Worldwielder, page 25
Part Five
Skewer
TWENTY-NINE
Melissa awoke in a frenzy, sitting up and gasping. Lucas had attacked Kyle yesterday! He'd beaten her friend to the ground, and she'd only watched. She saw it over and over again in her thoughts, each time more painful.
She did nothing but breathe for several minutes, becoming steadily aware of a dreadful headache whose cause she couldn't recall. Then her eyes came into focus. She reeled. She wasn't in her bedroom, lying in her bed, as she should have been. She was sitting on a stone floor in a stone cell with iron bars, and beyond them was a circular chamber with a bench, and on the bench was a bald man who was picking at his bare foot with a knife.
Melissa fought to restrain herself from crying out in horror. She scooted as far back into the corner of the cell as she could, searching her memory for an explanation of her current whereabouts. Perhaps she was still asleep. But after banging her head against the wall and pinching her arm several times, nothing had changed, so she gave up that line of inquiry.
The headache, a throbbing throughout her entire skull, seemed to grow worse the harder she thought. She paused and tried to calm herself, but she hadn't gotten far when she spotted the only other object in the cell—her backpack. She snatched it up, rifling through its contents. They amounted to one wooden chessboard and a complete set of pieces. But it wasn't just any chess set. It was Kyle's.
Melissa frowned. Kyle's chess set should have been with Kyle, back at his house. She turned to gaze at the bald man again. At his knife. At his purple robe. At the stone of the walls. At the small metal sphere hanging on a chain around her neck. At her shirt, torn clean down the middle and tied together.
In a surge, it all came back to her, knocking her over with the force of a blow. She caught herself on an elbow, gasping anew. Her most recent memories loomed in her mind like black smoke, dark and terrible. The tree world. The penthouse. The woman, whose face was again lost to her but whose identity she remembered just fine. And the halok world.
The halok world!
Terrified, she took stock of her mental faculties. Going insane, as Ringo had, was an obvious possibility. And then there was Mrs. Lamb's threat about losing her short-term memory. But she decided that, aside from the pain in her head, everything was in right sorts. Nothing a few days of rest wouldn't cure. Her vim had protected her after all.
She almost breathed a sigh of relief when she remembered something else Mrs. Lamb had said—He needs to be in peak form for the board tomorrow night.
She didn't have a few days to rest. Depending on how long she'd been unconscious, it might already be too late to prevent this demonstration for the board, whoever they were.
With the aid of a wall, she pushed herself to her feet. The headache was fast diminishing, she thought. But she was host to another sort of agony—despair. When she thought of Kyle, she could see his blank face and dead eyes as sharp as if they were a foot in front of her face. No matter how hard she tried to think of the old Kyle, she failed. A poison infected her memories of him. She felt betrayed, as though he'd plunged a knife into her heart. And when she tried to imagine rescuing him and everything returning to normal, she couldn't. That future was closed off, inaccessible. But as much as it troubled her, she couldn't dwell on it. There were bigger things to worry about now than her relationship with Kyle.
She turned her attention again to the Crumholtzian. Given the violet robe, she guessed it was Tibor, though they all looked so similar it was hard to be sure. Another glance around the dungeon made her fairly certain she was somewhere in the Unity cathedral on Cynn, since the architectural style matched what she'd seen of the place earlier.
She was about to open her mouth and call out to Tibor, asking him how long she'd been out, when she was distracted. A voice, hoarse and whispery, sounded from the cell adjoining hers to the right. “Melissa, is that you?”
She now noticed what she'd paid no attention to before—the mind occupying the cell. It was a pleasant yellow color, not the color a mind locked up in a dungeon had any right to be. But, more than the color, what gave her pause was its familiarity. Could it be…
“Brock?” she said, stunned.
“Wadup!”
Despite his apparent good mood, she couldn't help noticing the frailty in his voice. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Well, the dude with the knife, Luud, came to visit me after you disappeared. I guess he was bummed out about you stealing his teleportation thingy and wanted to know what was up. Pretty soon, one of his bros showed up, and he suggested I come hang with them for a bit… and here we are!”
Suggest didn't sound like something Luud would touch with a ten-foot pole. Threaten at knifepoint would be more accurate, Melissa thought. Something was obviously wrong with Brock, not to mention he'd been locked up for more than six months. She sat down, silent a long moment. “Brock, I'm so sorry.”
“Yo, it's all good. I've just been chilling here. They feed me a couple times a day. That dude Tibor hangs out here with me a lot. Sometimes we chat about animal sacrifice and stuff like that. Dude's into some weird things for sure, but I'm good with it. You know me.”
She'd known Brock was laidback, but no one was this laidback, content to sit in a dungeon with only a psychotic ex-otter-worshipper for company. It almost reminded her of…
But of course. Without an aegis, Brock would be under the effect of Cynn's pull, a pull that made a person content with any circumstance, as its painting and her observations suggested. She breathed a sigh of relief. At least he hadn't been miserable during his stay here. “That's… great, Brock. Did they do anything to you? Why haven't they let you go?”
“I think I heard Luud say something about wanting to flay me at some point, which is cool. I'm good with that, if he wants to. You do you, I told him. But pretty much, they've just asked me a few questions about you every now and then. Oh hey, I almost forgot, but I saw your buddy Kyle! He's totally here. He seemed good. Not super talkative. Actually, I don't think he said anything, but I guess he was just having a bad day or something.”
If only that were all… Melissa wished she could experience Cynn's pull herself. Then again, she might not even want to get out of here if she felt it. “Did you see the woman?” she asked.
“A woman? Nah, all I've seen are Luud and his bros, and I'm pretty sure they're all single. Or maybe they're into some different stuff, if you know what I mean.” After a brief pause, he went on. “So what have you been up to? I wish I coulda gotten in touch with you, because once I found out Luud was a chill dude, I figured you could just come and ask him where Kyle was. He definitely would have invited you over. But I guess you found him anyway.”
“Brock, Luud is not a 'chill dude.' We're being held prisoner here, against our will, and they're going to kill you. You realize that, right?”
“Word!”
Melissa rolled her eyes. “No. Not word. Listen, we're gonna get out of here.”
“That'd be cool, I guess.”
Well, at least he's not objecting to leaving. We can work with this. She returned her attention to Tibor, who had finished with the sore on his foot and now directed his ministrations to another on his elbow. She was about to open her mouth and call out to him, asking him the same question as before, when something else distracted her. A voice, hoarse and whispery, sounded from the cell adjoining hers to the left. “Melissa, is that you?”
She hadn't noticed the mind there before, nor did she now, because there was no mind. Which could only mean…
“Fink?” she said, stunned.
“It is I, or half of I, at least.”
A broad smile broke out across her face. She'd thought the bionic done for after the impalement. “How badly are you damaged?”
“A large contingent of my motor systems aren't functioning. I only just returned to operational capacity moments ago, thanks to the tireless efforts of my self-repair protocols. It's not all that bad—certainly not fatal, as you living creatures say—though I will need to visit a repair station.”
“I promise we'll get you to one, but first, we need to stop Mrs. Lamb.”
“I should think so!”
“Okay, any brilliant ideas on getting out of here?”
Brock spoke up first. “I don't know. It's pretty cool here.”
Then Fink. “If I were functioning properly, I might be able to slip through these bars. Sadly, not in my present condition.”
Melissa bit her lip and searched the cell for any boon to her predicament, a task which proved fruitless. Then, as her eyes began to trace a mite of dust drifting through the air, she gasped.
The door to her vim was still there, hidden in plain sight, waiting only for her to lose herself to it. In seconds, she'd passed through it a dozen times, forging her confidence. When she was quite certain its appearance wasn’t a fluke, she spoke. “Fink, what if I told you I'd figured out how to use my vim?”
“I say! Err, that's what I would say if you told me that. Are you telling me that?”
“Yes.”
“I say! What's the secret?”
“It doesn’t make a lot of sense. It's sort of like falling asleep, but you're still awake.”
“Whoa!” Brock exclaimed. “That's super dope. I always wanted to do that.” He didn't appear to have any idea what he was talking about.
Melissa laughed, then slipped again down that trancelike passage. Once there, she focused on Tibor's mind and its tightly wound coils of worlds, sorting through them, looking for… she didn't know what. Just as before, she recognized only a handful of the thousands of strands. Veritas. Xech. Kagu. Insatia. Melton. Crumholtz. Cynn. Prota. The tree world, whose pull was a mystery. Four other worlds she'd visited briefly. And one more… the world Kyle had used to cause the grayings.
It wasn't a long list, nor a particularly helpful one. She dropped out of her vim. “I'm not sure this will work,” she said, kneading her forehead. The headache was nearly gone by now.
“Yo, just use your super awesome friggin' mind-control power to make the dude let us out!”
So Brock did know what he was talking about, sort of.
“It's not exactly mind control,” she and Fink both said at once. “I have to know which world to pull on his mind with, and I've only been to a few,” Melissa added.
“Just try a bunch!”
“I could kill him by pulling on the wrong one. Then we definitely won't be getting out of here.” She wondered how she'd known which world to use on the men in the canyon on Kagu, since she hadn't been to one whose pull caused people to fight each other. Beginner's luck, perhaps. She couldn't count on a similar result now.
“If I may suggest,” Fink said. “Suppose you were to pull on his mind with Kagu, and then, well—”
She knew where this idea was headed. “No! I am not doing that!”
“You dude's wanna fill me in on what this Kagu place is all about?” Brock asked.
“Err, it has a particular effect on men in regards to women, and makes them—”
Brock got the idea. “Yo Melissa, you could totally pull that off!”
She shook her head, wishing he could see it. “It would never work. I'm not even that pretty.”
“Uh, that is so not true.”
She blushed, glad he couldn't see it.
“It's an unimportant factor,” Fink added. “The Kaguans took no issue with your looks, yes?”
Except the one who wanted to burn my face off, Melissa thought, but said nothing. She was quickly realizing that any further argument would consist only of irrelevant excuses. A single glance at Tibor and his sore-picking, knife-dissecting nastiness made her go queasy, but she couldn’t think of a better option.
“Okay,” she moaned, taking a deep breath. “I'll try.”
She slipped back into her vim, found the blazing orange thread of Kagu in Tibor's mind, and pulled. Despite his five aegises, she encountered minimal resistance, though she guessed that would change if she kept this up for long.
Then she departed her vim, a test to see if her pull would hold without conscious effort. It did. In the back of her head, she could feel a pressure, like a clenched muscle, as her vim continued to work on its own.
Now for the hard part.
She stood and leaned against the cell wall in her best imitation of a seductive pose. It wasn't a very good one, she thought, but it felt dirty all the same. Had Fink and Brock been able to see, she wasn't sure her straight face would have survived longer than a second.
Even without their observation, it only lasted five. “Tibor!” she crooned, and promptly clapped a hand across her mouth to silence a laugh.
Tibor stilled, then his eyes drifted up and found hers. His face, before a stoic mask, filled with hunger. As though drawn by a magnet, he began to rise.
Well, that was easy.
But then his gaze broke away and he dropped back against the bench, resuming his elbow-picking with a guilty mope. “Zoo must not talk to me,” he said.
“Rats,” Melissa mouthed, turning away. This wouldn't be so simple. Rulus and the other Kaguans had suffered from no kind of morality to inhibit their behavior. But Tibor, given his lifetime of Crumholtzian brainwashing, would need more persuasion.
She needed ideas. Brock was likely full of them, but she didn't want to ask him. For some reason, she was ashamed at the thought of admitting she'd never flirted with anyone before. Then again, Tibor probably hadn't either.
Turning back to him, she pulled her face between two bars and tried to look innocent. “You're really good with that knife.”
He looked to her again and just as quickly looked away, his expression riddled with disgrace. But she could feel the pull of Kagu still at work on him, drawing him down the wide road to sin. He just needed a little push.
“Will you show me your other knife? I bet you're really good with that one, too.”
He frowned in confusion. “My other knife?”
“Yeah. You can, uh… stab me with it.”
The confusion remained, and she was beginning to fear she'd have to come right out and say what she meant when comprehension dawned on his face. His eyes went wide. A war of conscience broke out in earnest across his features. He began to tremble.
From the adjoining cell, Melissa could hear Brock's sidesplitting laughter. She was having a tough time restraining the impulse herself, and might have failed were it not for the onset of a new headache. It was the same kind as she'd experienced during the grayings, and growing worse by the second. Pulling on Tibor's mind was pushing hers to its limit. But there was nothing to do but wait and hope.
Tibor had begun muttering to himself. “I should not. It is… vrong.”
He stood and began to pace. “But the Lutris is not here… it vill not see. No vun vill know.”
He stopped abruptly. “But zoo vill know zoo did wrong.”
He spun the other way. “Vhat if the Lutris is wrong? It vas wrong about vegtibles…”
And that appeared to be the deciding argument, for he went slack-jawed and rushed towards Melissa's cell, keys in hand. She backed away as he threw the door open.
Fumbling to undo the buttons on his robe, he stalked forward. “I have a very big knife, as zoo call it. I vill stab zoo vith it, and zoo vill—”
“Nope,” she said, and slid back into her vim. She didn’t waste a moment in wrenching on his mind with Xech, turning him into a glazed-eyed zombie, one who would soon have no memory of the preceding scene.
All the same, she couldn't leave him without some small token of her affection.
The kick caught him square between the legs. He went down gasping. With any luck, that “knife” of his wouldn't be seeing any action for a long, long time.
She fished the keys and locutor from his belt, pausing to give him a slug on the head for good measure, then grabbed her backpack and darted out of the cell. Even after locking the door, she didn't release his mind. She wanted to make quite certain as to his amnesia.
She opened Fink's cell next, finding him in rotten shape physically, only two of his paws usable. His spirits were not dampened, however. “I say, excellent going!”
“Thanks.” She set him on her shoulder and moved to Brock's cell.
Upon seeing her, he jumped to his feet and beamed. She had every intention of doing the same, but a closer look at him made her falter. Her muscular friend was not so muscular anymore, two hundred-odd pounds having wilted a quarter as much. He was also enveloped by a frightening stench. His clothes—gym shorts and a bro tank—appeared to be the same ones he'd been wearing when captured. A formidable beard blanketed his face.
Melissa recovered her surprise quickly enough, but opted for an awkward dodge when he tried to hug her. She suspected that, in Cynn's pull, he wouldn't mind. She was correct.
“That was dope, Melissa!” he exclaimed, pumping his fists.
She smiled. It was good to see a familiar face from home.
“So, any brilliant plans?” she asked when they'd gathered in the dungeon's central courtyard. She'd released her pull on Tibor's mind, but he remained a crumpled heap on the cell floor, moaning from her assault on his nether regions.
“Now that you can wield,” Fink said, “why don't we pop over to what's-its-name? You can incapacitate Luud and Mrs. Lamb, then grab Kyle.”
Melissa shook her head. “She has over a hundred henchmen there. I could sense them before. And I'm no match for Kyle.”
“Oh.”
“Yo, just use your friggin' mind-control superpower on them!” Brock offered, clearly thinking it the most obvious thing in the worlds.
But Melissa was still recovering from the headache of using her vim on Tibor, and that had been just one mind. She gave another shake. “Not against a hundred. Fink, how long has it been since we found Kyle?”
“According to my internal clock, just over twenty-two hours.”
That made today the tomorrow Mrs. Lamb had spoken of yesterday.
“Then I think Mrs. Lamb is gonna have company,” Melissa said. “The board, whoever they are.”
