“Very good,” Zuhl said as he took Abigail and secured her over his saddle in front of him. He whispered a few words and she felt suddenly warmer, though she was still unable to move. Zuhl pulled a fur blanket over her and launched into the sky, followed by the remaining nine dragon-men.
The last thing Abigail saw before she lost consciousness was Mage Dax launching a bolt of lightning at the trailing dragon-man. It hit the creature, lighting it up with crackling power, then arced through the night to another and another and another and another after that, burning a hole through the chest of each as it leapt from one to the next, each falling from the sky in turn.
Chapter 9
She woke in a round room with a single barred window and a trapdoor in the floor. She was lying on a pallet with several furs covering her. The air was cold … she could see her breath in the dim light streaming through the window. Aside from the pallet and furs, the room was completely empty. She checked her boots and found her knives were gone.
She was defenseless.
Still wearing the clothes she’d been dressed in during the meeting with her advisors, she stood and wrapped a fur blanket around her to ward off the chill air. From the tiny window, she could see the ocean below, bleak and foreboding, low clouds blanketing the world to the horizon. Light snow was sporadically whipped into a frenzy by sudden gusts of frigid air.
She went to the trapdoor and tried to open it but it held fast, as she knew it would. She knocked on the door, but got no response, so she sat back down and tried to think of a way out of her predicament.
An hour later, she heard the sound of boots on stone from below, followed by the scraping of metal on metal, and then the trapdoor opened. One of Zuhl’s brutes eyed her with a menacing grin and grunted while motioning for her to follow him.
With a sigh of resignation, Abigail wrapped a fur around her and followed the big man down the corkscrew staircase to the level below. There were four guards in the chamber. Each stared at her in open challenge-she ignored them.
The brute led her through the halls of a keep until he came to a large set of double doors, which opened to a sparsely furnished and somewhat cold room, though warmer than the little tower room where she’d awoken. Zuhl sat at a table with an assortment of foods arrayed before him, all served on fine porcelain dishes.
“Good morning, Lady Abigail,” he said, dismissing the soldier with a gesture. “I trust you slept well.”
She scanned the room, looking for a weapon or an opportunity to escape, anything she could use against Zuhl, but found nothing. She decided to be bold. The temperature of the room didn’t warrant the fur blanket, so she shrugged it off, letting it fall to the floor without a second look. Then she walked to the table and sat down.
“Well enough, considering,” she said as she took an empty plate from a stack and started piling food on it.
He almost smiled, but not quite.
“I have a number of questions for you,” he said. “Most are simply matters of curiosity, a few are of strategic importance. You will answer them all, one way or another.”
Abigail shrugged as she took a big bite of biscuit dripping with blackberry jam. “Maybe,” she said around a mouthful.
He stopped and looked at her, not a simple glance, but really looked at her as if seeing into the essence of her being. Abigail was reminded of Alexander and the way he could look into a person and assess their true nature.
“What were you thinking when you jumped from your wyvern and attacked me in midflight?” Zuhl asked, his penetrating gaze searching her face intently as he awaited her answer.
“I was thinking it was the only way to kill you,” Abigail answered, preparing another biscuit.
“The odds of success were so slim as to be improbable,” Zuhl said. “Failure was almost certain death, yet you didn’t hesitate. Why?”
“I told you, it was the only way,” Abigail said.
“I don’t understand,” Zuhl said, shaking his head slightly, a deep frown creasing his pale brow.
“What choice did I have?” Abigail said. “No one else had any chance at all against that dragon. I was the only one who could do what needed to be done, so I did.”
“You could have retreated, you could have sued for peace and offered terms for a truce, you could have ignored the dragon and focused on the land battle, you could have sent your Sky Knights against me, you could have surrendered, or better yet, you could have stayed on Ruatha where you belong, yet you chose to engage me when you are clearly not my equal.”
“I cut you in half, didn’t I?”
“That you did,” Zuhl said. “I must admit, I would have been more cautious had I been aware that your brother had given you the Thinblade, another perplexing development. Why would he do such a thing?”
“He didn’t think he could be both the Sovereign of the Seven Isles and the King of Ruatha at the same time.”
“Why not?” Zuhl asked, leaning in with great interest. “Not that I accept his claim as sovereign mind you, but I’m very curious about his motivations. Were I in his shoes, I would never relinquish either the Sovereign Stone or the Thinblade.”
“No, I don’t suppose you would,” Abigail said with a little smile.
“Why would he?”
“It created a conflict,” Abigail said. “He couldn’t rule Ruatha as king and still expect the other island kings to accept him as sovereign.”
Zuhl’s frown grew even deeper.
“Power is not about seeking the acceptance of those you rule, it’s about imposing your will upon them, whether they like it or not,” he said.
This time it was Abigail’s turn to shake her head. “You don’t get it, do you? He doesn’t want power any more than I do … he just wants to live his life and be left alone.”
Zuhl stared at her as if trying to reconcile two versions of reality that couldn’t coexist before shaking his head in frustration.
“Back to your reasons for engaging me,” he said. “My questions for your brother are best saved for him, should we have the pleasure of a conversation before I claim victory over him. Why would you risk your life when you had such little chance of success?”
Abigail put her biscuit down and fixed Zuhl with a glare. “Because I’d committed good people to a battle that they were going to lose as long as you were riding Ixabrax. Killing you was the only way to save them from defeat … and the only way to get to your ships.”
Zuhl shook his head again. “Your motivations escape me. I don’t understand why you would risk your life for the safety of your subjects-their place is to serve you, your place is to command them, not die for them.”
“You have it exactly backwards, Zuhl,” Abigail said. “My place is to serve them, to protect them from the ambitions of tyrants like you.”
“I don’t comprehend you at all,” Zuhl said. “Things I don’t understand make me uneasy.”
“Good,” Abigail said, punctuating her statement with another bite of biscuit.
He glared at her for a moment before composing himself again and beginning a new line of questioning.
“You mentioned Ixabrax. Why didn’t you kill him? Why set him free? How could you know that he wouldn’t turn against you the moment you cut his collar?”
“I didn’t,” Abigail said with a shrug, “but I trusted my instincts and it paid off. He sank one of your ships for me.”
“You gave up your one chance to strike on a hunch?”
“Yeah, I guess I did,” Abigail said. “I met a dragon once before … she was a magnificent creature. It turned my stomach to think of her in a collar like Ixabrax, so I cut him loose.”
“You take great risks without due consideration of the consequences,” Zuhl said.