Chapter 7: Hiding
Kel didn't go back to sleep that night, nobody did. The room was big enough to house them all. They had needed a few pallets and one person would always have to sleep on the couch. Really it was two room combined. The door leading from the hall to he second room was nailed shut. They had taken two beds from another room to use and the only real problem was having only two bathrooms to share between 12 people. The King was not staying with them but Prince Roald had decided too. There were books, a chessboard and one window. All the rooms were lit by lamps.
Kel couldn't stop thinking about poor Peachblossom and Jump. She hoped her family was ok. Kel was staring out the window. She watched by the light of the moon as snow fell gently. She hardly noticed when someone came up to her.
"I'm sorry," Dom said.
"It's not your fault," Kel said, blinking back tears.
They just stood together a moment. Kel heard Merric and Seaver were playing chess, Tobe watching them. Lalasa was sewing. Others were flipping pages of books. "Aren't they worried?" Kel thought. "Don't they know they could die any day now?"
Kel would have liked to go into another room and cry but she was afraid that if she left she would never see her friends again. She read for a while, then she played chess against Dom but no matter how hard she tried she couldn't get her mind off her troubles.
At one point she went up to Lord Raoul and asked, "Have you noticed Lady Alanna's eyes?"
"Yes, she said they were a side effect of a spell she used to disguise herself to save someone and it hasn't worn off yet," he replied.
A while later Tobe came to stand by her. "So I wasn't dreaming. It was all true?" he said quietly.
"I should have believed you," Kel said, trying not to cry. "I could have saved them."
"It's not your fault Lady," Tobe said.
It was still dark and everyone was tired. They agreed that two people would guard while the others slept.
"I'll go on the first watch," Lady Alanna volunteered.
"Me too," Dom offered.
They kept the door connecting the two rooms open. Yuki and Neal slept in the same bed in one room along with Prince Roald in the other. Lord Raoul slept in the third bed and Kel slept in the fourth. Tobe, Owen, and Merric and Seaver slept on pallets. Lalasa slept on the couch.
Kel tossed and turned in her sleep. She was back in the world with nothing.
"Did you like your surprise?" the cloaked figure asked. It was sitting in Queen Thayet's dinning chair.
"What have you done with them?" Kel shouted walking up to the smoke woman.
"Haven't you guessed?" it asked.
"If you harm anymore of my friends I will kill you!" Kel threatened. She was a foot away from her enemy. Kel looked around and saw a candlestick on the table in front of her. She took it and swung hard. It went fight through the women.
"I knew you would do that," the woman said. With a snap of her fingers the candlestick was gone. "That's why I put it there." Kel glared at the smoke woman. She couldn't even see her enemy's face.
"If your hungry I can give you something to eat," the smoke woman hissed. She snapped her fingers again and the table in front of Kel steamed with food. A goblet appeared in her enemy's hand, and a whine bottle floated over to fill it. "Try the cook's special," it said. Then suddenly what looked like a roasted horse's head appeared on a platter in front of Kel. Kel backed away, feeling sick.
"You evil disgusting, vile snake!" Kel hissed.
"I'm a snake now?" the figure said. Suddenly it changed its form to look like a giant snake. Kel scooted back further. It charged at her and opened its mouth wide as if it were going to swallow her. It didn't. Instead it went right through her and turned into a woman again. Then she snapped her fingers once more.
"Kel!" Lord Raoul hissed in her ear. Kel quickly sat up.
"What now?" she asked quickly.
"It's Tobe. Also Owen won't wake up." Kel followed Lord Raoul to where Owen slept. Neal was bent over his body.
"He's not dead," he said quickly, seeing the worry on Kel's face. "I don't think he was just hit on the head though. There's not bump or bruise or anything."
"How did it happen!" she demanded.
"I'm so sorry Kel," Dom said. "I was in one room and Lady Alanna was in another." Kel turned to Lady Alanna.
"I turned my back for one moment!" she said bitterly. "I was watching the door and when I turned back they was gone. They just vanished! Someone is getting around our protective spells and using magic!"
"They tried to grab me too!" Lalasa cried. "It was too dark to see who they were but they went for me." Kel put a hand on Lalasa's shoulder.
"I used some of the defense techniques you taught me to make one let go. He pushed me down and they jumped out the window," Lalasa explained. Kel saw the bruises on Lalasa's arm.
The room was silent for a minute. Then Yuki looked at Neal worriedly and put a hand on his shoulder. No one spoke. Kel gazed out the window. It seemed the snow below was untouched. "When Owen comes around, he'll tell us more about what happened," Dom said, putting a hand on her shoulder.
Razziel's P.O.V
Razziel awoke in the middle of the night. She heard a sound. She wasn't sure what it was. She got out of her bed and looked out her window. The night was peaceful until she heard another sound. She looked down and to her horror saw 2 men climbing down the wall. They were using some kind of weird glowing rope. She gasped when she saw that one of them was carrying something that looked a lot like a person on his back. She watched them as they landed in the snow. They quickly ran off towards on of the walls surrounding the palace. One of them kept throwing white light back at their footprints.
Razziel had to do something. She had to follow them or call a guard. If she went after them nobody would know what the two men were up to but if she didn't follow them they'd get away. She opened the door and looked out into the hall but no guard was nearby. She would have to follow the crooks. She ran back to the window. The two men were using the glowing rope to climb over the wall.
She quietly opened her window and began to climb down. It was a bit frightening going down but she wasn't the kind to let that stop her. As she lowered herself closer to the ground she wondered why the guards hadn't spotted the crooks. She jumped down the last 5 feet and landed with a thump. The two crooks didn't seem to notice, they were almost to the top of the wall. Razziel looked around and saw the guards. They were walking back and forth in the same pattern and they didn't seem to notice anything. When she looked closer she saw that their eyes seemed lifeless.
The crooks had jumped to the other side of the wall and taken the sticky rope with them. Razziel had no idea what to do next but when she touched the wall she realized it was still sticky. She had a crazy thought that would never work but she had to try. She clung to the stone wall like a spider and began to climb higher and higher, every moment getting farther and farther away from the ground.
"I can do it! I can do it!" Razziel said in her head. Then suddenly she was at the top. "I did it," she whispered aloud. Then she smiled to herself. She would never have done that if she hadn't run away. Then she looked below. She could see two horses ridding farther and farther away. "First test is complete," she said aloud. "Now for the second." Razziel climbed part way down the wall and jumped the last couple of feet. Quickly she started to run. She had to find a horse! She ran until she came into the market. She looked around and spotted one tied to a stick. Begging the gods that whoever owned the horse wouldn't be too angry. She quickly untied it and jumped on it's back.
Razziel hadn't been on a horse in a long time and was surprised that her body fell into the correct positions. Which way were the men riding? She rode in what she thought was the right direction until she came to the edge of the market.
"Excuse me miss?" a man in uniform asked her. "Where do you think you're going this time of night?"
"Have you seen three people leave the city? They only had two horses," Razziel explained.
"Why yes miss, two men who we saw come 'ere about a month ago were riding off with another lad," the man replied.
"How long ago she asked anxiously."
" 'bout 20 minutes or so," the patroller answered. "What's all this about?"
"It's a long story," Razziel explained. "Did they say if they were coming back?" she asked.
"They told me they were moving goods from one place to another or something."
"Thank you," Razziel said as she galloped after the thieves.
Tobe's P.O.V
Clip, clop, clip, clop, clip, clop… Tobe listened to the rhythm or the horse's hooves. It was somewhat comforting. His fists clenched around horse fur. He knew he was riding, that much was clear enough. The strange thing was he felt sick to his stomach and as weak as a kitten at the same time. He kept drifting in and out of consciousness. It was as if someone had hit him on the head and he was just waking up but the only difference was that the feeling didn't last a few minutes. It lasted the whole ride.
He could hear little snippets of conversation. "…pick up me nephew…" "…Ha, ha, haa, ha…" "…did you give him? He should have wo…" "…any minute now. She said she's got another way to get the rest of them…"
"This is weird," Tobe thought to himself. Who was on the horse with him? The voices he heard sounded oddly familiar. He tried to think back to what had happened. Everyone had needed to go into hiding, and then they all went to sleep, and…and then…he couldn't remember. "Think harder!" he told himself. He had gone to sleep then he'd woken up for a second but had fallen back asleep. There'd been some weird smelling stuff that reminded him of flowers.
Through his drifting in between consciousness and sleep he kept getting confused. One moment her was riding, then he was being carried some place, then he was laying on something soft but firm. "I'm still in bed. I never even woke up. This has all just been a dream," he told himself. Although, it didn't feel like he'd been dreaming. In dreams you didn't have your eyes closed the entire time and in dreams you didn't feel tired. "This is not good," he thought.
Razziel's P.O.V
Razziel had searched high and low for signs of the mysterious men but they seemed to have disappeared. She was far away from the palace by now, and it seemed that she would have to turn back. Then up ahead she saw a fire and wondered if it might be the two men. She crept closer but as she neared the light she discovered in was and old man and two boys at about the age of 15 and a small house. Neither of them looked fat or disgusting like the thieves she had seen. They had three horses and looked harmless to her.
One of the boys looked up and saw her. He nudged the other boy with his elbow.
"Excuse me," Razz started. "Have you seen two men traveling tonight?" she asked. "One fat, another tall?"
"No miss, nobody's come by," one of them answered. "You sure?" she asked, her heart sinking.
"We've been out here all night, you see. We've been watching for the last hour or so and nobody's come by," the other boy said.
"Thank you," she said sadly and started back for the palace.
Kel's P.O.V
"Owen?" Merric was trying to wake Owen up again.
"It's magic, powerful magic," Neal told him. "I could probably wake him up if I wanted to kill myself. I wish the girl-Razz- was here. She's got some extra magic in her."
"Why can't Lady Alanna do it?" Seaver asked.
"My magic is still drained of the spell I was working on earlier," Lady Alanna said. Kel was still gazing out the window.
"Why don't you get some rest Kel," Dom said, putting a hand on her shoulder. Kel shook her head and looked down.
All the time she had been gazing out the window she had never noticed the glowing coming from the wall.
"Look," Kel said, opening the window. Dom stuck his head out.
"What?" he asked.
"The wall, there's something on the wall," Kel said as she stuck her finger out to inspect it. "It's sticky," she said.
"What's sticky?" Lord Raoul asked behind them.
"We found something," Dom called in. Queen Thayt appeared next.
"What is it?" she asked. Seaver pushed himself forward.
"Looks like the remains of a spidarian's rope," he commented.
"That would explain how our two thieves got up here," Dom said.
The group pushed and shoved to get better looks at the glowing green slime.
"Get back! We can't all fit at the same time," Lord Raoul said. Then everyone pulled back. Neal came over and got a sample of the slime.
"It is from a spidarian's web," he announced.
"That doesn't help us much," Lady Alanna said.
"Could the thieves be spidarians?" Seaver asked.
"No, Tobe said he saw people," Kel argued.
"Perhaps they bought this rope, or are friends to the spidarians," Queen Thayt put in.
There was a lot more arguing until everyone just stopped talking. They ate breakfast in silence. It consisted of bread, cheese, and fruit. Kel put herself to work by reading about magic from the books that they had, hoping to learn of some sort of spell that could help them. She hadn't found anything helpful so far. She had learned many things about the different kinds of magic and had just finished the section about the different kinds of spells. It was when she began the section about magical item that something caught her eye.
There
are many types of magical artifacts that we have discovered
throughout the world. Most of them all have one thing in common, they
can get past any magical defense system. The most common magical
items such as good luck charms could not do this of course. Items
such as the Crystal Shield, which was known to give whoever wore a
sort of force field which nothing cold penetrate, could get past any
magical defense.
An item like the Orb of the Gods, which was said
to be a legendary sphere that gave anyone who possessed it ultimate
power to controlling, creating, and taking life could do the same.
Both these items were said to be made by the gods, as gifts for mages
who could handle the responsibility.
Kel read about many other magical items and thought, "Saria must own some kind of magical object."
Razziel's P.O.V
Just as Razziel laid her head on her pillow someone knocked on the door. With a groan she got up and opened the door to find Salma.
"What are you doing? It's time to get to work," Salma said. Razziel moaned. "Where's that noble that you serve?" Salma asked, peeking in.
"I have no clue, the last time I saw him was yesterday morning," Razziel answered truthfully.
"Well lets find out where he is, if he's gone somewhere you should have gone with him," Salma said.
"Perfect," she thought.
After lots of asking and searching they discovered from a servant that Owen was staying in a room at the tallest tower of the palace. It took a lot of climbing but they reached the room. They encountered a set of guards on their way up, who wouldn't let them pass unless they had an official pass from the king.
There was a lot more walking and then a lot of waiting. Salma left Razziel waiting. She waited about an hour to see the king. She was very nervous. She was going to see the king! After some explaining he stamped the royal seal on a piece of paper.
"It should let you get passed them," he said.
"What are they guarding?" she asked curiously, not making eye contact.
"You'll find out when you get there," he said. "Once you go in you will not be able to leave till we think it is safe," he added.
There was a lot more walking, which tired her out because of her lack of sleep, until she came back to the guards. She went through four pairs of guards before she reached the actual room. "It is protected by magic," one guard said. "You must put your hand on it and state who you are, and why you are here before it will let you in." Razziel followed the man's instructions and the door began to glow the color of her magic. Then it opened slightly and she slipped in.
Kel's P.O.V
Everyone looked up to the sound of the door opening. Kel's mind raced for a moment, picturing the cloaked figure from her dreams but sighed when she saw it was Razz. The girl didn't look to good and had circles under her eyes that looked to be from lack of sleep.
"What are you doing here?" Merric asked.
"I have no clue," she admitted. "They told me I had to be here because he was here," she said, pointing at the sleeping Owen.
"Aren't you a sight," Neal exclaimed. "I need your magic again."
"Again?" she asked woefully.
"Yes, I need to wake him up," Neal said, also pointing to Owen.
"Sure," she said with a sigh.
XXXXXXXXXXX (A moment of thought from Razziel…)
Razziel walked over to Owen and Neal. She didn't like being watched by everyone else in the room. Neal held out his hand and she took it. Once again she found her ball of magic. This time she timidly touched it and asked it to come to her. Now a warm feeling washed over her body as the magic slowly came out and up into Neal's body. After a while he said
"That's enough," and she sent her magic back down.
XXXXXXX
Razz was a beautiful sight to be seen. He body glowed an aqua blue color. Finally Neal broke free of her hand and began his work on Owen. It didn't look hard to Kel but she figured that if the person who put the spell on Owen used at lot of magic it would take just as much magic to take the spell off. The radiant light that came off of Neal reminded her of when he had brought Tobe's fever down to save him. Neal was a powerful mage.
The light died and everyone waited. Then a groan came from Owen's bed.
"He's awake!" Yuki cried.
"What hit me?" Owen asked, sitting up and looking around.
"A spell," Merric said.
"What happened last night?" Dom asked.
"Where's Lady Alanna?" Owen asked looking around in panic. Everyone turned to look at Alanna. He gray blue eyes were like stone.
"It was her!" Owen cried. "She let them two men in! I saw her. I saw them go for Lalasa! Then I saw them carry Tobe off!" he cried.