Page 86 of Elvenbred

“I’m sorry,” she replied. “I overstepped.”

He got up quickly and moved away, as though remembering his role … and hers. “Best you have the ash bucket filled. I can’t cut you any breaks.”

He left briskly.

She watched him go, then scratched her chin with a thumbnail. “Well, Rock. It was definitely something I said. We learned that the stables are near a large gate in the estate’s wall. Large enough for carts anyways. Maybe large enough for you.” She turned to look at Rock. “I know why I’m here. I mistook a dessert fork for the salad fork. But, what are you in for …?”

Rock, being Rock, said nothing. He started to mooch around the hopper where another few cartloads of soiled straw came tumbling down. “I agree, big boy. Formal dinners are such a bitch. Let’s get you something to eat.”

Once she had fed Rock, she waited for the noise to settle down before she went back to her labors. The fourth rod, well loosened by her previous exertions came free, releasing a torrent of a vile smelling ichor. The smell burned her eyes and lungs, and she reeled away coughing and unable to see. She felt Rock heave, actually shift and press and she opened her streaming eyes to blearily see him expel a thick, greasy sludge that spattered on the floor and gave off an unholy reek.

She coughed again, trying to clear the stuff out of her burning lungs. Rock surged then, against the hopper that held the straw, striking it hard. Distressed metal groaned and thick timbers napped like kindling. Triana scrambled to keep her purchase on top of Rock, but without getting near the disgusting black smears that covered his back. He shifted again, striking the hopper. Triana slid a bit, her heart in her throat as she came close to sliding off. He turned again, and she nearly overbalanced and fell into his path.

“What has gotten into you!” she snapped, frightened and confused by the sudden change in his placid behavior. Then she saw as he turned that he had tried to scrape out the last bronze rod. Rock had sheared it hard enough to have bent it nearly a third of the way over. She knew from the others she had removed that it would be sunk too deeply and set too well for him to succeed. He wouldn’t get the rod out, but his thrashing might cause her to fall into his path. She would be a red smear on the floor if she fell into his path.

“Stop, stop, stop, stop!” she called out, thinking the words as hard as she could on the off chance that he was somehow reading her mind, as some of the humans were said to be able to do. “Let me try. Maybe I can do it. I did the others.”

The thrashing and heaving eased. She had no idea if it was the tone of her voice, or her words or even thoughts that did it, but the earthquake movements along Rock’s back eased. She made her way along his back, still avoiding the stinking fluid, as close as she dared to the final rod. He had bent it certainly, but had also cracked the carapace around it. Provided that Rock felt pain, she could only imagine how much the impact would have hurt.

She looked at the wreckage of the hopper, sized up what it could provide. The wooden cradle lay smashed, while the bars that held the soiled straw had been bent like hairpins. She gave those a hard look. Their shape reminded her of something. She sat on top of Rock, thinking, before she recalled. Kyrtian had a picture that showed how one part fit inside another. The two parts had been connected by some kind of wire or bar. Perhaps if she could take the bent bars, she could work them around each other to make a lever that might draw out the last bronze rod faster.

Mark after mark of frustration followed as each contraption failed more spectacularly than the previous. Finally, sore and frustrated, she simply stood on the remains of Rock’s food hopper and pulled on the damned rod as hard as she could. She felt a slight movement. He had knocked it loose! She swore sulphurously, a long steam of creative profanity, at the realization of the wasted time.

She hauled on the bronze rod with all her strength, while Rock obligingly shifted away. The rod shifted a handspan at a time. Working together, they managed to draw out most of its length, with her nearly being pulled under him only a few times as he shifted and took her off her balance.

In time, they had most of the rod out, until they hit a sticky bit, and refused to budge. She braced herself for a final pull, putting all her strength into it. She heard a small sound, like a cracker breaking, and felt something shift. The final rod’s last arm length came out with no resistance whatsoever. The mighty tug overbalanced her and she tried to stop her fall, her arms windmilling as she tried to stay upright. The effort failed and she fell over backwards into the hopper. The last rod had been removed, Rock was free!

She sat up, picking soiled straw out of her hair, and prepared to give Rock a piece of her mind. It wasn’t really his fault, of course, but swearing at herself didn’t carry the same edge.

Her mind flooded with a sense … of a butterfly flitting from flower to flower. Not how it looked, and not an image, but how it felt to be a flitterwing, free to bob and float, lapping up the sweet nectar on a sunny day.

Triana felt herself nearly swept away by the tide, the sheer vastness of the sensation, as though she were a small child standing next to a vast drum, where every beat thrummed and thumped against her tiny body. She felt lost for a moment, swept away and drowning in the waves of feeling and sensation that washed over her, and exaltation. Pure freedom.

“Rock?” she gasped, trying to gather her composure. Another tide of feeling, a more complex emotion, swept her away again. She tried to push back and ward her mind, but it was like trying to hold back the sea with her hands. The engulfing feeling and the sheer vastness of the emotions swept away her feeble defenses.

She shifted her legs around so that she could stand and gingerly stepped out of the ruined remains of the hopper that held the soiled straw. She took a look around the ruins of her cell. Several bars had bent under the weight of Rock’s efforts to loosen the last bronze rod. The metal and wooden hopper had been smashed to bits, and long sprays of black noisome fluid congealed on the floor. Triana suspected she had long since gone noseblind from the smell of the manured straw, but the stench of this stuff sliced right through it all. She got a whiff, then covered her nose with her sleeve to try and keep from retching.

She might have gotten Rock free, but the destruction would surely give the game away the moment the guard entered. She turned to face Rock, who appeared to be swaying a bit, in time with the walls of sensation that crashed down on her. She focused on the words she wanted to say. She took a couple of steps forward.

The collar. Can you free me too? Then we might escape?

But once the guards realized that Rock was no longer controlled … an alarm would be raised, probably long before she could do anything to prevent it. They might even know now—or at least, soon. They’d obviously captured Rock somehow in the past and hammered those control rods in, so they obviously knew what to do about him.

And that would mean … probably defeat for Rock, and death for her. They would never take the chance that she’d find a way to free Rock a second time.

She doubted getting the collar off would matter much when the guards came in, but she’d be damned if she went down without a fight. The beating tide eased a bit, and she felt something akin to the sensation of being warmed by a strong afternoon sun. She didn’t understand it, and it frightened her a bit.

What in the name of all things dark and dangerous were those rods doing to him? It seemed as if it was far more than merely negating any magic powers Rock had. Because this … this, well, felt (for lack of a better word) as if the rods had cut off or muted all of Rock’s senses. Whatever those senses were ….

She grasped that somehow Rock had turned his attention towards her. She saw a thin silver tendril emerge from Rock’s side. The rest had visibly darkened, become more stone-like and less pearlescent, except for the tendril that extended towards her. The silvery thread thickened, becoming as large as her finger as it extended towards her. She felt a twinge of fear as it moved towards her face.

“Please,” she asked. “Be careful.”

The tendril touched the collar around her neck. She felt a shock, smelled something sharp, followed by a loud crack, and the world went sideways.

A distant portion of her felt her body slam against the bars of the cage, and felt her skin burn from where Rock had caused the collar to … melt? She could feel her body distantly, and could just see it, as though it were at the far end of a long tunnel. She drifted in darkness, and could just see a thin shimmery silver thread connecting her to her faraway body. She concentrated and could feel her heart still working, her lungs still sipping air, but her body felt like a cold and distant thing to her.

Curious, she thought. What … where?