Suddenly, he was gone.
I tried to move, but my body didn’t want to cooperate with me. When I tried to turn to my side, a sharp piercing pain bit at my ribcage. I moaned in agony.
After what felt like forever, I could hear voices on the other side of the crumbled wall.
“Aidan? Aidan?”
Iskandor. I tried to answer, but my voice failed me.
I could hear pieces of rock debris being moved. After a few moments, beams of sunlight broke through the wall and brightened the cave.
Before I knew it, I could feel someone’s presence beside me. “Aidan! Are you alright?”
It was Derrick. “I’ve been better.”
“Can you move?”
“About the only thing I can move without my body becoming very angry with me is my toes.”
I looked up. Derrick, Kirra, Aurora, the two brownies and one pixie. Iskandor was just entering the cave in human form.
Someone was missing.
“Mirabelle,” I breathed. “Where is she?”
“Relax for a moment, Aidan,” Derrick said in a soothing voice. But quite the opposite of what he had intended, a sense of dread crept up on me.
“Where is she?” I repeated, slower this time.
“Aidan,” Iskandor said, “please try and remain calm—”
I reached out and grabbed Derrick by his armor and pulled him closer, so we were just about nose to nose. My heart was pounding and I was suddenly terrified.
“Where. Is. She?”
“Someone tell him,” Kirra said evenly. “There’s no point in keeping it from him.”
Now I was really starting to get angry—I could feel the lightning crackling on my body. “Keep. What. From. Me?”
The cave was silent, which didn’t help contain my rage. Finally, Derrick spoke.
“They took her, Aidan. She’s gone.”
CHAPTER 10
I don’t remember much of what happened next. I remember that every color suddenly ceased to exist … except for red. I remember screaming, I remember my powers surging. Everybody was yelling, diving for cover. Lightning bolts. Then someone yelled something, and everything went black.
I woke up several times afterward, only for a few seconds, and I was being held in the talons of a dragon, flying high above the world.
I woke up surrounded by white walls that were immediately familiar to me. I could hear the light coughing of the sick and injured. It took me a moment to remember what was happening, but when I did …
Mirabelle.
I tried to sit up off the gurney, only to find I was tied to it.
What the hell …
“We had to, Aidan,” Iskandor said, standing at the foot of the bed. “It was the only way to keep everyone safe.”
I was angry as him, more than I had ever been. I tried to summon my powers.
“That won’t work either,” he explained calmly. “I’ve enchanted the ropes to nullify your powers.”
“Traitor,” I snarled at him, and I couldn’t believe it came out of my mouth.
“No, Aidan,” Iskandor replied, again with his customary calm. “We had to, for everyone’s safety. You’ve become a danger to anyone around you.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, my voice still low.
Iskandor sighed before he answered. “When you found out about Mirabelle, you lost control. Your powers went haywire, shooting lightning bolts all over the place. Derrick and Kirra were almost hit. Then you passed out, and I brought you back here.”
“I should be out looking for Mirabelle,” I said.
“We’re working on it, Aidan,” Iskandor said. “Kirra has some of her people out around the area near Min Lenoras. Derrick has his own scouting party out too—he took the pixie and brownies with him. They should be able to get in and out of Min Lenoras unseen. As soon as they hear something, we’ll know.”
“That’s not fast enough,” I said, my voice rising. “She could already be dead—or worse …”
“Don’t think like that, Aidan,” Iskandor said. “We’ll find her, I promise. I’d be out searching myself, but I needed to make sure you were taken care of.”
“Don’t worry about me!” I yelled, losing composure. “Find her!”
Iskandor shook his head. “You are my top priority, Aidan. No matter what happens, that will never change. Besides, when you lose control of your powers, I’m the only one with the strength to contain you.”
Now my feelings of anxiety were mixing with compassion. Iskandor’s concern for me touched my broken heart.
“We have to find her, Iskandor,” I said, tears welling in my eyes. “We have to.”
“We will, Aidan.”
Finally realizing that resistance was futile, I asked the question. “What happened?”
Iskandor was silent for a moment. “After you … left …” he started, clearly asking another question with that statement, “the focus of the Ther-lor became clear. Their mission was to kidnap Mirabelle all along. A dozen of them surrounded her and took her away. Even a fighter as fierce as Mirabelle couldn’t fight them all off.”
“Didn’t you follow them?” I asked incredulously.
“You think I didn’t?” Iskandor answered, showing signs of irritation for the first time. “I shifted into dragon form and followed them as soon as I got the chance. The pixie came with me. But it was like … they vanished.”
“We were in the mountains,” I grumbled. “Where could they possibly have gone?”
“If I knew that, we never would have lost Mirabelle,” Iskandor answered evenly.
I realized finally that I was being too hard on Iskandor. If he could have saved Mirabelle, I know he would have. My pain and my rage were overruling my common sense.
“I’m sorry, my friend,” I said, ashamed of myself. “I’m just …” I trailed off.
“I know,” Iskandor said, putting his hand on my arm.
I looked down at my restraints. “So how long do I have to stay like this?”
“Long enough until I know you won’t destroy the entire city in a fit of rage,” Iskandor answered evenly.
I sighed deeply. “I won’t. At least, I have no intention to. You have my word.”
Iskandor smiled, nodded, and with a flick of his fingers, dissolved my bonds.
I sat up and rubbed my wrists and ankles. It only lasted for a moment, but I felt some appreciation at the fact that all Iskandor needed was my word to release me.
“So why did you leave the battle?” Iskandor asked me bluntly. And with those words, it suddenly occurred to me that I was also responsible for Mirabelle’s disappearance. If I hadn’t left everyone behind …
My body shuttered with the realization. But I tried to force my self-loathing into the pit of my stomach in order to answer Iskandor’s question.
It didn’t work though. The dragon knew me too well, and realized something was amiss. “No one blames you, Aidan. Even with you there, Mirabelle may have been kidnapped anyway. There were too many Ther-lor.”
I tried to swallow that, but it didn’t go down too well. I tried to force my mind away from the subject by answering Iskandor’s question.
“I thought I saw Sirak,” I whispered. “I thought, ‘I could end this right now.’ So I went after him. But it wasn’t Sirak.”
“Who was it?” Iskandor asked.
“Norvin,” I mumbled.
Iskandor’s eyes were wide with shock. “What?”
By now, the dragon knew all about the history between Norvin and I. He also knew that I had confronted him in the cathedral before my battle with Sirak, and that his body was nowhere to be found in the aftermath.
I hesitated before I answered, still trying to piece the altercation with my nemesis together in my head. I really wasn’t sure what I had seen. “It was Norvin, but … it was also a Ther-lor. Like, he had somehow been transformed, but he was still himself. He could think for himself.”
Iskandor was silent, also trying to piece this new
information together.
“That’s not all,” I continued. “He was also stronger, faster … like a Super Ther-lor or something.”
“That’s not good,” Iskandor replied. “It seems that Sirak is making advances in his experimentation.”
I nodded.
“What did he say?” Iskandor asked.
I sighed. “It’s mostly a blur, but he taunted me. That much I remember.”
Iskandor was silent for a moment. “Well, if Norvin is, as you say, a ‘super Ther-lor’, then things will be even more difficult than imagined.”
We were both quiet for several moments as we absorbed the changes in our situation. Then a sudden, random thought occurred to me.
“Did Aurora freak out when you turned into a dragon?”
“No,” Iskandor replied. “She simply stared. I don’t mind telling you, that little girl sends shivers up my spine.”
“You?” I chuckled, amused that this mighty dragon was so intimidated by a little girl, no matter how strange and mysterious she was.
“Yes,” Iskandor said. “I believe myself to be pretty adept at reading you humans—for the most part, you, um,” he paused for a moment, thinking, “wear your hearts on your sleeves, as I believe the human saying goes. But Aurora … barely a flicker of emotion ever penetrates her stoic demeanor. Many children see far too much at a young age, especially in these troubled times, but clearly Aurora’s horrifying trials shattered the barriers of what she could handle, emotionally and mentally.”
We were both silent for a moment, and I pondered Iskandor’s words. But after a while, I could contain myself no longer.
“What do we do about Mirabelle?”
Iskandor responded evenly. “We wait.”
***
“Aidan!”
Mirabelle. I could hear her.
“Where are you?” I screamed.
“I’m here!” She yelled in response. “Hurry!”
I ran, although I had no clue where I was running. I was in a place I had never seen before, apparently some kind of dungeon. Everything around me had a weird shimmering quality to it.
I tried to follow her voice, but I couldn’t find her. I was getting more and more desperate.
“Mirabelle!” I called frantically.
“Aidan …” Her voice was weaker now.
Terrified, I kept running toward the sound of her voice. I turned a corner …
And there she was. But it wasn’t her.
She had ebony skin, blood red eyes. She was in her purple and silver armor, and she had her longsword.
“No!” I moaned, sinking to my knees in despair.
She raised her sword and charged, hissing …
“Lord Aidan.”
I started, waking from my awful nightmare. My head darted this way and that, trying to remember where I was. The dream lingered in my mind.
“Are you alright, sir?”
A soldier of Delmar stood before me. I tried to respond, but for a moment, I couldn’t speak. My breath came in ragged gasps, and my heart was pounding furiously.
It had been almost two weeks since I woke up in the infirmary. I had waited and waited and waited, and every minute felt like an eternity in my mind.
Second, minutes, hours, days, weeks—they all dissolved into each other. Time ceased to exist. There was no color in the world, no beauty, no life.
There was nothing without her.
I don’t know how I kept myself together, but I know it wasn’t easy. And Iskandor was never too far away from me, in case he had to shift to dragon form and fly me away from the city if I was ready to explode or something.
And believe me, keeping myself in check was no simple task either.
“Lord Aidan, they’re summoning you to the castle.”
Those were the words I had been waiting to hear for what felt like forever. I rushed to the castle. I passed Derrick on the way there, who followed after me. His scouts had already returned a couple of days prior with no luck. He was smart enough not to say anything to me.
Anyone on the streets on the way to the castle gave me a wide berth. They had been during the entire two-week period, amidst the news of what had happened and various subsequent rumors. I didn’t pay attention to them—it wasn’t worth my time to get mixed up in any gossip.
Plus I might have killed somebody if they said the wrong thing.
When I entered the courtroom in the White Castle, other than the king’s guards and a few servants running around, the only beings in there were King Baladir, Iskandor and Kirra.
I went straight for Kirra. “Any news?”
Kirra shook her head. “No. Sorry, Aidan.”
I wanted to scream, and it took everything in my being not to. Nothing against Derrick, but I wasn’t expecting his scouting group, comprised mostly of foot soldiers, to have much luck at Sirak’s very-occupied-with-Ther-lor fortress in Min Lenoras. Kirra’s people, though—masters at infiltration—I was hoping beyond hope that they would find something.
But they hadn’t.
“My men want to be paid,” Kirra was saying to me.
Now my temper was really starting to boil. “Then pay them.”
“They want you to pay them,” Kirra replied evenly.
“Why me?” I asked, my voice rising. “You hired them, not me. I didn’t ask for your help.”
“Well, that’s a real nice way to say ‘thank you’. And they’re not stupid. They know you have gold.”
She’d barely finished her sentence before I’d turned and stormed out of the royal court. My powers were beginning to surge.
“Aidan!” Derrick yelled after me. He may as well have saved his breath.
I could hear everyone following me, but I was only focused on one thing. Outside the castle, in the Garden of Rememberance, were Kirra’s small group of fellow thieves.
I did not decrease my pace as I approached the nearest one. “You’d like to get paid?”
“Ye—” He didn’t finish because I had him in the air by this throat.
“Aidan!” Kirra screamed. One of her other thief friends advanced on me, but I stopped him by lifting my hand and showing him the swirling ball of lightning it was holding.
“Tell me, sir, how would you like to be paid?” I snarled at the man. “Gold coins or your life?”
Gasping for air, the thief couldn’t answer.
Kirra was suddenly in front of me, her other dagger at my throat. Even in my rage, I had to admire her fearlessness.
“Let him go, Aidan.” Her voice was low and deadly.
I glared at her, then back at the man, still gasping for air.
I tossed him to the ground. The thief grasped at his throat, thankfully gulping in breaths of fresh air. I pulled out a small pouch of gold coins and tossed it next to him.
“Split that amongst yourselves.”
And I turned and walked away.
Kirra was right behind me, clearly furious. “What was that all about?”
I spun around on her. “Your men have a great deal of gall demanding payment from me for what any country would perceive as illegal tactics.”
“I had them do that for you, you ungrateful bastard!”
I took a step toward her. “You better lower your voice to me, you worthless thief.”
Kirra’s eyes were as wide as apples. Then screaming, she once again drew her daggers, intent of fighting me.
Derrick was suddenly in between us. “Hey, that’s enough! Stop!”
“Move out of the way, Derrick,” Kirra growled. “I’m going to gut him like the pig he is!”
I didn’t even bother to draw my swords. “You’ll be dead before you can finish your first swing.”
Then Iskandor was in front of me. As always, he spoke very mildly. “I understand your pain, Aidan, but you are being very foolish.”
In the back of my mind, I knew he was right—but I certainly wasn’t ready to admit it yet. Instead, I turned and stormed off.
There was only o
ne destination on my mind—and Iskandor knew it.
“Aidan, you can’t go!”
“The hell I can’t,” I responded. “I’m going in there and I’ll get her out myself.”
“You’ll get killed. You’re still recovering from your injuries as it is.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“Aidan,” Iskandor said, suddenly materializing in front of me, “I can’t let you go. It is suicide.”
The concern in my friend’s eyes weakened my resolve for a moment. He was probably right—going to Min Lenoras myself was likely to result in my doom. But in my mind, I had no other choice …
“He could be torturing her in there, Iskandor,” I whispered, almost pleading. “I can’t … I can’t …” I started sobbing.
“Aidan,” the dragon said, stepping forward and pulling my head to his shoulder, “we will find her.”
“How?” I asked, starting to panic. “We can’t get past the Ther-lor without sending an entire army. And even that might not be enough!”
The pain was overwhelming and far too much for me to handle. I sobbed uncontrollably on Iskandor’s shoulder.
“We’ll find a way,” Iskandor said.
I shook my head. “There is no other way, my friend.”
Iskandor was silent for a moment, and then he said, “Then I’m going with you.”
I knew he was going to say that—just as I knew that talking him out of it would be pointless. But I tried anyway.
“No, my friend. I don’t want anyone else involved in this.”
“If you’re involved, I’m involved, Aidan,” Iskandor replied. “You know this.”
His undying loyalty never ceased to make me tear up just a little—but that was easily disguised as I was now a blubbering mess. I wanted to protest more, but in the end, I just looked at my feet and nodded slowly.
“We cannot tell anyone else,” Iskandor said. “You know they will follow.”
Again, I just nodded.
“We’ll leave at nightfall,” I said slowly.
CHAPTER 11
The rest of that day was the longest day of my life. I kept willing it to move faster, but time ignored my desperate pleas. So I paced until nightfall.
When the time finally came, I met Iskandor in the Garden of Rememberance. He was in dragon form, just sitting and looking out to the east, our destination.
The Treachery Of A Weasel Page 11