Unbound (49 page)

A sudden chill coursed through him. His skin prickled as the temperature dropped severely. He drew in a gasp and tasted cold on his tongue.

Unless, of course, as bait for a trap.

He saw the frost first as he whirled about, a cloud of white mist haloing the top of a fallen log. And burning through them, a pair of eyes alight with a red glow, piercing through the veil of cold and scowling.

But not at him.

“
Cesta!
” he screamed.

Across the clearing, she looked up at him, then followed his gaze to the top of the log. Her cry of alarm shifted clumsily into words of power, hands thrown up and sending the air before her shimmering with an invisible shield. Sloppy words, weak stance, hasty spell.

It was hardly a surprise that the spear-sized icicle that slammed into her sent her flying.

The tails of her coat fluttered like a bird’s wounded wings as she went sailing, but the air was thankfully unstained by any crimson. The icicle, then, had merely shattered her shield and not pierced her flesh.

That’s good,
Dreadaeleon thought.

“Apprentices?” a deep voice asked.

And that is not.

A figure, tall and slim, leaped from the top of the log. His descent slowed unnaturally as he fell, so that his boots did not so much as crunch a single leaf when he landed. Adjusting the cuffs of a clean coat, he stepped forward and regarded Dreadaeleon coolly through clear, bright eyes.

Admittedly, Lathrim did not look like what Dreadaeleon was expecting.

His skin was pale and clean, his black hair unwashed but kept in a neat braid, and his trimmed beard betrayed only a few unruly strands. His angular face showed no gauntness or hunger. And while his eyes bore dark circles from sleeplessness beneath them, they were not the bloodshot, wild stare that he had seen on the heretics who had earlier burned.

“The Venarium cannot possibly be so shameless as to send children after me,” he said, shaking his head. “I was hoping to lure Vemire out, not his pets.”

Ah, so that’s why he was expending such minute amounts of energy,
Dreadaeleon thought.
Only a Lector would be able to detect such trace amounts. Go on, old man, tell him he can’t be so clever if mere children figured out his scheme.

That would have been a good thing to say, he knew.

Of course, it was not what he said.

“B-by order of the V-Venarium,” he stammered, “of T-Tower Defiant, I command you . . . you to . . .”

“And they’ve already drilled that nonsense into you, have they? I suppose the first thing one trains a dog to do is bark.” Lathrim shook his head and turned away from Dreadaeleon. “I’ve no interest in fighting the Venarium’s thralls, boy.”

“N-no,” Dreadaeleon said, shaking his head. “I have to . . . to take you in. I swore an oath.”

“You swore servitude.” Lathrim waved a hand, dismissive, as he began to stalk off into the underbrush. “I pity you, boy, but not enough to humor you. Now go to tend to your fellow dog, she looks almost as sad as—”

The heretic’s voice was cut off by the sudden bolt of cobalt electricity that arced over his head. It struck the branch of an overhanging tree, severing it neatly and sending it to the earth, smoking. He glanced at the fallen branch for a moment before looking behind him at the boy in the too-big coat, an overlarge sleeve billowing around a skinny arm that ended in a pair of smoking fingers.

“I’m not a child,” Dreadaeleon said, his eyes bursting into light. “I am a
wizard.
”

To his ears, that sounded pretty good. Strong, forceful; admittedly, he probably would have sounded
more
forceful if his spell had come even remotely close to striking its mark.

As it was, the toll from the magic spent had already torn itself out of his body. He felt his legs weaken, his breath become heavy, a sheen of sweat appear on his forehead. He wasn’t ready for a spell of that magnitude; even a clumsy show of force had taken too much out of him.

But that feeling, that wispy power that boiled angrily inside him, came flowing back into him. It bid his legs to hold steady, his breath to keep going, his eyes to burn, and his mind to reject any thought of retreat.

“As you like.”

Lathrim made a slow bow. Then shot up, a single palm outstretched. He spoke a single word. And, in a single moment, a gout of flame erupted from his hand and roiled toward Dreadaeleon in a cackling blaze.

To his credit, “hurling oneself to the side in a blind panic” did not
exactly
qualify as “retreating.” But the tax on Dreadaeleon’s body made it hard for him to scramble to his feet; he felt smaller and weaker than ever before. And when he clambered up, that sense of power that bolstered him began to dissipate like so much smoke.

The flames retreated back into Lathrim’s palm with another word, leaving behind only a black char line where the flames had eaten away the leaves. No stray flames or sparks had remained.

Son of a bitch,
Dreadaeleon thought.
He can control his fire. This is too much, old man. You have to get out of here. You have to find Vemire. You have to . . .

He forced that thought silent. Cesta was still here, with this madman, this
heretic.
Whatever he
had
to do was irrelevant. Whatever he was going to do was all that mattered.

“Don’t think I enjoy this.”

Of course, at the moment, what he was going to do seemed to fall along the lines of “die horribly, possibly while crying.”

“You deserved better than the life the Venarium promised you, boy. You deserved better than to be turned into their slave and sent to die on a mad errand.” Lathrim advanced toward him, palm still outstretched and glowing with flame. His eyes burned brightly. “Take some solace, at least, that the ones who follow you will be safer for the example you’ll make.”

His body screamed at him to run; he ignored it. His heart screamed at him to panic; he ignored that too. A wizard’s power was in his mind, his thought, that which elevated him above the common barkneck.

Think, old man,
think
.

But any spell he could have called to mind powerful enough to kill this heretic would be too big to control, and the toll would kill him besides. He looked at Lathrim, transfixed by the fire that sparked to life in the heretic’s palm. It was only by chance that his eyes drifted to the earth, where the fallen tree branch lay.

And it was only by fear that he acted quickly.

A word, shouted. He reached out with an invisible force, sending the air rippling past Lathim. The heretic glanced at it, unimpressed. But he was not aiming for the heretic.

That unseen force seized the tree branch, surely as it had seized the carcass earlier. And with another word and a fierce gesture, Dreadaeleon pulled.

Sloppy. Hasty. An ugly, ugly spell.

But it didn’t need to be pretty.

The branch came hurtling up behind Lathrim. Its jagged tip found the heretic’s leg, pierced his thigh. His concentration broke in a wail of pain as Lathrim fell to one knee.
Now
his eyes bore all the wild agony of the heretics that had come before him and they were fixed on Dreadaeleon.

He spoke a word. He raised his palm. Fire burst from his hand . . .

. . . and was extinguished just as rapidly.

Another word, spoken louder, drowning out his own. The air rippled around him as another force crashed against him and sent him flying. With a shout, he flew across the sky, leaving only a few embers behind as he crashed against a nearby tree trunk and lay still.

Dreadaeleon looked up as Cesta came staggering toward him, breathing heavily, barely standing from the exertion. And yet, she had enough to look at Dreadaeleon and grin broadly.

“Good work, Dread,” she gasped. “Good work.”

And that little ego boost was
just
enough to keep him from collapsing over and pissing himself from exhaustion.

* * * * *

There you go, old man. One fold after the other, left over center, just like they told you. How’d the rhyme go? “Once for the neck, twice for the wing?” No, that doesn’t even rhyme. Just . . . oh, that doesn’t look good at all, does it? Well, just fold that part like . . . yeah, and then do
that
part like . . . ah! And there you go!

He looked down at the tiny amalgamation of paper and blood sitting upon the palm of his hand. In this light, as the sun set behind the gray clouds overhead, it looked a
little
like a bird, he supposed. A bird that had been in a terrible accident, anyway.

But whatever deficiencies his paper-folding skills might have had, he at least got all the important parts down: the parchment had two wings, a head, and critically, the smeared stain of blood uncovered by his various clumsy folds.

He sighed. It would have to do.

He spoke a word to it—the only word it was designed to understand. The blood began to glow, revealing strange sigils painted onto the paper in the red life. With a sudden stir, the paper bird’s wings began to twitch. Clumsily, it took flight, lifting off his hand and rising past the eaves of the trees overhead and into the sky.

Dreadaeleon watched its little red glow as it sailed high, until it finally went too far for him to track and winked out of existence. He was not worried, though. The little creation would head unerringly toward the source of its blood sigil—the Lector himself—and deliver itself and the message it carried.

Depending on how far Vemire had actually traveled, it could be anywhere from one to three hours.

Which made Dreadaeleon smile.

That gave him at least a
pretty
good chance of coming out of this situation without being burned alive.

“Did it work?”

He glanced over his shoulder. Cesta stared up at the sky, searching for the messenger bird.

“It should have,” Dreadaeleon replied. “Lector Vemire prepared the spell himself before we left. I can’t see any reason why it should
fail
.”

His voice cracked slightly on that last word. Whether that was a betrayal of the fear lurking at the back of his head or perhaps just overdue puberty, he wasn’t keen to explore. And Cesta did not seem to care, one way or the other. When she looked at him, her grin was positively ecstatic.

“Can you believe it, Dread?” she asked. “We did it. We
did
it. Vemire expected us to only be of assistance, but we actually caught the heretic all by ourselves.”

“Right. Yes. That’s good.” Dreadaeleon nodded along. “But, uh, let’s still be careful. He’s still a heretic and we should be—“

“We took all the necessary precautions,” she countered. “He’s bound and gagged. He can’t cast. There’s nothing to be worried about.”

“Vemire said the heretics were dangerous, though.”

“And they are. When they’re not bound and gagged.” She held up her hands. “Okay, yeah, I know. We’ll still be cautious, but let’s savor this a little, hm?”

He looked past her, toward the meager fire they had built up and the prisoner sitting beside it. His hands firmly tied before him, his ankles likewise secured, Lathrim stared dully over the gag tied about his mouth. His eyes were empty, but not with the resigned blankness that came in defeat. Rather, to Dreadaeleon, he looked almost . . . bored.

Perhaps Cesta saw that too.

Perhaps that was why she strode toward him with a swagger that would look haughty even on a man six cups deep.

“Did you hear that, heretic?” she said. “The Lector will be on his way shortly. I expect your judgment will be extremely swift. The Venarium protocol is quite clear on matters of heresy.”

Lathrim did not so much as glance up at her. Not that she seemed to notice.

“But surely you already knew that. Surely you did not commit your crimes without knowledge of the price you’d eventually pay.” She walked a long, dramatic circle around the fire. “We were briefed on your charges before we left, Lathrim. Two Venarium agents were killed trying to calm you down when you snapped. You snatched priceless components when you fled Tower Defiant and took three Venarium agents with you.”

She paused, turned, fixed a glare down at Lathrim, who did not return it.

“They’re dead now, you know.” She thrust a finger at him. “Because of you. Because of the lies you told them. Because of the filth you spewed. You convinced them to betray the Venarium and they died for you.”

“Cesta.” Dreadaeleon took a step forward, reached out toward her. “Maybe you shouldn’t—”

“And you don’t even
care!
” Cesta shouted over Dreadaeleon, ignoring him as she stepped toward Lathrim. “Five people are dead because of you! Five people who had lives to lead, lost because of your wretched lies, and you don’t even
blink
to hear it.” She knelt down, reached out for his gag. “What do you have to say for yourself, you piece of—”

“
Cesta! No!
”

She glanced up at Dreadaeleon, cast a baleful scowl at him. “It’s fine, Dread. Any spell he tries to cast will be futile without his hands.” She sneered at Lathrim, tore his gag free. “Isn’t that right, heretic?”

Dreadaeleon braced himself. Though his body was still weak from his earlier spells, he immediately reached inside himself and searched for more power, more of that hazy, boiling strength. He unconsciously began to slide into a stance, ready for any spell the heretic might speak.

But the heretic spoke no spell. For a long time, he did not speak at all. And when his lips finally did move, he merely smacked them once or twice, then looked up at Cesta, and spoke softly.

“May I have some water, please?”

A sigh of relief washed over Dreadaeleon. It didn’t seem like an unreasonable request. And yet, to see Cesta’s face screw up in anger the way it did, one might have thought that asking for water was on par with insinuating certain proclivities involving her mother and livestock.

“What did you say?” she snarled.

“Water,” Lathim repeated. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

“If it’s not too much . . .” She shook her head. “Did you not hear a
damn
thing I said? About the men you killed? About the laws you broke?”