The Keeper and The Dragons Ch. 31-33

Chapter 31

Eastmarket District, Oldtown

Elisabeth Van Horn, late of the Seattle Van Horns, awoke face down on the floor in a cave-like room that smelled of urine and blood. She sat up and winced at the pounding in her head. Buttons and Nevermore were missing. She felt a flash of anxiety. What had happened to them?

Katerine and Niamh sat up with similar groggy expressions.

She felt something encircling her neck. "What..."

"Listen, we've been torc-ed," Niamh said. "Don't try ..."

Both Elizabeth and Katherine screamed and started thrashing around the floor.

"... to use magic or the torc will deliver pain."

"Fuuuuck," Katherine panted in agony. "Thank you, Guinevere Google. You could have warned us. Elisabeth, are you okay?"

"No, I am not. I have a splitting headache. Some sort of magical device has just electrocuted me. This adventure sucks."

"Someone drugged us," Niamh said. "Lan was right. Oldtown is not a walk in the park. We have been babes in the woods here—far too trusting. It's fortunate that we're still alive."

"One or both of the dragon women drugged us," Katherine spat. "Lan will come for us, but let's get out of here before he does. I can see the smug grin on his stupid face now."

"What if he can't find us?" Elisabeth asked.

Niamh made a face. "He will come for us. Lan is as stubborn as a mule like that. He will knock down every door in this city to find us if he has to."

"Are you talking about Lachlan Quinn?" came a voice from a dark corner of the room. Her accent made her sound like an upper-crust Londoner.

Surprised, the three women drew together and peered into the dark. They hadn't realized that they weren't alone.

Elisabeth saw a woman crouched in the corner. She, too, wore a torc. Her face seemed to flicker. She grimaced in pain. Then her appearance settled into an exotic ebony haired, lavender-eyed Asrai halfling.

"Jesus," Katherine mumbled, "Doesn't Lan know any plain women? This is ridiculous."

"Who are you?" Niamh demanded.

"My name is none of your business, shifter," she snapped back. "Mind your tone."

Elisabeth went into peacemaker mode. "Sorry, we are a bit upset. Being enslaved and all. How do you know Lachlan Quinn?"

"We've known each other for a long time, most all our lives. Our relationship is complicated. That scar on his face? I gave it to him."

Elisabeth watched as Niamh prowled the room, looking every bit like the angry panther she was. She sniffed the stone wall.

"Crap, we're down in the Desolate. The walls are salt."

"Actually, we're in the sub-cellar of a building in the Eastmarket," said the strange female.

"Wait," Katherine said. "What do you mean, you gave him the scar on his face?"

The door slammed open, interrupting the conversation. A massive orc shoved her way in. She pointed to Elisabeth and motioned for her to come.

Still feeling the effects of the potion that the tea had been dosed with, Elisabeth meekly followed the orc up two flights of stairs. She was still trying to come to terms with all the shocks she had experienced with ever since the dragon women had knocked on her door in Seattle. Romance books never told of all the gritty details of actual adventures. That you were tired and gritty feeling and you really needed someone to let you say time out for a minute so I can get myself organized a bit. In real life, the shocks just kept on coming, no one cared if you were feeling sick and tired and had to pee. Plus, there was a curious feeling she could only describe as a sense of anticipation in the back of her brain. It was distracting, limiting her ability to concentrate.

They walked down a dimly lit tunnel and up three flights of stairs to emerge into a brightly lit room. An enormous sheet of black glass, maybe ten feet by ten feet dominated one side of the room, opposite that a plain wooden dining table covered in papers and a vast pile of books. An office chair sat behind it. The walls were painted purest white. She decided the room was best described as antiseptic. Her harmonizer senses immediately rebelled at the absence of any kind of warmth. She could also smell the coppery smell of blood.

It's like a laboratory or a morgue.

A tall figure stood staring at the sheet of black glass. Flickering whorls and flashes of energy racing across reminded her of a giant screen saver. The fractal patterns were revolting to her harmonizer senses. At first, Elisabeth thought it was a big monitor or television screen until she realized it was transparent. She could see the wall behind it.

"Elisabeth Van Horn, I presume?" The tall being's English was upper class posh, straight out of London. He turned his back to the screen and looked at her.

A Daoine Royal. A creature straight out of mythology. She stared helplessly at six and a half feet of god-like perfection. Long platinum blond hair. This is what Adonis must have looked like, she thought. One side of his face was unearthly handsome, the other side, marred by some truly awful burn scars, twisted his face to make his visage look like a creature from hell. His eyes immediately drew her attention. Two oversized green eyes that burned with power and madness. For the first time, she could appreciate what it meant to be in the presence of a god.

He made a casual wave and all her protective wards fell away like so much fluff. Another wave and she found herself on her knees and suffused with a feeling of utter adoration for him. Another wave and she felt a tickle that became pain that moved to agony. Another wave and she was free.

He smiled. "I have found that it saves time to remind you humans of your place. I have a task for you." He gestured for her to get up and go over to the table.

It was all she could do to keep herself from vomiting. She had never in her sheltered life felt such a sense of utter violation from the elf's casual control of her mind and body. She had never felt utter terror before, either.

The sight of the scroll let her compartmentalize her emotions. It lay in the center of the table, looking like a pile of dirty white, tattered rags. Something inside her jumped eagerly, like a kid at Christmas.

"Tell me, human. Can you translate the script?"

"Yes." Choking pressure from the torc around her throat forced the response. She didn't really notice. Her attention was laser focused on the scroll. Upon closer examination, the pile of rags turned out to be tattered lambskin. Symbols jumped out at her. Ancient Goídelc written in Ogham script. She bent down to take a closer look. Carefully, with trembling fingers, gently opened the first bit of the scroll.

"Tell me about this spell?"

Elisabeth looked up sharply, then carefully schooled her features. "I recognize the Ogham script. The spell appears to deal with the defeat of various sea creatures." She looked again at "a spell for the curing and preserving the cod-fishes and other sea creatures".

"Very good. Sit you down and translate the next spell's wyrds."

The compulsion to obey was too strong for her to resist.

A timeless while later, she had worked through most of the spells in the scroll when a guttural voice broke into her concentration. She looked up and saw a shifter woman with a little girl. They stood spell-bound in front of the Daoine.

He pointed to one of the orc guards.

"Take the girl down to the others. I will have a use for her later." He motioned the shifter woman to his side. "You my lovely, I have use for you now."

Later, Elisabeth thought she should have suspected something terrible was going to happen because the other massive orc visibly shuddered and turned away to face the wall. As the elderly shifter woman stood with a smiling look of adoration on her face, the tall elf picked up a black bowl and a blade. He expertly cut her throat and collected the spurting blood. The woman made no sound, no change of her adoring look--just died in place.

The Daoine threw the bowl of blood against the energy shot sheet of glass. He chanted a spell she recognized as one of the Major Summonings from the scroll she had just deciphered. The black sheet of glass cleared instantly to reveal six beings sitting around a table of what looked like white marble.

One of the cowled beings pointed to Elisabeth. The Daoine frowned. He motioned to the orc to escort her out of the room.

Elisabeth followed obediently, her mind working furiously. The skin of cowled being's hand was a leathery mottled green-black—like a crocodile's.

Daemon-kind. The fool was creating a thinning into the Niflheimr Realm.

Chapter 32

Eastmarket District, Oldtown

The orc led Elisabeth back down to the cave-like room to the others. She found Nimah and Katherine cuddling the little girl who was sobbing her heart out.

"Who is she?" she asked.

Katherine got up and walked over to her and whispered, "She is Lan's ward. Her name is Katrinka. From what I know, her mother dropped her off with Lan and asked him to take care of her. He's been taking care of her for the last couple of months. The Goddess only knows what he will do when he finds someone has taken her."

A sudden wave of exhaustion swept over Elisabeth. She sank to the floor. "If the kidnapper was who I think it was, Lachlan doesn't have to worry about finding her." She gave Katherine and Niamh a terse account of what she had just witnessed.

"Well, good news, bad news. Now we know where the mind mapper came from and we know the Sidhe are up to their neck in this." Niamh squatted down next to her and Elisabeth. "What are we going to do? We have no defense against one of them, especially a royal."

"Wait, I have an idea, don't talk for a minute," Elisabeth said.

While the two of them silently watched her, Elisabeth mentally walked through the spells she had read from the scroll, muttering to herself.

"I have a way, but you guys aren't going to like it."

"Tell us, you stupid witch." the Asrai halfling's calm facade was fraying. "I've worn the torc before and know what is likely to come. Only a miracle can get us out of these things."

Katherine gave her a quelling frown, then nodded encouragement to Elisabeth. "She's not wrong. If you have an idea, go ahead tell us what you're thinking."

Niamh looked at the half blood wood elf. "Before we go any further, who are you? How did you end up here?"

"I've had many names, but Wraith is as good a name as any other. As to how I came to be here, my stupidity is as good an answer as any." She retreated to her alcove, careful, Elisabeth noticed, to stay within whispering distance.

"Okay, Wraith," Nimah responded with open distrust. "Keep your secrets close. We have more pressing issues. But don't think we won't be revisiting things with you. Go on, Elisabeth."

"My time with the scroll gave me a binding spell I can cast to protect us from being controlled by the Daoine. I think it will even work with the torcs around our necks. The spell binds us into what the druids called a Cyfamod. A coven of sorts."

"Okay, what is that?"

"Think of it as the four of us pledging to a sisterhood. The druids called the binding, deirfiúracha m'fhuil—blood sisters. It was an earlier, more intense version of our more modern coven."

"First of all, how can you cast this thing? You can't use magic with these collars on," Niamh said. "I can't even shift."

"It's old magic. I don't think the torcs can stop it. I think it's worth a try."

"Hold on a minute. Tell us the pros and cons. Start with the cons. What do you mean, a sort of coven? The aunties have taught us all our lives to stay away from the blood magic."

"Actually, it will make us more like a family than a coven. Now that I think more about it—maybe closer than a family. Anyway, one drawback is that the Aunties, especially mine, will lose their minds when they find we've left our respective covens. I've never heard of that happening. The Red Queens might get involved. We will be essentially starting a new coven—one with a shifter and maybe an Asrai halfling in it to boot."

"What else?" asked Wraith.

"There is no going back. We do it, we pledge for life. The spell binds us forever."

Niamh fingered the torc around her neck. "So bottom line, the choice is we get enslaved now, probably get our throats cut and our blood drained in the next few days as part of some demonic ritual, or we join a kind of sorority/sisterhood and maybe run into some disapproval later from some cranky old women."

Elisabeth and Katherine stared at her and then started laughing.

"You people are strange." In the dim light, Wraith's mouth was thin in disapproval. "I cannot do this. I have made commitments that I will not break. Any choices I had about my life's direction were gone long ago."

"What sort of commitments?" Elisabeth asked. "The spell is very specific. Your commitments become our commitments. That's the way it works."

Wraith's expression turned stoney. Elisabeth's harmony magic had within it a strong empathy component. She read that the young woman's survival instinct was weighing the risk. For a person who has learned to trust none but herself, how can you trust three strangers with your life?

"I... I have a son."

Elisabeth looked at her without expression. There was nothing to say to that. It was her decision.

"Okay," Katherine interrupted. "Let's take a deep breath and think for a moment. Elisabeth, you have a way to protect us from his control. Maybe. Let's move on to problem number two. How do we get out of here? And say we figure that out. What do we do next? We have no hope of overcoming the magic of a Daoine Royal."

Wraith spoke. "What I don't understand is why the old Dragon has not sensed what's going on. He has always been the city's defense against incursions from the other realms."

"Holy crap," Elisabeth blurted, "That's why they cast the hex. They have him trapped in the lower levels of the bank. We have got to get the heck out of here."

"Decision time, ladies," Niamh said crisply. "If this offers the slightest chance of getting out of here, I'm all in. That asshole could come for us at any time. I, for one, am not interested in slavery. I tried it once and didn't like it."

Katherine sighed. "I'm sure I will regret this. I'm in."

Waith scowled, "What do you need me to do?"

"Not good enough. You to say it. Half measures are sure to have unexpected effects."

"I'm in."

A tiny voice piped up behind them. "Me too."

Niamh smiled at Katrinka and gave her a hug. "I think this is just for big people, honey."

Katrinka gave her a mulish look.

"I don't suppose any of you have a knife?" Elisabeth said hopefully.

Katherine shook her head. Niamh nudged Wraith. "Give her one of yours. By my count, you're carrying five." The green-haired woman scowled and pulled out a finger-length blade out of her thick hair and handed it over.

Elisabeth inscribed a circle on the dirt floor with her sidewalk chalk.

"Okay, step inside the circle and gather around. This is a complex spell. I need a bit of blood." She slashed her palm, then slashed the others in turn. "Join hands and repeat "we are blood; we are bone; we are one" after I say the incantation."

The others nodded. stepped closer and joined hands.

Elisabeth intoned softly, "Gwaed ydym ni asgwrn yr ydym yn un."

The three others obediently chanted—We are blood—we are bone—we are one."

A bell chimed in the room...

"Gwaed ydym ni asgwrn yr ydym yn un."

We are blood—we are bone—we are one"

Two bells rang.

"Gwaed ydym ni asgwrn yr ydym yn un."

We are blood—we are bone—we are one."

Three bells rang out. Deafening them. Dust drifted from the ceiling.

The torcs fell away from their throats, twisted and mangled by the force of magic.

One by one, they collapsed like so many dominos.

Katrinka fell as well.

Chapter 33

Westmarket District, Oldtown

The troll, Toolie, led Quinn through the warren of streets that made up Westmarket. The district was the oldest part of the city. A good number of the buildings were constructed of wood, some still showing the burn marks of the fire some hundreds of years ago that burned the rest of the city to the ground. After that fire, most clans, as soon as they had gained enough coins, built their compounds of stone and brick.

The big female strode along silently toward her clan's compound. She kept to herself any thoughts or questions she had about the day's events. Her silence suited Quinn. He was feeling increasingly anxious. The situation was layered with complexity—plotters behind plotters. He didn't for a minute believe the Guildmaster was anything more than a pawn in some other beings' master planning. Quinn knew he wasn't good at Machiavellian maneuvering. He preferred straightforward action. Go here, catch this bad being and stop it from hurting other beings.

Another thought occurred to him. He knew someone who reveled in the twist and turns of conspiracies—the Vampire.

"How much further, Mistress?"

"We are here, Master. If you wait here, I will fetch my sister Ooona." She pushed past two gangly seven-foot younglings who were guarding the gate to the compound. They gave him a hard look. Quinn read them instantly. A mere human male could provide some sport to liven up a boring afternoon of duty.

Quinn didn't want to hurt them, so he moved across the lane and hoisted himself up on a hitching rail beside two sleepy mules.

Three grimy preteen street urchins were coming down the lane playing a game of keep-away. Running and yelling as they tossed a home-made ball. One of them went up to reach for an errant toss and ran into him. She snatched a roll of pennies out of his pocket and the three laughed and scampered away.

That was interesting. The female had signed to him that the last street sighting of Wraith was in the old labor exchange building down by the river. He frowned, this mission had him running back and forth across the city like a taxi service.

Toolie came out of the compound accompanied by a young female who looked exactly like her and an ancient female troll. The two young guards, when they spotted the elder, immediately sprang to attention and began glaring up and down and around like a threat was imminent.

Quinn stood respectfully. "Singer and Song bless you Grandmother."

She growled a rote response, "May you be blessed as well. My granddaughter tells me that you bear the Vísdómur's mark."

"Yes, grandmother."

"Well, don't dawdle, show me."

Quinn extended his arm and showed her the tiny mark on his wrist. Trolls see far further into the infrared than humans can, Quinn knew the mark stood out like a neon sign to the troll elder.

The only sign it impressed her was a slight widening of her purple eyes.

"Humph. Why are you here mixing in our business, boy? Haven't you caused enough trouble already?"

"Because a storm is brewing, Yeree," a stern voice sang from behind him. Quinn winced. Malak the Seer makes an appearance. "YOU should know that. YOU have contributed to its making. WE are going to have a talk about your clan's overweening greed."

The elderly troll's face went ashen when she saw who spoke. She and the others dropped to their knees. The youngest of the two male's tunic darkened as he wet himself. He began to moan in terror.

The Vísdómur were the patron goddesses of troll-kind. A visit from one of the Sisters was a once in many generations event. If the clan survived the visit, they would talk about this day for ages.

Malak mind whispered to Quinn, "Take the two sisters and get you hence and find the hex witch. She must wake the dragon lest this city be overrun. Go."

Quinn wordlessly turned away to obey. He gestured to Toolie. She and the other female he presumed was her sister, Ooona, jumped up and started walking east. The further they walked from their compound, the faster their pace. Quinn figured they were grateful to get away from the judgment of the Seer. He didn't blame them.