Shaper of Stone (The Shapers Book 1) (13 page)

Garit asked, “What about Duncan?
It doesn’t look like you have enough left to cover his
bracelet.”

I estimated the amount of the nerafpan
remaining in the pile. Garit was right. There wasn’t enough,
but I had an idea. The cables that extended from the helmet had
nerafpan in them. I picked up the helmet I had just removed and ran
my hand over one of the cables.

Beads of nerafpan formed at the base of
my hand and slid forward as I dragged my hand down the cable. It
wasn’t much different from wiping oil off a dipstick. When I
reached the end I had a ball about half the size of a ping pong ball.
I grabbed the remaining cables and repeated the process. Soon I had
four of the globs. That should be enough. I smashed them together
into a single ball.

Shira watched me nervously as I
approached Duncan. Garit still carried him. The unconscious man
looked so thin. He probably didn’t weigh much more than a
child. I took his wrist and held the nerafpan ball next to the
bracelet.

This time it was much easier. I
pictured the nerafpan flowing from my hand to his wrist where it
coiled itself around the bracelet. As soon as the image formed in my
mind, the nerafpan began to shape itself. It only took a couple of
seconds to complete the job. Duncan’s bracelet was shielded. It
was a mirror to my own.

Shira hovered over me as I finished
shaping the shield. When I stepped back to examine it, she asked,
“Did it work?”

I offered her a reassuring smile, “I
think so. Mine is working, and his is the same.”

“That’s great,” said
Garit. “Can we get going now. He may look light, but I swear he
is getting heavier the longer we are down here.”

Shira said, “He probably is
getting heavier. The more time he has to rest the more his body will
try to return to its natural state. Look at how much his face has
filled in or at how the color has returned to his skin. He is going
to be alright.”

I didn’t answer. I hoped Shira
was right, but even if he physically recovered we didn’t know
what his mind would be like. If he was lucky he won’t remember
what happened to him.

On the floor a tiny bit of nerafpan,
about the size of a peanut, had fallen next to my foot. It rose off
the floor and into my hand in response to my will. I knew Vatrale
didn’t have to touch the nerafpan to shape it. It looked like I
didn’t need to either. I wondered what else I could do with
this power.

“I need to do one more thing,”
I told the others. “Come on. Let’s go back to the locked
gate. I think I know how to open it.”

I practically ran from the room on my
way to the gate. The others followed behind at a little slower pace.

The lock would need both hands to lift
it. Garit wasn’t kidding when he said it would be hard to
break. Maybe, we didn’t need to break it.

I pushed the piece of nerafpan into the
lock and visualized it taking the shape of the key.

“What are you doing? Forget the
lock. You’ll never get it open, and we don’t need
anything from there.” Apparently there was a limit to Garit’s
patience and I might have been close to reaching it.

“One moment. I think I got it...
There we go,” I said as the lock popped open.

“Alright, you can pick a lock,
but I still don’t see what you want in there.”

I swung open the gate. Before it
stopped moving I stepped into the room with the orbs and the cables.
The first cable I grabbed was cold when I touched it but rose in
temperature almost immediately. The cable rippled. The nerafpan
separated from the other metals and flowed along the surface of the
cable. This time I pulled it to me instead of dragging it from the
metal. It slithered to my hand then continued its journey across my
skin.

The cables were coiled and twisted.
Each one touched several others. I drew the nerafpan out of the cable
closest to me, then I began to draw it from the other cables. It
looked like water flowing toward me until it reached my left hand.

I focused on molding the substance. It
enclosed my hand and began to take shape. It slid between my
fingers,
wrapping around each of them, then around my palm. When I stopped, my
hand was enclosed in a glove of nerafpan.

My hand was warm in the glove, but not
uncomfortable. I wiggled my fingers and they moved easily in the
glove.

Garit shook his head in response to my
silly grin when I showed him what I had done. “You are going to
need a lot more if you want to make a suit of armor.”

Armor? I wondered. I focused on the
glove and it thickened and spikes popped out along the knuckles. As
quickly as I could picture it in my head the glove changed into a
spiked gauntlet.

Garit was right. I’m needed more.
The cables were drained and had already started to rust. It was
almost like the only thing preserving the metal was the nerafpan and
now that it was gone, the time spent in the damp underground was
catching up with them.

There were still the orbs. I grabbed
one and tried to pull the nerafpan from it like I did with the
cables.

Nothing happened.

“Hurry up,” Shira urged me.
“We have already been gone too long.”

I heard her but didn’t respond. I
could feel the nerafpan in the orb. It shifted and slithered beneath
my touch but I couldn’t pull it out. I closed my eyes to block
out any distraction when I focused. I could almost get it. Almost.

Shira grabbed my shoulder and pulled me
away from the orb. My eyes snapped open. The green glow from the orb
in front of me was blinding. I blinked my eyes rapidly until my
vision adjusted.

“What the heck? No wonder I can’t
get the nerafpan out of it. I grabbed a charged one.”

Shira kept pulling on me, “No. No
you didn’t. You did that. You closed your eyes and it flared to
life.”

“Huh? That isn’t possible.”
I started to pull away, but I could see the worry in her eyes.

Well, I got one glove out of it, and
they were right. It was time to get back. We need to rejoin the
others.

Shira lead me out of the room right
behind Garit. Together we began to make our way back to the lift.

I glanced back once to see the glowing
orb that I had left behind. I would love to go back and try to figure
out what happened, but that would have to wait until some other day.

-o-

We stood at the bottom of the shaft and
looked into the darkness above us. The lift obscured the mouth of the
opening, but even without it there was not enough daylight left to
shine into the tunnel.

Garit knelt in the side passage and
lowered Duncan to the ground. Shira immediately moved to his side and
cradled his head. No one said anything yet, but I think we all know
that we weren’t going to be able to climb the ladder and carry
Duncan at the same time.

At least Duncan was looking much
better. I swore he gained a few pounds on the way from the cells.
When I looked at him lying on the floor next to Shira I couldn’t
help but think he reminded me of someone. I wondered if I saw a
portrait of him in Vatrale’s estate. He was the crazy old man’s
last student after all.

“When it’s safe we’ll
send the lift down for you and Duncan. Until then stay away from the
bottom of the shaft. I don’t want anything to drop on you.”

Garit grabbed a rung on the ladder and
began to pull himself up.

Shira reached up to squeeze my hand.
“Be careful up there.”

“We won’t be long.”

Garit was about a quarter of the way up
the shaft. I needed to hurry if I didn’t want him to get too
far ahead. With a final wave, I reached the bottom of the ladder and
started the climb.

There was a little light from the
lantern Shira was carrying, but it didn’t reach far up the
shaft and soon I was climbing in darkness. The sound of Garit’s
breathing floated down to me. He moved easily up the ladder. His pace
never slowed.

I wished I was doing as well. Going up
was definitely more work than coming down. Once I was a little past
the halfway point I paused to catch my breath and shake out my arms.

Garit was almost at the top. I looked
up just in time to see him climb past the bottom of the lift. It
shook a little when he slid onto it. The chain creaked beneath his
weight.

It couldn’t have really been as
loud as it sounded. I hoped.

Now that the way was clear, I scrambled
up the rest of the way. Garit pulled me onto the lift beside him.
Together we laid there while we observed the compound.

It looked quiet.

The mine guard was sitting against a
low wall. His shoulders were slumped forward and his chin rested on
his chest. He looked like he was sleeping. If he drank enough of
Hahn’s wine he would probably stay that way for a while. Talia
had a few herbs that would knock you out if you mixed them with
anything stronger than milk. If all went well she and Hahns planned
on slipping the tainted wine to the rest of the guards.

Garit leaned over and whispered in my
ear. “What now?”

What now indeed. Our original plan was
to sneak out over the wall once I had the bracelet shielded. That
changed when I said we had to rescue Tavi and forced everyone to be
ready tonight.

The plan was still to sneak out, but
first Garit and I would get the boy. Shira was going to get everyone
else to the wall with the ladders Hahns had been building. Now we had
to get Shira and Duncan out of the mine too.

“We’ll go to the barracks
first. Hahns and Talia can get the others to the wall while you and I
get Tavi. Once he is safe we’ll come back for Shira and
Duncan.”

“That won’t work. Once the
boy is free, Balruc will send out the guards. We’ll need to
fight our way back to the lift. We’ll need everyone with us to
stand a chance, and even then it will be a bloody mess. Our folks
aren’t killers.”

“And the guards are,” I
finished for him. “I suppose you have a better plan?”

“Maybe. We could just kill
Balruc. Without him the guards might not be willing to fight. If we
get close enough, you can just drop a boulder on his head.”

Could I? I had only shaped the
nerafpan. The one time I tried to shape stone the bracelet blocked
it.

There was a noise from the guard. A
snort that made me jump. The lift swayed just a tiny bit, but not
enough to cause the chains to creak. I almost started laughing when I
realize it was the guard snoring.

“Well?” asked Garit.

I showed him my gloved hand and let the
nerafpan flow around it until reshaped into a dagger. “I don’t
know. This is the most I’ve ever done. I never had a chance to
practice on anything else.”

He grunted and inclined his head. “Then
I’ll do it. Keep your head low and stay behind me. We have to
deal with that guard first.”

He slipped a nasty looking dagger out
of his boot before crawling off the lift. For a big guy he moved
quietly across the packed earth around the mine shaft. I followed a
few feet behind him.

I put my hands together and let half of
the nerafpan flow from my left hand to my right while being careful
to keep the bracelet covered. When I was done there was a second
bracelet on my right wrist. I flexed my wrists and three razor sharp
blades slide out of the bracelet along the back of my hand. They
stopped when they reached the tips of my finger. I made a fist, and
they looked like claws sticking out of my hands.

Garit had made it to the guard. He
lifted his right hand with the dagger in it and slammed it down on
the guard. There was a loud thunk and then Garit slid him to the
ground. Surprisingly there was little blood.

-o-

As I stared down at the body, Garit
stepped away from the fallen guard. I thought I would feel more
upset, traumatized. Instead I felt relief. Relief that he didn’t
hear us coming. Relief that he didn’t put up a fight.

To convince myself he was actually dead
I nudged him with my boot.

“What are you doing? Are you
trying to wake him up? I just knocked him out.”

That was when I noticed how Garit was
holding his dagger. He had the blade pointing up, but he struck
downward. He had hit the guard with the hilt of the weapon.

“I thought you killed him.”

“Not if I don’t have to. If
we take down Balruc, then we won’t need to fight the rest. I
don’t want to kill any of them. I’ve known most of them
for ages. They aren’t the nicest guys, and they won’t
stand up against Balruc, but they aren’t evil. It could just as
easily be me sitting there.”

The dirt road flared with light when
the door to one of the buildings opened. Voices drifted to us when a
large man stepped outside. He closed the door behind him, cutting off
the light and noise from within, before turning toward the warehouse
where Tavi was being kept.

“Crap, there he is!” I
hissed between clenched teeth.

“Hold still, we need him to get
inside. Then he’ll be alone.”

Garit waited until Balruc reached the
warehouse before he stood and started to follow. He motioned for me
to join him.

“Walk like you own the world. The
guard won’t get suspicious if we act like we belong here.”

Guard? What guard? Then I saw him. He
stepped out of the shadows when Balruc approached the warehouse. They
talked briefly before Balruc entered, then the guard moved away from
the doorway. He stopped on the other side of the street where he
could lean against another building while still watching the door.

Balruc was out of sight for only a few
seconds when a blood curdling scream ripped through the night air.

-o-

“Tavi!”

I knew Garit had a plan. I just forgot
what it was. When I heard the scream I yelled then sprinted toward
the warehouse.

The guard who let Balruc inside must
have had the same idea. He was charging toward the same door. The
difference was that he had pulled a sword and was shaking it in the
air as he ran. He was going to beat me to it.