Disclaimer ! Does anybody read this thinking I'm Trudi Canavan and own her work ? They're wrong. I own nothing.
Warning ! This chapter deserves its rating T. And it's not because they have too much fun.
14- The Danger You Don't See
Every day after that had followed the same pattern : Sonea would wake up early, and break her fast with the High Lord. The two of them tried to keep their behaviour more formal or at least, no more than friendly, and succeeded most of the time in keeping their desire for each other under control.
Then, she would go to her classes, where Regin had finally put a stop to the sabotage of her work. Instead, he would usually mock her and try to destroy her self-confidence by telling her how she was going lose her challenge. She would send him packing with a witty reply, and it would end up at least once a day by an argument made of various attempts to impress each other. Sonea had had a difficult time admitting it to herself, but she was rather enjoying the present situation – at least, compared to the previous one, when Regin's "pranks" often tested the limits of her self-control. And somehow, she had the feeling that he was enjoying their sparring too. The present situation allowed him to humiliate the High Lord's Novice without risking any punishment – not that he cared very much before, anyway.
At the midday break, Sonea would have lunch with Rothen, where she could relax, laugh, get help with some of her homework, and basically pretend to herself that she was a normal Novice, which she appreciated very much, for she had having never experienced it before.
During the afternnon she would go back to her classes and Regin. One notable difference happened in the Warrior class : Lord Balkan seemed to fear that Regin and Sonea would want to bring the day of the challenge forward and set the new date during his class. As a result, he decided to drop his system of pairing according to strength, which always paired them together, and they both found themselves training with far less skilled Novices.
The time between the end of her classday and the dinner at the residence would be spent in extra-Warrior classes. The High Lord had requested that Lord Yikmo to train her, as he was known for taking on students with difficulties and for his peculiar method of teaching, which the High Lord had judged suitable for his favourite.
These extra classes were exhausting. She would attack Lord Yikmo, trying to pass through his defence, and he would analyse the way she did it, tell her how to imrove it, and make her attack him again and again, until he found it satisfying and thought that it would do against Regin. Then he would attack her, and she would have to defend herself. He would explain her the best way to do it, and he would attack her again and again, until she successfully blocked him. He expected her to find a new way to attack him every day, and every day he came with another way to attack her. His choices were mainly based on what Regin was practising. That was one of the advantages for Sonea's training in the Dome, while Regin was in the Arena with Lord Balkan : no one could watch her training and report to Regin. Whereas Sonea had no such problem, and her "spies", usually Rothen, Osen or Lorlen, who had thrown his Administrator's supposed neutrality out of the window, were doing a really good job, since the walls of the Arena was made of pure magic and thus, transparent.
The High Lord would join them one day out of three. That, obviously enough, gave Regin something to talk about.
"Remember that you're the one I'm supposed to fight, dear Sonea, not your guardian." He told her the day after Akkarin had come to her training for the first time.
"I do remember, but, really, I don't see why you should care, the result would be exactly the same anyway."
"Thank you Sonea, but no, sincerely, I don't think I could defeat the High Lord of the Guild – yet. His favourite, however, is a different matter." All of his friends burst into laughter at that. She already had her reply in the mouth, but had to bite it back when their teacher walked in the room at that moment.
They would proceed differently when the High Lord visited his training sessions. His actually consisted of simulated duels. They would fight on five sets, and she would try to apply everything she had seen with Lord Yikmo previously. Of course, she never won against him, but then, no one was expecting her to, and they would have been greatly surprised if she did. Nevertheless, each time one of her strikes would reach him, she would take it as a personal victory and a recompense for her efforts.
All the training invariably made her dead hungry, and Takan was more than eager to cook for her and experiment with new recipes, each one tasting better than the others. Sonea knew it was his own way to support her, and she was grateful for this. There were few conversations during those dinners she shared with her guardian, and when there were, they were only small talk or school-related ones. After dinner, Sonea would give Akkarin some of her power – she had to insist, along with Takan, that a band of Ichani was much more serious a threat than Regin, before he accepted to keep on taking her power every evening. Then she would go back to her room, do her homework or read some books, before falling asleep. Sometimes, Sonea thought that this was the best part of this challenge : she couldn't remember a time when she had slept better than during the last week-end and a half.
And now, three days from the Challenge, she woke up in a place the darknessprevented her recognizing. Instictively, she tried to create a globe of light, and realized two things at this moment. First, she had absolutely no power left, and second, she was tied up to the wall, her hands a tad above her head and gagged with what should have been the slash of a magician's robe. She couldn't remotely remember why or how it had happened. She was half slouched against the wall, and analysing the soreness in her arms and legs, she concluded that she could not have been here for a very long time, maybe a quarter of an hour. She attempted to straighten herself, but felt a sudden rush of pain in her head. She let out a small cry. At once, the room was brightened by a small globe, which allowed Sonea to see that she was in one of the secret corridors of the University. She was also able to make out the silhouettes of two people watching her – two boys, from their statures, and Novices, from their robes.
Seeing their faces brought back memories – bad memories. Memories of these same two boys breaking into her room, soon after she had fallen asleep. They entered by the window, open as often when the night was so clear, and stunned her before she could react in any other way than creating a close shield, which did not last longer than a few minutes. Her Warrior training had exhausted her and she had insisted on giving Akkarin power tonight as well. They had kept striking for a few minutes, after she had run out of power and her shield vanished. The last thing she could remember before waking up wasthe feeling of something hard and heavy against her head.
As things were making more and more sense to Sonea, she felt her anger rise, as well as the frustration at finding herself in such a situation. Ropes would not usually have bothered her, she would have got rid of them in the twinkling of an eye, but without power, she was just a slum girl again – or even less than that, for a slum girl would definitelyhave had a knife on her and would already have maimed one or both of the boys. Living in the Guild, with so much magic available inside her, had dulled her, had made her weak toward any non-magical attack, she thought. The realization came too late to be of any help this time, but she promised herself she'd find a good knife and start training with it again, once she was out of this mess.
But first, she needed to find a way out of this mess.
All this thinking and remembering took place in the back of her mind,leaving her able to take in her abductors and listening to their conversation, and she did not like what she saw and heard.
She recognized them now. They had been in her first class, before she moved into a more advanced one. Some of Regin's followers. "Of course" she thought bitterly. "Who could be reckless enough to actually kidnap the High Lord's favourite?" It answered a few question in itself, such as the "Who" - quite obvious, now – and the "Why" - easily indentifiableas "stopping her from attending the Challenge", or at least "making her unable to win it".
They were arguing, keeping their voices low, so that she could not make out everything that was being said, but she finally figured out that they were discussing what to do with her and who was to bring Regin.
"You should go. You were the one who had the idea."
"Precisely, I should stay with her." The one who was speaking stopped and looked expectantly at her. "Actually, I was thinking that, maybe, we could... wait a little bit before fetching him..." The first boy looked at him, the lack of understanding clearly visible on his face. The other one cleared his throat. "I mean, with everything he said, I guess he'll want to take her at once. And we're the ones who did the job, after all, so I say we should at least enjoy it a bit."
That sounded bad for Sonea.
"Are you crazy ? What if the High Lord learns of it ? I'd rather keep my head where it is !"
"Why would she tell him ? She's from the Slums, they're all whores there after all. I'm sure she actually likes it. Know what ? I'm even going to pay her for that, if she's worth it."
That sounded very bad for Sonea.
"I still think it's a bad idea..."
"Have you heard Regin ? He's said the High Lord's already done it, he can't blame us for something he does every night, now, can he ?"
"Listen, do what you want. I'm going to bring him, so you've got 'til we're back. I wouldn't want to touch her anyway." He turned on his heels and left the room.
That sounded very, very, very bad for Sonea.
The remaining boy – Kano, that was his name, she suddenly remembered – looked at her with a creepy grin, his eyes dark with lust.
Sonea did her best to stay calm and ignore the knot forming in her stomach. "So, he's going to rape you. What would you do if you were in the Slums ?" The answer was simple enough : stab him. "What would you do if you didn't have a knife ?" Hit him in the balls. "What would you do if you were tied up?" Scream for help. "And what would you do if you were gagged as well ?" The answer came again, as quickly, but far more frightening, than the first one. "Then you can do nothing" Nothing. That wasn't possible. There had to be something to do. She just couldn't figure what. Inside her, the knot in her stomach turned into a nearly physical pain. Having lived most of her life with this feeling constantly in her, she gave it its rightful name : fright. She was terrified by her powerlessness.
The boy – "no, man ; someone ready to rape a helpless girl can't be called "a boy"" - the man made one step towards her, reveling in the panick which he saw flickering in her eyes, and which she could not hide, no matter how hard she tried to. He laughed. He laughed, and she wanted to hurt him, like she's never wanted to hurt anyone. And she couldn't do it.
Kano took another step.
"Well, well, alone at last... what could we do, say ?"
Another step.
Sonea tried to move back, but she was already against the wall and couldn't move farther away, while he kept on advancing, slowly but surely. He stopped when he was standing a few inches from her, so close that she could feel his disgustingly hot breath against her skin. His presence was oppressing her, her back pressing so hard against the wall that she could feel every single stone on her skin. He stretched both of his hands, cupping her cheeks. He slided them lower, caressing her shoulders, coming to settle on her breasts, ignoring her struggling. She let angry, desperate tears flow freely from her eyes as his lips found her throat, bringing her on the verge of throwing up. She could tell he was enjoying this. His hands were busy fumbling with her robes. He had revealed one of her breasts and was squeezing it, moaning against her throat. She squirmed and struggled some more, and even made a poor attempt at walking on his feet, desesperate for him to suffer at least a bit. He only pressed himself against her harder and he spoke, in a low voice vibrating with wanting.
"C'mon, show me how you made the High Lord so taken in you... You should be a damn good shag, if you satisfied him !" If he wanted to upset her, it was the right thing to say. At the mention of Akkarin, she broke down and would have collapsed, if her wrists weren't tied to the wall above her head.
And he was enjoying himself. He was opening his mouth to speak further, but was stooped in his activity when a hand landed on his shoulder and spun him around, to have a fist crashing into his face, breaking his nose and sending him a few meters away. Before she could understand what had just happened, Regin – Regin ! - was cutting the ropes tying her up, and she collapsed in his arms. He fastened her robes back, took her gag away, and she bent away to vomit her last meal and her terror. He hold her hair away from her face, and tried to sooth her, speaking in a softer voice she hadn't ever heard from him, under the gaze of the two other boys, stunned by the unexpected turn their situation were taking.
"I'm sorry, Sonea, I'm sorry... You'll be okay, everything'll be okay..." He was cut in his attempt to reassure her by a voice, far lower than his own, coming from the entrance of the room.
"What. Has. Happened. Here ?" The four Novices turned to see a tall, dark figure, his face twisted with rage and astonishment and his eyes fixed on Sonea.
Hehe... only one month has passed since my last update... yeah, yeah, I know, it's still too long, but it's getteing better, right ? And also totally different from what I expected... Seriously, this story just won't be directed. Each time I try to bring it in one direction, it decides otherwise, and I have to change everything I've planned...
Once again, Thank to the best beta-reader and ever, that is HeadlessHedwig. May the FFF reign over the worlds.
I'd like to know what you think about it, so review... Please ?