The Flute Keeper's Promise (The Flute Keeper Saga) (20 page)

An image of the Slaugh word
liebet
floated through the air. It was one of the few written ones that I recognized.

“This word can simultaneously mean
‘mine’
or ‘
yours
,” the voice continued. “When paired with the adverb ‘
ivern
’
the meaning becomes even more ambiguous since ‘
ivern
’ is also a dual
definition word. It can mean both ‘
forever
’ and ‘
never
.’”

Liebet ivern
.

I was bothered by the strong
sensation that I’d seen the phrase written somewhere before. I racked my brains
trying to figure it out.

Someone approached outside. There
was only one thing left on the tray. It was a fig. I quickly snatched it up as
the door opened and hid it in my palm.

“How is my star pupil?” asked High
Priestess Grimmoix.

I stared at the old woman with
deep-seated dislike. This confused me. I didn’t know why I should dislike the
high priestess.

“Something wrong?” she asked, eying
me suspiciously.

I shook my head.

The priestess didn’t look
convinced. She grabbed my chin and peered into my eyes. The feel of her cold,
knobby fingers made me squirm.

“Stop fidgeting!” she said, jerking
my face even closer to her own. “Hmmm…there’s a little too much spark in your
eyes. They must have waited too long to feed you. Nothing a second course won’t
fix.” She let me go.

I shrank away and rubbed my chin.

High Priestess Grimmoix rapped on
the cell door. The guard opened it to let her out. The priestess looked over
her shoulder at me.

“I’m going to hand pick some
special treats for you. Won’t that be nice?”

I caught a threatening tone in her
voice. It made me uneasy. I nodded politely in hopes that would hasten her exit.

“Good,” she said with a shrewd
smile. “Then you’ll be all ready for your induction tomorrow.”

The door shut. I waited until the
footsteps faded down the corridor outside. My heart pounded. I didn’t know why
I was so nervous. The news of my induction was a surprise. The priestess made
it sound like a nice thing, but I wasn’t so sure any more. I wasn’t sure of
anything.

I glanced at the fig in my palm. I
did not feel as ravenous as usual. Lately my meals only left me hungry for
more. Nevertheless, I had room for just one little fig. I lifted it to my
mouth, then paused.  This felt like something that I’d done before. Was my mind
playing tricks on me?

“Only one way to find out,” I
whispered under my breath. Then I popped the fig into my mouth.

They came for me the next day.

High Priestess Grimmoix seemed very
pleased to find me waiting quietly with a blank look on my face.

“There’s a good girl,” the
priestess said, patting me on the head like I was a favorite dog.

I was very quiet and very rigid. I
followed the priestess obediently out of the cell and into the corridor where
Judge Kesper and the clergy elders were waiting. The elders were comprised of
three very old men and four stern-looking women.

“Miss Wren is a model student now,”
the priestess said to Kesper. “She’ll make a fine addition to our Cognites.

“A productive member of our
society,” Kesper said. Then he snorted. “About time! If only her grandfather
had been so easy to subdue.”

“That’s the past,” said one of the
clergy elders in a sepulchral voice. “The future is ours to control. The tests
are promising. All we need now is the tablet.”

“Any leads?” one of the women
asked.

“We’re close,” High Priestess
Grimmoix said. “The duke has his best men on it.”

“ You mean you haven’t foreseen the
exact location?” the other woman asked.

The lines around High Priestess
Grimmoix’s thin lips puckered. “The visions have been clouded lately. Perhaps
all has been overshadowed by the events of this past week. The duke’s takeover has
sent waves through the web of destiny.”

I inhaled sharply.

“Something the matter?” High
Priestess Grimmoix asked.

“No,” I said. “It was just a hunger
pain.”

“Not to worry,” she said, grabbing
me by the arm. “There will be no more pain soon.”

“That sounds nice,” I said.

The others snickered.

We formed a line with Kesper in
front, me and the high priestess right behind and the elders bringing up the
rear. We walked through a hall with rows of cells just like the one I had been
in. Guards were posted here and there between the cells. The guards gave nods
of respect as the priestess walked by.

“Any word yet on the whereabouts of
Othella and her daughters?” asked one of the lady elders.

“No, but it’s hardly a concern,” Kesper
said. “They are considered to be in exile. If they do turn up, it’s the duke’s
task to decide what to do with them. He’s quite put out with the whole mess, of
course. He’d just as soon wash his hands of them and I say the kingdom would be
better for it.”

We arrived at heavily guarded door.
High Priestess Grimmoix gave a signal and one of the guards pressed a glyph on
the wall. The door split down the middle and opened, allowing us to enter a
high-ceilinged vault with a canal running through it. The canal split off into
branching waterways that connected the vault to other rooms.

A small wooden boat bobbed at the
edge of the canal. Kesper stepped aboard, then the priestess. She tugged my arm
and I stepped gingerly onto the boat. The elders stepped in after me. The boat
sped off under its own power as soon as the last elder climbed aboard.

The boat skimmed the water until
the canal branched off into another room. The boat followed the stream to
another passage where the water splashed down a wide set of stone stairs. We
were jostled as the magically-enhanced boat bounced up the incline to a wide
archway. On the other side of the archway was a cavernous expanse that appeared
to have no end.

It was a magnificent chamber. The
stream swelled to form a huge, slow moving river. The ceiling high above was a
jumble of earth and tree roots with rays of sunlight piercing through in
places. Many of the tree roots stretched down from the ceiling to the surface
of the river, forming intricate spirals and webs along the way.

The boat slowed to match the pace
of the river. It carried us silently through the maze of hanging roots.

Kesper’s beady eyes spun in their
sockets. “It always humbles me to come here. It is truly a sight.”

“Water and earth,” the elder with
the sepulchral voice said. “These are the roots of our great civilization.”

The raft carried us deep into the
mass of roots. Some spots were gloomy as the inside of a cave; others were lit
brightly from the shafts of light falling from high above. The raft drew up
beside a mound of earth that was surrounded by a fortress of tightly intertwined
roots. High Priestess Grimmoix snapped her fingers and some of the roots drew
back, revealing a narrow entrance. We filed quickly through the opening. The
priestess snapped her fingers again and the roots pulled themselves shut.

Inside was a glass bubble that
acted like a greenhouse. It was warmed by a piercing sunbeam that shot straight
down through the middle of the encircling roots. Inside the glass bubble were
rows of young, potted trees. Five life-sized statues made of amber stood among
the trees.

At first glance the amber statues
were eerie. At second glance, they were sinister. Inside each one was a real
person, frozen in the resin. They stared out with dead expressions. Two of them
were young men. I spotted one young woman and a little girl as well. The last
and most distant one was an old woman. They all wore the green cloth of the
clergy and had bright red crystals around their necks. I couldn’t help but stop
and stare at the one nearest to me. He was a boy my age with white hair and
striking purple eyes.

A steady dripping echoed all
throughout the greenhouse. The noise came from thin, silver needles that had
been drilled into the resin statues. The needles pierced the skin of the bodies
trapped inside, drawing thin trickles of blood. The blood ran down the needles
into collecting troughs. From there the blood was channeled into glass tubes
that fed into the soil of the surrounding trees.

“Ah, Cognites,” Kesper said with
mock admiration. “The best of pupils.”

“How proud they’d be to know such a
celebrity is joining them,” High Priestess Grimmoix said, patting me on the
back.

“Do you plan to donate her memories
to the Wren family tree?” Kesper asked.

“No,” Priestess Grimmoix said with
conviction. “She is an anomaly. It is better that she be forgotten. As far as
history is concerned, Alberich was the last true Wren. His demise should
continue to serve as a warning to others who would turn against us.”

My lips twitched ever so slightly.
The priestess caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. She frowned.

“Get her into the resin
immediately,” the priestess said. “The sooner we get this over with, the
better.”

One of the male elders grabbed my
arm and took me to a ladder that led up to a wooden platform. Beside the
platform was a huge vat of sticky, sweet-smelling resin.

“Climb,” the elder instructed.

I took a step up the ladder. The
elder followed me.

The others stood beside the resin
vat with excited expressions on their faces. The only exception was High
Priestess Grimmoix. She watched my movements like a hawk.

Something fell out of my robe and
bounced down the ladder. The elder behind me picked the thing up and stared in
confusion.

“An orange,” he said. “Where did
this come from?”

High Priestess Grimmoix’s face
contorted to a snarl of rage. “GRAB HER!”

I hurried up to the top of the
platform. Heart racing, I pulled out other fruits that I’d stashed in my robe.
It was all from the carefully picked last meal that High Priestess Grimmoix had
sent in for me. I used the uneaten fruit as ammunition, pelting it at the
elder. It slowed him down enough for me to gain footing at the top of the
platform.

“GET HER! GET HER!” the priestess
shouted.

Magic spells flew my way. I
deflected them with a barrier, but just barely. My magic was terribly weak.
Then I remembered the red crystal I was wearing. I ripped the thing off and
tried my magic again. This time, I was able to create a barrier strong enough
to knock the elder off the ladder and ward off two pillars of ice that the
others cast at me.

Sweat poured down my face. I was
getting a workout after wasting away in the cell for weeks. I did not slow down
though, not even for a second. Revenge kept me going. Ever since tasting the
fig and re-living my family’s history, all my memories had come back. I’d
realized what High Priestess Grimmoix and Kesper were trying to do to me. 

I had played their fool, waiting
for the right moment to retaliate. Now, standing next to the vat of sticky
resin, I saw my chance.

High Priestess Grimmoix used magic
to try to knock me off the platform. I kept my place by pushing back with my
own magic.

“How is she doing that?” one of the
elders shouted to the priestess.

“She hasn’t been eating the fruit!”
Priestess Grimmoix yelled “And she’s removed her dampening crystal! I told you
we should start embedding them in their foreheads!”

“Why didn’t you foresee this?”
shrieked one of the woman elders.

“I told you—” the priestess said,
huffing, “—the visions have been clouded!”

Their squabbling gave me a few
seconds to recover some of my energy. I’d need every ounce of it for what I was
planning.

 “USE YOUR WINGS!” Kesper shouted
at the others.

High Priestess Grimmoix and the
elders just stared at him.

Kesper gaped back, dumbfounded.
“You mean none of you can fly?”

“You can’t either!” Nuckelvee
snapped.

This was welcome news to me,
although I’d always suspected as much. It took a special sort of magic to be
able to conjure wings. No Fay who had given their heart over to bitterness or
greed could hope to fly.

The platform gave an ominous creak.
I was drenched in my own sweat. My hands trembled. I only had one chance to get
this right.

There came a loud snapping noise.
The platform buckled and smashed into the vat of resin. I jumped down to safety
as the vat started to tip. With one last burst of magical energy, I gave the
vat a hard push. The amber resin spilled over the elders below.

By the time they realized what was
upon them it was too late. A few unlucky elders were coated head to toe. Most were
stuck up to their chests.

Only Kesper’s head remained free of
the resin. The rest of his body was trapped in a round, gooey glob of the
stuff.

There was no time to celebrate. I
ran towards the boat. I wished there was some way to help the Cognites who were
trapped like statues, but I didn’t know how. I’d just have to send help if I
made it out. Even then I couldn’t be sure I had any allies left in the castle.

It had all gone so wrong. I hated myself
for falling into the priestess’s stupid trap. Maybe if I’d had my wits, I could
have stopped the duke’s takeover. Now it was too late.

I came to the root-sealed wall
outside the greenhouse. I pushed against the roots but they didn’t budge. I
tried snapping my fingers as High Priestess Grimmoix had done, but the entrance
remained closed.

“You’re doing it wrong,” said a
menacing voice.

Shocked, I spun around. There stood
High Priestess Grimmoix. Somehow she’d escaped the resin spill. There wasn’t a
drop on her. She looked wild. All her wiry gray hair had come loose from her
head scarf. It stuck up like damaged feathers over her pointy ears. Her lips
were drawn back, making her thin, beakish nose stand out even more.