“We have to get you out of here, Lady Abigail,” Sava said.
“I’m not leaving him,” she said, kneeling next to Anatoly and cradling his head in her lap. She felt the knot in her stomach tighten when she saw the bright red blood on his lips. He was hurt … badly. Then she heard another roar, and though not as fearsome as a dragon’s, it had a similar quality. She looked up and saw a dozen or more creatures descending into the room.
They were a mixture of man and dragon, each standing eight feet tall with pale blue scales like those of a snake covering their entire bodies. They had bright golden eyes, horns that swept back from their dragon-like heads, and a ridge of spikes running down their backs. They were thin and sinewy, but looked inhumanly strong. Blue batlike wings, a long bone-bladed tail, sharply clawed hands and feet completed the nightmare.
One landed on the table in front of Abigail, its claws gouging into the wood. Captain Sava stabbed at it, but his blade was turned aside by the hardness of its scales. It backhanded Sava, sending him tumbling to the floor, then grabbed Abigail by the arm and started to launch into the air.
She grasped the hilt of the Thinblade just as the creature thrust with its wings, slipping the blade free of its scabbard and slashing up toward the monster. The Thinblade cut cleanly through the beast’s arm and wing, sending them crashing to the ground amidst an inhuman shriek of pain from the half-dragon, half-man.
Abigail rolled to her feet as Sava and two of his men converged on her, forming a cordon of protection with their dragon-plate shields raised high against the threat descending on them.
Another beast landed in the center of the shattered table. It reared back and breathed a cone of icy air at Magda, coating her shield with frost. She seemed to be chilled by the attack, but her shield protected her from the brunt of it. Her spell came quickly, sudden anger flashing in her eyes … a blue pinwheel of force materialized in front of her, then moved quickly toward the dragon-man, catching it in the midsection and cleaving it cleanly in half. Three of its brethren shrieked in fury at the loss of one of their own.
Another flew over Torin and Conner, breathing a gout of frost on them, chilling them to the bone and sending them to the ground, shivering. They were both still alive, but completely incapacitated by the numbing cold. Corina released a light-lance spell at the beast, burning a hole through its chest. It crashed to the ground and never moved again.
Sark caught two of the creatures in a whirling vortex of wind and carried them up and out of the chamber into the dark of night.
Another of the beasts grabbed hold of one of the Strikers with its taloned feet and carried him several dozen feet into the air before dropping him to the ground. He crashed into the stone floor and fell still as death.
Mage Dax was feeding power into a ball of lightning that was forming between his outstretched hands. It was growing in size and intensity when a blue dragon landed on the edge of the hole in the ceiling. It was beautiful and terrible all at once. Abigail saw similarities between this one and Ixabrax. Its rider looked down into the room with calm, almost detached calculation.
Zuhl.
“Take the girl,” he commanded as Dax released the ball of lightning at him. Zuhl directed his staff toward the streaking, crackling ball of electrical power and instantly formed a half-shell protective shield in front of him. The lightning struck it with thunderous force, shattering the shield and hitting the dragon square in the chest. The dragon reared back and looked like he was preparing to breathe frost into the room, certain doom for them all, but Zuhl commanded him to stop and they launched into the darkness.
Three of the dragon-men landed around Abigail. All three breathed frost at her and her cordon of Strikers. They all fell in a shivering mass. Abigail had never been so cold. It penetrated into her bones, paralyzing her with numbness. The nearest dragon-man grabbed her and launched into the sky. She held on to consciousness even as the Thinblade slipped from her grasp, burying to the hilt in the stone floor.
At the same time, two more dragon-men breathed frost at Magda and Corina, forcing them to defend against the attack long enough for the beast carrying Abigail to escape. She watched the ground fall away as the beast gained altitude. It flew to Zuhl, perched atop the guard house on the last remaining tower of the fortress.
“Very good,” Zuhl said as he took Abigail and secured her over his saddle in front of him. He whispered a few words and she felt suddenly warmer, though she was still unable to move. Zuhl pulled a fur blanket over her and launched into the sky, followed by the remaining nine dragon-men.
The last thing Abigail saw before she lost consciousness was Mage Dax launching a bolt of lightning at the trailing dragon-man. It hit the creature, lighting it up with crackling power, then arced through the night to another and another and another and another after that, burning a hole through the chest of each as it leapt from one to the next, each falling from the sky in turn.
Chapter 9
She woke in a round room with a single barred window and a trapdoor in the floor. She was lying on a pallet with several furs covering her. The air was cold … she could see her breath in the dim light streaming through the window. Aside from the pallet and furs, the room was completely empty. She checked her boots and found her knives were gone.
She was defenseless.
Still wearing the clothes she’d been dressed in during the meeting with her advisors, she stood and wrapped a fur blanket around her to ward off the chill air. From the tiny window, she could see the ocean below, bleak and foreboding, low clouds blanketing the world to the horizon. Light snow was sporadically whipped into a frenzy by sudden gusts of frigid air.
She went to the trapdoor and tried to open it but it held fast, as she knew it would. She knocked on the door, but got no response, so she sat back down and tried to think of a way out of her predicament.
An hour later, she heard the sound of boots on stone from below, followed by the scraping of metal on metal, and then the trapdoor opened. One of Zuhl’s brutes eyed her with a menacing grin and grunted while motioning for her to follow him.
With a sigh of resignation, Abigail wrapped a fur around her and followed the big man down the corkscrew staircase to the level below. There were four guards in the chamber. Each stared at her in open challenge—she ignored them.
The brute led her through the halls of a keep until he came to a large set of double doors, which opened to a sparsely furnished and somewhat cold room, though warmer than the little tower room where she’d awoken. Zuhl sat at a table with an assortment of foods arrayed before him, all served on fine porcelain dishes.
“Good morning, Lady Abigail,” he said, dismissing the soldier with a gesture. “I trust you slept well.”
She scanned the room, looking for a weapon or an opportunity to escape, anything she could use against Zuhl, but found nothing. She decided to be bold. The temperature of the room didn’t warrant the fur blanket, so she shrugged it off, letting it fall to the floor without a second look. Then she walked to the table and sat down.
“Well enough, considering,” she said as she took an empty plate from a stack and started piling food on it.
He almost smiled, but not quite.
“I have a number of questions for you,” he said. “Most are simply matters of curiosity, a few are of strategic importance. You will answer them all, one way or another.”
Abigail shrugged as she took a big bite of biscuit dripping with blackberry jam. “Maybe,” she said around a mouthful.
He stopped and looked at her, not a simple glance, but really looked at her as if seeing into the essence of her being. Abigail was reminded of Alexander and the way he could look into a person and assess their true nature.
“What were you thinking when you jumped from your wyvern and attacked me in midflight?” Zuhl asked, his penetrating gaze searching her face intently as he awaited her answer.
“I was thinking it was the only way to kill you,” Abigail answered, preparing another b
iscuit.
“The odds of success were so slim as to be improbable,” Zuhl said. “Failure was almost certain death, yet you didn’t hesitate. Why?”
“I told you, it was the only way,” Abigail said.
“I don’t understand,” Zuhl said, shaking his head slightly, a deep frown creasing his pale brow.
“What choice did I have?” Abigail said. “No one else had any chance at all against that dragon. I was the only one who could do what needed to be done, so I did.”
“You could have retreated, you could have sued for peace and offered terms for a truce, you could have ignored the dragon and focused on the land battle, you could have sent your Sky Knights against me, you could have surrendered, or better yet, you could have stayed on Ruatha where you belong, yet you chose to engage me when you are clearly not my equal.”
“I cut you in half, didn’t I?”
“That you did,” Zuhl said. “I must admit, I would have been more cautious had I been aware that your brother had given you the Thinblade, another perplexing development. Why would he do such a thing?”
“He didn’t think he could be both the Sovereign of the Seven Isles and the King of Ruatha at the same time.”
“Why not?” Zuhl asked, leaning in with great interest. “Not that I accept his claim as sovereign mind you, but I’m very curious about his motivations. Were I in his shoes, I would never relinquish either the Sovereign Stone or the Thinblade.”
“No, I don’t suppose you would,” Abigail said with a little smile.
“Why would he?”
“It created a conflict,” Abigail said. “He couldn’t rule Ruatha as king and still expect the other island kings to accept him as sovereign.”
Zuhl’s frown grew even deeper.
“Power is not about seeking the acceptance of those you rule, it’s about imposing your will upon them, whether they like it or not,” he said.
This time it was Abigail’s turn to shake her head. “You don’t get it, do you? He doesn’t want power any more than I do … he just wants to live his life and be left alone.”
Zuhl stared at her as if trying to reconcile two versions of reality that couldn’t coexist before shaking his head in frustration.
“Back to your reasons for engaging me,” he said. “My questions for your brother are best saved for him, should we have the pleasure of a conversation before I claim victory over him. Why would you risk your life when you had such little chance of success?”
Abigail put her biscuit down and fixed Zuhl with a glare. “Because I’d committed good people to a battle that they were going to lose as long as you were riding Ixabrax. Killing you was the only way to save them from defeat … and the only way to get to your ships.”
Zuhl shook his head again. “Your motivations escape me. I don’t understand why you would risk your life for the safety of your subjects—their place is to serve you, your place is to command them, not die for them.”
“You have it exactly backwards, Zuhl,” Abigail said. “My place is to serve them, to protect them from the ambitions of tyrants like you.”
“I don’t comprehend you at all,” Zuhl said. “Things I don’t understand make me uneasy.”
“Good,” Abigail said, punctuating her statement with another bite of biscuit.
He glared at her for a moment before composing himself again and beginning a new line of questioning.
“You mentioned Ixabrax. Why didn’t you kill him? Why set him free? How could you know that he wouldn’t turn against you the moment you cut his collar?”
“I didn’t,” Abigail said with a shrug, “but I trusted my instincts and it paid off. He sank one of your ships for me.”
“You gave up your one chance to strike on a hunch?”
“Yeah, I guess I did,” Abigail said. “I met a dragon once before … she was a magnificent creature. It turned my stomach to think of her in a collar like Ixabrax, so I cut him loose.”
“You take great risks without due consideration of the consequences,” Zuhl said.
“I’ve heard that before … from my father no less,” Abigail said. “Tell me something, why are you doing this? What do you want?”
“I want what everyone wants, immortality and the worship of every living soul,” Zuhl said.
Abigail stared at him, mouth agape for a moment before she burst out laughing. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said, still laughing.
“No, I’m not,” he said, looking somewhat offended by her impertinence. “Don’t you want to live forever?”
Abigail frowned and cocked her head to the side for a moment. “Huh, I hadn’t really thought about it. Death is just a part of life, part of the natural cycle. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to die, certainly not anytime soon, but I’ve always known my life would end someday.”
“What if it didn’t have to?” Zuhl asked, leaning in again. “What would you do for the chance to live forever?”
“I don’t really know,” Abigail said.
“I do,” Zuhl said. “I’ll do anything I have to.”
“I guess that’s the difference between us,” Abigail said. “There are some things I love more than my own life.”
Zuhl looked down at his plate, shaking his head again.
“Why did your brother commit the bulk of his forces to defending Fellenden?” he asked, changing the subject abruptly.
“Because your barbarians were killing innocent people,” Abigail said.
“But Fellenden is nothing to you or your brother,” Zuhl said. “Phane is your enemy. He’s attacked you again and again, yet you declare war on me when I’ve done nothing to provoke you. Again, I don’t understand.”
“It’s really very simple, Zuhl, you were hurting innocent people and we had the power to stop you, so we did.”
“When doing so puts your own people in jeopardy? Even now, Phane is building his strength in Warrenton. When the spring thaw comes, he’ll overrun your forces and his Lancers will be free to wreak havoc throughout northern Ruatha, all while your forces are mired in Fellenden.”
“Alexander’s looking at the bigger picture,” Abigail said. “If we’d permitted you to build your fleet, we wouldn’t have had a chance in the long run. He made a sound strategic decision with full knowledge of the potential consequences.”
“Perhaps,” Zuhl said, nodding slightly. “At least such an explanation is based on reason, more so than some of his other decisions. Where is he now?”
“I wish I knew,” Abigail said, putting her biscuit down. “He was going to talk to a dragon, last I knew, but he could be anywhere by now.”
“Tanis? The bronze dragon who rules in the Pinnacles?”
“No, Bragador, on Tyr,” Abigail said.
“The chromatic dragons—why would he go to them?” Zuhl asked. “They’re even less interested in the affairs of men than the bronze dragons.”
Abigail realized she’d said too much. Zuhl didn’t know about the Nether Gate, and she had no intention of being the one to tell him.
“Isabel’s been infected by one of Phane’s minions,” Abigail said. “Alexander’s gone to collect the ingredients for a potion that will heal her.” A half-truth made for a better lie than an outright fiction.
“He sends his sister to wage war against me, leaves his home to fend for itself, and ventures off to bargain with a dragon to save his woman?” Zuhl scoffed. “I find that hard to believe. No man worthy of being called a Lord would make such poor strategic judgments. There must be more—he must have another purpose.”
“If he does, I don’t know what it is,” Abigail lied.
Zuhl scrutinized her closely, his eyes narrowing before he nodded.
“Your brother has a gift for seeing colors,” Zuhl said. “As I understand it, his magical vision offers him insight into the nature and intentions of others. Quite a powerful skill. When I learned of it, I developed a spell that accomplishes a similar result, though through very different means. I cast that spell jus
t before you arrived. Up until now, you have answered my questions truthfully, but you just lied to me. Why?”
Abigail smiled and sat back, picking up her glass of juice. “There are some things we’d rather you didn’t know,” she said.
He almost smiled, although without any mirth. “Naturally,” he said. “No matter. Once we arrive at Whitehall, I will have you interrogated properly. You will tell me everything I wish to know, and I assure you it won’t be pleasant.”
“You can torture me if you like,” Abigail said, “but it won’t do you any good.” She tried to remain calm even as she quailed inside. The prospect of torture was terrifying.
“You just lied to me again,” Zuhl said.
“Did you really expect me to answer all of your questions?” she said.
“Of course not,” he said. “As for torture, that’s such a crude means of persuasion, and not entirely reliable. No, I have a far more effective method in mind. You see, in the northern wastes of the Isle of Zuhl lives a most remarkable creature. Those who live in the area call it an ice slug. Harmless creature, but the slime it exudes has a most powerful effect when imbibed. It seems to release all inhibitions, eliminate all guile, and induce a state of mind that is utterly incapable of lying. So you see, there is really no point in attempting to deceive me, as I will have the answers I seek.”
“Maybe … but not today,” Abigail said.
“Very well, perhaps another line of questioning is in order,” Zuhl said. “What did Alexander find in the Stone’s Wizard’s Den?”
“I have no idea,” Abigail said. “I haven’t seen him in a while. Truth is, I didn’t even know he’d gotten into the Wizard’s Den yet.”
“Fair enough,” Zuhl said. “I have reason to believe there is a book of great interest to me, either in the Stone’s Wizard’s Den or the sovereigns’ library within the Reishi Keep. I intend to make a trade with your brother … you for that book. Provided he delivers it to me before the winter solstice.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Abigail said, “but if this book you’re looking for is where you think it is, I doubt Alexander will ever give it to you.”
Cursed Bones (Sovereign of the Seven Isles: Book Five) Page 7