He whispered, “That was amazing!”
“Put me down!” she hissed.
Still chuckling quietly, he set her down. “Sorry. That was just . . . wow.”
Eyes having adjusted a bit more, he saw that her cheeks were dark, and not just from her freckles. It also looked like she was trying—unsuccessfully—to keep from smiling.
“We still have a job to do, Chip!” she whispered.
“Right. Sorry.” He held her pack out.
Lips twisted, she said, “That was kind of amazing, though.”
Chuckling quietly, she locked the door, took the pack, and removed a hand-lantern from within. She then clicked it on, and keeping its beam directed downward, she headed for the other side of the room to the desk that was the disguised safe.
Sitting three feet from the wall with the tall windows, it looked like the other desk in here, save for its strange neatness. A small lamp, unlit, sat at the back of the desktop. Books sat in three stacks of various height—the tomes piled in perfect alignment atop each other. Two writing instrument holders, they looked to be carved of wood, held a few pencils and pens, their ends all angled toward the front of the desk instead of random directions. There was a line of three ink jars, holding, it appeared, the exact same amount of ink. Their glass glinted in the light of Fox’s hand-lantern.
A pulse of magic came from her, and the hand-lantern remained in the air when she released it, lighting up the desk.
Fillion nodded approvingly. That was a handy use of the levitation spell.
The top of the false desk extended out from its sides by perhaps three-quarters of an inch all around, and eyes squinting in concentration, Fox ran a finger of her left hand back and forth under that small lip along the left side and ran a finger of her right hand along the front side.
She smiled and whispered, “Found the studs.”
After quiet, simultaneous clicks, the top of the desk slowly lifted up and back like the lid of a chest. None of the items atop it shifted or fell, as if they were held fast by glue or some such. The rising top revealed a large, heavy-looking safe that had been hidden in the body of the desk.
Fox set her pack down and began removing items from within.
He glanced at the office door. Let me know if the patrolman does anything different.
As you wish.
It took much longer, perhaps ten minutes, and required more tools and a different device to accomplish, but getting into the safe was very anti-climactic compared to the door.
Fox began removing files and papers from within the safe and stuffing them into her pack.
“Give me yours,” she whispered when her pack was full.
He nodded and handed it over.
She opened his carryall and began removing small bundles of paper items from inside.
He leaned closer in surprise. “Hey. Those are pamphlets the criers hand out.”
“Indeed. A fitting replacement for the papers we’re taking.” Fox chuckled. “I just wish I could see the look on the face of the next person to open the safe.”
Five minutes or so later, the evidence had been replaced with flyers, and their packs were very full.
He hefted a carryall over his right shoulder and a twinge in his injured arm made him grunt. The pack was heavier than before.
“Let’s get out of here.” She closed the door of the safe and began fiddling with its locking mechanism.
Someone approaches from the other end of the hallway.
The other guard returning?
It is not the same person. Surprise and worry came through the link. Fillion! She thinks of that room!
“Someone’s coming to this room!” he hissed.
“Damn.” Fox grabbed her pack and reached into the desk, to the right of the safe.
The top began to slowly lower back down, and Fillion tried to mentally speed it up.
Fox retrieved her hand-lantern and aimed it around the room. “With our diversionary attack still going on, we have to assume that person is coming to destroy the evidence. We need to hide.”
“But when she opens the safe, she’ll see it’s full of those flyers!”
“I doubt she’ll open it. Koen wouldn’t give the combination to just anyone, and the destruction feature that is a standard option on that model does not require opening the safe to activate.”
She is halfway down the hallway. The patrolman walks with her, now.
“They’re both coming.”
“Both? Hmm.” Fox looked toward the door. “We’ll leave as soon as they get here, then.”
They are almost there! Ten seconds!
“Ten seconds,” he hissed.
“Hurry!” Fox clicked off the hand-lantern and jogged to the other side of the room. “You hide behind that suit of armor.” She pointed to the large set of plate mail to the left of the door. “Once they walk in and head for the desk, we sneak out. Got it?”
Nodding, he hurried to his spot, and she slipped behind a tall case to the right of the door, ducking out of view.
Heart racing, he breathed as quietly as he could.
At the door!
He heard a key being inserted, heard jiggling, and the door opening.
“—taking any chances, I told you. Lord Koen gave very specific instructions.”
There was a quiet click, and his heart nearly stopped when sconces opened all around to light up the room. Pissing blades! He pressed himself against the wall.
“I understand, ma’am, but from what I’ve heard, we’re keeping them at bay.”
Two people walked into view. A tall woman led the patrolman to the far side of the room.
“For now,” the woman said.
Gaze constantly returning to the two, Fillion toe-walked from behind the armor and headed for the door. Fox stepped out from behind the case and hurried out of the room.
Following Fox into the hallway, he heard a male voice from behind. “Is it supposed to make that much smoke?”
Did the destruction enchantment burn the safe’s contents? Curious, he stopped and looked in the doorway. Smoke rose up from out of the open desk.
“I don’t know, but help me open a few win—Hey! Who in hells are you?”
Shit! Eyes wide, Fillion threw up a barrier in the doorway.
“Gods dammit, Chip! Come on!” Fox waved at him from further down the hallway.
He ran.
“Get back here! What are you doing wandering the manor?”
They saw me! As he dashed down the hallway for the side corridor, he glanced back and threw up another barrier behind.
I am at the balcony.
At least one of them knew sorcery, because the first barrier collapsed, its magic recoiling back to him just as he followed Fox into the side corridor.
Seconds later, the next barrier fell.
Damn it!
He threw up another barrier at the intersection behind.
They want to kill you!
They? Both must be giving chase. He ran for the end of the short corridor.
Hurry!
You don’t have to tell me that, leather-bag!
Ahead, Fox opened the glass paneled door and stepped onto the balcony.
He set the levitation anchor on her as he drew near, and then stepping onto the balcony himself, he lifted her up to Coatl.
The recoil from the third barrier collapsing almost made him lose control of the levitation spell. Concentrating, he set her on the saddle and ended it.
The sound of pounding feet was frighteningly close.
Jump!
“Hold on, Fox!” He held the pack strap tight and leapt off the balcony.
There was a short time of falling, during which his stomach felt as if it were going to come out his mouth.
Got you! Coatl’s forepaws and forelegs held him tight.
His injured arm hurt like hells, but it mattered not. Surrounded by Coatl’s scent, Fillion leaned into him. This is twice today I find myself in your embrace, big guy
. It feels pretty nice, I must say.
A rumbling dragon chuckle vibrated against him. Now you know how I felt when I was smaller.
He smiled. Let’s get back to headquarters.
I am already on the way.
+ + + + +
Chanté held his arms out at his sides as Nantli tore through the bright mid-morning sky. How long had they been flying? Not that it mattered. This was fun.
A deep rumble thrummed up through his thighs. “This is . . . fun?”
He laughed. “Of course! Flying with you is amazing! About the only way it could be better is if Quillan was with us.”
“Oh? Why is that?”
He drew his brows together and thought about it. “It seems that experiencing fun things with others makes them even more fun.”
“With others? You?”
Her seeming surprise stung, primarily because it would have been warranted at one time. “Why not?”
“Hmm. Hold tight.”
He clamped his calves against the leg-holds and grabbed the saddle.
Nantli did two barrel rolls and barked as she leveled out. “This is fun!”
Chuckling, he said, “I told you!”
“So why Quillan, then? Why not anyone?”
The sky wavered, skittered momentarily.
He blinked. What . . . what had that been?
“Ulthis? Why not anyone?”
Shaking his head, he thought on her question. “Uh. I suppose it would still be fun with any of my friends.”
“Friends.” A draconic grunt pulsed through his legs.
“But it would be more fun with Quillan.”
“Is that so?”
He drew his brows together once again. Nantli knew how he felt. Why was she acting like this?
Something . . . didn’t feel right.
A look around revealed nothing out of the ordinary. They approached the pink-tinged stone hills that were the Guildhall, fluffy white clouds filled the azure sky, and in the distance, a brown smudge of buffalo moved slowly across the amber plain.
Chanté scowled. The feeling of . . . wrongness would not leave him, and strangely, it felt familiar, somehow. What was he missing?
As they flew above the enormous hill that was the housing section, Nantli said, “Prepare yourself.”
He again readied for a roll, but instead, Nantli dove for one of the large holes in the ground, one of the dragonlinked courtyards below. To his astonishment, she did not slow for a landing. She increased her speed, wings beating again and again as she hurtled toward the dark maw.
“What are you doing! Slow down!”
Wings pulled in, Nantli plunged like a comet toward the hill, toward the gaping abyss. Together, they speared the dark opening and plummeted into inky blackness. He looked back, but the opening was gone. Darkness enveloped them as they dropped farther into the unknown.
He felt air rushing over them, hear its harsh whisper over his gear, her wings, but he could see nothing. He knew he sat astride an enormous, beautiful dragon, but if not for gripping onto the handholds and the feel of the saddle under his thighs and buttocks, he’d have only the sound of the air thrumming her wings to know that he wasn’t completely alone.
A shiver of fear ran through him at the thought that he might be again.
Leaning closer to Nantli, he opened his eyes as wide as he could, tried to see her beneath him. Was she still there? He saw the faintest . . . something.
Nantli had begun to glow!
Slowly growing brighter, she soon became entirely visible and cast light even unto him. Her illumination increased more and more until, shockingly, she burst into thousands of tiny lights—glowflies!—that surrounded him, fell in the darkness with him.
His heart began beating faster. What was happening? What had happened to Nantli?
As their wavering, random flights brought the insects near, their soft glows would light up small portions of him, pick out details of his riding gear. But there was no saddle, there was no dragon. He was now alone, falling through the darkness.
“Nantli!”
The air rushing over him began to slow and the flapping of bits of gear grew less violent and quieter. Suddenly, most of the tiny lights raced away from him into the distance. They left arcing trails like tiny meteorites as they made their way to hang suspended all around in the velvety blackness. Only a few glowflies remained near him where he floated among the stars.
The much smaller cloud of slowly blinking insects twitched. “Ulthis.”
Realization made him grunt. “You’re not Nantli. This is a dream.” He drew his brows together. “A–Alandra?”
“You did not heed the instructions Garathel gave you.”
Shock jolted him like a bolt of lightning. The reckoning, it was now!
He swallowed. “I–I tried. I truly did. But I had no guidance, only vague warnings and even more ambiguous direction.”
“You were not to impart knowledge to them that they had not attained on their own.”
“I–I know.”
“They did not know of trilateral symmetry.”
He frowned. “Aeron’s portal spell makes use of it to—”
“They knew not how to properly repair nerves.”
“Their doctors knew about nerves! They know what they are and, again, I merely adjusted Aeron’s Vascular Sleeve—”
“The first lapse was ignored, and the second, but then, after you left that boy’s room, you revealed your true nature to a human.”
“She had already guessed!”
With Alandra’s silence, his heart grew heavy. There was no other way to describe it. Leaving Quillan behind was going to be the most difficult thing he would do.
He looked out at the darkness, at the false stars in the distance. “Why?”
“I should be asking you that.”
He glared at her representation, the cloud of idly flitting insects. “Why didn’t Garathel take me after the first lapse! Before I—” He clamped his lips shut and clenched his hands into fists.
“I wanted to see what you would do.”
Chanté drew his brows together. “You wanted to?” His eyes widened.
“Yes. I am the one who decided you should experience this. Your father merely carried out my wishes.”
Confusion and then anger blossomed in his heart. “But, they call you merciful!”
Three or four of the glowflies blinked as one. “Your first lapse was the shield. Why did you create it?”
That same strange calmness that had descended upon him when he saw Quillan’s fondness for Elizabeth filled him now. Inevitability. “I didn’t want Aeron and Anaya to come to harm, to be killed.”
“The same thing that initially put you in this place.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I saved Anaya at Bataan-Mok because I didn’t want her taken from me, which she would have been had she been killed. At the train, I shielded them because I didn’t want them to die.”
“There is a difference?”
“At Bataan-Mok, I didn’t want my . . . experiment? . . . game? . . . whatever you want to call it, I didn’t want it interfered with. The train was different. I probably wouldn’t have been able to explain it then, but I can now say that I didn’t want to see their lives end.”
A few glowflies pulsed together again. “Why did you repair the nerves in the boy’s arm and hand? He would have lived even without such measures.”
“Just because you aren’t dead, doesn’t mean you are truly alive.”
All the glowflies blinked as one. “That . . . is not an answer to my question. You knew you were at least skirting the rule, and yet you continued anyway. Why?”
He watched the insects fly about normally again. “I wanted to be certain that he could continue to do that which he loves.”
“Even though you were told that breaking the rule would cause you to be sent somewhere new?”
“I felt that it was worth the risk. If you take me away, it will hurt not to see him
again, but if I hadn’t risked breaking the rule, if I hadn’t repaired his arm, it would have destroyed me to see him every day unable to do his work and knowing that I could have helped him.”
The glowflies flitted about a few moments.
“Why did you tell the woman who you are?”
“Quillan was asleep, or I would have told him.”
“Why would you tell anyone?”
“Having to lie to my friends in order to hide who I really am has started to weigh remarkably heavy. I felt that if I could tell one of them the truth, a person that I trust, then mayhap it would lift a little of that weight.”
“Your father gave you Nantli. She knows who you are.”
“I did talk with her about many of the things I was going through, things that I was feeling, and I am grateful to her, but the heaviness came from lying to people I care about.”
All was quiet save the faint hum of insect wings as the glowflies flitted about in wavering paths.
“Indeed.”
Their previously random slow pulses of light began to synchronize. Then, blinking as one, the glowflies spread and arrayed themselves around him in a circle at about waist height. They began to fly along that circle faster and faster, turning into a pulsing ring of light.
“Are you ready, Ulthis?”
It was time to be taken away. Tears fell from his eyes, rolled down his cheeks, and dropped into the unending darkness below. He could not speak for a moment.
Taking a sobbing breath, he nodded. “I am. But before we go, I want to thank you.”
“You do not seem happy. Why would you thank me?”
“Of course I’m not happy!” His nose was running and more tears fell down his cheeks. “I don’t want to leave them.”
“If you are not happy, then I do not understand why you wish to thank me.”
“Because as painful as this parting will be, if you hadn’t punished me, I would never have met my friends, I would never have bonded with Nantli, and I would never have had the chance to fall in love with Quillan.”
“I . . . see.”
The ring of light, of glowflies, pulsed blindingly but briefly. The place wavered, or maybe it was his tears.
Of Gods, Trees, and a Sapling: Dragonlinked Chronicles Volume 4 Page 101
