The Flute Keeper's Promise (The Flute Keeper Saga) (57 page)

I felt nothing. Praying that I was
mistaken, I took her milky white wrist and squeezed it tight. There was no
thump beneath my fingertips.

“No, no, no!” I shouted. I squeezed
Wilhelmina’s shoulder. “Wake up!”

A group of malnourished-looking Fay
gathered nearby. They wouldn’t come close to the giant bird. Instead, they
watched fearfully from an alleyway.

“Are any of you a Channeler?” I
asked.

Nobody answered.

“Anybody?” I shouted. “This woman
is dying…she’s…”

Wilhelmina’s wrist fell heavy as a
stone from my hands. I shook with rage.

“Damn you!” I screamed at the
bridge.

I let Wilhelmina’s body slide
gently over Tuari’s wing to the ground. The scared citizens drew further away.
They cowered as Tuari flapped her wings to take off.

My rage propelled the bird upwards
with more speed than ever before. The bridge was chaotic. Spells flew right and
left, along with Slaugh weapons. Nuckelvee still hadn’t collapsed despite the
knife sticking into his neck. I arrived just in time to see him pull it out and
hurl it back at Lev.

I cast a small barrier to deflect
the knife. Lev never noticed. He was busy dodging comets of ice that Marcellus
was casting nonstop.

The judges were engorged with magic.
I cried out in fury for my helplessness and for the slain woman lying in the
street below.

 “So glad you came back, Flute
Keeper.”

I tugged Tuari around to face the
repulsive Judge Kesper. He wore a sinister smile as he walked across the bridge
towards me, through a wall of flame. The flames did not touch him. They bent to
his will, acting like a sort of barrier for him. 

“So much like your grandfather,”
Kesper said. “He just couldn’t leave well enough alone. It was bad enough for
him to steal the clergy secrets, but then he had to go and woo away the one
girl in Faylinn that he knew
I’d
been courting. In the end I suppose he
did me a favor, sweeping that floozy out of my life so I could focus on my role
as a judge, but one does tend to take those sorts of things personally.”

I hovered cautiously near the
bridge, just beyond the wall of flame. “What are you talking about?”

Kesper toyed with a ball of fire in
his hands. “Alberich and I were friends. I was the one who got him a spot as a
clergy trainee! How did he repay me? By running off to propagate his cursed
family line, that’s how! He had to be stopped.” 

“You twisted jerk!” I screamed. “He
wanted to destroy the flute, but you killed him before he could do it!”

“What silly fantasies!” Kesper
said. “Destroy the flute? Nonsense. He was trying to bring the Wren bloodline
back to its full power! We couldn’t let that happen. If only we’d known about
your father, our little scouring would have been complete—all tied up, no loose
ends. But perhaps
you
were meant to live. Now that you’ve come back, we
can sap that legendary power out of you. Maybe this is fate’s reward to us for
our good deeds.”

I couldn’t believe what I was
hearing. “Good deeds! You’re a corrupt psychopath!”

Kesper’s eyes flashed white. “I am
a judge of the Seelie Court! I am not subject to
your
trifling ideas of
right and wrong!”

“Are you still flappin’ your trap?”

I looked up to see Valory hovering
over Kesper’s head with her collapsible fishing pole. She swung out the line
and the barbed hook caught on the back of Kesper’s robe. Before Kesper could
comprehend what was happening, Valory yanked him off his feet and dangled him
over the side of the bridge.

“Ooh, looks like my line snagged on
a slimy old stump,” Valory said. “Guess I’ll have to cut it.” She flicked open
her scaling knife and sliced the line in two.

Kesper plummeted. I watched the
look of terror on his face as he realized what was happening. He cried out in
desperation. The air around him warped as his magic-bloated body attempted to
do the one thing that might save him. He couldn’t conjure his wings.

Valory wrinkled her nose. “Eeew.
That’s gonna leave a greasy spot on the cobblestones.”

I gave her a thumbs up. “I’ve said it
before and I’ll say it again: you’re the best fisherman I know.”

Valory smiled, but then her face
fell as she surveyed the street below. “Is Wilhelmina…?”

I nodded somberly.

A dangerous expression contorted
Valory’s face. All at once she went from jovial to enraged. Her black eyes swore
a thousand unspeakable things. With a roar, she took off for the other end of
the bridge where Nuckelvee was making a stand despite the wound in his neck.

The other Slaugh who were dodging Knuckle’s
attacks caught onto the reason for Valory’s fury. Abandoning all caution, they
descended upon the judge like a flock of carrion birds.

Lev alone dealt with Marcellus. The
old judge was conjuring ice comets with less frequency now. He looked a bit
deflated and his eyes didn’t glow so much. A spark of hope reanimated me.
Whatever this new power was, it had its limits. It couldn’t be used
indefinitely. Marcellus was running out of steam.

Lev must have realized it, too.  “Come
on, old man!” he goaded him. “Is that all you’ve got?”

“Stay back,” I warned him as Tuari
and I closed in on the judge.

Seeing a new threat, Marcellus
redoubled his efforts by casting multiple spells at me. I met the spells with
my own magic, manipulating my barrier so that Marcellus’s ice comets ricocheted
back towards him. Knocked unconscious by his own spell, he collapsed onto the
bridge.

The other Slaugh had finished with
Nuckelvee and tossed him off the bridge. With the three judges out of our way, we
regrouped. Many of the Slaugh were wounded, but they looked more charged up
than ever. I knew it was because of their fallen comrade. Noemi’s face flashed
through my mind. I felt guilty. After all, Wilhelmina had come along to help
protect me.

“Don’t,” Lev said to me in a low
voice. He was drenched in sweat and half of his weapons were missing from their
places in his belt. “There will be time to mourn later. Now we move forward.”

I swallowed hard. It was very
difficult to keep my voice from quavering. “Where do we go? I’ve seen no sign
of Chloe yet.”

Lev pointed to the glass spire atop
the central tower. Bursts of light flickered beneath it. The crystal on top of
the spire blinked wildly like a frantic beacon.

“Something is going on up there,”
Lev said.

I gulped. “That’s the throne room.
Let’s go.”

The Slaugh took up their places
around me and we began the ascent alongside the tower. Lev stayed in front.
Valory kept close to my right side, just beyond the reach of Tuari’s immense
wingspan. She had not yet recovered from her anger. There was no hint of a
smile on her lips and no warmth in her eyes.

The sound of thunder grew louder
the closer we got to the spire above the throne room. I then realized that the
thunder was coming
from
the throne room.

We reached the top of the spire.
Nothing was visible beneath the cataclysmic explosions of light. The crystal
was blinding up close. It hummed, resonating with some force that it was
drawing from the room below.

The Slaugh circled around the spire
and looked to Lev while Tuari and I hovered above the crystal. It was the
highest point in Ivywild. I couldn’t see beyond the boiling clouds, but I knew
we must be above Woodman’s Hall by now.

“I see no choice but to break
through,” Lev said.

There was no way to see what was
going on inside. I watched, trying to make sense of the blasts of lightning and
flashes of other magic. Then I noticed two focused points of light. One was
purple and one was green. They moved slowly and carefully, becoming larger as
they drew nearer to the spire. With a start, I realized what they were.

“Wings!” I shouted. 

The shapes took definite form on
the other side of the glass ceiling. Two people pounded on the glass, trying to
break through.

A great flood of relief washed over
me.
Chloe and Garland!
Tuari screamed a majestic call that could very well
have been the sound of my own joy and relief.

I flew in close to the glass. “Get
back!” I shouted.

Chloe looked up. When she saw Tuari,
her face lit up like a torch. Her purple wings grew ten times brighter.

“Come on Tuari,” I said. “You know
what to do.” I made myself as flat as I could against the bird’s back.

Tuari stretched her neck, extending
her hooked beak out in front of her like a massive arrowhead. With a screech,
she dove towards the glass.

Glittering shards exploded around
us as Tuari broke through. Some of the pieces were fine as dust. They whirled
away on the slipstream of Tuari’s wings. Fragments of the shattered glass clung
in her feathers and in my hair. Little beads of blood appeared on my arms, but
I didn’t care.

A purple light filled the hole we’d
made. Chloe flew through it, followed by Garland.

Chloe wore a loose-fitting
priestess robe with blue jeans underneath it. “EMMA!” she exclaimed as she
smothered me in a hug. Garland sat behind me and gave my shoulder a squeeze. Tuari
sagged under the added weight.

I pried Chloe loose. “What’s going
on down there?”

“Oh, Emma, it’s just terrible!
Bazzlejet is fighting the Duke of Briar and a lot of the clergy, and they’re
all pumped up with magic because the duke’s been sucking it out of innocent
people! There’s this lady called Kiros Rubedo caught in the middle of it all,
and they’re just throwing spells around like crazy and there’s nothing we could
do to help because we’ve got to destroy the crystal.”

It all came out so fast that I only
caught every third word.

“So…” I gazed down into the mayhem
below the shattered spire. “Bazzlejet’s still down there?”

Chloe nodded rapidly.

“And Kiros Rubedo?”

“Yes.”

“And what’s this about a crystal?”

Chloe pointed a shaking finger to
the beacon flashing behind me. “I think the crystals are keeping the castle
afloat. I’ve never seen them flash like that. The duke must have made Kiros use
her alchemy on them.”

“A likely conclusion,” Garland
said, rubbing his cracked glasses. “That’s why we need to destroy them. It
might bring this place down.”

Though I had been willing to
destroy Ivywild before, I wasn’t sure that bringing it crashing from the sky
was the greatest plan. For one thing, we were too close to Woodman’s Hall. For
another, there were still plenty of innocent people living on the castle
grounds.

Lev read my mind. “That’s too
risky,” he said.

“YOU!” Chloe exclaimed. She
squinted at him and then turned around, taking in the sight of my entourage. “What
are you doing here?”

Garland laughed nervously. “Chloe,
isn’t it obvious? They’re saving our skins.”

 “But Kiros and Bazzlejet still
need saving,” I said.

Lev gave Tuari a doubtful glance.
“You can’t fly that bird down there. It’s too big of a target.”

He was right, of course. I gave
Tuari’s head a little pat. “What can we do?”

“Let me go down there,” Valory
said. Her eyes were steely. “I’d love to bust me up some bad guys.”

A bolt of lightning shot out of the
shattered spire. Tuari bucked in surprise. The Slaugh cursed and backed away.

“Bazzlejet,” Chloe said. “He got a
dose of the stolen magic. He’s a little, um, overzealous.”

“He’s certainly able to defend
himself right now,” Garland said, “but I don’t know how much longer he can hold
out.”

Lev flew closer to me. “This is a
job for us Slaugh,” he said. “You take Chloe and Garland and get out of here.”

I knew he’d suggest such a thing,
but I had ideas of my own. “No way,” I said. “You’re not flying down into that
mess without some kind of protection.”

“I don’t need a barrier,” Lev said.

“They might want one,” I said,
gesturing to the other Slaugh.

“You have no wings,” Lev said, his
voice getting low and growly. I knew the tone well, but the expression in his
eyes wasn’t anger. It was fear.

“Then I’ll just have to borrow
yours,” I said.

Chloe rolled her eyes. “Some things
never change. Why must you two always argue? I’ll tell you right now,
I’m
not going anywhere. Garland and I are going to stay here and see if we can
manipulate the crystals somehow to control the castle.”

“We are?” Garland squeaked.

Chloe crossed her arms. “Damn right
we are.”

“Emma can borrow my wings,” Valory
said. She looked imploringly at Lev. “We’ll be your shield.”

It was clear that Lev didn’t want
to relent. I saw again the doubt in his posture and the flash of fear in his
eyes. Faced with Valory’s confidence and my stubbornness, however, he didn’t
have much of a choice.

“Stay close,” he said. He gave a
signal to the other Slaugh. They lined up behind me.

Chloe and Garland conjured their
wings again and hovered above Tuari. I stood up on the bird’s back so that Valory
could grab my arms.

“Be careful,” Chloe said, suddenly
watery-eyed. “It’s crazy down there, seriously. I didn’t think Garland and I
would make it out!”

 “You, too,” I said. It felt like a
stupid thing to say, considering the circumstances. I thought of Wilhelmina
again and my throat grew tight. “I mean, if it gets bad, just get out of here,
okay? Your mother is waiting below. They all are.” I turned to Garland. “I
swear, Finbarr, you’d better let Anouk know you’re okay. I don’t want to be the
one to tell her that you died up here, trying something stupid.”

“Duly noted, Miss Wren,” he said
with a thin smile.

That was it. There was nothing else
to say. “
You can go now,”
I whispered to Tuari. She disappeared into a shimmering
mist, bound back to the Twi-Realm, her soul’s resting place. I felt a strange
tug as the bird disappeared, almost as though a part of me was trying to leave,
too.
Is that where I belong, in the Twi-Realm?