Page 50 of Veil of Vasara (Fate of the Five #1)

CHAPTER 50- NATHON

T here was a loud commotion at my door.

I sprung up from lying flat immediately and grabbed two blades from my belt. The guards were incapacitated, and the sorcerer would never have risked appearing at my door, not when the window was already open.

Someone was trying to force it down.

Who would be so utterly reckless as to try and knock my door down in the middle of the night?

The wood was strong, but after a few beatings from the assailant, it gave way, and fell to the ground. Dust from it blew up in the air. I remained still, waiting for it to cast away and reveal…

“Your…Your Highness.” A ringed hand was gripping my door frame. It let go as the silhouette bent forwards at the waist and suddenly fell to his knees.

The Captain. The Captain was in my room, half dressed. The upper half of his chest was wet, and his hair was completely loose.

What had that sorcerer done to him?

I placed my daggers back into my belt and quickly ran over towards him.

“Captain? What are you—"

Before I finished my sentence, I sensed it.

I grabbed the Captain's shoulders and shoved him to the ground, just as I did, two blades soared over our heads. The Captain was still conscious but appeared unwell.

He propped up onto his elbows. Part of his hair was sticking to the wet skin on his collarbones. I looked at him searchingly. He met my eyes and opened his mouth to speak, but he had no time to talk.

“What is this?” the sorcerer’s voice sounded from behind me.

I turned around. She held a piece of dark paper in her hands.

So, she had retrieved it, and I had been correct, the Captain had possessed it.

I stood in front of the Captain. He tried to move himself, but I placed a hand on his right shoulder, which was also wet, and shoved him as softly as possible to the floor.

“Stay there,” I mumbled to him.

The Captain looked at me confused, and slightly disoriented. He truly did look sick, but he was still alert and conscious. He understood my instructions and my intentions.

“What did you do to him?” I asked the sorcerer. “I told you not—"

“Yes, you told me not to kill him. I didn’t. His current state has nothing to do with me.”

My fingers were still resting on the Captain’s shoulder behind me. At this, I turned around and looked down at him. Why was he here?

“What is this, Prince?” the sorcerer repeated, bitingly.

I remained looking at the Captain for a few seconds. Was he here to help… or harm me?

I turned around. “It’s information I need.”

“Information you need?” She chuckled slowly. “You mean it’s information you didn’t want anybody else to possess?”

“Most important information is the kind you don’t wish for others to possess,” I replied dryly.

The sorcerer pointed at the Captain with her other hand.

“Why don’t you ask him why he’s here?”

I was interested myself, but I replied, “Why don’t you just say what you came here to say?”

“Don’t play the fool with me Prince, not over this. If you think I’ll work with you now, you’re truly as insane as they say you are.”

“You know this woman?” the Captain mumbled from behind me.

I ignored him. I lifted my hand off of his shoulder and stood fully in front of him now. “I don’t know what you are referring to. I have no reason to lie.” I tried to speak as calmly and confidently as possible.

“You have every reason to lie. How could I have expected anything different from the Vulture himself?” she spat.

I was not in the habit of placing myself in situations where I had the least amount of information. This was one of those.

It didn’t seem as if she could be reasoned with.

“You’ve read it,” I concluded. My eyes found their way to the paper in her hands.

“Yes, and so has your friend. You should have seen his reaction.” She didn’t sound as if she revelled in it, but it was clear by her tone the Captain had reacted poorly to its contents.

“Are you here to kill me then?” I lowered my head down slightly, and my voice.

The sorcerer didn’t answer. But that was answer enough.

The Captain struggled behind me and pressed himself up against the wall. I kept my eyes on the woman.

“May I at least have the pleasure of knowing why?” I gritted my teeth as I tilted my head to the right.

She laughed coldly. “Why? Why? Because you’re evil. I’d rather take my chances and kill you, than let you live for one more second in this world. I’m thinking your friend might be here for similar reasons.”

I slowly turned around to the Captain who was now standing. He appeared sweaty and pale. I searched his body up and down.

“He doesn’t have any weapons on him,” I observed.

She winced at that, the bottom half of her face twisting in confusion.

I turned and stood back slightly, so that I was standing in between the Captain and the sorcerer, able to see them both by turning to the left and then right.

“You saw it, didn’t you?” the sorcerer was addressing the Captain. “That’s your Kingdom he’s doomed to destruction.”

I furrowed my brows deeply at that. “What?”

The sorcerer smiled. Her smile almost seemed manic, deranged. “You truly have no shame.”

I looked at the Captain, but he only looked at me warily and said nothing.

I assumed the worst.

“I have no plans to harm Kalnasa,” I told him firmly, meeting his eyes.

“And yet, it is your writing, your signature on this paper.” The sorcerer drew my attention back to her.

I looked at Noxscroll as she waved it before her. Of course I couldn’t see any text on it at all.

I tutted. “I signed no such thing.”

“Is that what you were doing there, in Vasara’s centre? Looking for more people to torture… to experiment on?” she said. Her voice was steely, but also full of abject despair.

This was becoming increasingly confusing and incriminating. The Captain gave me a quizzical look, his eyes betraying his doubt. His belief in whatever the sorcerer was implying was clearly becoming stronger at the revelation I had visited Vasara’s draining centre.

“I was there because something is being hidden from me regarding those places and I want to know exactly what,” I explained.

“From you?” the sorcerer said. Although she was employing no sorcery, there was an unmistakable air of danger all around her, a kind of destructive intent. “The orchestrator cannot also be oblivious.”

“That is because I have not orchestrated anything,” I said sharply. I wished now that I had worn my tunic, my jacket, which contained more hidden compartments and weapons. While I always kept my belt on for emergencies, I hadn’t anticipated this turn of events, at all. All I was wearing was a thin, silky white undershirt, and the black pants and boots which had in total, five daggers attached to them.

I wasn’t sure it would be enough. For me, perhaps, a very small chance, but if the Captain was attacked, he looked as if he would coil over instantly. Thinking this, I glanced at him anxiously.

“Why are you here?” I finally asked him, my voice becoming softer. The Captain looked as if he didn’t know the answer himself.

“Because you signed this. A message that references the great and disturbing lengths you and your atrocious family have gone to, to make his people suffer.”

I looked back at the Captain who remained silent.

“Captain…I did not—" I began.

“Who would be foolish enough to believe the words of someone like you?” the sorcerer interrupted.

Irked at her attempts to stop me from speaking to the Captain, I turned to her.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but you yourself had done so up until a few hours ago.”

“I never believed you, Prince. I only ever hoped I would survive long enough to outmanoeuvre you. But now… it seems that will be unnecessary.”

“You were never this rash before,” I said, taking one step forwards, to the right, towards the Captain.

“You know nothing about me, Prince.”

“But you assume to know everything about me.”

“Don’t I? Don’t I know? Wouldn’t I know best?”

The woman was growing increasingly agitated, and the meaning behind her words increasingly difficult to discern.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

The sorcerer huffed and threw the paper to the floor. “What’s it to be, Captain… are you on his side or mine?”

I took one more step towards the Captain. “I know you have no reason to. But trust me. Please.” I looked at him warily.

The sorcerer was amused. “That will be the biggest mistake he ever makes.”

“You’re the one who wished him dead.”

“That was before I read this.”

“Ahh, I see, now you wish him peace and longevity of life?”

“You have some nerve to talk about his peace, when it is you who has forced his homeland to the brink of destruction.”

“I haven’t.” I raised my voice. The two words left my lips as sharply as the daggers at my hip might cut. “There’s only so many times I can deny this.”

“It doesn’t matter how many times you do, I won’t believe you. I won’t let you hurt anymore people.”

It struck me then, that I might really die here, tonight, in this room, in the dark. What a fitting end it would have been for my dark and brutal existence. What a shame, I had told Loria once, it would be, to have endured the dark all this time, only to never escape it. To have stumbled blindly through it, only to reach a dead end, to have never found a corner that was illuminated by some fleeting light.

But this was no fitting end for the Captain, and I had not yet assured Loria’s safety.

“The Captain hasn’t hurt anyone,” I said, seriously.

“Captain?” she asked him. “What have you decided?”

The Captain didn’t say anything, he only looked at me, then back at the sorcerer, but he did not move.

“I’m sorry but I can’t in all good conscience, let you live now…nor you Captain, if you insist on remaining by his side.”

“So, you’re doing this for the greater good are you?” I snapped. “You’ll only make things much worse for yourself, you won’t realise that until it’s too late.”

“As I told you before…I’ll take my chances.”

I pulled the two daggers out of my belt, and swung in front of the Captain.

“Don’t even think about intervening, you look terrible,” I said quietly, speaking to him.

“It doesn’t look like…she’ll give me a choice,” the Captain said coarsely.

I turned over my shoulder, “Ahh, so you can talk, I was beginning to think she—"

But before I could finish teasing the Captain, the sorcerer ran towards me. I twisted my left arm and aimed for her chest with my dagger but she, like a blur, spun around and grabbed my arm, placing it behind my back. I bent forwards and threw her over me.

As she rolled to get up, I flung a dagger at her neck. She dodged, although it scratched her ear. She used speed enhancement to rush towards me again and shove me to the floor. I grabbed a dagger from my boot and jabbed it aimlessly into the air at the blur of motion she had become. She evaded it and smacked my hand away.

I managed to hold onto the dagger and rolled to the side. She kicked me in the torso, then the face.

She was air, she was the wind that came through the window.

And how could you fight the wind?

You couldn’t, but you could feel it, and you could, at times, see it.

I ran to the furnace opposite me, and grabbed a wooden log, just as a hand gripped my ankle, and swung me to the floor. I held the flame in front of me, standing up.

It blew towards the right.

I grabbed a dagger with my other hand, this time from my thigh, and jabbed to the left.

I struck her in the knee.

She yelled and fell down, but very quickly regained composure, and disappeared again.

The flame flew towards me, I ducked. A blade swung over my head. But then, as I came up, an invisible gloved hand clutched at my throat. I used the arm with the dagger to stab at her hand, but I could barely move.

This was strength enhancement, her hand was squeezing my throat with a crushing power. I gasped for air, my vision was beginning to blur. It normally took around two minutes to strangle someone to death. Here, it would be a matter of a few more seconds.

The hand suddenly let go of my throat. I dropped to the ground instantly, and let out a hoarse cough, the air entering my trachea sounded like steel scraping against wood.

The Captain was standing in front of me. He had grabbed the log of fire and shoved it into the woman’s face. She had raised her hand up just in time to take some of it to her palm. The glove on her right hand melted away.

Her skin bubbled and seared with burns. She yelled in intense pain, but within seconds, we watched as the skin on the bottom half of her face began to heal. The Captain staggered on his feet, looking weak.

Furious, the sorcerer sprung her hand forwards in the Captain’s direction, and threw him at the back wall, beside the bed. His skull hit the bricks with a thud, and he slid downwards, blood dripping out of his mouth. His eyes were surprisingly still open, but they were dimming by the second.

I stood again. This time, stumbling towards the Captain. He looked at me drowsily, his head tilted up to do so.

“I told you not to intervene,” I whispered angrily.

“You….” the Captain whispered even more quietly. “You’re…welcome.”

The Captain’s eyelids began to close, his silver lashes brushing against his upper cheeks like a small bird’s wings, fluttering in flight.

If he fell asleep, he might not wake up.

I could only think of one way to keep him awake.

This was far from ideal.

I placed my hand on his shin, where his wound was, from days ago, and squeezed down.

The Captain’s eyes shot open instantly. “Agghhh,” he flapped around on the ground like a dying fish. He looked at me irritated, and then…knowingly.

“I’m sorry Captain, I am, but you have to stay awake.”

The sorcerer was still on the floor across from us, but she was getting up, already recovering from the singeing burns on her face and neck, the burns that would have been enough to sear the skin completely off a human being’s face.

The Captain pressed his lips together and winced, clearly in pain. His eyes shot above my shoulder, and I turned around as the sorcerer approached us.

I turned to face the woman, “Look, I—"

But the sorcerer didn’t let me finish. She lifted me by the arm and flung me to the right. I rolled backwards and landed in a somewhat crouched position, standing up straight afterwards.

She ran at me with the fire log and swung it at my face. I ducked backwards, and as I came back up, grabbed onto the log and shoved it to the ground. She backhanded my face with her strength enhancement, and I fell to the side, my ears ringing, and my vision blurring again.

She came up from behind me and grabbed my hair, pulling it hard so that I faced her. “I never saw you there,” she said. “Why?”

“Saw…saw me where?” I asked, tasting blood in my mouth.

“Even now, in your last breaths, you lie,” her voice was simmering with hatred.

“Even now, in my last breaths…I am nothing more than what people…believe me to be,” I replied, laughing.

She held a blade to my neck. I grabbed the final dagger at my right hip and stabbed her in the foot.

“Aggghh,” she yelled but didn’t move. She simply lifted the foot up and used it to stand on the wrist I held the dagger in. The blood from the wound spurted onto my bare skin, but stopped, stopped within seconds.

How could I fight this? Fight wind that could…heal itself?

“I hope Noxos throws your soul into the deepest pits of suffering in Nevultus,” she told me.

“If that’s his goal, it would be more effective… if he let me live…”

“You think you have suffered? You,” she spat.

She let go of my hair. The Captain was standing behind us. He’d stabbed her in the back with one of my daggers. He looked considerably worse than he had minutes ago. She reached with one hand behind her back and pulled the blade out. She swung at the Captain, but I turned, and grabbed her legs, dragging her back before she could reach him. She fell to the floor and dropped the dagger. She kicked me in the face.

She stood and with her ungloved hand, shoved the Captain hard in the chest.

But she froze, when she came into contact with his skin, the impetus behind her movements diminished.

I watched from the floor as the Captain let out a small gasp, pitiful yet painful. He clutched his head and sank to the floor. His eyes were wide, and brighter somehow, brighter than they had been moments ago, but they were full of fear, of terror.

“What have you…” I stood, beginning to address the sorcerer, but on reaching her, and grabbing her arm, she staggered back and fell to the floor. Her facial expression looked the exact same as the Captain’s. The bottom half of it anyhow.

This was my chance.

I knelt on the floor and grabbed both of the woman’s wrists.

“I didn’t write that note. I didn’t sign it. I don’t know anything about experiments, or torture, or the draining centres at all. I had nothing to do with this. Which means that someone has implicated me in it. Remember. Remember this.” I shook her slightly and she turned to me. I didn’t know if she could fully hear or see me, but I continued.

“I could have killed you here and now, and if it is as you suspect, if I had signed that letter and committed those deeds, there would be absolutely no benefit or reason for me to let you live, but I am letting you live, because I am not responsible for these actions… and you are going to help me find out who is. You will. ” I shook her again.

She dropped back to the floor further when I let go of her wrists and looked around, but she appeared to have returned to full consciousness.

The Captain however had not.

“What did you do to him?”

She took in some shuddering breaths, then placed one hand over her mouth as if shocked. “I didn’t…I didn’t mean to—"

“You didn’t mean to what? If he dies I—"

“I don’t know…I don’t…”

She stood and quickly rushed to the bed. Before I could process what she was doing, she grabbed the enolith stone I had set there and escaped out of the window.

I rushed to the Captain’s side. He was still clutching his head. Sweat was now stuck to his forehead and his clothes. His body was clammy and cold.

“Captain. Captain, can you hear me?”

No response.

I grabbed one of his hands as gently as possible, but he quickly pushed it back against his temple.

“No…no…” he murmured to himself.

If this sorcerer had made the Captain lose his sanity, I would most certainly ensure she lost something in return. A finger, a hand, a leg, her tongue.

“Captain?” I addressed him again, although even I believed it was useless.

“Please…please…don’t…” he whispered. He was staring at the floor as if the wood was a portal into a nightmare.

Was this an illusion? I had heard some sorcerers could conjure illusions, could conduct hypnosis, similar to that Telepath who had tried to kill the King.

If it was, there would be no way of breaking it, except possibly, for one.

“Captain, I truly am sorry…once again.” My voice was still slightly hoarse from the choking.

I lifted my hand and struck him in the face, hard. He fell to the floor. His face was so pale now, that my strike had left a red print on his cheek.

I leant forwards, wrapped his left arm around my shoulder, and dragged him to my bed.

Once he was lying flat, I looked at him more carefully. I pressed the back of my hand to his forehead. It was hot. I did the same for his upper chest, which was also warm and clammy. I knelt beside the bed and slowly lifted the bottom of his pale blue trousers up, exposing his shin.

His wound was open, inflamed and healing very poorly. Someone had stitched it, but whoever had, had done a terrible job.

I sighed. My vision still hadn’t fully restored, and my ears were still ringing, but even now, I could do a far better job at stitching this wound. I walked into the washroom and grabbed a towel, dousing it in cold water.

I returned and placed it on his forehead, slowly removing the errant strands of silver hair that were stuck to his face. His hair felt as silky as the garments I wore, more so. I rubbed it in between my fingers.

I shook my head and dropped the strands. I didn’t have time to assess his hair’s texture, or a reason to either. I still had to stitch his wound and find a way to repair the door. In hindsight, it was very impressive he had managed to kick it down in this state.

And I still hadn’t figured out why he’d been so insistent on entering.

I returned to the bed and to the Captain’s leg. Kneeling down beside it, I removed the stitches. The Captain, however, was a terrible patient and kept moving and jerking around in his unconscious state. It occurred to me that the illusion had in fact never ended at all, but at least he wasn’t so fretful now.

Eventually, after much stopping and starting, I stitched his wound and dressed it. His wound was very warm and smelt dreadful. I’d make sure to ask the Captain who had seen to it when he awoke, so that I could have them dismissed. After all, any healer who worked this way would be better off never attending to any of the sick or poorly, ever again. It would be a service to humanity.

I chuckled to myself. It would probably be the first good thing I did for the human race.

I strode towards the door, and using the tools I had brought with me, repaired it within half an hour. I had learnt to do all manner of things as part of Sarlan’s training as a child, including deconstructing and constructing a number of different objects, lock picking, cipher reading, and hinge fitting. This in particular was useful for when you needed to kick down a door that had no keyhole, but wanted to repair it before leaving, to make it seem as though you were never there at all.

Afterwards, I pulled the wide dark chair to the left side of the bed, facing the window which I left open. After all, although the room was cool, the Captain was not.

Sitting here this way, I could watch and wait to see if that woman returned.

I placed the golden cushion behind me and my feet up on the very edge of the bed. I glanced at the Captain. His pallor was still poor, his clothes still stuck to his skin with sweat, and his lips, which were normally slightly peach, were now as pale as his hair.

I leant forwards and lifting the cloth, felt his forehead again. Now, it was frozen cold.

I gathered some spare blankets the servants had left in the wardrobes and placed them on top of the Captain’s body. He was shivering slightly. I walked over to the fire and rekindled it, allowing the flame to grow brighter and the room warmer. Eventually a faint orange glow from the fire cast itself across the darkened room. It struck the Captain's face softly, colouring it near gold. The sweat on it almost looked like stars.

I had done all I could.

Against all odds, the Captain and myself were still alive.

And now, I had to make sure that we remained that way.