Or so he thinks, I reflected. The wards were starting to open, as if the intruder had hacked the spellwork and keyed himself to the wards. He didn’t put me to sleep.
I inched forward, hiding behind an invisibility charm. My opponent was vastly more professional than the town guardsmen. He certainly wasn’t taking any chances. He’d wrapped himself in an obscurification charm, ensuring that anyone who saw him would think the slight moment was just a trick of the light. I would have been more impressed if he hadn’t been trying to kidnap a young woman and her child. He deserved every last moment of the beating I was about to give him.
He moved towards the caravan, parsing out the wards. I studied him back. He didn’t appear to be that powerful, although it was hard to be sure. He was clearly highly-skilled, with the sort of experience that could have - should have - found him a job almost anywhere. My eyes narrowed. There had to be a reason he hadn’t found a more honest line of work. Anyone willing to kidnap children from their beds was clearly a monster beyond redemption. Did he have tastes forbidden even to sorcerers? Or ...
I slipped out from under the caravan and hurled myself forward. His shadowed form seemed to jump back as he sensed me barrelling at him, too late. I crashed into him, grabbed hold and teleported us both outside the town. The forest appeared around us, trees lit up by the light of the teleport for a long moment before it flickered and died. His magic lashed out at me, trying desperately to crack my defences before it was too late. I’d caught him by surprise. He’d need to refocus his magic if he wanted to escape and he didn’t have time. I wasn’t going to give him any.
He bit off a word in one of the older tongues, languages the empire had tried to suppress before it met its untimely doom, then jabbed a finger at me. The curse was surprisingly weak, designed to worm its way through my protections rather than crack them outright. I squashed it with a thought, wiping the curse from existence. It was overkill - massive overkill - but it served a purpose. If he realised he was facing an immensely powerful opponent, he might just surrender.
A force punch slammed into my wards. Surrender was clearly not what he had in mind. The punch itself was harmless - it would have crippled a mundane - but he’d used the spell to distract attention from two smaller charms trying to sneak through my protections. It was impressive, I supposed, as I destroyed them both. My brothers and I had spent years sharpening our magics in endless duels - loser had to do everyone’s chores for a week - and we were good, very good. My opponent might be skilled, but he lacked the raw power to be a threat.
I could have drawn it out, but I didn’t have time. I lifted my hand, channelling a wave of raw power. He was picked up and thrown to the ground, magic sparking around him as it was redirected by my spells. He was still fighting - I felt his desperate attempts to get something, anything, through my wards - but his power was draining so rapidly his spells were fading into nothingness. The haze around his face blurred, then snapped out of existence. I found myself staring down at a completely unfamiliar face.
He looked back at me, fearfully. I said nothing, taking the time to study him carefully. His brown skin and dark eyes might mark him as a member of House Sejanus, but might likely not. He’d shaved his hair off, something that house regarded as a mortal sin. My eyes roamed over what little I could see of his bare skin. He wasn’t used to manual labour, I figured; his hands didn’t bear the scars of a childhood spent behind a plough or working in the fields. I guessed he was a merchant’s son, perhaps even the bastard child of a magical family. The latter was unlikely. He had real talent. Any family with half a brain would be happy to overlook his origins in exchange for his services.
“We can do this the easy way or the fun way,” I told him. “You can answer my questions, or I can use force.”
I waited, preparing myself. His magic was drained, but I didn’t dare rely on a truth spell. He might just have enough power to subvert it from the inside. It would be easy to control his body, to turn him into a puppet, but a great deal harder to control his mind. The defiant look he gave me suggested he’d had the same thought. He might have protected himself against normal means of interrogation, from spells and potions to simple torture. I’d done something similar myself. If done properly, it was easy to mislead an interrogator. They knew their subject was telling the truth.
My magic blurred into the ground below. Roots burst free, wrapping themselves around his arms and legs. I watched his eyes go wide, an instant before they were hooded again. He thought he could outwait me, that his magic would regenerate - in time - and give him a chance to escape. I shrugged and directed one of the roots to smack him across the head. He sagged. Taking no chances, I brushed a finger against his forehead and cast a sleep spell to make sure he’d stay unconscious. It wouldn’t be easy to use soul magic when he was asleep - it had its dangers - but it was safer than leaving him awake. I didn’t want him fighting me.
His nightmares will provide enough of a challenge, I thought, as I knelt beside his head and glanced up at the night sky. It was just past midnight. I had no idea how long it would be before my opponent was missed, but it wouldn’t be that long before the town started to rise with the sun. This has to work - and work quickly.
I rested my hand on his forehead and began the spell. It had taken me a long time to learn soul magics, even though I’d been told I had a talent for them. It was never quite as simple as it sounded, if only because one had to lower one’s own defences while reading another person’s mind. It didn’t take a powerful magician to shove a mind-reader out. I pushed down, feeling the first flurry of random thoughts and feelings brushing against my mind. I did my best to ignore them. The flickering images meant nothing.
Memories rose in front of me, trying to pull me down. There seemed to be little or no connection between them, as if the unconscious mind was darting from memory to memory without following a chain of mental links. I wondered, just for a moment, if it was a defensive spell, one designed to make it hard for me to pull anything from his mind. The images were so blurred it was hard to see, the mental undertow pulling me further into his thoughts. If he woke while I was inside him ... I’d heard horror stories that suggested it would be an utter disaster. I had to move quickly. His unconscious mind already knew something was wrong.
I saw a memory I recognised - Whitehall - and followed it through a chain of links that took me through a storm of other memories. My opponent - his unconscious mind insisted he was called Chuter - had gone to Whitehall, had studied there ... and had been expelled, after being caught doing something ... his mind shied away from precisely what. I knew it had to have been bad. The Grandmaster hated expulsion and only sanctioned it as the last resort, after scoldings, beatings and punishment details had all failed. What the hell had he done? I didn’t want to know. I’d seen students get away with everything from molesting younger students to attempted murder. One student had even tried to feed his rival to a vampire! What was so terrible the Grandmaster had kicked him out on his ass?
It wasn’t that long ago, I thought. His time at Whitehall was after mine.
The memories grew stronger as I followed the thread. Chuter had gone from place to place, seeking education. He had enough training to be useful ... particularly to someone who was often on the wrong side of the law. His apprenticeship ... I recoiled from the memories, shaking my head in disgust. The master had been thoroughly unpleasant. And yet, Chuter had learnt his lessons well. He’d killed the bastard, stolen everything he could from the shop and fled. Eventually, he’d ended up in Yolanda. He hadn’t been welcome. Someone had remembered him. And then ...
I frowned, inwardly, as his mind struggled not to surrender the next few memories. They came in flashes of insight, wedded to pain. Chuter had been recruited. His master had given him a set of very specific instructions. Kidnap people ... magical and mundane. Take them to a fort, far from the city. Hand them over and claim the reward and ... the memories veered suddenly, boiling with poison. Chuter had been
... I tried not to retch. I’d seen all sorts of horrors, yet there were limits. I gritted my teeth, keeping myself under tight control as I tried to catch a glimpse of the master. Chuter had seen him. He had to have. No magician with half a brain - and Chuter was intelligent, if vile - would have been happy working for a masked man. The risk of simply being left holding the bag was too high.
His mind screamed, then crumbled. I felt his memories shattering as I hurled myself out of his mind and back into my body. The world seemed to blink. I heard a grunt of pain, then nothing. Chuter was a limp bag of bones on the ground. Drool dripped from his mouth and pooled under his chin. I didn’t need to perform any tests to know his mind had been destroyed. He was well past any justice I might choose to mete out.
I swallowed, hard. I’d seen magicians doing all kinds of horrific things for power, performing rites that would make necromancers blanch, and yet ... Chuter had been particularly disgusting. I wanted to find a lake and swim in it, to tear off my clothes and scrub myself raw ... to go through the memories with a fine-toothed comb and remove any that weren’t strictly connected to my mission. I understood magicians who did horrible things for power, but doing horrible things because one enjoyed them ...
My stomach churned. I stood, commanded the roots to let Chuter go and searched him roughly before removing his cloak. His master had given him a keystone, as well as a charm linked to his blood. There was something oddly amateurish about it, as if whoever had cast the charm hadn’t really known what he was doing. It hadn’t been Chuter. I donned his cloak, took a sample of blood to activate the charm and then stared down at his body. He’d been a vile monster. He deserved worse. Far worse.
I blasted the body. Fragments of flesh flew in all directions. The local wildlife would take care of them, I was sure. It wasn’t a particularly respectful burial, but Chuter didn’t deserve one. What he deserved ... I shook my head as I turned and started to walk. The memories showed me where to go. I could be there in an hour, perhaps quicker. Chuter had probably had a horse, hidden somewhere nearby. I didn’t think he’d had the raw power to teleport or the stamina to walk so far before sunrise.
The trees seemed to close on me as I kept walking, silently comparing the memories to the maps I’d seen before setting out on the mission. The fort had been disused for decades, ever since the pass it guarded had collapsed and become impassable. Yolanda’s monarch hadn’t seen any point in keeping it manned, not when there was no way an army could get through the mountains and hit the kingdom from the rear. And yet ... something had clearly reopened the fort and done it without being detected. I was starting to have a very bad feeling about the whole affair. The fort was quite some distance off the beaten track, but it wasn’t that far from the city. It shouldn’t be possible to reopen the fort without being detected.
A dark wizard could have moved into the abandoned fortress and turned it into his lair, I told myself. And the kingdom could have been trying to ignore him in a bid to save face ...
It was possible, I thought, but unlikely. The king could have asked for help from the White Council. They might have sent me to kick the squatter out. Unless ... a nasty suspicion was starting to grow in my mind. It wouldn’t be the first time a king - or a minor noble - had turned a blind eye to a magician’s less savoury actions, in exchange for the magician helping to defend the town. I knew at least four towns in the heartlands that had offered themselves to various powerful sorcerers, preferring their presence to their more distant monarchs. And if this sorcerer had been kidnapping people from the town ...
The guard didn’t seem to be trying to search for the kidnapper, I thought. They were just concerned with putting on a good show.
The fort came into view as I reached the top of the ancient road. It was larger than I’d expected; a simple blocky garrison, a walled courtyard and a gatehouse that had clearly been refurbished in the years since the fort had been abandoned. A pair of statues stood outside the gatehouse, surrounded by magic. They were so perfect - they looked like guardsmen, standing at the ready - that I was sure they were transfigured humans. I’d seen that before, too.
I considered a handful of plans, then took on Chuter’s form and walked forward. The wards buzzed around me, then sensed the blood-linked charm and retreated. I smirked. I understood the value of having guards who couldn’t think for themselves - guards could be bribed or simply overpowered, as I knew from experience - but a thinking guard might have wondered why I hadn’t brought my victims. He might even have known Chuter by sight. I felt the wards grow stronger as I reached the door, a combination of aversion and fear threads designed to push intruders away from the castle. It would have deterred almost everyone, if they hadn’t been ready for it. I slid my mind into the keystone, using it to clear my way. The wards offered no resistance as I walked into the castle ...
Two guards stood, just inside. They were human, yet ... there was something odd about them. I thought they were enchanted slaves at first, but there were no charmed collars around their necks. They were just inhumanly still. Their eyes flickered at me, then looked away. I didn’t see any hint of independent thought in their eyes. What were they?
Hurry, I told myself. The wards were so heavy it was hard to sense anything, beyond a blurred haze. The designer seemed to have simply crafted an endless stream of wards until they were actively interfering with each other. Chuter will be expected somewhere. Where?
The memories suggested I was wanted in the office on the uppermost floor. I kept walking, feeling the walls starting to close in. There was no light in the corridors. My night vision spell kept flickering, as if the wards were interfering with it too. Whoever had designed the defences was either an idiot or a genius or both. I’d met a few brilliant spellcasters who’d been completely stupid, when it came to interpersonal relationships. It was hard to believe my aunt had been so idiotic as to marry so poorly ...
A door loomed in front of me. I peered through ...
... And found myself staring into hell.
Chapter Eight
Chuter had been a horrible person. Whoever had designed the scene in front of me was worse.
I stared in utter horror. The hall looked like a giant butcher’s shop. Bodies - human bodies - hung from the ceiling, blood pouring from their veins and pooling in glass jars below. They were alive and yet ... my eyes traced tubes running from high above, feeding yellowish liquid into their veins. It was hard to tell what they were being fed, but I guessed it was something akin to a nutrient potion. There were limits to what one could do with blood replenishment potions ... I shuddered, suddenly understanding why the mystery master had hired Chuter. If he was ready to break all the rules, laws imposed by the empire and later confirmed by its successors, what did it matter if he hired a vile monster? I felt sick. There was nothing I could do for the poor bastards. They would be drained of blood, then ... then what?
My stomach churned as I moved forward, slipping between the bodies. There were over twenty people in the room - male and female, young and old - and they were all being drained of blood. Why? I knew quite a few rites that involved blood, but this much? Did the mystery master intend to cast the rites time and time again? I found it hard to believe. Doing them once was quite dangerous enough. Something moved at the far end of the room and I froze, drawing my obscurification charm around me. Two men, clad in white coats, appeared from a side door and made their way to a dangling body, one that had expired, removing it from its hook with practiced ease and placing it on a table. My gorge rose as they hacked the body to pieces, carving it up as easily as a butcher would carve a pig. They bottled the organs and placed them on a trolley, dumped the bones in a sink to wash and pushed the trolley out of the chamber. I took a final look around, then followed them, keeping within the shadows.
The next chamber was no improvement. It was smaller, walls lined with shelves crammed with jars of potion ingredients. I hadn’t seen so many in one place since I’d left Whitehall. Smaller jars of human orga
ns were clearly visible, all carefully labelled by someone who knew what they were doing. I peered at the writing thoughtfully. It wasn’t Whitehall’s style. Mountaintop? Or Laughter? It was hard to imagine Stronghold producing a monster who could do this. Perhaps it was someone from the legendary Hierarchy. But everyone considered the Hierarchy nothing more than a rumour ...
I warily looked around, then slipped into the next room. It reminded me of an advanced alchemical classroom, with long tables lined with cauldrons, ingredient jars and everything else an apprentice alchemist might need. The men at the tables, dressed in the same white clothes as the butchers I’d seen earlier, were too busy to pay any attention to me. They were intent on their brewing ... my eyes narrowed as I studied their work. It wasn’t safe to brew potions by rote, yet ... they were doing it. I wondered what was keeping them in place. They didn’t look to be slaves. I walked around the chamber - half the trick of maintaining a successful obscurification spell is not doing anything that suggested you didn’t have a perfect right to be there - and through the next door. A grown man lay on a table, completely naked. His arms and legs were firmly strapped down, eyes wide and staring. Another man was holding an injector tube. As I watched, he pushed it against the other man’s neck and triggered the spell. I grimaced. Anything that needed to be injected like that was bad news.
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