Dead Rainbow

Slaves

Redwing and Schön spent two days being beaten, starved, and ruthlessly abused by drunken soldiers along with a handful of others who had survived the royal extermination. By the third morning, the prisoners were fighting with each other over who would be able to lick the slime off the dungeon wall to avoid dying of thirst. 

"Who's the librarian in here?" demanded the guard as he opened the iron door and sent the prisoners fleeing in fear to the back of the cell. 

"Well, who's the little bookworm, eh? Speak up or I'll..." 

Schön gathered her last shred of self-respect and stood. "I am the Royal Archivist." 

The immediate response was a violent smack from the guard that sent her to the floor. 

"Oh, sure a woman who can read books. Now, listen here, they need some help in the library and we want to know who knows about the dead emperor's books." 

Redwing shirtless, battered, and on the brink of death, stood between the guards and his mother. 

"I can read. I know all the books of the library, it was my mother who taught me." 

The guard grabbed him by the hair and dragged him out of the cell as other soldiers pulled his whimpering mother off the ground. 

"A momma's boy and his smarty-pants mother. Bring 'em both."

They were dragged not to the library, which had been ransacked and burned, but to the alchemist's chamber in the north tower. 

"Slaves, meet your new master, Mazlo the wicked warlock." 

They were thrown to the floor yet again. 

"And I bet they thought the dungeon was bad." The guards laughed as they left the room. 

A crooked hunched over man in black robes with no hair and a twisted scarred face looked down at them. He wore pointed black boots and a thick black belt with a curved dagger in a metal sheath. Strapped in a chair next to him was the dead body of the former emperor's most powerful alchemist. 

"Now, which one of you knows how to remove the curse from these books?" Mazlo asked. 

Schön got up off the floor, her left eye swollen shut. "It looks like you've just killed the only man who could." 

"What about a woman?" Mazlo eyed the battered mother and son. "You've read these volumes before?"

"I have." 

"Then you know the way to free them from their protection?" The fingertips of both his hands were blackened to his second knuckle as if he'd stuck them into a fire.

"Just because someone possesses the knowledge, doesn't mean they're foolish enough to use it." 

With a wave of Mazlo's hand, the shackles holding the dead alchemist into the chair opened and the body slumped forward onto the floor. He moved his other hand as if he was grasping an invisible cup and Schön's arms slapped to her sides. She grunted in resistance as she floated across the room and was placed into the vacated seat. Mazlo snapped his fingers and the shackles shut around her wrists and ankles.

"Now. I'm only going to ask this once..." He reached for his curved dagger. 

"Wait!" 

Mazlo turned and looked at the skinny boy. 

"She doesn't know how to remove the spell." 

"And you do?" Mazlo resheathed his glowing dagger with a click. 

"I was the alchemist's assistant. Many times he forgot to seal the tomes. He often tasked me with securing the material in the event he was too overcome by his potions to perform the incantation." Redwing glanced over hungrily at a bowl of red apples on the table. 

"Well then, let's see you do it." 

"Release my mother." 

"After." 

"Release my mother and teach me the powers you just used." 

Mazlo curled a wicked smiled at this. A dark shadow grew out of his back as if his soul was a shadowy demon that decided to show itself. The terrifying specter filled the room and towered over Redwing with pointed claws. The entire chamber sunk into an eerie blackness. 

"You will open the books now or your mother will die and you will take her place in the chair." Mazlo's voice had changed into a reverberated demon growl. 

"Oculorum lumini." 

As soon as Redwing said the words his eyes began to glow white. He saw through the darkness and saw that Mazlo's shadow was indeed the source of his power. That he was in league with a demon and that the demon feared the light. 

Schön sat stunned by her son's hidden powers. 

"Redwing, do as he says." 

"Yes, boy, listen to your mother," growled the shadow and Malzo simultaneously. 

"No!" His eyes grew brighter lighting the room and shrinking the shadow back into the warlock. 

Mazlo whipped around drawing his dagger and slammed it into Schön's chest. She screamed and Redwing burst into tears losing his concentration as the light faded from his eyes. Mazlo twisted the blade sending Schön into frightful convulsions. He looked back with an evil sneer at the boy. 

"You'll open the books, now." 

Redwing wiped the tears from his face. "Open, so the master may conduct his craft. 3,2,1," he said snapping his finger three times. 

Mazlo saw the books were no longer cursed to touch. He ripped his blade out of Schön's heart and splattered more blood across the floor. He opened the first volume. 

"The secret's of the ancients are mine!"