Chapter 11

  Sword drawn, the man looked around the foyer, his head darting left and right, though his eyes saw nothing of me. I took a few quiet steps back, giving myself room to work a spell.

  Quickly, I dropped the piece of iron, moving my arms up, then down in a swift motion, draining the iron of its matter.

  “Who’s there!” the man cried, starting to panic.

  The iron disappeared and its matter stalled there in the air, waiting to be used. I unwrapped the rope tied around my waist and threw the end into the air. Swirling my arms around again, performing a very specific animating spell, I sent the matter into the rope, giving it a kind of life.

  Suddenly, the rope launched out toward the man and wrapped around him in a tight vice grip. The man began to panic?—?I heard his breathing speed up and he groaned as the rope wrapped tight around his torso.

  He dropped to his knees, then all the way to ground. The rope held him in an unnaturally firm grip, almost like steel binders, and would do so for hours hence if I let it.

  I got up close to his face, and though he couldn’t see me, he could feel my breath on his cheek.

  “I’m looking for a boy, a young mage. Where is he?” I growled.

  The man stuttered. “Who are…what is it… you want?”

  “The mage was here a week ago. Where did you take him?”

  I unsheathed my steel, bringing the blade of my knife under his chin so he could feel the cold metal on his skin.

  The man inhaled abruptly when he felt the cold metal on his neck. His hands shook, fear lit his face, and then before I could say another word, his eyes flashed wide.

  His face paled and he met my eyes directly.

  I realized that I’d just materialized above him. I was perfectly visible again. It probably seemed intentional to his eyes, as if I’d made myself visible to threaten him. Either way, I could use his shock to help me.

  “Who are you?” he whispered, tears in his eyes now.

  “The boy,” I said again. “Do you remember him?”

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  He nodded. I heard shouting outside in the yard?—?I needed to finish this up fast.

  “Where have you put him?” I shouted.

  “They took him downstairs, down…all the way…” he sputtered and tried to move. I dug my knee into his chest.

  “Down where?”

  “Below the keep…deep in…tunnels.”

  “Is Uof going to kill him?”

  The man stared at me as if I’ve asked him a stupid question.

  “No, of course not,” the man said as if that answered it.

  “He’ll keep him then?”

  “We’ll take him to The Factory,” the man replied, looking at me with a strange light in his eyes as if I should have known. “He’ll want your power too, mage.”

  I rammed the butt of my knife into the man’s head, knocking him senseless.

  As I strung my rope back around my waist, my mind hummed to life, processing a new idea. If Uof weren’t killing the mages, then he needed their power for some reason. He used them. I knew that he, and Weer before him, had killed hundreds, if not thousands of mages. But perhaps here he enslaved mages instead of killing them outright?

  But why?

  Bodyguards? Surely no true Mage would protect the man who destroyed their order. Then, why did Uof want them at all?

  I dropped a small flake of gold in the air, drained it, and rendered its matter useful. I spun the matter into an unmovable wall of air sealing the front door of the prison. Then I scanned the foyer for stairs going down. Besides the front door, now blocked, there were stairs going up, and on the opposite side was the door I entered from the banquet hall. At the far end of the hall, there was one more door. I sprinted through this last door.

  The door led to a deserted hallway beyond the foyer.

  The hallway ran the length of the east side of the keep. Doors ran along both sides of the hall, and I tried them all. I found barracks and service rooms, but I saw no more soldiers in the process. A couple of the doors were locked, perhaps weapons caches or a treasury.

  I opened the last door on my left and immediately I could tell. This was it.

  The smell beyond the door was musty and earthen. The room in front of me was small, with a few shelves and supplies, room to place a cloak or a hat, with another door on the other side of the room.

  Beyond that door, I found what I was looking for. A dark, dank stairwell led down and a damp smell hung in the air.

  I closed the door behind me and just before I ducked down into the stairwell, I heard a large boom. It sounded like the men outside were trying to knock down the front door. I wished them good luck in that endeavor, as I'd seen a wall of air last for days—though I'd never fought an entire army of Motorized.

  I took the steps down two at a time, trying to stay quiet just in case someone stood guard at the bottom. I thought about the way back, and how I would escape from this prison once I’d found Bend. I hoped there was an exit down here somewhere, so I wouldn’t have to thread my way back to the surface and fight my way out.

  Then I pondered the question I’d had in my head for the last few minutes. Why would Uof want to capture mages? How was he using them?

  If he needed their power, perhaps it had something to do with the hybrid weapons that he’d been creating in this city for decades. The soldier had mentioned something called “The Factory.”

  Was there a place in the city where Uof made the hybrid weapons and the other motorized devices that had made him rich?

  Finally, as I continued down, I thought about the boy. Bend.

  If the boy is still alive, then I’ve got a chance I thought. If not, it was all for nothing anyway.