Stones Unbound (The Magestone Chronicles Book 1) (10 page)

Finally, Zazaril’s shoulders slumped slightly as she turned
to face her.  She watched as her visitor’s amber eyes attempted to pull any
piece of information from her expression as possible.  When the attempt failed,
the ambassador obviously straightened.  “Forget I even asked,” she said as she
moved to the door and opened it.  Pausing at the threshold, she added quietly,
“You will be a good addition to the Council... when the time comes.”  With
that, she closed the door behind her.

Marisha’ilea stared at the door for a while after the other
Dar'Shilaar left, puzzling out her last statement and the brief conversation
that led up to it.  She filed it away in the “things to sort out later” part of
her mind, and went and got ready for bed.

Reegan Hicks was worried.  Something must have gone wrong.  She
had not seen Hoyle around the Red Rooster Inn since
that
night, and it
had been over a week.  Rumors abounded of a City Guard raid on the same guild
that the trio left to investigate on the same night.
Had he been captured or
killed?  If so, by whom?  Did the Empire have him?  If not, what kind of
merchants' guild was running out of Goralon?

She checked in with the proprietor, a portly man name
Edvard, with a red beard and hair, most likely from the Isle of Saretha.  He
had not seen Hoyle either, but since he paid by the month, his room was secured
for at least another few days.

She had tried tracking down Salrissa the last few days, but
she was as elusive as Hoyle.  Had she been captured as well?  No, apparently she
had not been captured, as Hicks saw her last night as she strode through the
common room of the Red Rooster heading for the stairs.  By the time she had
fought her way through the common room, climbed the stairs and reached the door
to the room Salrissa shared with Hoyle, the door was locked.  There was no
answer to her knock, though she could hear noise inside.  She pleaded with
Salrissa to let her in, to tell her what was going on.

“Go away.” was the terse reply from within the room.  After
a few more moments of banging on the door, which drew a few people from their
rooms, as well as a few curious stares from the common room below, she thought
of an idea.

She returned with Edvard and the room key, but once the door
was open, there was no one to be found.  Everything seemed to be in order,
nothing obviously out of place.

“There’s no one here, thus I must ask you to leave.” Edvard
insisted as he gestured her out of the room, relocking the door.

She was at a loss of what to do next, and worried for her
friend.  Two days ago rumors began to spread that the Kingdom of Goralon had
suspended trading with the Empire.  There was no indication as to why, but all
her merchant peers began speculating on which wares were going to be in short
supply in the near future.  Goralon mainly supplied heating coal, brass, and
iron, as well as animal furs trapped by the barbarians to their north.  Some
foodstuffs difficult to grow in the Empire’s warmer climate were on the list,
string beans, peas, cabbage, turnips and some weird fruit that came in stalks,
called gorbat.

As Hicks represented a consortium of blacksmiths, her partners'
biggest concerns would be the iron and coal, but she had other prospects that
may pan out in the future, rendering the Empire’s slight dependency on Goralon,
to some regard anyway, obsolete.

An idea came to her, so after settling her business the next
morning, she set out for the Dar'Shilaar Embassy.  After an hour of navigating
the busy spring streets, side stepping oxen led wagons, the odd noble’s coach
and various people and horses, she arrived at the embassy.  She was directed
inside by one of the guards.

Stepping inside the tower, she saw a large number of people
who appeared to be waiting in line.  There were poles on ropes that guided the
line to snake back and forth from a stone balustrade at the front, separating
the public half of the room from the other.  Behind the balustrade there looked
to be two Shilaar seated at a table each, with quills, ink and parchment within
reach.  Several clerks stood behind them, and others moved about, some leaving
the room through a back door. 
It was ordered chaos!
thought Hicks. 
Trust
Shilaar to bring order to chaos. 

One of the clerks was working along the line with a pitcher
of water and a few wooden cups.  When he finally reached her, she asked to see
Celia.

“I’m sorry, but you must wait in line for your petition to
be heard,” was the reply.  Hicks was pretty sure that was the standard answer
to any standing in line.  He hadn’t even looked her in the eye when responding. 
So she waited, and waited, and waited. 

Finally, shortly after the lunch bell, when the Shilaar at
the front had been replaced by a different pair, she finally reached them.  She
stood before a small mousy, brown-haired sorceress in a faded lavender dress
with an odd hat on her head that seemed to be made entirely of feathers.  It
had also been dyed lavender to match her dress.

“What can we do for you today deary?” the woman asked
without really looking up.

“I would like to see Celia, if I may?” Hicks requested.

The woman started writing her request down on a piece of
parchment before the words registered and she paused and looked up.  “Celia?” 
She seemed confused.

“Yes.  I’m an acquaintance of hers.  It’s about some
business we talked about a while back.” Hicks ventured.

The small sorceress frowned.  “We don’t generally have
petitioners ask for specific personnel by name.  You said your name was?”

“I hadn’t, but it is Hicks.  Obviously you’re very busy,
could you please have someone fetch her for me?  I assure you, it’s quite
important,” she gestured at the long line of people behind her.

“Hicks?  That would be your family name I assume... I used
to know a Hicks once, a Fernazad Hicks out near Fallow Hollow.  What a silly
name.  Fallow Hollow, not Farnazad –” the mousy wizard began ready to start
into a long diatribe.

“Please ma’am, I need to speak with her.” She interrupted.

“Oh yes, right.  What was your first name, deary?  For the
record of course...”  The woman crossed off her original words on the parchment
and wrote another sentence.

Hicks supplied it, assuring the woman that Celia would not
know her by that name, insisting that they use just Hicks on the note that was
to be used to inform her that she had a visitor.  The Dar'Shilaar then handed
the note to one of the clerks who left the hall.  A clerk directed her to a
stone bench under a window to the side of the room to wait.  They offered her
water again, which she gladly took.  She leaned back against the wall and
settled in to wait, again.

She watched the people in line, some obviously desperate, some
despondent, some clutching hats to their chests, others trying to pretend not
to be nervous.  The afternoon moved on, and the line dwindled, but Celia did
not show up.  She checked with several of the clerks over the course of the
afternoon, but none had any more information to give her.

It was finally time for the embassy to close, and she had
not seen Celia yet.  Either she was too busy, didn’t care, or had forgotten who
Hicks was.  She wasn’t sure if she was more angry or scared.  Either way, she
was certainly not happy.

Ravan moved along the corridor as quickly as he dared.  As a
stable boy in the Imperial Army, he had managed to earn his much coveted
position of assistant head groom at a fairly young age.  It was not all
rainbows and candypops for sure, as it was hard work, but he now got to live in
the sky citadel.  Three months ago, they had moved him and the head groom to
the sky citadel from Parr’ador.  At the time, there were no horses on the
citadel, and the new position was a mystery to him and to the head groom.  He
was now in charge of all the horses of the newly developing Sky Cavalry.

Very few knew of the Sky Cavalry, they had been practicing
only in the early morning and at dusk, and had been kept below the Citadel
walls, to be out of view of the city folk.  The Dar'Shilaar had delivered the
harnesses just over two months ago; one hundred for horses, one hundred for
their riders, and an unknown number of magestones, but at least twenty – he was
required to keep count.  The harnesses for the horses were designed to fit
under the horse’s armor, made of thin straps of leather sewn with metal thread
that held a small magestone at the center of the horse’s chest.  The harnesses
for the men, also with thin strips of leather, were meant to be worn over armor
and hold a magestone over the chest piece of the armor.  The harnesses for the
men were more meant to prevent falling deaths than allow men to fly.  They had
been tested, and allowed men to float slowly to the ground when they fell off the
horses.  Ravan imagined they may even allow men to float upwards as well, but
certainly not fly as easily as a bird.

In the last two months they had been able to train only
twenty of the most stalwart warhorses of the army.  They had been brought from
Parr’ador in secret, and they had worked day in and day out to remove the
skittishness from the horses as they learned to fly.  Ravan shook his head.  He
didn’t think it was in their nature, but some of the horses took to the
additional freedom.  Would wonders never cease?  First the mirrors, then the
gates, then the skyships, and now this.  He shook his head again.  The things
he had seen up close since earning his position were awe-inspiring.

However, tonight he could sense something wrong.  The horses
were upset at something; he could hear their nervous whinnies from below
through the gaps between the boards in the wooden floors.  His room was one of
several in the top floor of the stone stables at one edge of the sky citadel;
the floor below housed the storage rooms and hay loft; and the main floor below
that the stables themselves.  He had thought he had heard quiet voices from the
floor below just a few minutes ago. 

He had climbed from his bed, and dressed quietly in the
breeches and shirt of his uniform – it was still cold out at night – before
proceeding along the hall to the winding stairs down.  Now he was edging
towards the storage room at the far end of the hallway, from where he could now
hear quiet voices.  He stopped by the edge of the door, and listened as quietly
as possible.

“Where are they?” demanded a harsh voice in a whisper.

“They are locked away here in this locker,” spoke a voice
Ravan recognized as the head groom, Vargas.  He could hear a key scrape in a
metal lock.  “The harnesses are here, but the head Dar'Shilaar himself removes
the stones at the end of each training session.”

“Very practical, but it is of no concern.  The harnesses
will be adequate for my needs,” was the quiet answer.  Ravan felt a shiver run
up his spine; the words made him feel as if a snake was winding its way up his
shirt.

“Here are the six you requested, Mi’lord.” Ravan had never
heard Vargas defer to anyone like he was doing to this man.  “They will be
missed in the morning, so if I could get my payment now, it would be mighty
kind of ya.”

“Certainly.”

Ravan heard more quiet words that didn’t make any sense,
then Vargas cry out, a cry that ended abruptly, then a large
thump
. 
Ravan peeked around the corner into the room and gasped audibly.  A tall, thin
man in dark robes was standing over Vargas’ still body, the six flight
harnesses sized to fit a man slung over one arm.  The tall man looked up from
Vargas at Ravan’s gasp, and met Ravan’s eyes.  Ravan could see some sort of
metal band holding a magestone to the man’s forehead.  There appeared to be
blood painted on the man’s face also.

“
Vortu!
” the man spat at Ravan, pointing fingers at
him.  The magestone on the man’s forehead flared brightly and many dark,
shadowy spikes drove Ravan into the wall across the hallway.  His muscles all
locked up briefly, and then went limp, as his vision began to fade to black. 
“One more task before I go,” he heard the man whisper to himself before Ravan
slid into oblivion.

There are many experiences in life that we get to choose how
they affect us; they can best be forgotten, they can break us, or they can
forge us into something stronger.

Again I mention
Choice
.  The days in the dungeons of
the Imperial Sky Citadel, being tortured daily, were among the worst in my
life.  I felt anger; rage even, that those acts could be perpetrated upon my
body and mind.  I felt despair that I would never escape, or would die there as
so many before me.  So many emotions wound through me during that week that I
thought my mind would break.  Of all the emotions that were presented by my
desperate mind, the one I
Chose
to cling to was the one most elusive:
steely resolve.

My
Choice
was to come out stronger, should I survive, a
blade honed by the fires that did not consume it.  An unfeeling weapon with
only one use – vengeance.  That being said, sometimes other people’s Choices
can override even our best intentions...

Journal of Hoyle Dardanel

The 27
^th
of Jarn,

In the year 89 IR (Imperial Rule)

Hoyle awoke to darkness.  And pain.  All his muscles ached
and many new scars crossed his body.  His clothes now were in blood-crusted
tatters.  But he was alive.  The only new development was that they had decided
that after the last indeterminate number of days, that there was no point in
chaining him to the floor.  In fact, he had full run of the entire cell; one
span by one span by one span high.  Actually the cell was two or three
handspans short in each direction.  He was only able to lay flat on the cold
stone floor if he went corner to corner, and found that if he turned the wrong
way, the bolt linking his former chains to the floor would dig into his lower
back.

They still left Brows chained though.  Although he had
stopped growling several days ago, Hoyle guessed that Brows was as tired and
sore as he felt.  That is, when they brought light to collect whomever they
were going to question again.  Hoyle had tried making friends with the small veklian
who came to feed them about twice a day, but the only thing he had gotten from
the creature was his name – Sathran.  So every time since that day, he had
greeted the creature by name and thanked him for his meal, as disgusting as it
usually was.

Today seemed different though, for some reason he had an
uneasy feeling.  He had heard noises from the guardroom at the end of the
hallway, loud shouting that went on for a little while, and then nothing for
some time.  One of the other prisoners had screamed out a while back, but was
cut off abruptly.  That prisoner's constant moaning had never resumed.

He heard the door open at the end of the hallway, and quiet,
shuffling footsteps come down the hallway.  A small glow preceded the small veklian,
a small stone he carried cast minimal light, but enough for the reptile-like
creature to apparently see.  Sathran stopped across the hallway, opened the
cell holding Brows, and gathered up and dumped his chamber pot into the bucket
he carried.  As always, Brows lunged for the veklian, even if it was a
half-hearted effort at this point, his chains bringing him up short.  For the
most part Sathran ignored the larger man, which enraged him even more.  Sathran
closed and locked his cell, and turned to gather Hoyle’s pot.

“Good morning Sathran!” he said with as much cheerfulness as
he could muster, not expecting a reply.  The creature looked at him briefly as
he unlocked his cell door.  Hoyle handed him the chamber pot carefully, and
then sat back against the wall.

A loud commotion at the end of the hall preceded several
large soldiers coming down the hallway, apparently to collect one of them. 
Robart “Slowkiller” followed behind them.  The torches they carried brightened
the hallway considerably, stinging Hoyle’s eyes.  One soldier pushed Sathran
back into Hoyle’s open cell as the group stopped between the two cells.  Two
soldiers squeezed into the other small cell, one unlocking Brows from the
floor, the other with his sword out.

“Time to go, you ugly brute!” Robart ordered.  He looked at
Hoyle from the corner of his eye.  “He won’t be coming back, so did you want to
say your goodbyes?” he said sarcastically.  Hoyle noted a dangerous look in
Brows’ eye, but didn’t have time to register it before the commotion broke out.

Black spikes of shadow flew through the air from the hallway
leading to the deeper cells to Hoyle’s right and bit into the soldiers.  Two
soldiers collapsed in pain, writhing on the floor from the pain of multiple
shadow spikes.  One spike hit the guard with his sword out in the shoulder,
causing his numb hand to drop the sword.  The last spike hit Robart in the
chest, causing him to grunt in pain, but he remained on his feet and turned to
face down the hallway toward the unknown assailant.  Hoyle noted the large man
touch his ear, which held Hoyle’s firebird earring the large man had taken from
him a few sessions ago.  He looked at Hoyle briefly as he drew his sword and
threw his torch down the hallway. 

Hoyle saw the fourth soldier wrestling with Brows in the
small cell that he had resided in for the last several days.  Even from his
knees, Brows had managed to get the chain linking his hands around the soldier’s
neck.  With a mighty heave, Brows lifted the soldier as high as he could,
bashing the soldier’s head to the stone ceiling.  But it was the
crack
of the soldier’s neck that told Hoyle the guard was dead.  Brows dropped the
body unceremoniously to the ground, and untangled the chain from his neck.  He
grabbed the keys from where the soldier dropped them and began to unshackle his
limbs while looking at Hoyle with a wicked gleam in his eye.  Hoyle pulled
Sathran back into his cell, and pushed the door shut with his foot, hearing the
click
as it locked.  Brows smirked at him.  Hoyle shrugged.

In the meantime, the guard with the numb arm had picked up
his sword with his other hand and had started advancing down the hallway in
front of an angry Robart.  The two guards on the floor had stopped writhing. 
One had passed out – Hoyle could still see his chest moving, but the other had
rolled to his stomach and was trying without success to stand.

“Charge him you dundering oaf!” Robart shouted at the top of
his lungs, “Don’t let him cast–“ he began before a beam of blackness hit him in
the chest, and he staggered to his knees, and then finally fell onto his back
in front of Hoyle’s cell.  His eyes were open, but his body was unresponsive. 
Hoyle crawled over to the bars, reached through and pulled the earring free. 
He then retreated to the back of his cell and put the earring back where it
belonged – in his own ear.

Brows managed to move out of his cell, now growling again,
and kicked the soldier, who was still trying to rise, in the throat.  A choked
gurgle came from the man as he fell to his side.  Brows reached down and picked
up one of the discarded swords from the ground and slid it into the soldier’s
chest and twisted.  The soldier twitched for a few moments then went still. 
Brows slit the throat of the unconscious soldier casually and then moved over
to the prone Robart with a wicked expression as he slowly slid the sword into
and through the torturer’s thigh.

“We don’t have time for this,” whispered the other assailant
as he revealed himself to be the man Hoyle only knew by the name he had given
him - Whisper.  He glanced in at Hoyle and Sathran, the flickering shadows cast
by the torch down the hallway making his face seem to dance.  He was carrying
some sort of leather harnesses over one shoulder.

Brows got up and walked down the hallway to Hoyle’s left. 
He heard the hallway door to the guardroom close with a quiet thud.  Brows
returned with a wicked gleam in his eye.  That seemed to be his standard
expression.  He reached down and pulled the sword from Robart’s leg.  Hoyle saw
open eyes register the pain, and tear up as Brows drove the sword into the
thigh of his other leg, scraping the stone beneath.

Whisper turned and gestured at Hoyle and Sathran, and Hoyle
knew what was coming, so he pulled Sathran towards him, shielding the veklian
from the half-dozen shadow spikes that drove into Hoyle’s back.  His muscles
burned and seized causing him to cry out before he dropped to the floor,
immobile.  His earring burned white hot in his ear as it absorbed some of the
magic, some of its capacity spent on the magic that hit Robart.

Brows grabbed the bars of Hoyle’s cell and shook it, trying
to shake it open.

“We don’t have time for this,” Whisper again chastised
quietly, and began casting again.  A large, swirling circle of shadowy clouds
evolved into being on the wall beside Brows' cell.  It was thin, like a piece
of dark fabric, like a painting on the wall, but it had incredible depth
swirling like a maelstrom over the ocean.

Brows growled at the situation, and picked up another sword
off the floor, leaving the one in Robart’s thigh.  He turned and stepped into
the shadow portal with one last glare back at Hoyle, disappearing into the
darkness.

Whisper stepped to the portal and paused, the magestone on
his forehead glowing wildly.  He looked into Hoyle’s eyes and stated in his
quiet voice, “Pray we do not meet again, for if we do, you will not survive a
third time.”  With that he stepped into the portal and it collapsed behind him.

---o---

It was a long time before Hoyle could move fully.  He had
listened to Robart whimper slightly every once and a while as he tried to
move.  All he had been able to do was pull the sword out of his leg, and pull
himself up to a seated position against the wall beside Hoyle’s cell.

In the meantime Sathran had helped Hoyle by massaging his
legs and arms with his three clawed paws – hands – whatever.  Hoyle was glad to
have the pins and needles finally gone.

“Why you protect me?” Sathran asked quietly so Robart could
not overhear.

“Don’t know” he said as quietly.  He thought about it for a
minute as Sathran waited.  “I guess I thought that you shouldn’t suffer for my
actions.”

“Not understand,” Sathran replied, “but happy that you save
my life.”  He stood easily in the small cell, and moved to the cell door and
opened it with his key.  He gestured to Hoyle to follow.

Hoyle moved from the cell, and stood for the first time in
hours, though it felt like days, as much as his back protested.  Robart looked
up at him, dark eyes in a pale face.  Hoyle looked down at all the blood
pooling around his torturer’s legs.  He tore two strips from his own bloodied
rags, the irony causing him a small smile.  He wrapped one strip around each of
the large man’s legs, tying it more tightly than necessary, eliciting a groan
each time.

“Veklian, you will regret letting this man go,” Robart said
weakly.

“Life for life,” the small creature replied.  “Code you
remember.”  He gestured at the bandage strips Hoyle had tied around the man’s
legs, preventing more bleeding.  “I send help.”

Hoyle looked behind him, towards the direction the attack
came from and saw the body of the fourth soldier, smoke rising from his mouth
and burned out eye sockets.  The torch was just about spent, flickering weakly
a few feet from where the body lay.  He could not see another way in; the
hallway ended a good distance away at a blank stone wall.  He wondered if
Whisper had used one of those shadowy portals to get here.

“Enjoy the darkness a while brute,” Hoyle stated flatly as
he grabbed the nearest of the two torches and a sword from the floor and
followed Sathran from the dungeon, not looking back once.

---o---

Hoyle looked at the small creature who had rescued him from
his cell as he pulled his boots on over his sore feet.  Although his clothes
were ruined beyond measure, they had found some boots and a cloak in a locked
trunk in a storage room located next to the guardroom.  Even without his tools,
he had improvised and managed to break into the wooden box.  He had smashed the
lock with a large stone.  Not very subtle, but he was in a hurry.

Once Sathran had helped him collect some clothing, he led
Hoyle through a series of passageways, hallways and corridors in the underbelly
of the Sky Citadel.  They met another veklian a few minutes into their journey
and Sathran stopped and whispered quickly in his native language to the other. 
The other one left on whatever errand had been discussed.  About twenty minutes
after they had fled the dungeon, alarms began to ring throughout the complex. 
They were loud enough they could feel the vibrations this deep under the main
ground level.  Once in a while, they would even get close enough to the surface
to hear the alarm bells directly.  Sathran finally led him through the veklian
slave quarters, where many large, black eyes followed his movements.  He had to
walk hunched over, as the ceilings in this area were built for creatures of a
similar height to the veklians.  Sathran gestured for him to enter a small
storage room, filled with a few crates and barrels.  Hoyle could smell dried
fish, and what he thought must be moldy potatoes.

Sathran pushed aside a crate to reveal a small cubby, smaller
than the cell he just escaped from.  “Hide here, back soon.” Sathran directed.

“No way!  I am not going into that.  It’s smaller than my
cell was!” Hoyle did not fear a lot of things, but his body was not in any shape
to fold itself back into that kind of space.  Sathran looked perturbed, which
surprised him that he was able to read that emotion from the creature's face. 
“Tell you what; I will stay in this room.  If I hear any soldiers coming I
will, at that time, crawl into that hole and pull the crate in front of the
hole.”  That seemed to satisfy the creature, who nodded his head, turned and
left the room.

That was over an hour ago, and now he was back.  He had
collected new clothing of about the correct size, including a thin leather
jacket, two linen shirts, a pair of wool pants, and a pair of wool socks.  The
wool itched fiercely on his scratched feet and scarred legs, but the pants and
socks were warm.  He hadn’t realized how used to the cold he had gotten until
he felt the warmth of being fully dressed and not sitting on stone.  He pulled
his second boot on, still looking at Sathran.

“Well?” Hoyle finally asked, his patience ended.

“Yes?” Sathran tilted his head to one side.

“What is happening?  Are they looking for me?” he said
slightly impatient, or more probably frantic, he wasn’t quite sure.

“Many things.  Second attack at stable.  Priestess saved big
man with hurt legs, but he sleep.  Another hurt, he also sleep.  Many killed. 
None looking here, for you.” Sathran said.  It was the most words Hoyle had
heard from the creature - ever.

“Thank you.” Hoyle graciously offered.  So there was another
attack on the sky citadel tonight – he had determined the fact that it was
night through the one window they had passed in their escape. 
Were the
attacks related?
 
Sathran had said the other attack occurred at the
stable.  Why did the sky citadel need a stable?  What was Whisper carrying?
 
They looked like harnesses to Hoyle, but he had little experience with horses,
so they could have been anything.  It didn’t really matter, this didn’t affect
him other than the fact he was still owed a great deal of gold.  But he had his
life, as much as they tried to take that from him too.  He was starting to get
very angry at Brows and Whisper.