by JA Andrews
“We’re not here to stop him,” Ayda called back over her shoulder. “We’re here to kill him.”
Chapter 46
“No we’re not!” Brandson protested. “We’re not here to kill him.” He looked around the group. “Are we?”
“No,” Milly said. “We aren’t. We’re here to stop him from raising Mallon.”
Douglon let out a short laugh. “We’re here to kill him.”
“Alaric,” Milly appealed to him.
Alaric took a deep breath. “I would rather not kill the old man.”
“You won’t need to,” Ayda said.
“It should be easy enough to stop him,” Alaric said, ignoring her.
Ayda snorted again. “Because it’s been so easy to stop him all the other times?”
“This is different,” Alaric said. “We know where he is, and we know what he is planning. Even if he gets everything set up before we get there, he will be relying heavily on the runes he draws before he begins. He won’t be able to begin until the monsters arrive for him to sacrifice. That should give us plenty of time. And we will stop him this time.”
“Oh,” Ayda said, her eyebrow arched, “so we finally have a Keeper in charge. It’s nice that you’ve decided to break away from wallowing in your past long enough to commit to something. Tell me, Keeper, how do you plan on stopping him from doing this exact same thing again sometime when we aren’t following him?”
“We’re going to take the Rivor’s body and destroy it.”
“Don’t you think I’ve tried? What do you think I’ve been doing since my people fought him? I don’t know if he can be destroyed.”
Alaric nodded slowly. “Maybe not. But we can try again. Together.”
“It is the Shade Seeker who wants to raise him,” Ayda pointed out. “There’s a simple answer to how to keep him from trying again. He wants the power that the Rivor can bring to him. He is not nice, nor does he care for any of us. He used us, manipulated us, destroyed my home.” Ayda’s eyes glowed with fury. “And he will pay for it.”
“We’ll stop him, Ayda,” Alaric said.
“Stopping him isn’t enough.”
Alaric turned to Nox. “Is there a way for us to enter the keep unnoticed?”
There’s an entrance in the back. It will not take long to reach it tomorrow morning. The Shade Seeker shouldn’t be able to see us approach.
“Then we should get some sleep,” Alaric says.
Ayda glared at Alaric, then turned and stalked over to the fire.
One more day and this would be done.
Morning couldn’t come soon enough.
Unfortunately, dawn’s early light came a little too late.
The sky had turned a dauntless pitch purple when Douglon shook Alaric awake.
“She’s gone,” Douglon hissed.
Alaric sat up and tried to focus on the dwarf. “Who’s gone?”
“The stupid elf. She’s gone. She left sometime during the night. She never woke anyone for the next watch.” Douglon scowled into the forest.
Alaric looked around. Ayda was nowhere to be seen. Alaric swore, jumping to his feet. “He’s still doing it,” he said, slamming his pack together.
The others stared at him blankly.
“Gustav doesn’t have his dragon,” Alaric said, “so he drew something more powerful to himself. He drew Ayda.”
Everyone had slept soundly, even Nox, who had curled up in front of one of the gaps in the boulders. That must have been Ayda’s doing as well. Alaric felt like he hadn’t slept that deeply in years.
“How long ago do you think she left?” Milly asked.
“As soon as we fell asleep… Or more accurately, as soon as she put us to sleep,” Alaric answered.
Brandson tried to stand, but cried out and fell against the boulder next to him. Milly ran over to him as he slid back down to the ground. She pulled up the leg of his pants and drew in a quick breath. The skin around the scar where the ape had gashed him had turned dark red.
Alaric went over to look at Brandson’s leg and swore again. Not just an infection. The ape’s nails must have been poisonous. He hadn’t thought of looking at it last night. He couldn’t leave Brandson like this.
“We need to drain this. It should be quick.”
Alaric sent Douglon off in search of a couple of plants while Milly began boiling water.
I can follow the elf’s trail, Nox offered.
Alaric nodded.
With a rustle, Nox slithered over the nearest boulder and into the forest.
Alaric took his knife and held it in the fire. He turned to Brandson. “I’m sorry. This is going to hurt.”
He washed Brandson’s leg thoroughly, then took his knife and slid it carefully through the center of the scar. Greenish puss seeped out while Brandson bit back cries of pain. Douglon returned, and he and Milly began making a paste while Alaric directed them. Once Alaric had drained out as much puss as he could, he rinsed the wound with water and pressed the paste onto it. Then he ripped up a shirt for some bandages and wrapped the leg.
It felt like ages before Brandson was ready to be helped to his feet. Milly slipped under his arm to stabilize him.
Nox wasn’t back yet, but they hurried, packing up their things as quickly as they could. Ayda must have reached the keep hours ago. Alaric slammed his things together. Ayda should be more than a match for Gustav, but she had been so angry. Dread anchored deep into Alaric’s gut.
Milly let out a loud gasp. Alaric looked at her in alarm, wondering what had happened. She was staring wide-eyed at something behind him.
“Good morning,” a nasal voice said from outside the rocks.
Alaric spun around.
Gustav was standing just beyond the coals from last night’s fire. He still wore his blue robe with the swirling stars, but it was rumpled and dirty.
Douglon growled and pulled out his axe.
“You came back?” Brandson said.
“That was unwise,” Douglon said, stepping toward the old man.
“Alligo!” Gustav shouted, waving his arms dramatically toward them.
Alaric started to laugh at the ridiculous motion until he felt his legs freeze to the ground. The paralysis moved quickly up his torso. He grabbed for the pouch at his neck just as his arms went rigid. Only his head was free to move.
Behind him, he heard Douglon grunting against the spell as well.
Alaric felt the humming of the magic focused on the ground around his feet. He began to gather energy to attack Gustav.
“Liquo!” Gustav shrieked, this time waving his hand frantically at Alaric.
Alaric felt the energy drain from him, sinking down into the ground. As fast as he could gather it, it ran out of him.
Gustav shook his hands out and looked at Alaric warily for a moment. Then he grinned.
“Don’t try to fight me,” Gustav said, motioning to the top of the boulders surrounding them.
There was a slither and a scraping of claws as monstrous creatures crawled up onto the tops of the rocks. On the boulder closest to Alaric, an enormous badger appeared. It scraped long, black claws against the rock as it leaned toward them. Instead of the black eyes of a badger, it had human eyes, light brown and shrewd. On other boulders sat a long, mottled snake, a small bear, and a golden-haired lion, all looking at them with unnerving intelligence.
“Gustav?” Brandson asked. “What are you doing?”
Gustav didn’t look at Brandson.
Alaric strained against the magic holding him in place. He pulled in energy again and again, only to have it drain out just as quickly into the ground beneath his feet.
“What do you want?” Alaric demanded through a clenched jaw.
“I want peace and quiet to finish my work. And you weren’t going to give me that. So I’m afraid you’ll need to stay here. I’m leaving my creatures here to keep you under control.”
“You mean to kill us,” Douglon growled.
“Not yet. I�
�m not sure you all won’t still be useful to me for something. So for now, I’ve commanded them to leave you alone as long as you remain inside the boulders. If you try to leave, I’m afraid they will kill you.” Gustav studied them all. “And after everything, I find that I’m a little fond of all of you.”
“Well, we hate you,” Douglon said. “Where’s Ayda?”
Gustav smiled. “Ayda has agreed to help me in my work.”
“She wouldn’t,” Milly said.
Gustav flashed her an irritated look. “Ayda is helping me. And with her energy, there is nothing to stop me.”
“She’s not working with you,” Alaric said. “Even your influence couldn’t convince her to help you. You’re using her.”
Gustav smirked.
“I’d be careful,” Alaric warned. “Ayda isn’t someone to trifle with.”
“Ayda will be no trouble,” Gustav said, waving off Alaric’s words. “And neither will you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to take your weapons.”
Gustav walked slowly up to Douglon, reaching tentatively toward his axe. When Douglon didn’t do anything more than snarl at him, Gustav took the axe from his hand.
Brandson stared at the wizard, a mixture of anger and hurt in his eyes. Gustav walked past him quickly, not meeting his eye and took Brandson’s knife from his saddle and two more knives out of Douglon’s. The wizard held them pell-mell across his chest and walked out of the ring of boulders.
“I’m afraid it’s time for me to go,” Gustav said, hoisting the weapons up higher in his arms with a clatter. He looked at each of them for a long moment. “Um, goodbye.”
As Gustav stepped out of the ring of boulders, Alaric threw his entire will against the spell holding him still. His hand holding the pouch jerked forward, breaking the cord that it hung from and leaving the pouch hanging from his clenched hand. Nothing else moved. He was filled with fury.
“Let me see the Wellstone.” Alaric’s voice broke with desperation. “Before you do it. Please let me see the Wellstone.”
Gustav paused and turned back. “What do you need the Wellstone for?” He tilted his head as he looked at Alaric’s hand. “What do you keep in that pouch?” Dropping the weapons to the ground, Gustav walked back between the boulders and stepped up to Alaric.
Alaric reached for energy, but again, felt it drain away. He strained against the immobilizing spell, but could do nothing beyond grind his teeth furiously at the old wizard.
Gustav ignored him and pulled the pouch out from Alaric’s stiff fingers. He pulled open the strings and dropped the rough ruby into his hand.
Chapter 47
Gustav’s mouth fell open. He slowly raised his eyes to Alaric in disbelief. “A Reservoir Stone? I thought you had been drawn to me because I needed you to read the map. But you were drawn to me because I needed a Reservoir Stone.”
Gustav looked at the ruby in wonder.
“Now, I don’t need Kordan’s emerald. I’m not particularly good at creating Reservoir Stones, you understand. And since I haven’t been able to find any other Shade Seekers since I came back from the Roven Sweep a year ago, I started looking for Reservoirs that already existed. When I heard that Keeper Kordan had buried an empty one, I knew I could use it. Just fill it with someone else’s energy.
“But this Reservoir Stone still swirls with the flame of a sacrifice. It will be so much easier to add energy to this one than to Kordan’s dead emerald.” Gustav flashed a wickedly gleeful smile toward Alaric.
“It will be messy and leaky, but enough energy should get to Lord Mallon to wake him up. When he’s awake, he can find other sacrifices himself.”
“Hm,” Douglon grunted, “I wonder where he’ll find one of those.”
Gustav’s brow creased. “He won’t sacrifice me. I’m the only servant loyal enough to help him return.”
“I’m sure he’ll be very grateful,” Alaric said, glaring at Gustav with more fury than he had ever felt.
“Oh, you’ve made it so easy! It’s already holding a sacrifice!”
“It’s not a sacrifice!”
Gustav looked at the Keeper in surprise. “You don’t even know what you have, do you? You don’t know the power this holds.”
The old man’s fingers were wrapped around the ruby like a parasite.
Gustav’s smile spread. “A Reservoir Stone is a vessel, a vessel to hold the power of a life which has been sacrificed until it is poured into someone else. They are Mallon’s specialty. He has used dozens of them. Absorbing the power of other strong men, including any Shade Seekers who weren’t useful to him, made him almost invincible. He strengthened himself by the sacrifice of others.”
Alaric’s stomach clenched. “She is not a sacrifice.”
Gustav’s eyes widened, then he burst out laughing. “You sacrificed someone you know? You proved in Queenstown that you weren’t much of a Keeper, but that is even darker than I expected. Thank you, by the way, for bringing my medallion to Queenstown. I had thought it lost. My task is much easier with those instructions.”
Alaric strained against the magic, his breath coming in gasps.
“Why did you do it?” Gustav asked curiously, looking at the ruby.
The words rose unbidden. “I had no choice. I needed time. I needed time to save her.”
“Save her?” Gustav’s brow creased. “You didn’t save her. You sacrificed her. Shade Seekers don’t pull the life out of someone to save them. They pull it out to sacrifice them. Then they use the energy for themselves.” Gustav raised his gaze back up to Alaric’s face. Sudden understanding filled his face, turning to a look that almost held compassion. “You didn’t mean to sacrifice her, did you?”
“She will not be a sacrifice!“
Gustav looked at Alaric hesitantly, then he began to speak almost kindly. “She already is. Whatever she was before this—whoever she was—she isn’t here any longer. At least not all of her.”
Alaric stopped struggling. He looked from Gustav to the ruby. The old man couldn’t know that. He didn’t know what he was talking about.
“Too much of her has been lost,” Gustav explained. “Too much energy is lost when the vessel is created. The Reservoir holds the life energy of a person, but not enough of it to make a whole person again. The sacrifice exceeds the reward. I thought even the Keepers knew that much.”
Gustav looked at the Reservoir Stone closely, then closed his eyes. Alaric felt him cast out toward the energy in the ruby. A wave of fury rose at the thought of Gustav’s mind brushing against her.
Gustav looked up at Alaric puzzled. “There’s not much life here at all. Whatever you planned on doing, this does not hold enough life to do it.”
Alaric glared at the old man’s wrinkled hand grasping the red stone.
“It’s certainly not enough for what I need.” Gustav shrugged. “But I can add more. Every little bit helps, I suppose.” He tossed Alaric’s leather pouch on the ground and dropped the ruby into his pocket. With one final look at each of them, Gustav stepped out of the circle of rocks and disappeared.
The ruby. Gustav had his ruby. He had Evangeline.
Alaric’s gut felt like ice.
His wife was going to be sacrificed to Mallon.
Fury built up in him. He strained against the spell holding him in place. It was as though he had been turned to stone.
Douglon was swearing and grunting behind him.
Gustav was getting farther away and Alaric couldn’t move.
His rage boiled over into a roar as he reached out gathering energy as quickly as he could, only to have it drained out into the ground once again. Alaric ground his teeth and gathered more, faster. He drew from the ground, from the trees, from the embers of last night’s fire. He reached into the boulders and pulled the slow, dark solid vitalle of the rock itself.
The energy from the boulders held. Before it could drain out, Alaric focused his energy on the ground around him.
“Lacero!”
The energy
stabbed down into the ground, slicing Gustav’s spell, tearing out of Alaric’s palm like a knife. He fell to his knees.
Gustav’s spell to drain his energy must have been focused at his feet, because Alaric felt a rush of vitalle flow into him. He turned to the others. Quickly, not noticing the pain, he cut through the spells, setting the others free.
Douglon ran through the opening where Gustav had stood, lunging for their weapons. A shriek rang out above them, and an enormous vulture swooped down out of the treetops in front of them, diving for Douglon. The dwarf raised his arm to defend against the attack. Talons ripped across it.
From the woods behind the boulders, Nox lunged for the vulture, his jaw closing on one of the bird’s legs. The vulture gave a scream, but Nox yanked the bird out of the air and the two tumbled into the trees. The forest beyond the rocks swayed with the crashes of their fight.
Douglon scrambled back into the circle of boulders, holding his arm to his chest. He swore loudly, glaring at the beasts poised at the tops of the boulders.
The group backed up to the center of the clearing, standing with their backs together. Alaric glanced around the clearing. Their weapons were still outside the ring of boulders. The only weapons within reach were long, thick sticks by their feet. Those wouldn’t hurt anything.
Atop the boulders, four monsters shifted, watching them with glittering eyes, content to stay there for now. There had to be a way to get them to leave, to break Gustav’s control over them. He reached down slowly, picking up the four closest sticks.
“Those aren’t very good weapons, Keeper,” Douglon growled.
Alaric held them together and reached up to touch their ends.
“Incende.”
The sticks burst into flame. He handed them out to the others before shaking out his hand. Then Alaric cast out his mind toward the badger, its mind full of stealth and power. It knew the people below it were of little consequence.
Alaric felt the tether on its mind, the thin leash of control of what was left of the Shade Seeker’s control. With a quick burst of energy, Alaric snapped the tether.
The badger twitched, then lifted its head and sniffed the air. Alaric took a step toward it, raising the fire closer. The badger shied back, then dropped off the back of the boulder.