The Western Wizard by Mickey Zucker Reichert

Swiftly,Garn ducked into the opening and pulled it closed behind him.
    Blindly, Garn drew the tinderbox and dagger from his pockets and a torch from his belt. He slashed the dagger across flint, scattering sparks. These met the wet torch and died.
Damn!
Garn used the unsharpened edge of his dagger to scratch wax from the torch head and then tried again. This time, the pitch sputtered feebly, then lit. The wax made a soft hiss. Garn headed down the passageway.
    Rats fled like shadows before the torchlight. The semicircle of light revealed intricate carvings on the walls, blackened in patches from dampness and partially obscured by moss. Masters of stone craft, the Béarnides had sculpted the castle and its city from the mountain. Yet, despite their skill and the solidity of their materials, Garn wondered if a path so old could withstand time. He tried to imagine innocent, naive Sterrane as a child, fleeing through a damp, rat-infested tunnel with the screams of his mother, six siblings, and the most loyal guards and servants echoing behind him. Garn shivered at the pictures his mind conjured, marveling at how Sterrane had remained so innocent and gentle after such a tragedy.
    Garn continued, the dense silence of the tunnel revising his conception of Sterrane’s escape. More likely, buried beneath thicknesses of stone, he had heard nothing of the battle. Still, regardless of how much or little Sterrane had directly witnessed, the fact remained that he had lost his family, all of them at once. At one time, before the birth of Garn’s own child, the significance of such a disaster would have been lost on him. His own father was a skilled gladiator who, offered freedom, had chosen the pit and died there. A scullery maid beaten and abandoned by her own parents, Garn’s mother paid him little heed. At the request of Garn’s father, Captain Rache had raised Garn, though little more than a child himself. But that relationship had degenerated into hatred the day Rache had helped capture Garn so that Santagithi could sentence him to life in a cage.
    As always, bitterness welled up in Garn, accompanied by rage. He suppressed his wrath with the mental control to which Colbey had steered him more than a year ago. His thoughts returned to Sterrane, and he could not helpbut wonder how Béarn’s heir had managed to escape the hot, vengeful malice that had at times driven Garn to madness and volcanic violence, even against his friends. With Rache’s death had come a control, though not for the reasons Garn had expected. Now, Garn sincerely hoped he could fulfill Rache’s dying request, wished that he could raise Rache’s child better than Rache had raised Garn.
    The passage ended abruptly. With a vicious curse, Garn threw back his dark, dripping hair and assessed the presumed cave-in he would need to clear to complete his journey. Wedging the torch in the crevice of a carving, he drew his dagger and chopped at the moss. Dirt peeled from the surface, then the dagger rasped against rocks, uncovering an etching of a spitted deer. Rather than a collapsed barricade of rubble, Garn had discovered the far wall of the tunnel. Replacing the dagger, he grabbed the torch, raising it to the ceiling. Cracks formed a square hatchway, with a central hole. Once, Garn guessed, a rope had graced the middle section, the hemp now rotted away.
    Garn extinguished his torch, groping for the hatch in darkness. Sterrane’s description and Shadimar’s magic had revealed that the doorway would open into the room of a young girl who Sterrane could not identify. The brief research they had managed to do suggested that the child was Morhane’s granddaughter.
    Sterrane had also warned Garn that the closed hatch fell flush with the floor and could not be pried open from inside the castle, thwarting pursuit. Decades ago, Sterrane’s eldest brother had slept in this room, with the panel wedged open but hidden. Sterrane had come upon the hatch by accident. Unable to