“Let me tell you how we can beat that hag,” Teeand said.
“WHAT DID YOU DO??” Sath bellowed at Anni. He had risen from the spot on the floor where he had tried to catch Salynth and Taeben before she disappeared and was bearing down on Anni, his eyes blazing with raw fury.
Anni fell to her knees, pressing her face to the floor. “Forgive me, Majesty, I only thought of your sister, the Princess, and her safety. I thought that because the sorceress seems to appreciate magic users…well, I thought that she would trade…”
“You thought WHAT??” Sath yanked Anni to her feet by the scruff of her neck and held her there. “You were going to trade Gin’s life for Kazhmere’s?”
“Yes, Majesty,” Anni said, sniffling. “I was only thinking of Kahzi!” Tears rolled down her cheeks and when Sath brought her face close to his he could smell the fear rolling off her in waves. He dropped her suddenly and backed away, holding his hands out to her.
“I’m sorry…Anni, dear spirits, I’m sorry.” He would not permit himself to become his father even though his sister was…Kazhmere…an image of her playing in the nursery danced through his mind and took his breath for a moment. His need to protect his younger sister was all-consuming. In that moment, something snapped in Sath. He felt the bloodlust coming over him, as it had back before he met Gin in the tunnels…as it had when he was still hiding in the woodlands, waiting for a wayward druid or ranger to stumble into his path. He felt like he did the first night after he left Qatu’anari, the last time he had spoken to his father.
“How can I help?” Anni whispered. Sath ignored her and stalked back toward the way that he had come, where the other Fabled Ones were waiting. “Sath? Your highness?”
“You can help by getting out of my sight,” Sath growled. “NOW.” Anni stared at him for a second and then slowly got up from the floor where he had dropped her. She looked at him one last time, and then walked toward the doorway that would take her to the uppermost floor without looking over her shoulder.
Gin and Elysiam were tracking Sath through the corridors when they ran into him, sitting on the floor in the same room where Salynth had vanished with Taeben moments before. Gin ran over to him and knelt, wincing as he growled at her when she tentatively put a hand on his arm. “Sath, where is Anni?” she asked, steeling her voice though her insides were churning.
“Leave that be, Gin,” he said, not looking up at her. He glanced up at Teeand. “I thought you were going to take the others to safety, Tee?” he said, frowning.
“Not the plan, Sath,” Teeand said, moving closer and resting a hand on Sath’s shoulder. “You know that. I don’t leave friends behind.”
“Where is the bard?” Elysiam said. “And don’t try growling to change the subject, Sath…that may work on Gin but not me.”
“I don’t care where Anni is,” Sath replied. “All I care about is finding my…Kazhmere.”
“Your sister,” Gin said, smiling sadly at Sath as his gaze flew to meet hers. “I know, I overheard you and Anni and my Qatunari is better than you think.”
Sath locked eyes with Teeand, wondering that if she knew who Kazhmere was, did she also know who he was? An almost imperceptible shake of the dwarf’s head told him that she did not, and he exhaled loudly. “You are all willing to help me?” he asked, making eye contact with each in turn, his gaze finally coming to rest on Elysiam. “Elys?”
“After we rescue your sister, Sathlir, we will have a long talk, you and I. Deal?” Elysiam said, her voice cold and business like. Sath nodded his head. “Fair enough. Now, after hearing from Tee about the Tower, I think we have a plan if you’d care to hear it?” Sath nodded again. “But first I think we need to know if Anni is still on our side or if we’re going to be taking her off Hack’s list.”
“Annilanshi is inconsequential,” Sath said, his tone icy. Gin looked over at him, her brow furrowed in concern. “What is the plan?”
“Fine, moving on, Tee told us about what we may encounter on the uppermost of the floors. Our plan is that we go as far as we can under an invisibility spell and then fight only when we have to fight. But first we need to have a rest here, since this area seems uninhabited.” Elysiam paused for a moment, looking around at the others. “Eat and drink and rest, because Tee thinks that will make the upcoming fight easier. Then, when we are rested, Gin and I will work to ward off evil magic and grant us invisibility, and we move out.”
“Yep, sounds like a Tee plan,” Sath said, his face a blank slate. “Let’s do it.” He straightened up, sitting in the position that Gin had seen him take many times when he was meditating before engaging an enemy. She tilted her head to one side, trying to remember the last time she had seen him do that. He closed his eyes and fell silent.
“I don’t need to rest,” Hackort whined. Elysiam pushed him down on to the floor and then plopped down next to him. “I don’t like resting. It isn’t fun. Fighting is fun. Killing is fun. Rescuing Sath’s sister is fun.”
“Shutting you up will be fun,” Elysiam hissed at him.
Gin moved closer to Sath and reached out for his arm. Just before her fingers brushed his fur, he pulled his arm away. “Sath, I…”
“Don’t. Not now, Gin,” he hissed.
Teeand moved over and patted her on the shoulder. She leaned over onto the dwarf like a tired child, her eyes closed, and he hugged her to him for a moment before releasing her. Sath looked at him and Teeand held his gaze. His look warned Sath against hurting the druid, and Sath’s clandestine nod told the dwarf that he understood the caution.
“Let’s go,” Sath said. “I’ve waited long enough.”
Thirty
Taeben hated using magic to teleport with another person. It normally felt like being inside out, but was especially bad when you did not know it was coming. Salynth had left him back in the room where he was being held, and once the fog in his mind cleared, he could see the Qatu female in the corner. She was wearing her chains again, and he feared that meant she had tried to come after him when Salynth took him before.
“Stupid Cat,” he murmured as he crept toward her. She seemed to be asleep and he loathed to wake her. “There is no reason for you to make her hurt you over me,” he whispered. “I am certainly not worth that.”
“Yes you are,” Kazhmere said, opening her eyes slowly. “You’re just as worthy as I am, as anyone is.” She made eye contact with him and he looked away.
“Are you hurt?” he said, his voice soft. “I don’t have healing magic like you do so I can’t help, really.”
“No, I’m all right,” she said. “Where did she take you?”
“That’s really none of your concern, Princess,” Taeben said, hoping that she would be so outraged that he had referred to her by her title, she would shut him out to keep her secret.
“Really, you can call me Kahzi,” she said. “No need to stand on ceremony here, Taeben.” He frowned. “What did Salynth mean when she said she was taking you for your lessons?”
“None of your concern,” he barked at her. Why did she care so much about what he did? It would make it harder for him to practice his new skills on her if he thought of her as a friend.
“Why do you have to be so difficult?” Kazhmere asked under her breath. “Are all elves as difficult as you?” She tried to curl up as much as she could but the chains kept her from any more than a seated position on the floor. She leaned her furry head back against the stone and closed her eyes.
“I will ask you again, are you hurt?” Taeben asked tentatively after a long pause. Kazhmere ignored him. “I might be able to conjure you some food and water if that would help.” He cursed himself inwardly for extending kindness to her but found himself to be unable to stop. “Kahzi?”
“Princess will do, thank you wizard,” she snapped. Taeben narrowed his eyes and returned to the opposite corner of the room to meditate. “If formality is what you wish, then that is what you shall have from me.”
“Fine,” he muttered. As soo
n as he settled into the proper meditative position and cleared his mind, images of the earlier scene in the corridor with Salynth began interrupting his calm. Taeben scanned the image now burned into his mind and again settled on the wood elf he had seen. Ginolwenye! That was too much of a coincidence to have been random, that she would be here with his Mistress’s enemy. “Must have been an illusion,” he murmured and again cleared his mind to focus on that scene. He knew that Salynth would want to rehash it as she did all interactions with outsiders in her Tower, and he wanted to be able to answer her questions on the first try. Much less painful that way, he had found.
The image appeared in his mind again. The Qatu that she called Prince standing before her, the other Qatu female clinging to him and looking up at him with some sort of hero worship written all over her. Taeben shuddered. That sort of devotion was akin to worse weakness than that brought on by fear. Familiarity breeds softness and softness is weakness. He had seen the male before, in Bellesea Keep. Those memories, though still muddled due to his Mistress’s magic, were becoming clearer.
In his mind’s eye, Taeben looked beyond the two Qatu to the group that ran in at the last moment, before his Mistress commanded him to magically teleport the two of them away. “The Prince and his concubine, a dwarf, a gnome, and two wood elves,” he murmured, studying the group. Had the rest of them been in the Keep? He could not be sure, so he focused on the Qatu male and Gin specifically.
Kazhmere’s attention rocketed to Taeben, but she kept quiet to keep from rousing him from his meditation. The Prince he spoke of had to be Sathlir. Stupid proud brother of hers! Kazhmere bit her lip to keep from crying out. Why had Anni brought Sath here? And who was the ‘concubine’ that the wizard mentioned? She stilled her mind that roared like a hive of bees for answers and listened for more clues from the wizard.
Taeben was focusing on the two wood elves. “Both druids, interesting,” he murmured. He didn’t recognize the blonde right away, but the other one was most certainly the Ginolwenye that he had known as a child. He moved the memory forward in his mind to the point that he had spoken the long-forgotten nickname he’d had for her… “Ginny,” he whispered, and the memory-Gin looked up at him with a mixture of wonder and horror. “Ginny, what are you doing here?”
The memory-image of Gin stared back at him. “Ben, what are YOU doing here?” she said, and he echoed her with his own voice. Kazhmere watched in wonder. “What have they done to you?” Taeben found his memory wandering backward even further, back to his childhood, and he let it go there. His mind filled with images of Alynatalos, the gleaming elven city of gold on the southern edge of the forest. Tears pricked the backs of his eyelids as his mind’s eye visited his parents, and then flew along to schoolrooms where Taeben saw his younger self, pouring over spell books and ignoring the calls from his friends to come outside and play. “Lazy idiots,” he mouthed as the memory-Taeben called back to them.
He gasped as the scene shifted and a red-headed teenage female elf’s face appeared before his. “Tairn…” he murmured. The memory-Tairneanach was joined by a tiny wood elf with a bobbing auburn ponytail. The little wood elf looked up at him and he heard her voice trying to pronounce his name. “Oh, just call me Ben, you’ve butchered my name enough, Ginny,” he joined memory-Taeben in chastising her. He found himself frowning as she burst into sobs, and was amazed at how the sight of her tears caused such a pain to shoot through his heart even now. Taeben squeezed his eyes shut as tightly as he could to try ridding himself of the vision.
“Who is Gin?” Kazhmere said, unable to contain her curiosity any longer. Taeben’s eyes flew open. “And the Prince, Ben, the one you mentioned; that was my brother Sathlir was it not?”
“Do they not teach you in Qatu’anari to mind your own bloody business?” Taeben thundered, enraged that his meditation was interrupted, and still fueled by emotions brought on by the visions of his past. “My name is Taeben to you, Cat,” he hissed at her. “You may ask my Mistress who she currently entertains in her Tower for I am sure it is not my place to tell you.” He closed his eyes again before he caught sight of the sadness in her face at his outburst, only to see memory-image Gin’s bright blue eyes, etched with concern for him, floating in his mind.
“They teach me to be honest and fair, Taeben,” Kazhmere whispered, “and above all, to harm none if at all possible.” Holding her head in her hands, she started her own meditation in the hopes that her connection to her brother was intact, and that she could warn him to leave the Tower and forget her before he was hurt. Her heart and her fear betrayed her, and all she could visualize was begging her brother to save her as he had done so many times when they were younger cubs. Her shoulders shook as she cried silent tears, wincing and gasping as the manacles cut into the flesh under the fur at her wrists.
Thirty-One
Under the cloak of invisibility magic, the five moved through the fifth and sixth floors of the Tower, unnoticed by the ghostly inhabitants. Elysiam had cast the spell with Gin’s help, making sure that they could see each other. The warriors did not like magic, and Hack would only agree to it as long as he could see everyone. The gnome took the lead with Elysiam right behind him, ready to club him on the head if he made a move to attack anything. She looked down at him from time to time, amazed that he still had her back just as he had done when they first met so many years ago. Her mind wandered back for a moment, and she shuddered.
“You okay, Elys?” Hack whispered, stopping to look up at her and causing everyone behind him to crash into each other.
“Aye little man, you just keep on your way,” she hissed at him, smiling inwardly as he turned back to the task at hand and kept moving. Again she was reminded of times long past, when he had first asked her that same question. They had escaped together from the dungeons in Calder’s Port, and were about to embark on what had become one of the most important relationships in her life. Fair enough, tiny man! Elysiam smiled as she remembered what she had said to him that day so long ago. I can at least stay with you until I have paid off my debt to you for saving my life…which, we will never mention again, deal?
“What did you say, Elys? What about a deal?” Hack said, looking up at her and shaking her hand off his helmet, bringing her back from her musing.
“Nothing. I hate having to move like this, it’s so cramped!” she retorted, trying to shake off the memory.
Hackort patted her hand. “You just want to kill things. I understand, Elys. We’ll get to kill things soon enough,” he said.
“What are you, my mother?” she snapped, yanking her hand away from him. He shook his head, having come to expect these fits of temper when she was not getting her way. “Sorry.” Hackort smiled under his helm. Elysiam was one of a kind.
“Would you two zip it, please?” Sath hissed from his place in the lead. “It’s hard to sneak when you sound like a gossipy herd of elephants!” Gin muttered something under her breath about falling like a cat that made Sath chuckle and lightened his mood. “We’re almost to the doorway and then we can…”
“Can what? Save my friend? Concentrate on the mission?” said Anni, appearing from behind a pillar in the room they had just entered. Sath stood straight up, focusing on her and calling his magical pet to his side. “Oh, now there’s no need for that, Sath,” she said, glancing around the room. Sath followed her gaze and gasped when he saw all of the ghostly inhabitants of that floor standing at attention and watching Anni. “Oh, well, maybe there is.” With a flick of her wrist and a new tune from her lute, the reanimated began a slow walk toward Sath and the others, arms outstretched, voices joining into one bone-chilling moan.
“I guess they can see us?” Teeand asked, tightening his grip on his poleaxe.
“Um, yes, yes they can,” Sath answered. “Anni, stop this, we’re both here for the same reason. You don’t have to do this.”
Anni looked at him strangely, her head cocked to one side. “Are we here for the same reason, Sathlir? Did you not just g
ive up your sister’s life in favor of a wood elf who doesn’t even know how you…” Sath cut her off with an enraged roar. “Right. Sorry, didn’t meant to let that cat out of the bag,” she said, waggling her eyebrows and taking a step backward. The shades formed ranks around her, their dead eyes all glaring at Sath and the others. “Now, I am going to save my friend Kahzi, with or without your help. I would have preferred to have you on my side, Sathlir, but that is your choice.” She changed the tune on her lute and all the shades seemed to fall into a trance. With a final look over her shoulder, she moved to the nearest doorway with preternatural speed and disappeared through it.
“We’ve got about a minute before…” The sound of that unearthly moan interrupted Teeand. “Now!” He charged into the middle of them, bellowing curses directed at their mothers and anything else vile and malicious he could think to shout. Hackort was hot on his heels, following suit. Elysiam and Gin moved to opposite sides of the room, watching each other carefully as they did, and Sath stayed where they had come into the floor. He held back his magical pet tiger for a few moments, allowing all of the creatures in the room to focus their ire on the two warriors first, then released the cat to join the melee while casting his own magic spells intended to slow down the progress of the mob.
“Quake incoming!” Elysiam shouted to Gin across the growing din of magical weapons clashing with mundane steel. The druid ran to the middle of the room, dodging grabs from specters and jumping over slowly dissolving undead corpses as she went. Once she was sure she was in the middle, she motioned to Gin who did the same, only having to stop one time to shake off an undead grip on her boot as she leaped over a fading body. The two wood elves stood back to back and simultaneously lifted their arms, calling in unison on Kildir to deliver a shocking blow to the ground beneath them and swallow up the ghosts that threatened them and their companions. Seemingly, on demand, the room shook and pitched and most of the ghosts fell to the stone floor and disappeared into the cracks.
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