Felling Kingdoms (Book 5) (11 page)

Chapter 14

Gabriel stared at the bed canopy as he had for hours, lost in his broken body. His despair was unfathomable. Overturn was a breeze compared to Glittering.

He could feel his body, the cloth, and the warmth of hands that touched him, but his brain refused to acknowledge its existence. His Elements were simply gone, lost in a blink. He never felt so helpless. At least Overturn had allowed him to move and feel the sweet pulse of Elements in his chest. Now, he was completely useless, a burden to his Mages. He could not even give orders without complex and lengthy tactics. He gave up the second day. Lael could handle Jaden.

To his displeasure, Afton and Mikelle stripped him to better bathe and strengthen him. Respectfully, they kept his modesty mostly intact. Afton stood by his side with her hands on his calf, sending electrical pulses into his muscles to make them convulse and rip. She worked through a whole muscle before healing it. He could feel the strength locked in each fiber but had no way to use it.

There
was
a way out of this. He made up his mind early on to refuse food. When Mikelle tried to manipulate broth and pureed items down his throat, he would constrict and hold his breath. She had no choice but to stop forcing or chance suffocating him. He knew she was frustrated with him, but it had to be done. Unfortunately, water could be seeped through the skin. At this rate he would last about three weeks unless Mikelle devised a new way to force food in him. On day three his body called for food less.

Mikelle sat to his left, propped up with pillows, and read aloud from a tome on cultures of the Third Age while Afton finished with his calf and moved to his thigh. He wished he could tell her to stop, that what she did was useless, but no one was paying attention.

Mikelle paused in her reading. “Adelaide said something at the meeting the other day I thought interesting. She said this Castrofax never held a Mage higher than a Class Eight, and you said it felt weaker. Is…is there anything about this one that makes you think it cannot hold you?”

He frowned in response.

“But, you loosened the muscles around your eyes. What is to say you cannot do that for more?”

Afton paused with an interested expression. “Why not divert your attention to a single area and try to break it loose?”

In his despair he had not thought to try. He replied with a quizzical expression and closed his eyes, focusing on the fingers in his right hand. He lay there for what seemed like hours until Afton got too far up his thigh and made him loose concentration.
‘Dead puppies….’

Mikelle droned on as he stared at the bed canopy and felt the Castrofax. There was something different about the feel of this one, as if something did not quite match up perfectly. He cleared his throat, and Mikelle stopped to look at him.

“Need something?” She began to count through the alphabet until he blinked, a terribly time consuming process. Afton came to his bare hip, covering his leg.

“Feel…inside…Castrofax,” Mikelle spelled out. Blessedly, she was smart and could guess the word within the first three letters. She set the book aside and positioned herself better to grab the neckpiece, slipping her fingers underneath.

Instantly a flood of her concern, loyalty, and love rushed into him. It overwhelmed him and made his eyes water. Along with it came the exchange of Elements. Her Water, faint as it was compared to his, was as sweet as honey. It flooded into his chest like tea swallowed down the gullet. His own emotions of despair, uselessness, and anger flowed into her, making her frown as she moved her fingers along the inside. With it came his Elements, and he watched the fire spike in intensity behind her.

Mikelle stopped and ran her fingers back and forth. “This Castrofax is angled just a touch. It has a corner, a small one, but one none the less. It’s shaped like a large water drop.”

Her hands released, and her stream of emotions and Element severed, but Gabriel had control for a few seconds and laid a pattern to pull water from a cup beside his table. Hovering it above his chest, he shaped it to a point and froze it. Before he could plunge it to his heart, Mikelle flicked a finger, and the shard flung against the wall and burst into a hundred pieces.

“Don’t be so dramatic.” The fire roared behind her in response. She glanced back abashedly, and laughed. “Does the point mean something? Yes? What? W…e…a. Weakness? The Castrofax is weak.”

“Has anyone tried breakin’ it?” Afton asked timidly.

The two women looked at each other, then at him. They jumped up and rushed to find anything they could bash him with. He closed his eyes as Mikelle rushed up with a fire poker and grabbed his wrist. She jerked him off the pillow and laid the wristlet on the bedside. Raising the iron rod, she missed. Twice.

Afton took a subtler approach. She slipped two steel bars through the wristlet. By using the tension his wrist gave, she tried to snap the glass in two. No matter what the women did, the glass did not fracture, and Afton had to mend the bruises Mikelle left.

Still, Gabriel could
feel
the weakness in the Castrofax. It was as though there was a fault in the glass; a thinness. He strained as Mikelle continued to read, and Afton moved to his stomach.

He growled in frustration a while later, but something suddenly gave, and his fingers tightened. Mikelle snapped the book shut.

“Do that again!”

He slowly flexed his right index and middle finger, curling around the sheets.

“Oh my stars! How did you do that? Push? You pushed against the Castrofax? Why did you stop? E…x…h…a. Exhausting? Oh.” She gripped his hand. “Keep trying! You may be able to free your whole body someday.”

“He’s got t’ree weeks unless he eats somet’in’.”

“Will you have something now? Broth? I’ll heat it up.”

No.

Mikelle wilted, but he blinked and she rattled off the alphabet again. He spelled Robyn’s name.

“No, we have not told her. W…r…o. Wrong. I’m wrong? She is wrong?”

“Somet’in’ is wrong wit’ her.”

Gabriel nodded his eyes in Afton’s direction.

“I forgot about her in all this.” Mikelle spun the hinge ring around her finger having taken to guard it. “Would you have me go to her? Yes. Do you want her brought here? Yes?
Why
? Very well.”

She slipped off the bed and left him to stare at Afton. She worked up his stomach and around his left side. He cleared his throat with the intention of telling her it was useless.

“I’m sorry, Head Mage, I cannot count your blinks. I see t’ world in pulses, not in solidity like Shaun can.”

Regrettably, he let her continue. Her hands, while delicate and feminine, did not entice him like Robyn’s did. He saw Afton as a skilled healer who did her best to keep him whole. The day before, she rolled him to his stomach and gave him a thoroughly deep massage that left him in relaxed euphoria for hours. She had already spent time that day working through knots in his thighs. In three weeks he was going to be as relaxed as a newborn.

She made it to his shoulders, the tightest part of his body, and Mikelle walked in frowning.

“Something
is
wrong with Robyn. She’s not thinking straight.” She sat beside him. “Nor would she come here. She said she is too busy preparing.”

“For what?” Afton asked.

“For her wedding.”

Afton’s hands stopped. “I beg your pardon, but I t’ought she was marryin’ t’ Head Mage.”

“She is supposed to be.”

“Did she leave him when she found out about t’ Castrofax?”

“She has not been told.”

Afton frowned. “Who is she marryin’ t’en?”

“The Prince of Arconia.”

“T’ere is t’ problem.”

Gabriel looked at her with an expectant expression.

“Explain,” Mikelle translated.

“It is not my place to judge nobles, but t’ Queen’s problem began before she returned from Arconia. Her problem came wit’ her.”

Gabriel blinked rapidly.

“He agrees,” Mikelle whispered. “Do you want me to have him followed? Brought here? I can interrogate him.”

Gabriel sighed and looked at the ceiling.

“Is that your response for ‘I don’t know’? I thought so.”

‘In truth, what help could I be to Robyn?’
Gabriel thought,
‘She could not wed a crippled man. Perhaps Virgil is the best choice.’

Afton resumed her work, focusing on the individual muscles in his neck.

‘Just stop. Everyone go away and leave me here.’
But no one could hear his thoughts.

Maxine appeared in Atrox to find Ryker was not in his usual place. She stole into the manor with a searchers pattern and found him in the library, a vast room two stories tall with spiraling staircases and slender walkways. He stood atop one with an open book in his hands as she walked in.

“I have wonderful news,” she smiled. “The Head Mage wears Glittering.”

Ryker was midway through pulling another book out, but it fell to the walkway as his whole body snapped around to stare down at her. “How?”

She waggled her fingers at him. “I’ve been busy with the Prince of Arconia.”

Ryker smiled broadly, displaying his straight teeth in more of a sneer than glee. “Y’ clever creature. How did it happen?”

“I gave Virgil the Decadence Rings in exchange for his removal of the Head Mage. Arconia had a Castrofax.” She shrugged a slim shoulder. “He controls Queen Robyn, I control him, and the Head Mage is paralyzed.”

Ryker descended the stairs with a grin, clicking his cheek. “Y’ wondrous woman. I always underestimate y’.”

“We need to get Dorian up to speed fa’ faster.”

“Aye, beauty. Y’ best get started on that. I will join y’ shortly.”

She nodded and stole to Dorian’s bedchamber. The handsome man paced his room slowly as a Mage in a pale green dress told him of Anatoly City and its changes. He dressed in tan breeches, a long shirt and an open vest. His wardrobe had not updated since the Third Age, and for a moment she was taken back to the Mage Wars and their glories.

“I’m here to fix you, my lord,” she smiled winsomely. Dorian was younger, born four years after her, but he carried himself with the confidence of a man much older. It made him all the more enticing. He grinned slowly and went to a chair. His body was looser than it had been the night before.

“You may leave us,” he waved to the serving girl who jumped up and raced off. Maxine put her hands on his shoulders and set the regeneration-pattern into his muscles, ripping at them before mending.

“The Fifth Age is a strange one, my lady.”

“No more strange than the last ones.”

“T’ese Mages are content being Class Fives and Fours. I would fall on a sword if I was born so weak.”

Dorian was a Class Ten like all the Arch Mages, wielding Earth, Fire and Air. He was powerful, merciless; a destroyer. He understood how structures were built and how to bring them down with one blow. He knew where a fire would best spread, and how to use the air to aid in both circumstances.

She let her hands trail unabashedly. “I will rework your clothes later today. This Age has long trousers and tall boots.”

“What is old is new again. I still have tall boots from t’ beginning of t’ Third Age. I am pleased you have not changed, Maxine.”

“Oh, but I have,” she sighed. She bedded a villain, killed a Prince, bedded another, fell for the Head Mage, and trapped him and his beloved in their bodies. By the time she was finished
kingdoms would fall
. “We need to strengthen you as quickly as possible. Ryker will be coming to aid as well.”

“I t’ought we could have t’ morning to ourselves, my lady.”

Ryker burst in at that moment, letting Maxine’s reply die on her lips. “Y’ work on his legs, I’ll do the torso.”

“If you insist,” Dorian smirked.

“I wish during the rebirth I could restore a body t’ their normal stature, but I can only form muscles, ne alter their strength. Has Maxine told y’ of the Head Mage?” Ryker took up the left arm as Maxine knelt to work her way up the leg. “He’s been put in the Glittering Castrofax, so now is the best time t’ strike as the castle mourns. If we push y’, we can have y’ up t’ normal in a few days I think.”

“You are t’ master,” Dorian replied, wincing slightly as Ryker tore into him.

“I want y’ walking the manor every hour to get used t’ your new body. It is imperative we get y’ in the castle soon. I can ne leave Pike alone par long.”

“What will you have me do once inside?”

Ryker clicked his cheek. “That’s a story par another day. Can y’ get yourself in?”

Dorian drummed his fingers on the armrest. “Do t’ey know my face?”

“There is no way t’ tell.”

Maxine adjusted her position on his leg, doing her best to heal as she ripped unlike Ryker who ripped with abandon. “The Head Mage just brought in a few legions of Gaelsins.”