“Tilly, are you sure that you’re not lost?”

Walking in front because the passageway was too narrow for them to walk side by side, Tilly looked back over her shoulder and spoke without slowing.

“I often go this way, Mistress. Other routes are sometimes crowded and noisy. I find that this way is faster, and besides, I would rather be alone with my own thoughts.”

Magda understood that well enough. As much as she didn’t like the confining, dark passageways, they did have the advantage of being virtually unused. In the more direct routes by way of busy corridors she would have encountered a lot of people.

“Is it much farther?”

“A ways yet, Mistress.”

The two of them worked their way around an awkward jog in the passageway that skirted a protrusion of wet, gray, speckled granite on the right. It was the bedrock of the mountain itself, left in place to serve as a wall, evidence that they were at the margin of the Wizard’s Keep, deep in the mountain into which the vast structure was built. Much of the lower Keep was pinned directly into the stone heart of the mountain.

At an intersection, they followed the passage that cut off to the left, heading in the direction of the Keep’s interior. The walls were even closer together, the ceiling lower.

Not long after they had taken the turn, a deep thump shook the stone floor. Magda could feel the concussion in her breastbone. Grit rained down from joints in the stone. They both paused. She then heard a distant scream echo though the cramped corridor.

“What was that?” Magda asked, her words echoing back to her from the darkness.

Tilly glanced back and saw that Magda had stopped. “Not far ahead be where some of the gifted work on creating weapons. Sometimes, people get hurt. It might be nothing more than that.”

“Are you saying that you think it might be something else?”

The old woman leaned closer and lowered her voice. “I know that I be the one who planted the seed of this idea in your head, Mistress, but that was before people started turning up dead down here. Like I told you when you asked me to show you the way, I didn’t know if this still be such a good idea. As much as I would like to believe your suspicions, I don’t know if I share the explanation.”

Not long after Baraccus’s death, people had begun to find mutilated bodies down in the lower Keep. Tilly’s fears were understandable, especially since she had found one of the bodies herself. People didn’t know who was to blame, and that only heightened everyone’s fears.

At least Lord Rahl was long gone so they couldn’t blame him, though a few still tried. For some people, it was better to blame anyone than to fear the unknown.