IN HER POWER

Jade’s stomach lurched with fear. Someone rustled the rain canvas outside the tent where the maimwright had dropped her nearly a bell ago. She’d stumbled inside before the guards outside could stop her. Likely, it was where they’d wanted her to go, but she didn’t care, as long as she got away from the beast. Jade shivered. The thing was vile and reeked of decaying meat. Somehow, it hadn’t snipped off pieces of her for its meal, not yet. Were they keeping her here until the thing got hungry?

A guard wearing the armor of the Dark Citadel poked an unadorned full helm inside, startling her. Jade jumped. “Come,” he said softly, his voice a near whisper floating out from the helm, though his tone brooked no argument.

Jade followed the man’s wide shoulders through the tent flap and stayed back a couple of paces after getting a whiff of his armor. He must have had an extended stay in the field with no time to bathe. What did it matter? She was probably going to slaughter. Her legs grew weak with the thought.

Outside the tent, the sun had fallen, the moon had risen bright and now dimmed with every bell passing toward dawn. The dark-armored man took her to a small group of people clustered around a large kettle set upon a rock beside a fire. Stopping, he stepped behind her and pushed her gently forward, showing her to those who attended a meal.

A pair of silver bands tightened upon a muscular man’s biceps as he stirred a bowl. The stirring stopped, and he looked out from under a black cowl cut high on his torso that left his midriff bare.

Jade felt certain she’d seen him before. His golden eyes, hourglass in shape, reminded her of Broth’s so much it was uncanny. Though only when the warden’s mood was amicable were his eyes golden. All at once, she recalled hiding in a secret passage and overhearing a conversation between a hooded man and Darwin Darkwind months ago, Crystalyn beside her. The hooded man had planned to sap the Flow from under the Vibrant Vale with his alchemy worms.

The worms had a major weakness Jade needed to expose to someone, but who could she tell? She was a captive. What did they want with her? The situation was bad, but Crystalyn would be coming for her. Jade had to keep focused and stay alive until then.

The voice of the man with the hourglass eyes was a soft hiss, though it carried. “Where did you find her?” he asked the guard who had brought her from the tent.

“A shadow creature brought her, a winged wright. General Liam seemed to expect her and ordered her put in his tent under guard.”

His golden eyes never leaving hers, the hooded man opened them wider. “The winged wrights serve only the Dark Master, or so the belief goes. Perhaps such a conviction was cultivated by the Dark Disciples, those who fancy themselves true believers of the Great Master,” the hooded man mused.

The hourglass eyes finally moved their golden scrutiny from her as he regarded the soldier behind her.

Jade almost cried out with relief as he pulled the dark cowl lower, the golden eyes fading from sight altogether. “Captain, you are now General Karnas,” he said, his words a soft hiss. “Ensure that you, the captive, and thirty of your best veteran warriors have eaten, and then command them to prepare for a mounted journey to the Citadel. Travel at top pace, bring her without incident to my chambers, and await my return. I shall finish this campaign. Once the last great tree has fallen, expect me beyond the Dark Gate.”

“Yes, Great One,” General Karnas said, gripping her arm with a gauntleted hand.

The hooded man’s black cowl swung toward a big man standing off to one side. He wore no armor, only leather pants and a vest; the color was either black or brown, but she couldn’t be certain in the dim light. In his hands, he held a bowl. “My personal guard, one of my greatest, shall accompany you and your men. Perhaps you shall understand now her value is higher than your own. Do not fail to keep her from harm.” Though soft, the hooded man’s tone of voice held the promise of unimaginable violence.

Maintaining his grip on her arm, Karnas bowed deeply. “As the great lord commands,” he said. Straightening, he pulled Jade toward another campfire, one of many burning in the night. In the distance, the night horizon lit with a red glow as the great Valen trees burned. Jade’s stomach fluttered with an almost overwhelming sense of loss.

Striding on her right side, the big man spoke. “You can let go of her now.” His voice had a familiar tone to it, gentle but clear, vibrant like her dad’s, even with his ailing heart. Thinking of him caused her heart to race; she hoped he was still alive. Astura was too violent for an organ as weak as his was.

General Karnas removed his hand. “If she runs, you shall have the honor of retrieving her then.”

“If she runs, you can count on it. No other of your men will need to lift a foot or a weapon.”

The shadowy full helm of General Karnas swung toward her. “All the same, if she runs, all my men and I personally will chase her down.”

The big man didn’t respond. Instead, he held a bowl out to her. “Here, you should eat while you can, keep your strength high.”

“Thank you,” Jade said quickly, taking the bowl. Another pang of worry for her dad welled up in the pit of her stomach. Her father would say something similar, a gentle reprimand. She tried to keep the half-full bowl steady as they walked. There was no spoon; she’d have to drink from it.

Passing by the tent General Karnas had gathered her from, they stopped at a line of saddled horses tied to a guide rope. General Karnas bellowed names to an attendant to fetch ‘his men’ for him. The attendant trotted away, presumably to get them.

Raising the bowl to her lips, Jade took a tentative sip trying not to spill. An unfamiliar broth and something soft slid down her gullet, but she didn’t care what it was; she was famished. Jade drank the rest and handed the empty bowl back to the personal guard of the hooded man. He handed it to an attendant who rinsed it from a flask he carried and then stored it in saddlebags. Untying the black horse, he handed the reins to the big man and another to General Karnas.

Mounting up, the big man stretched an arm to her. “She rides with me,” he declared as she took his hand.

“You will slow us down, she gets her own horse. You can have the reins,” General Karnas said.

As the big man let go of her hand, his arm slowly receded. “Agreed,” he finally said.

Jade lowered her hand, looking around. She was suddenly unescorted. Did she dare run?

“Someone put the girl on a horse! Gently, treat her better than your own daughter or I will impale you upon my sword!” General Karnas bellowed.

Strong arms lifted her onto a tall horse. A dark land of shadows in the moonlight, the ground seemed so far away. The horse jolted forward. Jade clutched the saddle’s pommel as it moved behind an even taller horse the big man rode. A dark form handed him the reins.

All at once, there was a flurry of activity as men climbed upon skittish horses and General Karnas rode back and forth calling out to each man. Jade began to wonder if she’d have been better off with the maimwright and then shuddered at the thought.

After much shifting and moving about, they finally moved out, thumping the meadow with hooves two horses wide and a long string behind. General Karnas rode in the forefront next to a horse and rider she didn’t know.

“Hold!” General Karnas suddenly yelled, raising a shadowy arm. The dark form of a man stood in his path.

The hooded man folded his thick arms at his stomach. “General Karnas, a word with you.”

“Blast! I nearly rode you down, My Lord!”

The hooded man did not respond. Instead, the dark hood swung toward the man escorting her on his big warhorse. “You are my greatest experiment. Continue to prove your value. Protect the anomaly, get her to the Dark Citadel, and you shall have many such missions from me. No longer shall you be limited to traveling with only me,” he said. He strode back the way they’d arrived.

“Blast it!” General Karnas swore again, pulling his horse around. “Keep them moving, Captain Bozlun, I will catch you.” He rode after the shadowy form of the hooded man.

Jade was surprised. How could a man be an experiment? She couldn’t wait for daylight and a chance to study the man.

They rode in silence, the thud of nearly thirty horses behind her thunderous in her ears. At meadow’s end, the experimental man slowed, handed her the reins, and then dropped behind her. Soon after, they climbed a moist trail single file that wound through evergreen trees switching back and forth close to the roar of falling water.

The land around her grew slowly brighter as they topped out at a pine and aspen meadow. There, General Karnas rode past her to the front. Slowing beside Captain Bozlun, the general gestured to the trail ahead. “Keep going, I want to get through Broken Gap before we rest the horses.”

“As the general commands,” Captain Bozlun replied with a nod.

General Karnas nodded slightly at the man, a small smile on his lips.

With a start, Jade realized she could see the two leaders’ interactions as they both turned to face the trail ahead. They’d ridden all night. Looking first behind her, she found only the grim and grizzled faces of two black-haired soldiers; she quickly turned back in her saddle.

Glancing to the side, she discovered the experimental man riding alongside her. Thin brown hair and blue eyes reminded her of her dad, but there the resemblance ended. Where her father was overweight and weakened from congestive heart failure, this man’s muscles bulged with strength and vibrancy. He rode easily upon the tall warhorse. The worn hilts of two swords peeked over his shoulders rocking forward and back, riding easily, as he did in the saddle.

Though she’d never tried it riding before, Jade slowed the cyclone spinning around him. Focusing intently on the stormy gray cloud, she forced his rotation slower. The three images inside rotated leisurely around him. A great silver sword encrusted at the hilt and pommel with prismatic diamonds, a disembodied brain, and an empty vial stoppered with a black cowl rotated around him… past her father. One of her dad’s images had changed but there was no doubt now.

The rotation tugged hard at her mind. Jade let it go. Released, it twisted back into the gray cyclone spinning around him.

Shocked, she gaped at her dad as he turned toward her. Glancing forward and backward casually, he tightened his grip on her reins and coaxed his warhorse ahead, closing the distance between them and the general, only to slow abruptly before getting too close. “So you know,” he said, looking to both sides of her but not at her.

His words sent joy racing through her, but he wished to keep it secret, as he should. The general would separate them the moment he found out. “How is it possible, Dad?” Her excitement grew when she called him that.

“Try not to smile, Jade. Remember we don’t know each other, and you’re my captive until I can get you safely out of here.”

Jade curtailed her excitement with difficulty while watching the two riders ahead. At differing intervals, first one, then the other, shot a glance behind them keeping a watch on the two of them. She kept her voice down. “I’m trying, Dad. But you’re so healthy and so… young.”

“The hooded man’s power as an alchemist is great. His potions have enhanced my physique. Let’s save that for when we escape. Until then, these men cannot find out about us. Now that I’ve finally found you, I don’t intend to let anything separate the family any longer, Astura is too dangerous. Where is Crystalyn?”

For all her excitement, Jade grew worried. “I don’t know. We were escaping a fire from the southern outpost built upon a great falun tree when the maimwright grabbed me.”

Her father shifted in his saddle, seeming to keep a lookout into the trees ahead and behind them, before settling on the trail. “That must be the group Kara Laurel went after.”

“Who’s Kara Laurel?”

Her dad glanced surreptitiously behind him. “Never mind for now, it just means we have less time to get away than I thought. We leave tonight, prepare for it.”

“Dad, Crystalyn has changed here. She and I have found—” Jade clamped her mouth closed when General Karnas suddenly turned in his saddle, gazing first at her and then at her father. Signaling the men behind them to close the gap, he watched until satisfied with their compliance to his command. Jade could hear the dull thump of added hooves not far away.

Jade forcibly kept her eyes ahead, a frown of terror fixed upon her face, she hoped. Captivity had just gotten better and more frustrating at the same time. Her father—her too young father—was planning to help her escape, but she couldn’t ask him anything. Blurting out questions would put them both at risk. Something she’d do everything in her power to avoid now that they’d found each other.