by Rain Oxford
“What did you see?” Dylan asked.
The boys looked at each other, not sure what to say. They kept their words private for several minutes, all the while getting more and more frustrated. Sammy repeatedly gave me a regretful, despondent frown, but Ron’s face was determined. Finally, Sammy dropped his eyes in despair, his shoulders drooping like he held the weight of the world.
Sammy couldn’t lie to his father, so it was Ron who spoke. “It is dangerous for Emiko here. You have to take her with you. She will be mortally wounded if she stays.”
“You can’t stay here if there’s danger,” Dylan demanded. He didn’t believe his son. Oddly enough, I think he knew his wife well enough to see through any lie.
Ron smiled. “Don’t worry. Your demon has to protect us under your orders. You also need to leave your book here.”
“I never leave my book.”
“You have to. Trust me,” he pleaded.
Sammy looked at me with sad eyes, obviously trying to convey a message. I had been trained by my father to read minds, but it would have felt too much like a betrayal to do so to Ron. Though Sammy might have welcomed it, his mind was hidden. Whatever he had seen, he didn’t like it, but he wasn’t going to cross his brother.
Dylan sighed, took the book from his bag, handed it to Edward, and then closed his eyes. I knew he was focusing on the sense of time so I concentrated on the images of where we were supposed to go. Emiko slipped her hand gently into mine. A few minutes later, I opened my eyes to find the three of us in a bedroom.
Similar to in Emiko’s room, the bed was the dominating feature. It was just as big and tall, with jewel-encrusted, gold-threaded, dark blue blankets and tall, wooden bedposts. The walls were dark stone and decorated with weapons and paintings of women and wars. Across from the bed was a huge wardrobe, and on either side was a door without knobs. There were black glass panels next to each door, just the right size for a hand. The floor was covered in coarse carpet. On either side of the bed were small, identical tables. Upon the table on the opposite side of the bed from us was an electric lamp and a book, while the table close to us displayed an open box of treasure.
Emiko started for the box of jewels beside the bed and Dylan grabbed her arm to stop her. “We are here for a magical tool, not for you to steal stuff.”
“You have to do as I say, weren’t you told? I am the queen and if I want it, I can have it.”
Rojan growled. The wand appeared on the bed and since I was the closest, I grabbed it. “Let’s go before we get in trouble,” I said.
Dylan pulled Emiko tighter to his side as she once again tried to reach for the treasure. I touched the apple just as the door opened. Standing there was a king. His face was wrinkled and his hair was white with age, but he stood with strength.
There was an air about him that I was all too familiar with; I could always spot a man with too much political power. He had the crown and the dark blue velvet robes of a king with jeweled clasps, but he had a staff with a large crystal strapped to the top of it.
On Duran, long before I was born, there were kings of religion and kings of politics. Since the Reformation and the end of religion as part of the law, most rulers thought that using magic made them appear weak. My father, an exception, felt that magic was a tool as good as the sword to be used by any man powerful enough. That was another excuse for him to be disappointed in me; I was always better at potions and distractions than using magic to harm. On the other hand, Edward was a better teacher and I managed to learn a lot from him, including many spells that I could use to help Dylan… but all my knowledge was useless to me without energy.
He didn’t ask questions. Still in shock, he thrust his staff like a weapon. Dylan reached out as he always did to create a shield, but his magic was hopeless against the metal bracelet. I managed to push him down in time to avoid the same fate as the wall behind us. What came out of the crystal was not fire or lightning, but a concentrated form of energy that acted as such. The stone wall behind us cracked under its force.
I looked up to see the glass apple rolling right between the man’s feet. When I pushed Dylan down, it had been knocked out of his hands. Dylan jumped up and ran after it, shoving the king aside. A few steps outside the doorway was a set of stairs, which I got to just before the apple fell. Dylan tried to get it, but I knew he would have fallen, so I held him back. At the bottom, the apple shattered.
“No!” Dylan yelled, struggling against me. “That was our only way home!”
“We will figure something out,” I said.
“Do not move!” the king demanded in Sudo, pressing the crystal into my back. He yelled in a foreign language and we were quickly surrounded by guards, which were all dressed in blue cloth and some form of chainmail. I tried to get their scent, but my dragon senses were useless. I couldn’t even shift my eyes.
One of them took the lotus wand from me and one took Dylan’s bag from him. It was a good thing Dylan had given his book to Edward. When a man went to take the sword off me, it fell heavily to the floor. He man tried to pick it up, but could barely lift the handle.
“They have enchanted it.”
The king tried to lift it, tenaciously, until his face was red and sweaty, but the magic of the metal was too much for him. “Leave it,” he said, frustrated. “Put these trespassers in the cells.”
Emiko gave an outraged shriek. “You cannot put a queen in the dungeon!”
The king then turned the crystal on Emiko and it turned a dull orange. The man smirked. “Dragons have no authority here. This is a land of mages. Dragons are pets.”
And so I knew that Sammy and Ron had not chosen to live on Lore; they would never allow this to happen. I also knew Dylan was thinking the same thing, but whether it was with relief or dread, I didn’t know. As far as Dylan was concerned, neither Avoli nor Vretial were good enough for his boys.
The king waved the crystal staff at Dylan, but it didn’t strike. Instead, it just glowed dimly with white light. The man gasped. “A void? A real void on Lore? Where are you from?” he asked.
“Camelot,” my friend lied.
“What world?”
“You think you can get proper answers from me without at least a half decent torture session? No snake pits? No rusty skewers?! Not even a leaky faucet?! What kind of a man do you take me for?!” he yelled as if terribly insulted. The king frowned at me as if I could explain Dylan. There were no words.
When he aimed the staff at me, it turned a slightly lighter orange than it had for Emiko.
We were led through many hallways. It was clean and the lights were electric, like on Earth and Vaigda, but the walls were stone and the design was that of an old Duran castle. Instead of locks and doorknobs, there were glass panels like on Vaigda.
When Emiko continued to struggle, the king pressed the crystal to her back and muttered something in his language. Emiko went limp even before her heartbeat slowed and her eyes closed. She was asleep, but didn’t seem injured.
We were shoved into a room that could hardly be called a cell. Sure, it had no furniture, but the floor had soft carpet, it was warm, and there was a pile of blankets and pillows in the corner. The walls were whole. “If you shift in here, dragon, your bones will break before the walls do,” one of the guards said. He tossed Emiko in and I caught her before she hit the floor. Once again, my fire refused my call.
The door shut and we were left alone. Dylan sat against the wall and put his face in his hands with frustration. He was thinking furiously, but his strongest defense was magic. I laid Emiko down, covered her with a soft white blanket, and then sat next to Dylan.
Rojan?
I’m here, I’m still here. I just can’t help you right now.
The door opened just a few minutes later. The guards separated to let the king through, who casually glanced between Dylan and me. “Take the dragon.” The guards moved to take Emiko and I growled, but my teeth wouldn’t shift. “The male dragon, not the girl.”
/> How does he know?
That crystal of his turned orange near us and near Emiko. Perhaps it detects our blood.
“Why are you taking him? He’s not going to talk!” Dylan said. “You could torture him for days and get nothing. Take me; I’ll tell you anything you want to know if you give me lunch. Come on, you would much rather torture me!”
The guards were startled and confused, but a few looked like they were being persuaded. “You shut up,” I said. “I’ll torture you when we get home.” The king and his guards stared at me with shock. “My brother is unstable.” They shoved me into the hall and slammed the door.
“Name, rank, and number, Mordon, nothing else,” Dylan told me. We had actually discussed what we would do if we were ever separated and interrogated. I was to irritate them as much as possible and Dylan was to “accidentally” feed them false information.
I was led to a small room, very small and very white. The walls, floor, and ceiling were dull white. The only object in the room was a small table, which was also white, with one chair. So I would be tortured after all.
Only one guard could fit in the room with the king and myself, and he forced me into the chair. “I am Maslye, high mage and king of the Treslen lands. This is a world of magic and you are at my mercy. What is your name?”
“Yatunus-so Mordon, first adviser, six-two-four-zero.”
“Why are you here?”
“Yatunus-so Mordon, first adviser, six-two-four-zero.”
“Are you after anything in particular, or did you just think you could get away with stealing from the most powerful family of mages this world has ever known?”
“Yatunus-so Mordon, first adviser, six-two-four-zero.”
“Why does he keep saying that?” the king asked.
“This is some kind of tactic,” the guard answered.
“I will kill your friends for treason if you do not confess everything,” Maslye declared.
“Yatunus-so Mordon, first adviser, six-two-four-zero.”
“Enough of this.” He raised his staff and pressed the crystal against my chest. “You will only speak the truth!” White light burst behind my eyes as my body filled with energy. It was energy created to cause pain.
I had gotten myself caught by my father’s enemies outside of my father’s kingdom before. I have been tortured in many ways; cut, bitten, poisoned, starved, dehydrated, and left alone in a small tunnel for days with no light. It was all part of being a prince. But I never screamed like that before. Nobody had ever used magic itself to cause me pain. There was nothing like this known to Duran, because if there had been, we would be at war.
I leaned forward as the pain faded and left me numb. Even with my face pressed against the cool table, my head wouldn’t clear enough to think.
“Now, what have you come here for?” the guard asked, calmly. How he could be calm in the face of such cruelty, I had no idea.
“The lotus wand,” I said. I didn’t have the energy to stop my words, lift my head, or even speak above a whisper.
“Where did you find it?”
“It was left for us on the bed,” I said. My words came without thought, forced from me when I couldn’t fight them.
“There was no wand there an hour ago.”
It wasn’t a question, but I still couldn’t stop my mouth from betraying me. “It would only appear for about a minute in all of time. My brother’s father left it there, somehow, for some reason. He hid the wand and other artifacts and gave us a time map to find them.”
The guard pushed on my shoulder until I sat back. “How did you get here?”
I tried with everything I had in me to keep my mouth shut… Even Rojan tried, but the mage king’s magic was powerful. The harder I fought, the harsher the pain lashed as it reared back up to sting my body and scramble my mind. It wasn’t a burning, it was just raw pain. I yelled with agony until I couldn’t think and the magic grew calm again. I was too numb to feel any part of my body, merely phantom pains.
“How did you get here?” the king asked it this time.
My head throbbed and I couldn’t grasp a clear thought. “My brother is in league with the gods. Vretial gave him a glass apple that acted to transport us in time and space.” I was panting, but my words were clear.
“The little object that fell down the steps?”
“Yes.”
“And now you are trapped here?”
“Dylan will find a way.”
“He is a void. What can he do against magic?”
“It’s the metal bracelets that take away our power. He is a Noquodi. He is the most powerful and ingenious Noquodi ever born and he has the magic of a god.” I found the strength to lift my head and glare at the king. “And you have made a very, very big mistake. If you want to live, if you value your life, there is one person in all of space and time who you never cross, and that’s my brother.”
They both took a step back with worry across their faces, and I saw deep in the king’s eyes that he heard my warning. Unfortunately, he didn’t heed it.
“Send him back and bring me the girl.” I had no strength left to struggle. I was tossed into the room with Dylan and Emiko. Dylan caught me and the king aimed his staff at us in threat. Two other guards took Emiko, who was still unconscious. My body was numb and I could barely stay conscious, let alone fight them off. “Not going to fight, Noquodi?” The king taunted Dylan. I closed my eyes because I couldn’t look my brother in the face.
He laughed when Dylan had no answer and I heard the door shut behind them.
“I’m sorry,” Dylan’s voice startled me in the silence.
“What are you sorry for?”
“I couldn’t protect her when you needed me to. Without my magic, I really am nothing. I don’t even make a decent human.” He propped me up against the wall and sat next to me, avoiding my gaze.
“I’m worse. I told them your secrets.”
“I felt the magic they used on you. I thought they were killing you and…” He shook his head. “There was nothing I could do. You did nothing wrong, you couldn’t help what they did. I just couldn’t do anything.”
* * *
It was an hour before the door opened. Dylan was leaning against me, nearly asleep. Normally the heat from my dragon fire kept him on the other side of the room when he slept, but my fire was inactive. Both of us tried to take off the bracelets with no success.
Instead of guards, it was Emiko standing in the doorway. “Are you coming?” she asked. She gave me the fakest smile ever, but there was relief in her eyes. It was only a few minutes before that my strength had begun to return, so Dylan had to help me up.
“We have to get that wand back. We can’t leave until we get it,” Dylan insisted.
“We need your sword first, so you can fight,” Emiko said.
I didn’t argue with her. Once past the door, I glanced back to see the glass panel dismantled. Emiko had torn the glass touchpad apart to expose wires and a circuit board. She caught my surprised stare and gave me a knowing smirk, and I realized I underestimated her. The dragoness was exceptionally pretty, yet that hid something much deeper.
Finding our way back to the king’s room proved to be the easy part. Despite being as quiet as possible, we had too many close calls where we had to duck behind furniture and drapes. Finally we found Dylan’s sword right where it had been dropped.
Noise led us to another room, just a few doors from the king’s chamber. The door was open, but a quick peek was all we needed. Three guards were sitting at a table, riffling through our stuff.
“You get ready, I’m going to distract them,” Dylan said in my head.
I was perpetually grateful we retained that ability. “What are you going to do?”
“I try not to think about it. Just be ready.” Before I could stop him, he stepped out into the doorway. “Look at me, I’ve escaped!” He took off running down the hall and an instant later, the three guards were running after him. Not one of them look
ed back. We ducked into the room and gathered the stuff.
“Shouldn’t we go help him?” Emiko asked.
“No, he’s having a run. He’s good at that. I don’t think anyone could actually catch him.” I took a seat for a moment and tried to catch my breath, since I was still recovering from Maslye’s magic. “How did you escape?”
She gathered Dylan’s stuff into his bag, not even attempting to steal. “There was a metal lamp on the table in the wizard’s room. I was able to hit him with it. His door was open, so I escaped and found you.” She smiled at me. “I have always been good with technology. It took me less than a minute to rewire the door locks.”
“Why were you in the king’s room?”
She stared at the table. “That is where I woke up.”
“And the king was there?”
She cleared her throat. “Yes.” She handed me the bag and I caught her hand before she could pull away. She wouldn’t look at me and her hand started trembling.
She had been gone a long time. I tried to get a scent, but my senses were so dull. “Did he hurt you?” I asked. She finally raised her eyes and a tear fell. I didn’t know whether to hug the girl or kill the king.
Before I could do anything, she gave me her fake, happy smile and took my hand in hers. “I am fine.” She was lying, but I knew nothing about comforting women. When I picked up the lotus wand to examine, my fire tried to stir as if it recognized great power, but it settled back down.
The wand was about one and a half times the length of the fire wand. The bottom of the wand was black, then there was a thick stripe of red. Including the red, there were twelve even stripes of colors leading back to red before a hand’s width of white paint beneath the metal flower. The flower had three layers of petals and in the middle was a small, yellow gem. The inside of the petals were white, while the outside of the petals were green.
Now we had what we needed, we just had to figure out how to get Dylan and home. “Get out of there! They’re going back, and they’re searching rooms!” I heard Dylan’s words in my head and looked around. There was no place to hide.
