Read Rise of the Fire Tamer (The Wordwick Games #1) Online
Authors: Kailin Gow
Rise of the Fire Tamer (The Wordwick Games #1) (8 page)
Chapter 7
G
em was getting worried. She had gone outside, looking for Jack. Looking for Rio too, come to that, because she hadn’t seen either boy for at least the last hour or two. With Rio, she might have believed that he was still sulking, though even his hardheaded obstinacy should have abated after a while. With Jack though, it didn’t make sense.
Gem had to admit that she felt bad about not noticing that he was gone sooner. It was just that she and Sparks had started talking, and somewhere in the conversation she’d lost track of time. Now, Gem was regretting it. None of Goolrick’s soldiers remembered seeing Jack after he had left. As for Rio, the only one who remembered anything said that he had seen the boy around the side of the inn, but that had been almost straight after he’d walked out.
Gem went there anyway, but there didn’t seem to be any sign of Rio. All that was there was a crumpled piece of paper. Gem picked it up and read it, then read it again with increasing fear. Had Rio really run off after something like this? Had he really been that stupid? Had Jack? Gem felt her stomach knot. She could only guess at how much danger they might be in.
In the cowshed, in the Spurious village, Kat worked at the ropes holding her for the two hundred and fifteenth time. Well, she didn’t know that for certain. It wasn’t like she was od actually been counting. It certainly
felt
like it might have been a two hundred and fifteenth attempt though. Like the possible two hundred and fourteen other tries, the ropes refused to budge.
Kat was starting to think that it might not have been very prudent to argue with Sebold, but wise probably wasn’t the word she would have picked to describe herself at the best of times. The trouble was, she knew, she was just a naturally querulous sort of person. She would argue with anybody. It had only been a matter of time, really.
Thinking of time, hadn’t they kept her in her rather a long time? What sort of game did that? Kat was beginning to think that Henry Word had been in a very odd mood when he designed Anachronia. As if in answer to her boredom, the door to the shed opened. It revealed two burly figures, with a third, rather smaller one held between them, gagged with his hands tied.
“Jack?” Kat exclaimed. The two guards threw the boy into the pen, tossing his glasses in after him. Kat half-shuffled her way over to the boy, who groaned in pain as he tried to sit up. He had a black eye, and just the way he moved told Kat that he was bruised everywhere else too. One glance at his hand told her that they had taken Jack’s ring from him, the same way they had taken hers. Kat tugged the gag out of his mouth.
“Hi, Kat.’
Guilt hit her at the brightness with which Jack said it. He should have been angry, but he wasn’t. Somehow, that hurt, almost as much as those bruises had to.
“Oh Jack, I’m so sorry. If I hadn’t come here then… hang on. This doesn’t make sense. This is just a game. You can’t be hurt. Not really.”
Jack groaned again, and this time managed to get upright.
“That’s good to know,” he said, smiling wanly. “Though if so, I wish someone would tell the bruises.”
Kat tried to think about it more. The bruises were an aberration. They were out of the ordinary. They didn’t fit.
“I suppose,” Jack said, “I suppose this
is
a game, right? There’s… there’s no chance this could be real?”
Kat started to say that of course there wasn’t, but stopped herself. Normally, she liked to think she was a pretty intuitive person, knowing things by instinct, trusting what she felt. She got the feeling that was the wrong approach here. Instead, she tried to treat it the way a scientist would, taking the unproven theory- the hypothesis, they would probably call it- and testing it with the facts she could find. There were the injuries to Jack, and the fact that everything felt so solid. Then there was the way things didn’t work the way you’d expect them to in a game. Sebold didn’t live in a castle. Exciting things didn’t happen in the village on a convenient schedule. Even being imprisoned like this didn’t fit, because in a game, Kat would have escaped by now, or learned something convenient, or something. That left only one conclusion…
“Jack” she said, “we need to get out of here. If this isn’t a game, then what’s to stop Sebold from just killing us?”
A wave of fear hit her as she said it. She had charged into those ogres without a thought of the danger, because as far as Kat had been concerned, there hadn’t been any. But there had been. They could get hurt here. They could die here. Just the thought of it made her feel sick.
“What about the others?” Kat asked, not waiting for Jack to answer. “Are they ok?”
“They were fine when I left,” Jack assured her. “You know, I’d be better at escaping with my glasses on.”
“Oh, right.” Kat picked them off the floor two handed, cleaned them as best she could on his tunic, and then settle the glasses on Jack’s nose. “Better?”
Jack nodded.
“Right, I can’t get these ropes myself. Can you unpick the knots?”
It turned out that Jack wasn’t very good at undoing knots with his hands tied, but he was tenacious. He kept going persistently until finally the ropes fell away from Kat’s wrists. It didn’t take her half as long to get him free. The next step didn’t look so easy.
“We still need to get out of this place,” Kat said, “and the door is locked. I know, I tried earlier. Unless you can pick a lock from the inside…”
Jack shook his head.
“Maybe we could use one of the ruler words though.”
“You think we still could?” Kat asked. “I didn’t think to try without my ring on.”
“Isn’t that just a way home?” Jack asked. “There’s an easy way to find out.
Surreptitious
.”
Kat had to look hard to spot him, even knowing that he was there. She was torn between jubilation at the fact that it worked and anger at herself. She could have escaped hours ago!
“Right,” Kat said. She doubted that Jack had planned that many escapes before, and even if hers were mostly from her room after she’d been grounded, the experience was better than nothing. “I suppose we’d be better off waiting for dark, but we don’t know if Sebold will decide to do something worse before then. We’ll have to use the “
deleterious
” word to blow the door off, then make a run for it. It’s not great, but it’s probably the best we’ve got.”
Jack pursed his lips.
“What are you thinking?” Kat asked.
“There might be another way. A different word. I mean, if it can make an inn disappear…” he stepped over to the door, putting a hand on it. “
Ephemeral
.”
One minute the door was there, the next it wasn’t. Kat stood there open mouthed, mostly because it had hit her that, since this wasn’t a game, there was actually a real place where they could do things like making doors temporary enough to disappear. It was probably also handy if you lost your keys. Realizing that she was wasting time, Kat quickly whispered the word “surreptitious” and led Jack outside. She was cautious. She knew the word wasn’t as good as really being invisible, and now that she knew that injuries would really hurt, she suddenly didn’t feel like being spotted by any guards.
“We should get our stuff,” Kat said. She tiptoed her way over to the longhouse, trying to keep to the shadows. She needn’t have bothered. There were a few people further off, but no one was nearby. She peered around the edge of the longhouse door, then jerked her head back. Sebold was at the far end of the room, casting yet more runes. For a moment, Kat thought about pointing at him and saying deleterious, just to see if it would work, but she remembered what he had said about wearing protective charms. In any case, Kat wasn’t sure about whether she could do that to someone who wasn’t a character in a game, who was actually
real
.
Instead, Kat settled for sneaking inside just long enough to steal back her sword and shield, along with Jack’s bow, from where they’d been set in one of the spots beside the table. There was no sign of their rings. Kat guessed Sebold had those on him, and since even tiptoeing out balancing all the weapons made her heart hammer in her chest, Kat wasn’t going to risk trying for them. She passed Jack back his bow.
“Right, let’s get out of here before they notice we’re gone.”
No sooner had she said it than Kat heard a commotion over by the shed. Not waiting to hear more, and especially not waiting to hear the words “there they are, get them” she grabbed Jack’s arm and ran for the edge of the village. Maybe it was the words keeping them hard to notice, or maybe they were just lucky, but either way, no one tried to stop them.
Even so, Kat didn’t stop running until they were well into the trees. When she did, Jack more or less collapsed.
“We did it,” he gasped. “We actually got away.” He punched the air feebly. Apparently it was all he had the energy for.
Kat nodded, and was about to start celebrating herself, though possibly in a slightly less exhausted way, when she remembered something.
“We can’t stop. Sebold won’t just have sent one note. He wanted all the rings. We have to warn the others.”
“So we head back to the inn?”
Kat shook her head, even though she wanted, really wanted, to say yes.
“First, we’ll have to stop by where they caught you, in case one of the others is already on their way. Do you remember where it was?”
Jack nodded.
“I think so.”
Kat had half been hoping that he would say no. Instead, she had to hope as she jogged through the woods that there would be no one there. The sword and shield she wore weren’t the comforting presence they’d been when she got them. The thought of having to fight again sent shivers down her spine.
Those shivers turned to full blown terror when she heard the sounds of a fight ahead, but Kat didn’t stop running until she reached the edge of a track where Rio was fighting a pair of Sebold’s men, his broadsword slamming into their shields. For a moment, Kat thought that he might be winning, but then she saw the third man, back in the trees, the one that the other two were driving Rio towards.
For several seconds, Kat stood there frozen. The sight of the sword in the third man’s hands made her think of just what might happen to her if that sword struck her. She didn’t want to die. Kat looked to Rio again. His attackers forced him back another step, then another, laughing as they did it. Something snapped in Kat then. She threw herself forward, drawing her sword as the third man turned and aimed a startled swing at her. She ducked it more through luck than anything else, then stabbed out with her own blade. The soldier fell dead, and Kat turned back to the rest of the fight.
She didn’t need to do anything. Of the two men who had been attacking Rio, one was running away, while the other was on the ground with an arrow sticking from his chest. Kat tried to be nonchalant about it, but casual wasn’t an option the way she was currently feeling. She grabbed Rio, kissing him before he had a chance to protest.
“I’m so glad you’re all right,” she said when she pulled back. “And I’m so, so sorry.”
Rio led the way back towards the inn in silence. He couldn’t help his eyes darting to Kat from time to time, because he didn’t know what to say. He could still taste her lipstick from where she had kissed him, but couldn’t help thinking of the note to him written in the same shade. He also couldn’t help thinking about what Gem would taste like if she kissed him, and whether it would be as sweet…
Kat trudged along behind him, mostly keeping her eyes on the path. She’d blown it. She knew that. But Rio… he was hardly glancing back at her. Kat wasn’t going to let herself cry, but it wasn’t exactly easy…
Sparks was sharpening his sword, watching Gem try to convince Goolrick that they should go after the others. He wasn’t sure he liked the idea. Actually, what he really didn’t like was the thought of Gem wanting to run after Rio, but Sparks knew he shouldn’t say that. And there was Jack to consider…
Jack’s eye still ached, but he kept up easily enough. It was Kat who seemed to be having problems. She had hardly looked at him since escaping. Silently, without making a fuss about it, he slid his hand into hers…
It
took Gem nearly an hour to persuade Goolrick to send out scouts to search for the others. He only backed down when she threatened to go and search by herself, and then only when she promised to stay where she was. Gem just hoped that they would find the others before anything happened.
Chapter 8
G
em heard the shouts from Goolrick’s men before she saw the others return. She and Sparks were sitting outside the Ephemeral Inn, waiting for news as Gem had promised Goolrick she would. He had made his help conditional on her staying there, so she didn’t dare get up to check what was going on in case it gave the wizard an excuse to withdraw it.
Sparks had sat with her, on a bench in front of the inn, and Gem found that she was glad of it. He hadn’t said much, but just having him there had helped. The weight had been fraught with worry, filled with it, and knowing that she couldn’t help was worse. Still, judging by the sound coming out of the woods, the men of Perfidious had found something. Gem just hoped it was the others.
It was. They arrived in a cluster of Goolrick’s men, and Gem’s heart leapt to see them. It fell again when she saw that all three of them were being held tightly by the arms, like prisoners, and were being almost dragged along. When Goolrick stepped from the inn, Gem put herself in front of him.
“Tell your men to let them go, Goolrick. They don’t deserve to be treated like that.”
“Don’t they?” the young wizard gave her a cold look. “You might want to vindicate them, to free them from all blame, without thinking, but I cannot afford to be so foolish.”
Gem looked from him to Sparks, hoping that the boy would back her up. Instead, he was staring at the others with what appeared to be anger.
“Not you as well?”
“What do you expect, Gem?” he replied. “I saw the note. They ran off on the promise of a short cut, and Kat, she’s the worst of them. She betrayed us.”
Goolrick nodded his agreement.
“The boy is right. They ran off to join Spurious without a thought. Now the only question is what to do with them.”
That sounded ominous to Gem. She followed as Goolrick and Sparks walked over to where the others were being held. Gem had half expected Rio and Kat to be arguing and shouting, but the subdued way they just stood there was somehow worse.
“Please tell me that you’re at least going to hear what they have to say,” Gem demanded of Goolrick. Sparks cut in.
“What can they say, Gem?”
“We won’t know until they say it, will we? That’s the point. Rio, Jack, Kat, are you all right?”
They nodded. Rio gave the soldiers holding him an ugly glance.
“I’ll be fine just as soon as these two let go of me.”
“Goolrick…” Gem put a warning note into it.
“Oh very well.” The wizard sighed and waved a hand at his men, who let their three captives go. “Not that it makes much difference. They are still traitors.”
Gem ignored him, hugging Rio and Jack in turn. When it came to Kat, the other girl gave her a worried look.
“I didn’t know,” Kat said, biting her lip. “I thought it was just a game. It isn’t, Gem. It’s real. It’s all real.”
“I know.”
Gem hugged her too, because she was, despite everything, glad to see Kat back safely. Besides, Kat was right. She hadn’t thought any of it was real. How could Gem blame her when they had thought it was just a game?
Sparks and Goolrick had obviously found a way.
“It doesn’t change anything,’ the wizard declared. ‘They went over to Spurious. For all we know, they’re spying for them now.”
“We are not!” Kat insisted. “And Jack and Rio didn’t do anything. They just got captured because Sebold tricked them by pretending to be me.”
“That’s what you say,” Sparks shot back. “What do you do to traitors here, anyway?”
Gem started to suspect that things were getting out of hand. She needed some support if she was going to stop this from going any further, and the longer she procrastinated, the longer she delayed things, the worse they would get. Without hesitating, Gem grabbed Sparks by the arm and more or less dragged him back towards the inn. She just hoped that Goolrick wouldn’t do anything until she got back.
“What are you doing?” Gem demanded. Sparks looked angrily over at the other three.
“What am I supposed to do, welcome them back with open arms?”
“It would be a start. We need to heal this argument. We need a reconciliation here, not you going around being provocative and riling people up.”
Sparks stood his ground.
“No one made them leave, Gem. Rio ran off at the first sign of an advantage, and Kat… she’s worse than he is. They shouldn’t just get to come back and be forgiven.”
Gem noticed the name he had left off the list.
“What about Jack?” she asked softly. “You probably terrified him, asking what they did to traitors. He knows enough about history to know exactly what they did in the Middle Ages, and it generally wasn’t very nice.”
Sparks looked down. He obviously hadn’t thought of that.
“Jack… well, they obviously tricked him.”
“And Rio,” Gem insisted. “This is just your dislike of him.”
Sparks shook his head, but didn’t answer. Finally, he nodded.
“Ok, maybe. But what about Kat? I’m not having her back, Gem. Not after what she did.”
“She made a mistake, that’s all. You can see just by looking at her how sorry she is. This could even be useful,” Gem continued. “We need to know more about the Spurious tribe if we’re going to solve things. Kat has seen them firsthand.”
Sparks didn’t speak for a minute. His hands tightened. He obviously didn’t like the idea.
“That works both ways,” he said at last. “What if Goolrick’s right? What if she is a spy?”
“You don’t believe that, not really. Anyway,” Gem hesitated as she tried to think of how best to put it, “I don’t know why, but I think we’re going to need her. Whatever is going on here, it will take all of us to sort out. That includes Kat. Please, Sparks.”
Gem wasn’t sure if it was the final please that did it. Whatever it was, Sparks gave a single, terse nod. Gem smiled.
“Thank you. Now all we’ve got to do is convince Goolrick.”
The wizard didn’t seem to have done anything drastic to the others while he was waiting for the two of them, at least. He turned expectantly, fixing Gem with a smile that was probably intended to be benevolent.
“I know this must be hard,” he said as she got closer. “And I see that there may be some extenuating circumstances here that make the betrayal less awful. That’s why I’m not suggesting that we hurt any of them. I have some compassion. You must see that we can’t trust them though, my dear. I must insist that we send them away.”
Afterwards, Gem suspected that it was that patronizing little “my dear” that did it. She’d had a tactful, polite approach worked out, given that Goolrick was standing in front of so many of his men, but it suddenly didn’t seem right. Gem suspected that if she tried to be polite, she’d never be more than “my dear” in the eyes of either Goolrick or the Perfidious tribe.
“No,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?” Goolrick looked remarkably like he had just swallowed a frog.
“You should.” Gem forced herself to keep going, because she knew that once she stopped, she probably wouldn’t be able to do it again. “In fact, you should beg the pardon of all three of my friends for daring to try and discredit them with lies about being Spurious spies. I won’t let you dishonor their names like that.”
“I did not mean to impute…”
“I know very well what you intended to attribute to them.” Gem forced herself to keep her tone cold and imperious. “As for your idea about sending them away, it isn’t going to happen, Goolrick.”
The young wizard tried drawing himself up to his full height and puffing out his chest. Gem had half expected it, and in any case, with the ludicrous robes he wore it just made him look like a peacock fanning its tail.
“I really must insist-“
“No,” Gem interrupted. “I’m insisting. Rio, Jack
and
Kat all get to stay.”
“And if I refuse?” Goolrick asked. Gem decided that smiling was the best option, even if she didn’t particularly mean it.
“Can you refuse?” she asked. “That would imply that you were in charge. My friends and I are all free to come and go as we please, correct?”
Goolrick obviously knew when he was beaten. He nodded.
“Yes. That doesn’t mean I have to offer those three my aid, though.”
“Then I’ll say this. I go with them. The five of us travel together. If you don’t want the others here, then I’ll leave too. It’s all of us or none of us. You choose, Goolrick.”
Goolrick looked past her, to Sparks, then nodded.
“Very well. They stay.”
That seemed to let all the tension out of the moment. Goolrick’s men stopped crowding around the others, who wandered off into the inn, Kat after hugging Gem again.
“Thank you,” Kat said. “I promise I won’t do anything that stupid again.”
“Oh, I bet you’ll think of something,” Gem said, but she said it lightly. Kat looked furious for about a second, but then laughed.
“Yeah, probably. I generally do.”
She went with the others, leaving Gem with Goolrick, who seemed to be waiting for her.
“You’re angry that I pushed you into this,” Gem guessed. To her surprise, Goolrick shook his head.
“Actually no. If anything, I’m impressed. It was a brazen, bold strategy that worked well. A good move, I thought. A… regal move. Will you do one thing for me, though?”
“What’s that?” Gem asked it carefully.
“Will you keep an eye on them? None of us is ever truly certain about others.”
Gem wanted to snap back that she was, but she suspected that would be the wrong approach. Now was the time for tact.
“All right,” she agreed. “If you want me to, I’ll make sure that none of the others deserts again.”
“That’s all I ask.” Goolrick clasped his hands together in what might have been a gesture of gratitude, or might have been some secret wizardly sign. Not knowing any secret wizardly signs, Gem wasn’t sure. “I’ll leave you alone now. There is,” he nodded to the corner of the inn, “at least one more person who wants to talk to you.”
Rio didn’t reveal himself until Goolrick was out of sight, but somehow Gem had guessed it would be him. The brash, cocky boy from before was gone for the moment, replaced by a surprisingly sheepish looking version.
“I guess…” he began. “I guess that I didn’t do too good a job of showing you this nice guy you think I am, what with running off.”
“No. I suppose not. Why did you do it?” Gem had the feeling that he needed to tell her. Some things, you had to say.
“I suppose I just wanted to win. I thought that if I stayed here, I didn’t stand much chance.”
That obviously wasn’t all of it.
“What is it, Rio?” Gem asked.
“Well, maybe I thought that, with you having set your sights on Sparks, there wasn’t much for me here.”
Gem had to stop herself from laughing when she saw that Rio was serious.
“Rio, you’re still thinking of me as this silly little rich girl.”
“No I’m not.”
“You are,” Gem insisted. “You think that the only reason I’m in this game is to meet boys? Yes, I like Sparks, and I like you too, though I haven’t a clue why right now. Even so, I’m here to win. We all are. The thing is, Rio, there are a lot better ways of doing it than running out on your friends.”
Rio looked away, but then nodded.
“Yes. Yes there are.”
Jack
watched the Ephemeral Inn fade, quite literally, behind them as the five of them, along with Goolrick and Goolrick’s men, marched on and wondered what was next for them. Whatever it was, he was glad they would be facing it together…
Sparks wasn’t quite so glad, but he agreed with Gem. Whatever was coming next was going to need all of them. Looking over at Rio, he just wished it didn’t…
Kat found herself trying to keep out of the way, which was a new experience for her. Mostly, she wanted to go home, but since Sebold had her way back, that wasn’t going to happen soon…
Rio found himself strangely glad to be back with the others. Normally, he didn’t trust anyone, but first Kat and Jack had risked themselves to save him, and then Gem had spoken up for them. Maybe he would be better off with them after all…
For his part, Goolrick watched Gem. Yes, there was definitely something there he could use…