The Worlds of the Sheaf

Shonnla - Part 5

     Drenn's warning upset and unnerved them enough that Thomas found himself lying awake well into the small hours of the morning worrying about it. He'd tried so hard to win the trust of the people of Shonnla. He'd fooled himself into thinking he was making some progress with them, but the more he thought about it the more he realised that the priest was right. Every word spoken by the Mayor and his other 'guests' was suddenly revealed in a new light, and he now guessed that every one of them was, in fact, trained in prisoner interrogation. They hadn't said a thing that hadn't been, obviously or subtly, a dig for information, while their own questions had been deftly diverted or answered only obliquely.

     Thomas realised that he knew nothing about Malgania except its approximate size and level of technology, and even those things he'd assessed for himself in the previous days from observing the citizens going about their business. He knew nothing about the size of its army, whether it even had a navy, how well its cities were equipped to resist an invasion... They were being treated as spies, he realised in sudden revelation. They suspected they'd been deliberately planted here, with the aim of gathering information, and spies were always executed, in every society he'd ever heard of.

     Drenn's right, he realised. They are going to kill us. We have to get out of here as fast as possible. Even waiting a single day might be waiting too long. Escaping would mean using his spells, though, and for that he'd need a clear head. He had to get some sleep. He was so unnerved by their newly discovered danger, though, that he had to use all the meditation techniques he'd learned in the University before he could finally drift away.

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     The next morning he rose early and slipped quietly into Drenn's room, where he found the priest already about his morning exercises, his taut, muscular body slick with sweat. "Finding the weapons we came with might be difficult," he said. "Any old swords would be good enough, wouldn't they? They seem to have pretty good quality weapons."

     "I would very much like to get my throwing knives back," the priest replied. "They have a certain sentimental attachment for me." Then he sighed, though. "Good enough," he said. "So long as we've got something to fight with." Thomas nodded gratefully and left.

     The obvious place to look for weapons was the guardhouse, and Thomas meandered his way in that direction in the pretext of exploring the city. It wasn't the first time he'd done so, but now for the first time he looked behind himself from time to time, looking for people following him. In the busy, crowded streets it wasn't possible to tell for sure, but on one occasion he thought he saw someone ducking back out of sight as he looked around. He toyed with the idea of ducking into an alleyway to catch his tail as he passed by, but it would only tip them off that he was on to them. He refrained from looking behind himself any more, therefore, even though the back of his head itched as if he could feel crossbows aimed at him.

     Only when he saw the guardhouse ahead of him did he slip into a doorway long enough to mutter a spell. Then he sprang back out into the street before someone using the door bumped into him. Sure enough, no-one reacted to his presence and he had to dodge out of the way of people heading straight for him. He was invisible. He paused for a moment on an impulse, and was rewarded by the sight of an averagely dressed townsman searching around in confusion, looking for the Tharian he'd been following. Thomas chuckled under his breath, then ducked between the guards on door duty and into the guardhouse.

     He had to be quick. His tail might guess that this was his objective and raise the alarm. He dashed down corridors and up and down stairs, therefore, pressing himself flat against the wall whenever he came upon someone passing in the other direction, and eventually he discovered a sturdy, locked door with a word he didn't know painted on the heavy, closely grained wood. He guessed the word was 'Armoury'. He looked up and down the corridor to make sure he was alone, then cast another spell.