Taming the Elements: Elwin Escari Chronicles: Volume 1 (32 page)

The whites of the man’s eyes turned black, then he moved with surprising speed. Elwin felt something solid strike his stomach and face in rapid succession. For a moment, he thought he was falling, but darkness filled his vision, pushing his thoughts into oblivion.

Chapter 16

Consequences

Feffer sat up on the bed, not sure how long he had been asleep.

Feffer’s father had not been waiting in the front like he had anticipated, so Feffer had searched for him in the office on the second floor of the warehouse. He had not been there either. Instead of going straight to the festival, Feffer had visited his old room.

The small room was exactly as he had left it. Well, not exactly. His father had tidied his bed and cleaned his clothes, folding them neatly atop the bed. The window still had the same blue curtains, and the large chest still rested at the foot of his bed.

Feffer had sat on the bed and tried to remember the last time he had been alone.

“A year,” he had said. “I have not been alone since we left.”

He had laid back on the bed. The next thing he knew, he was waking up.

Feffer swung his feet over the side of the bed and stood, rubbing his eyes.

“The Lifebringer curse me for a fool. Why did I ever give up this bed for an old wooden bunk?”

A year ago, he had felt such excitement at the prospect of leaving for the capital. He was going to be a member of the White Hand of Justice. Wilton had called him a naïve fool. He hated to admit it, but Wilton had the right of it.

“I had been a fool,” Feffer said. “But I have changed. I haven’t seen war yet, but I know what war means now.”

Wilton was not the only person he knew who had been sent to the northern islands to fight. He had heard word of ships being sunk by the Elements. Men he had trained with had been swallowed by water and flames. Others had been taken captive or killed outright.

War was not a thing of glory. The songs were not honest. Battles that bards sang of did not give the truth of it.

War meant death.

When he had last seen this room, he was a child. He had the innocence of a child. Wilton had tried to tell him, but he had not believed his brother. He stood from the bed, crossed the room, and looked out the window. He could see the Scented Rose Inn across the square. Hazy light fought to be seen through the rain and barely reached the streets.

He came to the sudden realization that he could have been asleep ten minutes or ten hours. It was still daylight, but the thick rain hid the sun. So, he had no notion of what the hour was.

“Curse me for a thumping fool again! I’m missing the cursed festival!”

As he turned to leave, his window shattered and something solid struck him in the shoulder, knocking him from his feet. Wind pushed billowing clouds of smoke into his room, as a wave of heat hit him in the face.

“What in the abyss?” he coughed.

Dropping to his hands and knees, he crawled out of the room. He stood and felt beneath his tunic where he had been struck. His shoulder would bruise, but his skin and bone were unbroken.

He ran across the upper platform, around the stairs to the ladder that led to the roof. The latch was not locked. His father had always said he kept the roof locked to keep out intruders, but Feffer had always known it was to keep him from climbing up there.

Feffer flung open the door and climbed onto the roof, then ran to the edge. Tendrils of smoke rose from the inn but no flames as far as he could see. The door and most of the right side of the inn were missing as if some giant’s hand had knocked the building from the inside. He could see the common room clearly. Inside and out people were stretched out. Some were bent at odd angles, but some looked as if they were curled on their sides, sleeping.

At this distance he could not see if they were breathing.

“What in the abyss!” he said again.

A man walked through the smoke into the street, stepping on people. He wore black robes and a dark cloak. The rain did not land on him. It hit an invisible shield and rolled around him. In his right hand, he had a large sword that was jagged on one side. Over his left shoulder, he carried someone.

“Stop,” he heard someone say.

Feffer searched the street for the source of the voice. The Escari’s wagon had been knocked over from the force. The wagon had been led by four horses. One of them was trapped beneath the wagon. It laid very still. And the other horses were gone. If they had run off, it would take hours to round them up.

Behind the wagon was Drenen. “Please, stop!”

The man ignored Drenen and walked toward the stable to the left of the inn.

“Please!” Drenen cried. “He is my son.”

The man stopped walking and turned toward Drenen. Feffer gasped when he saw Elwin’s face. Feffer reached for his sword at his hip, but it wasn’t there. He had left his sword at the farm.

“The Seeker take me for a fool,” he cursed. Why had he left his sword?

The man eased Elwin to the ground and walked toward Drenen.

“What is your name, peasant?” the man asked.

“I am Drenen of house Escari.”

“Come here,” he said in a level voice.

Drenen took a step forward and hesitated.

“You wish to be near the boy?” the man asked. “There is only one way this can be. Come to me.”

Drenen walked to the man.

“Kneel,” he said as if commanding a dog.

“Why are you doing this? Please, give me my son.”

The man’s sword hand moved with a speed that made Feffer blink, striking Drenen in his face with the hilt. Drenen stumbled backwards, then fell to his knees.

“Please.” Drenen’s voice was strained.

The man sheathed his sword and raised his hand in a claw-like grip, poised in front of Drenen’s heart. His hand become black, outlined in a burning white glow. The front of Drenen’s good tunic began to blacken and burn beneath the glowing hand.

Drenen cried out in fear and crawled backward from the man.

Feffer wanted to scream at Drenen to run, but he couldn’t make himself move. His own instincts told him to hide or go for help.

Drenen did not back away very far before the dark man reached him. He grabbed Drenen’s foot with the glowing hand and pulled him closer. A dark fog surrounded Drenen as the glowing hand thrust
into
his chest.

Feffer cried out before he could stop himself. “No!”

If Drenen or his attacker noticed, neither even glanced in his direction.

Drenen’s mouth opened wide, but no sound escaped. The hand went beyond the limits possible of a mortal body as the man’s arm was swallowed by Drenen’s chest. Embers and bits of burning cloth rose from the hole in Drenen’s shirt.

That’s his festival tunic
, Feffer thought. It was a stupid thought. Who cared about a tunic?

A stench wafted up to his nostrils. It was fowl like burning hair, but thick like ash and dust. Feffer covered his nose with the inside of his elbow and coughed into his sleeve. He stumbled backward and almost fell. He wanted to scream, cry out, do something. He felt helpless on the roof without his sword.

This wasn’t real. He was still asleep. Maybe he had fallen and struck his head. None of this was possible.

When the hand left Drenen’s chest, Feffer heard the faintest gasp echo in the air. It had not sounded like a man’s voice, but like the wind itself. A brilliant light came into being, forcing Feffer to look away from the square. He shielded his eyes and watched through the cracks in his fingers. A glowing image the size of a man floated above the man’s upraised hand.

Feffer dropped to his knees.

The light had the shape and appearance of Drenen. It wore his torn tunic and long breeches. Black fog lingered around the arm holding the light. For a moment, the man held the image between him and Drenen.

Drenen writhed on the ground, clutching at his chest. His mouth was open as if screaming, but no sound left his lungs. Feffer stood, both fists clenched. He judged the distance between himself and the man.

If he leapt …

The man reached into his robe and pulled out a metallic object about the size of a small foot. As he brought the image of Drenen near the box, the top opened.

Tendrils of black fog left from the opening and solidified in the form of chains, which elongated and sprouted shackles at their tips. When the shackles closed around the ankles, wrists, and neck of the image, Drenen arched his back until only his head and feet touched the ground.

The image shrank as it was pulled into the confines of the box. The light dwindled and disappeared, bathing the square in darkness once more. The lid slammed closed, making a heavy metal clink.

Drenen dropped into the dirt and laid very still. Where he had been breathing laboriously before, now his chest was unmoving.

Feffer held his breath, waiting for Drenen to move, breathe, do anything. Nothing happened. He wasn’t moving. He would never move again.

Feffer looked at Drenen’s ruined tunic and tears filled his eyes.

“He killed him?” he whispered. “The Lifebringer save me. He killed him.”

After replacing the chest in the folds of his robes, the man walked back over to Elwin and knelt beside him, leaving Drenen in the square.

“He’s a dark savant,” Feffer realized. What would a sword have been against a man like this?

Feffer became aware that he was still standing and that his fists were clenched. He suddenly felt exposed. He dropped to his belly, crawled back toward the hatch, and climbed down the ladder.

Once he was on the landing, he began to pace.

“What is going on?”

He grabbed his head. “Think, think, think, think. I have to think.”

This man could kill him without lifting a hand. How could he fight that? He couldn’t.

“But I have to save Elwin. What is this man doing with Elwin?”

Then Feffer remembered something he had heard from Lord Zaak and Sir Gibbins discussing. The dark savants were seeking out all the elementalists coming into their power. This man was going to take Elwin and force him to wield the Death Element.

“The Lifebringer save me,” Feffer said. “What am I going to do?”

Elwin awoke upon a hard surface that moved and swayed with the motion of a road. The morning was brighter than it had been the previous day, but there was still a misting rain hanging in the air. The water and the brightness blinded him.

His head ached. He had been unconscious, but he had not entered the shadow realm. Did he wake from a dream? No. He no longer dreamed. Zeth was real.

He sat up.

A cage surrounded him. It rose out of the long wooden board beneath him. There was no door. The misshapen bars were stained yellow and white. He touched one of them. It had a wet feel, like a mushroom after a rain but harder. Then he saw that one of the bars ended in boned hand.

“What in the abyss?” Elwin backed away from the bars. “Bone! These are made from bone!”

He had touched it. His stomach became ill, and he began to heave up his guts. When his stomach was empty, he continued to heave. After his stomach calmed, he struggled to breathe for several moments.

He needed to get a hold of himself. There had to be a way out of here. He looked at his cage, scanning for any weakness. Two horses pulled the cage, driven by a single man.

He could only see his driver’s back. The man had short brown hair, soaked from the rain, and he wore a brown tunic with green stitching around the hem. The man’s attire was much like what his father had worn to the festival.

“Please,” he called to the man, “let me out of here!”

The man’s pale face turned toward him. The center of his brown eyes swirled with a black fog, but there was no mistaking the face of his father.

“Father?” Elwin said. “Father, let me out of here! What is going on?”

His father opened his mouth to speak, but words didn’t come out. Instead, his father trembled and the fog in his eyes swirled more violently.

“Father!” Elwin called.

“He was never your father,” Zeth’s voice said. The dark clad man rode alongside the wagon on a white horse.

“What did you do to him?” Elwin demanded.

“He is called a soulless one,” Zeth said. “His mind is still his own, but his body is forever a slave to this.”