The Flute Keeper's Promise (The Flute Keeper Saga) (33 page)

Trapper Toussant covered the
vagrant’s mouth with a blanket. “Pipe down, buddy. You’ll get us all in
trouble.”

Above us, Natty’s customers jeered
at the guard.

“
Go back to your side of the
ocean!
”

“
We can take care of ourselves
around here!
”

“Ungrateful bumpkins!” roared the
guard. “Just wait until the duke hears about this!”

“Boo-hoo,” Natty said. “The duke
can levy taxes all he wants. He’s not our king!”

An inspired chorus of “
Huzzah!
”
filled the pub.

“Sounds like things are getting out
of hand up there,” Valory said. “We’d best make a break for it when it gets
clear, don’t ya think?”

“Just a minute,” I said, approaching
the vagrant. “What were those two names?”

“Oh,” Trapper Toussant said. “They
were Finbarr and—”

“Wren,” the vagrant said. He looked
up at me with eyes so sunken that his face was like a skeleton. Then, without
warning, he reached up and grabbed my wrist. My first instinct was to pull away,
but I saw by his expression that he recognized me.

Then something strange happened.
The place where he touched my wrist started to burn. It felt as though he was drawing
energy out of me. The essence of all my strength rushed to the spot. I cried
out and collapsed to the floor. The instant I fell free from his touch, I began
to feel normal again.

The man sat up. Some color returned
to his sagging skin. His eyes appeared sharper and more alert.

Valory rushed to my side. “Are you
okay?” she glared at the vagrant. “What did you do to her?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.
They did this. They did this to me.”

The confrontation upstairs had reached
a standoff. Now patrons were shouting and swearing. The floor creaked
incessantly with the sound of Natty pacing behind the bar.

“I’ll be back!” shouted the guard.
“Mark my words. You will pay what you owe!”

The swinging doors squeaked and the
sounds of breaking glass chased the duke’s man out to the street.

“Don’t throw your mugs, idiots!” Natty
yelled at her customers. “What will you have to drink from?”

“Our boots!” shouted one tipsy
patron.

The ceiling rattled as everyone
stomped in unison and chanted “
Boots!
”

Valory rolled her eyes. “If this is
civilization, then I’m not impressed. What do you reckon that red cape is gonna
do when he comes back?”

“I don’t know, but maybe we’d be
safer elsewhere for now,” Trapper Toussant said.

I barely heard them. I was staring
at the vagrant with disbelief. Though some strength had returned to him, he was
barely half a man. Yet something of the man he used to be remained in his
skeletal face. I didn’t want to believe it, couldn’t, and didn’t dare. It
couldn’t really be him, not without the diamond crystal around his neck.

“You don’t recognize me,” he said
in a voice renewed by the strength he’d siphoned from me. It was a voice I knew
well.

Something stuck in my throat. I
couldn’t bring myself to say his name for fear it would make it true. “What
happened to you?”

“I was a test subject,” he said.
“They did countless experiments. They took my magic.”

Valory balked. “You know this guy?”

I looked him over from head to toe.
His appearance was much like King Theobald’s after he’d given up his magic. Now
I understood why he looked so unnatural.

He’d been drained.

I swallowed the lump in my throat
and turned to Valory and Trapper Toussant.  “Guys, it is my honor to introduce
you to Faylinn’s one and only Diamond Rank Master Caster, Commander Frayne
Larue.”

CHAPTER
NINETEEN

Valory and Trapper Toussant stared
at me aghast like it was some kind of sick joke.

“I mean it,” I said, trying not to
get choked up. “When I last saw him, he was the most powerful magician in all
of Faylinn.”

“
Was
,” said Commander Larue
wretchedly. “I made a mistake. I should have done everything in my power to
protect Chloe from the Duke of Briar.”

“But you were betrayed by the
Seelie Court!” I said. “You had no way of knowing.”

“But I could have stayed,” the
commander lamented. “Instead I followed the duke’s orders and went to take my
new post. It was in a marshland prison called Helm Bogvogny. I was told that
I’d be stationed as a guard. Instead they used some weapon on me as soon as I
arrived and made me a prisoner.”

It clearly pained him to speak. I
couldn’t bear to watch him. The Slaugh may have been the most physically
powerful beings in Faylinn, but whenever I thought of authority and magical
expertise, I thought of Commander Larue. It shocked me to see what he’d been
reduced to.

“What kind of weapon?” Valory
asked.

Commander Larue looked at her
curiously, as though seeing her for the first time. “I don’t know,” he said. “I
didn’t see it, but whatever it was it made me unable to use my magic. Otherwise
I could have mopped the place with those Larlathian brutes.”

“So it was the duke’s men,” I said,
clenching a fist. “Did they control the whole prison?”

“No, they were just security,”
Commander Larue said. “Inside, it was…” He shuddered.

I went to touch his shriveled hand
reassuringly but then remembered what would happen. I drew back my hand and
asked, “Who was inside?”

“I should not say it,” he said,
squeezing his eyes shut. “It’s blasphemy.”

“What they did to you is evil,” I
said. “Nobody here is going to judge you.”

Commander Larue took a deep,
rattling breath. The color had gone out of him again. His arms shook just from
propping himself up on his elbows. I understood what must be done. I reached
nervously for his hand.

“No!” he said, drawing away from me.
“I didn’t mean to drain you before. There’s another way. Check my boot there,
in the side pocket.

I did as he instructed. Inside his
boot I found something hard wrapped in a handkerchief. I unwrapped it and saw
that it was a blue stone with smooth, glassy sides. In places it appeared
almost translucent but in others it was solid, dark and hard. It felt warm. I
noticed a tingling sensation as my bare fingers grazed the stone.

“Is this alchemic?” I asked,
handing the stone to Commander Larue.

“Yes,” he said, taking the stone
carefully. In the flickering lantern light the stone pulsed with its own power.
There came a flash as Commander Larue held it in his bare palm. The stone turned
darker as he held it. His arms stopped shaking. Some of the pallor left his
face. He quickly wrapped the stone back in its handkerchief and placed it on
the bench next to him.

“What is that thing?” Valory asked,
crowding awkwardly close.

“Some kind of magic stone, eh?”
asked Trapper Toussant.

“I shall come to it briefly,”
Commander Larue said. He sat up and leaned his back against the wall. I admired
his strength. Whatever the stone had given him, I knew it was his own fierce
will that kept him going.

He watched me with his hawk yellow
eyes. “How have you made it this far?” he asked. “I thought for certain that
the duke would hunt you down and imprison you, too.”

“You know me,” I said. “I’m just
like a weed in the flower bed. They keep trying to get rid of me and I just
keep popping back up.”

Commander Larue gave me feeble
smile. “Yes, I know all too well. It does me good to see you. You may be one of
the only people left who can help.”

“Who
is
that girl?” I heard
Trapper Toussant whisper to Valory.

“She’s my friend,” Valory replied.
“Any friend of hers is a friend of ours and their enemies are our enemies, so
listen real good to this commander guy.”

I couldn’t take my mind off the
atrocities Commander Larue had endured. “Are you strong enough now to tell us
everything that happened?” I asked.

“I think so,” he said, sitting up
straighter. “I was given orders to guard Helm Bogvogny. I hoped to use the time
away to think of a plan and perhaps form an alliance with some of the other
guards, even call on the prisoners if I had to. I wanted to use their prowess
to oust the duke. However, I greatly underestimated my enemy.”

“
The duke,
” I hissed.

“It was night when I arrived. Helm
Bogvogny lies in a marsh near the Eastern Gulf. It takes days and days of
travel to get there. I was foolish enough to fly most of the way to save time.
It cost me dearly. I was so exhausted when I arrived that the guards got the
jump on me with some kind of attack that drained me. Then they put me in a cell.
I lost track of time after that. The only thing to disrupt my days was when
they
came with their needles and extractors. Alchemy was outlawed ages ago because
it can so easily be misused. These people misused it in every horrific manner
you can imagine.”

“Alchemy?” Trapper Toussant
interrupted. “Ain’t that like what Enchanters do when they take one thing and
change it to something else?”

“In a manner of speaking,”
Commander Larue said. “However, Enchanters rely solely upon magic. They are limited
by their own abilities. When you see an Enchanter make an object move you are
really just seeing a projection of their power. It is the same with us Master
Casters. The amount of elemental magic we conjure is only equal to the power
within us. It is not limitless, and once we spend it we’re stuck until we’ve
rested up and recovered.”

“No kidding, huh?” Trapper Toussant
said, scratching his bristly chin. “I only enchanted something once in my whole
life and it laid me up for days.”

“Alchemy is different,” Commander
Larue went on. “A skilled alchemist can change something solid into energy and
back again. They can manipulate any material to amplify or extract elements
from their surroundings. They aren’t limited by their own power, but by the
nature of the materials themselves.”

I thought of Othella’s alchemic
source crystal. Othella was a Guardian, same as me, but her barriers were ten
times stronger thanks to her little blue crystal. W.R.A.I.T.H. had not been
above using alchemy in their experiments, but I remembered something that
Bazzlejet had mentioned once.

 “It’s unstable,” I said. “Energy
created from alchemy is hard to control.”

“And it’s just as hard to control
solids made from it,” Commander Larue said. “If you take energy and force it
into a solid form, it doesn’t want to stay that way. It wants to change back.”
He tapped the stone that lay wrapped in the handkerchief next to him. “That’s
why if I touch this stone, the power inside jumps into me, becoming energy
again.”

Valory cocked her head and asked,
“But if the energy in that rock wants to get out so bad, then how did it get in
there in the first place? Where’d it come from?”

Commander Larue lifted a hand to
cover his eyes. “The most appalling misuse of alchemy…I can’t believe that
they
of all people—”

“Who?” I asked. “The ones running
the experiments?”

“The clergy,” Commander Larue said
in a low, sad voice.

Trapper Toussant gasped and made a
protective sign with his fingers. Valory scratched her head in confusion.

I wasn’t surprised at all. “So their
cruelty extends beyond the cathedral.”

Commander Larue lowered his hand.
“What do you mean?”

“Ever heard of the Botanique
Purifico?”

The commander gave me a blank look.
“No, but the things they’re doing at Helm Bogvogny are diabolical. This stone I
have is just a small piece of something they created. It’s made of magic that
they drained from Fay prisoners. Some of my own is no doubt in it as well. I
would rather have not used it, knowing where it came from. Most of the
prisoners die when their magic is taken.” He lifted his shriveled hands and
grief filled his eyes. “If they don’t die, they end up like me. But I had to
get away. I had to make it far, so I used the stone. I had to tell somebody and
I prayed every night and every day that my path would bring me back to Lord
Finbarr or—” he looked me in the eye, “—back to you.”

Valory and Trapper Toussant had
drawn back from the stone in revulsion. It was sick and unnatural to see
people’s life forces trapped in something no bigger than a lump of coal. It
violated all that was right, even for a Slaugh who’d never known magic.

“That’s just AWFUL!” Valory
exclaimed.

“Horrid,” Trapper Toussant said,
making the protective sign again. “And you say this little hunk of rock is just
part of a bigger one?”

Commander Larue nodded. He was
starting to tire again. “I don’t know what they were planning to do with it,
but there was a stone as big as this room made entirely from extracted magic.”

“
Was?
” Valory and I asked at
the same time.

The tiniest smile wavered on
Commander Larue’s lips. “I haven’t told you of my daring escape. As you can see,
their experiments on me had some strange side effects. When I first discovered
that I could drain magic by touch, it was on an attendant who was supposed to
be tying my restraints. With the energy I sapped from him, I was able to break
free and escape to the main lab. That’s where I saw it: a giant stone shining
with magic. You didn’t even have to touch it to feel its power. The clergy were
onto me by then, so I had no choice.” He lifted his index finger. “I pressed
this fingertip to the stone for just one second and received the biggest jolt
of my life. I felt as though I could do
anything
. I could have destroyed
every guard there.”

“But you didn’t,” I guessed. I knew
what he’d done because I knew what I’d have done.