Live and Let Lie
(Book Five of the Secret Magent series)
by F. A. Bentley
Kindle Edition / Copyright April 2019 F. A. Bentley
Cover Art by Cormar Covers
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All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents occurring herein are solely the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales are entirely coincidental.
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Charles Locke, Sorcerous Secret Agent, is no stranger to deception. However even Charles is left sweating bullets when a new mission forces him to face off against the most powerful Illusionist in the world. Navigating spiderwebs of betrayal, rallying reluctant allies, and (hopefully) convincing a certain she-devil to help, Charles must face off against a vast Russian wilderness worth of vengeful spirits and slumbering monsters to find his fairy tale ending.
Live. And let lie.
This is the fifth volume in the Secret Magent series; a novel.
Contents
LIVE AND LET LIE
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
About the Author
Chapter 1
I think an honorable duel to the death loses a bit of its ceremony when your battle plan hinges on nailing your opponent with an angry rooster.
The shag haired man in red robes narrowly dodged the furious fowl that hurtled towards his head, tumbling to the side and flinging his tattooed palms out towards his sworn foe. Fire burst out of his fingertips like a flamethrower, painting the arena sickly yellow and blood red.
A bold strategy, but unfortunately the rooster wielder seemed intent on maintaining the upper hand. With a look of deadly concentration the thin twig of a woman swung her rod against the oncoming blast of fire. A gust of wind manifested at the gesture, snuffing the streams of fire in a heartbeat.
“Is there any particular reason I’m being made to watch this?” I asked one of the robed men guarding me.
A withering gaze passed over me. The lidless eyes stitched into their robes twinkled with latent magic. When I didn’t flinch the guard replied, “Archmagister’s orders. Just watch.”
I was too tired to resist so I decided to play nice. After all, it wasn’t everyday I got to see two mages publicly fight to the death.
Judging by his exchanges so far, the shag haired sorcerer must have put all his eggs into one basket. Offensive spells. His specialty I bet. With a flick of his fingers, he flung a thousand fiery darts at his opponent like a hail of slow-mo machine gun bullets.
Nuanced and refined his sorcery might be, but his magic lacked imagination because of that same specialization. It’s not very easy for fire to beat wind. His opponent didn’t bat an eyelash, bracing her rod for another gust of wind.
As the wiry sorceress cast her spell, I saw the pyromancer’s mouth curve into a deadly grin. Pushing his hands out, magical might poured into his darts as the fire hungrily gobbled up the air around them. Boom.
One of my guards snorted in contempt. The other shook his head.
Spontaneous combustion. The arena was littered with smoke and ash. Murmurs erupted among the gathered mages in the crowd, marking the seeming end of the duel.
They were wrong though. If there was anything mages liked, it was keeping their trump cards close to their chests.
Like a misty tidal wave, the billowing smoke swirling around the arena edges was blasted aside. The wind mage’s rooster, standing before his slightly singed mistress, beat his wings furiously.
“Bait,” I said.
My babysitters turned to me, awaiting an explanation.
I obliged, “Wind magic is good defensively against fire, but it’s the speed you have to watch out for. Tossing that chicken Familiar to go for the killing blow prematurely created the false impression that she messed up. She baited him.”
One of the guards nodded. “Familiar shot back at the last second, shielding her from the combustion.”
“And then blew the smoke back the way it came,” I finished for him.
Low visibility was the opposite of a good thing for mages that needed to aim their magic. The pyromancer was in trouble now.
With a call from the wiry woman, the rooster sprung into action. Heaving her magic rod forth, the sorceress willed a tailwind to blast behind the rooster, guiding the magical chicken on a collision course with the shag haired man.
In a flash, the concentrated wind magic on the chicken’s wings hit the man’s throat like a guillotine blade. His body fell forward. His head flew backwards. I let out a low whistle as the guard on my left shook his head anew.
A voice boomed over the babbling spectators “The right honorable magistrix Adalene Michaud has triumphed. In accordance with the laws of trial by combat, the Michaud-Straumer vendetta is, as of this day, officially absolved. Audience adjourned.”
Some of gathered throng of mages stood up in apathy or disgust, making their ways back to isolated studies. Others resumed talking about the results of the battle, or discussing what they’d have done in the decapitated pyromancer’s shoes. Others still exchanged money as bets were won and lost.
One thing I’ve learned here in Nine Towers is that no matter how much magic you have in you, you’re still a human at the end of the day. The twig thin Adalene picked up her rooster and nuzzled
her nose into his green and red feathers, “Tres bien, Monsieur Rico.”
“Let’s go,” spoke the guard on my right.
Of course, I wasn’t here at HQ because I wanted to watch my fellow colleagues duke it out in the modern equivalent of gladiatorial battles. I was sort of forced into it. Being one of the few survivors of a botched mission that cost Nine Towers dearly tends to have that effect. Success or slaughter, someone has to do the paperwork at the end of the day.
Walking past several winding halls and down an authentically ancient stairwell brought me to a large arched door caked in powerful anti magic barriers. A knock on the door saw dull runes blaze to life around the outermost parts of the portal. Symbols that looked strikingly like eyes opened and peered at me with a life of their own.
They could have probably installed cameras and saved themselves the damn trouble.
The doors opened with a creak. A grand room with regal furniture and tables spread out before me. There were nine seats present in the center. One for each of Nine Tower’s nine towers. Most were empty, but not all.
The air was filled with latent magic, and the sounds of heated discussion. The big kids were arguing. But about what? My guards deposited me before a pair of grimacing old men, bowed their respect to their bosses, then beat a hasty retreat. I don’t blame them.
“You summoned me, Archmagisters?” I asked.
Two pairs of eyes turned to me, as though noticing my presence for the first time.
“Charles Locke, Warlock First Class,” spoke a tiny clean shaven man, his fancy robes unable to hide the fact that he was wearing house slippers underneath. “Good that you’ve come. As you can imagine, we’re quite curious to hear about what happened in Venice.”
Gilbert Gelwer. It only made sense that the Lord Summoner would be the one to summon me to the council. However, the way in which he did it was wholly uncharacteristic of the level headed man.
I narrowed my eyes. “Casually ensuring that I watch a fight to the death between two mages before giving my report? I can’t help but get the feeling that this was some kind of warning.”
The short man’s welcoming smile collapsed into a frown. He groaned, dragging a hand down his face.
“It was his idea,” he said, hooking a wrinkly finger towards the other man present. “Iron fist. Velvet glove. Etcetera. Tell us about Venice, Locke. We’re short on time and I promise you whatever problems we had there are going to seem like a scraped knee compared with what’s to come.”
What’s to come? What the hell could have happened at NT’s headquarters that was worse than the pitched battle I barely managed to crawl away from?
I cleared my throat, and gave them my report.
Chapter 2
“So to sum it up, the Dagonians ended up being friendly, I helped them cut off the Olympian leadership, then we all got our asses handed to us by an Angel. Nothing short of a miracle that I survived.”
As I finished speaking, silence fell over the antechamber. The massive room felt terribly empty without anyone speaking. Staring at the vacant chairs, I wondered when was the last time the Archmagisters cared to all show up in the same place at the same time. If only for a drink and a chance to exchange gossip.
“This being that attacked you, Warlock Locke,” Gilbert trailed off.
“Yes?”
“Are you certain it really was an Angel?” he asked.
The encounter was etched into my mind. Recalling the ragged cloak that clung to the monster’s body and the terrible wings that sprouted from its back sent a shudder down my spine. I remembered too the talk I had with a certain asshole just after the battle.
“It’s a False Angel,” I told the Lord Summoner.
“A False Angel?” he echoed.
A snort of contempt reached my ears. Not from Gilbert. It came from the other Archmagister. The one I’d been trying my very best to pretend didn’t exist: Rodrigo Baltazar.
“Really,” he said. “A False Angel. And just what’s possessed you to come up with this crack pot theory?”
The Lord Evoker was a fiery man, and not just because he specialized in tossing about fireballs, lightning bolts and otherwise annihilating people with a snap of his fingers. His stark well groomed mustache and severe posture reminded me of a Medieval judge. I doubted he put much more thought into condemning someone to death than a Medieval judge would either.
“Let’s just say I have a hunch about it,” I replied.
“I don’t deal in hunches,” Baltazar replied. “I deal in realities. Realities like the precise number of loyal sorcerers killed in Venice during this whole debacle. The number of Egomancers, per hour, per kilometer, it took to ensure that the huddled masses of mud-wit Mundanes don’t get it into their thick skulls that magic is anything but a Fairy tale, and all the logistics behind it!”
He was right, unfortunately. The worst part about the operation in Venice was the backstabbing we suffered at the hands of our supposedly close allies. The Olympians didn’t even bat an eyelash when they rammed a knife into our rear end like we were Caesar with a piece of paper taped to our back reading ‘please shiv me’.
A brutal betrayal.
“Ninety three casualties, of which eighty are extremely dead and another two of which suffered crippling wounds. The only ones unscathed were a pair of Egomancers and a few stragglers who got a lucky roll of the dice. A catastrophic loss. The Venetian Magocratic Assembly won’t recover that sort of manpower for at least a century! And that’s not all.”
I was beginning to understand why the Lord Evoker existed in a state of constant fury. Anyone would be angry if all they had to deal with was casualty lists.
“What else could have possibly happened?” I almost hesitated to ask.
“Swanquill was on the casualty list.”
My eyes widened. My heart plummeted into my stomach like a leaden weight.
“Phil?” I whispered.
“He’s with the healers now. It’s uncertain if he’ll survive,” Baltazar added offhandedly. I turned to look at Gilbert. His nod confirmed it.
Phil was dying. Fact.
I left the big hollow antechamber in my dust, and rushed up the stone stairwell two steps at a time until my heart beat furiously and sweat sloshed down my back. I didn’t stop when I reached the top of it either, I ran right to the medical sanctums whirling past the smattering of mages crowding the cramped halls.
Mage hospitals weren’t like regular emergency rooms. You can thank the wildly abundant and highly contested methods of healing for that. A healing sanctum can have any combination of Meditationists, Chanters, Druids, Shamans, Mind Surgeons, goddamn Necromancers even, and a dozen other sub types and fringe groups working in it at any given moment. And of course, each different healer was convinced their method of saving lives was superior and all the others there were little more than copycat posers.
“Phil. Which room is Phil in?” I asked the overweight secretary at the desk.
The woman set down her diet coke and shot me a dirty look before answering: “Philestos Swanquill is not currently accepting visitors without the express permission of the Archmagisters. Especially not from warlocks.”
“I’m a friend. He’s the reason warlocks are even a thing, dammit, of course I’m worried about him!”
“I’m terribly sorry,” she replied without sounding the least bit terribly sorry, “but I can’t let you in.”
The hairs on the back of my head stood on end as a sudden spike in magic blew through the room. It felt like a very powerful spell had just been cast. I turned around in time to see a trio of tiny creatures poof out of thin air.
Garbed in brown patchwork clothing, massive noses jutting out of their cowls, I stared curiously as the three knee high critters babbled a greeting to each other. Drawing a chalk circle on the stone floor with tired efficiency, they took positions at three separate ends of the shape before putting their hands together and speaking a word of power in unison.
Out of
a cloud of smoke stepped the Lord Summoner.
“Archmagister Gelwer?” I asked.
“I thought I’d come check in on the old devil myself since you seemed so eager. You’ll need me to get in anyways, and I don’t need you starting a fight in the healing sanctums.”
“Thanks, but what’s with the--”
Gelwer chuckled, “Oh I just remotely conjured these three Kobolds who specialize in summoning, so that they could in turn summon me to the desk. Thank you gentlemen, by the way. Good luck against those bloody Gnomes.”
The Kobolds bowed, vanishing with a snap of Gelwer’s fingers.
“Hard not to abuse power when you have that much of it,” I muttered underneath my breath.
“Let an old man show off, Locke,” he retorted. “Mary. Let us in to see Swanquill.”
The secretary pointed to the second last sanctum on the far right. I opened the doors and prepared for the worst.
Chapter 3
Philestos Swanquill loved looking prim and proper. He was a Demonologist by trade, and a practicing professional in the Infernal courts. Hell, he was on a first name basis with most of the greater Demons, Devils, and Daimons of the world.
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