Free Into a Dark Realm by Raymond E. Feist Page A

around here some years back. My men report tool marks on the rock face. There was probably a path down to the floor of the run that was demolished.” He sighed. “It’s time. Where’s your man?”
    Nakor nodded behind them. “Sleeping, under the wagon.”
    “Get him, then,” said Erik von Darkmoor.
    Nakor hurried back to the luggage wagon, where the two boys responsible for looking after the stores from the town waited. They spoke in hushed tones, understanding how dangerous this missionwas; even so, they were only boys and the waiting was making them restless. Underneath the wagon lay a solitary figure, who roused quickly when Nakor kicked lightly at his boots.
    Ralan Bek wiggled out from under the wagon, then unfolded himself to tower over Nakor. The youth was six inches over six feet in height, and he loomed over the diminutive gambler. Nakor knew he was possessed by some aspect of the God of Evil—a tiny “sliver” as Nakor thought of it; an infinitesimal portion of the god himself—and that made Bek extraordinarily dangerous. The only advantage Nakor possessed was years of experience and what he thought of as his “tricks.”
    “Time?”
    Nakor nodded. “They’ll be there in a moment. You know what to do.”
    Bek nodded. He reached down and picked up his hat, a hat he had claimed as a prize from a man he had killed before Nakor’s eyes, and he wore it like a badge of honor. The broad-brimmed black felt hat, with its single long eagle’s feather hanging down from the hatband, gave the youth an almost rakish air, but Nakor knew that beneath the young man’s convivial exterior seethed a potential for harm, as well as preternatural strength and speed.
    Bek trotted over to the face of the cliff, and waited. A coil of line was dropped quietly from above, followed a moment later by another. Soldiers quickly tied heavier rope to the lines, and this was pulled up. When the first rope was made secure, Ralan Bek unbuckled his scabbard belt and tied it over one shoulder, so that his sword now rested on his back. With powerful ease he pulled himself up the rope, feet firmly on the rock face, as if he had been climbing this way all his life. Other soldiers followed, but Bek’s speed up the rope was unmatchable.
    Erik watched him ascend into the darkness. “Why are you so insistent he goes first, Nakor?”
    “He may not be invulnerable, Erik, but he’s a lot harder to kill than any of your men. Magnus will look out for those guarding themain entrance to the keep, but if there’s magic on this back door, Bek has the best chance of survival.”
    “Time was I would be the first one up the rope.”
    Nakor gripped his friend’s arm. “I’m glad to see you’ve got smarter over the years, Erik.”
    “I notice you’re not volunteering to be up there, either.”
    Nakor just grinned.
     
    Bek waited, running his fingers over the door’s outline. It was a rock, like the others, and in the darkness he couldn’t see the crack his fingertips told him marked the edge of the entrance to the bolt-hole. He let his senses drift, for he had discovered early in life that sometimes he could anticipate things—an attack, an unexpected turn of the trail, the mood of a horse, or the fall of the dice. He thought of it as his “lucky feeling.”
    Yes, he thought. There was something just beyond this door, something very interesting. Ralan Bek did not know what fear was. As Nakor had suggested to him, there was something very different, even alien, about the young man from Novindus. Glancing down to where the little man waited with the old soldier, he found he could barely make them out in the dark. “Lantern,” he whispered, and a soldier behind him handed him a specially constructed, small, shuttered lantern. He pointed it at Nakor and Erik and opened it and shut it again quickly. That was the agreed-upon signal to proceed cautiously.
    Not that Ralan truly understood caution. It was as alien to his thoughts as fear. He tried