God of the Abyss (42 page)

There was an air about him that I
was all too familiar with; I could always spot a man with too much political
power. He had the crown and the dark blue velvet robes of a king with jeweled
clasps, but he had a staff with a large crystal strapped to the top of it.

On Duran, long before I was born,
there were kings of religion and kings of politics. Since the Reformation and
the end of religion as part of the law, most rulers thought that using magic
made them appear weak. My father, an exception, felt that magic was a tool as
good as the sword to be used by any man powerful enough. That was another
excuse for him to be disappointed in me; I was always better at potions and
distractions than using magic to harm. On the other hand, Edward was a better
teacher and I managed to learn a lot from him, including many spells that I
could use to help Dylan… but all my knowledge was useless to me without energy.

He didn’t ask questions. Still in
shock, he thrust his staff like a weapon. Dylan reached out as he always did to
create a shield, but his magic was hopeless against the metal bracelet. I
managed to push him down in time to avoid the same fate as the wall behind us. What
came out of the crystal was not fire or lightning, but a concentrated form of
energy that acted as such. The stone wall behind us cracked under its force.

I looked up to see the glass
apple rolling right between the man’s feet. When I pushed Dylan down, it had
been knocked out of his hands. Dylan jumped up and ran after it, shoving the
king aside. A few steps outside the doorway was a set of stairs, which I got to
just before the apple fell. Dylan tried to get it, but I knew he would have
fallen, so I held him back. At the bottom, the apple shattered.

“No!” Dylan yelled, struggling
against me. “That was our only way home!”

“We will figure something out,” I
said.

“Do not move!” the king demanded
in Sudo, pressing the crystal into my back. He yelled in a foreign language and
we were quickly surrounded by guards, which were all dressed in blue cloth and
some form of chainmail. I tried to get their scent, but my dragon senses were
useless. I couldn’t even shift my eyes.

One of them took the lotus wand
from me and one took Dylan’s bag from him. It was a good thing Dylan had given
his book to Edward. When a man went to take the sword off me, it fell heavily
to the floor. He man tried to pick it up, but could barely lift the handle.

“They have enchanted it.”

The king tried to lift it,
tenaciously, until his face was red and sweaty, but the magic of the metal was
too much for him. “Leave it,” he said, frustrated. “Put these trespassers in
the cells.”

Emiko gave an outraged shriek.
“You cannot put a queen in the dungeon!”

The king then turned the crystal
on Emiko and it turned a dull orange. The man smirked. “Dragons have no
authority here. This is a land of mages. Dragons are pets.”

And so I knew that Sammy and Ron
had not chosen to live on Lore; they would never allow this to happen. I also
knew Dylan was thinking the same thing, but whether it was with relief or
dread, I didn’t know. As far as Dylan was concerned, neither Avoli nor Vretial
were good enough for his boys.

The king waved the crystal staff
at Dylan, but it didn’t strike. Instead, it just glowed dimly with white light.
The man gasped. “A void? A real void on Lore? Where are you from?” he asked.

“Camelot,” my friend lied.

“What world?”

“You think you can get proper
answers from me without at least a half decent torture session? No snake pits?
No rusty skewers?! Not even a leaky faucet?! What kind of a man do you take me
for?!” he yelled as if terribly insulted. The king frowned at me as if I could
explain Dylan. There were no words.

When he aimed the staff at me, it
turned a slightly lighter orange than it had for Emiko.

We were led through many
hallways. It was clean and the lights were electric, like on Earth and Vaigda,
but the walls were stone and the design was that of an old Duran castle.
Instead of locks and doorknobs, there were glass panels like on Vaigda.

When Emiko continued to struggle,
the king pressed the crystal to her back and muttered something in his
language. Emiko went limp even before her heartbeat slowed and her eyes closed.
She was asleep, but didn’t seem injured.

We were shoved into a room that
could hardly be called a cell. Sure, it had no furniture, but the floor had
soft carpet, it was warm, and there was a pile of blankets and pillows in the
corner. The walls were whole. “If you shift in here, dragon, your bones will
break before the walls do,” one of the guards said. He tossed Emiko in and I
caught her before she hit the floor. Once again, my fire refused my call.

The door shut and we were left
alone. Dylan sat against the wall and put his face in his hands with
frustration. He was thinking furiously, but his strongest defense was magic. I
laid Emiko down, covered her with a soft white blanket, and then sat next to
Dylan.

Rojan?

I’m here, I’m still here. I
just can’t help you right now.

The door opened just a few
minutes later. The guards separated to let the king through, who casually
glanced between Dylan and me. “Take the dragon.” The guards moved to take Emiko
and I growled, but my teeth wouldn’t shift. “The male dragon, not the girl.”

How does he know?

That crystal of his turned
orange near us and near Emiko. Perhaps it detects our blood.

“Why are you taking him? He’s not
going to talk!” Dylan said. “You could torture him for days and get nothing.
Take me; I’ll tell you anything you want to know if you give me lunch. Come on,
you would much rather torture me!”

The guards were startled and
confused, but a few looked like they were being persuaded. “You shut up,” I
said. “I’ll torture you when we get home.” The king and his guards stared at me
with shock. “My brother is unstable.” They shoved me into the hall and slammed
the door.

“Name, rank, and number,
Mordon, nothing else,”
Dylan told me. We had actually discussed what we
would do if we were ever separated and interrogated. I was to irritate them as
much as possible and Dylan was to “accidentally” feed them false information.

I was led to a small room, very small and very white.
The walls, floor, and ceiling were dull white. The only object in the room was
a small table, which was also white, with one chair. So I would be tortured
after all.

Only one guard could fit in the room with the king
and myself, and he forced me into the chair. “I am Maslye, high mage and king
of the Treslen lands. This is a world of magic and you are at my mercy. What is
your name?”

“Yatunus-so Mordon, first adviser,
six-two-four-zero.”

“Why are you here?”

“Yatunus-so Mordon, first adviser,
six-two-four-zero.”

“Are you after anything in particular, or did you
just think you could get away with stealing from the most powerful family of
mages this world has ever known?”

“Yatunus-so Mordon, first adviser, six-two-four-zero.”

“Why does he keep saying that?” the king asked.

“This is some kind of tactic,” the guard answered.

“I will kill your friends for treason if you do not
confess everything,” Maslye declared.

“Yatunus-so Mordon, first adviser, six-two-four-zero.”

“Enough of this.” He raised his staff and pressed the
crystal against my chest. “You will only speak the truth!” White light burst
behind my eyes as my body filled with energy. It was energy created to cause
pain.

I had gotten myself caught by my father’s enemies
outside of my father’s kingdom before. I have been tortured in many ways; cut,
bitten, poisoned, starved, dehydrated, and left alone in a small tunnel for
days with no light. It was all part of being a prince. But I never screamed
like that before. Nobody had ever used magic itself to cause me pain. There was
nothing like this known to Duran, because if there had been, we would be at
war.

I leaned forward as the pain faded and left me numb.
Even with my face pressed against the cool table, my head wouldn’t clear enough
to think.

“Now, what have you come here for?” the guard asked,
calmly. How he could be calm in the face of such cruelty, I had no idea.

“The lotus wand,” I said. I didn’t have the energy to
stop my words, lift my head, or even speak above a whisper.

“Where did you find it?”

“It was left for us on the bed,” I said. My words
came without thought, forced from me when I couldn’t fight them.

“There was no wand there an hour ago.”

It wasn’t a question, but I
still
couldn’t
stop my mouth from betraying me. “It would only appear for about a minute in
all of time. My brother’s father left it there, somehow, for some reason. He
hid the wand and other artifacts and gave us a time map to find them.”

The guard pushed on my shoulder until I sat back.
“How did you get here?”

I tried with everything I had in me to keep my mouth
shut… Even Rojan tried, but the mage king’s magic was powerful. The harder I
fought, the harsher the pain lashed as it reared back up to sting my body and
scramble my mind. It wasn’t a burning, it was just raw pain. I yelled with
agony until I couldn’t think and the magic grew calm again. I was too numb to
feel any part of my body, merely phantom pains.

“How did you get here?” the king asked it this time.

My head throbbed and I couldn’t grasp a clear
thought. “My brother is in league with the gods. Vretial gave him a glass apple
that acted to transport us in time and space.” I was panting, but my words were
clear.

“The little object that fell down the steps?”

“Yes.”

“And now you are trapped here?”

“Dylan will find a way.”

“He is a void. What can he do against magic?”

“It’s the metal bracelets that take away our power.
He is a Noquodi. He is the most powerful and ingenious Noquodi ever born and he
has the magic of a god.” I found the strength to lift my head and glare at the
king. “And you have made a very, very big mistake. If you want to live, if you
value your life, there is one person in all of space and time who you never
cross, and that’s my brother.”

They both took a step back with worry across their
faces, and I saw deep in the king’s eyes that he heard my warning.
Unfortunately, he didn’t heed it.

“Send him back and bring me the
girl.” I had no strength left to struggle. I was tossed into the room with
Dylan and Emiko. Dylan caught me and the king aimed his staff at us in threat.
Two other guards took Emiko, who was still unconscious. My body was numb and I
could barely stay conscious, let alone fight them off. “Not going to fight,
Noquodi?” The king taunted Dylan. I closed my eyes because I couldn’t look my
brother in the face.

He laughed when Dylan had no
answer and I heard the door shut behind them.

“I’m sorry,” Dylan’s voice
startled me in the silence.

“What are you sorry for?”

“I couldn’t protect her when you
needed me to. Without my magic, I really am nothing. I don’t even make a decent
human.” He propped me up against the wall and sat next to me, avoiding my gaze.

“I’m worse. I told them your
secrets.”

“I felt the magic they used on
you. I thought they were killing you and…” He shook his head. “There was
nothing I could do. You did nothing wrong, you couldn’t help what they did. I
just couldn’t do anything.”

*          *          *

It was an hour before the door
opened. Dylan was leaning against me, nearly asleep. Normally the heat from my
dragon fire kept him on the other side of the room when he slept, but my fire
was inactive. Both of us tried to take off the bracelets with no success.

Instead of guards, it was Emiko
standing in the doorway. “Are you coming?” she asked. She gave me the fakest
smile ever, but there was relief in her eyes. It was only a few minutes before
that my strength had begun to return, so Dylan had to help me up.

“We have to get that wand back.
We can’t leave until we get it,” Dylan insisted.

“We need your sword first, so you
can fight,” Emiko said.

I didn’t argue with her. Once
past the door, I glanced back to see the glass panel dismantled. Emiko had torn
the glass touchpad apart to expose wires and a circuit board. She caught my
surprised stare and gave me a knowing smirk, and I realized I underestimated
her. The dragoness was exceptionally pretty, yet that hid something much
deeper.

Finding our way back to the
king’s room proved to be the easy part. Despite being as quiet as possible, we
had too many close calls where we had to duck behind furniture and drapes.
Finally we found Dylan’s sword right where it had been dropped.

Noise led us to another room,
just a few doors from the king’s chamber. The door was open, but a quick peek
was all we needed. Three guards were sitting at a table, riffling through our
stuff.

“You get ready, I’m going to
distract them,”
Dylan said in my head.

I was perpetually grateful we
retained that ability.
“What are you going to do?”

“I try not to think about it.
Just be ready.”
Before I could stop him, he stepped out into the doorway.
“Look at me, I’ve escaped!” He took off running down the hall and an instant
later, the three guards were running after him. Not one of them looked back. We
ducked into the room and gathered the stuff.

“Shouldn’t we go help him?” Emiko
asked.

“No, he’s having a run. He’s good
at that. I don’t think anyone could actually catch him.” I took a seat for a
moment and tried to catch my breath, since I was still recovering from Maslye’s
magic. “How did you escape?”

She gathered Dylan’s stuff into
his bag, not even attempting to steal. “There was a metal lamp on the table in
the wizard’s room. I was able to hit him with it. His door was open, so I
escaped and found you.” She smiled at me. “I have always been good with
technology. It took me less than a minute to rewire the door locks.”