by Jaxon Reed
“How did they get in? I heard no sounds of battle.”
“Stivvins, the Captain of the Gate, let them in without a fight.”
“On whose orders?”
“His own, Your Highness. He said something about a prophecy.”
“Have Stivvins brought here. I want to question him myself.”
“Begging Your Highness’s pardon, but I don’t think that’s possible. The metal men are headed straight here!”
Endrick stood, now visibly shaken. He said, “Any sign of Darkstone?”
The guard shook his head.
What a time for him to go missing, Endrick thought. He moved toward the door off to the side of the dais.
“Everybody stay put. I’ll figure out what’s going on.”
He opened the door and entered his council chambers, rushing to the window. Down below in the distance, he could see the street cleared. Riding up the middle on a white horse, a man in green made his way steadily forward. This, Endrick knew, had to be Trant.
A child approached the horse, and Trant pulled to a stop. She handed something up to him, it looked like a flower. Even at this distance, Endrick could tell he was thanking her. Then he continued on, waving at the occasional well-wisher. They were actually waving as he passed, something they never did for Endrick.
Behind Trant stomped the metal men, the very ones Darkstone had commissioned. Endrick could hear their feet clanking against the cobblestones. And above them, watching over everything, a wizard hovered. It had to be Greystone, Darkstone’s nemesis.
Endrick slinked back from the window before anyone could see him. He thought for a moment, struggling to stay calm. Then he nodded to himself, his mind made up. He went back into the throne room and motioned for the guards to approach.
“Lock down the palace. Nobody gets in or out. Especially do not let that pretender out there inside! Do you understand me? You have sworn an oath to me, and I expect you to keep it.”
The guards nodded and saluted. Endrick dismissed them and retreated again to his chambers as they hurried to spread the word and place the palace on lockdown.
Endrick made his way to his quarters, dismissing the servants. Alone in his bedroom, he took off the gold crown inlaid with emeralds and placed it on the mantle of his fireplace. Then he pulled his silk coat off and his shirt. He found the plainest tunic in his wardrobe and donned it.
He looked down and frowned at his green silk britches and fine leather boots laced up to his knees, but he knew there could be no replacing them at the moment.
At last he left his rooms, and made his way down to the ground floor of the palace. Here things were a beehive of activity, with servants and soldiers bustling about. He ignored them, and paid no heed to those who bowed when they recognized him.
He found the entrance to the dungeons, and went down the steps, leaving the world above behind. A lone jailer sat at a table in an alcove, a barred gate behind him blocking further access. He stood up in surprise as Endrick came down the steps. He was not used to visitors. His eyes widened when he recognized Endrick.
He bowed and said, “Your Highness.”
“I’ll be taking the secret tunnel out of the palace. I need a weapon.”
“Beg pardon, Your Highness?”
“I need a weapon. Give me your sword.”
The jailer unsheathed his shortsword and handed it over to Endrick hilt first, a confused look on his face.
Endrick said, “You’re about my size, I think you’ll do. Take off your tunic.”
The jailer now seemed truly flustered and stared at Endrick with an open mouth.
“Don’t make me say it again. Take off your tunic, now.”
The jailer struggled but managed to peel off his grimy green tunic. When he placed it on the table, Endrick stabbed him in the gut. The jailer screamed, falling down on his knees and holding the blade.
Endrick reached down, yanked the keys off the man’s belt, and pulled the sword out. He placed the keys and the sword on the table and began taking his own clothes off.
-+-
“Why, exactly, did you call this emergency meeting of the Magic Council?”
Quartzstone’s eyes narrowed in suspicion as he asked the question while glaring around the table. Several people were absent.
“There are certain matters we need to discuss,” Oldstone said. He smiled politely at Quartzstone, Sandstone, and Silverstone. Nobody smiled back. “In addition, I thought we could enjoy some time together in my castle.”
“Where is Greystone? Where are the two irritating ones? And where’s the girl?”
“Princess Mita and Greystone are accompanying Prince Trant on an errand and cannot be present. I’m afraid Redstone and Loadstone have not accepted my summons. But I am grateful the rest of you have chosen to come.”
He nodded at Bluestone, Goldstone, and the others.
Quartzstone snorted. He said, “This is ridiculous. This isn’t a real meeting.” He stood to leave. Sandstone and Silverstone followed suit, rising out of their chairs.
“Sit down!”
The three of them slumped back in their chairs, feeling the power and authority in the ancient wizard’s voice. Quartzstone said, “Are you threatening us, Oldstone?”
Oldstone smiled, his lips thin. He said, “No.”
Deedles jumped up on the table and crouched near Oldstone, facing the wizards. Her eyes narrowed to slits and her ears folded back. All clearly heard her, in their heads.
I am.
Oldstone cleared his throat to alleviate the uncomfortable silence that followed as everybody stared at the cat. He said, “We will remain together here in my castle for a while. I suggest you make yourselves comfortable. My facsimile will bring us some food soon.”
He smiled again and said, “Oh, and don’t try flying off. You’ll upset the cat. She knows several nasty spells, including one that will knock you out of the sky. And there’s a particularly strong suspension spell she has that takes several minutes to resolve. Of course, you’ll have fallen to your death before then.”
-+-
“Should we help her?”
Redstone asked the question while shading his eyes from the sun, watching the battle between Mita and Darkstone unfold.
Loadstone said, “I do think she needs a distraction or two. Hit him with Disambulation. I’ll try to get through his protection with Wizard’s Fire.”
They stepped away from each other a few paces, and both concentrated on their respective spells, sending them upward almost simultaneously. Loadstone’s hit first, and the blue globe around Darkstone blinked out from the force of the spell, dying while absorbing its energy.
Redstone’s spell hit next, stunning Darkstone for a second. Just as he shook it off, Mita tackled him and they fell to the ground in the middle of the clearing, the impact separating them.
Darkstone spied the dagger, and rolled over to grab it. Mita stood and walked toward him.
“Stand back!”
He shook the dagger at her.
“That’s a fake,” Mita said.
Darkstone looked down at it in surprise, and felt for his power, just as Mita cast a complex sleep spell on him and then turned the spell on herself.
He dropped the dagger, and fell flat on his back, sound asleep. Mita collapsed to her side, slumber taking her as well.
-+-
Darkstone looked around at a darkened, bleak landscape. Few details were visible. A few blades of grass. A boulder. Everything seemed gray and colorless. He stood up carefully, and mentally assessed his injuries.
Just as he decided he was unharmed, Mita appeared before him. One moment she wasn’t there, the next she stood facing him in the dim, colorless light.
He snarled, and shot out a Spell of Expulsion, snapping his hand out at her as the force left his palm and formed an arc of power before him.
Instead of flying backwards she smiled. No, he decided. She smirked.
“Is that the best you can do, Wizard?”<
br />
He cast spell after spell at her, sending Wizard’s Lightning, Blades of Death, and half a dozen others in quick succession.
They all failed, either passing through her or around her.
Finally he paused, working the mental equations, and cast a Globe of Doom at her. It sailed forth from his hands toward Mita . . . then slowed to a crawl as it drew near her.
She smiled again, and bent down to poke it with a finger. It popped like a bubble, dissipating harmlessly.
Darkstone’s eyes bulged. He stammered, unable to form a coherent word. Finally he said, “That’s . . . that’s not possible!”
“Anything’s possible in a dream, Wizard. It’s my dream, and I control it.”
In the distance, Darkstone heard something large approaching. He squinted, trying to see what was coming. It sounded like a large beast running fast.
“Have you read Shoapper, Wizard?”
“What?”
The beast drew nearer. He could hear it panting. Darkstone instinctively cast a blue Globe of Protection around himself.
“Shoapper was a scholar at the High Tower, he lived a long time ago.”
“I know who Shoapper is, bitch!”
The beast was very close now. He couldn’t still couldn’t see it. He decided to fly up and away, to flee that awful presence drawing near, but for some reason the power of flight wouldn’t work for him.
Mita said, “Shoapper had an idea. He thought that if you die in a dream, you would die in real life.”
The beast was almost here. He could feel its presence, and there was no doubt the awful animal meant to attack him.
“Let’s see if Shoapper was right. I’d like you to meet a friend of mine.”
The mind monster pounced on him, cutting, biting, gouging. Darkstone threw every spell he could think of at the thing, and they did nothing. Then his throat disappeared in a bloody bite and his belly ripped open, unseen claws flinging his guts right and left.
18
Deep in the hold of King Keel, well below the water line, Stin sat with arms around his knees in a tiny holding pen. Six paces by eight. He had counted them off several times, walking the floor covered in moldy straw. Sharing the space: a bucket of water, a bucket of slop, and a piss bucket. All were empty, for now.
The marines had been rather rough in depositing him down here. They shoved him in the pen, hands still tied behind his back, chuckling as he lost his balance. Then they took his purse, which contained quite a bit of gold. They turned out his pockets and found the scrip from the Mystic Bank. They couldn’t figure out what it meant, but they took it, too. Then someone spied the chain on his neck, and took the captain’s key from him.
When there was nothing more to take, they left him alone and said the jailer would be by soon to untie him.
Tucked away in this dark corner of the ship, shouting seemed futile. If anybody could hear him, which he doubted, they would likely never respond. But shouting was necessary when his jailer appeared, a crusty old salt named Deef. Shortly after the marines deposited him in the pen, he came down and reached through the bars to cut the ropes so Stin could finally pull his gag out.
He shouted, “They call me Deef, ’cause I’m deef! I cain’t hear a word you’re sayin’!”
He cackled, the sound echoing off the ship’s timbers as he filled Stin’s slop and water pails.
“They say you gots a silver tongue! Well it ain’t no use ’gainst me! ’Cause I’m Deef!”
“Yes, yes. I get it. You’re deaf.”
“What? I cain’t here you! I’m Deef! That’s mah name!”
And so it went. Deef would come in and bellow out some conversational snippets, swap out his respective buckets, and leave again.
Stin napped. He woke to find the captain’s key around his neck. He wondered if the marines would come back and take it again. When they did not return for it by the second day, he decided if the marines were anything like the seadog pirates he had sailed with, they likely thought it lost or stolen.
The scrip from the Mystic Bank reappeared, too. It showed up in the same pocket he’d left it, as fresh as the day Mandross handed it to him.
He marveled at the magic that brought both items back to him, and he wondered whether they were related somehow. By the time Deef showed up to swap out the buckets again, Stin had decided they must be under the same spell, or at least very similar spells.
At last, on the third day, movement seemed to slow. He felt the thump of what he presumed to be a pilot boat. A few hours later, the ship scraped against a dock and stopped moving altogether.
Deef came in again, carrying ropes and a rag. He said, “Ah’m sorry, but Ah gots to gag you! Not everybody’s deef like me! Gots to protect them from your silver tongue!”
Stin let the old man gag him and tie him up, offering no resistance. He hoped for a trial, which was his right as a subject of the Coral Throne. Surely they were docked in Coral City, he reasoned, and if he were brought before a maritime judge he could plead his case and come up with a plausible explanation as to why he did not return with the hostages from Lightfish when they were ransomed. He could probably also think up a good reason why he was back on Wavecrest while it was committing another act of piracy.
Fortunately, as far as he knew and if all went well, nobody from Wavecrest would be around to offer a counter-narrative. They were all dead by rope, arrow or blades, their bodies left in the sea.
All except Quent, who was posing as his dead brother Quarl back with Old Denn on the little merchant ship they had attacked. And the handful he saw escaping in Wavecrest’s launch. But those few were unlikely to show up at a trial.
He mulled over the possibilites and considered the best arguments to make at court as the marines marched him up and out of the hold. The sun hurt his eyes after so much time down below, and with his arms bound he couldn’t cover them. He walked with his head bowed and eyes closed until they could adjust.
The marines led him across a gangplank and through the docks. Finally, Stin looked up and squinted. He could see Coral Castle, its orange-red spires topping a hill in the distance, the highest point of the city.
He was home.
The marines handed him over to the first group of Royal Guards they found. They gave the leader a parchment with an official-looking wax seal, and said the prisoner was to be placed in the Coral Dungeon immediately. The guards were also warned that under no circumstances were they to take Stin’s gag out until he was safely behind bars.
The guards chuckled at this, and one of them made the inevitable dirty joke. Then they pushed him roughly forward and began the long ascent to the castle. Once out of sight of the marines, they searched him. This time the scrip from the Mystic Bank was ignored, but inevitably they found the key on the chain under his tunic and took it.
At the castle gates he was transferred again, and the orders about keeping him gagged were repeated. The captain on duty appointed two of his men to bring him to the dungeon, where they handed him over to the jailer who guided him down several flights of steps, deep below the castle.
At long last, the jailer opened a sturdy wooden door and pushed Stin into a small, dark cell. Unlike the ship’s pen, used mainly to hold the occasional drunk marine or disorderly sailor, the dungeon cell reeked of long and perpetual use.
“Stand against the wall, and I’ll cut the ropes,” the jailer said. “No funny business, or I’ll stab you.”
Stin obeyed, and let the man cut his ropes. The jailer made a hasty exit and shut the door on rusty hinges that screeched in the darkness. Stin listened carefully as the jailer’s steps receded up the stairs. The he took stock of his surroundings.
He had spent considerable time in Coral’s Royal Dungeon, after having the misfortune of being caught stealing too many times by the City Guard as a youth. It was here, under the tutelage of Syphon, he had first learned how to be an effective thief.
The memories of Syphon teaching him how to pick the lock on their cel
l door brought back a smile.
“What are we waiting for? Let’s leave!” he had said, full of youthful exhuberance, the door to their cell wide open.
“Don’t be daft,” Syphon responded, closing it and relocking it. “You’ll never get past the jailer, then you’ve got the Royal Guard to worry about. No, it’s better to blossom where you’re planted. And you’re planted with me under the castle now, boy. Remember, even mushrooms can grow in the dark.”
“That’s true,” the younger Stin said, “But think what mushrooms grow in!”
Syphon smiled and said, “Mushrooms feed off decaying matter. And down here we can thrive in the dark.”
How, exactly, they could thrive in a dungeon young Stin never stayed to find out. When he felt he had learned all Syphon could teach him, he sneaked out one night, slipping past the sleeping jailer and staying in shadows to avoid the guards.
He made it. He grew, developing his powers of persuasion along with height, and enhanced the skills Syphon had taught him. He never came back. Until now.
This time, he thought, things seemed different. The dungeon felt smaller. This cell, similar to the one he had been confined in as a boy, seemd far more cramped than he remembered. Perhaps, he thought, it had to do with the fact he saw the world through a grown man’s eyes now.
The key reappeared on his chest. He smiled and looked down at it, wondering what the guard who just lost it was thinking. Perhaps he hadn’t noticed yet.
With it, the key’s power returned. He could suddenly feel every living thing all around him. He could sense every passageway, every door, even narrow crevices the rats sneaked through and the cracks through which water seeped.
Above all else, Stin could feel Corsairs Cove. He knew, even deep in the dungeon under Coral Castle, how to get back. He could feel the way, just as surely as a compass needle pointed north.
He wondered briefly if the marine and the guard who possessed the key for a short while felt its power while they had it. He decided they did not. The key was bound to him. Cessic had named him captain, and with it the key and its power had transferred to him. Others possessing it before it reappeared around his neck could probably not grasp the key’s full significance, or power.
