"Am I dreaming?" Arai asked out loud. Having just woken up, he was still a little muddleheaded, and Lillandra's strange dark cloak, which seemed to merge with the shadows themselves, looked like something out of a dream.

"Of course not," she replied. "Hurry, now. We don't have much time."

Twine, who had also been sleeping, stirred when he heard Lillandra, and when he saw her there, crouched down next to the bars of their cell, his eyes went wide. "Lillandra!" he practically shouted.

"Shut up!" she hissed back at him. She removed something from within the folds of the cloak -- it turned out to be a key -- and unlocked the door to the cell. "Let's go, Arai."

Arai had a thousand questions, but he held off on asking them for now. He glanced at Twine and Sir Estil. "What about them?"

"What about them?"

"I can't leave them here."

"Bring them along, then," she said crossly.

"I won't leave without my shipmates," Twine said firmly.

"I can't sneak all of you out of this prison," she said. "Do you know how long it took me to sneak in? There are guards everywhere." She reached into her cloak again and produced Silus; she handed the sword to Arai. "There's no time to argue. Let's go."

Arai accepted the sword, but he didn't budge. "Twine is right. We can't abandon the crew of the Cockatrice. And they're not the only ones here who have been impressed against their will."

"We can't save them all," she insisted.

"We can try."

She sighed. "Do you always have to play the hero? All right, then. What do you suggest?"

"We'll free them," he said, "and we'll fight our way out. There's at least a hundred prisoners down here. If we can catch the guards by surprise..."

"You're insane."

"We have to do something."

"Whatever you decide to do," Sir Estil broke in, "you'd better do it fast. The guards will find us soon."

Arai nodded. He swiped the key out of Lillandra's hands (leaving her looking rather dumbfounded) and began using it to unlock the other cells. He warned the prisoners to be quiet, but some of them couldn't help but exclaim in surprise. He winced, hoping their voices wouldn't carry.

It took about five minutes for him to unlock all the cells and free all the prisoners, who gathered themselves in the dungeon's corridors. Arai wasn't sure how to proceed from here -- the prisoners were free, but many of them were weak, and none of them had any weapons. They couldn't possibly overpower the guards in this state.

Sir Estil surprised him by taking charge. "Gather the strongest of them together," he told Arai. "We'll attack the guards outside the door, seize their weapons, and proceed through the castle, killing as many of them as we can, as quietly as we can, and collecting their weapons. As soon as we've acquired enough, we'll send a couple of men back here to arm those who remain. Most of the soldiers will be sleeping in their barracks at this time of night -- we should try to bar the door, lock them in there somehow. And if the Skirrish do manage to raise the alarm, we'll throw everything we have at them, all at once. At least a few of us may manage to escape." He turned to Lillandra. "Do you know what time it is?"

"After midnight," she said.

"That should make our job easier." He lifted his chin at the assembled prisoners. "Tell them."

Arai explained Sir Estil's plan to the nearest prisoners, who passed it on to those behind them. Several large, strapping men soon emerged from the crowd, volunteering to be a part of the advance guard -- including a couple of burly sailors from the Cockatrice. There were eight of them in all.

Arai took the lead, for he was the only one equipped with a real weapon. With Lillandra, Sir Estil, and Twine following him, and with the eight volunteers behind them, they made their way down the corridor, to the large double-barred door of the dungeon.

"How did you get through here?" Arai asked Lillandra.

"I drugged the guards," she said, "and stole their keys. The door up ahead should still be unlocked."

"The guards are asleep?"

"Not exactly. They're in a kind of stupor. But they shouldn't give us any trouble. It's the gate guards we'll have to worry about, and all the others prowling around."

Well, this was good news. Arai glanced at Lillandra, running at side, her weird shadow-cloak fluttering behind her, and grinned. She had come for him after all. She was risking her life to rescue him.

Arai opened the door, cautiously, and found the situation as Lillandra had described it: the two sentries stationed at the door were standing there stupidly -- still on their feet, but swaying drunkenly, as if in a daze. Arai took their pikes and gave them to a couple of the volunteers, then had them dragged back through the door and locked up in one of the cells. "How long will they stay like that?" he asked Lillandra.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"A few minutes. I didn't have time to make a more powerful philtre. I was too busy making this cloak."

"What is it, anyway?" he asked.

"An Assassin's Cloak. I wanted to make a Draw of Shadows, but I didn't have enough time, so I made this instead."

"What does it do?"

"It's for sneaking around, for hiding in the shadows. A Draw of Shadows would have enabled me to travel through the shadows, like Nharlek's monster did, but it would have taken months to make. This was the best I could do on such short notice."

"I appreciate it. Where's Shell?"

"Safe."

The group started down one of the castle's corridors -- sticking to the shadows, hugging the walls, and trying to make as little noise as possible. At one point they encountered a pair of guards, chatting with each other; Arai quickly dove out of sight, and when they turned a corner, two of the bigger sailors seized them, wrapping them up in headlocks and strangling them until they stopped moving. Each guard had been carrying a sword; these were handed over to a couple of the other volunteers. As they made their way through the halls, they found a few more items that might make useful weapons: a hammer, a table leg (converted into a club), and a few other odds and ends. They found another sword as well, which Sir Estil appropriated for himself. "Skirrish steel," he complained, testing its weight. "But it'll do."

Twine and two other sailors from the Cockatrice volunteered to look for the barracks -- Sir Estil was right; if they could trap those soldiers in their rooms before the alarm was raised, they would stand a much better chance of escaping. Arai wished them good luck and sent them off.

They managed to knock out several more guards, and to collect several more weapons, some of which were sent back to their comrades in the dungeons. By now they had arrived in a corridor adjacent to the main hall -- the large, spacious gallery they had passed through when they were first captured. Peeking around the corner, Arai spotted several more bored-looking guards, like the ones they had already overpowered, but this was a big, open room, and catching them by surprise would be very difficult.

"Any thoughts?" Arai whispered to Sir Estil.

"We only need to get close to them. How good is your Skirrish?"

"Pretty good," he said. The spell Lillandra had cast on him gave him a perfect command of these eastern languages; he apparently spoke them like a native, without any trace of an accent.

Sir Estil nodded. "We'll disguise ourselves as guards and approach them. You do the talking. When I give the signal, let them have it."

Arai blew out a breath. "All right," he said, and the two of them proceeded to strip a couple of the guards they had knocked unconscious earlier and change into their black uniforms. Then, leaving the others behind, they walked out into the open, headed for the guards. There were six of them in all; three of them were standing around chatting, and the other three were stationed at various point within the gallery. A seneschal, on call for late-night deliveries perhaps, was also scribbling something at a desk near the entrance, but he didn't look to be much of a threat.

They approached the three men who were standing together. "You've been relieved," Arai told them.

The men turned to look at him. "Relieved? What are you talking about?"

"Valtun's worried about assassins breaking down his door or something. He wants a couple of you to go up there and guard him. The two of us will take over here." He jerked a thumb at Sir Estil. The knight, his face hidden beneath a Skirrish helmet, nodded in agreement.

The men looked at each other, frowning, obviously skeptical. "I don't recognize you," one of the said. "Are you new?"

By now they were standing within five or six feet of the men. When one of them took a step forward, to get a better look at Arai's face, Sir Estil whispered, "Now!"

Arai reached for his sword, but before he had even pulled it halfway out of the scabbard Sir Estil had already whipped his own sword out, lightning-quick, and cut down the first man. A second later, the second man went down; Sir Estil seized him by the gorget, pulled it down, and stabbed him in the throat.

Arai was astonished -- he had never seen a man move so fast, not even Yaqui, and his skill with that sword, even if it was just "Skirrish steel", was uncanny; it seemed to dance in his hand, flickering in the torchlight.

And the knight was at least three times his age! He couldn't believe it.

He had his own work to do, however; he didn't have time to marvel at the Sir Estil's swordplay. Drawing Silus, he slashed at the third man, but the guard somehow managed to bring his pike up and block the blow. He was too surprised to retaliate, however, and Arai quickly pressed the attack, slipping around and cutting his hamstring, which caused him to fall to one knee. Arai snatched the pike out of his hand and tossed it aside, then booted him in the back of the head.

That was three down, but the other soldiers in the gallery had seen everything, and the seneschal, panicked, was now screaming his head off. Two of the soldiers charged them with their pikes, while another ran off, his eyes wide -- either out of cowardice, or to alert the rest of the soldiers stationed in the castle. Arai hoped that Twine and the others had managed to lock down the barracks.

Sir Estil cut down one of the men who charged him; again, he moved so quickly, and with such poise, that Arai could barely follow his movements. The other guard ran past him, though, aiming for Arai. A sword was a poor weapon against a pike, but Arai had battled spearmen and pikemen before and he knew how to deal with them -- he waited until the last moment, then twisted his body around the length of the pike and delivered a backhand blow to the guard's neck. The blow was deflected by the man's armor, but Arai was close enough now to hit him with the Net of Steel, forcing him to drop the pike. One of the burly prisoners then jumped out of hiding, wrestling the man to the ground.

Lillandra stepped out of hiding as well, her Assassin's Cloak shimmering weirdly in the torchlight. "Now what?" she asked.

They could hear shouting coming from some distant part of the castle. "We don't have much time," he said. And only a moment later, a dozen more soldiers came rushing into the room. Seeing their fallen comrades, and seeing the Arai and the others standing there in the gallery, they cried out in alarm and immediately attacked.

At almost the same moment, however, the crew of the Cockatrice, along with the rest of the prisoners, suddenly came roaring out of the corridors, and just like that, the fight was on. The entire gallery was thrown into chaos -- men yelling, weapons clashing, battles erupting all over. In the midst of this, Twine appeared, running over to Arai and Lillandra. "There's two barracks, maybe three," he said breathlessly. "We managed to block the door to one, but it won't held them forever, and the others are all awake now. They came pouring out. What do we do?"

"Figure out how to lower that drawbridge," Arai said grimly. "We're getting out of here."

But then he stopped, and frowned, because a new figure had just swept into the gallery: a tall, gaunt figure, hovering over the heads of the others, his fingers alive with flame.

"Valtun," Arai muttered. Another fight, with another sorcerer. It figured.