The Flute Keeper's Promise (The Flute Keeper Saga) (27 page)

Mrs. Larue appeared behind him and
pulled him back inside. “Sit down! You’ll aggravate your injuries!” she pushed
him into an armchair and snapped her fingers. Her source crystal flashed and
the chair started walking upstairs. Alice and Harriet followed behind. They
lugged bags that were bursting at the seams with supplies.

I kept a close watch on the duke’s
men. My main worry was that they would have bows and arrows. As they drew
closer I saw that they did not. They would have to get close to us to do any
kind of damage. For once, I had the advantage.

“Surrender now and we’ll spare your
lives!” shouted one of the men.

“Emma!” called Mr. Larue. “We’re
ready! Go up to the deck!”

“Hurry!” Mrs. Larue shouted. She
and the girls were huddled around their supplies. Bazzlejet and his armchair
were wrapped in ropes and tied to the railing. Alice and Harriet did not look
scared, but they stayed close to their mother. Beth had tied herself down to
the supplies. She shook like a leaf.

A purple glow came from Mr. Larue’s
wings. He offered me a hand. “Come on. I’ll carry you up to the others.”

“No thanks,” I said, glaring at the
duke’s men. “I’m going to buy you a little more time.”

“But you can’t fly!” Mr. Larue
said. “How will you get to us after I separate the house?”

“Don’t worry about me,” I said,
patting my sword. “I have a way to escape.”

“But—”

“Duck!” I shouted.

A wind drake swooped low, buzzing
Mr. Larue’s head. One of the men on its back reached for Mr. Larue. I hurled a
pulse of energy at him, causing him to miss.

“GO!” I shouted.

Mr. Larue flew up to the
observation deck. The nearest wind drake chased him. I cast another pulse of
energy at it. The startled wind drake thrashed about in the air, causing the
men to slide. They nearly fell off, but saved themselves by grabbing the wind
drake’s tail.

“It’s the other fugitive!” shouted
one of the men to his partner. “The one that went over the waterfall!”

“Impossible!” shouted another.

I cast barriers to keep the other
wind drakes from getting too close to the Larues. “Hey!” I shouted. “You want
me? You’re going to have to come get me!” I took off running across the patio.

There was a brilliant flash as Mr.
Larue made the first cut. His lightning bolt shattered the support beams
between the kitchen and the observation deck. The kitchen lurched to one side.

Two of the wind drakes chased me.
The other two closed in on the Larues. I tried casting a barrier but it was hard
to make it precise while I was moving.

Alice and Harriet pulled pans from the
supply bags and threw them at the men on the wind drakes’ backs.

“Take that!” Alice shouted as a
frying pan hit one of the men squarely on the head.

“You’re not taking my brother!”
Harriet yelled. She threw forks. None of them hit their target but they did
force the men to wriggle and reposition themselves.

There was another flash. The
kitchen groaned and then fell away completely. What was left of the house
teetered precariously to one side. The observation deck, still partially
attached, also shifted. Beth and Mrs. Larue screamed.

Two of the wind drakes bore down on
me. I could feel their hot breath on my back. As a last resort I threw myself
to the patio floor. The wind drakes zoomed over my head and then whipped their
long bodies around, spurred on by the men riding them. I took a deep breath and
focused on my magic.

“Nowhere to go now!” shouted one of
the guards as the wind drakes closed in on me.

The words had barely left his mouth
when I knocked the men off their mounts with an invisible barrier. They fell to
the patio in a stunned tangle of arms and legs. The freed wind drakes kept
flying, abandoning their riders.

“Come back!” shouted one of the men
who had managed to untangle himself.

Mr. Larue cast another bolt of
lightning. The magical bolt struck close to one of the remaining wind drakes,
grazing the scales near its head. It bellowed and gave up the chase even though
the two men on its back yelled at it to keep going.

There was only one wind drake left.
The four men I had knocked down jumped and waved their arms to get the riders’
attention. The last of the connections to the deck were almost broken. The
patio heaved and buckled. Portions of the house fell away, sending debris
crashing to the rocks below. A sheer mountain face rose ahead. Capped with
patches of sparkling snow, it waited to be witness to the crash.

The last few beams holding the
house to the observation deck gave way. There was a deafening crack and
suddenly the deck flew free. Now dwarfed by the huge balloon, the deck hovered
in the breeze like a piece of paper. I caught glimpse of the Larue family’s
faces. Mrs. Larue screamed my name, but the scream was drowned out by a gust of
wind. The updraft caught the balloon and swept them up and over the mountain
peak.

The Larues were safe. The same
could not be said for me. The patio and the bits of house still attached to it
were in a free fall. The four men screamed like babies. They waved their arms
in hysterics. The two men on the remaining wind drake swept alongside the patio.
They reached out to their comrades but the wind drake couldn’t keep up with the
falling house.

So what if I didn’t have my own
wings? I had a magical thunderbird at my beck and call. I couldn’t wait to see
Alice and Harriet’s faces when I caught up to them riding the magnificent
golden bird.

“It’s been fun, guys, but I’m out
of here,” I said, reaching for my sword.

All of a sudden, the house collided
with an escarpment on the mountainside. The patio disintegrated. I squeezed the
sword tight in my hand as I was thrown forward onto a slab of the broken floor.
Flowerpots fell and shattered all around me. The other men and the wind drake vanished
among the debris.

I lay flat on my stomach, clutching
the little piece of floor. It hit a large rock. The blow jarred my bones and
caused even more chunks of the patio to fly off and shatter on the mountain. A
snow-covered slope lay below. My unlikely sled bounced along the first little
bit and then skidded across the snow. I saw a fissure in the rock, bounded by a
field of boulders.

There was an explosion of wreckage
and snow. My body flew free. I pitched end over end until my head struck
something hard.

I did not black out. I wished I
would. Pain hummed up and down my body like an electric current. My vision was
cloudy. There was a dripping noise by my ear that I suspected was blood. With
the pain came nausea. I turned my head to retch. The small movement made the
pain increase tenfold.

The cold of the snow seeped through
my pants, making my legs prickle. That was good. At least I could still feel
them. I attempted to get my bearings and sit up.

Bad move. It felt like my own ribs
were stabbing me. I screamed and then bit my lip so hard that I tasted blood.
My vision went even blurrier. All I could see was the white glare of the snow.
The sword was still in my hand. I felt its smooth shape resting against my
palm.

A sudden noise made me grip the sword
tight. It was the sound of footsteps crunching towards me. With rising panic I
tried to see who it was. Had one of the duke’s men survived?

My struggling only made things
worse. I screamed again, overcome by the pain in my chest. The footsteps
paused. I sensed a shadow falling across me. Squinting through the haze, I
could just make out a tall, dark figure studying me.

The person leaned over. I got the
impression of a milk-white face and black hair. There was a voice as well, but
it was muffled and distorted by the waves of pain in my head.

“I’m sorry I have to do this,” came
the slow, warped words.

Strong hands reached under my
armpits. They pulled me up. The pain was too much. The last thing I saw was two
dark eyes looking down at me.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I slept for what felt like a very
long time. Occasionally I would wake up and get the impression of a smoky fire
or scratchy sheets, but my eyelids felt so heavy that it was much easier to go
on sleeping. My brain was sluggish. I could barely feel my arms. My legs were
splinted up and stuck out past the end of the short bed I lay in.

One time I woke up and saw a person
staring at me. I fought my drowsiness to get a closer look because the black
hair, the white skin and the strong jaw were terribly familiar. My heart rate
sped up. Was it him? Had he come back?

It was one scattered thought lost
among the tumble of pain-dimmed drowsiness. Time lost meaning. My memories were
broken and strung together wrong so that sometimes I thought I was back in the
human world while in others I was re-living the last terrible seconds before my
blackout.

I awoke again some time later to
find deft fingers working on bandages around my face. The wrists were thick,
but there was something soft and feminine about them. Still half-dazed, I
reached up and touched one of them.

The person shrieked and jumped back
several feet. “My stars! You scared the jumping jellyfrogs out of me!”

The voice was incongruous with the
rest: definitely female, with a heavy country brogue.

I was hesitant to turn my head or
move around much. Something bright red near my feet caught my eye. It took a
moment for me to realize that it was a pile of blood-soaked rags and bandages. “Where
am I?”

My mysterious caretaker sidled close
by and began working on my bandages again. “I don’t rightly know how to tell
you, Miss. You fell out of the sky on Signal Mountain. I’ve brought you to my
hut on the other side. Middle of nowhere, you might call it.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off the
pile of bloody rags. “Is that all from me?”

My savior cleared her throat
awkwardly and removed the pile from sight. “Never mind about that. Tell me, how
do you feel?”

Her face lingered over mine.
Through my bandages I saw that the chin was more rounded than I’d previously thought,
though still strong. The lips were thin and gray. The white skin was weathered,
but the eyes were full of spark and almond-shaped in the familiar way that got
my heart racing again. “I feel horrible.”

“Well, that’s got to be an
improvement. You’re talking at least. Means you’re not damaged in the head. I’m
sure glad I don’t have to put you out of your misery.”

“Me, too.”

She turned away to get something
and I caught a glimpse of bony wings peeking out above her shoulders.

“You’re Slaugh.”

“So I’ve been told,” said the girl.
“My name is Valory. You can rest easy. I mean you no harm. You’re going to have
to tell me how you ended up falling from a house in the sky, though. All my
life I’ve used this mountain as my hunting ground and I’ve never seen anything
like that!”

I carefully tried moving my head and
found that it did not hurt as much as I anticipated. I was a little stiff, but
the pain was gone. Very gingerly, I pushed myself up on my elbows. There was no
stabbing pain in my chest like before. “You fixed me,” I said in surprise.

“Aye, and no easy task it was,”
Valory said, coming to my side with a washcloth. “Cracked skull, broken ribs,
bruised up legs and arms all out of joint…phew! Makes me hurt just thinking
about it! But don’t you worry none. Almyra was the best mender ever, may she
rest in peace, and she taught me everything she knew.”

“Who’s Almyra?” I asked.

“My foster mom,” Valory said. “She
lived in this mountain range for ages. Knew all the old folk remedies. She
patched me up a time or two, especially when I was learning to fly. Passed away
last spring. I do miss her. It’s been a lonely year.”

Amused by Valory’s un-Slaugh
tendency to chatter, I tried to smile. “You haven’t had anyone to talk to all
that time, huh?”

“Just some fur traders and a nice
young Fay man who tried to sell me a rake that could work on its own. Of
course, I don’t give no care about how my lawn looks what with being out here
by myself and no neighbors to impress.”

Valory’s penchant for talk was a
welcome comfort while I was healing. Sometimes she gave me mashed up herbs to
make me drowsy if any pain came back. During the nights while I slept, she went
out hunting so that in the mornings there were always fat game birds or fish
cooking in the fireplace. Unlike most Slaugh, Valory had developed a taste for
berries and grains, which she stored around the hut.

All of this helped speed up my
recovery. Soon the bandages came off my face. A week later Valory removed the
splints from my legs and loosened the wrappings on my torso. The first thing I tried
to do was sit up.

“Ow!” I exclaimed, rubbing my head.
“I didn’t realize the ceiling was so low!” Now that I was sitting up I realized
that the hut was entirely round and low to the ground. Valory had to walk in a
constant stooped position. It was a strange living arrangement for someone who
was easily six feet tall.

Valory shrugged. “It never bothered
me or Almyra. Makes it easy to heat in winter, too.”

Valory’s preference for creature
comforts surprised me. To my knowledge, most Slaugh preferred places that were
dark and cold.

“What are you looking at me like
that for?” Valory asked. “Is there a spider on my head?”

“No,” I said. “I was just thinking
that you are the strangest Slaugh I’ve ever met.”

Valory appeared unsure how to
respond. She cocked her head, letting her black hair spill sideways from under
her battered leather hat. The rest of her clothes were similarly battered, but
solid and easy to move around in. She wore knee boots with patched up pants and
a belt of furs. Her shirts were all made of plain, coarse fabric that did no
favors for her paltry curves. She had a boyish figure, and when she wore her
favorite ratty fur coat it was hard to tell that she was a girl.