Chapter 18 #2
He walked closer, looming into Syla’s view, a view that was lopsided thanks to her crooked spectacles hanging halfway down her nose. She straightened them, but her arm hurt with the movement. Everything hurt.
“And the dragons aren’t nearby,” the man added, still calling to someone outside. Vorik. It had to be. “This is our chance to kidnap her.”
Kidnap her?
Syla fought against the pain pulsing in her head to focus on the young man as he crept closer.
He was bleeding, black riding leathers torn from the gargoyle claws, but he reached for her with determination in his eyes.
Was kidnapping her part of Vorik’s mission?
His words from the ship rang in her mind. Come with me.
Maybe he’d wanted it to be voluntary, but, for some reason, his people—probably his odious general—wanted her. Could they know that a moon-mark was required to access the storm god’s laboratory? Yes, of course. They had the same information that she did.
“Nobody’s kidnapping me.” Syla gritted her teeth against her pain and shoved a rock off her hip. As if to emphasize the sentiment, and certainly her feelings, her moon-mark flared.
Not answering, the white-haired stormer reached for her.
If he’d meant to help her up, she would have allowed it, even thanked him, but the silver glow illuminated his features, and his set jaw and stance promised he meant to sling her over his shoulder and tote her off to his superiors.
Her heart pounded at the thought, and she imagined General Jhiton somehow using her against her own people, turning her into a tool to harm the Kingdom.
He grabbed her wrist and started to pull her up. Setting her own jaw, Syla grabbed his wrist.
Unlike with the impervious gargoyle, he was a flesh-and-blood human, and she knew his anatomy intimately.
When she sent her magic coursing into him, only the fact that he was Vorik’s comrade—and her life wasn’t in immediate danger—kept her from replicating the attack she’d made on the assassin.
But she did wrap tendrils of power around his trachea, tightening his airway, as she’d done days before to another stormer.
Like that enemy, this man didn’t have the power of Vorik or Captain Lesva, no means with which to combat her magic and drive it away.
Syla squeezed his airway shut completely, and he dropped to one knee. He tried to lift his sword, but with his limbs rapidly growing numb, he fumbled and almost dropped it.
The grip on her wrist loosened, and the man’s eyes widened. He’d faced the gargoyle fearlessly, but this… This was different.
Syla wouldn’t have loosened her own grip, not until he passed out, but a shadow dropped through the destroyed roof, startling her. Was that Vorik?
The white-haired man released Syla and pulled away from her. That broke her link to him, and he gasped, reaching for his throat, his eyes still bulging. He lifted his sword, as if he might strike her, but Vorik stepped between them, blocking his man from reaching her.
“Greetings, Your Highness.” Vorik leaned over her, eyes scouring her with concern. “Given your current tenuous position, I do not mean to be overly critical, but you came into the rainforest without a dragon or explosives? Have you heard that this is a dangerous place?”
Vorik raised his eyebrows and smiled, the smile that always altered his appearance from fearsome enemy warrior to achingly handsome friend—lover. Someone she longed to have as a permanent part of her life. The blood and soot on his lean, angular face couldn’t disguise his inherent appeal.
“I thought more of bringing along food, water, clothing, and first-aid supplies than explosives,” Syla said. “Back at the temple, black powder isn’t on the packing list they give to healers heading into the field to do their work.”
“Goodness, your people are short-sighted.”
Syla adjusted her spectacles. “Quite literally.”
“Are you all right?” Vorik lowered a hand to her.
Though she was more wary than ever of him after his man had blurted out the kidnapping plan, her body reacted without the hesitation that her mind felt, and she clasped his hand.
Vorik pulled her gently to her feet and folded her in a light embrace.
Maybe he knew she’d been close when that explosion went off and had been battered.
“My cousin,” she said, “and Fel.”
As much as she wanted to lean into Vorik and relax, they might yet be in danger.
“They’re all right,” Vorik said. “I started out there. I didn’t know you’d invited your very own gargoyle inside.”
“Invited isn’t quite the word.”
“I expect your allies will find a way back here soon, though the explosives made the roof fall in places. More places than it already had fallen. This is quite the treacherous jungle of broken rock. You should be grateful to Lieutenant Wise for finding you in it.”
“I’d be more grateful to him if he hadn’t said he was here to kidnap me.”
As if he hadn’t heard that comment, Vorik continued with, “He must have seen or heard something and come to investigate while I was with your bodyguard and, ah, the lady you brought out here, who’s also moon-marked.” He raised his eyebrows. “Is that the same girl who was in the tunnels?”
“Teyla, and yes. Your people already kidnapped her once, so don’t even think about doing that again. To her or me.”
Though her bruised and beleaguered body longed for support, Syla made herself step out of Vorik’s embrace. Her heel caught on the edge of the rock pile, and he reached out to steady her.
“Damn it, Vorik,” she caught herself blurting in frustration. “Stop helping me if you’re my enemy.”
He lowered his hand. “I would prefer not to be.”
“But you are, aren’t you? Unless you resign as an officer and leave your horrible general, I can’t think of you as anything else.”
“The horrible general is my brother.”
“I hate him.”
“You barely know him.” Vorik had the gall to smile. “He likes you.”
“So much he wants you to kidnap me?”
“He actually hasn’t made that order.” It sounded like a silent yet belonged at the end of that sentence. Vorik frowned at his lieutenant. What, because he’d voiced their plan aloud?
The man—was his name truly Wise?—stepped back, hands lifted. He looked like he wished he were anywhere else except here for this conversation.
“But you do have orders to find the components to a shielder to keep me from getting them, don’t you?” Syla asked. “You stole our scrolls and know as much about where they are as we do, and you also know it takes a moon-mark to open the laboratory, right?”
She held up her hand. Its glow had faded, but it hadn’t disappeared completely.
Vorik gazed sadly back at her. It was as much a confirmation as if he’d nodded or spoken an agreement, but it irritated her that he wouldn’t admit it.
Also that he thought his brother wasn’t horrible.
His brother who was probably even now on Harvest Island, rounding up her people for internment—or death—and directing the stealing of more crops.
“Wise,” Vorik said, “search the rest of the ruins, and see if that moss thing is here.”
The lieutenant opened his mouth, as if he might correct moss thing to a more accurate term, but maybe he read the grimness in Vorik’s face because he didn’t.
“You think there’ll be something here? After centuries of abandonment?”
“She did.” Vorik nodded to Syla.
She bared her teeth at him and didn’t say that nothing but luck and seeking high ground had guided her here. Besides, was that true? Her moon-mark had first brightened when they’d reached the bank.
Wise headed for the doorway but halted. Fel stepped into view, his face slick with blood and his clothes torn. He held his crossbow, a quarrel loaded, and aimed it at Wise, who stopped and lifted his hands.
Vorik, who looked like he’d expected Fel at any moment, barely reacted, only flicking a finger for his lieutenant to go another way.
There wasn’t another doorway out of the room, but Wise climbed up the rock pile far more easily than Syla had, then disappeared onto the roof, a few shards of stone falling in the aftermath of his passing.
Fel shifted his crossbow to point at Vorik’s chest.
Vorik snorted softly but didn’t object. Unlike the rest of them—Teyla was just visible leaning against a wall behind Fel’s shoulder—he wasn’t injured, at least not that Syla could detect.
And, unlike his lieutenant, he had the magic of his dragon bond, enhancing him far beyond normal human capabilities.
He could likely have darted across the room and disarmed Fel without much trouble.
For several minutes, they stood in that position, nobody moving. Even though Fel had his crossbow pointed at Vorik, Syla was the one who felt like a prisoner.
Sooner than she expected, rocks shifted overhead, and Wise climbed back down.
He carried a ceramic amphora so coated in cobwebs and dust that one couldn’t have discerned if any designs or decorations marked the side except that the front had been wiped clean.
Wise must have used his shirt. The clean spot revealed a painting of a tree with a cylindrical-shaped bulb growing out of a patch of moss.
Further, Syla’s hand warmed in its presence, and her moon-mark glowed again. Cheerfully.
“I think this is what we need, sir. I broke the seal to look inside.” Wise shook his hand, as if some magic might have zapped him when he’d done so.
“There’s a gray-green powder, and it glows like…
” Wise looked at Syla’s moon-mark, then set down the amphora.
He wiped dust off the lid and opened it.
Silver moonlight flowed out, shining on all of their faces.
“Oh, brilliant,” Teyla said, eyes alight as she leaned around Fel.
It would have been more brilliant if a stormer hadn’t been holding it.
“Were there any more urns back there, Wise?” Vorik watched Syla’s face as he asked.
She glared at him. “They’re amphoras. Two handles, a narrow neck, and a tapered bottom.”