The Castrofax (26 page)

Gabriel’s breathing was sharp and laborious.
He had no retort.

Nolen snatched the winch back up and wrapped
it around Gabriel’s left calf. Should he succeed in breaking the
long bones, each limb would be compromised. As Nolen fastened the
object, Gabriel slowly looked at Lex with an expression that said
‘watch closely.’ Gabriel took in a breath, held it, and sprang to
action.

He pulled himself up on the chain and picked
up the knee of his injured leg. Abandoning the cry held between his
teeth, he drove it into Nolen’s face. Lex jumped in shock as they
heard the snap of bone as Nolen fell to his back. Gabriel leaned on
his good leg and put his head on his arm, each exhale brought with
it a solid whimper.

Nolen lay on his back for a moment shocked.
He sputtered and turned his face to the side. Blood streaked from
his nose. He touched it carefully, wincing; it was surely broken.
Rage radiated from his eyes and met Gabriel’s.

He jumped to his feet and grabbed a knife
from the wall. Taking one step forward he used his momentum to
drive the blade into Gabriel’s stomach. Lex could not see where the
blade pierced, but he heard the Mage gasp and choke. Nolen grabbed
the back of Gabriel’s head and jerked the hilt, causing Gabriel to
choke again. He took a step back, leaving the blade where it
rested.

“Go,” Gabriel whispered. “Go get Aisling,” he
said more forcefully.

“I could heal you if I wanted,” Nolen replied
and pulled the control piece out. A moment later his nose snapped
back into place.

“No, you…can’t,” Gabriel replied, and a line
of blood dripped from his mouth. “My power…cannot heal myself,” he
choked out. “You…great fool.” His knees gave out as he coughed. The
jerking motion against his broken forearms caused him to choke out
a scream that died sharply with another cough.

Lex ran to the pulley and released it,
letting Gabriel drop to the floor. He fell on his back, and his
wide eyes told the truth of his pain. His hands hovered over the
blade wedged deep between two abdominal muscles on the left. Nolen
had twisted it, leaving a crescent-shaped wound.

“Go,” Gabriel whispered again, blood wetting
his lips. “
Go!
”

Lex could not remember if Nolen tried to stop
him. All he did remember was tearing out of the dungeons, his
bloodied boots skidding for a second on the black tiles of the west
wing.

Lady Aisling had been as patient as she could
be with Miranda. The Queen was a fool, but whatever Nolen
threatened her with must have been truly terrifying. Miranda did
not come to her with a release, and no rookery page came with an
overthrow from the Head Mage, so Aisling stood once again to plead
with the Queen.

She was halfway down the hall to the Queen’s
chambers when somebody called for her in a most urgent manner.
Hoping it was a rookery page, she walked swiftly back up the hall.
“Here!”

Instead of a servant, the soldier Lex met her
in the doorway, his face painted with exhaustion and fear. Upon
better inspection, Aisling saw he was splattered with blood, and
his fingers caked with it. Her eyes grew wide.

“You—must come,” he gasped and without
respecting the courtesies a Lady was entitled to, he grabbed her
hand. She was not a fast runner, and Ladies never did such things,
but she had the trademark long legs of the Lamay family and kept
pace with him as he pulled her along.

“What has happened?” she asked as they sped
past courtiers.

Lex could not find his voice as his lungs
rasped for air, so he made a fist and drove it into his stomach
with an imaginary knife. Her mind ran through healing patterns as
they continued, knowing a wound to the gut could easily pierce
vital organs.

They raced wearily into the dungeons, and Lex
turned her down a hall. “Steel—yourself,” he rasped before they
reached a door at the end. He jerked it open for her and released
her hand.

Nolen stood off to one side, leaning against
a wooden table with his arms folded. His face was angry and
bloodied. Lady Aisling paid no mind as her eyes glanced over him to
see the mangled remains of a man on the floor. She knew it was
Gabriel, but only because the Castrofax glinted under the light of
the flickering lantern. Her hands went to her mouth, and she
shrieked.

There was so much blood on the floor, it was
a wonder anyone could survive. She crouched and hovered her hands
over his torso. He lay on his back, his bound hands still connected
to a chain hanging from the ceiling. Gabriel made no response as
she called his name, and she shook too hard from the run that she
could not feel a pulse under his neck. The knife wound still bled,
so she knew he was alive. The energy he gave off was so small she
missed it.

She sank a probe-pattern in around the knife
and was immediately accosted by every wound he bore. She did not
know where to start, and the sudden sensation of every cut, every
bruise, burn, and broken bone stopped her. Her eyes widened as her
mouth fell agape. She did not know someone could suffer such wounds
and live.

Focusing again on the knife, she felt what
flesh it had cut through. Carefully, she mended his insides,
working her way up for several minutes as she slid the knife from
his belly. His labored breathing smoothed a little, but he did not
open his eyes.

“I cannot work in here,” she whispered to
Lex. “Bring me a stretcher, and a sheet.” The soldier nodded and
left, his boots echoing down the hall.

She held her hands over Gabriel’s body and
felt for the worse wounds. Despite her best efforts, tears sprang
to her eyes, causing her to blink rapidly.
‘Here lies the best
hope for the Mages. Who could ever think he was great now?’

She put a hand on his nose and slid the bones
back into place slowly. His brain was concussed, and that was
something she lacked the skills to heal. When she put a hand over a
broken forearm and laid a pattern to mend it, Nolen
straightened.

“Leave that, I am not finished.”

She shot him a murderous look as her retort
spilled from her tongue. “I will be returning him to his quarters.”
Nolen opened his mouth to object. “I know a lot more about the
limits of the body than you do, you star-blinded fool. He is nearly
gone.”

Nolen glared down at her before swiftly
leaving the room.

Lex was quick to return with a guard and a
stretcher. Somehow the two men lifted Gabriel onto it. Their hands
slipped against his skin and couldn’t gain purchase on his
shoulders. The soldier found a blanket, and Aisling draped it over
Gabriel, covering him from head to heel. She did not want to parade
him through the palace looking a corpse.

She walked beside the stretcher as the two
men carried him, working little healing patterns into the wounds
she could reach from his side. Swallowing back the lump in her
throat, she knew it would be a long while before the boy fully
healed.

Before they reached her rooms, Prince Balien
found them. “I just heard,” he said, running up and breathing
heavily. Aisling swore he had more informants than she, but he
helped more people with his herbs and gained a loyal following long
ago. He looked down at the stretcher and gripped at his heart. “Oh
stars, is he dead?”

“No,” Aisling replied, her voice betraying
her worry. “Bring me whatever you can to help.” He nodded and sped
off to his quarters.

The anteroom to her chambers was vacant, and
she breathed a sigh of relief that she did not have to contend with
the Queen. She led them to Gabriel’s rooms and grabbed a blanket
from the bed, throwing it on the floor.

When she pulled the cover back, she realized
the darkness of the dungeons had masked a great deal of the wounds,
and heat sprang back to her eyes. She spread her skirts and saw the
purple hem was sodden with blood. She must have looked a sight
walking through the palace. Word would be everywhere by
nightfall.

“I—I will need water and sponges,” she said
to Lex. The guard stood there stupidly, looking down at the damage
with searching eyes. “You wait outside and admit no one but Prince
Balien.”

Lex emerged from the wash room with an armful
of wet towels and immediately dabbed at the bloodied skin where
Aisling instructed. Her Element would allow her to feel all the
damage, but she could not bear to see such a great man so horribly
wounded.

She put four fingers over his broken collar
bone and put it back together quietly. His ribs were the next to be
repaired, five in all broken through with many more cracked. His
forearms screamed to her that both the little bones in them were
broken, and the flesh around it pinched and bruised. She fixed
those next, shivering as one snapped back into place. Lex managed
not to gag. The right femur also had several fissures under a
mountain of bruises.

She repaired the breaks to his hands next,
sealing the torn skin above his knuckles. “He fought back,” she
murmured, recognizing the defensive marks. “It feels like his back
is the worst.” Lex nodded quietly, wiping blood from Gabriel’s
hands.

Balien thundered in at that moment and
stopped suddenly when he saw his friend. His mouth fell and quickly
sharpened to anger. His fists clenched around the ceramic vials in
his hands. “It is a wonder he is alive,” he growled and stepped
around to his head. “Did you get anything into him?” he asked
Lex.

“I got the tincture and the salve,” Lex
replied and pointed to Gabriel’s face and collar bone.

“Brace yourselves,” Aisling said, feeling
deep into Gabriel’s left shoulder. It snapped with a sickening
crack, and Lex gagged again looking away. “Did he truly not break?
Did he break and Nolen just continued?”

“No, m’Lady, he did not break. In the end he
kicked Nolen in the nose before the Prince could break his
calf.”

Balien slipped a vial of rose-colored liquid
into Gabriel. “He is desperately dehydrated.” Balien pointed to a
wound leaking thick blood. They spent several minutes filling
Gabriel’s mouth with water and holding it shut until he swallowed.
He coughed up most of it.

“I thought the old stories of Class Tens
being hard to break were merely inflated,” Aisling whispered. “We
need to turn him over. Whatever happened to his back is accosting
all my probing-patterns.”

With his broken bones healed, Gabriel was
easier to move, and both men carefully rolled him onto his stomach.
Aisling felt her chest tighten as the light fell upon the
wounds.

“Stars above,” Balien cursed and turned away.
“Lady, can you heal that?”

Aisling put a hand over Gabriel’s back and
felt the heat radiating off it. His skin was absolutely torn to
shreds, and in some places it had been flayed off completely,
leaving the muscles revealed underneath. “N-n-no,” she muttered;
Lex carefully reached over the skin and pulled a barb from it.
“What instruments did he use?”

“This was done before I arrived, but I saw a
crop, a bullwhip, a metal scourge, and a few different
cat-o’-nines.” Lex picked something else from a wound. “At least
one of the cats had barbs on it.”

Aisling sniffed and held a hand to her lips.
“Lieutenant, I need you to find me as many Battle Mages as you can.
Quickly now.”

“Yes, m’Lady,” he replied and rose, trotting
out swiftly.

“Can it be fixed?” Balien asked as he knelt
to continue Lex’s work.

“In time. I do not have the stamina to repair
everything done to him,” she answered and dabbed at her cheeks with
a dry towel. “I did not know Nolen was capable of something as
grotesque as this.”

She put her fingers on the back of Gabriel’s
arm and mended the skin. Each piece knit together slowly and
sealed, leaving a line of new skin under the dry blood. “Walk back
and forth,” she said to Balien. “I am not getting enough
energy.”

“Why do you cry for him?” Balien asked after
several rotations.

The tears spilled afresh at the question. “He
was so great, once.” She passed her fingers along Gabriel’s side
where the damage was not as bad. “Will you get him out of his
clothes?”

Balien stopped circling and pulled a short
knife from his boot. He cut along the outside of Gabriel’s trousers
and smallclothes. Aisling handed him a towel to respect the boy’s
modesty, and he draped it over Gabriel. The trousers were badly
ripped, and underneath there were long thin lines of blood across
the backs of his thighs and calves.

Aisling threw her hands up. “Go summon the
Queen. She needs to see what she allowed.”

She looked again at Gabriel’s back and pushed
the edge of the towel down to see how far the lines extended. She
was so overwhelmed, wanting to heal it all at once but not knowing
where to start. She began with the line that stretched up the
middle of his back. The tight corded muscle around it had protected
the strip. Bits of skin were still connect, and it was those she
began to work with. They extended to connect to others like a
fleshy spider web. She had to physically move pieces around to
align them, and the feel of it sickened her. Blood was already
caked under her fingernails.

“Your Grace, this is something you truly must
see,” she heard Balien say through the walls.

“Is it as amazing as you say?” Miranda
asked.

“Amazing is certainly a word for it.”

Balien stepped into the room with the Queen
close behind and moved out of her way, so she could see Gabriel.
Miranda let out a shriek and covered her face with lace-gloved
hands.

“This is something you need to see,” Aisling
said before the Queen could turn very far. “Your hand allowed this.
Your
son
did this.”

Miranda lowered her hands and looked sideways
at the Mage on the floor. “Is he alive?”

“Barely,” Aisling replied and turned back to
mend the strip. “I counted a total of fourteen full breaks. He has
lost so much blood and has taken such a force to his brain that he
may not wake. If he does, he may not be the same person.”