The Wizard's War (9 page)

“Just stairs, but it’s real bright at the top. I’m
going to go up and try to find the keys.” She left before I could say anything
else. I backed up to the middle of the cage because the bars were making me
feel nauseous.

It was just a few more minutes before a loud crash
and a shout could be heard upstairs… but it quickly became quiet again. I
waited, holding my breath, for the door to open. Either Sari was caught and
being taken back to her cell, or she would return with a key…

But the door didn’t open, and not knowing what
happened was so much worse.

*          *          *

“Tell me about your last vacation.”

I gave the nosey doctor my best deadpan expression.

“You said your family went on a lot of vacations.
Where did you go last?”

“Where is Sari?” I asked.

“Do you want to see her again? Why did she just leave
you? You broke her out and she ran off without you. Doesn’t that make you mad?”

“Where is she?”

He sighed and examined his fingers. He was sitting in
a chair by the door and I had been in the cage for at least a day without food
or water. Anything he offered me, I rejected, not just in suspicion but because
I was too nauseous to try to eat or drink.

“She escaped, and she wasn’t worth going after. We
only wanted you anyway. Had we known you were so attached to her, we would have
tried harder to use her against you. Now tell be about your last vacation.”

“We went to Hinode, one of the smaller islands of
Zendii.” Actually, our last vacation was to Malta, but Hinode was the
destination of our last vacation on Duran.”

“Wow. Sounds like quite the tourist destination.”

“Actually, it isn’t. It’s difficult to get to, and
you have to use a small boat because you have to go through a cave. You could
rock climb, but my brother doesn’t like heights.”

The doctor looked through the notes on his clipboard.
“Yes, your younger brother… Yatunus-tai Ronez. There isn’t much information on
him. He wasn’t named after a dragon, then.”

“No. He was named after another member of the
family.”

“He doesn’t like heights, but he is fine with a dark
cave?”

“The dark doesn’t bother him.”

“Does it bother you?” he asked.

It used to bother me a lot when I was a child, but
not so much in the past five years. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“We don’t want you too uncomfortable during these
investigations. As far as I am concerned, you are innocent until proven guilty.
I don’t believe you should be condemned by association, that you should be
punished for your parents’ crimes.”

“My parents never committed any crimes.”

“Consorting with gods and demons… maybe not a crime
in itself, but they must have used their unnatural powers to commit crimes. I’m
not saying you had anything to do with it, but if we find out you did, you
could be tried with them. Now, if you cooperate, you can be pardoned. If they
made you do things, all you have to do is confess, and you will be forgiven.
You’re still a child, not even of age to make your own decisions; not to blame
for this.”

“I’m getting sick of your games. My parents are
wizards, and all their power has been developed naturally over years of
practice.”

“About your father…There are records of his
homeschooling, his wizard tests, and his marriage license to your mother. The
weird part is, nothing at all appeared until he was twenty-two. How is it a man
has no record of childhood?”

“Growing up isolated on Shomodii can do that.”

“Your hair color is odd. Nobody else in your family
has that color, correct?”

“It’s a recessive gene.”

“Perhaps from your mother’s parents?”

“I wouldn’t know. My mother was orphaned by a tragic
accident. She was too young to remember it, but the story was that her parents
were robbed and murdered.”

“What an unfortunate family history… so much death.
Your uncle’s mother died at his birth, too, I believe.”

“That’s right. It seems to have brought us all
together. We’re a very close family.”

“So they must realize by now that you’re missing.”

“I’m sure they have.”

“Your parents’ marriage license is expiring in a few
months. Do you think they will renew it?”

“Of course they will.” The doctor kept switching
topics, and while it was getting very tiresome, I knew it was on purpose to
trip me up. He was trying to make me stumble over my story, or give up
something I shouldn’t. The advantage I had was that my father and Ron rambled,
endlessly and irrationally, so I was used to this.

“What do you know about other worlds?”

“They exist. I read a lot of books.”

“In what language?” he asked.

“In whatever language they’re written in. Usually
Sudo.”

“What about
English
?” he asked.

I paused. How in the world did he discover a human
language? “What is
English
?” I asked, trying to cover up my stumble with
confusion. Anything he knew about my mother’s world was bad.

“A language I heard about once. It’s an Earth
language. Do you know what Earth is?”

“I assume it’s one of the other gods’ planets.”

“Guess which god’s.”

“There are many gods and worlds, how should I guess
that? Why do you keep asking me these pointless questions?”

“What questions should I be asking you?”

“You shouldn’t be asking me any questions! You have
to let me go, this is illegal!”

“Maybe I should be asking about your brother.”

“Leave him out of this.”

“He wasn’t at your home, either. Maybe he went with
your mother. He’s only fourteen, right? He isn’t to blame for what your parents
do. You can protect him by telling me. Don’t you want to protect your little
brother?”

At this point, I was almost willing to risk the
consequences by trying to escape. The only consequence I wasn’t willing to risk
was that if they found me once, I could lead them back to Ron.

“Get out. I’m not answering any more of your
ridiculous questions. You can’t hold me here forever. Just get out.”

The doctor stood. “I’m disappointed. I wished you
would save yourself and your little brother a lot of trouble by being helpful.
Think about it for a few days. I’m sure you will reconsider.” He left.

With no windows, it was impossible to know if it was
day or night, and whatever power the stone bars had was making me very
lethargic.

Sometime, a few hours later, a boy about Ron’s age
came in with a plate of food. “Go away,” I said. The boy didn’t, though. I
closed my eyes, lying curled up in the middle of the cage, and ignored him.
There was a slight sound of scraping metal as the boy opened a small section
built into the bottom of the cage, just barely wide enough to slide a plate
through. It was a weakness in the structure I could have exploited, but no sago
would have been strong enough, and I wasn’t at the point where I could risk
exposing myself yet.

“You need to eat,” the boy said when I didn’t move.

“I don’t want it.”

He was silent for a moment, but didn’t walk away, so
I looked at him. He was sweating slightly and trying desperately not to look
around. “You need to eat,” he repeated, looking emphatically at the plate.

Nestled under a small piece of old-looking bread was
something shiny. I reached for it, careful to hide the key in my hand when I
picked up the bread. “You’re right. Thank you.” I nibbled at the hard bread,
but my stomach rebelled.

He nodded and started to leave, but paused at the
door. “There’s a storm tonight. Shomodii doesn’t have electricity, so you may
not know, but sometimes storms can knock out the power.” He left.

I gave up on eating the bread and instead waited for
the sound of a storm. It was at least three hours before the storm began, and
still another before the lights cut out. Assuming that I couldn’t be watched in
the dark, I immediately stood and felt my way to the cage door. It took a few
minutes before I felt the key hole and was able to unlock it, but I found my
way out of the room easily. There was a door that opened to set of stairs,
which were shrouded in darkness.

It was still pitch black when I reached the top of
the steps, so I had no idea what to do. Soon I heard voices to the left; hence
I followed the wall to the right. Suddenly, the lights flickered on and I found
myself in a hallway. Hoping luck was on my side, I took the closest door, which
opened to a bedroom. It was empty, and the voices were coming closer, so I
ducked into the room, shut the door, and hid under the bed.

I was away from the bars, but the lethargy still
clung to me like wet clothes. I fell asleep.

*          *          *

“Hail… please hear me.”

I woke with a start at the sound of Ron’s voice in my
head.
“Ron? I hear you. Can you hear me?”
No answer…
“Ron?”
I
still couldn’t feel him anywhere close. My power stirred, sluggish, but there.
Hopefully that mean that the damage those bars did wasn’t permanent.

I crawled out from under the bed carefully, but there
was nobody in the room. Just as carefully, I left. I checked three doors until
I found one that led to another hallway. Avoiding people was my highest
priority, but I was completely lost in this huge complex. I discovered with
horror that this was some sort of containment compound. There were several
laboratories filled with surgical tools, drugs, and technology. Most of the
rooms were empty and locked from the outside with a window into the room, like
cells.

I didn’t think much of my headache when it began.
When voices approached from in front of me and behind me, I ran into the only
room I could. Standing there, in the middle of one of the horrifying labs, was
the doctor and his assistant. I turned to run back out the door, but a guard
blocked my path.

The doctor started speaking, my head suddenly
pounded, and my vision faded.

When light returned, I saw my father, Edward, and two
strangers in a motel room. Edward held a gun on an older man, who held a knife
against the throat of a middle-aged woman. Dad was trying to talk the man into
letting the woman go, but she was screaming insults at him. To the shock of
everyone in the room, the man suddenly threw the woman at Dad and dived for
Edward in a fit of rage. His knife easily slid into my grandfather’s chest at
the same moment as Edward pulled the trigger.

Reality blinked and it was a little while later. The
old man’s body was still lying on the floor, but Edward was also dead. My dad
cried over his body, blood all over his hand. My dad was a doctor and healer,
but sometimes there was no way to save someone.

*          *          *

I opened my eyes. It had just been a vision; I still
had time to save him. Sure, I didn’t know how much time I had, but I knew it
hadn’t happened yet.

I was lying in a bed, strapped down tightly, in a
brightly lit room. The doctor’s assistant stood over me, regarding me with a
dispassionate expression. “He’s awake,” she said, alerting the doctor’s
attention. He came to stand beside me with a cruel smirk.

“Finally. I wish I had known you were a seer from the
start. Whether your parents deal with the gods or not makes no difference now.
You can’t imagine how long I’ve been trying to capture a real seer to
experiment on. I want to see what gives you your premonitions, and how to
recreate them.”

I turned my head as much as I could and saw an I.V.
bag with a strange blue liquid. My parents were going to be pissed.

*          *          *

I don’t know how long I was there. Several times I
woke in excruciating pain, and other times I woke in a drug-induced calm. My
dreams were seriously messed up. I had horrible nightmares about everyone in my
family dying, strange memories of my childhood, and conversations I never had.
One dream involved doing things with Sari that she definitely wasn’t ready for,
but it was so good I wanted to try anyway.

Probably the oddest dream I had was flying with
Mordon and Rojan as a dragon. Every time I ever spoke with the gods ran through
my head, including an argument between Avoli and Vretial over who we should
choose to serve. Ron ended that argument quickly by assuring them both that he
would never
serve
anybody.

At every moment, I knew I was dreaming and knew I had
to wake up, but I almost never could.

Then it came again. The horrible vision of my uncle
killing my father played in my head, taunting me. Maybe it was a warning,
something I had to stop. I just didn’t know how. I had no idea why Mordon would
kill Dad, or how to stop it. It didn’t make sense.

The vision finally ended and I opened my eyes… but I
couldn’t see anything. My eyes hurt really badly. I tried to reach out, but I
was still strapped down. Finally, I realized there was whispering from
somewhere in the room. It was extremely disorientating.

“I think we got as much as we can out of him.”

“Put him in one of the rooms. Eventually, someone in
his family will come looking for him and we can use them.”

It was the doctor’s voice.

“What about his magic? If we don’t put him back in
the cage, his magic might return,” the assistant said.

“I doubt it. Keep watching him. If his magic does
return, we can lock him back in the cage, but I doubt it will at this point.”

A few seconds later, I felt small hands unstrapping
the ties on my arms. I couldn’t help but to jump a little, because I still
couldn’t see anything. This time, two sets of large hands pulled me into a
standing position, but both my legs hurt far too much to stand without help.
“What’s going on? Why can’t I see?” I asked.

“You had a bad reaction to some of the tests,” the
assistant said dismissively.