Shaper of Stone (The Shapers Book 1) (12 page)

It was Shira’s turn to ask a
question, “What changed? I’ve seen you stand up to the
other guards more than once. That doesn’t sound like a man just
trying to make it through the day.”

The big guy stopped and poked me in the
chest. “It’s his fault. I saw him try to choke Vatrale.
It didn’t do any good, but at least Devin tried. Then later
that night Vatrale ordered me to keep you and your friends safe. That
got me out from under Balruc.”

Garit started moving again. Shira and I
glanced at each, but remained quiet as we followed him.

“When Devin got attacked by the
mob, I was terrified. I didn’t know what to do. If I hurt
anyone, I knew Vatrale would take it out on me, but if I did nothing
it would be even worse. That is why I tackled you. I figured if I got
killed trying to protect you it would be better than whatever Vatrale
would do to me. Then you had to thank me when it was over. You
thanked me and all I was really trying to do was save myself. Next
thing I know you are plotting an escape and are including me in
everything. I almost spilled it all to Balruc. You trust too quickly
Devin Symms. It will get you killed.”

I didn’t have an answer to that.
He was probably right. After all, I did trust Vatrale at one point,
and look how well that turned out. Shira gave my hand a squeeze and I
smiled back at her.

“Maybe,” I said, “but
none of us would make it if we didn’t work together. And don’t
forget, I never trusted Balruc.”

“That is a good thing,”
agreed Garit. “A rabid dog makes a better friend than him.”

-o-

We finally arrived at the passage where
the siphoning rooms were located. As always, I ignored the other
rooms and went to the one that I worked in. I opened the door and
entered first.

The room looked like I expected. It was
empty except for the table and chair. The helmet with its array of
cables sat on the table.

“Where is the sphere?”
asked Shira after she followed me into the room.

I opened a door in the back wall. I had
never been this way and expected to find a room on the other side.
Instead there was another corridor. To the left I could see the door
to other rooms like the one I just emerged from, but it was the
hallway to the right that snatched my attention. The hall continued
another fifty feet past two more doors. A green glow filled the end
of the hall. It came from charged spheres.

“This way,” I told the
others before entering the corridor and moving down the hallway. The
light from my torch flickered along the wall.

“Wow! Would you look at that,”
I whispered when I reached the gate blocking the end of the hall.

Racks for the orbs filled the room.
Four orbs sat close together near the entrance. Their glow filled the
chamber and spilled into the hall. Next to them were another six dull
spheres that had yet to be charged. The rest of the racks were empty.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple hundred orbs could have
been stored here.

“What is it?” asked Shira.

“Look at the size of this room.
Do you think it was filled?” I wondered.

Garit peered over my shoulder. “Vatrale
has been at this a long time. He might have used that many orbs.”

“So many lives destroyed. What
does he hope to accomplish? What would demand so much power?”

Shira’s question was one that
worried me as well. Was he looking for a long term power supply? Like
stocking up on batteries before a storm hits, or was he planning
something big where he needed to release all of the power at once? My
gut said he was planning something big. I think he was going to need
all of the power, but I couldn’t even begin to imagine how he
might control it.

Shira pointed to the spheres that were
left, “Whatever he is planning, it looks like he might be
getting close. He doesn’t have many left to charge.”

“We can worry about that later,”
said Garit. “We have a more immediate problem.”

He waved his torch in front of the
gate, and we all saw the padlock hanging from the chains keeping the
gate closed.

“Can’t you smash it with
your sword or something?” I asked Garit.

“In your dreams, maybe. If I take
a swing at that, I’m more likely to break my sword than the
lock.”

I grabbed the gate and shook it. The
chain wasn’t tight and I could pull the gate forward a few
inches, but nowhere near enough to squeeze through.

“We’re screwed,” I
announced to the others.

“Don’t give up yet,”
Shira said. “We can search the other rooms. We might find a key
or a pry bar or even an orb sitting around.”

“We’ve come this far. Let’s
see what we can find nearby.”

After we moved away from the gate Garit
said, “I’ll check the store room. There should be tools
there. I might be able to find a way to break the chain.”

We split up. Garit ran back into the
room we first entered. Shira and I started searching the other rooms.
She and I stuck together as we worked.

The first room we looked in was empty.
It was just bare walls and another door on the far side. We figured
the door lead back to the main hall and ignored it for now. The next
room was the same. It didn’t take much time to search either of
them.

The third room contained a work bench
against one wall. A lantern hung from a metal hook above the bench. I
took it down and gave it a shake. It made a nice sloshing sound and I
guessed it was at least half full. I lit the lantern. It gave off
enough light that Shira and I put out the torches we had been
carrying. They had been burning for a while and were giving off as
much smoke as light.

Holding the lantern above the table we
completed our search. There were some leather straps, knives and
buckles on the top. Beneath it was one of the bases the orbs sat in
when they were being charged. Four cables lay coiled inside of it.

There was no key. No really big hammers
either.

We left the room and continued our way
up the hall. We skipped the room Garit ran through and searched two
more rooms with no better results. There was only one more room left
in the hall.

I pushed open the door and the light
from the lantern filled the small room. I stopped with a curse.
Behind me, Shira gasped at the body resting on the table. How could I
have forgotten Vatrale’s student? He was still here. Vatrale
never stopped draining the energy from him.

“Shira, wait here.” I
handed her the lantern then stepped into the room. Of course, she
followed right behind me.

“Who was it?” Her voice was
hushed as she spoke.

“Vatrale said he was one of his
students. Look at the orb. It is only slightly glowing. They must
have replaced it recently. They’ve been draining him this
entire time.”

I looked back at her, “I thought
he was released with the others. I didn’t know he was still
here.”

“What do you mean released? It is
almost a skeleton.”

At that moment, Garit appeared with a
hammer and chisel in his hand. “I found these, I think I can
break the .... Oh Hell. They left him here to die, didn’t
they?”

Shira turned on him, “You knew
about this.”

I spoke up, answering both them of.
“Not to die. I don’t think he is dead. They are still
draining him. Help me disconnect the orb. We have to free him.”

Garit dropped his tools and came over
to remove the orb. Shira looked at me like I was crazy. She was about
to say something but I raised my hand to stop her.

“Give it a second,” I then
paused until I noticed the change begin in the man on the table.
“Take a closer look at him now.”

She stood next to me and looked down at
the form on the table. His skin began to soften and regain its color
almost as soon as the orb was detached. His chest slowly rose and
fell as he started to breath on his own. The hand next to me
twitched. I reached down and gently squeezed it. I felt like I was
holding a twig in my hand.

As each second passed he made the
transformation from near corpse to a sleeping, sickly man.

“I saw him when they changed out
an orb. He is still alive. He’s coming with us.”

I turned to the others to see if they
objected.

Garit simply nodded and said nothing.
The orb was glowing softly at his feet where he placed it after
removing it from the charging base.

Shira stared at the man on the table.
Tears streamed down her face. She stepped in front of me and traded
the lantern she was carrying for the hand I was holding. With her
free hand she gently touched the cheek of the unconscious man.

“Duncan? Duncan, it’s me,
Shira. You’re going to be okay honey. We got you now.
Everything is going to be okay.” She whispered to the man on
the table.

“Shira, is that,” I began
to ask her, but she interrupted me before I could finish the
question.

“Yes,” she answered.
“Devin, you’ve found my husband.”

-o-

Shira and I finished removing the last
of the straps securing Duncan to the table. He hadn’t moved
except for random twitches since he started to come back. Vatrale
said that the power could keep us alive without food or water, that
we could draw from it to sustain us, but he never talked about the
recovery process.

I thought Duncan would eventually wake
on his own. We just needed to give him time. Time we didn’t
have.

On Duncan’s left wrist was a
bracelet identical to mine.

“We are out of time,” I
told the others. “Vatrale will know we released Duncan. It’s
now or never.”

“What do you mean?” asked
Garit.

I pointed to the bracelet on Duncan’s
wrist. “It is the same as mine. I’m sure that Vatrale
will eventually notice that he is drawing more energy from Duncan now
that he isn’t attached to a sphere.”

It was time for me to get started. I
grabbed the helmet we pulled from Duncan’s head and dropped it
onto mine. I didn’t have to wear the helmet, but I figured I
would need my hands free for this. I sat on the floor and pulled the
pieces of nerafpan from a pouch. There weren’t many. I dumped
them between my outstretched legs.

“Garit, hook me up.”

Hook me up. It sounded so complicated,
but all he needed to do was drop the sphere into the base. He put the
orb in place and in a few seconds I could feel the connection to the
sphere.

I picked up one of the nerafpan pieces
and rubbed it between my fingers. Nothing happened. I was not
surprised. Channeling into the orb would disrupt the bracelet. I
closed my eyes and visualized the stream flowing out of me through
the cables into the sphere. The stream widened and flowed over me. I
let it flow down my arms and into my hand.

My wrist tingled as the bracelet
responded to the flow of power, but that was it. There was no pain.

The nerafpan in my hand began to grow
warm. I ran my finger across it and felt the strange ore respond to
the pressure of my touch.

I opened my eyes. Shira was kneeling on
the floor next to me. Garit was standing behind her with Duncan in
his arms. The big guy must have picked him up as soon as he dropped
the orb.

I gave them a smile.

“It’s working,” I
said as I raise my hands and showed them the flat piece of nerafpan I
had just made. I took the piece and slid it under the bracelet. The
two ends pinched together with no problem. It didn’t look
pretty, but I wasn’t trying to make a fashion statement. “Now
get going. I’ll meet you at the lift as soon as I’m
finished here.”

Shira shook her head. “No. I’m
not leaving until you are finished. We need to stay together. Now
more than ever.”

“She’s right. We stick with
the plan,” agreed Garit.

There was no use arguing with them. It
would take time we didn’t have, and it wasn’t likely that
I would change their mind. Instead I picked up the next piece of
nerafpan and started shaping it into a sliver that I could slide
under the bracelet. The work went quickly and soon I had over half of
the bracelet covered.

There was no change in the bracelet. I
still felt it siphoning energy from me.

The room had taken on a green glow as
the orb I was attached to absorbed the extra energy I channeled. It
felt warmer too. I paused to wipe some sweat from my forehead. The
others seemed unaffected by the temperature change.

My head itched beneath the helmet. I
hoped there weren’t any critters in it. I probably should have
checked before I put it on. Great, now my head itched even more just
thinking about it.

“What is it?” asked Shira.
“Why did you stop? Is something wrong?”

“No. Nothing is wrong. I just
needed to take a break. How’s Duncan doing?”

“He’s still sleeping, but
he looks much better.”

I nodded my head while I picked up the
next piece of nerafpan. I smoothed it into a thin layer before
sliding it under the bracelet. When it was in place I wrapped the
nerafpan and pinched the edges together. Then I picked up the next
piece and repeated the entire process.

Pinching the last piece in place was
like throwing a switch. The bracelet’s pull on me stopped
immediately. One second it was there. The next it was gone.

The lumps of nerafpan around the
bracelet were rough and grated against my wrist. That was expected.
My ability to shape the nerafpan with my fingers had always been
crude. At least it worked. Now lets see if I could improve on it.

I focused on the bracelet and let the
power flow out of me. There was no pain. No sense that the bracelet
was affecting me in any way.

I stopped to admire my work. The rough
edges were gone. The shield I worked around the bracelet was smooth
and unblemished. It looked perfect.

“It worked,” gasped Shira.

“Yeah. Cool isn’t it.”

I pulled the helmet off of my head then
ran my fingers through my hair. The air in the tunnel was cool
against my skin, and it quickly dried the sweat beading on my
forehead.