Free Into the Labyrinth by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman Page B

adjusted to the light. The Ancient eyed Hugh quizzically. Other people the Ancient had seen in this position had been limp with relief—some so limp he’d been forced to carry them in. Every member of the Brotherhood knew about the archer. Hugh knew that he’d been a curt nod away from certain death. Still, there was no sign of it on his face, which was harder than the fortress’s granite walls.
    Yet perhaps the penetrating eyes of the Ancient did catch a flicker of feeling, though not what the Ancient had expected. When the door offering life instead of death hadopened to Hugh the Hand, he had appeared, for an instant, disappointed.
    “Will Ciang see me this moment?” Hugh asked, voice gruff and low. He raised his hand, palm outward, to show the scars that crossed it. Part of the ritual.
    The Ancient peered at the scars intently, though he had known this man for more years than the elder could recall. This, too, was part of the ritual.
    “She will, sir. Please go on up. May I say, sir,” the Ancient added, his voice trembling, “that I am truly glad to see you well.”
    Hugh’s grim and dark expression relaxed. He laid his scarred hand on the old man’s bird-bone-fragile arm in acknowledgment. Then, setting his jaw, the Hand left the old man, began the long climb up the innumerable stairs to Ciang’s private quarters.
    The Ancient peered after him. The Hand had always been a strange one. And perhaps the rumors about him were true. That would explain a lot. Shaking his head, knowing that he would likely never find out, the Ancient resumed his post at the door.
    Hugh walked slowly up the stairs, looking neither to the left nor to the right. He wouldn’t see anyone anyway, and no one would see him—one of the rules of the fortress. Now that he was here, he was in no hurry. So certain had he been of his death at the hands of the archer that he hadn’t given much thought to what he would do if he didn’t die. As he walked, tugging nervously on one of the braided strands of the beard which straggled from his jutting chin, he pondered what he would say. He rehearsed several variations. At length he gave up.
    With Ciang, there was only one thing to say—the truth. She probably already knew it anyway.
    He traversed the silent, empty hallway paneled in dark, highly polished, and extremely rare wood. At the end, Ciang’s door stood open.
    Hugh paused outside, looked in.
    He had expected to see her seated at her desk, the desk marked with the blood of countless initiates into the Guild. But she was standing in front of one of the diamond-panedwindows, looking out at the wilds of the isle of Skurvash.
    Ciang could see everything worth seeing from that window: the prosperous town—a smuggler’s haven—rambling along the shoreline; the craggy forest of the brittle hargast trees that separated town from fortress; the single narrow path that led from town to fortress (a dog walking along that path could be seen by every lookout in the Brotherhood); and beyond and above and below, the sky, in which the isle of Skurvash floated.
    Hugh’s hand clenched; his mouth was so dry he could not for a moment announce himself; his heart beat rapidly.
    The elf woman was old; many considered her the oldest living person in Arianus. She was small and fragile. Hugh could have crushed her with one of his strong hands. She was dressed in the bright-colored silken robes the elves fancy, and even at her age there was a delicacy, a grace, a hint of what reputedly had once been remarkable beauty. Her head was bald, the skull exquisitely shaped, the skin smooth and without blemish, an interesting contrast to the wrinkled face.
    The absence of hair made her slanted eyes appear large and liquid, and when she turned—not at the sound but at the absence of sound—the penetrating look from those dark eyes was the arrow shaft that had not, until now, lodged in his breast.
    “You risk much coming back, Hugh the Hand,” Ciang said.
    “Not as much