“Shall I alert the Readers, Duke?”
“Yes! And I want to speak directly with Vlax.”
“Yes, Duke.”
Barzon left, the front door swinging open and blowing cold air in to hit me before I had fully buttoned up my coat. I caught a look of myself in the mirror, as its pristine surface nearly rattled off the wall with the high-energy reverberations of the still screeching blaster cannons. There were no screams going up in the Kall. We weren’t directly under attack. It sounded like they were coming from near the lake.
I pulled on my amply furred hat and gathered up my weapons. Vlax was just entering the outer door as I moved to exit it. He was a slender man, always dressed in a full get-up of charcoal grey leather armor with just a red bandana. His eyes were strikingly black and they pierced right through you, probably because, if you knew who he was, you knew he was Reading you, even if you had the most intensive of mental blocks prepared. He was a Mercenary Reader, trained at the most elite colleges, but turned out for practicing some of the more delicate nuances of mental control, even on the teachers when their minds were distracted by other matters. He was a sociopath if ever I saw one.
He had cast Bravo Ilisa from Bristola to the ground using telekinesis and straight into a coma for a few days, so we had heard. She was in recovery now. He was worth the price he was having me pay: or he would be if he helped me control Lord Skarde so I could get back my Dukedom.
“Well? What have you learned?"
“Your Readers are still casting a net, but I already know.” Vlax rubbed his face with his grey gloved hands and stared at me a long moment. I huffed out a sigh to get him moving along with what he had to say. “If you are ready, Duke Fenvitz, the moment is now. Skarde the Berserker is here. They are out by the lake. He is here and I am ready to take him down for you.”
I took a step down into the snow. “Good, Vlax. You are ready to battle for his mind?”
Vlax walked down the stairs beyond me and turned to look back. “Why no, Duke Fenvitz. There will be no battle. I will cripple him. I will cripple his mind and then you can do whatever it is you want with him.”
A chill went through me, a chill that was partly suggestive of fear and partly suggestive of eager anticipation for a gift I had long awaited. Vlax’s eyes were so dark, so unforgiving… That was what I needed on my side right now.
I was taking back my Dukedom.
Twenty
Ilisa
I held onto Skarde’s back as he cringed into the snow. I dug my fingers into his fur coat, trying to send calming waves of thought from my far-too erratic emotions into his taut, tense body.
“Put up your mental blocks! Fight against it! The harshness, the pain they are sending you, that is just to get you to break so they can control you! You must put up the mental blocks!”
Skarde’s body quivered and shook. He beat his fists against the snow, making a dense impact in its white fluff. He shook his head, his dark curls flying, and blood droplets spewed from his nose, spraying a light mist of red into the sparkling white. I pulled Skarde back onto his heels and looked him square in the face as I sank to my knees in front of him. It stilled my heart to see tears streaking down his face that he couldn’t seem to control. Tears and sweat mingled with the blood streaming from his nose. He braced himself against the ground, knees wide, wrapping his arms around his body, his gloved fingers gripping himself tightly. His eyes were glazed back in his head and he was breathing heavily. He seemed to be fighting against grabbing for his blaster.
I tried to reach into his mind but he thrust me out, such a pure feeling of rejection impaling me so that I felt punched in the gut, even though he hadn’t touched me. I caught my breath and breathed in deeply, calming the rage that threatened to make me want to demand why he thought he could thrust me out like that: it had to be because he thought he was protecting me.
“Must not kill… Must not fight… Must not hurt…” He grunted out the words.
I placed my hands on his tear-wettened cheeks. His face was fiery hot. His eyes wavered in his face, finally focusing on me.
“Skarde, reach out to me. Work against them. Work with me. Focus on me. I’m your Destin. Work with me. We can fight them. Don’t listen to whatever they are saying.”
“They… Tell me… Want me… Fight… Kill… Everyone….” Skarde’s voice was strained, guttural, harsh. His breathing was ragged. I leaned in and kissed him deeply. His breathing broke and he tried to push me off for a moment, then sank into the kiss. I grabbed onto his mind as his scattered, frantic mentality cleared and his mind melded with mine again, his hands grabbing me instead, and then I could feel what he was fighting, what he had been hiding from me: the full force of Fenvitz’s Readers and their mental war against him.
They were waging their strength and wits in a full attack on him to get him to stand up and wield his blaster, or the blaster cannons, or his swords, whatever he had near him, and slay us, anyone near him and on our side, and mow them down where they stood. And, instead, Skarde was on his knees, defending us in the only way he could: with inaction and blood and sweat and tears.
The flurry of the Readers in our mind was a hot mess of overwhelming messages,
