Dusk Gate (Soul Bound Book 1)

by Benjamin Medrano

  Xandra smiled thinly, sitting back in her chair again as she looked at him pointedly, raising an eyebrow. He had the good grace to nod at her. “Of course, wasting time. So, you’re not doing this for the council, correct? In that case, my usual rates will apply.”

  “I expected as much,” Xandra said, inclining her head slightly. “Fortunately for me, you currently owe me no less than fifty crowns for my assistance with Sir Ricter’s problem.”

  Mora’s eyebrows rose a little, and the woman asked, “Sir Ricter? What happened there?”

  “Nothing of note,” Cain said, giving Xandra a sharp look. “The problem was to be dealt with quietly, as it was a very sensitive issue.”

  “Nothing in my contract said anything of the sort,” Xandra replied calmly. “I helped, and I haven’t commented about it because there hasn’t been a need to. The main concern here is that we need you to investigate what’s happened.”

  “Fine, fine! I just need something to go off of that’s more than just plant monsters. There are tons of those across the world, and my magic has to focus on something. The more specific you are, the better my spells work,” Cain said, raising his hands as he conceded the point. “Can you tell me anything more?”

  Xandra turned to Jasmine, raising an eyebrow.

  Jasmine nodded, taking a deep breath before she spoke. “We aren’t certain of much, save that the monsters first appeared three days ago, no, four days now, when a strange darkness covered the country from horizon to horizon. I’ve heard that they spread from Meladon Forest, which is near the center of Loth. With as long as it took for word to reach us, I’m not certain of much more than that, and I suspect the first people to notice the invasion must have died, since Lothdar was under a full-scale siege last I heard. I wish that I could tell you more, but that’s all I know.”

  “Hm, Meladon Forest? That gives me a lot more to work off of. Give me a minute,” Cain said, heaving himself out of his chair. He moved at a brisk pace toward the back door of his home, while Jasmine and Naomi settled down again.

  “Are the two of you alright? If you barely escaped Loth after that, you must have been moving quickly,” Mora said, her tone compassionate, and she waved at the tea set. “I could find something more than tea for you if you’d like?”

  “No, Xandra took us to the Grounded Galleon for lunch before this,” Jasmine quickly assured her. “And we’re both priestesses, so we dealt with the lingering injuries this morning.”

  “Though I am tired,” Naomi confessed, quite deliberately not looking in Xandra’s direction, the elf thought. “We got a full night of rest, but I didn’t sleep well, and after two days of running, I think it’ll be a while before I’m recovered.”

  “I warned you that not being able to run for long periods could get you killed,” Xandra told her, keeping her tone even. “Endurance is vital if you want to survive.”

  “We’ve been trying to work on that together. There’s only so much we can do when we have duties to attend to, though,” Jasmine said, lowering her gaze to the table. “I’ve been learning to defend myself, too. I just wish that it was enough.”

  Xandra opened her mouth, but Mora spoke first.

  “I know what Xandra’s about to say, but ignore her,” Mora said bluntly, glaring at Xandra. “She would say you needed to practice more, and make certain you can deal with whatever comes. I say that’s hogwash. Do what you can, and don’t beat yourself up over failures.”

  “That is not what I was going to say, so don’t try to speak for me,” Xandra replied flatly, a flicker of anger welling up inside her, which she firmly suppressed. “It just makes you sound like an idiot. Was Jasmine woefully unprepared for what she ran into? Of course. She has neither the skill nor the temperament for large-scale battle, her spells are so poorly cast that she wastes three times the mana she needs to… and despite that, it wouldn’t have made a difference if she had the skill. While I may think that most people are incompetent idiots, I’m not a complete fool either. Who would have expected an invasion that engulfed an entire country in a matter of days, and which cut off teleportation? That’s more than I would have expected, that’s for certain. So how am I supposed to criticize them for failing to stop it?”

  Mora stared at Xandra, her eyes wide, while Naomi and Jasmine watched as well. The shock in their eyes irritated her, and she sniffed, shaking her head.

  “Just because I don’t suffer fools gladly doesn’t mean I can’t tell when people didn’t have a chance. All the training in the world won’t do you a damned bit of good if you get knifed in the back. You may as well put a mountaineer in charge of a ship just before they get hit by a hurricane. Or maybe throw your average farmer at a dragon,” Xandra said irritably.

  “I still think it’s the biggest concession I’ve heard you make,” Mora said, a smile flickering across her lips. “Do I need to throw a celebration?”

  “Obviously you haven’t asked the right questions. I know that I have my limits. I simply work to make sure that when I run into a problem, I have things set up so that my skills can get me through them,” Xandra snapped. “And if you throw a celebration, it’ll just tell me which building to set on fire so I can reduce the number of idiots in the world.”

  “As if you’d actually do that,” Mora replied in amusement. “I know you better than that.”

  Xandra growled under her breath, her irritation growing stronger, but she couldn’t argue. While she didn’t like Mora pretending to be so shocked, the woman was the most tolerant of Xandra among her acquaintances. Aside from Dominick, anyway. The blunt battle-mage was the type of person she could respect, and after she’d thrown him through a wall he’d begun respecting her in turn. Not that he hadn’t nearly killed her first.

  “How long have you known one another?” Jasmine asked, looking between them curiously. “It can’t have been more than three years… that’s how long ago Xandra escaped the lower planes with us, after all.”

  “That’s a good question,” Mora said, leaning forward and idly tracing the edge of her teacup, creating a quiet resonance as she looked at Xandra, her gaze thoughtful. “I think about… two years at this point? Everyone was startled when you drove the wagon full of stolen goods into town and demanded that someone help you find the rightful owners.”

  Xandra shrugged, looking upward as she murmured, “That’s likely correct. While my sense of time is still skewed, the winters have rather starkly reminded me that I didn’t have to deal with cold weather for over a millennium. I don’t enjoy those months, even with the sea making them less extreme.”

  Naomi gave Xandra a sharp look, opening her mouth, but visibly bit back whatever she’d been about to say.

  “Has she done much good out here, then? We hadn’t realized she was so close to Loth still,” Naomi asked instead, looking at Xandra warily. That was just as well, in Xandra’s opinion. Naomi not trusting Xandra was just common sense, considering where they’d met, and how they’d interacted before this.

  “That depends how you look at things. It isn’t like Evren is a beacon of law and civility,” Mora replied, a note of amusement in her voice as she looked at Xandra. “That said, I do think that a few of the more… malevolent groups have decided to seek greener pastures after she arrived. While Xandra doesn’t actively seek them out, they’ve learned that she doesn’t hold back when she sees them trying to throw their weight around.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Jasmine asked, her eyebrows furrowing slightly.

  “She set a ship on fire when she learned they were carrying slaves,” Mora said dryly, causing Jasmine to inhale sharply, and Xandra scowled, interrupting.

  “After making certain the slaves weren’t aboard. Then I shoved it out into the bay, so it could burn without risking the entire docks. I’m not a complete idiot,” Xandra said, and sniffed. “At that point, they made the mistake of attacking me directly. I defended myself.”

  “Wait, and you’re still allowed in the city? The guards didn’t
do anything?” Naomi asked, her eyes huge.

  “Of course not. She destroyed an entire slaver crew on her own. No one paid the dockside guards enough to mess with her,” Mora said in amusement. “I think that a few of the people they associated with sent some assassins after her.”

  “Ones who weren’t fireproof,” Xandra added pleasantly, and grinned as Naomi blanched, while Jasmine’s cheeks colored. Behind Xandra the door opened, and the elf tensed slightly, then relaxed again as Cain spoke.

  “What’s this about being fireproof?” the man asked, a hint of concern in his voice. “I do hope you aren’t planning to set anything on fire in my garden.”

  “No, we were just discussing the attempts on Xandra’s life after the slaver incident,” Mora explained, grinning at the man. “Don’t worry, unless they decide to attack again at this point, your garden is perfectly safe.”

  “Good, as I host far too many guests here to risk it,” Cain said firmly while he approached. He was holding a large object in both hands, one covered by a red velvet cloth, and he set it down on the table, which shifted slightly under its weight, then the man removed the cloth with a flourish. It revealed a gleaming crystal ball resting on a stand.

  Xandra resisted the urge to smile, as she knew that Cain couldn’t help his flamboyance. It was something he did all the time, so it was practically an ingrained part of his nature at this point. Of course, then he ruined it by talking.

  “Within my crystal ball are visions of the past and future, of things incalculable distances away and those next door. Whatever it shows is always true, so watch carefully lest—” Cain began speaking solemnly, at which point Xandra interrupted.

  “Keep acting, and I’ll melt it,” Xandra said bluntly. “We’re not the impressionable nobles and merchants that you normally deal with. Jasmine is the holy maiden of the Phoenix Queen, while Naomi was a priestess the last I heard. We’re neither ignorant nor so wealthy our brains are dribbling out our ears.”

  Cain’s mouth snapped shut as he gave her a betrayed look, prompting a snort of amusement from Mora.

  “I thought you were already wealthy,” the alchemist teased, and Xandra rolled her eyes as Jasmine giggled softly.

  “Wealthy, yes. Mostly because I don’t waste my money on frivolous things. However, I’m not so wealthy that I’m willing to waste money,” Xandra told her, sitting back in her chair. “We don’t need a performance, we need information.”

  “How rude. I’ll have you know that the performance helps me focus on what I’m doing,” Cain replied, sniffing as he settled into his chair. “However, since you insist, I’ll set it aside. One minute, I’m going to search for a planar breach first. If that doesn’t work, we can look for a passage into the underworld, but that’s far more likely to give false results.”

  “I thought you said that it was all true!” Naomi protested, and Cain smiled at her reassuringly.

  “That’s because it is true. The problem is that there could be dozens of ways into the depths of the earth, but there’s no telling if my spell will fasten on the right one. There’s far lower odds of there being multiple passages to other planes of existence in that area,” the diviner explained, then his smile faded as he continued, “That isn’t to say there won’t be, though. This is why I wanted as much information as possible first. It makes it easier to remove the incorrect results before they even show up.”

  “Not to mention all of the other variables that go into such spells. Wrapping your mind around divination magic is… difficult. There’s a reason there are so few spellcasters who advance in that sphere, despite it being excellent for making a living,” Xandra said, inclining her head toward Cain as she added grudgingly, “While I may not enjoy his accompanying performance, Cain is the best diviner I can remember meeting. I admire his ability to make sense of how the magic works.”

  “Why thank you. I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Cain said, his eyebrows rising as he exchanged looks with Mora.

  “Don’t get used to it. If I praise you too much, you’ll likely turn into a gibbering imbecile like Danford,” Xandra replied, her tone scathing, and both of them laughed.

  “We’ll keep that in mind,” Mora murmured, and Cain nodded.

  “In any case, the main thing about divination is that anything in the past or present is comparatively easy to discern. You give the magic enough details to work off of, and it can find anything as long as it isn’t being concealed by another effect,” Cain explained to Naomi patiently. “The future, though… that’s a lot harder. You aren’t going off of things that already exist, you’re going off of what might happen. How likely is it that a storm will wreck the shipping in the Sea of Mists, or that it might ruin crops across the countryside? How likely is there to be a war where a merchant is trading? It’s all based on probability, and most people have a shaky grasp of that. For me, it’s easy. Not so for other people.”

  “Ah. I think I get the idea. Like… like how the spring rains usually come by the beginning of Springmist, but sometimes they come earlier or later than that,” Naomi ventured, nodding slowly, and Cain grinned.

  “Exactly! If you keep track of when it happens in an area, you can see trends, and calculate when the rain will come more accurately. And with divination magic, if you have a grasp of how to do that, it can also calculate all of the things you can’t see to give you a very accurate idea of what will come,” Cain said, and nodded at the orb. “That’s what I do, really. I figure out where things are, were, or where they might end up. Now, I’d best get to work before Xandra rips my head off.”

  “I wouldn’t rip it off. That would be far too messy,” Xandra replied mildly, a smile tugging at the edges of her lips, though she resisted the urge to laugh. She was mostly amused that he’d given the explanation to Naomi.

  He gave her a sour look, but after another moment Cain focused on his crystal ball and began to chant. The spell was quick and elegant, even if it had a few tiny elements of illusions woven into it, which surrounded the orb with a thin mist. Xandra would have been more annoyed if the spell wasn’t so perfectly polished that there weren’t more than a few threads of stray mana filtering out from it. One of the things she’d noticed was that priests and priestesses tended to be a lot sloppier with their spells than other types of magi, which led them to waste more mana. Cain didn’t do that, which Xandra appreciated.

  Jasmine sat forward in her chair, her gaze fixed on the orb, while the others watched curiously as well. Xandra wasn’t an exception, though she was more relaxed than the others were. If a disaster was about to strike Loth, that was simply how things went. She wasn’t going to get upset about it, since it wasn’t her home and she’d seen similar things far too many times over the years. Perhaps seen was the wrong term, she corrected herself a moment later, but she’d certainly heard about them from her Mistress, as well as seen some of the results.

  An image slowly took shape in the orb, one that wasn’t as clear as Xandra had expected. She saw a forest shrouded in darkness, with an open glade at its center. The glade had two trees in it, their branches arching upward to meet one another, and between them was a shimmering green light. From the light emerged thorned plants like those she’d destroyed the previous day, marching in rows, while a male figure with dark fur and glittering amber eyes watched them. Xandra’s eyebrows rose at that, slightly surprised to see one of the fair folk, but at the same time she wasn’t that surprised. She’d been afraid of an extraplanar invasion, and the fair folk… well, if one offended them, sometimes their response was completely out of proportion to the insult given. There were also a few flickering figures near the edge of the orb, and Xandra was certain she’d seen something moving. Something she recognized.

  Then the fair folk’s gaze snapped upward, revealing a feline face, and it snarled something before the image in the orb suddenly winked out.

  For a moment the garden was quiet, then Mora spoke softly. “Well, that’s not good.”
/>   Chapter 18

  Jasmine felt her stomach knotting as she thought about what she’d just seen. The sight of so many creatures coming through what was obviously a portal was horrifying, but she wasn’t sure what to make of the feline humanoid. She thought it was one of the fair folk, but they varied in shape enough that she couldn’t be certain. She asked softly, “Is it normal for the vision to end like that?”

  “No,” Cain said shortly, sitting back with a hint of resignation on his face. “He must have noticed the scrying and countered the spell. That happens sometimes, but not often. It doesn’t look like Loth is in good shape, and I don’t think that we learned much. My apologies for that.”

  “Didn’t learn much? You need a new pair of eyes, apparently,” Xandra interjected sharply, her lips forming a frown as she looked at the crystal ball, continuing relentlessly as Cain’s cheeks reddened, “The portal was green and trees formed its confines, while a fair folk was keeping watch over it all, which almost certainly means that the other side is linked to one of the fey realms. We know that a twilight encompassed Loth when the invasion began, which indicates they might be from one of the dark realms. We can’t be certain which one, obviously, but there are other clues as well. Did none of you see the dryads moving the trees around the edges of the clearing?”

  The garden was silent for a moment, and Jasmine felt her cheeks heat as she shook her head. “No, I’m afraid not. I was watching the plants coming out of the portal, and… well, I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

  “Do the dryads matter? I didn’t see them, and dryads have never been that big of a threat that I’ve heard of,” Naomi said, frowning a little, which prompted a snort from Xandra. Naomi flushed angrily, but visibly bit back her response

  “Anyone can be dangerous if they put their mind to it. Just because dryads aren’t known for their strength in battle like minotaurs doesn’t mean that they’re as useless as Vanreth. More to the point, if they’re moving trees, that indicates they’re up to something,” Xandra said, tapping the table slowly. “Depending on the tree, their roots can go deep, or they can shatter stone, given time. Perhaps they might be targeting the walls…? No, that seems unlikely. The trees would be in danger. Some dryads can effectively teleport between trees, so that’s another avenue of attack. The problem is that we don’t know enough.”