Chasing Bloodlines (Book 4) (13 page)

“You’ve got t’ree more on t’eir way.”

They carried Gabriel down a slender hall with steel doors set every few yards, numbered at the top, until they found 128. The door squeaked when they opened it, revealing a small cell long enough to put a cot, and wide enough to take a few steps. They set him on his side on the cot. They took his cloak, belt, and searched for any kind of weapon. Satisfied, they left closing the door and latching it shut loudly behind them. He closed his eyes and focused on breathing in order to calm his rising panic. Trapped. He was trapped again, with no access to his Elements.

He listened carefully to sounds in the hall as he waited for feeling to return to his body. Scrape of boots, opening and closing of doors, but no sound from his companions.

After an hour his motor function returned, and he sat up to spit and wipe the blood off his face. The room had a chair in one corner, a single glowing bowl over the door, two buckets, one with water, and several blankets. Of any comforts, there were none.

He inspected the door for any fault, but it was solid. It had two smaller doors in it, one in the center and the other in the bottom, but they would not budge.

Color drained from his face, and adrenaline spiked his chest as Robyn’s summons suddenly pinged the golden band around his finger. He paced a tight circle, his hands in his hair, and fell into the cot. Minutes passed, and he waited for another summons, and sure enough it came. She needed him. After the third, another summons did not come again. Hopefully she would go through the hinge and ask after him.

He sat forward, head in his hands, and waited.

Chapter 15

“You cannot kill Prince Balien, it will heighten the tension in the palace and make it harder for you to finish your mission,” Maxine stated, her arms folded under her breasts. She wore an off-the-shoulder dress this evening, seated in Nolen’s small room in Kilkiny. “We discussed this already.”

“If I can slip poison into his…”

She cut him off with a hand. “We cannot discuss this here.” Seizing Void and his wrist, she took him to her mansion high in the Gray Mountains, depositing him in her bedchamber.

“Blessed stars, I could use a hot bath,” he said, marching to the washroom shedding clothes as he went. “Listen, Maxine. I could slip poison in his food as soon as Robyn is dead. He will have to be eliminated before I take the throne, regardless. If he marries and fathers a girl, she is next in line. Either way he will have to die.” He turned the taps over her massive circular tub. “I would prefer to bleed him. I could sneak into his bedchamber and wait to catch him off guard.”

She shook her head as he stepped into the tub. His face was healing well, leaving almost no vestige of scar though she could see it in the right light. “You need to focus on Robyn first.”

“He poisoned me for years, Maxine. I thought I was horribly ill, and you cannot imagine the discomfort. Now I discover he was probably laughing hysterically behind my back. He must pay.”

“Fine,” she sighed. “What would you do to him?”

“First I would sever his spine so he cannot walk, then flay him, or maybe the other way around, then cut his heart out.”

She grimaced. Nolen had a dark heart akin to none she had ever met. He enjoyed pain for no reason, and it alarmed her. “Do not kill the Prince.”

He slammed a fist on the water. “I certainly will!”

“No, you will do as I tell you!” she said in a tone he never heard. She did not tolerate belligerence and arguing against one of her orders. “You will kill Robyn,
then
Balien. Am I clear?”

He gave her a sour look, unused to being told no. “Very well.” He slipped beneath the rising water and rose, shaking the drops from his head. He had grown harder in his weeks away, unused to lifting heavy loads. It reminded her of the Head Mage’s tone cut frame, and she grinned at the thought. Nolen took it as an invitation. “Care to join me?”

She smiled in a cloy way. “No. Enjoy your bath.” She walked away. He would learn one of these days that she would not tolerate such dark speech in her home if he wanted anything from her.

Mikelle began to worry around noon, and by nightfall was beside herself. Gabriel had not returned, and no one had been brought over that day. She was not the only one to worry. The Council had already pulled five Class Six Mages, one in every Element, and taught them the sidestep-pattern.

“Do we go now?” Lewis asked as the remaining Council convened in the anteroom. “Night has already fallen, and the King will not grant a visit so late.”

“He will not grant one at all,” Shaun cut in. “I fear if t’ Head Mage is wit’in Anarma, he will have to break himself out.”

“Perhaps he was waylaid,” Penny suggested, “And nothing is wrong.” The door to Gabriel’s room suddenly opened, and Aisling stepped out. “Oh, blessed stars,” Penny breathed.

Aisling raised her brows. “Is everything well?”

“Is the Head Mage not with you?”

“No.”

“How did you get here?”

“Hinge ring. What happened to Gabriel?” Aisling cut in. “We tried to summon him this morning but suspected he was busy and would come when free.”

“He is missing in Tintagaelsing,” Mikelle replied. “Is there any way into that palace without touching the stones?”

Shaun leaned back and forth on his heels, “Find t’ strongest Earth Mage in t’ castle, and I’ll see what I can do, but not’in’ can be done until mornin’.”

Gabriel waited for hours, staring at the black stone ceiling until he heard steps in the hall. He heard many people walking that day, but one with a limp, judging by the way he scuffed a step, came more often than others. Someone had brought him a foul-looking stew and piece of hard bread, but Gabriel was too anxious to eat.

Incanted stones were complicated. To step on one meant the removal of all Elements, and he was surrounded by them. If he laid a pattern and stepped on an incanted stone, he would be able to hold the pattern. Remarkably, if he flew over the stones they would not affect him. He knew it was useless to try jumping and seizing his Elements, but he did regardless.

The scuffing footsteps stopped outside his cell, and the door unlatched open. He bolted to his feet and rushed the door, knocking the man in black to the ground. Gabriel almost made it past two more before he was swarmed with hands and fists. Someone cracked his head on the side of the wall, and sent him halfway to the ground. Four sets of hands pulled him to his feet and restrained him.

The man with the scuff looked him up and down and rested on his hair. “I t’ought all t’ brunets died off.”

“T’is one claims he’s from anot’er country.”

“Where t’ey grow t’em larger I suspect. Well, bring him down. We’ll test him out.”

Some pushed while others pulled, but Gabriel dug his heels in until they were forced to drag him down the hall into a room brightly lit with glow bowls.

The room was studded with rectangular metal boxes. Each connected with spiraling wires and cord, and in the center was a metal table stood vertically, about the size of a person. Gabriel saw each box wired to the table.

“New one?” a man asked as they dragged Gabriel to the table and pushed his back against the cold steel. The man shucked off Gabriel’s coat and set it on a peg as the guards wrestled his hands to his sides. Finally succeeding, they clamped a hand into a metal shackle.

The familiar old feeling of the Castrofax flushed with a vengeance, and he lashed out furiously with his free hand and legs. One man fell to the ground screaming, and another fell against a metal box with a bleeding face. The other two threw themselves against him and pulled with all their strength to force Gabriel into the table.

The men in black stepped in before more of their equipment could be disturbed, securing Gabriel’s other hand and legs in short order. Gabriel gasped on the table, half in exertion, half in terror, and blood bubbled to his throat. The table cranked, tipping him back until he was horizontal.

A man in black pulled the laces from his shirt and ripped it down the center, while another looped leather straps around it. Each strap had several metal circles on it that felt cold against his heated skin. Someone brought several slender needles attached to wires to the table and raised one to a silver disc.

The needle slid through the metal disks and pinched his flesh, driving deep into his chest. He grunted, but more at the barbarity than the discomfort. The man drove five more into him consisting of different lengths and hooked them to a box with switches and things Gabriel did not have names.

“Ready,” a man in black announced before standing beside him. “Lie still, it will be less painful.” He pulled a wooden dowel from his pocket and set it between Gabriel’s teeth. Gabriel cringed to think how many people had bitten it as well.

“Set it to seven, and we’ll see how he handles it.”

The lights dimmed a moment with an erratic hum, and a sharp pain shot through Gabriel’s chest down his back. He gasped as the pain beat with his heart until he felt the vertebrae seize. It rose slowly as the pain fizzled through him, numbing his legs as it climbed.

“Take it up to eight.”

The humming increased, and his back locked faster until his arms tingled.

“Off,” the man in black called, and the humming stopped. Gabriel’s tense body released into the table as he gasped, feeling sweat bead on his forehead.

“Very good. We can take it to nine tomorrow,” he said and tapped a red strip on a large black box.

They unstrapped the leather and removed the needles before unhinging the shackles and removing the wooden dowel. The entire table broke apart as two men stood on opposite ends and lifted Gabriel off. They carried him out of the room and deep into the darkness where few lights hung. His back ached in the familiar way a doldrums-pattern felt, sinking deep into his skin to stop motor function, but this time his limbs tingled numbly.

They took him to a faintly-lit room with another table in the center, and carefully rolled him onto his stomach. His head they placed between two bolsters, so he could not turn his neck. They left and closed the door behind them.

Gabriel lay there for several minutes mentally flogging himself for stepping foot in the palace. His Council would know something was wrong by now, and he feared they would come for him and share his fate.

The door unlatched, and he heard soft footsteps on the stone. Someone stood at his head. He felt hands on his back.

“T’ey did a number on you,” a faint female voice said as she ran both hands down his spine, prodding in between his bones. “I’m goin’ to release you, so breathe wit’ me.” She took in a deep breath, and he followed. As he exhaled, she pushed hard, and his back snapped. It was an alarming feeling at first, but warmth spread through him as his muscle relaxed.

She continued, starting at his lower back and working her way up to his shoulders.

“Is that how they harvest Mages?” his muffled voice asked.

“Oh, aye.” She slipped her fingers up and down his spine again. “You’ve got a lot wrong wit’ you.” Her fingers came to his jaw and she pressed hard in the corner. “You don’t sleep well. You suffer great stress. What happened?”

“I’m the leader of free people under attack.”

Her hands paused before slipping to his hair. “Oh, oh, you’re t’ Head Mage of Jaden.”

“How do you…?” he breathed and looked up from the bolsters to see the familiar face of the girl Afton. Now that he was closer, he saw she had faint white scars around her eyes. She was surely blind. She still wore a long blue dress with a yellow shawl thrown around her shoulders that she crumpled between two hands. He pushed himself and she took a step back.

“A guard is a call away,” she warned. He paused and looked at her, but she made no recognition of it. The faint white pattern that beat from her last time was nowhere to be seen. “Lie on your back.”

He obliged slowly, and she stretched out her hands, gripping the table.

“How was it you attacked me?” Gabriel asked without looking at her.

Her hands slipped to his neck and felt around. “T’ere are many stones in t’ palace t’at are not incanted, so I can access t’ Elements. T’ere are none down here so don’t get bold.”

“You heard me talk to the King. You know my stance on Mage treatment. If you get me to a stone, I will free the both of us and have you home in two minutes.”

“I have stood here for years, and I hear t’ same t’ing over and over. Everyone wants to be free, but t’ere is no way out of here.”

“There absolutely is,” he cut in. “I can transport you across the country in seconds.”

“Take in a breat’ and let it out,” she sighed before cracking his neck. She wrapped both hands around his jaw and pulled back slowly, elongating his spine. “At best t’ey will keep you a few years and release you. How strong a Mage are you?”

“I’m a Class Ten.”

“Oh,” she whispered. “I haven’t seen one of t’ose before. T’ey might keep you longer.”

“My betrothed is Queen of a kingdom in my land, and she will flatten this kingdom within a month, I guarantee it. And my Mages will help.”

“I wish I could help you.”

“Get me to a stone, and I will take you far from here.”

She smiled a touch. “I can’t imagine leavin’.”

“You
what
?” Gabriel breathed.

“Your Secondhand wanted me to tell you he is well. Guard!”

The door buckled, and two large men stepped in to pull Gabriel off the table and into the hall, manhandling him back into his cell after many furious altercations.