d



Cassilda moved through the dark on careful feet. The moon peeked fitfully through the tree cover, occasionally catching steel or oiled leather in  an unpleasant flash of reflected light. The nights animals seemed unenthusiastic about the interlopers, paying them little mind. All the while she whispered quietly to herself, reciting the words of her spell over and over. It wasn’t a powerful glamour, she couldn’t have kept it up for long if it were. There was power in subtlety tough. Just a whisper of power, enough to make the idly curious ignore a glint of armor or a snapped twig.
 
It was a great relief to reach the castle itself. She was glad Kayden had a way in, it had the look of a place that would chew up men in a siege, taking it would be far more costly than any value it could provide a besieger. That was the point of castles she supposed, to make a few men extremely expensive. Of course, defenders who forced their besiegers to take them by storm could expect no mercy.
 
The moon was shadowed on the granite stairway as they picked their way higher. She tried not to think about bowman waiting in the dark to spit them, when their only choice was death by arrow or by the long fall to the rocky floor. She remembered the grim satisfaction she had felt in a similar situation when she had been with the bowmen, raining arrows on some doomed unfortunates.
 
Kayden’s question shocked her from her reverie. The door seemed a formidable obstacle, but appearances could easily deceive.
 
“I have something,” she whispered, setting her shield down on the stone and stepping to the door itself. Reaching into a pouch she groped blindly in the dark, eventually feeling the smooth glass surface of a small bottle of oil. Drawing the vial out of her pack she carefully smeared the oil on the hinges of the gate. Some of the others were looking at her as though she were conducting some great work.
 
“Oil,” she explained, “so the hinges don’t squeal.” She doubted it would stop the squealing completely, certainly on the first turn, but it would help.
 
Now for the real work. She badly wished she could review the spell but she didn’t dare risk the light. Instead she placed a palm on the lockplate of the door and began a low soft chant. The arcane language sounded like a human approximation of ice cracking. Sweat began to gather on her brow and her palm began to pulse with heat. Veins in her pale hand began to blacken and reach up her arm. With a final hissed syllable she finished the spell. There was a surge and the blackness flowed out of her hand and into the lockplate. Rust bloomed out from her hand, like a film of frost on a window pain and she sagged backwards from the effort of the unfamiliar spell. 

Breathing hard she drew a dagger from her belt. Taking a deep breath she drove the point into the rusted lockplate. It slid in with a crunching sound as the rusted metal gave way like old bark. The door gave a soft groan as she twisted the blade, shredding the hopelessly corrupted mechanism. The door fell with a slight bang and squealed for a second as it began to turn. Then the oil coated the hinges and it quieted, its weight slowly pushing it open.