There must have been nearly a hundred columns, Mr. Hopewell realized.
They followed the Tounder down a wide stone staircase that wound for what seemed like miles below the earth. Finally they emerged onto the cobblestone street of a medieval village.
***
Scarlet couldn’t believe her eyes. It was a place familiar from her dreams, but those dreams had done nothing to prepare her for the grandeur of the reality. It was as if they weren’t underground at all. Light was everywhere, filling the space with a glowing warmth so much like the light of a summer’s day that her mind was reeling. Hadn’t she just climbed down an impossibly long staircase? Surely in her dreams she hadn’t imagined entering a hollow tree and walking beneath its roots.
Everywhere she looked were unbelievable sights—magnificent gardens, full of fairy-tale flowers, columbines and larkspur and Canterbury bells, around velvety lawns punctuated by dancing fountains; shops selling everything from strange fruits in jewel tones to golden loaves of bread to shimmering fabrics. The main street was lined with statues of fabulous creatures that seemed to be carved out of light. At the center of the town square stood a massive windmill, its long blades turning in languid circles, powered by what looked to be solar panels mounted on them.
Next to this glorious reality, the world of her dreams had been only a faint echo. Now, in the Tounder village, all of her fears and exhaustion melted away. Everywhere busy Tounder were milling around, working, shopping, gossiping, going about their lives as if this were the most normal place in the world.
Scarlet had been shuffling along behind her parents and the old Tounder, but as they passed an open pavilion, she stopped, drawn as if by a magnet to the scene she saw there. Seated on the floor underneath the awning, a group of young Tounder were watching what must have been their teacher working with his hands to form an orb of light. The young Tounder watched him, some taking notes on rough parchment, while others carried on their own quiet conversations, much as Scarlet and her friends did in math class. The teacher circled his hands over the orb, making it grow and shrink and then causing its light to brighten and flicker.
“It must seem quite astounding to you, dear,” Xavier said from right behind her. She started and turned to face him, her face flushed with excitement. “I imagine all this must be.” He paused, smiling at her, and then leaned in close, continuing in a voice just above a whisper. “I can assure you, though, it’s just the beginning of the wonders yet to come.”
Reluctantly, Scarlet pulled herself away from the class to follow Xavier down the street again. As they rounded a bend, what she had seen as only the hint of spires in the distance came fully into view, a gleaming white structure, something between a cathedral and a castle—a palace, maybe, Scarlet thought. It soared above the buildings around it, a spire rising from each of its four corners and generous windows of crystal, carved in the shapes of creatures both familiar and exotic, set into its walls. Two colossal roots descended from the oak tree behind the palace, flanking the spires at the back, running along the ground on each side of the building, and finally meeting to intertwine in an elaborate pattern at the front, where doors would normally be, guarding the main entrance to the palace. At Xavier’s approach the roots slowly unlaced themselves and curled back to allow the group to enter.
Xavier guided them through the grand foyer and into a warm sitting room with couches of wood, upholstered luxuriously with soft leaves filled with dandelion-seed down. Xavier motioned for them to sit on the sofa near the fireplace that dominated the far end of the room. Exhausted, the four humans sat, feeling the fatigue lift from their muscles, a feeling of security and warmth enveloping them.
Dakota seemed to be arguing with one of the Tounder, while Xavier took his seat in a large chair across from the family. He motioned to Dakota, who was reluctantly leaving the room through a doorway hidden in the wall. “He is loyal to a fault, I think. He doesn’t even want to leave you to get his leg fixed.”
“Um,” Mr. Hopewell fumbled. He seemed to be struggling valiantly against an intense desire to close his eyes and go to sleep. “Yeah, he’s a great dog.”
“Yes.” Xavier laughed. “That he is. I guess some answers are in order.”
“That would be nice,” Mrs. Hopewell said wearily.
“Mommy, I’m hungry,” Melody whispered. Somehow she’d managed to sleep through almost the whole ordeal.
“Oh, how rude of me!” Xavier waved to a group of Tounder waiting by the doorway. “Perhaps the ladies might like to retire for food and rest. I’ll explain what I can to you, Mr. Hopewell.”
Mrs. Hopewell was reluctant, but, looking at the exhausted
children, she agreed to follow the Tounder out of the sitting room with Scarlet and Melody. Cricket followed, not wanting to let the girls out of her sight.
***
Once they had left, Xavier turned back to Charles, handing him a glass of cool liquid that a Tounder had brought in on a platter. Charles drank it down quickly, feeling his thirst instantly quenched.
He looked quizzically at the glass. “What was that?”
“We call it water.” Xavier smiled. “I guess you might call it fairy water.” He let out a bellowing laugh, apparently finding this a grand joke.
Charles smiled back uncomfortably, too tired to enjoy the humor. “Of course. What else would it be?” Looking down at the glass, he realized that it was full again. He was too weary to be shocked, so he just gratefully took another sip.
He’d fully intended to listen keenly. Now, he hoped, he could get some answers, make sense of what was happening to him and his family. He had so many questions, so many fears. Yet somehow just now they didn’t seem as urgent as they had just moments before. A profound feeling of peace enveloped him. Surely it wouldn’t hurt if he laid his head back to rest, just for a moment . . .
Within seconds he was fast asleep.
***
Xavier had expected this. After all, what Mr. Hopewell and his family had been through was exhausting in every possible way. He motioned for another group of Tounder to come and take Mr. Hopewell to his family, then sat down again, relief washing over him.
For the first time in fourteen years, for a moment at least, he could be at peace.
It had been a long time to wait for the greatest gamble of his life to pay off. Although he’d had full faith in Udd Lyall, he could not help but worry whether he’d played his own part well enough. But now that Scarlet was safely under his protection, Xavier could fully concentrate on the next phase of the plan.
Prince Thanerbos was growing stronger with each passing moment. Xavier had no way to tell how long they had left before he reached the full height of his powers. There was no time to waste.
Although he knew that Udd Lyall would only shrug off any expressions of gratitude, Xavier decided that he would try to offer thanks anyway. Even if he hadn’t known where the castle Tounder had taken him, it would not have been difficult to find Udd Lyall. Xavier could hear his disgruntled growls of protest the second he left the sitting room.
He found Udd Lyall lying in the castle’s infirmary, a well-lit room that, small as it was, sufficed for the needs of the entire village. A larger space was not needed; Tounder rarely experienced injuries or got ill, and when they did, it was usually something simple and easily treated.
The Tounder treating Udd Lyall seemed to be quite energized at the chance to handle such a nasty wound. This would be the worst injury most of them would ever witness, and they found it a real treat to hone their skills on something so significant. Udd Lyall, on the other hand, did not appear to be amused in the slightest.
“Watch it,” Udd Lyall growled as one of the Tounder poured a cleaning solution on his shoulder.
Xavier approached the table where Udd Lyall lay, giving his friend the warmest of smiles. Udd Lyall looked up at him with a flash of anger. “Thank you,” X
avier said to the Tounder healers. “You may go.”
Reluctantly the Tounder left, leaving Xavier and Udd Lyall alone. Xavier placed one of his hands over the wound and began singing in a voice so quiet that even Udd Lyall, with his superior canine ears, had difficulty hearing him. It was a soft, lilting song, and as Xavier sang, his hand began to glow with a warm yellow light. The wound on Udd Lyall’s shoulder closed, healing in a manner of minutes.
Xavier fell silent for a moment, looking down at his old friend. “Thank you, dear friend. You have saved us all.” There was so much admiration and gratitude in his voice that it seemed on the verge of breaking.
Udd Lyall shrugged off the thank-you, as Xavier had known he would. “How long do I have?” he asked, his voice resigned.
“I don’t know for sure.” Xavier sounded sad. “I have not found much in my library about the life span of dogs. Mr. Hopewell might actually know better than I___”
“No,” Udd Lyall interrupted. “It doesn’t matter anyway. We don’t intend to take our time.”
“You’re right, we do not,” Xavier responded. As Udd Lyall began to pad out of the infirmary, he added, “Are you going?”
“You don’t need me for this part. It’s you she needs now. I have some explaining to do to the pack.” And with those words, Udd Lyall trotted out of sight.
6
The Conquered
Brennan was scared. There was no point in denying it or trying to act otherwise. There was no one left to act tough for except himself, and he knew better. After all, he couldn’t fool himself. It just didn’t work. He was not, however, afraid of the jail cell he found himself in, or the overwhelming cold that sank deep into his bones. He wasn’t even afraid of the jailers who had kidnapped him, thrown him into this dismal place, and beat him so unmercifully. No, he was afraid of the loneliness and the sorrow. His mother was gone, and now he was the last of his people. The last of the Conquered.
It was hard to believe that it had come to this. For all his mother’s sheltering, her constant vigil, her obsessive looking over her shoulder, she was gone, and he was right where she had always feared. He looked over his body, lean and fit, his skin brown with the sun. Until this morning there had not been so much as a scratch on him, and now, after only half a day as a slave, his skin was marked forever. There were sharp, angry whip marks across his back, and an especially deep one ran the length of his chest, slicing a symbolic partition through his heart. This was his fate, as it had been that of all his people. Despite his mother’s attempt—which had only led to her death—there was no avoiding destiny.
His mother had not believed in fate and had fought it most of her adult life, but there was no denying simple fact. Every man and woman of Brennan’s race had been hunted down and sold into slavery—the women for their unparalleled beauty, the men for a natural strength and hardiness that made them invaluable as laborers for the mines and quarries in the southwest. Brennan had often wondered how, considering his peoples’ physical strength, they had become slaves to a weaker people. Not in all the libraries of the world could he have found an answer. There was no history of the Conquered, as his people were called. No record of a time before servitude. All that a young Conquered needed to know was that he had been born, he labored, and he would die. Even this brief history was no longer of any value. With the passing of his mother, Brennan had become the last of his kind.
That, of course, made him the most valuable Conquered ever to walk this land. He might be of little value to the mines now, but the dark and twisted souls of Satorium would pay a high price to own the last Conquered on earth. He would be kept like an endangered species at a zoo, in a cage for all to gawk at. Perhaps they might even put him in an arena. The last Conquered to have that honor had been a champion for fifty years before his master poisoned him to make for a more exciting contest. Unfortunately the Conquered gladiator had dropped dead before the match even began.
Brennan stirred and shuffled farther into the dark corner of his cell. Footsteps were echoing against the stone walls of the corridor outside, and that could only mean one of two things. They were coming to beat him again, or to move him to another, equally dismal place. Either way, fate or not, Brennan had decided he would not go quietly this time. When they first came for him, his shock over the loss of his mother had been too fresh, too numbing, for him to care for anything else. Now the pain was as sharp as a razor’s edge, honed to a deadly point of pure anger.
Perhaps in response to the violence around them, or as an attempt to better endure the life they faced, Brennan’s people had always been peaceful. The Conquered gladiator was such an anomaly that in a thousand years he had been the only one. Well, Brennan had no elder to speak calm words to him, to tell him to quell the anger inside. No mother to help him calm his mind against the flood of emotion that rattled him. His anger was all he had for guidance, and he saw no reason to deny it.
Deep in his core he felt the familiar heat rising, though he knew it was in vain. The Tempest, his people called it—a force latent within all Conquered males that could give them an incredible surge of strength. With this force, legend had it, the Conquered had built the Great Wonders in the Northern Mountains, the Dorans’ capital city, Caelesta, and the tower prison of Leona, where it was said that the dark one was being held. The construction of these ancient works would have been a feat even in modern times, and yet they’d been built by hand centuries ago by the Conquered. As an act of rebellion, the Conquered elders—acknowledging that the Tempest had become merely something for their enslavers to exploit, rather than a force that could throw off their bonds—had refused to teach the youth the ability to harness this power, and the knowledge had slipped away with the elders’ deaths. Now all that was left of the Tempest was a gentle suggestion of the bridled power within.
Brennan could now hear voices along with the footsteps, and he readied himself. The voices were familiar; they belonged to his jailers. Brennan tried in vain to unearth the Tempest, but it was like trying to find treasure that might be buried anywhere across an entire continent. Without a map, it was hopeless.
Though for a moment, when he had found his mother’s body and heard the laughter of her murderers, he’d almost thought—
It made no difference now. It was buried too deep.
“Can’t believe this is the last one.”
Brennan could make out the voices clearly now.
“We can retire on the money we make with him.”
Brennan could see the faces of the two men, who were indeed his jailers. The head jailer reminded Brennan of a rotten tree—large, cumbersome, giving a menacing appearance from a distance. Up close, however, the weakness and decay were evident. His assistant, much younger and smaller, had yet to show the ravages of a lifetime spent in prison; instead, he wore filthy rags in a feeble attempt to ape his mentor’s style.
“Whaddaya mean, retire?” The head jailer snorted, hacked up some phlegm, and spat on the wall.
“I mean, if he’s the last, we’re gonna get rich selling him. Make a lot more than we do with these normal creatures.” The younger man gestured toward the other cells. “Hasn’t been one of the Conquered up on the market in ages.”
The head jailer stopped and looked at his assistant, who obviously had the lion’s share of what little brains the two possessed. His head tilted, and he frowned, trying to figure out what the younger man was getting at.
The assistant threw the head jailer a worried look. Brennan had watched the two often enough to guess why—the big man would be none too pleased if his assistant figured something out he himself hadn’t or couldn’t. In any other circumstances, the scene would have amused Brennan.
“We get ten percent of what they sell for at the market, yeah?” the assistant said apprehensively, having decided to press on. Reasonable enough, thought Brennan, forgetting for a moment that it was his fate they were talking abo
ut. Surely the big man would be pleased he’d be getting rich, whoever he heard it from.
“Oy,” said the big man.
“Usually it’s the same. We sell a beast for a hundred, we get ten. We sell a rare beast for two hundred, we get twenty. Well . . . seeing as that big fella is the last Conquered anyone seen in ages, he’s gonna go for a lot more.”
“Oy.”
“Okay . . . So ten percent of a lot more is . . . a lot,” the younger jailer announced, quite proud of himself.
There was lengthy silence while this all sank in. Finally the head jailer cracked his assistant on the head with the handle of his whip. “You think I didn’t know that, boy?” he snarled and, without another word, started toward Brennan’s cell.
Brennan knew it was useless to fight the two men. It wasn’t that they could possibly be a match for him, but there was nowhere to go. The jail was four stories belowground, and surrounded by guards. Perhaps he should just take the way of his people and be at peace with his fate.
No, he couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t do that. He thought of his poor mother, who had died trying to keep him safe. He thought of their life together, running from place to place, never at peace, never at home. What honor would it do her memory to just accept being a slave, when she’d given up so much to keep him from becoming one? No, this Conquered was going to put up a fight. At least that way she would not have died for nothing.
Brennan had backed up against the slimy wall farthest from the cell door, steeling himself for the fight ahead, when he was hit with a sudden realization. At sixteen, he’d never fought before. Would that matter? He hoped not. He was strong—very strong. At nearly seven feet tall, he was broad-shouldered and thickly muscled. Once, traveling with his mother through deep woods, he’d lifted a tree trunk easily out of their path. Never, though, had he used his strength in anger or violence.
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