Valverna

by A Clarkson

  “Kill him and I let the arrow fly,” she returned, not releasing her grip.

  “Do you really want his blood on your hands?” he asked in a mocking voice.

  “From where I stand,” she countered, “you are the only one here with blood on your hands Brian.”

  He chuckled slightly and waved a bloody hand in her direction.

  ‘Well then, we appear to be at an impasse,” he said with a casual shrug as though he didn’t have a care in the world.

  Without taking her eyes off Brian, Ira tried to get a sense of the guard’s condition. By the bleeding gash on his arm and awkward movements, Ira guessed he had been poisoned. Ira recalled that the paralytic was very fast acting. He urgently needed help if he had any hope of surviving.

  If she could pull Brian into a confrontation with her, she may be able to lure him away from the guard and get a shot at him.

  “Whose body is buried with your family Brian?” Ira asked.

  She needed to distract him, but she also wanted some answers. Hopefully she could accomplish both if she asked the right questions.

  “Who do you think it is?” he asked with a coy smile.

  Ira resisted the urge to gag. This was not the kind of thing someone joked about.

  Did he think she was impressed? Was he proud of what he had done?

  Of course he was, she scolded herself. This was some great achievement to him and he was revelling in the cleverness of it all.

  "Did you murder your children or Jeffrey first?"

  He scowled, not appreciating her bluntness.

  She wasn't interested in hearing him boast about how brilliantly he hid behind his family's murder. If he wanted to brag about it, she would remind him of exactly what that cleverness cost him.

  "He shouldn't have been there at all!” he said angrily. “The fool got cold feet at the last second and changed his mind like a coward."

  “But you were happy to murder your children?” she returned snidely.

  "My kids would never have felt a thing,” he responded with heated frustration coating his voice. “The plan was simple and they should have been asleep, but Jeffrey decided he couldn't do it and started making all this bloody noise about how it wasn't worth it."

  Brian shook his head as though gravely disappointed. "He had such potential,” he said almost sadly. “But he couldn't appreciate the bigger picture."

  "And what is the bigger picture here Brian? What happens at the end?"

  "Power!" he whispered like a fanatic man saying his god's name.

  Ira supposed that's what he was in some ways. A worshipper to the Church of Power, sacrificing his children in its name.

  "How will suppressing the research grant you power?"

  "So you have discovered what I am looking for. Good. That will make everything easier. My associate was right to suggest that we use you."

  Use her how, she wondered as her heart sped up.

  With a mocking voice she asked, "Your associate or your boss? Is someone else pulling your strings? It doesn't sound like you have much power at all to me."

  "That is only temporary," he hissed. "Soon I will be wealthier than my wildest dreams! I will re-discover the Gavarnium and will be praised as a hero of the world! And then I will hold all the power.”

  Ira had never heard of Gavarnium. She supposed this was the alternate energy source they discovered at the lab in Caldessa.

  “You really believe your employer will let you expose what they have worked so hard to hide?”

  He looked at her with an eyebrow raised scornfully, “Of course. It is what they want. I cover up the initial research from Caldessa, and then rediscover it here in Valverna.”

  Ira felt sick. Were they truly so greedy that they wanted control of another power source? Was the world to be under Valverna’s thumb forever?

  “So all of this? All of these lives you have taken are for wealth and power?”

  “That is all there is!” he hissed. “Power is the only thing that matters! There are only two types of people in this world: the rich, and everyone else. The rich control everything, and that will never change. The world is on the brink of a monumental change, and you will either be at the front or be left behind.”

  Ira wanted to dismiss Brian’s ramblings as the nonsense of a crazy man, but couldn’t dismiss the sense that this was becoming a common refrain. Hadn’t Magnus and Francis said things to that effect as well? That the world was changing.

  What did they mean? Magnus said that new things were being discovered, things that hadn’t existed before. Francis said that everyone was desperately searching for the next rybrum, the next discovery that would change the world.

  And now Brian?

  What was happening beyond Valverna’s walls?

  Brian suddenly straightened, a proud and slightly fanatical look in his eyes, “Now I too shall be one of the powerful in this world. This discovery will put me at the front, leading the pack! I won’t need to sit and be told what to do any longer! I will have control.”

  “So what is stopping you?” she asked, genuinely curious. “You have taken out the lab, nobody would be able to prove the Gavarnium was already discovered.”

  “Because I don’t know where that idealistic fool Pimento hid it!” Brian growled. “He hated what the rybrum became, all he wanted was to find something that the world could own together,” he scoffed and rolled his eyes dramatically. “What nonsense. That will never happen. Anything that is found will simply be bought out and controlled just like everything in this world.”

  “Especially if people like you are willing to sell them out to the highest bidder,” she injected snidely.

  “There will always be people like me, Ira. Everyone is like me. You are like me! Desperate to be better than we are, desperate to have more, to be richer, more powerful. It is a drug and we are all addicts.”

  Ira refused to believe that. “Some of us more than others it would seem,” she countered. “I wouldn’t murder someone elses children in cold blood to get some more money and power. Let alone my own.”

  “You cannot know that,” he scoffed. “You cannot know the length you would go when offered immeasurable power.”

  “But not John?”

  “He had it already!” he hissed. “John Pimento already became filthy rich when he found the rybrum. And rather than letting the rest of us have a little slice of that pie, he wanted the Gavarnium to be publicly owned. So the researchers, those of us who labored for decades to find this, would get nothing. Nothing! We wouldn’t be buying up compounds in the Blue Desert. We would have nothing!”

  “So this is what all this was about. Your plan to get rich fell through.”

  “I have given my life to that place and I refuse to have nothing to show for it!” he growled venomously. “When I learned of his plan, I took action.”

  “But Pimento knew something was happening,” Ira guessed.

  Brian nodded “He suspected one of us learned the truth. That his secret plans were revealed,” he hissed. “So he came out to the lab and took a copy of the research. I wasn’t sure what his plan was. Perhaps to leak the findings around the world to prove we found it?” He shook his head, “Whatever it was, it didn’t matter, because Jeffrey and I took our own copy and destroyed the lab.”

  His gaze darkened. “And then that fool Jeffrey had a change of heart and destroyed our copy of the data. Deleting all evidence that the Gavarnium ever existed!”

  Brian’s eyes burned with fury. “I couldn’t believe it. Why did he do that? He ruined everything!”

  Ira recalled the images of the body they found and believed to be Brian Wick’s. It had been so thoroughly beaten and disfigured it was unidentifiable. Now Ira understood what caused Brian to erupt in such anger.

  The guard at Brian’s feet moaned again, and Ira saw that his breathing was becoming more laboured every second. She didn’t have long.

  “So I went to John Pimento’s fancy desert ranch and I forced him
to tell me the truth,” Brian continued, unaffected by the suffering going on in front of him. “I made him confess that he had taken another copy, and given it to some old sweetheart here in Valverna.”

  “Why poison?” Ira interrupted. “Surely there are simpler ways to make someone talk than poisoning them.” This bothered Ira from the start. Why go to all the trouble of poisoning someone just to torture them or even beat them to death.

  Brian beamed with pride and Ira immediately regretted asking. The last thing she wanted was to stroke his ego.

  “The poison is a creation of my own; something I cooked up quite a few years ago and have been slowly administering to my wife and children,” he explained with a gleam in his eye. “You see, this is why they never should have known. They already had such a high quantity of the Wick of Death in their system, they were almost dead already. A touch more would have done the job, and they never would have suffered.”

  Ira couldn’t believe her ears. The Wick of Death? How conceited could one man be?

  “You’re a psychopath,” she said in a whisper. “How could you do that? They were your family!” she cried, unable to keep the horror from her voice.

  She needed to ask him something else. Something to take the visual out of her mind of a father slowly poisoning his own children. How long had it been going on? How long had he been slowly killing them? How could he believe they hadn’t suffered?

  Finally pulling herself back together, Ira considered the various unanswered questions she and Magnus had been trying to make sense of. Remembering the fortress that John lived in she asked, “How did you get John to let you in?”

  Brian’s eyes twinkled at her mischievously, “I can’t tell you all my secrets little Ira.”

  Ira silently gagged at the endearment, but realized Brian had unintentionally confirmed their assumptions that someone helped him. The man was a proud ass, he would have no issues bragging of another clever accomplishment. The fact that he refused to tell her spoke volumes. He had an accomplice.

  “I couldn’t find the bitch here in the city for the longest time,” Brian continued. “But then, like a gift from heaven, some guy tries to kill me.” He smiled and it made Ira’s skin crawl. “And just like that, I was back on track.”

  Ira and Magnus had been right, there was a good chance Maureen would have survived if she hadn’t hired David as a hitman.

  “And Maureen told me the darndest thing,” he said excitedly. “She said the research was stored in a stone. A stone! I didn’t believe her at first, but she eventually convinced me that she was being truthful.”

  Ira’s blood froze. Francis said that the dragon eyes absorb information from their surroundings, but that someone with the knowledge and tools could actively add and extract information from the stone. Was this what happened? Had Clarisse known how to use the stone to store the research? The stone had no markings on it, no engravings, how could someone store information on a stone?

  And if that was true, was Francis also right about the stone sometimes giving off an echo? Feedback she called it. What would that even look like? Would Ira recognise it if she saw it? Would data appear before her eyes? Information? Test results?

  Unaware of Ira’s momentary distraction, Brain continued,“And imagine my surprise when my associate told me that your little convoy stopped out in the desert to be given such a stone only a few days ago!”

  Ira couldn’t believe her ears. Brian thought the stone was the one Magnus received and not the one she was wearing on her neck at that very moment. Somehow they knew the research was stored onto a dragon eye, they simply had the wrong stone. Ira was certain of it. Clarisse had taken her amulet, given it to John to upload his data, and then Maureen brought it back to Valverna. Poor Alistair had simply been the go between.

  Did this mean Clarisse was a Raven? How else would she know how to use the dragon eye? If that was so, why had she never spoken to Ira about it? Was this what she wanted to talk to Ira about the night before she died? To tell Ira that the amulet she wore every day was actually some kind of powerful stone? And that simply by owning it she was painting a great big target on her back for a group of religious zealots who murder families?

  This was too much to think about right now. She needed to figure out how to get the research off the stone. Francis said the Ravens didn’t like to share their knowledge with outsiders, but without Clarisse, Ira didn’t know who else to ask. She needed to talk to Francis again. But before that, she needed to get that guard to a medic.

  “So rather than me running around any longer looking for this mysterious stone I had a better idea,” Brian mused, bringing Ira back to the issue at hand.

  She raised a brow at him derisively, “Oh yes? And what would that be.”

  “I will have you bring it to me.”

  Chapter 24

  The Poison

  Ira laughed. She couldn’t help herself. Why did Brian think she would help him in this macabre quest?

  With a broad grin she asked, “And why would I do that?”

  He smiled at her in return, “Well I planned on poisoning you, as I felt that would be the best motivator. But having spoken to you, I think you would be more motivated by me poisoning him instead.”

  It all happened in less than a heartbeat.

  All of a sudden Brian twisted to the side and dropped into a crouch as he threw a knife into the shadows to Ira’s right. In the same moment that Ira heard a sharp intake of breath and a grunt come from the shadows, Ira let her arrow fly. Brian had sheltered his body enough that she hit him in the right shoulder, the arrow burying deep into the muscle. It wasn’t a fatal shot, she knew, but it would hinder his ability to use that sword.

  She moved to draw another arrow but stopped at Brian’s next words. “I wouldn’t do that if you want the kid to live.”

  Ira refused to take her eyes off Brian, but paused her hand in its retreat to her quiver.

  “Very good Ira,” Brian praised in a voice laced with pain. Ira took great satisfaction in hearing his pain, especially as he said, “This will go much more easily if you cooperate.”

  Moving his good hand to his shoulder, Brian tried to ease the bleeding around the arrow still embedded there as he said in a hurried voice, “I will give you the antidote for the poison if you bring me the stone.”

  “Looks to me like I could just wait a bit and I’ll be able to take it from your cooling corpse,” she said mockingly in an effort to hide her anxiety for the child whimpering beside her.

  “Because this isn’t the antidote,” he said with a vicious smile, wiggling a vial he retrieved from his inner coat pocket, “merely a delaying agent.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she countered. He had stabbed a child with that horrible poison! Ira could barely see through the haze of anger. She tried to remain focused. Things could still get worse if she didn’t stay alert.

  “Haven’t you wondered how I kept everyone alive long enough to ask them the information I needed?” he asked with a sneer.

  She had. It hadn’t made sense that victims who were paralyzed would somehow be able to answer questions from their torturer.

  “I have been using this,” he continued, without waiting for a response. “I designed this little beauty to delay the paralysis. When administered correctly it shuts off the blood flow to the extremities, keeping the victim immobilized but awake,” he finished with a grotesque smile.

  Ira was once again floored by just how deranged Brian was. Not only had he concocted an obscene poison that caused paralysis and ultimately death, but as though that hadn’t been enough, he created something to slow its effects, offering him the chance to toy with his victims while they lay frozen and helpless.

  The guard whined quietly, and desperate to help him in any way, Ira demanded in a taunting voice, “Prove it.”

  It was a risky move. She didn’t want to piss him off, but she hoped Brian’s ego would force him to show off his creation.

  Seeming pleased at h
er demand for a demonstration, Brian leaned forward and emptied a vial into the guards gaping mouth. The injured man put up no resistance and Ira knew he didn’t have much time.

  “What does that prove?” she asked. “For all I know you have simply given him a vial filled with water.”

  “Well then as far as you are concerned he dies either way,” Brian said with a shrug, wincing slightly at the motion.

  “What I am offering is an exchange: the stone that holds the research for the antidote. Are you willing to risk that child’s life on your belief that I am lying?” he asked with a sneer, knowing he had already won. “I will give you enough of the delaying agent to last you until sundown tomorrow. If you have not provided me with the stone by then, he will die.” Brian offered firmly.

  “And the guard?” Ira asked, hoping he would make it that long.

  Brian simply chuckled and dropped two vials on the floor. “You better hurry,” he said with a wink, “Not sure this one will last much longer.” Giving the guard at his feet a firm kick in the ribs, he turned and ran. Ira quickly drew an arrow and fired, but Brian was out the door and out of sight before she had much of a chance to aim at anything. She hoped she at least clipped him again.

  Running to the guard’s side, she snatched the vials and after a quick inspection to confirm he was still breathing, darted back to the shadows where the child had fallen.

  To her horror, William sat on the ground, blood streaming from a wound on his thigh where the knife hit the muscle. Ira was relieved to see it missed the artery, as there would be substantially more blood already if it hadn’t. From the awkward movements of his limbs though, she knew the paralytic was already beginning to set in.

  “You need to drink this,” Ira said softly. “It will slow the poison down.”

  The fear in his eyes broke her heart, but he obediently opened his mouth and swallowed the contents down.

  ***

  Carefully and quickly Ira withdrew the knife from William’s thigh and bandaged the cut. He would need stitches as soon as they got back to the barge, but he couldn’t travel with a knife sticking out of him, so this was the best option.