Tears of War (14 page)

She shrank away as he walked through the doorway. She started to follow behind, but he stopped and glared at her. “I don’t need an escort. Go. Find something useful to do with yourself.”

Her face paled as she bobbed a quick curtsy and fled in the opposite direction. He growled low in his throat and stormed toward the main cavern. Damn Sadira and her infernal shadows. She enjoyed using them far too much. There was very little method behind her madness. No temperance in her. She loved causing pain just for the sake of causing it. There was nothing wrong with indulging occasionally, and using it when the situation called for i;t however, Sadira overdid it.

When he entered the main cavern, he found Sadira sitting on one of the long, built-in benches that ran along the walls. Plush cushions ensured that the cool stone they were made of wasn’t noticed when sat upon. Sadira’s pet sisters knelt at her feet.

“Why did you send someone to interrupt me at this late hour? What do you possibly have to say that is important?”

Sadira sneered at him. “I see you didn’t tell her to get lost. Such a softie, Kovan. I’m sure whatever you were doing was of the utmost importance,” her tone said just the opposite, “but I have need of you.”

His eyes narrowed. “What can you possibly need, Sadira?”

“I need help with the prisoner.” Frustrated anger crossed her face. “My shadows continue to fail against him.”

Kovan shook his head. “He is, or rather was, a Border Guard. Did you expect him to break easily? They’ve been hardened against pain. It’s part of their training. I think you would have learned something from the last time you confronted one.”

He smirked at the flash of hatred in her eyes. He loved to taunt her with that. She had thought she was so powerful with her shadows until the mate of the rider they captured didn’t so much as flinch when she used them on him. Not only did he not flinch, he’d attacked right back. That had shaken the dark haired beauty some.

Her eyes narrowed. “Perhaps my shadows don’t work as well as I would like them to against certain types of people. This is why I asked you to work your magic on him. We need answers and he remains silent.” She paused for a moment and leveled a considering look at him. “That is, of course, if you can bring yourself to do it.”

He knew that comment was coming, but it still irritated him. She’d never let him forget that he’d been unable to take part in the torture of the rider they’d captured over a year and a half ago. Those violet eyes—his mother’s eyes had been the same. He couldn’t bring himself to look into those eyes as he caused the prisoner pain. Sadira found his inability to inflict pain and suffering on women amusing.

“Fine,” he snapped. “I will do what you cannot.”

“In the meantime, I have sent Dreth to find more magic users with the right temperament.”

He nodded. “Yes, we need more riders for the eggs.”

“We need them for more than that. During that battle, the Guardians had more magic users than dragons with them. We shouldn’t restrict our training to only those who can hatch eggs. We need to build our own army of mages to fight.”

Kovan shook his head. “According to Dreth, the only reason they do that is because a rider must be called by a draclet before they can hatch an egg. We have no such constraints. We have no need of mages.”

Sadira rolled her eyes. “Don’t be a fool, Kovan. There will be plenty who think as we do, but don’t want to risk death if they are unable to fully hatch a black egg. We should offer them a haven. To do otherwise would be a waste of talent and opportunity.”

“Fine, do what you wish with that.”

Before she could say another word, he walked away. If only he could just kill her. But her hair. Her damn hair. Whenever he saw it, he saw another woman with that color of hair. His mother. What had his mother done to cripple him so? He had loved his mother. But even years after her death, his love for her haunted him, and he despised her for it—and himself.

He set the confusing emotions aside and descended the steps into the dungeon. Torches lit the curving stairs, although he hardly needed them with his enhanced vision. At the bottom, three more torches burned in brackets across from a row of cells. Cells that now had caps welded onto the ends of every hinge pin thanks to one of the new Shadow Riders whose magic did things with metal.

The torches cast flickering light across the man chained to the wall in the second cell. A Calladaran Border Guard. Light gray eyes stared at Kovan through the bars from under a mat of tangled hair. Festering, blistered skin covered the man’s arms and bare chest, evidence of Sadira’s shadows.

The Border Guard squinted up at him. “You here to try your hand at torture?”

“I’m not here to
try
anything.” Kovan smiled slightly as he unlocked the cell. “Calladar was less than welcoming when we approached them. It took several deaths to put them in their place. Since we cannot maintain a constant presence there, we need to know what kind of resistance they plan, what kind of defenses have been put in place, and whether you have found any allies. You were high-ranking enough, you will know.” He hung the keys back on their hook and grabbed the simple wooden chair from where it stood next to the wall, before pushing past the iron barred door.

The man’s eyes narrowed as Kovan stepped into the cell and was no longer backlit by the torches. “You are Calladaran. How can you do this? How can you betray Calladar this way?”

Kovan sat the chair down and straddled it, his arms resting on the chair’s back. “My father was the interrogator in Calladar for many years. He was very good at his job, never killing any of those he put to the question and always getting a confession. He enjoyed the work, a little too much. I knew every pressure point on the human body by the time I was six. I learned more as his son than his apprentice did working with him. I use the healing element of magic, it makes getting inside the body much easier, it makes what I do more intense. I have passed beyond what my father could do.”

He leaned forward until his chest rested against the chair back and looked the man in the eye. “I tell you this so you understand what you are facing. So you know you will not be facing Sadira’s shadows again. To give you a chance to give the information freely. You will not die until I am ready for you to and you will suffer greatly at my hands. I can make your death quick and relatively painless, or I can draw it out and when the times comes, kill you very slowly. I will give you a moment to think it over if you like, but know that one way or another, I will get the information that I want.”

“There is nothing for me to think about. I am not you. I will not betray Calladar.”

Kovan settled back until only his arms were on the chair back again. “It will be as you wish.”

Power built within Kovan and he reached for the first pressure point. He would move on to other, more painful nerve centers as the torture escalated. Sweat broke out on the man’s brow but his face remained impassive. Kovan kept the original thread of power and added to it, reaching for another pressure point, doubling the pain and working the weaves to intensify it. Though the man’s face remained expressionless, his breathing hitched and the sweat rolled down the side of his face.

Kovan worked a third a weave and reached out to another bundle of nerves. The man’s muscles quivered and he drew a shuddering breath. He wove a fourth thread and applied it. The first low moan broke past the man’s lips but still he worked to hold against the pain. The moan showed they were getting somewhere, but it was going to be a long night.

Kovan walked slowly back to his quarters. The halls of the Kormai were silent, even the servants were asleep at this late hour. Quillan gazed down at him as he passed through the main cavern. He barely glanced at the dragon. Using magic for such an extended period and in such a controlled manner left him exhausted.

He reached his quarters, ignored the map still spread across the table, and went directly to bed. He found little relief in the soft bedding or in the chance to close his eyes. The Border Guard was dead after divulging everything he knew, which was precious little. Calladar was scrambling to come up with a defense against the dragons. They had no allies yet except maybe Shadereen. The alliances between nations weren’t what concerned them. Rather, it was contact with the Guardian dragons from Galdrilene or their riders.

The torture and killing of the Border Guard wasn’t what weighed on his mind. Those things were necessary. It was what would come after he closed his eyes that stole the relief he should have found in sleep. The dreams that always haunted his slumber after such a task. The dreams that never left him alone.

Despite his fatigue, he fought his heavy eyelids, reluctant to slide into the subconscious realm of dreams and nightmares. The bed, soft and warm, hugged his body. His eyes closed, giving to the weight of exhaustion.

The dream started almost immediately. He watched, a part of the dream and yet separate as if he were a spirit, hovering unseen as the door shut behind his father. His mother slid the heavy locking bar into place. She told his father that she did it out of fear of being alone in the house while he was gone fulfilling his duties as interrogator. But Kovan knew better. The locking bar gave his mother a few precious moments in case he should come home early. Time enough to protect herself and her son.

Down the hall, a young Kovan opened his bedroom door and peeked out. His mother, her smile radiant and her violet eyes alive now that his father was gone, motioned him forward. He ran down the hall to her and she wrapped him in a tight hug. “Would you like to help me make us some breakfast?”

The young Kovan nodded and they headed to the kitchen. She laughed as she cooked, then she played with him in the enclosed courtyard behind the house, the only place he was allowed to play. His father had forbidden him from playing with other children, insisting they would poison his mind. They never had company and his mother never left the house unless his father accompanied her. Kovan knew he had grandparents on his mother’s side, but he had never met them.

Before lunch, she carefully slid one of the books from the shelf. His father had made clear that neither of them were to touch his books, but his mother did anyway. She sat on the floor with him, reading to him and teaching him how to read for himself. Always they kept part of their attention on the door. His mother always seemed to know when his father was coming home early, but she still left the bar in place.

Thankfully, he rarely came home early and often worked extra days. His mother was a different person when he was gone. She danced, she sang, she let him help bake. Her smiles were beautiful, her love lavish. She was quick to hug and praise him.

The dream held a golden quality as images blurred from one into another. The warm sunshine in the courtyard as she held him up so he could reach the lower limbs of an overhanging tree. He loved climbing high into the branches and seeing the city. Although he never stayed long. Always there was a nagging fear that he would miss hearing the door and he would climb down to find his mother cowering and his father standing beneath the tree. He could have used the tree to escape. He could have run away, but he couldn’t leave his mother and she was too frightened to attempt it.

The golden dream drew to a close, shifting and darkening as it always did. The sun sank toward the western horizon and long shadows crawled across the ground. His mother’s smiles began to falter as anxiety tightened her eyes. She put together the evening meal in silence, her eyes flicking toward the door every few minutes.

Without needing to be told, Kovan gathered his few toys and hid them under the floorboards beneath his bed. He swept the floors and looked carefully for anything that might be out of place. Then he returned to the kitchen and helped clean things up as she cooked. The air thickened with palatable tension.

Soon, his father would return and something wouldn’t be right. Nothing was ever right, nothing ever good enough. Kovan couldn’t stand straight enough or he stood too straight; he couldn’t respond to questions quick enough or he responded too quick and was accused of trying to anticipate what his father was going to say. His mother changed from a beautiful rose glowing in the sun to a wilted, fading flower. Dinner was too cold or too hot. She had cooked too much food or not enough.

There was no pleasing his father because his father enjoyed what he did all day too much. He enjoyed inflicting pain and having power over someone. The home that always felt secure and warm after his father left, became cold and hostile upon his return.