“Someone important. Powerful. We don't get to know who it is. Chief does the negotiations. When Julius Septimus failed negotiations with the Chief, he came to me directly, and I agreed.”
“Pretending I go along with this. What good is it to have you, one man, against all your Blackwings? Or do you bring my fire drake into it?”
Valerin gave a low chuckle at the thought. “No. The Blackwings and I know all about him, and you in particular. A strong opponent from a single background is easily defeated, but a wild card?” Still kneeling, Valerin put his hands on his thighs and met my gaze. “I learned all about you. About your association with the Hunters. About your demon exploits. You bogey busting. Your desperate desire for magic. Your favorite trinkets. Your talent with tricks.”
He never blinked, never took his eyes off mine, and I refused to break the contact first. Even so, he sounded admiring as he spoke. With my ward in place, the suffocating atmosphere of outside was diminished, and I felt the tickle of scales trying to emerge from my skin. I recognized the dilation of his eyes, the vibrancy of his hair and irises now. I should have known with his name.
“You're a drake.”
Valerin tipped his head. “I am, milady. Your own heritage is not so transparent. What is known is that you are from the Swift potion-makers of the Verdant Wildwoods, intermixed with humans, and that your father is Magnus of the Wildwoods. Magnus and his siblings are renown Hunters, I have always held them in great admiration. When I learned of your connection with them, I presumed that you would share in many of their qualities.” He twisted a black ringlet around his finger. “Your brother Leazar is known to be a non-shifter. There are rumors that your case is otherwise, but there is no evidence to suggest you have a second form. And your fire drake's hesitancy to formalize a union supports the theory that you are like your brother. Nevertheless, we did not wish to risk it. We thought we would disable you. No one expected the full range of a wind elemental, however.”
A shudder trembled through the floor and I thought I could hear the distant outcry of yelling. Barnes' words came back to me and I bit my lip, wondering if he was right.
“They're coming to clean up their mess. They can't risk that I'd tell. Which I have, in order to gain your favor and a measure of your trust. If I have your ear, I have a chance at finding Josephina. Chief is coming for me no matter if I speak or not. And if he can get you at the same time as me. … ” Valerin let his voice trail off, and I didn't have to be told that I'd be an excellent bargaining chip. A faint banging sounded. I didn't know what was causing it, but I didn't like that it was happening. This far into the dungeons, it could only mean a prison riot.
“You intentionally put me into harm's way.”
“That I did, milady. I will not deny it. But with you, I stand a chance at survival. Do not pretend that you would have done otherwise if you were in my position.”
That was exactly the thing which made me so angry. It was the sort of thing I would have done, and I was a fool for not guessing—well, not guessing something like this would happen. I hadn't known enough to have guessed the particulars, but how often did a Blackwing survive in the dungeons? Hadn't Barnes warned me?
“Tell me your rank, element, position, and shifting status.”
He would have been well within his rights to deny an answer. Such a thing could only be demanded within the same organizational unit, and he owed me no fealty though he called me Lady.
“I am son of the third seat in the Elder's Council at the Selestiani Settlement, water elemental, a Watcher, and a capable shifter within the aerial combat unit.”
If he was telling tales, he was telling good ones. He likely was a water elemental, no reason to lie about that. And while Elders would not go out into the world, every drake family had a Watcher to keep tabs on the ever-changing world outside. Being the son of an Elder would be ideal, it was a career path to eventual attainment of the seat on the Council meetings. Of the shifting, it could have been a brag, but I doubted it. Watcher was an important role. If he'd said he wasn't qualified I would have wanted to know why he was outside of his settlement.
The room gave a terrible lurch and I nearly lost concentration on the ward. Then I saw that there were shapes behind the outermost ward, impossible to tell if I was out of time with the prisoner due to the warden or due to other prisoners. Either way, I had to make up my mind quickly about this Valerin Wolds. Because I could hope that was the warden outside, but I didn't think that it was, particularly not as more hazy shapes filed in through the door.
“What is a Watcher of the Selestiani Settlement,” I'd never heard of the place before but that meant nothing, “doing running with the Blackwings?”
This was the crux of the matter, and if I believed the answer would determine if I saved his hide as well as my own. The people on the outside were placed strategically around the ward, I knew from the arrangement that they were going to take it down. Though I'd be in trouble for casting magic within the dungeons should it turn out to be the wardens after all, I was very glad that I had my own ward up. That one wouldn't come down so easily.
“I was press-ganged, milady. It is their favorite recruitment method.”
“I take it the incendiary bullets are why you don't jump ship.”
“Precisely so. Will you join me in the center, milady? It won't be long now.”
The outermost ward failed with a shrieking alarm which got louder as the curtain of water shredded into tiny bits. Before it fell completely, I saw five brown-clad men. Wardens. That would have been fine. Except they had the guards' staffs in their hands, and behind them were orange-suited prisoners in anything but a peaceful assembly. The last ripple of water faded and one man raised his staff, lunging for me. The staff struck my ward. His spell recoiled, sending bolts of electricity everywhere and shaking the room.
“Enter the next ward!” Valerin yelled. Years of listening to Father triggered instant compliance to the command, and soon I was enveloped in the middlemost circle. This one did not disguise those outside, and I examined the traitors who had been bought or intimidated into this riot.
“Quickly,” Valerin said. Inside his circle there was no more than six feet of wriggle room. It'd be a tight fit and I'd be at his mercy.
“If I set foot in there, you are to transfer all the energy you can to me for me to use and I'll leave you behind if you so much as touch my elbow without my say-so. Do you agree?”
He winced. I'd be suspicious if he agreed too easily. Valerin watched as the wardens attacked the ward I'd made with malicious glee. It wouldn't hold long without a steady feed of energy.
“If those are your terms, I must agree, but I don't care for them,” Valerin said. “I hope you know what you are doing.”
A triple shock of electric bolts sizzled. The ward began to harden, becoming brittle. Without waiting, I crossed the final line between me and Valerin. He remained kneeling when I stood before him, his pose one of perfect subservience. It didn't make me trust him, but it was better than him breaking his word right off the bat. The sound of shattering glass snapped around us, my ward on its last leg. The two prison wards wouldn't keep the others, not when they knew how they were constructed and how to take them down.
I reached to draw on the concrete floor with my finger. A pencil hovered in my sights. Valerin must have smuggled it in somehow, that or gotten it from someone else.
“Finish these equations for me.” I was writing out the second when he gave me the answer for the first. We had all the problems solved within a couple minutes. The middle circle was well on its way to being dismissed. The prisoners crawled over one another in their eagerness.
Valerin watched as pencil lead scraped across the white paint of the concrete, the wood biting into the glossy floor's finish when the point had dulled down. Every symbol came out perfect, straight, confident. It did not appear like I was shaking and that all I could hear was the echo of blood through my veins.
“You are making a
n area attack, but it's narrowed into a concentrated zone,” Valerin said, twisting his hair as he read what I left behind and started work on a portal. “How is that going to help us?”
A prisoner slammed into the ward two feet from my face, making me drop the pencil. He ginned so all his teeth showed and licked the transparent pane separating me from him. So the middle ward was gone. Only this innermost ward remained. Once the wardens elbowed their way to the front, they'd have free access to us. My fingers fumbled the pencil, numb and cold.
“Wolds, finish the portal. Make it directional, so it takes the same path the area attack uses.”
“Why?”
“How do you defeat armor, Wolds? Do you hit it with blunt force? You take something sharp and strong and you pierce it. That's what we're doing and if it doesn't work we're little worse off than whatever happens when that ward dies.”
He scrambled to cooperate, though to let him move as fast as he needed to, I almost had to sit on his back. Tight spaces were going to forever remind me of this. Of the close-pressed crowd of jeering, hungry faces clawing to break down the final defense. Valerin put his pencil down and shook his head.
“We don't have enough energy units to do this.”
Energy units was not a term I knew, but the point was still the same. “Just give me whatever strength you can.”
“I'm not as strong as Meadows. I can power one of these two things, but not both, and I'm sorry but you don't have the raw strength to make up the difference.”
I cut off an angry reply. I had gotten used to Mordon's seemingly limitless endurance. That had been an oversight on my part, to think that Valerin could substitute for him. After all, it was doubtful that the Blackwings could have kept someone with Mordon's strength in their press-gang for long. I should have realized … I could stick up a quick fey circle, goad the prisoners into unleashing spells against it, channel that energy into our spells, but it would take time and the fey circle wasn't any good against the brute force which the prisoners seemed to favor. Then I slapped my own head.
“Wolds, on my ankle is a stone. Mordon said it's powerful. It was in Josephina's, I mean it was on her person. Draw strength from it.”
“You have her soul gem?” Valerin's mouth dropped. “How did you—never mind. Give it.”
Our one and only saving grace was that it had taken the five traitor wardens this long to find access to the barrier between us and them. Valerin broke the chain off my ankle, bit his own thumb to draw blood, and smeared the gem in it. The chant he started was unfamiliar and it made the stone radiate light. Sensing that something was happening and they wouldn't like it, the prisoners grew frantic. Valerin held the stone between both palms, striking the pose of a monk at prayer.
My breathing came in shakes. Fists rammed the ward. Designed as it was to withstand an attack from within, it was deteriorating fast. Sections crumbled and fell. Fingers poked through, then those disappeared. When an eye peered at me, I jabbed my nails into it. There was a howl of pain, wet on my fingers, and a chorus of taunts from the others. Bigger sections fell inwards, blocking the smooth lines we'd made. I tossed the rubble aside, put my hand on Valerin's back, resisting the urge to tell him to hurry.
The shift to dragon form was just itching beneath my skin. It would help, but that was all. I thought of what they'd do if they laid hands on me, and spared a thought for Mordon and my parents and all my friends. These prisoners would kill me. Probably slowly. They'd kill Valerin in a hurry, but not me. I might even still be alive when the guards and other wardens made good on their promise to contain the prison break. But I would see Death after this …
Death wouldn't be happy to see me. He'd want to know why I let myself die. Why I didn't kill them instead. My heart came to a sudden halt. If I erased the directionality of the area spell, I could imbue it with two words and Valerin's strength. And I could stop the hearts of everyone within the room. How many people? Thirty, fifty? The thought made me dizzy, but as I reached to rub out the direction algorithms, the soul gem activated. It was a bright white light at first, then Valerin cried the signal to start. It knocked me back.
I hadn't been in a portal that rough since my entrance into the Wildwoods. Air whistled in my ears, deafening, boxing my head, inducing ringing. Turbulence shuddered through the portal as the attack spell ahead broke through barrier after barrier. I gripped Valerin's shoulder, he clutched me against his chest, I hated to think what would happen if I fell out of the portal, if that was even possible. Or what would happen if the attack spell ran out of strength before we made it out of the last ward, the crash would kill us.
The sensation of being propelled forward stopped and was replaced by weightlessness. Like those breathless seconds after jumping out of a swing and before being dragged down by gravity. I gasped, blinking in a bright area.
No more confined space. Open air. My eyes widened when I realized I'd let Valerin set the destination. He'd chosen freedom in the low hanging clouds and blue skies.
We were free falling towards shining water.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I'd never shifted that fast before. Whatever I'd thought was speedy before today was nothing on this. Maybe it was due to the near-panic I had been in during the dungeons. I filled my wings before Valerin's were even half-formed against his body. As he was still holding onto me, this made me a parachute, and a pretty poor one since I was half his dragon size. The shoulder I'd dislocated before started to tingle then send hot little stabs of pain.
Below us, a lush forest blanketed mountains with peaks so tall the trees stopped growing near the tips, replaced instead by white smudges of snow. Lakes and rivers glinted in the sunlight, winking with the movement of water. Civilization was nowhere to be seen. At another time, I would love nothing more than to take wing and cut through clouds. Surely there couldn't be a sight closer to heaven on earth. But I didn't want to see them like this, with Valerin dragging on me.
When his wings were formed and his neck was still elongating, he released me, fell a ways, and opened his wings with a snap. The release hurt almost as much as bearing his weight had, except now it gradually felt better.
Valerin's coloring was unique. His head and neck were dark blue, his shoulders, back, and tail a mottled blue-black. When he cut me off and faced me, his underbelly was all silver except for a patch of sapphire-blue on his chest.
“This way,” he said and tipped upwards.
What did he take me for? He was out of the dungeons. I wasn't going to keep my coven waiting for me. I started down. There was land, I could smell the earth in my nostrils.
I felt Valerin gliding through the air, his posture aggressive. Hunting me? When he was close enough, I streaked around his neck and dug my claws into the scales plating his back. He thrashed, I closed my teeth around his neck. Then he dove. I knew the maneuver from observing Mordon training with others. Speed and a sudden jolt dislodged an opponent in my position. I could use him like a launching pad by leaping when he stopped.
The air swirled around us in a sudden tempest. As I'd tucked my own wings against my back, this frayed against his tender membranes all the more. He grunted when there was a tear in his right wing. Just a little closer to the ground, and I could disappear into the wooded area.
A handful of drakes joined us, all coming to Valerin's aid. He jolted to a stop, but my escape was blocked by a pale blue and white drake so I had to remain glued to Valerin's back. I examined those I could, annoyed at their interference. Escaping now would not be so easy.
Where they had come from, I didn't know, but they must have been close in order to be upon us so fast. I berated myself for not checking the skies for reinforcements. All the energy I'd expended in breaking out of the dungeon had shortened the range of my awareness, and they were too close for me to escape. I changed the pattern of the wind to be a swift swirl around us, calm in the center, so Valerin and I could talk without the others interfering.
“This is the second time yo
u've tried to abduct me, Wolds,” I said.
“No. Not this time.”
“You thought I wasn't a shifter. You were going to take me. And now your friends are here.”
Valerin snarled and whipped his head to an orange fire drake, yelling through the wind. “Fall back, Nabur.”
“Valerin!” said someone from the other side.
Nabur, the apparent ranking drake, roared his reply and came nearer. Something buffeted me. My talons sunk beneath Valerin's scales. Before I'd been holding him the way I would have held Mordon while goofing off, but now it would take effort to remove my claws from his armor. Valerin's body writhed with the way he lunged at Nabur, a frisson of pain passing through the both of us. It hurt to have nails beneath his hide, and it hurt to have my talons pulled. I wrapped my tail around his middle and seized.
“I scared her, Issa,” Valerin called. “You'd do the same. Now fall back. You're making it worse.”
My talons were slipping. My hold was less secure, even with my tail. I didn't know why, I hadn't decided to loosen my grip. It was like my claws were becoming shorter.
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