The Flute Keeper's Promise (The Flute Keeper Saga) (50 page)

“We won’t let anyone get you,”
Valory said. “Everyone here will keep you safe.”

“Mom says you have to keep yourself
safe.”

Valory and I looked at each other
helplessly.

“Oh dear!” Fritz cried. “Oh dear. Do
stop that! Please, children!”

The children had wrapped Fritz up in
the room’s only rug and were rolling him around the floor in it.

I groaned. “I’ll go get a handle on
them.”

Valory stopped me. She stood up
straight, arched her shoulders and did a dead-on impersonation of Lev’s
commanding scowl.

“CHILDREN,” she said in a loud,
deep voice, “EYES ON ME!”

Every child in the room froze and
stared.

“UNROLL THAT GNOME!”

Fritz was free in an instant. He
tottered dizzily over to a rocking chair and sank down into it.

Valory continued to stare down the
tykes. I watched in amazement. It was actually working. The children gave her
their full attention. They looked too scared to do otherwise.

Valory cracked. She smiled a little
and relaxed her shoulders. “Okay, squirts. Who wants to hear about the time I
trapped a kelpie using nothing but bootlaces and a slab of smoked cheese?”

Fifteen little voices squealed, “I
do! I do!”

Valory looked down at Noemi and
winked. “Good. You all spread out that rug and have a seat. We’re gonna have us
some story time!”

The children quickly arranged
themselves, leaving a space for Valory in the middle of the rug. She let Noemi
nestle up close beside her. Once she began to tell her tale there was no
evidence that the nursery had been a madhouse only moments before.

“Thank goodness!” Fritz said, slumping
in the rocking chair. “I do long for the days when all I have to do is attend
to you again at the castle, Miss Wren.”

I felt a jolt of pain that I
couldn’t hide. Fritz saw me wince. He drew a long breath and hung his head.

“I keep telling myself it will all
go back to the way it was,” he said. “Perhaps I should not get my hopes so
high…”

“Just in case,” I finished for him.

***

Out in the murky forest, Lev had
pinpointed the first wave of intruders and he was concerned. There were too
few
red capes. He detected no more than six. He would have liked their odds better
if there were more. He knew the duke to be underhanded. His tactics were dirty
and even though the numbers seemed to be in their favor, he knew it counted for
little.

He tried not be distracted by the
whimpering hostages from Feegman’s Boot. They limped towards Woodman’s Hall,
clearly all too aware of the red capes following them, but too beaten to care.
He told himself that a Slaugh caught in their situation would know better. A Slaugh
would never become a hostage in the first place.

It was pure ego but it helped him
keep the confidence he needed to command his troops. An outsider would never
know it, but these particular Slaugh were all very young and very rough around
the edges.
Every warrior must be flawless, must never flinch, must never
falter
. It was ingrained in Lev, but there was another part to him as well.
He acknowledged it as weakness, but in his heart of hearts he knew it was his
mother’s voice that kept him from living each moment for the next battle.

It was hard enough to keep his head
in the moment when he kept thinking about his visit to Rae. He’d been able to
put the encounter out of his mind well enough until he saw Emma again. Now
every time he saw her face he thought of the word
sacrifice
. If she had
any idea of the horrible visions in his head, she’d know why he’d been avoiding
looking her in the eye.

“Sir, they’ve stopped.”

It was Katriel whispering from the
branch below. Lev pulled himself back into the present and focused on the
hostages. The old Fay man, the Brownie woman and her children had collapsed by
the stream. He caught the scent of Mr. Tulley and the Terra Cartisans who were
hiding behind a pile of tree trunks that had washed up from the tidal wave.
They were waiting for their chance.

Meanwhile, the red capes hung back
from the hostages, watching. They tried to remain unseen among the forest
foliage but they were not Slaugh and they did not have the knack of blending
seamlessly into shadow and moonlight. Besides, their odor was too strong. They
reeked of the bitter smoking leaf that many Larlaithians rolled up and put in
pipes. It burned in Lev’s nose.

“You,” Lev whispered to a Slaugh in
the next tree over. “Take out the man in the back.”

It was done seamlessly. The Slaugh
swooped down and picked off the lagging red cape before any of his cohorts even
noticed. Lev had not given a specific kill order, but the captured red cape
made no sound. More than likely the man was dead. That was fine since he appeared
to be an underling. Lev set his sights on their leader, a big man with
steel-gray hair and a noticeable limp.

With another signal, one more of
the red capes was taken. This time, however, the man got out a garbled cry
before the Slaugh who captured him broke his neck. The other red capes whirled
around and drew their swords. They ran to encircle the frightened hostages.

“NOW!” Lev shouted.

His troops glided down from the
surrounding trees like birds of prey. Their numbers took the little band of red
capes by surprise. One more of them went down easily, felled by a thrown blade.
The rest scattered in confusion, leaving the hostages out in the open.

The Brownie woman screamed and
hugged her children close. Only when the Slaugh had drawn the remaining red
capes to a safe distance did the Terra Cartisans move in. They grabbed the
stunned hostages and lead them away.

 “I knew it!” the red cape leader shouted.
“I knew you traitors were hiding somewhere up here in the northern forest. Now
the duke will come down on you with the force of a hundred armies!”

The Terra Cartisans ignored the
threats as they struggled to haul the weary hostages to safety. Trapper
Toussant could barely walk. Two of the Fay men had to hoist him up and carry
him.

The Slaugh closed in on the red
cape leader. All the other red capes were dead.

“So you devils are in on it as well,”
the leader said, curling his lip at the Slaugh nearest him.

The circle of Slaugh tightened
around him. They hovered with their hands on their weapons, waiting on Lev’s
orders. Either they could kill the man, or they could take him alive. Lev had
considered taking at least one of the men prisoner so that they could wheedle
information about the duke’s activities from him. It seemed like the smart
thing to do, but the man’s attitude bothered him. Something wasn’t right.

Lev checked to make sure that the
Terra Cartisans and the hostages were safely on their way to the cave. The
bodies of the fallen red capes lay sprawled on the forest floor.

Their leader laughed. He reached
into his cape.

“DON’T MOVE!” Lev shouted as he
drew one of his daggers. He burst through the circle of Slaugh.

“What are you going to do?” the red
cape said with a sneer. “Kill me?”

Lev took aim with the dagger. “Yes,
unless you cooperate and come with us.”

The man tilted back his head and
laughed. His wrist flicked under his robe. There was a pulse of light.

All of the Slaugh had their weapons
drawn but none of them could do anything with Lev in the middle of the circle.
It was up to him to kill the red cape. He tossed the dagger in a perfect arc.
It should have caught the man in the throat, but by the time it reached the
spot there was nothing there but a dimming glow. The red cape was gone.

Lev roared the worst of Slaugh
curses and dropped to the ground. The dagger that should have killed the red
cape was stuck point down in the dirt. He kicked it and cursed again.

“What happened?” Katriel asked.
“Where did he go?”

“He had a Pyxis Charm,” Lev
growled. “He has gone back to Ivywild. Now the duke will know where we are. He
will send more men. We are finished here.”

The other Slaugh stared at the
ground. Lev felt their anger and disappointment and it was heavier than the
weight if his armor. They had only just found a new sanctuary and now they
would have to abandon it.

 “How long do you think we have?”
Katriel asked.

Lev shook his head. “Not long
enough.”

There was a troubled flutter as the
others twitched their wings.

“We could fly away,” spoke up one
man. “This isn’t our fight. We’ve said that all along. Let the Fay take care of
themselves.”

Lev leaped on him so fast that the
man didn’t even have time to throw up his fists.

“Have you no honor? This isn’t
about Fay or Slaugh anymore. This is about reclaiming our world from a tyrant.
Would you run, coward? Would you leave the defenseless to perish?”

He let go of the man’s collar and
shoved him to the ground. The others looked away in shame. They had all been
thinking the same thing. He knew it, and they knew he knew it.

Wilhelmina was the first to say
something.

“Please, let’s hurry back to the hall
and tell the others,” she said.

Though she did not mention Noemi,
Lev knew a mother’s plea when he heard it. “Yes, Wilhelmina. Fly ahead to Mr.
Tulley and tell him to take the hostages back as well. Now that the secret’s
out there’s no use keeping them in the cave.”

“What will we do now?” Katriel asked
as Wilhelmina flew away.

Lev didn’t answer. He didn’t have
any more answers. He felt ashamed. He had failed miserably by letting the red
cape get away. What doom had he brought upon the innocents at Woodman’s Hall?

What doom had he brought to
her?
He had tried to shield Emma from his nightmare visions, but now they surged
through his mind with new clarity.
Death. Destruction. Sacrifice
. These
were the mechanisms of destiny and he had laid an open path for them straight
to her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Chloe and the others made camp in
an abandoned cornfield. Nobody built a fire. It was warm and they wanted to
keep their presence a secret. They sat in a somber circle, nibbling at the food
the Mrs. Larue had packed.

Now that Chloe had seen the prison
and had been told the story of Commander Larue’s suffering there, she felt a
terrible ache in her gut that wouldn’t go away. It was more than anger. It was
fury worse than any she’d ever known and sadness more piercing than she’d ever
thought possible. Not only had she let Commander Larue down, but she’d turned
her back on all her people while terrible things were done.           

“So you think that they finished
whatever they were doing at the prison?” she asked Jules Larue.

“I think so. Those fires weren’t
accidental. They destroyed the prison and then left it.”

“But why?” Chloe asked.

“To get rid of evidence,” Bazzlejet
suggested. “To hide the experiments they were doing.”

“No,” Othella spoke up. “They
didn’t have to hide anything. More likely they destroyed it all so there’d be
nothing left that anyone else could use.”

Tobin smacked an insect that was
biting his arm. He’d been silently morose since leaving Helm Bogvogny. They’d
found no signs of his mother there. The two Master Casters traveling with them
had even inspected the skeletons to determine their age and gender. None of
them were a match for Kiros Rubedo. That wasn’t much of a comfort. Having heard
what they’d done to Commander Larue, Chloe didn’t care to imagine what they had
in store for Kiros.

“I just wish there was a way to
know what the duke was up to,” she said. “Believe me, I want to go back to your
hideout and see Emma and Lord Finbarr just as bad as anyone else, but…”

“We’ve done nothing to help them,”
Bazzlejet said. “We’re no better off than when we started.”

“Exactly,” Chloe said. “And
besides…” she glanced over at Tobin.

“Kiros,” Othella said lowly. “I
wish I knew why they took her.”

Tobin lifted his head and looked at
her with a spark of hope showing in his face. “Can’t we just go wherever this
duke guy is? You know, sneak in?”

Othella sighed. “Not to be
pessimistic, but Ivywild is impenetrable. It only has one entrance by land and
that will be heavily guarded. The protective barrier is gone, but to go in by
air would be suicide.”

Bazzlejet sighed. “If only I could
get inside! I had all my own little routes mapped out through the place.
Keeping hidden from the duke would be as easy as making a virgin blush.”

“Bazzlejet, mind your tongue,” Mr.
Larue said sharply.

“Yessir,” Bazzlejet said, ducking
his head.

Chloe knew Ivywild better than
anyone. The lousy duke had lived overseas his whole life. There was no way he
could have ratted out all the nooks and crannies by now.

Garland Finbarr cleared his throat.
He’d been staring dreamily into the distance and he even hummed a few times. It
was an odd way to deal with their predicament, but Chloe didn’t think any less
of him for it. Now that their talk had turned to Ivywild, however, he perked up
and listened with interest.

“What is it?” Chloe asked, catching
a curious gleam in his eyes. “What are you thinking about?”

“Well,” he said, “there
might
be a way to sneak into the castle, but it is extremely dangerous.”

Chloe leaned forward. “Go on.”

Garland fumbled around in his
carryall bag and pulled out a beaten up little book. “There’s a way through
here.”

“No,” Mr. Larue, the two Master
Casters and Violet said all at the same time.

But Chloe was afire with new energy
as she looked at the little book. “Yes!”