Calla's Story

Chapter 26

Twenty-Six

I wake the next morning and allow myself a few minutes to lie there smiling before getting up. I might have a mother in hospital and a mentor who hates me, but I’m finally doing what I’ve always wanted to do, I have actual, real friends who are doing the same thing, and I get to occasionally hang out with a cool Underground tattoo artist who thinks I look good in evening wear.

I get to the Guild dining hall in time for breakfast, but the only other person sitting at our usual table is Ned. Gemma is apparently ‘not feeling well,’ and then Ned receives a message from Perry saying he overslept and only just woke up.

“Must have been quite a party, huh?” Ned mumbles.

“It was. I think it’s safe to say Gemma won’t be eating any chocolate bonbons for a while.”

Ned nods. He then shovels food into his mouth with alarming speed before excusing himself to go finish some homework. I’m pretty sure we had no homework yesterday, which means Ned is simply making an escape. I suppose he’s still too shy around me to consider sticking around for a conversation without the safety net of his other two friends.

Since classes aren’t due to begin for another twenty-five minutes, and—fortunately—I have no meeting with Olive this morning, I decide to go to the healing wing and visit Mom. The woman behind the desk in the waiting area makes a comment about me not observing visiting hours, but, with a conspiratorial smile, she lets me through anyway.

I sit on the stool that appears beside Mom’s bed and watch her for a while. I try to find the anger I felt when I learned her secret, but it’s mostly gone. I’m relieved. Hanging onto that anger would have been exhausting. When I look at her now, I just feel … sad. I feel as though I don’t know nearly enough about her, and, to be honest, she doesn’t know me that well either. “We haven’t had the healthiest mother-daughter relationship, have we?” I say as I place my hand over Mom’s. “We smile at each other and skim the surface of our lives with pleasantries, but neither of us ever trusted the other enough to go deeper than that. There are things, so many things I could have shared with you. The nasty comments that left me in tears, my fear that I’d waste my life as an artist and never help anyone, the thrill I felt the first time I did a back flip, my crush on Zed, the truth about what really happened to … that boy who committed suicide.” I squeeze Mom’s hand, wondering if she’ll remember any of this when she wakes up. “Neither of us had to be so alone, Mom, but we chose to keep our secrets to ourselves. I guess we’ll see if we can change that when you wake up.”

I stand, then turn back as I remember something. “Ryn and Vi are finally having a proper wedding. Union ceremony, I mean.” If Mom were awake, I know she’d correct me. “It’s happening next weekend. I know that’s barely any time to organize anything, but a friend of theirs has some time off so she offered to plan the whole thing. So, you know, if there’s a wake-up date you’re aiming for, any time before next Saturday would be—”

From the corner of my eye, I see the curtain sway. I look up as two male healers walk in. They’re surprised to see me here, but not as surprised as I am to see them. Because despite the uniforms these two men are wearing, I know they’re not healers. One is the scarred man who fought me and attacked my parents, and the other is Saber.

They stunned me.

I’m lost in a groggy no man’s land of semi-consciousness when I become aware of this. I remember flinging sparks at them and grasping the air for a throwing star. I threw one—and that must have been the moment I was stunned because I don’t remember anything after that.

I feel a rocking motion, but I can’t tell if it’s real or if it’s part of my confused half-dreaming state. I swim in slow motion through water thick like syrup. My arms are weak. So weak I can barely pull myself through the thick water. I try to kick against it with my legs, but they’re even more sluggish than my arms.

A cold breeze. It drifts across my face, smelling like salt. The rocking motion continues, and a sloshing sounds joins it. I drag one eyelid open for a moment and see dark clouds moving above me before darkness descends over my vision once more.

Mom. What did they do with Mom?

Over the next few minutes, I catch glimpses of the turbulent sky above, someone moving next to me, and then a dark shape blotting out the sky. By that point, I’m conscious enough to know I’m in a boat and that my wrists and ankles are bound. With a great effort, I manage to keep my eyes open longer than a second or two, and that’s when I realize what the dark shape is: a floating island.

“Where … are …”

A face appears above mine. A face I recognize. “This one’s waking up,” Saber says.

“Well, we’re here now,” a male voice replies. “Probably a good thing she’s awake.”

“Are we in the right spot?” Saber asks.

“Yes, I just got the signal.”

A moment later, the rocking and sloshing disappears. I manage to raise my head enough to figure out what’s going on: The boat is rising through the air toward the underside of the floating island. I see dark earth, hanging vines, rope ladders, and falling streams of water. Then I see a distinct circular shape. As we sail smoothly upward toward the circle, I realize it’s a hole. We rise through it, fly sideways, and, with a sudden lurch, the rocking and sloshing returns. We must be floating on water once more.

I’m fully awake now, although my limbs are still sleepy from the stunner spell. I look around and see metal gates and stone walls and flames dancing in torches. Saber leans over me once more. “Welcome to Velazar Prison,” he says with a sneer.

Velazar Prison? “What?” I manage to croak out. “Why?”

Saber vanishes from my line of sight. Using my elbow, I manage to push myself into a sitting position. We’re floating on an underground canal alongside several other small boats, and lying beside me, his arms and legs also bound, is Gaius.

“What’s going on?” I ask Saber. “What did you take us for, and why are we at a prison?”

Saber laughs. “Did you hear that, Marlin?” he says to his scarred companion who’s just finished securing the boat to a post on one side of the canal. “Thinks she can interrogate us.”

“You know each other,” I say, looking from Saber to the scarred man and back again. “You’re working together?”

“Come on, Gold.” Saber snaps his fingers several times. “Figure it out. It’s not that hard to put the pieces together.”

Marlin shouts something to a man on the other side of a locked gate. “He came after my mother,” I say, nodding my head to Marlin, “because he wants to know about the vision she Saw all those years ago. And you …” I think back to what Chase told me “… you wanted to travel back in time to find out something.” The connection clicks into place. “The same thing Marlin wants to know. You were going to go back to the time my mother had that vision and find out whatever you could about it.”

Saber snaps his fingers again. “Congratulations. Aren’t you clever.”

“But why? What’s so important about this vision she had?”

He shoves his face in front of mine. “Now why would I tell you that? You’re the girl who assisted in destroying an ability that was mine. I will never get that back, and after the boss is done with you, I’m going to make sure you pay for it.”

I shrink away from his snarling words. Blinking against the last wisps of grogginess floating through my mind, I try to focus on projecting an—

“Everyone, put these on.” The man who was behind the gate—a guard, I presume, judging by his uniform—walks to the edge of the canal and tosses four metal rings to Marlin. “You know the drill. You won’t be able to step outside of your boat unless you’re wearing them, and you won’t be able to take them off until you’re back in your boat at the end of your visit.”

Marlin leans over and pushes a ring onto one of my fingers. “No more illusion tricks from you,” he says.

So that’s what this is. I thought I recognized the metal. I saw it in Zell’s dungeon, wrapped around the wrists and ankles of most of the other prisoners. I was supposed to have a band made from this metal to stop me projecting illusions while I was locked up there, but Zell’s men hadn’t yet made one small enough for me by the time Ryn came to get me out.

“And leave any weapons in the boat,” the guard adds. “You won’t be able to get them past the first gate. Right, then, let’s go.” A flick of his hand produces a set of stairs leading down from the side of the canal to the edge of our boat. Clearly he still has access to his magic.

Saber cuts the cord around my ankles with a knife and pulls me to my feet. Then he shakes Gaius and slaps him a few times until the poor man wakes up.

Blinking, he stutters, “Wh—what is—”

“Get up,” Saber says, cutting the cord that binds Gaius’s ankles and yanking him to his feet. He tosses his knife and several other weapons onto a cushion beneath one of the bench seats.

“I don’t understand. Calla? What are we—”

“Shut up,” Marlin says. He grabs my arm and pushes me ahead of him up the steps.

The four of us follow the guard through the gate—which is locked behind us by another guard who pats us down to check for weapons—along a cold stone passageway with water leaking down the walls, and into what looks like a waiting room within a cell. Two rows of slightly battered wooden chairs are lined up behind bars, and in front of the bars is a desk. The guard walks to the desk where a pile of forms sits, waiting to be filled in. “I presume you’re here to see the same person you always see?” he asks.

“Yes,” Saber says, and the guard fills in several of the blank spaces on the form.

“Right.” He straightens. “I don’t know what you’ve got going on here with people tied up, but you know I can only let one of you in at a time. The rest of you have to wait in there.” He gestures to the chairs behind the bars.

“We need to see him together,” Marlin says.

“That isn’t going to happen. One at a time. That’s the way it works around here.”

Marlin removes a folded envelope from one of his pockets and hands it to the guard. “Make it happen.”

The guard opens the envelope and removes a page from inside. The dull, flickering light makes it hard to tell, but I think his skin loses some of its color as he examines the page. His jaw clenches. He returns the page to the envelope and hands it back to Marlin. “Even if I wanted to take you all through at the same time, I can’t. There are twelve guards between here and the visitation rooms. Are you planning to blackmail all of them?”

“Take the ring off the girl,” Saber says, “and she can get us there without anyone knowing.”

The guard’s jaw tenses again. “I can’t do that.”

“Unless you want your wife and children to know what’s in this envelope, you’ll do it.”

The guard draws a slow, deep breath, watching Marlin as he considers this threat. Then he pulls me to the side of the room and lifts my hand. “Is it going to hurt?” I ask, unable to keep the fear from my voice. This is the same metal that scarred Ryn when it was removed from his arm. Vi went through the same thing. She told me she blacked out from the pain.

“Not when done properly,” the guard says. “And I’m one of the few who knows how to do it properly.” He rubs his finger back and forth over the ring, muttering words under his breath. Then he slips the ring off as easily as if it were any ordinary ring.

“Good,” Marlin says. “I’m surprised you didn’t demonstrate your ability the day I broke into your house,” he adds as he pulls me away from the guard. “If I’d known what you can do, I might have asked for a little show.”

“Why should I perform for you now?” I demand.

“Because I’ll hurt you if you don’t. Or I’ll hurt this man over here.” He gestures to Gaius. “Cut off a finger, perhaps. Or—” he taps his chin thoughtfully “—I’ll simply remind you that I have your mother. That would probably be the most effective threat, don’t you think?”

So he does have Mom. Despair threatens to overwhelm me as my fears are confirmed, but I do my best to stand my ground. “You won’t do anything to her. You need her.”

“I need her alive, yes. It doesn’t matter to me if she’s injured in any way.”

I grit my teeth. “Fine. What do you want me to do?”

“It’s simple. Whenever we pass a guard, he or she must see only Saber and this man.” He points to the guard who’s clearly being blackmailed into all of this. “If that doesn’t happen, we’re all in trouble—including your mother.”

“Okay. I can do that.”

Saber walks with the guard, and Marlin, Gaius and I follow quietly behind them. We journey past various guards through a confusing maze of stairways, corridors, and ancient, rickety elevators, all as dark and damp as the first passageway we walked through. Even if I wasn’t focusing intently on projecting images of empty space, I doubt I’d be able to remember my way out of here. Before passing through another locked gate, the guard has to produce the form he filled in for approval from another guard. After receiving a stamp on the form, we’re allowed through.

Finally, we walk onto a bridge stretching from one side of an enormous cavern to the other. And that’s when I almost ruin everything, because I’m so stunned by what I see that, for a second, I lose focus. I quickly grasp hold of it, though, sending most of my energy into projecting the illusion that Marlin, Gaius and I aren’t here, while allowing a tiny part of my brain to marvel at what I’m seeing.

Hundreds and hundreds of individual prison cells float in the air, filling the cavern and slowly moving in different directions so that no two cells are next to each other for more than about half a minute. The guard who’s been leading us presents his stamped form to the man waiting at the gate halfway across the bridge. “Okay,” the man says with a nod after checking the form. “I’ll send him to Visitation Room 2.”

As we walk through the gate, I see a cell high up near the ceiling pick up speed and move toward the far side of the cavern. I assume it contains the man we’re here to see. We cross the bridge to the other side of the cavern and walk down another corridor before stopping outside a closed door with a number 2 on it.

“I hope you don’t expect me to wait outside,” the guard says. “There are other guards who patrol this corridor, and they’ll want to know why I’m not in there with you.”

“Oh, please do come inside,” Marlin says. “We’ll be needing you.”

The visitation room is split in half by bars made of the same metal as the rings. We wait on one side, and a door on the other side opens. A man in dirty prison overalls and straggly two-toned hair walks in. There isn’t anything remarkable about his appearance, nothing that would make him stand out in a crowd. His demeanor is anything but commanding, but I sense a change in the two men who brought us here. Out there they were in charge, but in here they answer to him.

“Oh dear,” Gaius mutters. “Not good, not good.”

“Good evening,” the prisoner says, a pleasant smile on his face. “Thank you, Mr. Saber and Mr. Marlin, for bringing these two here so promptly. Are the bonds really necessary, though? They make this whole business rather disagreeable. Mr. Saber?” Saber steps up to me and works at the knots around my wrists until the ropes come loose and fall to the ground. Then he moves to Gaius while the prisoner beckons to me. “Miss Larkenwood. Why don’t you come a little closer so I can see you properly.” Instead of moving toward him, I take a step backward. “Oh, I can’t hurt you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he says, holding his wrists up to show a metal band around each one. “You’ve probably figured out by now that this substance blocks magic. It’s a rare metal, used in most prisons but difficult to find elsewhere. Prince Marzell managed to acquire some, which is how I initially got to see it in action.”

I frown at him. “Who are you?”

“My name is Amon. I was a spy within the Creepy Hollow Guild for many years. First I worked for Prince Marzell, and then I worked for Lord Draven. Now—” he steeples his fingertips “—I work for no one but myself.”

This must be the man Chase was talking about. The most dangerous man we know.

“So … Draven really is dead? That enchanted storm that showed up last week had nothing to do with him?”

A hint of a smile appears on Amon’s lips, but other than that, his expression remains unreadable. “How would I know anything about that? I’m locked inside a prison.” He lowers his hands and clasps them behind his back. “You’re probably wondering why you’re here,” he continues. “It wasn’t part of the plan. I didn’t even know about you. The plan was to take your mother, but you happened to be in the room at the time, so you were taken as well. When Saber visited earlier today, I told him to simply get rid of you. But then he told me you can produce illusions of some sort, and I had to see that for myself.”

“Well then,” I say, because I see no other way out of this. “What would you like to see?”

“Hmm.” Amon tilts his head to the side. “Show me a unicorn. I’ve never seen one in real life.”

I resist the urge to tell him he still won’t have seen one in real life when this is done. Instead, I relax the control on my imaginary wall and picture a unicorn inside the cell with Amon. He jumps back, startled, then laughs.

“Remarkable,” he says, reaching forward to touch it. His hand passes through the unicorn, of course, because it isn’t really there. It vanishes as I lock my mind back up again.

“Anything else I can do to entertain you?” I ask, unable to keep the sarcasm from my voice.

“No, no, that’s all.” He nods to the guard and adds, “You can block her magic now.” With a mutinous glare at the prisoner controlling this entire scene, the guard walks slowly toward me. He removes a ring from one of his pockets and forces it onto my right hand.

Amon looks over my shoulder to where Gaius is standing. “This is the man who took your power from you, Mr. Saber?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Impressive. That’s a skill that can definitely be useful to me. First, though, I’d like a demonstration.”

“A—a demonstration?” Gaius stutters.

“On her.” He points at me.

“What?” I back away, but there’s nowhere to go.

“I want what she can do,” Amon says simply. “And you, Gaius, are going to be the man who stores all the abilities I want to collect until I can get out of here and make use of them. Now take it. And don’t stop there.” He grasps the cell bars and peers intently at me. “Take all of it. Every drop of magic she possesses.”

“What?” I gasp.

“I—I can’t do that,” Gaius says. “I can take Griffin Abilities, but I can’t take core magic.”

“Can’t? Really? How do you know that?”

“Well, I’ve never done it. I don’t know if—”

“Now’s your chance to try. Treat this as an experiment. But please don’t pretend you can’t do it in a weak attempt to save her. That won’t work out well for either of you.”

Gaius continues to shake his head as he backs away from me.

Amon sighs, as if this little drama is keeping him from something more important. “You’ll be saving her life by doing this. I promised Saber he would have his revenge, and the way we’re doing that is by removing all her magic. So if you can’t do that, I’m afraid we’ll have to kill her.”

Gaius grows still, but his wide eyes never leave me. I see his resignation, and I know what decision he’s come to. “Don’t do this, don’t do this,” I beg. “Please don’t do this.” I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to wind up magic-less either. There must be another way out of this.

“I—I have to,” Gaius says, tugging uselessly at the ring on his finger. “I can’t let them kill you.”

“You. Guard,” Marlin says. “Remove this man’s ring.”

The guard hesitates, then puffs out his chest and places his hands on his hips. “No. I can’t let you do this. It’s all gone too far now.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Marlin says. “This is not your moment to be a hero. Do you really want to watch your own life—your family’s life—go up in flames because you tried to save someone you don’t even know? Do you really think that’s worth it?”

The man looks tortured, but in the end, with a cry of anger, he crosses the room and removes Gaius’s ring. He pockets it, then turns to me and grips my shoulders.

“No!” I try to squirm away, but Saber and Marlin catch hold of me. I kick and scratch and hit, but they pin me to the floor. Gaius advances on me, guilt and fear written across his face.

“Please forgive me,” he says. “I’m only trying to save you.” He catches my flailing hand and hangs onto it. He closes his eyes, and I make one last desperate attempt to get away. I scream and kick and thrash, but Gaius never lets go of my hand.

I don’t know the moment when I finally lose my Griffin Ability, but I feel it when he begins to draw my core magic out of me. It’s my essence, my energy, the thing that distinguishes me from other magical beings and beings with no magic at all. I slowly grow weaker. Weaker and colder. My vision dims, and I wonder if this will kill me anyway. Is magic what keeps me alive, or can I survive without it?

Weaker … colder … darker …

Blackness clouds the edges of my vision as the last of my magic is sucked from me.