Wangaia - Gayle P. Nastasi (best ereader for graphic novels .txt) 📗

what I'm talking about, do you? Something is really wrong here."

When he spoke, his precaution was tinged with pity. "You are mad, you truly are. Obviously you have heard of my plight, and now you babble of things nonexistant. Your illness has spared your life, pitiful girl. My plans were to head south, far from this realm. But I know of an asylum--"

"Asylum! I don't need an asylum! I want to help you!"

"How can a madwoman help me?" He seemed almost amused.

If there was no Vatas in this twisted version of Casey's fantasy world, perhaps there were no crystals, either. But she knew that was the first task Gareth was supposed to accomplish, to remove the tool Rath used to channel and magnify his mind-
controlling powers.

"I know where Rath keeps a set of crystals. Much of his powers are centered around the control of other peoples' thoughts, right?"

Gareth nodded slightly. "How do you know this?"

"That's not important."

"It is to me." His grip tightened on the dagger's hilt.

Casey rummaged through her brain for something, anything, that would give him reason to believe her. "Have you heard that madmen dream dreams?"

"Everyone knows that. What has it to do with my plight?"

"I . . . I dreamed of you."

He scowled, dark and distrusting, but let go of the dagger. "I will listen, but I will not hesitate to run you through if you give me reason to. What did you see in this dream?"

Well, that was better than nothing. "I saw--" Casey dug back through her story, through the outline she'd followed to write it, prayed that no more of the details had changed too drastically in this version, "I saw you, happy and well-loved, living with your sister and her children in your ancestral home of Caer Dôn."

He nodded. "Go on."

So far so good. "Your servants were content to work for a kind master, the townsfolk around you were treated well by you, and loved their Lord dearly. Because of your family's good name and your benevolence, you'd become one of the most loved and successful landowners in Wangaia."

He gave a grunt of approval, and sat back upon the dirt tent floor to listen, arms crossed over his raised knees.

"Annur Rath's family, though, had squandered and lost most of what they had held in generations past. His grandfather, in particular, was a lewd and greedy man who destroyed the Rath reputation, lost their holdings to gambling and bad judgement, and Caer Rath and its surroundings had fallen into ruin. Caer Rath lay empty these past thirty years, no one knew the whereabouts of the survivors of the family." She watched his face, waited for some sort of signal that she was on target. It was a mask of angry stone. Good enough.

She went on. "Then, a short time ago, a man came into your widowed sister's life. He was tall and handsome, had an air of nobility about him, and she fell instantly in love with him. After two years of grief over the loss of her husband, she was lonely, vulnerable, ready to marry again. You distrusted this man, suspected his true identity, and that he was controlling your sister somehow by dark means."

"Annur Rath is an evil creature, a predator, and he cares not how he kills his meat." The red had risen into Gareth's face, hatred for the man who had destroyed his home and family flashed across his features.

"But you didn't know he'd been working masking spells for a long time before he approached your home. For some reason they worked on all but you--your servants, your stewards, all the townspeople loved him, and they began to see you with disfavor because you spoke against this man. You were accused of wanting to prevent your sister's happiness, of wanting to hoard all the Dôn holdings to yourself and not share them with her or her kin, of the same sort of greed and dark thoughts that had destroyed the Rath family two generations before."

"I was a fool. I waited too long to act. By the time I stood against him physically, tried to put him out, my whole household had been turned against me. I was seized on my way to attack him and thrown bodily out of my own home, by my own guards. He had their minds in his evil grasp."

"And as soon as you were gone?"

"My sister was forced to be his concubine, her children put to work in the scullery, my people bent to slave labour under his taskmaster's whip."

"And now you must find a way to regain your home, to save your family."

He laughed derisively. "Now I must leave these parts, and try to make a meager life for myself elsewhere. My life here is forfeit. Rath has all of the local people watching for me, hunting, with instructions to kill me. I cannot fight against sorcery."

"But no, that's not right. Gareth Dôn wouldn't give up just like that."

"Gareth Dôn knows when the battle is hopeless, girl. There is nothing I can do."

"But there is! The crystals! If you get them, you can destroy them. He'll lose his hold on everyones' minds without his tools. He's not much of a sorceror after all--just a wannabe."

"Wan-na-bee? I do not know this word. Is this some sort of apprentice?"

Casey smiled. "Yeah, something like that. So--the crystals? I know where they are, are you game?"

"Rath seems to think I am game, for he sports with my life as a hunter stalks a trophy stag. He would mount my head and hang it upon his wall likewise, if he had his desires." Gareth's expression darkened with anger and a touch of fear. "How do you know the location of these crystals, or for that matter that they even exist? Did you see this in your dream as well?"

Casey nodded. In a way it was actually true, although the dream had been a waking one. She could see the suspicion in Gareth's mind, however. It colored his face with shadows, and his eyes watched her with no glimmer of trust in their expression. "I know you have no reason to believe me. But isn't it worth taking the chance, if you might be able to get your home and family out of his clutches?"

"Clutches? You speak very strangely, woman. To me, 'clutches' are eggs in a hen's nest. But truly, Annur Rath hovers over what should be mine like a broody hen, snapping at any hand that tries to free one of the eggs from the nest. Unlike a hen, however, Rath's snap is deadly. Would that I could snatch him out by the leg and wring his scrawny neck--then I would pluck him and gut him and toss him into the stewpot." He folded his arms atop his knees and rested his chin on them. His eyes roved over Casey, searching her face, examining her expression, as if hunting for any reason to believe her. He must have seen something, for he finally said, "Where are these crystals?"


III

Casey couldn't believe she was actually doing this. Under the cloak of darkness, they had slowly approached the back of Caer Dôn, to the point where the stableyard gate stood locked against the night. She felt as if everything was backwards, the story writing her instead of the other way around. So far, the physical details of the castle and its surrounding holdings had given her no surprises--they were all as she had so carefully written them. She held her breath as she sifted through the thick ivy that hung on the fortress-like wall. Despite the fact that she kept telling herself that Gareth makes it through this part of the story unscathed, she felt uneasy and afraid. There was no Vatas--there should have been a Vatas and the stew should have been rabbit. According to her plot outline, Gareth, alone, should find the passageway where Vatas told him it would be located, and no confrontations would occur inside the castle.

Of course, in her original version, when he gets to where the crystals are supposed to be, there are no crystals, too. But Casey had an advantage that even Vatas didn't have in the story. Casey knew where Rath had moved the crystals to.

She hoped.

It was there. Beneath the ivy, four strides from the northwest corner of the stableyard wall. Right where she'd written it.

"Here," she said, and took Gareth's hand in hers. She guided it to the latch. "This is the way in, but I don't have the strength to force the door. It's not bolted, but hasn't been used in centuries."

He snatched his hand back. "How can you possibly know more than I about my own ancestral home?"

"The dream, I told you." She pulled at the ivy until the moonlight shone upon the hidden portal. "Come on, try the latch."

"If this is a trap, I promise that you will die at my blade before I die at theirs."

"Please believe me, it's not a trap!"

"I do not believe you. But I have no choice but to find out for myself."

The ancient metal creaked and groaned under the force of Gareth's strength, but finally the ring turned. The hollow clang of an inner bolt sliding back came from within the wall. Gareth shoved hard, grabbing Casey and dragging her through alongside him.

Firelight glared in her eyes, blinding her. A burly arm was around her throat. She felt cold steel dig through her tunic and press against her ribs just below her left breast.

"Traitorous wench!" Gareth hissed in her ear.

"Ah, Dôn, just the person I've been waiting for!"

The voice was nasal, rodentish, and when Casey's eyes adjusted to the torch glare, she was greeted by the sight of half a dozen guards, swords drawn, and the sneering, drawn and paste-white face of Annur Rath. Just as she'd described him in Wangaia.

"No!" she gurgled past the tight grip of Gareth's stranglehold. "I didn't write it like this!"

* * *

"Gareth, if I had betrayed you to Annur Rath, why would he have thrown me into the dungeon with you?"

The chains rattled as he turned angrily on her. For the moment she was thankful for them, actually--they were probably the only thing keeping him from throttling her.

"I do not know, perhaps to try to win my trust again so that he can deceive me further!"

"You're in a dungeon chained to a wall, for God's sake, why on earth does he have to deceive you further?"

"How am I to know the workings of such an evil mind? Perhaps just to torture me, moment by moment, until he finally puts me to my death! I cared for you, I fed you, I took you into my