The Unseen Tempest (Lords of Arcadia) (25 page)

“My plan is for you to get us both out of this castle and away from the king. I am in no condition to face him right now.”

He had expected an answer like that. “And where would you have me take you, Your Majesty?”

“Where is Hawk?” she asked.

Before he could answer, the door slammed open, and two guards came charging in.

Ater spun and produced two more daggers that found their way into the men’s eyes. “So you’re powerless?” She nodded. “Well, that’s just great,” he muttered as he grabbed the downed guards’ weapons.

Tossing one to the queen, he said, “Please tell me you can use that.”

She caught it deftly and spun it around before bring it up to bear. “I can manage.”

“Are there any secret passages that lead out of the castle?” he asked.

He saw the outrage in her eyes. “I am not going to reveal state secrets to you.”

He forced down a sigh and limped over to the door. “I’m not going to be running anytime soon, so we move surely and as quietly as possible.” He waited to see if there was anyone else coming. When it was evident the coast was clear, he motioned to her. “Come on, stay on my heels. Do not wander off.”

He could see the resentment in her eyes. “Just go.”

Moving as one, they made their way into the palace.

I
WOKE
up in a lush room with Hawk looking down at me.

“Oh God, I’m still here,” I groaned, trying to sit up. “I was really starting to hope you were some hot farmhand that I imagined when I hit my head on a pig stall.”

His confusion lasted a few seconds as he searched my thoughts for what I was talking about. “No. And, to be honest, dropping your house on a witch might not kill her. I am not even sure what the water thing is about.”

For some reason Hawk’s speculation cheered me up, and I grabbed him tightly in a hug. “What is wrong with me?” I asked him as he hugged me back. “I erased her face.”

He was torn between telling me something pleasant, like everything was going to be all right and telling the truth, which was he had no idea what was going on with me. Finally, he just thought back to me,
No matter what it is, I am going to be with you for it.

It was a good save.

“I am not entirely sure you erased her face,” Ruber commented after a few seconds of hugging.

I looked up at him, realizing I must have asked Hawk that out loud. “What do you mean?”

“I mean if you had done something to remove her face or to mar her features, it could have been reversed. Which is what Olim and I were trying to do, but there was no evidence that anything had been done to her.”

Hawk let me go and glared at Ruber. “She had no orifices—how can you say that nothing had been done to her?”

Ruber’s voice got a bit huffy. “I didn’t say nothing had been done to her. I said there was no magical evidence that anything had been done. When a spell is cast on someone, you can sense the change that was done to them, and most times you can reverse the effect. This is how casters dispel certain magical effects. I am saying that Kane did not magically erase her face. As far as magic was concerned, that was completely normal for her.”

“How does that work?” I asked, more confused than ever.

There was a burst of cold air around us, and Olim appeared in the middle of the room. “Well, my sister is resting. It seems you made your point.” She sounded way too satisfied for my taste. “Are you feeling better?”

“Hungry,” I said, realizing I was famished.

She nodded and waved her hand, creating a solid ice tray filled with a variety of different colored ice. “Eat and replenish yourself. You’re going to feel that way for a while.”

“You talk as if you know what is going on with him,” Hawk said, getting up off the bed.

“I do,” she said casually. “It’s a common side effect since he is pulling on his own life force.”

My mouth was half-full with vague apple-tasting ice. “I’m pulling on what?”

“We don’t have much time, and we have much to cover.” She gestured behind her, and an elaborate throne of ice formed for her to sit. “I’ve been waiting for you to arrive for a long time. You would think I’d be more ready.”

I scarfed down the last of the ice and swung my legs off the bed. “You’ve been waiting for me? Why?”

“Because, Kane, you are the start of the most important change in the realms.”

Chapter 12

“Everybody walks the same halting steps

toward their destiny. The difference is most

aren’t aware of where they are going.”

The Dreamer

K
OR
MATERIALIZED
in his home in a flash of light.

And instantly knew it was a trap.

Magical tendrils shot out from the walls and encircled his limbs. His arms were spread far apart so he couldn’t draw an arrow. He’d seen this spell before. It was druidic in nature, which could only mean one thing.

“You came back,” Nystel said from behind him.

He couldn’t turn around, so he had to assume she had been signaled by the spell and teleported in. Though the chance of her just sitting in the dark waiting for him to return was possible also. “Did I give the impression I wasn’t?” he asked, letting his limbs go limp since there was no way he could break the magical vines.

She walked around into his field of vision. “You fled with a criminal, attacked my guards. Honestly, Kor, what were you thinking?”

It was a question he had been asking himself, but he ignored it. “What crimes has he committed?” When she looked at him, confused, he added, “What crimes has Ater committed?”

“You both attacked my guards.”

Kor shook his head. “No, that was after you were going to kill him. Before that, what was his crime?”

She looked at him, disappointed. “You know what his crime was.”

“Maybe I don’t. Explain it to me.”

Sighing, she began to pace in front of him. “Crimes against Koran, of course. You know the punishment for that.”

“Against Koran, the actual deity himself? So let me get this straight. If I choose another path, if I choose of my own free will to follow another way of life, then that is automatically a crime against Koran, and I should be put to death?”

She looked at him like he was simple. “Of course.”

He said more to himself than to her. “I had never heard it said out loud before. No wonder they hate us.”

“Are you done?” she asked, turning back to him.

“Almost,” he said, looking back at her. “You’re wrong. What we are doing, it’s wrong. What you did to that city was wrong. What you tried to do to Ater was wrong. And what you’re about to do to me is wrong. And you will be stopped.”

She arched an eyebrow, giving him a sarcastic smile. “Am I? I have no idea what town you are talking about, but I assure you, everything I do is in the name of Koran. And if he has fault with it, then let him strike me down right now.”

They both paused, waiting for an effect.

Which was when a magical portal came bursting open and six floating ambers came flying in the house, all of them glowing with magical energies. Seconds later, Adamas came floating through, his voice laced with anger. “We are not done, elf.”

Nystel looked around and exclaimed in outrage, “What is the meaning of this? I order you to submit at once in the name of Koran.”

The diamond looked at her for a second and then said to his guards, “Shut her up.”

The gems let out a honey-colored beam that encased the high priestess in a chunk of magical amber, freezing her in a perfect expression of fury. Her spell failed, releasing Kor, dropping him to the ground.

“You struck me!” Adamas declared as Kor rubbed his wrists to encourage his circulation.

“And you imprisoned me because you thought I had somehow attacked Ater and taken his stone. So we’ve both made mistakes.”

“You’ve yet to prove that,” the diamond said, keeping his distance from the elf and his bow.

“Then let’s find him, and he can tell you the truth,” Kor offered.

“I thought you did not know where he was.”

“I don’t, but give me a chance to restore my energies and I can cast a spell that will find him. Do you think you can hold off killing me for that long?”

“And the female?” Adamas asked about Nystel.

“Oh, she is perfectly fine there for now, trust me, perfectly fine.”

“Then rest and cast your spell. My patience grows thin.”

Kor took a deep breath, sat down in a lotus position in the middle of the floor, and began to meditate. He tried not to think of how much was at stake.

He tried and failed pretty badly.

A
TER
AND
Titania made it to the fourth floor of the palace before they were discovered.

They had been lucky so far, avoiding the patrols that were walking their normal route, when they literally bumped into a pair of guards entering the residence. It was hard to say who was more surprised, the guards or the escaping prisoners.

What is easy to say was who ceased being conscious first.

Ater slammed the hilt of his blade into the side of one guard’s temple while Titania cut through the other guard’s neck with her sword. The man grunted once before falling to the ground, grasping his throat.

“Why did you kill him?” Ater asked as she wiped the blade clean.

Titania looked confused at the question. “He is a traitor, and as queen, I can kill anyone I want. Since when is an assassin so squeamish about death?”

Kneeling down, Ater pulled a cloth over the man’s throat and pressed it there, trying to calm the man as he bled out. “I am not squeamish about death. I simply loathe unnecessary killing. This man did not need to die.”

“You put a dagger into a man’s eyes downstairs, and you slit the throat of one of your own men on Earth. What is the difference?”

The man gasped once and stopped moving as the dark elf stood up and confronted the queen. “The difference was there was no way for me to get to the man before he could sound an alarm, so he needed to die. You could have shown mercy.”

“Since when do I know the meaning of that word?” she asked, a dangerous look on her face.

That was when someone below them began screaming that the prisoners had escaped.

“The time for debate seems to be over,” Titania said, giving him a snide grin.

“Follow me,” Ater said, moving farther into the residence level.

“Y
OUR
MOTHER
was not human,” Olim said, which by this point was pretty much “duh.”

“What was she? A fairy?” I asked, hungry for information.

Olim shook her head. “She was the same race as my sisters and I. She was a higher being.”

Both Ruber and Hawk seemed to understand what that meant.

“This starts to make sense,” Ruber said, sounding more like he was just thinking out loud than making a point. When I stared at him, he added, “Your abilities are warping reality, a gift the higher ones possess, each to some degree.”

The ice queen nodded. “It’s true; our abilities, no matter how simple they may seem, actually change reality around us. If one of my people can create flames, in fact they are altering the reality to make fire out of air. Your mother was one of these people.”

“She could make fire?” I asked, more confused than when we started.

Hawk grabbed my hand. “No, she could change reality. She was a god.”

“No,” Olim said sharply. “Higher beings are not gods. They simply possess abilities that make them stronger than those of the lower realms. Our realm, Tokpewa, is the closest mortals can get to the Source. Because of that, we are born able to manipulate reality in different ways.”

My mom?

“She was one of the first beings to escape the realm. In fact, her success gave me and my sisters the idea of leaving. Somehow she knew that sooner or later Tokpewa would be cut off from the lower realms, meaning that not even the gods could intervene.”

“You mean to say, with the world tree moved, there are no higher beings?” Ruber asked, stunned.

“No, they are still there, but they simply have no access to the other realms anymore. The tree acts like a conduit, allowing energy to flow throughout the Nine Realms, bringing life to all. When my sister convinced Titania to move it, she knew it would cut off the flow of energy, making the higher realms unable to fix things.”

I was literally forcing myself not to just sit there like a block of wood. “My mom knew all this? How?”

“Where the three of us could catch glimmers of the future and how it can unravel, your mother could literally see future events in great clarity. Where the three of us were known as Fate, she was known by another name to the lower realms. A name that creatures everywhere fear and respect.”

She said nothing more, and I gestured at her to spill it.

“Destiny—she was known as Destiny.”

I could sense Hawk’s mistrust instantly. “What exactly is the difference between fate and destiny? It seems they are very much the same thing.”