The Flute Keeper's Promise (The Flute Keeper Saga)

by Ashley Setzer

  It took a lot of strength to keep up my barrier while I was on the bird’s back. “It’s okay,” I said soothingly. “They can’t hurt us.”

  “Ho, ho, is it the Flute Keeper?” Kesper chortled. “It must be. Look at that magnificent beast!”

  “I can’t wait until we get our hands on it!” said the spidery Nuckelvee. He rubbed his hands together in delight. “Think of the power!”

  “Think of her power, young brothers,” said Marcellus. “I want her youth to quicken in my blood!”

  Kesper sneered. “My esteemed Marcellus, you’d certainly put her gifts to much better use than she ever has. Look at her! Cavorting with Slaugh!”

  “What are you old fools doing up here?” Lev shouted.

  “Speak not to me, cur!” Kesper boomed. “We have no use for the likes of you. We are blessed by divine power.”

  “It is our holy mission to judge,” Nuckelvee said. “We judge you to be blackened with sin. You can see it in your blood. Black, black, black as the deepest pits of the Twi-Realm! That’s where you’re headed. That’s where we’ll send you.”

  “You have nothing to offer us,” Marcellus chimed in, his voice eerily resonant. “There’s not a drop of magic in you to bargain for your soul.”

  Befuddled by all the crazy talk, I focused on maintaining my barrier. Tuari was still trying to back away, so I had to fight against her, too. It was putting a strain on me.

  “Why don’t you old geezers stop your yapping and get out of our way?” Valory shouted.

  Lev shot her a warning look.

  Kesper raised one hand. A meteor formed out of thin air. He hurled it at Valory. I had to react quickly to reinforce the barrier near her. When the meteor collided with it, I felt it like miniature earthquakes running down the length of my body.

  Almost as if he felt it, too, Lev winced and turned to look back at me.

  “It’s…so…strong,” I said, gasping for breath. The impact had knocked all the air out of me. “Their magic…how?”

  Lev clenched a fist. “We have to keep going!” he shouted. “Pull up!”

  The Slaugh went to fly above the bridge, but a turbulent whirlwind sucked them back. It tossed them around like playthings. Lev and Valory managed to escape the cyclone by diving down to the bridge. An unlucky few were caught. I watched helplessly from Tuari’s back as the Slaugh spun round and round.

  On the bridge, Nuckelvee twirled his index finger and laughed. “Around you go and…bang!”

  He’d singled out Wilhelmina. The wind spell sent her reeling towards the main tower. Her wings were useless. She smashed into the wall hard. Her body went limp and she fell down the side of the tower, looking like a broken doll.

  “Tuari, go!” I cried.

  We took a dive and swept under the falling woman. I reached out to grab her and pulled her onto Tuari’s back. Her eyes were closed. A little trail of black blood streamed from the side of her mouth.

  The sound of laughter rang out over the bridge. Nuckelvee was still delighting in his little trick.

  Suddenly there was a gleam of silver. One of Lev’s best throwing knives cut through the air and found its mark just above Nuckelvee's collar.

  Choking, Nuckelvee stumbled backwards and grabbed his neck. Lev gave a signal to the remaining Slaugh. They flew in around the judges and hurled more weapons at them. Kesper and Marcellus fired back with meteors and blasts of wind.

  I told Tuari to land in a street below the bridge. Wilhelmina wouldn’t open her eyes. I put a finger to her neck to feel for a pulse.

  I felt nothing. Praying that I was mistaken, I took her milky white wrist and squeezed it tight. There was no thump beneath my fingertips.

  “No, no, no!” I shouted. I squeezed Wilhelmina’s shoulder. “Wake up!”

  A group of malnourished-looking Fay gathered nearby. They wouldn’t come close to the giant bird. Instead, they watched fearfully from an alleyway.

  “Are any of you a Channeler?” I asked.

  Nobody answered.

  “Anybody?” I shouted. “This woman is dying…she’s…”

  Wilhelmina’s wrist fell heavy as a stone from my hands. I shook with rage.

  “Damn you!” I screamed at the bridge.

  I let Wilhelmina’s body slide gently over Tuari’s wing to the ground. The scared citizens drew further away. They cowered as Tuari flapped her wings to take off.

  My rage propelled the bird upwards with more speed than ever before. The bridge was chaotic. Spells flew right and left, along with Slaugh weapons. Nuckelvee still hadn’t collapsed despite the knife sticking into his neck. I arrived just in time to see him pull it out and hurl it back at Lev.

  I cast a small barrier to deflect the knife. Lev never noticed. He was busy dodging comets of ice that Marcellus was casting nonstop.

  The judges were engorged with magic. I cried out in fury for my helplessness and for the slain woman lying in the street below.

  “So glad you came back, Flute Keeper.”

  I tugged Tuari around to face the repulsive Judge Kesper. He wore a sinister smile as he walked across the bridge towards me, through a wall of flame. The flames did not touch him. They bent to his will, acting like a sort of barrier for him.

  “So much like your grandfather,” Kesper said. “He just couldn’t leave well enough alone. It was bad enough for him to steal the clergy secrets, but then he had to go and woo away the one girl in Faylinn that he knew I’d been courting. In the end I suppose he did me a favor, sweeping that floozy out of my life so I could focus on my role as a judge, but one does tend to take those sorts of things personally.”

  I hovered cautiously near the bridge, just beyond the wall of flame. “What are you talking about?”

  Kesper toyed with a ball of fire in his hands. “Alberich and I were friends. I was the one who got him a spot as a clergy trainee! How did he repay me? By running off to propagate his cursed family line, that’s how! He had to be stopped.”

  “You twisted jerk!” I screamed. “He wanted to destroy the flute, but you killed him before he could do it!”

  “What silly fantasies!” Kesper said. “Destroy the flute? Nonsense. He was trying to bring the Wren bloodline back to its full power! We couldn’t let that happen. If only we’d known about your father, our little scouring would have been complete—all tied up, no loose ends. But perhaps you were meant to live. Now that you’ve come back, we can sap that legendary power out of you. Maybe this is fate’s reward to us for our good deeds.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Good deeds! You’re a corrupt psychopath!”

  Kesper’s eyes flashed white. “I am a judge of the Seelie Court! I am not subject to your trifling ideas of right and wrong!”

  “Are you still flappin’ your trap?”

  I looked up to see Valory hovering over Kesper’s head with her collapsible fishing pole. She swung out the line and the barbed hook caught on the back of Kesper’s robe. Before Kesper could comprehend what was happening, Valory yanked him off his feet and dangled him over the side of the bridge.

  “Ooh, looks like my line snagged on a slimy old stump,” Valory said. “Guess I’ll have to cut it.” She flicked open her scaling knife and sliced the line in two.

  Kesper plummeted. I watched the look of terror on his face as he realized what was happening. He cried out in desperation. The air around him warped as his magic-bloated body attempted to do the one thing that might save him. He couldn’t conjure his wings.

  Valory wrinkled her nose. “Eeew. That’s gonna leave a greasy spot on the cobblestones.”

  I gave her a thumbs up. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you’re the best fisherman I know.”

  Valory smiled, but then her face fell as she surveyed the street below. “Is Wilhelmina…?”

  I nodded somberly.

  A dangerous expression contorted Valory’s face. All at once she went from jovial to enraged. Her black eyes swore a thousand unspeakable things. With a
roar, she took off for the other end of the bridge where Nuckelvee was making a stand despite the wound in his neck.

  The other Slaugh who were dodging Knuckle’s attacks caught onto the reason for Valory’s fury. Abandoning all caution, they descended upon the judge like a flock of carrion birds.

  Lev alone dealt with Marcellus. The old judge was conjuring ice comets with less frequency now. He looked a bit deflated and his eyes didn’t glow so much. A spark of hope reanimated me. Whatever this new power was, it had its limits. It couldn’t be used indefinitely. Marcellus was running out of steam.

  Lev must have realized it, too. “Come on, old man!” he goaded him. “Is that all you’ve got?”

  “Stay back,” I warned him as Tuari and I closed in on the judge.

  Seeing a new threat, Marcellus redoubled his efforts by casting multiple spells at me. I met the spells with my own magic, manipulating my barrier so that Marcellus’s ice comets ricocheted back towards him. Knocked unconscious by his own spell, he collapsed onto the bridge.

  The other Slaugh had finished with Nuckelvee and tossed him off the bridge. With the three judges out of our way, we regrouped. Many of the Slaugh were wounded, but they looked more charged up than ever. I knew it was because of their fallen comrade. Noemi’s face flashed through my mind. I felt guilty. After all, Wilhelmina had come along to help protect me.

  “Don’t,” Lev said to me in a low voice. He was drenched in sweat and half of his weapons were missing from their places in his belt. “There will be time to mourn later. Now we move forward.”

  I swallowed hard. It was very difficult to keep my voice from quavering. “Where do we go? I’ve seen no sign of Chloe yet.”

  Lev pointed to the glass spire atop the central tower. Bursts of light flickered beneath it. The crystal on top of the spire blinked wildly like a frantic beacon.

  “Something is going on up there,” Lev said.

  I gulped. “That’s the throne room. Let’s go.”

  The Slaugh took up their places around me and we began the ascent alongside the tower. Lev stayed in front. Valory kept close to my right side, just beyond the reach of Tuari’s immense wingspan. She had not yet recovered from her anger. There was no hint of a smile on her lips and no warmth in her eyes.

  The sound of thunder grew louder the closer we got to the spire above the throne room. I then realized that the thunder was coming from the throne room.

  We reached the top of the spire. Nothing was visible beneath the cataclysmic explosions of light. The crystal was blinding up close. It hummed, resonating with some force that it was drawing from the room below.

  The Slaugh circled around the spire and looked to Lev while Tuari and I hovered above the crystal. It was the highest point in Ivywild. I couldn’t see beyond the boiling clouds, but I knew we must be above Woodman’s Hall by now.

  “I see no choice but to break through,” Lev said.

  There was no way to see what was going on inside. I watched, trying to make sense of the blasts of lightning and flashes of other magic. Then I noticed two focused points of light. One was purple and one was green. They moved slowly and carefully, becoming larger as they drew nearer to the spire. With a start, I realized what they were.

  “Wings!” I shouted.

  The shapes took definite form on the other side of the glass ceiling. Two people pounded on the glass, trying to break through.

  A great flood of relief washed over me. Chloe and Garland! Tuari screamed a majestic call that could very well have been the sound of my own joy and relief.

  I flew in close to the glass. “Get back!” I shouted.

  Chloe looked up. When she saw Tuari, her face lit up like a torch. Her purple wings grew ten times brighter.

  “Come on Tuari,” I said. “You know what to do.” I made myself as flat as I could against the bird’s back.

  Tuari stretched her neck, extending her hooked beak out in front of her like a massive arrowhead. With a screech, she dove towards the glass.

  Glittering shards exploded around us as Tuari broke through. Some of the pieces were fine as dust. They whirled away on the slipstream of Tuari’s wings. Fragments of the shattered glass clung in her feathers and in my hair. Little beads of blood appeared on my arms, but I didn’t care.

  A purple light filled the hole we’d made. Chloe flew through it, followed by Garland.

  Chloe wore a loose-fitting priestess robe with blue jeans underneath it. “EMMA!” she exclaimed as she smothered me in a hug. Garland sat behind me and gave my shoulder a squeeze. Tuari sagged under the added weight.

  I pried Chloe loose. “What’s going on down there?”

  “Oh, Emma, it’s just terrible! Bazzlejet is fighting the Duke of Briar and a lot of the clergy, and they’re all pumped up with magic because the duke’s been sucking it out of innocent people! There’s this lady called Kiros Rubedo caught in the middle of it all, and they’re just throwing spells around like crazy and there’s nothing we could do to help because we’ve got to destroy the crystal.”

  It all came out so fast that I only caught every third word.

  “So…” I gazed down into the mayhem below the shattered spire. “Bazzlejet’s still down there?”

  Chloe nodded rapidly.

  “And Kiros Rubedo?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what’s this about a crystal?”

  Chloe pointed a shaking finger to the beacon flashing behind me. “I think the crystals are keeping the castle afloat. I’ve never seen them flash like that. The duke must have made Kiros use her alchemy on them.”

  “A likely conclusion,” Garland said, rubbing his cracked glasses. “That’s why we need to destroy them. It might bring this place down.”

  Though I had been willing to destroy Ivywild before, I wasn’t sure that bringing it crashing from the sky was the greatest plan. For one thing, we were too close to Woodman’s Hall. For another, there were still plenty of innocent people living on the castle grounds.

  Lev read my mind. “That’s too risky,” he said.

  “YOU!” Chloe exclaimed. She squinted at him and then turned around, taking in the sight of my entourage. “What are you doing here?”

  Garland laughed nervously. “Chloe, isn’t it obvious? They’re saving our skins.”

  “But Kiros and Bazzlejet still need saving,” I said.

  Lev gave Tuari a doubtful glance. “You can’t fly that bird down there. It’s too big of a target.”

  He was right, of course. I gave Tuari’s head a little pat. “What can we do?”

  “Let me go down there,” Valory said. Her eyes were steely. “I’d love to bust me up some bad guys.”

  A bolt of lightning shot out of the shattered spire. Tuari bucked in surprise. The Slaugh cursed and backed away.

  “Bazzlejet,” Chloe said. “He got a dose of the stolen magic. He’s a little, um, overzealous.”

  “He’s certainly able to defend himself right now,” Garland said, “but I don’t know how much longer he can hold out.”

  Lev flew closer to me. “This is a job for us Slaugh,” he said. “You take Chloe and Garland and get out of here.”

  I knew he’d suggest such a thing, but I had ideas of my own. “No way,” I said. “You’re not flying down into that mess without some kind of protection.”

  “I don’t need a barrier,” Lev said.

  “They might want one,” I said, gesturing to the other Slaugh.

  “You have no wings,” Lev said, his voice getting low and growly. I knew the tone well, but the expression in his eyes wasn’t anger. It was fear.

  “Then I’ll just have to borrow yours,” I said.

  Chloe rolled her eyes. “Some things never change. Why must you two always argue? I’ll tell you right now, I’m not going anywhere. Garland and I are going to stay here and see if we can manipulate the crystals somehow to control the castle.”

  “We are?” Garland squeaked.

  Chloe crossed her arms. “Damn right we
are.”

  “Emma can borrow my wings,” Valory said. She looked imploringly at Lev. “We’ll be your shield.”

  It was clear that Lev didn’t want to relent. I saw again the doubt in his posture and the flash of fear in his eyes. Faced with Valory’s confidence and my stubbornness, however, he didn’t have much of a choice.

  “Stay close,” he said. He gave a signal to the other Slaugh. They lined up behind me.

  Chloe and Garland conjured their wings again and hovered above Tuari. I stood up on the bird’s back so that Valory could grab my arms.

  “Be careful,” Chloe said, suddenly watery-eyed. “It’s crazy down there, seriously. I didn’t think Garland and I would make it out!”

  “You, too,” I said. It felt like a stupid thing to say, considering the circumstances. I thought of Wilhelmina again and my throat grew tight. “I mean, if it gets bad, just get out of here, okay? Your mother is waiting below. They all are.” I turned to Garland. “I swear, Finbarr, you’d better let Anouk know you’re okay. I don’t want to be the one to tell her that you died up here, trying something stupid.”

  “Duly noted, Miss Wren,” he said with a thin smile.

  That was it. There was nothing else to say. “You can go now,” I whispered to Tuari. She disappeared into a shimmering mist, bound back to the Twi-Realm, her soul’s resting place. I felt a strange tug as the bird disappeared, almost as though a part of me was trying to leave, too. Is that where I belong, in the Twi-Realm?

  “Emma?”

  It was Valory, already straining from having to bear my weight. “Are you okay? You got a funny look on your face.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, not daring to look at Lev because he’d know I was lying. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  It was madness. The air was shattered by the bursts of power emanating from the bottom of the throne room. We descended slowly into the mayhem. Beyond the pale blue halo of my barrier, all I could see were confusing flashes of light.

  Bolts of lightning punctured the chaos. It was a good sign. At least Bazzlejet was still alive.