by S R Nulton
“And you!” he began, looking my way once again. “You had two jobs to do. Raise my child appropriately and die when it was time and you couldn’t do either of them right! You trained my little brat to have compassion and to stand up for others when she should have been trained to obey me without question! And you couldn’t even die like you should! Instead, I had to break an enchanted mirror and lose the use of it completely to get you to open that door, and it still didn’t work. I took away your precious little girl, and you still wouldn’t do as I wished! Why? Why couldn’t you just act like every other idiot woman I married?”
He was screaming by this point, spittle flying out and eyes hard as they stared at me. It was unnerving to see a man who had once had so much control over himself and everyone around him give into his emotions so thoroughly. The calm, clever man was gone and the madness he'd hidden for so long had taken over.
And then a bit of my own madness slipped out. “Because I’m a dwarf,” I told him. “You should have done your research better.”
Somehow, that wasn’t the response he was looking for.
“But you aren’t a dwarf, are you? You’re so much more than that. I did plenty of research. I know about your special bloodline and about all the magic that is locked inside you, magic that you can’t use but I can. I will. And like it or not, you opened the door. You’re mine now.”
Then, he threw his hand out and something heavy pulled my eyelids down. The last thing I remembered was Snow mumbling something and a soft thump as I landed on the ground.
After that, everything went black
~
I wasn’t well pleased when I woke up. It was a number of things, really. For one, I felt like I’d been dropped several times and just knew that I had bruises developing. For another, I had a nasty headache that was making it hard to think. Luckily, it was most likely from the sleep spell so it would dissipate rather quickly.
Most frustrating, though, was the fact that I was tied to a very cold stone table in the center of the basement.
Fantastic. We’ve got him just where we want him, I thought sarcastically as I shivered. The sad thing was, we actually did. Everything was happening according to plan. I’d been attached to a table for a reason and it was probably for the ritual to drain me of magic. The ritual that wouldn’t work because I hadn’t broken his rules. He told me that I couldn’t open the door, not that I couldn’t walk down the stairs. I wasn’t marked. At least this’ll be interesting to watch.
I opened my eyes when the headache diminished a little and looked around the room. Snow was still unconscious and had been strapped to the wall with a pair of manacles that I hadn’t noticed before. I was actually impressed that he could still lift that much dead weight, but it also explained why I felt bruised. He’d probably had a bit of trouble getting me on the table.
Turning my head, I saw my husband walking back into the room with his arms full of supplies.
“Awake already? You’re unusually resistant to spell work. I wish I’d known that from the beginning. It might have made things easier.” He glared at me and plonked a number of objects on the table next to me.
“I would apologize, but I’m not at all repentant,” I quipped, feeling distinctly sassy. I always knew that he was going to try and kill me at some point so there was no use getting upset about it. I was also more than a little nervous and that usually results in me being snarky toward authority figures. I’d always thought it was just a quirk of being young, but apparently it was just a part of my personality.
And I’ve probably gone and given Snow the same habit. Oh well, not helping it now.
“Yes, well, you will be soon. It means that this will be much more painful that it was for any of the others. Of course, with all the trouble you’ve caused, I do believe that you deserve it.”
A rattle of chains drew both of our attention back to the other side of the room.
“Ah, it seems my little mistake has woken up. Don’t worry, child; it will be your turn soon. It takes a bit more effort and a few extra considerations to drain someone from your own bloodline, but I’ll soon have enough magic to get around that little problem.”
I blinked, suddenly worried. We knew that the spell was set up to avoid draining blood relations, but if he was right, we might be in more danger that we thought. Of course, he didn’t really have the energy to force his way past that little quirk of the spell, but there was always a chance. I could only hope that he wouldn’t notice anything was wrong until it was too late.
The ritual itself was interesting to watch. I wasn’t an expert in magic, but I could appreciate the simplicity of the spell. It was actually built to allow a non-magical person to use it! That was a difficult thing to do, from what I understood. It put the burden of power on the objects used instead of the magic user.
Of course, he was using a number of enchanted items, so that helped.
I was a little concerned that nothing would happen if Snow wasn’t in the center of the focus. We didn’t want the spell to work, but it wouldn’t even backfire if she wasn’t included and that could lead to some awkward conversations. I quickly realized that there was nothing to worry about.
Instead of placing the objects around me on the table, they were methodically placed in each corner of the room. First, he place a rusty buckler in the corner near the stairs, the small shield beginning to show its age. Next was a green pennant flag with a crest I didn’t recognize embroidered in yellow. After that was a large silver bowl covered in odd writing that seemed to move when you looked at it for any length of time. Finally, he removed a signet ring from his hand and put it in the final corner.
There was a lot of pointless chatter in a language that I didn’t understand, but it wasn’t that interesting. What was fascinating was the odd glow surrounding the enchanted objects and how it steadily grew as he drew closer to me. Soon, the air began to fill with a shimmering light that reminded me of the bioluminescent fish in deep cavern lakes.
So that’s why he does this in the basement! The light would attract too much attention. I mean, the screaming of his victims was probably a concern too, but the light is much harder to deal with.
“Rather pretty, isn’t it?” Snow commented as she watched the show. Well, she did for a moment, anyway. After that she went back to examining the shackles she was wearing.
“What is it?” I asked her, ignoring the king’s annoyed look with very little effort. It is difficult to be afraid of someone who you’ve already beaten.
“No locks. I think he used magic to secure them. I’m not sure if that makes them easier or harder to get out of. I mean, I don’t have any lock picks or bobby pins on me, but still. I think I’ll have an easier time than you will. I can at least move a bit.”
“There is that.” I sighed and looked at my restraints a little closer. They were leather cuffs, but the latches were much too difficult to reach without a little slack. And there was none of that. Even my legs were tied down, much to my amusement. I had a feeling that he hadn’t done it once and gotten kicked during one of the rituals.
Served him right!
Suddenly, I noticed that the king was standing next to me. Over me, really. Anyway, he was standing there with a very long knife in his hands and I wasn’t feeling so sanguine anymore.
The magic gleamed and began to coalesce over him, making his features stand out in stark relief. He shouted the last few words and stabbed the knife up in the air.
At which point his eyes grew in surprise and the power recoiled and snapped back, throwing him across the room and straight into a wall.
I blinked. “Well, that was interesting.”
~
“How does it look?” I asked, still pinned to the table like a butterfly being put on display.
My daughter sighed. “Well, it seems like they are looser, but not enough to get out of.”
I groaned. “Of course not. And the boys aren’t due back for a while yet.”
When the
king had flown across the room, we thought it had been over. Unfortunately, we were wrong. The blow hadn’t killed him, just knocked him unconscious. That meant that his magic was still actively keeping Snow locked up. Which meant we were stuck, locked up in a room with a mad man who could wake up at any moment.
If only we could get rid of the magic on those shackles.
I blinked and rolled my eyes. “I’m being ridiculous. Mirror, would you mind draining the shackles for me?” There was a slight chance that it wouldn’t hear me, but I found that unlikely. The mirror liked me too much to ignore what had been going on in the basement. Unfortunately, it couldn’t think for itself quite yet.
Snow stared at me strangely. “Do you think that will work? Wait. No need to answer.”
When I looked over, she had already pulled her hands out of the unusually large shackles. Apparently they didn’t open like most, they just shrunk to a size that would keep the person from escaping. Smart.
She headed over to me, shaking her arms out as she went, and immediately started working on my restraints.
“Somehow this has both worked out the way we’d planned and gone wrong at the same time. How is that?” she asked casually.
“Ha! Welcome to my life. This is pretty typical for me, honestly. Reminds me a bit of parenting.” That made her laugh, but she freed me all the same. “Ahh! Much better. My arms were falling asleep.”
“Mine too. Shackles are really not comfortable, you know?”
Between the two of us, we were able to release my arms and legs, allowing me to stand up for the first time in a few hours. Which wasn’t fun! I was stiff, sore, and covered in bruises.
“What did he do, kick me while I was asleep?” I muttered as I stretched.
Snow just shook her head and nodded at her father’s prone body. “What should we do about him? I mean, I know that he’s pretty frail right now, but he still has a little bit of magic squirreled away.”
I groaned. “I don’t know. Why don’t you check on him while I go grab the buckler from the corner. I don’t want him that close to something that’s been enchanted, just in case he wakes up. And grab his knife while you’re at it.”
She nodded and reluctantly moved toward her father. I would normally have been the one to take on that task, but I wasn’t moving as quickly as she was. If he did wake up suddenly, she was in a better place to defend herself. I was just a liability.
I walked stiffly over to the corner and picked up the small shield. Looking it over revealed that it had been enchanted to help the bearer maintain vigor. “Huh. I guess all those classes with Spinner and Dallin have helped. It’s much easier to read the magic now.”
“Is it? I might need to ask them to tutor me then. All I know is that the knife is glowing still.” Snow held the blade up and it was, indeed, glowing.
I frowned and walked closer. “Let me see. Hmm, it looks like it just focuses you. Probably meant to make it easier to avoid distractions. Or direct spellwork. Either way, it wasn’t able to release the spell fully, so it’s still got the power stuck inside. I’m sure that Dallin can help us with it later. For now, just put it on the table.”
She nodded and headed back that direction.
It was about that moment that I realized she was too close to her father. He was twitching slightly and as she moved that direction, he leapt to his feet and reached for the knife.
I’m not sure what came over me, but I ran at him and pushed my weight against the buckler as I tackled him to the floor. He tried to get up, but I shifted my body to the largest form I had, which wasn’t much bigger than normal but still helped.
He wiggled a little bit and I felt his hand slip out from under me. When I glanced at it, I realized that he was holding another knife and aiming it at me! I shifted to bring up the buckler and accidentally elbowed him in the head as I did. A moment later, he was able to throw me off of him and he staggered to his feet.
I blinked as I looked at him but quickly realized that I wasn’t hallucinating when I saw something sticking out of his neck. The king grimaced and brushed whatever it was off.
That was the wrong choice.
Within moments, he was covered in blood. He looked down in confusion as it began to soak through his clothes, but by that point it was too late. He staggered once and fell against the wall. Every second that he spent bleeding out, he was also aging. My husband’s face seemed to dry out and shrink in, his eyes turning milky as his sight left him and his teeth falling out.
Before the last drop left his body, he was reduced to a skeleton. It teetered against the wall for a moment before sliding to the floor and crumbling to dust.
Snow was shaking and had a hand covering her mouth as she stared at the pile of clothing in horror. I wasn’t feeling too steady either, but I stood and walked over to where my husband’s body once lay and picked something up off the ground.
“It’s a bone. A sliver of bone.”
“I guess we didn’t need to get vengeance for them,” Snow began in a trembling voice. “His victims handled it for us.”
CHAPTER 14: CLEANING UP
SNOW WHITE
Within an hour, the men had returned, which was a huge relief, really. I’m generally good at dealing with stress, mostly because I lived with it as a constant my entire life, but there had been a bit too much violence around me for my taste. It was bringing back too many bad memories. Between being attacked by Bekins, hearing him being beaten to death, inciting a riot, being attacked by my father, and then watching him die in a very gruesome manner, I’d reached my limit.
I’d rather hunt a bear. Without weapons. In the dark.
At least that would give me less nightmares.
We’d decided to move to the library after we’d assured ourselves that he was really gone. Neither Mama or I really talked. I think we were both really shaken up by the whole situation. We both nearly jumped out of our skins when we heard out names being called out.
“Snow? Caillte? Where are you?”
“In the library,” Mama called back without inflection, refusing to move.
There was a thumping of boots before Craftis raced into the library and looked us over carefully. Well, he glanced at me and he eyed Mama like a merchant who just opened a box of porcelain. He seemed to see her as fragile, possibly damaged, and able to cut someone who wasn’t being careful.
I lost sight of them though when James walked in. At that point, I just couldn’t deal with it anymore. I started sobbing and launched myself into his arms.
“Shh, shh. It’s okay, love. Everyone’s safe. You’re safe now. Shh…” He rocked me back and forth for a while before moving us to a couch and settling me on his lap.
I bet he had practice doing this with his sisters, I mused. And I get to benefit from the fact that he’s not afraid of tears. I’m sure I’ll appreciate that fact later.
When I started to calm down, he picked up my hands and looked closely at the red marks ringing my wrists. “What’s this?” His voice was so quiet, so gentle, and his eyes were so hard. I shivered. He’d never looked like that before.
“He… he chained me t-to the wall.” I finally looked down at them and realized that they were more than just red. My wrists were bloody. I didn’t remember pulling them that hard, but I was so terrified that it wouldn’t surprise me. It was one thing to know that we were relatively safe and another entirely to see my father lift a knife over Mama as she was strapped to a table. I’d suddenly worried that he was going to stab her. It wouldn’t matter if the magic backfired at that point. She would have been just as dead.
But she didn’t die, I reminded myself. When I looked across the room, my worries grew once again. Mama was sitting there, eyes blank as Captain Craftis tried to speak with her.
“Mama?” I began.
She jerked her head up and looked at me, her eyes finally beginning to see the world around her. Then, she turned to Craftis and whispered, “He’s gone, Dallin. He’s finally gone.”
“I know, my queen. I know.”
“It doesn’t feel real. And, he tried to… he tried to kill us. He almost did. He was going after Snow and I tackled him and then he pulled out a knife and– you have to know that I didn’t try to. I just wanted to hold him down, but I pushed and when he got up, there was something in his neck…”
Her eyes had gone vague again and I realized that she was reliving everything that just happened. At least this time she was letting Craftis hold her.
Knowing that they were confused, I picked up the story, filling in the holes until I reached the point where she’d stopped. “I’m not sure how it happened but when he stood up there was something in his neck and when he pushed it off, he started bleeding…”
“And aging,” Mama continued. “He started aging so fast, like every year he cheated death suddenly came for him.” She paused. “I think the bone took his magic. It glowed slightly to me. I didn’t realize it down there because everything was glowing, but… even if he was low on magic, he would have died normally. He wouldn’t age like that.”
James let the silence sit for a moment before asking the question that both men must have been wondering. Still, it hurt to even think about. “Is his body still down there?”
I flinched. “Yes? Sort of. When Mama said that he aged quickly, what she meant was he continued to age until he turned to dust.”
That seemed to shock both of them. Finally, Craftis spoke up. “That explains the changes in the manor. He either up the last of his magic or was drained of it.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“The magnification spell is gone. The castle is now a lovely, large manor house. It’s significantly smaller, but still enough to house the troop we brought with us.”
Mama frowned for a moment before her face cleared. “The dwarves! They sent a troop? They must have been worried.”