Chapter 54
I made it to my mother’s wine caves without arousing any suspicion or pursuit. Slipping through the back entrance, I was puzzled that the men had left no trace of their entry, not that I expected much with them being Rangers. What I didn’t expect was nothing – not even a trace of their scent. It was as if they had not even come this way.
Inside was cool and dim with shelves holding a year’s worth of my mother’s last vintage. A modest accounting of bottles, she had laid down a few hundred and they were not covered with dust so someone had obviously turned them. Which meant someone had found the caves. Out of the darkness, stepped the wizard with a coterie of soldiers armed with devices I had not seen before. He was dressed in banded leather wearing gauntlets of a silvery metal that flexed as easily as his fingers.
Before I could say a word, he cupped his hands and threw something at me. Instantly, I was enveloped in a shimmering haze that covered my own force shield and the meeting of the two energies was enough to knock everyone but the wizard and me off our feet. A sheet of blue fire crackled around us and he stepped back a pace or two, his face creasing in astonishment.
“You’ve learned a thing or two since you left me, Tobias,” he grunted.
I found I could move but it was as if I was pushing through a field of tanglefoot vines. I could open a small space in front of me where my hands were exposed and blasted twin shots of both magic and electrical discharge back at him. It bounced off his hands and destroyed an entire wall of bottles, bringing down part of the cave roof. I turned and ran for the entrance, not willing to be buried alive; I saw an open patch of blue sky and leaped for it.
Behind me, I heard Blackfin shout and giant slabs of rock went flying. Several hit the shield and pushed it sideways, with me in it. I scrambled on hands and knees sobbing for breath onto the slopes of the cliff wall at the base of the glacier. The debris hadn’t hit me directly but the force applied to the outside of the shield was transferred inside to my body. As Laioli and Cabor had explained to me, a force applied to an object had an equal and opposite reaction to it. You push me, I push back.
He yelled my name and the shield around me offered no protection. His words hit me with the power of a hammer; a spell that triggered a deep compulsion in me, in which I had knowledge. I stopped dead in my tracks and waited for him to clamber over the ruined cave to stand over my sprawled form.
“Tobias, drop your shield,” he ordered and I did so. Then he deliberately drew back his booted foot and kicked me in the belly so hard that I flew backwards several feet. I struggled to draw in air; he had knocked me breathless and watched me turn blue.
When I finally could shudder in a precious lungful, it was to feel the liquid copper of blood in my mouth. I gagged and sprayed droplets of it on his feet. “Filthy slave,” he spat and kicked me again. I felt my ribs break and my spleen rupture. He was not content until he had kicked me into unconsciousness yet it was not as painful as the collar’s torment. He faded away in a soft blood red haze.
I was vaguely aware of being carried, moved into vehicles and flying somewhere. Of coughing up blood and providing amusement for a host of beings that tortured me with needles, tube feedings and rough handling. Always, I was aware of Blackfin’s face hovering over mine. I was aware of pressure all around me, the walls of something close to all four sides of my body. When I finally opened my eyes with any clarity, I saw his face, Ricbom and the Emperor standing over what was a clear plastic lid. In a room set up like a lab but clearly inside the Imperial Palace with its guilt and precious woods, marbles and inlays.
“He’s awake, Lord Blake,” Ricbom announced in a frail voice. He looked – shattered. As if he had been tortured beyond endurance, his will broken and his mind lost in a fog.
I pushed my hands against the plastic and felt an incredible soreness through my chest and belly. The lid barely moved and I saw holes that let in air drilled through the cover.
“Is he sufficiently cowed to obey you, Blake?” His Imperial Highness Avril asked. The wizard’s father was a tall man, fair-haired and comely. His age sat on him like an expensive suit fresh from the tailor. His eyes were light blue, sharp enough to melt ice and not comfortable to have settle on you.
“He is bound by blood, magic and pain, my Lord,” the wizard agreed. “I had a slave collar on him but he found a way to remove it.”
“So, what binds him now? Is he safe?” The Emperor demanded but Ricbom answered.
“He has been psych-conditioned, my Lord. Mind-controlled on a level even he was not aware of.” I gaped, my soul terrified at the notion that my thoughts and mind were not my own.