Cloak Games: Thief Trap (2 page)

I blinked. “Spark?” 

“Ah,” said the Elf. “I forget how ignorant the young ones are. The spark. I shall show you.” 

Again his cold fingers clamped around my jaw, and this time ghostly blue fire danced around his hand. Fresh terror surged through me, and I would have screamed for the nurses and the doctors, but they would have stood by and let the Elf do whatever he wanted. But the strange cold fire did not burn me, and suddenly I felt it inside of my mind. I also felt the Elf’s fingers reaching into my thoughts, sinking deeper and deeper.

It was a loathsome feeling, and the terror redoubled. Anger rose alongside the fear, and the scream burst from my lips. Without quite knowing how, I shoved against the intrusion inside my head, like pushing away a blanket. 

The blue fire flickered and went out. 

The Elf smiled his cold smile and withdrew his hand.

For a moment I could do nothing but gape in sheer astonishment. There had been a fire around his hand, and I had put it out with my mind. Nothing in my life had prepared me for something like this, and I struggled to understand it.

“The spark,” said the Elf. “The inborn magical ability. A talent, if you prefer. Once it was extremely rare among your race. Then the High Queen opened the gates to the Shadowlands and we came here, and piercing Earth’s umbra seemed to break some sort of protective shell around your world. Consequently, the spark has become much more common among humans. It would be a fascinating experiment to track the rate of the spark’s progression in your population, though I have no interest in the matter.” The cold smile turned a bit indulgent. “But you have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

“No,” I whispered, my eyes turning back to Russell in his incubator. 

“Perhaps you soon will,” said the Elf.

“I don’t care,” I said. “Go away and leave me alone. I don’t care about your stupid magic. I don’t care about anything.” 

“Lies,” said the Elf. “You care about the infant.” 

“He’s going to die,” I said, staring at Russell’s small, limp form. 

“My magic can save him,” said the Elf.

I looked up at the tall figure in black and gold. 

“It can?” I said.

“The frostfever inflicted by the blades of the frost giants is a deadly ailment, beyond the powers of your physicians and their machines,” said the Elf. “Even for magic, it is a difficult cure, spread over many years, yet not beyond the skill of an archmage. It is in my power to cure your brother.”

I stared at him, caught somewhere between hope and disbelief. I had a smart mouth…but I also had a suspicious mind, too. “Why? Why would you do that? Why would an Elf care about my brother?”

“I care nothing for your brother,” said the Elf. “You, though…I have a great deal of work for you. I could simply buy you both as slaves. Yet given the nature of the work I require from you, that would be a foolish strategy. A slave is a tool that always betrays his master’s work. No, I require your willing cooperation.” 

“To do what?” I said, baffled. 

“In time,” said the Elf. “In time. Do you understand what I am proposing?”

“I…I think so,” I said.

“Then say it in your own words.”

“You’ll use your magic to heal Russell,” I said, “if I do what you tell me to do.”

“Precisely,” said the Elf archmage, leaning closer to me. “Do you know what I will do to you if you disobey me or betray me?”

“You’ll kill us both,” I said.

“Of course not,” said the Elf. “That would be inelegant. No, the spell necessary to cure frostfever shall require twenty different castings, one cast every year. Should you disobey me, should you betray me, I shall simply withhold my power, and your brother shall die.” 

I looked at the Elf, and I was frightened. I saw the power there, the cruelty. Even at the age of five, I knew that this was not a good man. I wanted to cry. I wanted to run to my mom and dad. But they were dead, and I was all that Russell had left. If I did nothing, he would die. 

I couldn’t let that happen. 

“All right,” I whispered. 

The Elf raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry?”

I swallowed and squared my shoulders. “I…I will do what you say, if you make Russell better. Please, Lord Elf.” I remembered some of the manners Miss Culpepper had attempted to beat into my head. A human was always to address an Elf he did not know as Lord Elf, even if the Elf was not noble-born. 

The Elf snorted. “You do have a modicum of manners, then. We shall have to work on that. What is your name, child?”

“Nadia,” I said. “Nadia Moran.” 

“I am Morvilind,” said the Elf, “an archmage of the Elven nation and a Knight of House Tamirlas, vassal to Lord Tamirlas, the Duke of Milwaukee. You may address me as Lord Morvilind, or as ‘my lord’, as you prefer.” The cold blue eyes seemed to sink into me. “Now, Nadia Moran. Are you ready to follow my commands?” 

I tried to work moisture into my mouth. I was only five years old, but I had the sense that I was about to make an irrevocable choice. Yet I was only five, and I could not articulate my fears. 

Besides. Morvilind could help Russell. That was all that mattered. That was the only thing that could matter. 

“Yes,” I said, “my lord Morvilind.” 

“Good,” said Morvilind. “Let us begin at once. I shall speak with the doctors and secure your release, and I suppose one of my human men-at-arms can take care of the infant. One of the childless ones, I expect.”

“What?” I said. Morvilind gave me a look that was just short of a glare. “I mean…Lord Morvilind. Won’t Russell be with me?”

“Of course not,” said Morvilind. “Child, you and I have a great deal of work to do.” 

###

I had no idea what Morvilind wanted with me. 

At the time, I guessed he wanted to put me to work in his mansion. When I was a child, there were a lot of cartoons on TV about orphaned girls going to work in an Elven lord’s manor, gaining his approval through hard and industrious work, and then marrying one of the lord’s handsome human men-at-arms. The show usually ended with an epilogue set twenty years later as the protagonist watched with proud eyes as her son joined her lord’s service as a man-at-arms himself, ready to fight for the High Queen’s honor in the paths of the Shadowlands.

In retrospect, I watched a lot of stupid TV as a child. 

Anyway, that was what I expected. Scrubbing floors, cleaning pots, vacuuming carpets. That sort of thing.

Instead, two things happened.

First, before we even left the hospital, a physician visited, and gave me a drug that induced unconsciousness. When I awoke, I had a sharp pain in my chest and back, accompanied by a nasty bruise and a bandage. Morvilind informed me that he had drawn out a vial of heart’s blood, and with his magic he could use that blood to find me anywhere in the world or the Shadowlands if I ran. And with that vial of blood, his magic could kill me from any distance as easily as crushing a cherry in his fist.

That should demonstrate the overall tone of our relationship. 

Second, Morvilind started teaching me a variety of peculiar things. 

We left Seattle, and he took me to his mansion. As a vassal of the Duke of Milwaukee, he had an estate in a little lakeside town called Shorewood a few miles north of Milwaukee. My parents and Russell and I had lived in a small two-bedroom house in Seattle, and Morvilind’s mansion was so large that it boggled my mind. It was a sprawling pile of marble and glass and wood, built in the Elven style with a fine view of Lake Michigan. I looked at the house with dismay, wondering how long it would take me to scrub all those floors and wash all those windows. 

Instead, I had tutors, some of them human, a few of them Elven. 

In the mornings, I learned things most grade school children would have learned. Math and reading and lessons in English and Chinese and Spanish, the three most common human languages in the United States. I also learned High Elven, the language of government and law, and the use of computers. All the subjects were of a practical or technical nature. No history, no science, no art, no religion. 

Then, in the afternoons and evenings, Morvilind’s tutors taught me things I suspected grade school children in the United States generally did not learn. 

First, there was a great deal of physical training. A hard-bitten man who had the look of a former man-at-arms made me run laps in a gym, over and over again, a little further every day. He also taught me how to lift weights, and made me do sets on days I did not run. Another man taught me self-defense, how to fight with my arms and legs and how to get away from an attack. 

I learned other things. How to break into a computer illegally, whether I sat in front of it or accessed it over the Internet. How to open locks and safes and windows without being detected. How to use security systems, cameras and alarms and the like, and their weaknesses and vulnerabilities. 

There were endless tests. I had to open a lock, or hack a computer, or pick the pocket of a man unseen. There were no grades. If I failed a test, one of the instructors beat me across the shoulders and hands with a leather belt. It never broke the skin or raised welts, but God it hurt. If I failed too many times, Morvilind himself came to see me, and spoke of how disappointed he would be if Russell died of frostfever because of my failures. 

That drove me on. 

I pushed myself endlessly, desperate and frightened. The failures grew fewer and fewer. By the time I turned twelve, I suppose there were few people who knew as much as I had learned about locks and security systems and hacking and traps. More and more, I wondered what Morvilind was training me to become. Some kind of soldier, maybe? That seemed unlikely. The High Queen forbade human women from serving in her armies. A woman’s duty was to birth more sons and daughters for the defense of Earth from the Shadowlands, and a woman who died in battle could not birth children. 

So what did Morvilind want with me? Why go to so much effort?

At the age of twelve a different set of lessons began. 

Morvilind’s hard-bitten retainers taught me to use weapons. Knives, pepper spray, stun guns, and firearms. As much as I hated my teachers, I really enjoyed shooting. It took discipline and focus and concentration, and there was something deeply satisfying about putting a bullet through a target from forty yards away. Certainly it was much more efficient than fighting with a knife.

I had another set of teachers. Women, this time, mostly middle-aged. They taught me about clothing and makeup and manners, how to carry myself, how to dress myself. All the things my mother would have taught me, I suppose, had she lived. I hit puberty around that time, and they taught me how to deal with some of adulthood’s messier aspects.

I didn’t particularly enjoy that.

And then, to my astonishment, Lord Morvilind himself became one of my teachers.

“It is time,” he said, standing in the training room in his mansion, looking at the treadmills and weights with disdain. “You were too young to learn the power when we first met. Now that you have entered into what passes for adulthood among humans, you are ready.” 

With those words, he began instructing me in the use of magic.

His training focused upon the magic of illusion. Spells to create images, spells to alter the minds of others. Later I learned that the High Queen had forbidden humans from learning any kind of magic save that of the four elements, that any human who learned spells of illusion magic or mind magic was subject to summary execution. Morvilind did not share this little detail until later, but once he did, he never shut up about it, harping that if the Inquisition or the archmagi or the Wizards’ Legion or even the Department of Homeland Security learned what I could do, they would kill me on sight. And then, with no need for my services, he would not be obliged to continue his annual spells for Russell’s treatment. 

Needless to say, I never breathed a word about my magic to anyone. 

Nevertheless, I enjoyed learning to wield magic. The power, Morvilind said, came from the Shadowlands, radiated from it the way that heat and light came from the sun. Previously only a trickle had reached Earth, which was why true magic had been so rare in human history prior to the Conquest. After the High Queen and her armies had come, they had breached the barrier around Earth’s umbra, allowing far more magic into the world. 

It was a lot like shooting, really. I needed the same kind of discipline and mental focus to summon and direct the power. I learned basic spells to cloud the minds of others, to make them more favorably disposed to me. I learned to wrap myself in illusion, to disguise myself using a spell of Masking. 

But the most powerful spell I learned was the Cloak. 

With the Cloak spell, I could make myself completely invisible, undetectable by the senses or any magical spell. It did have a severe limitation, though – the minute I moved, the spell ended and I would be visible once more. Nevertheless, it was a powerful spell, and I surprised Morvilind by learning in quickly. In time, he told me, I could develop enough skill that I could Cloak myself while I moved, though that would take years of practice. 

The thought thrilled me. I dreamed of having that much power. I wanted enough power that I could cure Russell. I also wanted enough power that I could break free of Morvilind’s tyranny.

Because at the age of fifteen, after nearly ten years of nonstop training and study and work, I understood what Morvilind wanted of me. 

He wanted me to steal things for him. 

The first job was a bank in Minneapolis. I think it was a test of sort. Using the skills and magic that Morvilind and his retainers had taught me, I accessed the bank, overrode its security systems, stole an ancient golden necklace from a safe deposit box, and escaped without anyone even realizing that a theft had taken place. 

Morvilind was pleased. 

After that, he began giving me new tasks, each one harder than the first. A statue from a museum in Los Angeles. A rare book from the library of Harvard University. An enchanted ring from the mansion of an Elven noble. A computer hard drive from the offices of an art college in Seattle. Bit by bit I realized why Morvilind had trained me.