“My foot! My foot! Brightness! My foot!” His words dissolved into incoherent sobs.
Alora’s head was pounding. Her eyes stung. Her stomach boiled. Attempting to move her legs made the skin on her ankles burn, raw from the heavy metal binding them. Something bit into her wrists, pinning them behind her back, and her arms ached from their awkward position. Stones gouged her skin where her face pressed into the hard ground. But her pain was nothing compared to her nausea, as saliva poured into her mouth and her stomach turned itself inside out.
“Interesting...” Vindrake’s voice sent a shiver of dread down her spine. “It caused a hole in your boot without contact, and the boot provided no protection for your foot.”
The ringing in her ears made his voice sound far away, but she could see him standing not far from her face. Beyond him, the tall trees stood like dark ghostly witnesses, looming around the edge of the forest clearing, illuminated by an almost full moon.
“Yes, quite interesting. This dark magick must have come from the other realm. Perhaps this discovery will help me recover my scroll.”
“No! No! Please!” the crying man begged.
The gunshot silenced him.
Alora’s stomach rebelled, spasming repeatedly, though she had nothing in her gut.
“Ah, Alora, I see you’re awake.”
His boot planted on the ground near her face, and dirt flew into her nose. He settled himself on the ground beside her head.
“I’m glad to see you, Alora. Your presence has lifted my spirits considerably.”
Alora’s head wrenched upward, pulled painfully by the roots of her hair. She cried out, and her face dropped back into the dirt.
“Very good—you’re truly awake. Now answer me this! What is this blade you carried and how did it pierce my skin? No metal can cut me, yet your knife stabbed into my shoulder.”
Alora grasped at a fuzzy memory of an earlier battle with Water Clan... Vindrake’s shaman Abaddon boasting that his skin was impervious to metal just before Uncle Charles killed him with a ceramic knife.
“Answer my question!”
Her hair pulled her face up again.
“Ow!” she yelped. “I know nothing about your skin.”
Smashing back into the dirt, her nose throbbed.
“No matter! You cannot defeat me because God has delivered you into my hands, along with this magick blade and the otherworld weapon of death.”
Unable to think of a clever retort, she let out a haughty, “Ha!”
“You don’t believe me? Your very presence confirms my words.”
He paused, as if she might respond. But she concentrated on breathing, trying to calm her churning stomach.
“Hear this, Alora. Many years ago, God placed a scroll in my hands—the Maladorn Scroll. He gave me the gift to read it, an ability matched by no other. And with that scroll, He gave me the ability to acquire many gifts... to become more powerful than any other man in history. He’d already chosen me to be Water Clan leader, by my birth. But I knew, with my new powers, I was destined to be more. God chose me to unite all of Tenavae under one rule. And yet you—my daughter—have rejected my role as both your father and your king. This is unacceptable behavior. And that sin is the reason God gave you to me this very day... to punish you and to use you to regain my scroll. To assure my rightful place on the throne of Tenavae.”
There’s no use arguing with him. He’s insane. Not that I have the strength to talk, anyway.
“You know the scroll to which I refer?” He bent his head down to whisper in her ear, his foul breath assaulting her nose and setting off a new round of dry heaves.
“I’ve sent a message to the archivists at the Craedenza to let them know my terms for your release. All I require is the return of my scroll.”
Biting her lip didn’t prevent her from groaning as her brain throbbed and swelled, trying to burst through her skull. She saw him smile and knew he enjoyed her suffering.
I won’t make another sound, no matter what. I won’t give him the satisfaction.
“Of course, I have no intention of keeping that bargain. In fact, it’ll be quite gratifying to take your life, though I fear you may expire before I have the opportunity.” He frowned, studying her as he stroked his chin. “Perhaps you need sustenance. I prefer you remain alive... for now.”
He stood and walked away. A few minutes later, someone else came—a woman, by the look of her hands. She placed two clay bowls on the ground beside Alora, and left without a word. One with water, and the other with some nasty-smelling concoction that could never pass as food. Yet, after a while, her stomach growled, cramping with hunger, and she determined to eat the stuff anyway.