The Flute Keeper's Promise (The Flute Keeper Saga) (54 page)

“The statue of Danu Dana behind the
throne,” Chloe whispered back. “I’ll go up first and take a look.”

She grabbed the middle rungs of the
ladder and began to pull herself up. Before she got to the top, though, the old
rope ladder broke on one side. With her footing in jeopardy, Chloe floundered.
Bazzlejet caught her ankles and managed to hold her up.

“Can you still reach the hatch?”
Bazzlejet asked with a grunt as Chloe settled heavily on his shoulders.

Chloe stretched her arms and found
the edge of the opening. “Lift me up higher,” she hissed.

Bazzlejet groaned and stood on his
tiptoes. Chloe nudged the hatch open ever so gently, just making a thin crack
so she could peek into the room above. A statue of the legendary Fay warrior,
Danu Dana, blocked off the view to the main part of the throne room. Chloe could
hear the voices in the room much better now. The one she heard filled her with
instant rage.

“That’s it, take all you can. We’ll
bleed these traitors dry! Look sharp, old girl. No rest for the weary, I know,
but we’ve got a job to do!”

The duke was filled with psychotic
glee. The air felt unusually warm and there was a strange crackling sound in
the room. It made the hair on Chloe’s neck stand on end.

Bazzlejet started to sag underneath
her.

“I’m climbing up,” she whispered.
“I’ll give you a hand at the top.”

Before he could protest, she pulled
herself up by her fingertips and propped the hatch all the way open. She poked
her head out. While the clunky old statue kept her from seeing into the throne
room, it also kept the others in the throne room from seeing her. With her
pulse quickening, she climbed all the way out and squatted behind the statue.

The throne sat on the other side of
the statue. The duke shouted commands from it.

“Prod that Amber Rank harder, he’s
holding out on us!” the duke bellowed. “Yes, that’s it. Good boy. You’re
serving your kingdom well.”

Somebody let out a scream. The agony
in the sound made Chloe’s scalp crinkle.

“Pssst!” Bazzlejet whispered.

Chloe reached down and offered a
hand to pull him up. He struggled until he got a good grip on the edge of the
opening and then he pulled himself through. The energy in the air made his
spiky hair crackle with static.

He took up a hiding spot next to
her. She pointed towards the throne and made a face to let him know that’s
where the duke was. He peeked around the side of the statue. His face turned
waxy white.

The look on his face frightened
Chloe more than the strange noises. She tried to gesture with her hands to ask
him how many people were in the room, but he was unwilling or unable to
communicate what he’d seen.

Chloe took a deep breath and peered
around her side of the statue.

The center of the throne room sat
beneath a glass steeple with one of the tower crystals perched at the very top.
The crystal threw its glittering purple light on the scene below. A metal rod
had been run from the floor all the way up to the crystal. 

Kiros Rubedo was bound to the
crystal rod. A whirlwind of magical energy surrounded her. She appeared to be
drawing power from four commoners who were chained to the wall. They writhed in
their chains. Even as Chloe watched, their skin grew dry and their hair turned
lighter. She understood instantly what was going on. They were being drained of
their magic. There was a pillar made of blue stone on the other side of Kiros.
As she drained the prisoners, the pillar grew larger and pulsed with energy of
its own. Green-clad clergy members huddled around the pillar. They touched it
greedily, letting it flood their bodies with stolen magic.

“That’s it! That’s it!” shouted the
duke. “More!”

Chloe could not see him since the
statue blocked her view of the throne. The sound of his voice filled her with
sick terror. She trembled and squeezed her eyes shut.

“
In my castle
!” she
whispered.

She opened her eyes to find
Bazzlejet, still waxen, staring at her. He mouthed, “
Is that Tobin’s mother?
”

Chloe nodded. She thanked her lucky
stars that Tobin hadn’t come along. If he could see what they were using his
mother for—she shuddered. Best not to think about it. They were here and they
were the ones who had to do something about it.

She looked all around. The long,
silken banners that hung along the walls provided the only additional cover in
the room. To add insult to injury, the usual banners of purple had been
switched out with red ones.

The sight of the imposter banners brought
Chloe out of her fear and back to a healthy state of rage.  She evaluated their
options. They had to find some way to rescue Kiros. More importantly, Chloe
told herself, they had to keep the duke from reaching Woodman’s Hall.

Bazzlejet whispered, “What do you
think?”

Chloe didn’t want to say what she
thought because the thought she’d just had chilled her straight to the core.
She studied the crystal high above the throne. As far as she could tell, the
crystals were part of the spell keeping the castle aloft. Once in the past, an
enemy had infiltrated Ivywild and stolen all the crystals from the towers.
Chloe wondered how hard it would be to remove them. Then she wondered what
would happen to the castle if it suddenly dropped out of the sky.

 “Duke!” crackled an unpleasant old
voice. “I detect visitors among us. If my latest premonitions are true, then
the little queen who never was has returned to Ivywild.”

Chloe froze. There was no mistaking
the bitter voice of High Priestess Grimmoix.

The statue they were hiding behind
suddenly shattered into a million pieces, blasted apart by magic more powerful
than she’d ever seen.

A big, caped figure leered out of
the dust cloud from the pulverized statue. He threw back his head and laughed.
When he looked down again, Chloe saw that his eyes were glowing white.

High Priestess Grimmoix and the
other clergy members gathered behind the duke. They smoldered with their
siphoned power. All Chloe could see of their faces beneath their hoods were their
glowing white eyes.    

“Welcome back, my little princess,”
said the duke. “You’re just in time to witness Ivywild’s true ascension to
greatness. I have taken it to heights you never even dreamed of.”

Terrified and exposed, all Chloe
could do was scream, “MONSTER!”

The duke laughed again. “No, I am
not a monster. I am the only one who has ever seen the real potential in our magic.
All the races will know their proper place now. The Fay shall rule over them
all.”

“You mean you’ll rule over them
all!” Bazzlejet shouted.

“Every great race needs a leader,”
the duke said. “If I’ve had to take extreme measures to be the best possible
leader, so be it. History will be my judge. After this, all previous
generations of the Fay will look primitive. No more power shall be wasted on
the pitiful and useless, but be held entirely by those worthy of it. It is
better this way, after all. We shall stamp out the weaklings and build a
better, stronger race.”

Chloe couldn’t believe what she was
hearing. He was insane. He was also dead serious. She tried not to cower, but
she couldn’t bear to look up into his glowing white eyes or at the hooded
figures that surrounded him. Was this really the future of her race?

She sneered at the duke. “I’ll
never let my people become like all of you! You’re a bunch of freaks!”

The duke’s eyes dimmed as they
narrowed. His voice took on a deadly edge and the hooded clergy behind him
pressed in closer.

“My dear princess, you don’t have a
choice. You can either join us or—” he glanced over at the drained Fay commoners
who were chained to the wall, “—give yourself up to the cause.”

***

“We’ve spotted something coming in
from the south.”

I perked my ears up and listened as
Wilhelmina gave her report to Lev. It was the first real news we’d had since we
began preparations the night before. The atmosphere around Woodman’s Hall was tense.
Everyone knew something was coming, just not when or how.

Lev glanced past Wilhelmina to the
forest beyond the drawbridge. “Distance?”

“A thousand wingbeats and closing
fast. Whatever it is, it’s large.”

“Wingbeats?” I asked.

Lev and Wilhelmina looked at me in
surprise, as though they’d forgotten I was there. Unperturbed, I pressed for
more details. “You mean it’s coming in by
air
?”

Wilhelmina’s black eyes darted from
her king to me uncertainly. “Y-yes. Yes, that seems to be the case.”

Katriel and Valory flew into the
Hall and landed next to Lev. Both were breathless and sweaty and so eager to
talk that they both started at the same time.

“Caught the scent—”

“Coming from the east—”

“Foot travelers—”

Their words toppled over each other
as they rushed to give their news. Katriel glared at Valory.  “Shut up! I’ll
give the report!”

“Just tell me what you’ve found!”
Lev barked.

“We’ve caught the scent of a foot
party coming this way,” Valory said quickly before Katriel could get another
word in edgewise.

Lev raised his eyebrows. “Red capes?”

“Still too far away to tell,”
Katriel said with a sideways scowl at Valory. “We wanted to fly out further and
get more information, but we didn’t know if you’d want us to risk revealing
ourselves.”

Lev waved her off. “Go find out
more about the travelers and report back.”

Katriel lowered her head. “Yes,
Your Highness.”

“As for you,” Lev said, turning to
Wilhelmina, “Take Noemi and get downwind of the flying object. Gather as much
scent knowledge as you can.”

There was no mistaking the flicker
of worry in Wilhelmina’s eyes at the mention of her daughter.  

After Wilhelmina left, I asked Lev,
“Why do you want her to take Noemi? That seems dangerous.”

“Children have a stronger sense of
smell,” he said.

“Better than yours?” I asked
skeptically.

“Far better. It goes downhill as we
age. Give me a few more years and my nose will be no better than yours.”

I felt somebody tug my sleeve and
looked over to find Wimbleysminch waiting beside me.

“The cannons are ready,” he said.
“We’ve got a few cannonballs and loads of grapeshot. Lord Finbarr wants to try
magic projectiles, too. Flaming balls and ice chunks and things of that sort.”
He grinned. “Sounds like a good time.”

“Stand by for now,” I said. “Take
shifts on the watch and rest up while you can. We’ve been up all night. It
won’t do to fight if we’re asleep on our feet.”

“Aye aye!” he said.

“Speaking of sleep...” I glanced
over at Lev. There were deep circles under his eyes. As far as I knew, he
hadn’t so much as napped in two days.

“I’m fine,” he said. “I don’t want
to sleep.”

“But you need to. Go rest. I can
handle things here for a while.”

“No.”

It was no use arguing with him. I
sighed and rubbed my own tired eyes. All the waiting was getting to me. We
didn’t know where or when the duke would strike, otherwise I might have suggested
meeting him halfway. I caught myself wishing that I had a Pyxis Charm so I
could lead a surprise attack on him. Then something hit me.

“Hey, Lev.”

He stirred listlessly. “Yeah?”

“That red cape escaped using a
Pyxis Charm. Of the two left in existence, Othella has one and Robyn has the
other.”

 He stood up straight, looking more
alert. “Yes. Yes, I had thought of that, but…”

“Who did he get it from? Do you
think they’ve captured Othella and the girls?”

Just then, Valory came flying back
into the hall. She was a flustered ball of excitement.

“They’ve returned!” she shouted. “The
foot travelers are Mr. Larue and the Master Casters! They’re on the way! And
they’ve brought others!”

Her announcement brought all the
activity in the hall to a halt. Mrs. Larue came running down the stairs. Anouk
was close on her heels.

“Is it true?” Mrs. Larue asked.
“Have you seen them?”

Valory nodded animatedly. “Sure
enough. Katriel is on her way to help them.”

Anouk gripped the banister with
white knuckles. “Did you see Garland? Is he with them?”

“Well…” Valory’s face fell, “I
didn’t spot him exactly, but they were far off so it was hard to tell.”

“What about my Bazzlejet?” Mrs.
Larue asked.

 “I didn’t see him.”

Mrs. Larue and Anouk looked at each
other in horror.

“You said they have others with
them,” Lev said, frowning. “Who?”

“I don’t recognize them,” Valory
said. “It’s a Fay girl, a tall, dark-skinned guy and a lady in a rolling chair
contraption.”

As soon as she mentioned the
rolling chair, I gasped.

“Othella?” Lev said.

“But where is Chloe?” I asked.

I brushed past Valory and walked
out to the drawbridge. The inside of Woodman’s Hall was too heavy with everyone’s
fears and questions. I needed room for my own.

It was early afternoon. A train of
fat clouds blotted out the sun. From the looks of it, an evening rain shower
was in the works. Maybe it would storm. That would be appropriate, I thought—something
to unsettle things even more than they already were.

“Do you want me to fly you to
them?” Valory asked. She was watching me from across the bridge.

I shook my head. “No. I need to
stay close to this place.”

Valory spread her wings. “Well I’m
off again. Don’t worry about your friends. I’m sure they’re fine.”

I watched as Valory’s diminishing
figure passed two more winged shapes in the distance. This time it was Wilhelmina
and Noemi returning. I met them on the bridge.

“What did you find out?” I asked.