Riders of Fire Box Set

by Eileen Mueller

  So much for rescuing Roberto.

  §

  000 held Ezaara by the scruff of her neck, her legs dangling above the floor. Her jerkin cut into her throat, making it hard to breathe. Not that she’d want to in this stench.

  Commander Zens smiled, his bulbous yellow eyes cold. His calculating gaze skittered across her skin. He stretched out his hand. “So, breathing distasteful, is it?” His voice wended through her mind. “Perhaps you’d prefer not to breathe?” He slowly clenched his fist.

  Ezaara’s throat tightened. She let out a gurgle, fingers clutching at her neck. Her lungs burned. Gods, no air.

  “Drop her, Triple.” Zens laughed, flinging his hand open.

  Ezaara smacked stone. Her chest heaved as breath rushed back into her lungs. She’d panicked and forgotten her mental defenses. Zens was a monster—a power-hungry sick being, playing with people’s lives. She scrambled to her feet. While Zens was focused on her, he wasn’t torturing Roberto.

  “Stand still.” Zens barked. “Why are you here?”

  Ezaara remembered her favorite tree in Lush Valley; the bark against her cheek; a breeze rustling through the bright green leaves. She held the image fast in her mind, stilling Zens’ voice.

  Zens growled, flipping his hand.

  Ezaara flew into a wall, slamming her shoulder against the granite. She had to tell him something or he’d destroy her. Climbing to her feet, Ezaara answered, “I’m here to rescue Roberto.”

  Zens guffawed. “He doesn’t need rescuing. He’s here of his own accord.” Zens flicked his finger. Roberto’s body twitched. “Roberto’s here to do my bidding.” Flashing his teeth in a manic grin, Zens flung Roberto into the air, holding him there, then slowly lowered him to the ground. “I can slam him so hard, I’ll break every bone in his body. So, tell me, who are you?”

  Zens was lying. Roberto hadn’t come here willingly. She’d mistrusted him at his banishment, and he’d nearly died. She’d never make that mistake again.

  Zens’ mind shuddered into hers, but she blocked him.

  “Talented, are you?” Zens sneered. “We’ll see just how little talent you have.”

  Searing heat rippled across Ezaara’s skin. A wave of nausea roiled over her. She clamped down, forcing it out. The tree. Breeze. Leaves rustling.

  He hammered at her head, booming like a battle drum. Pounding her skull.

  The tree slipped away. She needed something more tangible, immediate. Ezaara fixed on Roberto, bloodied, on the floor.

  “So, he’s important to you? Why?”

  It was useless to deny it. She had to give Zens something, or he’d never let up. But not the whole truth. “I’m his trainee dragon rider. I wanted to save him.” She sighed, making her lower lip tremble. “I’ve obviously failed.” Hopefully, he’d buy it, not realize her strength.

  Zens just laughed. “You have a sense of humor, too.”

  He’d seen right through her little act.

  Zens sat in a chair, crossed his legs, and pounded her mind like a battering ram.

  §

  Ezaara woke as fists hammered on the door. Gods, not another day in this forsaken place. Her mouth was parched and she was weak from hunger.

  Zens had left last night, but he was back in his chair. Roberto was clasping his head, sweat rolling down his forehead. No doubt, Zens doing. “Open that please, Triple,” Zens said.

  000 strode over and opened the door. Two tharuks entered, holding a grubby, battered Adelina.

  Ezaara instantly blocked her mind, fixating on the flickering torch. If Zens realized they knew Adelina, he’d torture her to get them to talk.

  Zens’ sadistic smile was sickening. Pointing a finger at Adelina, he twitched it.

  Eyes wide, her chin shot up.

  “I recognize you from Amato’s memories,” he said. “You’re Roberto’s little sister.”

  “Am not.” Adelina thrust her shoulders back, defiant.

  A thin man entered the cavern, closing the door—Old Bill, Lovina’s former slave master.

  Ezaara turned her face away so he wouldn’t recognize her.

  “Beloved Commander Zens.” Bill rubbed his hands together. “Twice this week, I saw a flash in the night sky. Stinking winged lizards, I thought. I summoned 743 and 567 to help me catch this Naobian girl.” He licked his lips. “She’d make me a good slave. I lost my last one.” Bill paced around Adelina, looking her over.

  Then he saw Ezaara. “My highly-esteemed commander, I must congratulate you for capturing the new Queen’s Rider.”

  “Queen’s Rider?” Zens lifted an eyebrow. “Explain how you know her.” His disdain for Bill was barely veiled.

  Bill gave a fawning, sickening smile. “Beloved Commander, I was traveling through Lush Valley, spying for you and 458, when she left with the stinking queen of lizards. Her parents were riders, hiding in Lush Valley.”

  “000, reward him. Dismissed.” Zens waved Bill and the grunts away. With ice in his voice, he commanded, “Roberto, stand.”

  Roberto hobbled to his feet. Ezaara’s chest squeezed. Gods, he looked so weak, favoring his shackled leg, and cradling an arm against his side.

  “Since you’re proving so hard to break, we’ll have some fun,” Zens said. “Who would you prefer that I torture? The Queen’s Rider? Or your little sister?”

  Weakness

  By the dragon gods, what a choice: his lover or his sister? There was no guarantee Zens wouldn’t torture both. Or kill them, just to make him suffer. A chill spread through Roberto as Zens prowled toward his sister. Adelina’s body jerked and went rigid. Her face contorted in a silent scream. Her hands clutched at her throat, nails drawing blood. Suddenly, she crumpled in a heap on the stone, gasping.

  Roberto’s gut tied itself in knots. No, not his sister. He’d spent his life protecting her.

  Zens’ gaze flicked to Ezaara, his lips twisting in a sneer. “So, Roberto, let’s examine the Queen’s Rider.” The commander caressed her cheek with a fingertip. Roberto’s skin crawled, but Ezaara didn’t even flinch.

  Roberto clamped down the rage seething inside him. If Zens suspected he loved Ezaara, he’d hurt her more to get to him. Zens wanted to break him, to prove to himself that he could master the only person who’d escaped his power.

  If only Zens had a weakness he could exploit. He had to laugh at himself, looking for a weakness when he was chained, drugged and weak from torture.

  Hang on, Zens’ nightmare had shown Roberto his biggest weakness. His eyes flitted around the room. Now, if only he could use it.

  Adelina was lying there, as if she was asleep, the blood on her neck glistening in the torchlight.

  “A pretty one, this time,” murmured Zens, eyes roving over Ezaara.

  Shards, no. The hairs on Roberto’s neck prickled.

  “No one told me how attractive you were,” Zens purred.

  A keen mental energy hovered near Roberto’s mind. Zens was gauging him, sensing his reactions as he walked around Ezaara, assessing her like a prime head of beef at the market.

  Roberto wanted to rip Zens’ head off, but he forced himself to breathe calmly and think of summer days, fishing off the coast of Naobia.

  “Oh, Commander.” Ezaara laughed. “No one ever told me how handsome you are. How utterly devastating. They’d painted you as a monster, but now I see your true colors—your consummate use of power for the good of Dragons’ Realm. I’m sure Zaarusha will agree to your suggestion of returning to Dragons’ Hold with us, to rule at my side.”

  Sharding talons, Ezaara looked as if she meant it.

  Zens paused mid-stride, cocking his head.

  Roberto held his breath. What was going on?

  Baring his teeth, Zens snarled, “You despise me.” His voice turned as hard as flint. “You profess your love verbally, while secretly thinking I’m despicable.” Without warning, he flicked his hand and Ezaara slammed into the granite wall head first with a nauseating crunch. She landed with her neck at an odd ang
le.

  Gods, was she dead? A black hole ripped through Roberto’s chest. As he struggled to contain his horror, his barricade against Zens disintegrated.

  Zens loomed in his mind, stripping away his defenses, laying his emotions bare. “So, you love her? Let’s torture her some more.”

  “No,” Roberto yelled, the chains gnawing his flesh as he strained to get free. Not the two people he loved most. The only family he had.

  Zens flung his hand out. Roberto flew into the air. His chains strained, threatening to snap their fixtures out of the wall.

  “Love the Queen’s Rider, do you?” Zens sneered. “And I thought I’d cured you of weak emotions.”

  “Cured me?”

  “Surely, having your father beat you prevented you from trusting people, Roberto?” Zens spun him a half turn in the air, his voice worming its way through the caverns of self-doubt the commander had carved through his soul years before. “Amato was clever, he hid Adelina’s existence from me, but, in a weak moment, he revealed he had another whelp. So, I forced him to beat her.” Zens laughed. “No one—not even his own flesh and blood—came between us. I mastered him, making him murder his own wife.”

  Amato had tried to stand up to Zens and failed. He’d always assumed his father had been an eager accomplice. A chill skittered down Roberto’s spine. Zens was a monster.

  “Your father loved you, until I cured him of it.”

  He did remember his father loving him. But what good had it done him? Under Zens’ power, Amato had killed the woman he loved, and driven his littlings to hate him.

  What hope did Roberto have against Zens? At a young age, the commander had infiltrated his mind, training him to torture others mentally, to kill slaves, turning him into a powerful pawn. Gods, would he never be free of Zens’ legacy? One day, would he, too, destroy the people he loved?

  Zens’ eyes gleamed fanatically. He flicked his wrist and Roberto spun around in mid-air, flat on his back, the chains twisting around each other as he whirled, making a thick umbilical cord to the wall. As he spun, the chains tightened, yanking him lower.

  The commander laughed. “000, look at him. Hung in my web like a fly.”

  He kept Roberto spinning. The cave and its occupants became a blur. Zens’ laugh reverberated off the walls, sounding like a thousand madmen. Roberto’s gut heaved. He retched its meager contents over the floor. The chains tightened excruciatingly, getting thicker and shorter, as Zens reeled him in.

  He had to pretend he was subservient. It was his only chance. Spinning faster and faster, Roberto shut his eyes, trying to feign defeat. “Zens, please forgive me for leaving you. I’ll do anything you want.”

  “Forgiveness is not in my nature. Ask my parents.” Zens twirled Roberto until the chain was a bundle of twisted metal.

  Roberto’s body slammed into the wall, the chains biting into his back. He buried his thoughts. It’d be dangerous if Zens knew he’d understood the quip about his parents—that he’d seen Zens’ memory of murdering them.

  Zens turned to Ezaara—still prone on the granite floor. Beyond her, Adelina lay, scratches on her throat still gleaming red.

  Not Ezaara, not again. Zens stretched out his hand, lifting it. Her body didn’t budge.

  Was she dead? She couldn’t be, or Zens would’ve tossed her like a sack of flour.

  What was going on? Roberto didn’t dare mind-meld with her. To keep his thoughts shielded from Zens, he examined his chains. His wrist and ankle were bloody and torn where the shackles had burrowed into his flesh. The chain was bunched in a tangled mess behind him, but the fixtures attaching the chains to the wall were now loose.

  While Zens was occupied with Ezaara, Roberto stood. Body aching, he slowly turned until the chains were untangled. Then he hobbled back and forward, straining at the loose fixtures on the wall, playing the part of an agitated lover.

  §

  Zens radiated sickly yellow sathir, infected with an energy Ezaara had never seen. It felt wrong, unclean. Was this what gave him his formidable mental powers?

  Her neck ached. She’d landed that way, but deliberately kept it at an odd angle, so Zens would think she was incapacitated. The cool stone chilled her back. She drilled down with her mind, focusing on the heaviness of the granite—its gray sluggish sathir, barely detectable, but there. She sucked the heaviness into her, desperately trying to become one with the massive immovable force.

  Zens approached, boots scraping the granite. He flicked his hand again.

  Heavy. Heavy as rock. Sweat broke out on Ezaara’s brow. Her flesh was stone. She was granite. Immovable. Zens battered at her. Her mind was a wall of rock. Her body, married to the granite.

  Regular footfalls and clanking sounded behind her. Roberto, pacing. Out of the corner of her eye, Adelina stirred—her eyes flitted around the cavern, then drooped again—pretending.

  Zens tugged.

  Ezaara resisted. Something had changed: Roberto was pacing further than before. An extra step at the end of his route. He was up to something. She had to keep Zens distracted.

  “Triple, support me,” Zens snapped.

  000 lumbered over, grabbing Zens’ hand. Eyes drilling into her, they stared, jaws tight, dark saliva running down 000’s tusks.

  A tidal wave slammed into Ezaara, shredding her mind. Yellow bathed her vision. Her head throbbed. Her bones rattled in her skull. She gritted her teeth, resisting. Her flesh tugged as if it would peel from her bones. By the flaming dragon gods, they’d kill her.

  She let go.

  Zens crowed as she flew into the air, stopping just beneath the rock ceiling. He laughed, rubbing his hands together. Beside him, 000 guffawed.

  In a sudden clatter of chains, Roberto was behind 000, a chain around the beast’s neck, garroting it. “Free the women, Zens. Or I’ll kill Triple.”

  Zens turned, eyes radiating malice. “Go ahead. It’s just a tharuk, Roberto, I kill them all the time.”

  “Really?” Roberto raised an eyebrow, as cool as a winter’s morning. He tightened the chains.

  000 gurgled, red eyes bulging.

  Zens’ face contorted with rage. “Harm 000 and the Queen’s Rider’s skull will be smashed on the stone, scattering her brains.” Zens waved a hand.

  Ezaara plummeted toward the floor. She’d never see Zaarusha again.

  He flicked his hand, arresting her fall, a body’s breadth from the granite. Ezaara sucked in a gulp of air.

  “Just another tharuk?” Roberto said, tightening the chain a notch.

  Ezaara shot back up, hovering below the ceiling.

  Zens said, “Take your pathetic sister and go, but I warn you, Roberto, harm 000, and you’ll hear your darling Queen’s Rider scream.”

  “Adelina, open the door.” Roberto yanked on 000’s chain.

  Zens snarled as Roberto manhandled 000 out the door, Adelina on his heels.

  Ezaara tried to swallow, but couldn’t. Oh gods, he was abandoning her.

  Mage Fire

  Zens twitched his fingers. Ezaara landed gently on the floor.

  “And you thought he loved you? He’s incapable of love. He’s saving his own skin and leaving you to rot.”

  Ezaara barricaded her mind, shutting Zens out. Roberto had left to save Adelina. He’d had no choice. But as the door thudded shut, Ezaara’s heart shattered into a thousand pieces, the shards plummeting to the floor.

  §

  Roberto stumbled out the door, keeping the pressure on the chains around 000’s neck. Shards, he was weak. Physically, but also emotionally for leaving Ezaara behind. His chest was a ragged hole of desolation.

  Adelina barred the door. The wooden beam rattled in its fitting—Zens, no doubt. Gods, what would he do to Ezaara? Adelina gathered up the loose end of the chain around Roberto’s leg, swinging it. She hit the tharuk on the head. 000 dropped to the floor.

  “Adelina, the key to my shackles is around its neck.” Roberto disentangled his arm chain from around 000’s throat.

/>   His sister unlocked Roberto’s burning arm and leg. That was much better, now he could move.

  Thumping sounded in the tunnel. Adelina’s eyes flew wide. “What’s that?”

  Someone was running toward them—a lot of someones. “Tharuks. Quick.” Roberto hoisted Adelina up into a ventilation shaft near the door—must have been the one Ezaara had used when she’d first come through his door. Gods, Ezaara. He’d left her with that monster. Hot tears pricked his eyes.

  “Hurry,” Adelina hissed.

  Roberto tried to jump up to the shaft but failed. Adelina held her arms down. “Grab hold.”

  He was too weak. Roberto rolled 000’s body over against the wall, grunting and stopping to catch his breath. Then he propped the tharuk up against the wall and climbed up his body, grasping Adelina’s hands and walking his feet up the wall. She hoisted him into the shaft.

  Roberto crawled on battered limbs, his head throbbing and gashes bleeding. But it was nothing compared to the ache in his chest at leaving Ezaara behind.

  §

  Zens burned with anger, his mind searing hot. When had Roberto figured out that 000 meant so much to him? That his first creation was his only true friend? 000 was the only intelligent, formidable tharuk. Zens had deliberately engineered the grunts to be dumb, so he could keep them in submission. He’d sacrifice every other tharuk to save 000’s hide.

  He melded with 000. Darkness. Not dead, but unconscious. If Amato’s whelp had damaged Triple …

  Revenge would come later. Roberto would not get away with this. No one threatened 000.

  Zens melded with the nearest troop, sending them into the tunnels after Roberto and his sister. He would own Roberto. Break him and mold him to his will.

  Although weak, Amato’s whelp had been walking properly. So, Roberto wasn’t limplocked anymore. Someone had given him antidote. Now that he wasn’t going to die, Zens could still use him.

  His eyes slid over the pretty Queen’s Rider lying on the floor. Roberto had found love, despite all Zens had done to him. The best way to break Roberto would be to make him destroy this girl himself.