The lower levels of the castle were rarely ever used. There were cells there, for the random prisoner that they had needed to keep. It wasn’t common, but it did happen one every few hundred years or so. That was where AJ led Galiina to. He also had Vanir, Sheena, and Brian bring Ero down. This was going to be the safest place to transfer shields, as it was shielded itself against leaking magic.
Many a prisoner they had down there controlled magic, and this was the safest place to keep them. The main area was shielded against magic leaking out, while the cells were individually shielded so that any magic that was done instantly dissipated. This was going to be a benefit if there were any surprises inside of Galiina. If there was anything there that could damage, the damage would be confined to him and her only.
Looking at Ero, he thought to himself that it would also contain anything that Ero set free if his madness tried to leap out in the shield transfer. First things first. He made Galiina stand against a wall and shut off her senses. Then he turned to Brian, holding in a sigh. “Let’s get this shield transferred. After that, if you can just get him in a room, cleaned up. I don’t know, think of the things we wanted when we got out.”
“Aside from each other?” Brian teased him lightly. There was no recriminations in his voice or in their bond for what was going to happen. That surprised AJ. He had sensed it in most of the others. But not from Flreu, and not from Brian.
A corner of Brian’s mouth quirked as he sensed his thoughts. ‘Why on earth would I criticize you, song of my heart? First and foremost, this woman is a traitor who has sold us out to the worst enemy that we have ever fought against, knowing what that person is trying to do. Second, I know you as well as, if not better, than you know yourself. You’re not going to be like Roth…’
That thought hit home in AJ, bringing up the horror that he had been feeling inside. A horror that he’d tried to keep locked away; a fear of being no better than Roth. Fear of what he might have to do to this woman to get the answers they so desperately needed, and what it would do to him inside to have to do them. The burden of his position that dictated that he was the one to do this. It wasn’t something he could pass off on another.
Brian sensed those fears in that one vulnerable moment. That was all he needed to glean the extent of pain, guilt, and fear that were boiling inside of AJ. He stepped away from Ero, leaving him in capable hands, and wrapped AJ tightly in his arms. He didn’t speak out loud, but wrapped AJ in love the same as his arms were holding him.
‘Oh, love, the burdens you carry! So much weighing on your heart when there is no need! Never, never, could you be like Roth. No matter what you do down here, you could never be like him! First and foremost, Roth is evil to the core, and he enjoys causing pain. He lives for it. The guilt and sorrow you feel is proof that you’re nothing like him!’
‘Whether I enjoy it or not, the fact that I may have to sink to his level to do this…it leaves a blackness on my soul that I fear I’ll never be able to get away. How can I hurt another just for answers when what I’m fighting for is to preserve life? What kind of monster does that make me? Because, if it comes down to it, I will do what is necessary to save the whole, Brian.’
‘Alex, oh, my love. I know. But I also know you. If at all possible you will do anything you have to in order to get what’s needed before you resort to that. You’re not a monster. A monster would let this evil woman be at the sacrifice of the lives of everyone else. God, I could wish that you didn’t have to do this. That this choice wasn’t here for you. But it is. I trust in you that it’ll be the right choice.’ Those arms squeezed briefly before he pulled back to look at AJ’s eyes. ‘I will take care of Ero, and then I will come back to you here.’ It wasn’t a suggestion, but a statement of fact.
AJ smiled into his lover’s eyes. “Let’s get this over with.” He whispered softly.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The transfer of the shield had gone easier than they had thought. Once Brian had the shield in place, he dismissed the other two and took Ero to himself. Instead of forcing him to move, Brian used air to help support him, but he had Ero walk on his own. The movements were wooden, almost as if the elf couldn’t bring himself to move.
Within moments they were gone. Brian sent one last pulse of love along the bond as he shut the door. Then AJ was alone with Galiina. Alone with a traitor. He took a few moments to breathe and bring his mind under control. The words that Brian had given him helped to strengthen him. Brian was right. This was right. They couldn’t afford to be squeamish if it was going to be at the cost of the lives of everyone else.
Once he was under control, AJ released Galiina’s head and gave her back her senses. She opened her eyes slowly. In them was a darkness that AJ was amazed no one had seen before. The shield she’d had inside had worked amazingly well. Now that it was gone he could see that almost every inch of her body was riddled with blood magic.
“So,” she sneered at him. “I am under your control, oh great and powerful trulion. What will you do with me? Break my bones? Burn me to ashes?” Laughing, she tossed her head. “Do your worst. I will betray nothing to you. You will get no information from me.”
AJ took a deep breath and let a small smile curve his lips. He said nothing, simply leaning back against the wall and watching her. If there was one thing he knew, one thing that he had perfect over his thousands of years, he had to admit that he had the talent of annoying people down to an art form. One thing that always unsettled a person was when they didn’t get the reaction out of you that they wanted. Keep them on their toes, never sure of what you were going to do. Rule number one.
“So a staring contest, is it?” Galiina scoffed at him. “The all-knowing, all powerful trulion is going to stare at me as my punishment? Ha!”
Still he didn’t speak. He continued to stare, contemplating what he would need to do. How to word the questions he was going to ask. He let his mind wander of that for a while, ignoring her pitiful attempts to force him to talk. Brian had been right – there were other ways to get what he wanted from her before using pain. Even when he’d captured her, he hadn’t thought first of hurting her. He’d thought of how to trick the information out of her.
Realizing that, remembering it, helped bolster AJ up. He wouldn’t hurt her unless it became absolutely necessary. But he had no qualms about terrifying the information from her. Sometimes the right words, the right attitude, could do more than breaking a bone.
After fifteen minutes of silence from him, he could see that he had her on edge. Good. Now he let his smile grow, feeling it as she grew more nervous. “How long have you been Rothalo and Twyla’s agent?” he asked her politely.
She spat at him. It barely reached the ground a foot away from his feet. He ignored it, still smiling at her. Then he sealed her mouth shut so that she wouldn’t be able to speak. But she could still watch as he pushed lazily away from the wall. “You and I both know that you’re their agent. We both know that you’ve well and truly gone over to their side, and that you’ve been spying for them. We also both know that you’ve done blood magic.”
Standing directly in front of her, AJ used a single finger to tip her head upwards. “But, my dear, I know a few things that you do not. I’ve known Rothalo much longer than you, and much more intimately. We were bedfellows, once, back when I thought I could still change him and his ways. I probably know him more intimately than anyone on this entire planet.”
He leaned his head down so that he could meet her eye to eye. “If you do not answer my questions, I will ship you back to him.” He told her in a voice that was both soft and steel at the same time. Her eyes grew wide in her face and her breathing grew more labored. “Do you know what he’ll do to you if you show up there, with traces of my magic in you? Because I will make sure that my signature is all over you, my dear. For that alone he will torture you for days on end.”
Without batting an eye AJ described to her the kinds of torture that Roth favored. He spared no detail, or an ounce of pity. This creature deserved none. By the time he was done, her eyes had grown even wider.
“He will do this to you, simply because you have been touched by my magic, and on that alone he will assume that you have told me everything. You could try to deny it, but he wouldn’t believe you. You could offer him entrance to your mind, but he would assume that I had tampered with your memories. So he will torture you until you tell him what he wants to know. Trust me, when he is done, you will be begging to tell him anything he wants to hear, whether it be truth or lies.”
He released her chin and took a step back. With a small thought he released her mouth. She gasped air in, panic making her breath hitch. AJ took up his position against the wall again and stared into her eyes. In them he could see that she knew the truth of his words, and that her fear of Roth was far stronger than her fear of him.
“Now, I’ll ask you again. How long have you been Roth and Twyla’s agent?”
Galiina shuddered in a few more breaths, and AJ saw the defiant light leave her eyes. The fear of Roth’s torture was too much. “I have been Roth’s for a year now.” She admitted brokenly.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Two hours later AJ walked up the stairway with a heavy heart and a full mind. Everything that he had heard down there was bouncing around inside of his skull, each one clamoring for his attention. Once he Galiina had opened up, it had been pathetically easy to get all the answers he needed from her, and then some. She knew that all she could hope for beyond this moment was a quick and painless death. In the end, that was what she had begged him for. A simple death at his hand rather than the torture she would suffer at Roth’s.
The questioning had left him drained. So he was overjoyed to see Brian coming down the stairs to him. “Sorry, love. It took me a while to get Ero settled.” His lover said. One look at AJ and Brian wasted no time in coming forward and wrapping an arm around his waist even as he offered love and much needed energy through the bond.
AJ welcome all of it, but most especially the energy. His mental reserves felt lower than ever. For days he’d been running himself in every which direction, which was what had prompted the escape earlier in the day. But that had been interrupted, and he’d had to do more magic, and more work. His energy reserves felt lower than ever, and his brain simply wanted to shut off for a while. But there was too much to do.
That was another benefit of having Brian with him. His lover knew him inside and out, even without the bond. With that bond, it gave him even more understanding of AJ’s mind. Each day they grew closer and closer, until it felt more like they were one person living in two bodies. Brian didn’t try to stop him as he sought out the King, but simply assisted him on the way.
They found Flreu in the back garden with all of their friends, even Nick and Kevin. Just where he had thought they would be. For once AJ used the privilege that came with being trulion without a pang of guilt. He simply let Brian lead him to the grass and plopped down without a cordial word to anyone, or a pardon for interrupting the conversation.
“Well, I got what we needed from her.” He said, without preamble. AJ knew how exhausted he looked and he didn’t care. Frankly, he was too tired to care. Magically, physically, mentally, emotionally. Every way that mattered he was tired.
To the surprise of everyone, Brian looked at them all with a stern face from where he knelt by AJ’s side. “He’ll tell you what was said, and what’s important, but no more than that. After that he needs to rest. So no pestering him, no interruptions, or the audience is over.” There was no denying the command in those words.
AJ reached a hand up, patting Brian’s, which was resting on his shoulder. But he didn’t retract his lover’s words. Indeed, he was grateful for them.
“Ok, in a nutshell here it all is. She’s been working for Roth for about a year now. At first it was just assistance on his end of things when she went out into the world. Added magic on his side, trying to convince others to join to his cause, and such like that. But then I came back around, and he put her to work with me. Trying to subvert what I wanted to do. When it was obvious that it wasn’t working, he made her a spy.
“She spelled Ero so that he was under her control. Trust me, the things that she did to him you do not want to know, and I’m not partial to repeat. She was only too willing to tell me what she did. I’ll have nightmares about it for the rest of my life. She was just as bad as Roth in many areas. But, I’m diverting myself.
“Galiina told him plenty of information about our plans. She gave him precise details on our shields, our barrier, our weapons, where our points of attack are going to be and what will be done at each one. She warned him what our defenses are. She also told him how to gain entrance to the castle itself if we had to fall back to here and fight from inside. She told him who our allies are, and who aren’t. Basically, everything. She also told me that Roth plans on coming a week, maybe two, before the Celebration. That way he can roust us with plenty of time to get comfortably in here for what he needs.”
Flreu leaned in when AJ stopped talking. “Did she tell you who is on his side that we might need to worry about?”
Nodding, AJ tried to force his eyes to stay open. Gods above, he was so damn tired. He brought one hand up, rubbing at his eyes, even knowing that it wouldn’t help. “He has the Krutas, though we knew that. The Taaros are on his side too. He’s gathered rogue magicians from all over the world, mortal ones though. In his mind they’re disposable, so it’s no big deal if they die on the field. His hope is that they’ll take some of us out before they do. Ni shia as well.”
It was Richard who asked the next question. His voice was gentle, and he darted a glance at Brian’s stern face. “Are you sure that she told you the truth, Alyck? Couldn’t she have lied about this?”
For a moment Brian tensed next to him, but AJ silently quieted him down. It was a logical question. “I used a small weave that tested her words as she spoke them. It couldn’t force her to speak true, but it told me if she lied or not. Only once did she lie to me. She didn’t try it again.”
The steel in his words had the garden going silent. Just as AJ was about to excuse himself, Nick spoke up. Hesitant, nervous, but insistent none the less. “What did you do, AJ?”
It took everything AJ had to meet his friend square in the eyes. His heart broke a little to see the flinch there. Gods, oh Gods, Nick really thought that he had tortured the woman. “I did not hurt her.” He said, more coldly than he had intended. “I used words and words alone to get her to tell me the truth.”
“But…what about now? What happens to her now?” Kevin spoke up.
Here AJ did grow cold. His body and his mind turned to ice, and it reflected in his eyes. It was not AJ who spoke, but the trulion. “She was tried for her crimes, and executed.” He had given her the quick death she had asked for.
Most of the faces around him nodded. They knew that it was necessary. They knew what had to be done. But shock, horror, and disgust warred on both Kevin and Nick’s faces. Nick had gone pale. “You killed her? A defenseless woman?” he whispered. AJ could see that Nick’s easy tolerance had finally reached his breaking point. At another time he might have found it in him to care more. But at the moment he just didn’t have the energy.
Brian took control again. He put his hand on AJ’s shoulder, offering him another inflowing of strength, and looked around at their friends and family. “This meeting is done. Any questions you have can be answered in the morning. Our timeline is moved up, but we still have time. Time enough for a night of rest. No one is to bother Alex with anything else tonight. He needs rest.”
Without waiting for anyone to speak, Brian stood and drew AJ up with him. Much to AJ’s surprise, Brian had to support most of his weight. Without really paying any attention to where they were going, or the silent crowds that parted as they passed, AJ gave himself over to Brian’s tender care, knowing that he was safe and would be well cared for.