Haven (War of the Princes) (26 page)

           
“Not much of a fight are you?” he snarled mere inches away from my ear. “I’m going to drain you, Lodestone. Breath by breath I’ll take that pretty soul of yours. And how will it feel, all of that raw energy for myself? Sweet, sweet power. What’s wrong? You don’t look well. Oh. Air.”

           
He loosened his grip on my throat just as neon blotches and whiteness began to spot my vision. I rasped for as much oxygen as I could get.

           
“Enjoy it while you have it. Tick tock goes your clock,” he said maniacally.

           
“Can’t- hurt me,” I struggled to say. “
Fallux
…”

           
“Yes, he wants to go by the book and use you to the Prince’s purposes. He won’t always be in the way. Neither will that friend of yours, the very
Common
Lord Axton. He’s been trying to find a loophole to get you out of our custody. Which reminds me… a little girl came to the Installment yesterday. She demanded to have you released. Looked very familiar, but I can’t remember all the brats I meet. Who was she, I wonder? I’ve never drained a child. To be honest I’d quite look forward to the experience. So innocent, so pure. Oh and what power may lie beneath?”

           
Lina
.
He was talking about
Lina
. The kid actually had the guts to march up to this scary place and tell them to let me go. And Dylan… what was Stakes going to do to him? A tear leaked from my eye.

           
“I’ll s-stop you,” I hissed, locking eyes with him and feeling rage boiling up within me.

           
“No,” he said cocking his ugly head to the side, showing me the metal slashed side of his face. “You’ll die.
Fallux
has it all wrong. We don’t need to use you to find the other Lodestones. You gave us enough clues by showing up where you did. Should be easy enough now, and after draining you, I’ll be able to live long enough to see it through. Even if it takes the next hundred years.”

           
“Why?” I rasped.

           
“There is a wealth of power within you: I want it. And I want you to know, because it won’t change anything, and because I enjoy hurting people. You’ll see it all happen, step by step. You’ll know I’m getting closer. Your friends will bleed and you’ll know it was me. I’ll see all of that pain in your sweet, silver eyes when I come around to take you. Soon. Soon.”

           
And then he released me. I crumpled to the floor, dry retching as I gasped for air.

Completely composed, save for the usual insanity visible in his eyes, Stakes stepped three paces away from me.

           
Senior Commander
Fallux
came around the corner with a set of four Dragoons behind him. March was among them.

           
“What is this?” he demanded, seeing me on the floor holding my throat.

           
I mustered my strength and got to my feet. “Stakes tried to strangle me! He said that he’s going to get rid of you and drain me,” I said blurting everything out.

           
“Commander?”
Fallux
inquired coolly.

           
“An act, sir. She attempts to divide us,” Stakes said without even the hint of defensiveness.

           
Fallux
ignored us both as if we had never spoken. He obviously was unconcerned by my warning. Stakes winked at me. My hate for him increased tenfold. He was right. Telling me made no difference.

           
“One proven Ability. Not a weak one either. Invaluable, really,” the Senior Commander said striding purposefully toward me. Every movement exuded his triumph. “A second Ability is all I need as proof that you are a Lodestone. Either you are a master of restraint, being here this long and not showing your other Abilities, or you truly don’t realize you have them.”

           
“I
don’t
have any,” I argued stubbornly.

           
“Then you would try to tell me that you do not have one of the rarest and most valuable of all Abilities? I just observed you in the Isolation room. You would tell me that I did not witness a masterful show of The Pull just moments ago?”

           
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what that is,” I insisted.

           
Fallux
laughed and I didn’t like the way it spread his metal split jaw and showed off his double set of fangs. “You know very well what it is. The Pull is the Ability to find whatever you are seeking. Large or small, near or far, familiar or unfamiliar, you can find anyone and anything without fail. For example, you just found the most direct route through a maze you have never encountered before, in absolute darkness.”

           
I swallowed and it hurt.

           
My world felt like it was upside down. What he said made sense but I didn’t want to believe it. It was ridiculous! I was just lucky. My rational mind told me it couldn’t be anything more than that. But people had Abilities here. I had seen them. Dylan had The Lift and March had The Shift.

           
How could I have discovered the path to the Outside World if I didn’t have an Ability that let me find things? It was uncanny. Logically, I began to see how unlikely it was that I would find a direct route out of the Haven Mountains when none had done so in near seven hundred years, and how I was able lead Rune out of the honeycomb of cave tunnels. The more I thought about it, the more I could feel it, the very same way I felt a keen tug in the direction of home.

           
It was surreal and as much as I wanted to deny it,
Fallux
was right. I had The Pull. As soon as I had admitted it to myself, I wondered how I had never seen it so clearly before.

           
“And now you know it,”
Fallux
said sounding pleased. “Good.”

*
         
*
         
*

           
The brightness of daylight outside was a cruel contradiction to the deep shadows I faced within the fortress. On our way to my next test, the Senior Commander and his Dragoons led me to the ground floor and that was where I saw the warhorse.

           
We were crossing the wide stone entry hall when a shadow against the wall began to move without cause. Light pouring in from the main entrance only seemed to deepen the darker spaces in the hall, but lent no source for the blackness to move the way it did.

           
None of my escort seemed to notice or care about what was holding my rapt attention as we crossed the broad corridor. Only when I recoiled in fear of what I saw did they put hands on my shoulders to push me forward.

           
I stumbled, shocked by the impossibility that presented itself.

           
A skeleton, the skeleton of a horse, to be exact, lunged out from the deepest part of the shadow on the wall.

It looked like the shadow it had burst from clung to the moving bones like tar, and as its hooves clattered on the stonework tile, the shadow stretched and wrapped itself over the skeleton until there stood a black warhorse in full form. The excess of shadow snapped away from its glossy body and legs, retracting instantly to the darkness on the wall. If I hadn’t seen what I did, I’d swear that there was an average, flesh and blood horse standing in the hall with us.

The muscular equine did not regard us, but walked away toward a Dragoon entering the hall with a bridle.

I tried to calm down but couldn’t tear my eyes away from the thing until we had turned a corner.

Was I dreaming? Perhaps I was hallucinating from shock. I had always believed myself to be as levelheaded as anyone else, seeking logical and scientific explanations for all I encountered in life. My discovery of Abilities was the first thing to pop that bubble, but this… this was just over the top. I felt a sort of giddy hysteria enter my mind as I admitted to myself that it explained why none of the standard black Dragoon warhorses were stabled outside with
Florian
. I had wondered where they kept so many horses, but I never expected the answer to be remotely close to what I had seen.

That horse was a skeleton before the shadow made it look normal. Were they dead? Were Rune and the other Dragoons riding dead horses? A shiver of disgust tickled up and down my spine, but with it rose a morbid curiosity that I quickly tried to subdue.

Why hadn’t Dylan told me about this? I wished I could ask him. I wished that I were still with him at Breakwater Keep. His spoiled arrogance had irritated me from time to time, true, but he could also be kind and charismatic, and now I was surrounded by monsters. I did overhear him saying he was trying to gain my trust to get information from me, but he also repeatedly put himself on the line to help and protect me, even at the price of infuriating Lord Brendon. It was very possible he said what he did to avoid Brendon’s wrath.

It troubled me that he wouldn’t let me leave, that he wouldn’t help me go home… but how much more could I ask from someone of his station with his responsibilities? I hadn’t stopped to think what would happen to him if I did get away. He would take the blame for his escaped prisoner. Not to mention, if I’d have listened to him, if I hadn’t tried to escape, I might not have run directly into the returning Dragoons and their Commanders. I might still be at Breakwater Keep.

“I’m sorry, Dylan,” I whispered under my breath, letting my head hang as the Senior Commander unlocked a door. My throat still ached. Stakes’ words stabbed at my memory like barbs. He had threatened Dylan and it frightened me. I wished I could see him again. I wanted to warn him. I wanted to tell him I appreciated the comforts he had given me. Comfort didn’t exist at the Installment.

When the double doors swung inward I wasn’t expecting to see a room full of Dragoons and high-ranking militia. At their center was a very stern Lord Brendon, muscular arms folded over his broad chest.

Dylan stood beside him.

Chapter 25: The Final Test

           
Be careful what you wish for.

I got what I wanted, without any of the specifics. It figured.

I had wished to see Dylan and there he was. Unfortunately, he shared the room with his brother and thirty or so militants, not to mention the two Commanders and a handful of Dragoons that followed me inside. What good was seeing him if I couldn’t talk to him?

The room was oval and my audience was standing on tiered steps that surrounded a sunken landing. A single chair was bolted to the floor in the center of the room. I didn’t like how it looked. Metal clamps hung from its arms.

Everyone was looking at me, as usual. I tried to imagine that my body was just a protective shell and that this shell was all that they could really see. When I thought about it that way, I felt more confident and was able to raise my chin to their scrutiny.

I met Dylan’s eyes and his expression was that of sympathetic uncertainty. If only I could tell him everything I was afraid of. I wanted to warn him of Stakes’ threat. My first reaction was to wish that we could communicate without speaking. With my luck it would work miraculously, only for him to forget everything I said the very next instant.

“More proof every moment, Lord Brendon,” Senior Commander
Fallux
said in a tone that rang out in the otherwise quiet room. “More proof that this girl is a Lodestone from a place that eludes us, than a spy from the North. You, yourself were witness to her Ability in isolation. She is a keen user of The Pull.”

“People in the North have Abilities as well as we have here, Senior Commander, or do your many distractions keep you from remembering such simple facts?” Lord Brendon Axton rebutted. I knew he was a regular man, devoid of Abilities, or at least any powerful ones, but I had to admit that the man had courage to stubbornly and openly go head to head with Commander
Fallux
.

“On the contrary, no simple fact escapes me and nothing I invest my energies in is a distraction. Both of which will be proven momentarily and rewarded greatly by our Margrave and the Prince,”
Fallux
replied with a smirk, twisted by the metal on one side of his face.

The Senior Commander ushered me toward the ugly chair. I looked desperately at the faces watching me. Dylan averted his gaze. I didn’t know why. Did he know what was going to happen to me? Should I expect something terrible? My hands began to tremble again.

I scanned the faces of the Dragoons. Rune was in the room too. Even from a distance I could never mistake the angle of his broad shoulders, his low brows, or a hundred other nuances of his other features. He stood among his comrades like a statue and for a single heartbeat, his presence felt so strong to me that everyone else in the room may as well have melted out of existence. I still couldn’t be certain how I felt about him, but for good or ill, he was undeniably important to me.