Chapter Nine #2
Time to abandon his ride. He’d barely managed to hold the simple invisibility weave with the amount of sel’dor still in him, and though it had worked to hide him from a farmer preoccupied with driving his team, he couldn’t risk having sharper-eyed citizens of Vrest detect him.
A wounded Fey with a telltale scar across his brow would draw too much unwanted attention, and if news of his approach reached Celieria City before he did, the Tairen Soul might well flee with his soul-cursed, Mage-sired mate before Gaelen could get close enough to kill her.
Slowly, each motion an agonizing exercise in discipline and determination, Gaelen lifted his body up and straddled the sides of the wagon.
As the cart neared a small, bridged creek bed, he pushed himself off and went tumbling down the embankment.
Each bump and hard jostle sent agony ripping through him.
His invisibility weave failed, and he dragged himself to cover beneath the bridge and wedged himself up high to avoid detection.
Gods, that had all but slain him. He flopped back against the shadowed embankment and drew breath in short, sharp gasps. Beneath his skin, lumps of sel’dor burned like acid.
He fumbled for one of the black Fey’cha strapped across his chest. Two hundred miles still lay between Gaelen and his prey in Celieria City. Healthy, he could have run it in less than ten bells, but in his current condition, he’d be lucky to make it in ten days.
Time to lose a little more of the black metal the Eld had dispersed so freely. When he reached Celieria City, he’d give the High Mage’s get a little red Fey metal in return.
Vadim Maur’s flowing purple robes whispered in the tomblike silence as he descended to the deepest level of Boura Fell.
His hair, long and bone white, shone bright in the flickering lamplight of the dark corridor, a beacon for the two men and the leashed flame-haired woman, Elfeya, who walked silently behind him.
Three days had passed since he’d last called the Celierian girl. He’d found her, but she’d managed to rebuff him and lock her mind away from him. For the last three nights he hadn’t even managed to locate her, let alone call her. The failure infuriated him.
Kolis’s ensorcelled gift hadn’t worked either.
The cursed spell still hadn’t even been activated!
Vadim’s plan to capture the girl during the Bride’s Blessing was looking more promising by the day.
Fortunately, he had already put those plans in motion.
He wasn’t a Mage who believed in leaving things to chance.
Victory came to those who planned for it.
And punishment—swift and severe—came to anyone who stood in his way.
At the end of the level’s longest corridor, two burly men stood guard by a large sel’dor-plated door. They held barbed sel’dor spears in their meaty hands.
“Open it,” the High Mage ordered.
One of the guards grabbed the key ring at his waist and unlocked the door, swinging it open and standing aside to allow the Mage and his followers to enter.
The room was dark. Vadim lifted a hand, and Fire ignited the sconces throughout the room.
Light blazed, illuminating a huge, cavernous space hewn from the black rock of Eld.
Veins of sel’dor ran through the rock, a natural damper for the magic released here.
The room was a scientist’s delight, a laboratory stocked with a vast array of implements and pharmacopoeia to aid in the High Mage’s centuries-old quest for knowledge.
In the center of the room a wide table, fitted with sel’dor-barbed restraining straps, was bolted to the floor.
So much had been tried. So much had been learned. Almost enough, but not quite.
A large sel’dor cage sat against the far wall. Within it, a naked man cringed at the sudden brightness of the room.
Beside the High Mage, Elfeya made a soft, quickly muffled sound.
A sob. The Mage smiled with pride. Even after a thousand years, Elfeya still had the ability to weep.
It was a testament to his careful handling of her, the great care he had taken with both his pets.
So many other Mages had lost their captives to madness, broken them with frivolous torture, but Vadim Maur had yet again succeeded where others failed.
The man in the cage went still. His head came up, nostrils flaring.
His leaf-green eyes were drawn to the woman.
Elongated pupils narrowed to slits, then opened wide like a hunting cat’s.
His eyes glowed for the briefest of moments, a predictable flare of power that made him gasp when the sel’dor manacles piercing his wrists and ankles twisted the power into agonizing pain.
Elfeya cried out and flinched even as he did.
The man launched himself at the barbed bars of his cage.
His fingers wrapped around them, heedless of the sharp, jagged metal slicing into his flesh.
He shook the bars violently in a grip that still retained incredible strength even after so many centuries of imprisonment.
Even though the bars were made of barbed sel’dor, if the man’s wrists and ankles had not been sel’dor-pierced—and deeply—nothing could have held him in the cage.
He bared his teeth. He howled his rage. He howled his desire.
The woman trembled.
Vadim Maur laughed. Really, they were endlessly entertaining. And so easy to control, once you knew the trick of it.
“Come here, my pet.” The Mage held out a hand, and although Elfeya’s golden eyes blazed hatred—that had not dimmed in the last thousand years either—she came to him.
She didn’t flinch as he put the razor-sharp sel’dor blade to her throat.
The black jewel in the pommel of the dagger began to glow with subtle red lights. It had tasted her blood before.
“Take him to the table,” the Mage commanded, and the two servants he’d brought with him moved reluctantly to the sel’dor cage and the mad creature within.
As they unlocked the cage door, the prisoner sprang towards them, only to stop abruptly with a harsh cry.
The sel’dor blade had sliced into the woman’s throat, just deep enough to cause pain.
The High Mage smiled as he watched her golden eyes beg the manacled prisoner for death, laughed as the prisoner gave her a tortured look from eyes that now held despairing sanity.
Subdued without a hand or a hint of magic laid on him, the prisoner allowed himself to be led to the table, and the servants strapped him down.
The Mage could have restrained the man with any number of weaves, but this way was so much more satisfying.
When the man was cuffed to the table, Vadim ran a finger over Elfeya’s wound to close it.
He touched the sel’dor rings that pierced her ears.
Ten rings in each ear, set with tiny bells so she never forgot they were there or who had pierced her.
Matching belled manacles lined with sharp spurs to dig into her flesh circled her ankles, and masterfully crafted sel’dor bands of surprising delicacy and beauty clasped her upper arms with hundreds of deeply piercing teeth.
She was the only woman in his care ever to need such extensive binding. Her power was that great. But the strongest, most unbreakable bond Vadim used to control her was the man lying on the table.
Three burly servants and a small, ragged girl entered the room carrying a large basin, several buckets of hot water, soap, and a cloth.
The servants lowered the basin to the floor and filled it with the buckets of water.
The girl stood there, holding the soap and the cloth, her eyes lowered.
She was dark-haired, no older than ten or eleven.
There was something familiar about her, though the High Mage couldn’t have said what it was.
“What are you waiting for?” Vadim snapped at the child. “Bathe him.”
The girl raised her head and looked at him. Large, startling silver eyes surrounded by a fringe of black lashes stared at him from beneath slashing dark brows and unkempt hair. Cold eyes, ancient eyes—his eyes.
Then he realized who she was. The granddaughter of his great-grandson, or something like that. One of his numerous progeny. Vadim couldn’t remember her name, but it didn’t matter. She had been born utterly without magic. A worthless lump of flesh, good for nothing but serving her betters.
His hand shot out and smacked across the face with a sharp crack, enough force behind the blow to knock the child to her knees. “Insolence is not tolerated, umagi. Lift your eyes to me again and I’ll pluck them from your head.”
Without a sound, the girl picked herself up off the floor.
Eyes lowered with appropriate submissiveness, she stepped towards the chained Fey, dipped her cloth and soap in the basin, and began to bathe the years of grime off the prisoner’s skin.
The three burly servants who had accompanied the girl into the room unshackled one of the prisoner’s wrists and feet at a time so the child could reach his back.
When she was finished, the servants lifted the basin of water and emptied it on the man strapped to the table.
He gasped for air and shook his head to clear the water from his eyes.
Water and grimy suds streamed off the table and ran in soapy rivulets towards the drain in the center of the room.
The girl toweled most of the moisture from the man’s body and the table; then she and her fellow servants gathered the buckets, bowed to Vadim Maur, and left.