The Flute Keeper's Promise (The Flute Keeper Saga) (34 page)

“Of course not,” Commander Larue
said. “My only goal was to get rid of that stone. I hit it with everything I
had all at once; fire, ice, lightening, winds. I felt all the power leaving me
again and I understood the problem in their research. The power granted by the
stone does not last very long. Even so, there was enough material there to last
anybody for years. I didn’t want it falling into the wrong hands so I kept
blasting it until I ran myself dry.”

Valory pressed so close to the
bench that she was practically in the commander’s lap. “What happened next?”

“It shattered,” Commander Larue
said. “There was some kind of energy burst. It blew a hole in the prison. Luckily
I was thrown clear into a nearby river. When I came to, I found that little
stone lying on the riverbank. I could barely walk, so I brought it with me.
I’ve been draining it, little by little, so that I could live long enough to
tell Lord Finbarr. It is a great relief that you found me. I know you can
deliver my findings to him.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said.
“We’ll find him together.”

Commander Larue shook his head.
“No. Why do you think I’ve been laid up in this town so long? Neither the stone
nor I have much left in us. You’re strong, though. You’ll make it.”

Hot mist clouded my eyes. Valory
and Trapper Toussant backed away and bowed their heads respectfully.

I thought of the first time I’d
seen the commander’s craggy face glaring down at me. He’d been in full uniform
then with his cloak of Ivywild’s regal purple. I’d been scared of him and
rightly so. He had radiated power. All of that was gone now.

“I’m not that strong!” I exclaimed.
“I’ll never be as strong as you! We need you. Ivywild needs you! You have to
come with me!”

Commander Larue’s arms trembled. He
sagged against the wall. “I’ve never taken orders from a kid and I’m not going
to start now. Just remember everything I’ve said. Tell Lord Finbarr about Helm
Bogvogny. The duke, the Seelie Court and the clergy are all in it together and
they must be stopped.”

A tear splashed down my cheek. “Tell
him yourself!”

Upstairs the swinging doors banged
open. The whole building rattled as something heavy stomped towards the bar. 
We heard gasps and screams from the customers.

Valory let out a squeak and
whispered frightfully, “Emma, you know that thing I that I said smelled like
death? I think that’s it.” She pointed at the ceiling.

“I told you we’d be back!” said the
same guard as before.

“Get that abomination out of here!”
Natty shouted.

We heard more stomping. All of a
sudden a metal foot smashed through one of the rotted floorboards. It drew back
up with the mechanical whining of gears. Through the hole it made, we caught a
glimpse of a grotesque Goblin form fused with metal parts.

I gasped. “Not here!”

“What is that thing?” Valory asked.

“The red capes call them ‘reclaimed
soldiers,” Trapper Toussant said. “They took some of those things after the
attack at Mag Mell and re-jiggered them to work for the duke.”

Fury welled up in me, filling my
mouth with a taste like bitter acid. I spat on the floor. “I don’t care what
they call it. That’s a mechaman! It was built by a demon!”

We heard the duke’s man threatening
Natty. His mechanical partner had become still.

I jumped to my feet. “We have to do
something!”

Valory grabbed my pants leg. “You
said not to draw any attention! We can’t go barging up there! Natty will just
have to pay, that’s all!”

“It’s not about that!” I said.
“They’re terrorizing this town! Somebody has to put a stop to it or it will
just keep getting worse!’

“Emma—” Valory tried to argue.

“I’m going!” I said, heading for
the ladder.

“Emma!”

This time is was Commander Larue
who spoke. His yellow eyes blazed out of his ashen face. I stopped immediately.

He sucked in a ragged breath. “This
isn’t your fight. Remember what I said? You must find Lord Finbarr.”

I ducked my head and said solemnly,
“I know, Commander, but—”

“But nothing,” he said. He held the
wrapped stone in his hands. “Let me handle this. I’m going out anyways. I might
as well go out with a bang.”

I knew what he was going to do.
Every bit of wanted to stop him, but I wouldn’t. Commander Frayne Larue
deserved his honor.

He unwrapped the stone slowly,
reverently, for the last time. His bare palm closed around it. Blood rushed
into his face, restoring a touch of youth. His sagging skin became taut with
lean muscle.

He stood up. The stone fell from
his hands. It was black, cold and empty. The last of its magic flowed through
Commander Larue in a visible stream of light. He glowed with it. Hard resolve
showed in the lines of his face.

He wore no regal purple uniform. No
diamond source crystal hung around his neck, but he was the man I’d come to fear
and respect. I wished so much that his family could see him. Wouldn’t his
brother, Jules, be proud? Wouldn’t Alice and Harriet stare in awe and swear to
be just like him one day? They’d know. I swore then and there on my own life
that I’d find them and tell them about their heroic uncle.

Valory and Trapper Toussant
trembled as Commander Larue walked by. Valory’s wings drew up rigidly at the
field of energy surrounding him. I stepped out of his way and gave him a salute.

“At ease,” Commander Larue said. “You
stay out of the way until the mess is cleared up.”

I lifted my chin and tried with all
my might not to cry. “Are there any other messages you want me to deliver?”

“Yes,” Commander Larue said. “If
you see Chloe, tell her I apologize that I won’t be able to serve under her. It
was my life’s greatest achievement to serve her father. And tell that no-good
nephew of mine that I don’t mind if he tinkers with gadgets so long as he does
it to crush the duke and his whole rotten regime.”

“Yes, Sir,” I said.

He climbed the ladder. Valory, Trapper
Toussant and I climbed up quietly after him and held the trapdoor open just a
sliver so that we could watch.

The duke’s man was shaking a
handful of furs at Natty. “What’s this rubbish? Where are the gems, woman? You
know we only take real currency!”

The mechaman stretched a metal arm
over the bar towards Natty’s face. Natty quivered and pressed as far away from
it as she could.

“That’s all the currency I got
right now!” she said. “In this season people barter furs, not gems.”

The guard threw the furs at her
with a vicious sneer. Then he snapped his fingers and barked an order at the
mechaman. “Show this wench what happens when she disobeys a royal guard!”

The mechaman lunged over the bar.
At the same instant, Commander Larue stepped out of the corner booth. In one
lightning flash that lit up the inside of the bar like ten sunrises, he knocked
the mechaman out. All the skin on its metal frame sizzled and then turned
black. The monster lay lifeless at the guard’s feet.

“What the blazes?”

The words had barely left the
guard’s mouth when Commander Larue shot deadly swords of ice at him. The guard
gurgled, choked and fell in a bloody heap next to the mechaman.

Natty ducked behind the bar. The
rest of the customers pressed against one wall and stared at Commander Larue
with mixed looks of fear and amazement.

The swinging doors banged open and
the guard who’d questioned us earlier entered the bar. Two more red capes came
with him. They spotted their fallen comrade and let out cries of anger.

“Which one of you filthy,
mud-eating hicks is responsible for this?” one of them shouted.

“That would be me,” Commander Larue
said. He raised his hands and another flash of lightning felled all three men
at once.

“He’s incredible,” Valory said with
a gasp. “Almyra told me about magic, but I never knew it was like this.”

Three more guards burst into the
bar. They came armed with meager magic of their own. Weak jets of flame flew
towards Commander Larue. The aura of power around him grew even brighter and
denser, blossoming into the biggest shimmering Fay wings I had ever seen.

The wings lifted Commander Larue
above his attackers. Natty’s customers made sounds of awe. Nothing this
exciting ever happened in Feegman’s Boot.

The three red capes revaluated
their options and made a run for it. Commander Larue cast a vapor of ice at the
doors, freezing them shut. The red capes smacked into them and fell to the
floor. They scrambled to get away, but Commander Larue finished them off one by
one. It took a barrage of icicles and two balls of lightning to rid Feegman’s
Boot the of the duke’s men.

The bar patrons burst into applause.
Natty held a hand to her forehead and looked as though she might faint. The bodies
of seven red capes littered her pub. It was not going to be an easy clean up.

Commander Larue’s wings flickered.
Though the others cheered and clapped, I saw what was happening to him. With
each passing second his skin grew whiter. The hairs on his head withered and
fell out. The hollows of his cheeks sank in. He was drying up, turning to a skeleton
as all the magic left him in the form of starry wings. His body became a
deadweight. I could almost pinpoint the exact second when all that remained of
Commander Larue blinked out. In one instant, his yellow eyes still glowed in
his skeletal face; in the next, their light vanished. The wings pulsed a final
time with enough energy to fill the room with a blinding flash and then they
disappeared. The commander’s body fell woodenly to the floor.

 A ring of silent faces surrounded
him. The events of the past few minutes had rendered even the drunkest patrons
stone cold sober. For what seemed like a long time, they just stared at the
body. Under the trapdoor I squeezed my eyes shut and buried my face in Valory’s
shoulder.

Commander Larue had gone out fighting
the way he wanted. Now I had a job to do and I couldn’t let him down.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The sun shone much too merrily for
my mood the next morning. I stood before a fresh mound of earth. The modest
grave was surrounded by stakes with upturned boots on their tops. It was no
majestic pillar in the royal graveyard of Mag Mell. Under different
circumstances, Commander Larue would have been buried near Ivywild’s most
esteemed nobility.

“Seriously, what’s with the boots?”
I asked Valory.

Valory shrugged. “I don’t know. I
reckon it’s a sign of respect. All those folks seemed awful sad to bury him.”

“
Here your path in this world
ends, so I bestow upon you my leathers that you may have an easy journey into
the next
,’” said Trapper Toussant.

I looked up in surprise. I had not
noticed him standing nearby.

“It’s an old country prayer,” he
said. “That’s why we give up our boots for the departed. Looks like this fine
gentleman has twenty pair. That’s the most I’ve ever seen.”

“Hey, what’s all that you’ve got?”
Valory asked. She pointed to a large pack and a bundle of supplies next to
Trapper Toussant.

“I’m going up into the mountains,”
he said. “Most folks are. We’re emptying the town. That way, when the duke
sends men to come looking for his missing guards, we can lay an ambush and make
the fight a bit more in our favor.”

“That’s stickin’ it to em!” Valory
said, slapping Trapper Toussant on the back. He nearly fell over.

Natty walked by along with five
little Brownie children. They each carried rucksacks full of supplies.

“Going back to the old homestead?”
Trapper Toussant asked her.

“Yes,” Natty said. “My Pa said he’d
make room for us.” She turned and frowned at two of her children who were
shoving each other. “Straighten up you two!”

The Brownies moved on. I noticed
shop owners nailing their windows shut. Other families filed past on the road
out of town.

“Where will you go?” Trapper
Toussant asked.

Valory and I looked at each other.

“We have to find Lord Finbarr,” I
said. “Unfortunately the trail has run cold and we have no idea where to look.
Are you sure a Fay man with glasses never came through here?”

Trapper Toussant scratched his
whiskers. “Not that I can recall. There was something I was gonna tell you, but
I forgot until now. See, there’s rumors of a resistance group up north. I
thought when you two came walking into town with all those furs that maybe you
was a part of it and you was coming to barter for supplies. That’s why I took
you under Natty’s bar to begin with. I’ve had no dealings with the resistance
myself, but I know that back in the fall some Fay strangers came into town and
bought up lots of provisions, like they were supplying a whole group of people,
see? Natty and some of my other buddies helped them out with discounts.”

A flutter of hope filled my chest.
“Really? When was the last time those Fay were here? Are they due back soon?”

“Don’t count on it,” Trapper
Toussant said. “They’ve stayed away since the duke’s men took over.”

The hope fizzled out. I kicked a
clod of dirt and sent it skittering down the road.

“Chin up,” Valory said. “We don’t
have to wait around. We’ll find these resistance folks ourselves. We know
they’re somewhere in the north, right?”

I grimaced. “Valory,
north
could mean hundreds of places. There are like, mountains and a huge forest and…I
dunno, probably trolls and dragons and stuff.”

She grinned. Her wings twitched in
excitement. “Don’t be such a prickly prune. You’re with the best tracker in
these parts! All I need is something that one of the resistance folks bartered
and a map!”