“If you want to learn, then I will teach you,” he promised, realizing even as he said it that he was beginning to be dangerous. If Hoel didn’t want her to be taught, then there really wasn’t a whole lot that Ashcroft could do about that. As powerful as he was, Hoel had more than just healing powers. From what he understood, Hoel could just as easily deliver death with fire, earthquakes, and tsunamis. Millennia ago, when Hoel was young and Ashcroft was even younger, Hoel was known as ‘the great purger.’
But damn it, he wasn’t going to let another Byndian go to waste. Especially not one who seemed so eager to learn, even if just to protect herself.
As the guard whisked them to the gates of the royal courtyard, Ashcroft was reminded promptly of a major problem: Maili was married to a warlord. Not engaged, married. Damen would not just have to be what Maili claimed for Ashcroft to continue any sort of relationship with her, but Ashcroft would have to provide Hoel unarguable proof that Damen was up to no good enough for Hoel to violently oppose that man, and to actually go back on his own contract.
At the moment, the only proof he had himself was the measure of Maili’s desperation. If he didn’t play his cards exactly right, and find in fact more cards—and better cards—soon, then chances were that Maili was going to be whisked far away by her husband soon, and Ashcroft would never see the girl again, if he survived Hoel’s wrath when he caught up with her.
“Please, wait here…” the guard said when they’d reached the outer chamber to the throne room, then the sinewy guard bowed lowly and exited, leaving Maili and Ashcroft all alone.
Maili turned to Ashcroft and told him quietly, “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” Her tone was nearly churlish. “We both know that I am not my own master. You need more than my permission to become my teacher. Besides, call me a unicorn all you want, but we both know that you’d rather be on Hoel’s good side than on mine.”
He felt gelded by that lecture, and his shoulders slouched slightly with shame. Mulling over her words, he corrected, “I could live without being on Hoel’s good side. I cannot, however, live with being on his bad side. My death won’t do either of us much good, I’m afraid, so I’ll have to find a way to avoid that if at all possible.”
“Alright, how did you get in here before me?” Moriarty declared from behind them, pushing passed a second guard that looked to have led him in. “They didn’t seem to be interested in showing me in at all until I started making threats.” He crossed his arms impatiently across his chest and looked peevishly up at the ceiling.
“Maili’s threats are apparently better than your threats,” Ashcroft replied, lifting his shoulders. “Though really—I couldn’t imagine that they have your children. I do think this is a gigantic waste of resources and time.”
Suddenly the throne room’s gigantic doors opened and a pale, robed elf with an unpolished crown stared at them. His eyes were ethereal and a bright blue, as if marbles. Although the king was an immortal, he looked so worn and weary that Ashcroft would almost guess him to be an old man. “You’re here for the children, aren’t you?” was the very first thing he asked.
“Damn right I’m here for my children!” Moriarty bellowed, suddenly becoming fully animated with arms flailing in the air. “Where are they? If you hurt them, I’ll—!”
“They are fine. Please, let me explain…” the king replied wearily, looking humiliated and nervous.
“You’ll be explaining with my sword in your gullet if I don’t see them in the next five minutes!” Moriarty threatened.
Ashcroft stood, merely relieved as well as puzzled. It didn’t make any sense at all! Why on earth would the wind elves steal Moriarty’s children? What was their end game?
These thoughts were paused only by Maili, who pinched his elbow then looked up at him with a mischievous grin and an outstretched hand.
“What?” he grunted.
“I believe,” she said haughtily, “that you owe me five quid.”
He rolled his eyes, but he felt a grin playing at his lips. “Being wrong is a very strange feeling, I find,” he told her as he dug through his pockets.
“Don’t worry,” she replied simply, “you’ll get used to it.”
Chapter Eighteen
“We haven’t seen rain in over a decade. Not a drop,” the king lamented, sitting in his tattered throne. “We’re dying. When Damen Vanguard’s troops spilled in here last week, we knew that we were done for. How could we fight them? We just let them walk in.”
“King Vanguard?” Maili asked, her eyes wide.
“How are my problems—in any possible way—coming full circle here?” Moriarty demanded, stopping his pacing and looking completely undone. “His name should not be coming into this conversation. That’s a different problem!” He waved to Maili, as if Damen was her problem, hers only, and that she should limit suffering him to herself.
“He offered to let my kingdom go, and promised even to get a magus that could bring us rain, if only we took away Moriarty Miles’ children. He asked us to steal them and kill them, actually, but we simply couldn’t do that. We figured as long as we kept them hidden, Vanguard wouldn’t know the difference.” He sighed. “This whole thing has been horrible. As soon as I heard you were here… I’m a father myself. I couldn’t imagine what you must have felt like to have two of your sons stolen from you. If that’s what my kingdom needed to survive… perhaps we weren’t meant to.”
Maili flushed red, her hands balling into fists. When she glanced up at Ashcroft, he was giving her a tense look. She looked up and asked, “What?” because if she didn’t, she wondered if his look was going to make her head explode.
“You’re the only type of magi who has any ability to bring rain,” he told her. “This somehow relates to you. I just don’t know how… Or why. Why do you have anything to do with Moriarty?”
She didn’t know, either. There were a couple of things she didn’t understand about Moriarty, anyway. She didn’t know why she was dreaming about him before they’d met, for example. Her life was filled with mysteries, lately…
She looked down at her fingers, which she could still feel lacked power still after chasing down Ashcroft, and she had trouble believing that those fingers could ever bring forth rain. Besides, it didn’t make sense that she’d have that ability, yet hate rain so damn much!
“I’ve never met Moriarty before today,” she assured, shaking her head back and forth with confusion. “Are you sure you don’t have anything to do with Damen?” she asked, turning to Moriarty.
“Never met him!” Moriarty replied, throwing up his arms. “Damn it all, I have enough enemies that I know before starting to add the ones that I don’t! I’ve been living peacefully for decades! Why would he go after my kids?”
“Perhaps it’s you, then,” Maili said, turning to Ashcroft. “He’s an evil wizard, after all. Perhaps he’s an old friend of yours.”
“Friend?” he echoed dangerously.
Immediately backpedaling, she reworded, “I was being facetious. I meant enemy, of course. It’s not like you go around getting all chummy with just every wizard out there.” This seemed to be the correction Ashcroft wanted and he relaxed somewhat, regaining his thoughtful expression as he looked not at the king, per se, but through him.
While they were deep in thought, and soon after Moriarty continued his furious pacing, the throne room’s doors opened and Moriarty spun around quickly and gracefully toward it. After a half a second, he ran.
There was a little black-haired boy clumsily running toward him, screaming, “Daddy!” excitedly. Behind the boy was a teenager who looked ridiculously like his father, except that his eyes were clearer as well as a bright green, and a blond elf girl who walked behind them with her chin high and her posture perfect, holding the green-eyed teenager’s hand. She looked stiff, as if she was emotionally charged.
Moriarty swooped up his younger son, held the little boy tightly to his chest, and kissed the top of his head. The boy quickly cl
asped his arms tightly around his neck. “Damn, I was worried about you!”
“It was all Cole’s fault!” the boy accused immediately, turning and pointing toward the teenager.
Cole did look like he was feeling guilty. Moriarty looked over and closed the distance before pulling his eldest into a one-armed embrace, now hugging both boys at once.
“I’m so sorry, father. It’s a long story—I didn’t know Samuel was following me, and before you know it, we were both trapped and—” the teenager rattled, gesturing toward the elf maiden next to him.
Moriarty looked over his head at the girl, and then back at the boy. “Son, I’m really not looking to blame you at all. I’m just glad to see you again.” He embraced him again, apparently oblivious that the female elf was now silently crying. She raised her fingers to her cheek to wipe off the falling tears.
The king straightened and waved his hand toward her beseechingly. “Annabeth, come here, my child…”
Hesitating only slightly, the elf maiden walked over and the king stood and wrapped his arms around her.
“What are we going to do now? We have to do something!” the girl quietly sobbed with desperation. “Damen will murder us when he realizes we’ve returned them…”
“Well, of course I won’t let that happen!” Maili immediately piped up, leaning back in her chair with confidence. The king and the elf girl jerked their heads toward her. She realized that Ashcroft had started looking at her as well. “Even if I wanted to be one-hundred-percent selfish,” she added, “then if Hoel was to come here and hear what sort of deal Damen tried to cut… then I might not have to stay married to that miserable bastard.”
“We’re dying, anyway,” the maiden replied, despondent and shaking her head. “We needed that rain.”
“The rain was coming from me, anyway,” Maili informed firmly. “And if I can do it, then Ashcroft can teach me to do it every bit as easily as Damen could. In fact, even better, since Damen was probably going to welch on the deal, anyway. If he’s a welcher then that’s the least of his faults.”
Ashcroft leaned forward and bent his body so that his lips were next to her ear. Curling his hand around her upper arm, he said quietly, “Maili—that spell is more than snapping your fingers. It would surely require years of study…”
“I’m up for that sort of challenge,” she said, even though she knew she had never been a very quick learner. Still, she had already made the statement that she could do it, and she’d be damned if she’d take it back. Ashcroft couldn’t know she was a slow learner.
“I’ve met a thousand Byndians in my day, and none of them could cram for a big spell,” he warned, seeming about as excited about the prospect of teaching her this alleged rain spell as he should be—which was not at all. “You are all notoriously slow learners…”
“You said I was really powerful,” she argued, holding up a finger to make a point.
“I did,” he granted, “but…”
“You said I was a unicorn. Powerful and—”
“Fine, fine,” he huffed, probably because the elf king, and what Maili guessed was an elf princess, was staring at them with large, hope-filled eyes. “But I’ll be relentless and you have to do everything I tell you to,” he warned. “No half-efforts. I suppose I’ll give you some sort of crash course, God help me… but you are certainly right. We need to stay here and have Hoel collect us. Simultaneously we might be able to get Hoel to understand what Damen’s capable of, at least, as well as protect these people somewhat from Damen’s forces…”
“Stay here?” Moriarty said, finally returning to the conversation. He walked toward them, still holding his younger son with his other at his side. “Like hell we are! We need to get my sons back home!”
“Father, really. I would like to stay and help as well. God knows, that’s all we’ve been doing—they have a great need for any sort of magical powers they can get,” Cole argued rationally. Maili caught the look the boy then passed to the elf princess.
So did Moriarty, who then argued, “Oh, no. No, we’re not going to stay here just to impress a girl!”
Immediately, Cole’s and the princess’s face pinkened. “Father!” Cole chided. “Really—stop doing your best to humiliate me. I do that very well on my own,” he added, rolling his head toward the ceiling. “You have to understand what straits these people are in! Of course they kidnapped us; their lives depended on being compliant to a damned warlord who—for reasons I can’t even fathom—got it in his head that killing us would be a means to some sort of part of his world-dominating goals…” It was obvious that he had done a lot of pondering into why Damen Vanguard wanted him dead and had thus far come up with absolutely no conclusions. “Besides, we’ll be more protected in a fortress than at the tower. It’s not safe there on a normal day. And besides, these people didn’t think they were doing much harm at first. They really thought Huxians were mostly animals that would forget about their young after a few days.”
Moriarty looked over at the king. If looks could kill, it would have been one gory scene, indeed.
The king raised his hands. “How was I supposed to know? It isn’t as if there are many of you wandering about! I was told you were more fox than human… Your kind is a bit of a mystery.”
“I can turn into a fox and chase bunnies!” the little boy added then with excitement and pride. “I think I’m more fox than human. Mommy’s even said so—”
Moriarty pinched the bridge of his nose. “Really,” he said, visibly calming, “if I don’t get the boys back to their mother, she will castrate me; she’s twisting herself into pretzels even as we speak!”
“I’m staying, father,” Cole informed him stubbornly.
Maili found herself looking curiously over to see Moriarty’s reaction. He was seething with his son right now; jaw locked, teeth gritted, eyes narrowed. “First thing tomorrow, Coleby. We’re gone with the first light.” There was a warning in his tone that was unmistakable.
“Let one of my servants show you to your room, Master Miles…” the king offered and immediately waved toward the doors where a thin servant came into the room, coughing into his hand. He too seemed ill.
Moriarty frowned at the servant, then turned toward the king and continued to frown as he nodded his head and left with his youngest in-arms.
Cole was left behind, looking tight-lipped for a moment, and then stepped forth next to Ashcroft. “Master Ashcroft?” the boy asked. “How is it that you are here?”
“Your mother wrote me by fire-coin and told me your father had need of me. Honestly, I thought locating you both would have been like finding a needle in a haystack,” Ashcroft replied.
He blinked. “The other side of the fire-coin is with my mother?”
Ashcroft nodded.
Cole reached over and put out his hand. “Thank you for coming, Master Ashcroft. I appreciate you helping my father.” When Cole shook Ashcroft’s hand, he patted his elbow.
Maili caught a quick, odd movement as Ashcroft replied, “My pleasure.”
Cole bowed toward Maili, then at the king and princess, and then turned toward the door.
“Did he just…?” Maili asked, turning to Ashcroft and pointing in the direction that the boy departed.
Ashcroft finished her sentence, “Steal my fire-coin right out of my pocket? Yes. I think so. Apparently, the lad wants to contact his mother.” He shrugged, not looking concerned. “He’s much better at pick-pocketing than he was when he was small. He used to steal candy out of my pockets when he was just yay high.” He brought his hand about two feet from the floor, then added with a small, forlorn sigh, “Children do grow up quickly…”
“What’s this about your powers, by the way? I thought you were Hoel’s daughter, but Master Ashcroft makes it seem that…” the king began, his voice sounding weak and dry.
Maili’s stomach did a flip or two before she calmed herself and said, “Let me tell you something that I’m sure papa doesn’t want anyone to know
.” She shook her head. “But tomorrow—I swear we’ll try to make things right here.”
The king didn’t look amazingly convinced, but he did manage a small, even hopeful, smile. “I do pray that you’re right.”
She grinned, and took in a deep breath, and a peaceful rush washed over her. She looked down and realized that Ashcroft had taken her hand into his own.
Somehow, his support made her feel like she could conquer the world, and that Damen didn’t stand a chance.
* * *
“No, no!” Moriarty’s yells could be heard all over the castle two mornings later. Cole had wisely avoided his father completely the day before, much to Moriarty’s annoyance, and he was forced to stay where he was an extra day. Now, the day of their departure, Maili was eating over a small table of breakfast with Ashcroft as they listened to him scream from afar. “Of course I’m not happy to see you, bloody blasted female!”
She was perfectly delighted to eavesdrop on Moriarty’s personal drama. Ashcroft did look up when she motioned at him across the table, looking willing to talk about whatever Moriarty was yelling about, but Maili merely said, “Ashcroft, pass the milk, won’t you?”
Ashcroft turned toward the window as he wordlessly passed the creamer, seeming willing to act along with her as if Moriarty wasn’t incidentally airing his family’s dirty laundry.
“Cole!” Moriarty was yelling now. “Coleby Miles, come here right this instant before I—” Pause. “I don’t care who can hear me, Alice! It’s not like it’s not perfectly obvious to the whole world, anyway, that I have no control over anyone at all in my family! Cole!”
“Apparently Alice decided to come to her sons rather than the other way round,” Ashcroft mentioned simply, in the same tone one might use to comment on good weather. “Quite good news. I actually have found Coleby to be quite entertaining. It’d be sad to see him go.”
Her Master's Hand Page 21
