The stairs came out onto a curve-walled room that Lief guessed was basically a segment cut out of the tower’s roughly circular profile, and then truncated to fit around some central core. There were doors here—not just doorways but actual doors, although the carpentry involved looked shoddy—probably the original evil architect had not considered internal doors sufficiently villainous. There was some furniture here as well, Lief saw: rugs on the floor in various stages of moth-eatenness—and did that imply evil moths, or had they been shabby before they were brought here?—and some chests at a far wall that set his fingers twitching. He was forced to restrain his larcenous desires, though, because there was also a big table and a half-dozen chairs, some of which were occupied. There were two of them, both men, one squat and corpulent, the other broad-shouldered and powerful-looking, and they were playing for money. Lief knew the type instantly: they slapped their cards down fast, looked in each other’s eyes, and were constantly commenting on the flow of the game or abusing one another’s parentage. Aside from the motley of baleful amulets and rings both wore, and the fact that the tougher-looking customer of the two had glowing red eyes, they could have been any pair of card-sharps in any dive Lief had been to.

He had turned back to Enth to whisper something when he heard the first scream. It was a woman’s voice, and there was a man’s triumphant yell with it, and it came from just beyond one of the doors.

Of course there would be torture cells, Lief thought. He pointed hurriedly back down the stairs for Enth’s benefit, and then the two of them scurried back down as quickly and quietly as they could.

Dion listened carefully to Lief’s report, and then had him describe the phantom trap again in as much detail as possible, with Penthos listening in over her shoulder. They conferred briefly together, two professionals who had gained a good knowledge of each other’s capabilities, and then Dion led the way.

She had not truly thought that there would be prisoners to rescue. No doubt there were some luckless scouts from Cad Nereg, brought here for interrogation about the fortress’s strengths. The opportunity to relieve them from torment and release them was like a ray of sunshine in Dion’s increasingly murky world.

But she and her fellows would have to be perfect in their execution if they were to get the chance. If they got into a pitched battle with the two gambling Doomsayers then surely any prisoners would end up dead before they could be rescued.

She put Harathes as rearguard: as the least stealthy, he would have no chance of tipping the enemy off with an inopportune scrape of shield or rattle of armor. She and Penthos were in the lead, the rest strung out down the stairs in the middle.