I could contact Eric, with Dartix's help -- I knew I could. But it would take some effort, and even though I was so elated at first to realize he wasn't the murderer I thought he was, now I was beginning to feel... a bit... well, stupid. When I thought back on everything he said, everything he asked last time I saw him, I realized just how in the dark he had been about me too.
How must I have looked?
How must I have sounded?
Crazy.
I looked and sounded crazy. And now I knew I had to contact him, but I wasn't sure exactly what to say or how to say it. Should I merely point out that there was a trap, I was free, and that he shouldn't bother going to Gravlor's Peak?
Should I ask if he could come pick me up at the castle and bring me home?
Maybe the question was whether or not I was allowed to come home...
Dartix and I explored the ruins of my old castle, finding that the basement levels -- servants quarters, dungeons, armory, etc., weren't too bad. Above ground, almost everything was gone, but some of the small rooms remained. Some of the turrets were still up to snuff. I found that one of my sister's rooms was still there, but I didn't dare enter -- I couldn't have taken it.
"Dor!"
I shook myself out of the trance I had been in, staring at my sister's door. "What?"
"Come here!" Dartix insisted.
He was around the wing where my parents' room would have been. I already knew it was gone; it was the first thing I checked, and I had turned from it immediately. I found him by a small, fist-sized hole in the wall lining the staircase. "I found something here under the stairs. I wouldn't have noticed it, except what's left of these walls aren't matching up, so I was looking for a door."
"You found it," I replied, immediately remembering something I had forgotten long ago, sticking my hand in the hole and untwisting the puzzle inside. I heard the clunk of the door being unlatched, but it didn't swing open as it should have. I had to put my shoulder against it.
"What is it?"
I smiled then, "Dad's hobby room." --That's exactly what I remembered it as. He didn't let us come in there alone or even often; it was his little sanctuary where he worked on his little projects. But sometimes he'd shuffle one or two of us inside, and he'd make a flying machine whirr through the air or show us...
Wait. Dartix and I entered the room, and though it was exactly as I remembered it, something had changed.
No, the room hadn't changed.
I had changed.
I looked around and I recognized the stuff in there. A lot of it was the same kind of stuff Eric kept in his spell room. Potions, and contraptions, and even --
Eric's little portal thing, the one he used to clean the poisoned shirt I gave him (Oh Somebody, that was embarrassing!); a similar one was sitting on Dad's desk.
Now I was super confused.
Dartix walked around, fascinated. "What is this stuff?" he asked.
"It's, it's... hobby stuff. The Master... Eric has this stuff too though." I picked up a tuning fork beside a small becor. "We use it to make things -- potions, armies, walls, food. I remember Dad having this stuff, I remember it being his hobby room. I just didn't know at the time... and now I do, but I didn't remember until now."
"Ancient history, huh?" He sat in the large chair behind my father's desk. He picked up a large, leather bound book. "What's this?"
"My father's notes," I replied, a little in awe. I wanted to touch them, feel close to him again. At the same time, the idea of remembering him better repelled me -- it might be having my insides ripped from me all over again.
"Think we can use them to contact Eric?" Dartix asked. Thank Somebody for Dartix. I'd been struggling with what I should call Eric since the day he healed my wounds so long ago. But as soon as Dartix had accepted Eric wasn't the bad guy, he was just Eric to him.
"Maybe..." I said, thinking. Suddenly, that little portal thing in the corner caught my attention. I knew I couldn't use it to talk to Eric -- I didn't know how. He always said his was off-limits. But I remember Dad saying he used it to talk to the stars. I'd never seen him do it. I'd never seen it work, but...
Eric was from the stars.
Suddenly, Dartix froze. I noticed then how dark it had become in the room.
"Or maybe not," growled a voice from the doorway. Saymar was blocking the door. --The only door. "Thought you'd be safe here, didn't you? That's so predictable, Dor. I'm disappointed." He had to move sideways to squeeze through the small entry. That's when I noticed there were others behind him. "It's worse than finding you hiding under a table." This was true; I was feeling pretty lame now. "But it's nice of you to have let me in here. I knew it was here, but I never quite figured out the puzzle."
"You must be pretty dumb," I replied.
"I think you should reconsider how you speak to me, Dor," he said, stalking toward me, green eyes blazing, scars seeming deeper in the low light. "How the events of this night proceed will decide whether you become a queen or a slave. It's entirely up to you."
My hand closed around a jar on the workspace.
Saymar noticed, and paused. His eyes darted between the jar of dark glass and my eyes. "So. You choose slavery?" he asked.
"And you choose death," Dartix said, pulling out a dagger, and saying the heating words I had taught him to use for the chain. I was surprised by his creativity. He whipped it at Saymar, and I could see the dagger turn red and yellow with heat as it flew toward him.
But not only did it cool as quickly as it heated, Saymar knocked it away with the back of his hand. While he was distracted, I ran toward him and broke the bottle on his chest.
Saymar got one whiff and fell to his knees.
The substance inside got on my hands and I quickly put them in the air as I indicated to Dartix to run for it. He grabbed the dagger and another bottle, which he threw at Saymar's people just beyond the door. They scattered when they saw vapors being emitted, but they didn't go far.
Dartix threw the dagger again, and it missed its target again.
We tried to make it out, and when one of them grabbed me, I put my hands on his face and he passed out.
Dartix slowed down for me, and for that, I'll never forgive myself. An arrow hit him in the arm, and then something wrapped around my legs and I tripped. I tried to break my fall with my hands, and ended up on the ground with my face just above my wrists. I knew a split-second before it happened, that I was about to be unconscious.
-------------------------------------
When I woke up, it became quickly apparent that I was pretty damn naked. I was freezing cold. Everything was hazy though, I didn't realize where I was until I saw the dressings on the windows. --My sister's room. I looked at down, finding I was naked on top of a pile of the dustiest, spider-webbiest, oldest, moth-eaten bedclothes on the planet, and it took everything in me not to die of heebie-jeebies right there.
