I stopped, and looked at it for a moment. Some of the soldiers followed my gaze, and a sergeant cursed.
“That’s coming from the Military District,” he growled.
I frowned. “I’m going to go take a look.”
I bounced up three stories on a burst of force magic, touched down momentarily on a roof and pushed up again. As I sailed high into the air I caught sight of the source of the fire. A complex of large, barn-like buildings were on fire. But there were men in armor running around, and… were those griffons on the ground?
I still hadn’t figured out stable flight, but I was getting decent at pushing myself around with force magic. I threw myself across the sky, lurching and bouncing as I went and counting on my healing amulet to keep me from getting nauseous. I could easily travel as fast as a car this way, and the city wasn’t that big.
As I approached it became apparent that this was indeed the griffon stable, and something was seriously wrong. One stable was an inferno, ablaze from floor to rafters, and a whole row of buildings next to it had all caught fire. The high-pitched shrieks of panicked griffons filled the air as their handlers fought to get them to safety. A group of knights and men-at-arms were forming a bucket brigade, but it obviously wasn’t going to be enough.
I dropped out of the sky next to a guy in fancy armor who seemed to be giving orders.
“Is there anyone alive in there?” I asked, pointing at the blazing building.
He looked at me like I was nuts. “No!”
I nodded. “I’ll put it out, so it doesn’t spread.”
I jumped again, getting above the crowd so I could get a good view, and threw an airtight dome of force over the stable. The flames burned on for a few moments, and then guttered out. But the wood was still hot enough that it would just re-ignite if I exposed it to oxygen. I needed to keep it out, and I couldn’t conjure water… sand!
I landed on top of the force dome, and started conjuring sand inside the barrier. Loose material was even easier than stone, and the remains of the building quickly collapsed as tons of the stuff rained down on it. But I spent another minute making sure it was thoroughly buried before I let the dome drop, and bounced back towards the bucket brigade.
By then I wasn’t the only effective firefighter. There was a guy with an enchanted jug that sprayed water like a fire hose, and a knight with a sword that could quench small flames with a gesture. But half the complex was still on fire, and they were struggling to keep the flames from spreading.
“Can you make more of those things?” Fancy armor guy shouted.
“Yes. But anything inside one of these domes will suffocate,” I warned.
He shook his head, and pointed. “Can you put a wall up over there, to keep it from spreading?”
Using force walls to contain the blaze helped. Using domes and conjured sand to put out burning buildings helped more, freeing up others to work on saving the stables that weren’t too far gone. But most of the buildings were only partly on fire, and still had live griffins inside. There was nothing to do for those but douse the flames one patch at a time, struggling to beat the fire back faster than it could spread. As we worked a steady stream of soldiers and laborers poured in to help fight the blaze, and at some point a couple of younger wizards with water magic added their efforts to mine. But even so it was more than an hour before the fires were out.
By then Prince Caspar had arrived, and was stalking through the ruins fuming with fancy armor guy at his heels. He spotted me, and frowned.
“What are you doing here?”
“I saw the smoke,” I said reasonably.
“I’m glad you did,” fancy armor guy said. “We’d have lost half the griffons without your help.”
“Instead we lost a quarter, and how many more will die of exposure?” Prince Caspar grumbled. “These buildings are supposed to be warded against fire, Sir Jon. How could this happen?”
“It was an attack, Your Highness,” a liveried servant I guessed was some kind of high-class stable hand diffidently put in. “A fire-breathing monster, like a giant fox with two heads. The first anyone saw of it the beast was running along the row breathing fire on the buildings. It killed half a dozen men along the way, either burned them or just trampled and bit them, then turned around when it hit the end of the row and went into the royal stable.”
“Where did it come from?” The prince asked. “Or failing that, where did it go?”
The man shrugged helplessly. The prince turned red, and I wondered if he was about to order the man killed.
“It sounds like the same beast that attacked the Conclave,” I suggested.
He turned on me. “What? What beast? Why haven’t I heard anything about this?”
Oops. Oh well, too late now.
So I told him about the Unraveler, and the fact that apparently some wizard the Conclave had trusted was walking around town with a high-level monster that was disguised as something innocuous. The tale didn’t do much for his temper, but at least it meant that his ire wasn’t directed at me.
“Oden-damned wizards and their secrets,” he fumed. “If they’d informed me we could have taken steps to protect ourselves. Damn it all. Look, can you whip up something to keep the griffons we managed to save from freezing when that storm hits?”
I looked up, and realized that sure enough there was another blizzard on the way. We had maybe an hour or two before it hit, but that ought to be enough.
“Sure. What about healing?”
He shook his head wearily. “It’s dangerous enough for their handlers to be near an injured griffon, let alone anyone else. We’ll dump healing draughts in the water troughs, and they’ll be fine in a few hours. But that doesn’t work against the cold.”
“Right. I’ve never built a griffon stable before, so I’ll need one of the men to show me what they need.”
Sure enough, it was a quick job. A big box of self-warming iron where each stable had been, with dividers inside to form crude stalls. The men carted in fresh hay to serve as bedding for their charges, who watched the proceedings with an interest that was a bit eerie coming from animals. When the first building was ready the handlers just opened the doors and made a few clucking sounds, and most of the less injured griffons got up and made their own way indoors.
One of the grooms noticed my gaze, and chuckled. “Uncanny, ain’t it milord? But it ain’t like we could keep them if they didn’t want to stay. They’re smart, and they don’t much like the cold.”
Snow started to fall a few minutes before I was finished, and the wind was picking up, so I decided I’d have to call it a day as far as outdoor projects were concerned. Although it occurred to me that the timing there was a little convenient. A storm arrives just a couple of hours after the griffon stables burn down? Just in time to finish off any injured animals that got out of the buildings?
But no, this was obviously a well-planned attack. No one even got a good look at the wizard responsible, and it happened at a time when there was no one present who was capable of stopping it. Coordinating that with something as random as weather was impossible.
Unless they were controlling the weather, too.
I made my way home with that disquieting thought on my mind. The attack on the weather circle, the sea serpent, and now this. It was all part of a coordinated campaign to prepare the way for whatever was coming. Some attack that the enemy thought could actually take this city, if they could open a few key chinks in the defenses.
There weren’t enough clues to say what their plan was yet, but my gut said we didn’t have much longer. A week, maybe two. Time for a few more bits of sabotage before the final blow. I’d enjoyed spending a few days making some magic luxuries for myself and my people, but I couldn’t afford to keep spending time on that. Not until this threat was dealt with.
“One more night,” I told myself. “Tomorrow it’s back to military research. But I still have a few promises to keep.”
Cerise met me at the gate
, her face tight and her manner more subdued than usual. She nodded to me, and followed me silently to the elevator.
“Are you still pissed?” She asked quietly when it started moving.
“A bit,” I admitted. “I wasn’t expecting Avilla of all people to play games like that. Not to mention that the prince is the worst possible person for her to be causing complications with, politically speaking.”
“It’s not like that,” she protested. “Seriously. I talked to her about it, and she didn’t even realize what she was doing until after it was all over. I think he had a charisma talisman.”
I frowned. “A what?”
“A lot of rich guys use them. There’s more than one kind, but all of them basically just make you seem more charming and impressive than normal. The thing is, Avilla was so sheltered growing up you were practically the first man she even talked to. I think she just doesn’t have any resistance to that kind of thing, because she’s never had the chance to build up any immunity.”
“I suppose that’s possible,” I conceded, although privately I noted that it was also a suspiciously convenient excuse. “For that matter, her granny might have made her that way on purpose. She certainly doesn’t seem to be able to say no to you.”
“Or you,” Cerise pointed out. “You know how she is. Just walk up and kiss her, and she’ll do anything you want. Look, it wasn’t intentional. She’s really embarrassed about making a scene, and we’re working on a new ward to protect her from that kind of thing. Just give us a chance to make this right, okay?”
I sighed. “It’s not like I’m going to kick her out or something. Look, you said yourself that she’s inexperienced. If she decides she wants to keep her options open and sow some wild oats instead of committing to this coven bond you’ve been pushing that’s her prerogative. But if she’s having second thoughts I expect her to say so. I don’t like surprises in my relationships, and I really can’t stand dishonesty.”
She frowned, studying me carefully. “You don’t care if she’s a slut?”
“Of course I care. I just think people have a right to make their own mistakes.”
She nodded slowly. “I get it. Are you going to talk to her?”
“Tomorrow,” I decided. “There was another attack today, on the griffon stables this time. I think things are going to get bad again soon, and I’ve got some promises to keep before that happens. You and Avilla have your rooms set up now, right?”
The way Avilla had laid out our personal quarters was as unconventional as everything else about this relationship. There was a whole area that could only be accessed by going past her kitchen and the private dining room. It held a private living room, a bathing area I’d built for us to have to ourselves, a couple of other rooms that currently had no use, and a hallway connecting five bedrooms. A spacious master bedroom at the end, and a pair of slightly smaller bedrooms on each side of the hall.
The three of us had been sharing the master bedroom, but I knew Avilla and Cerise had claimed the two rooms closest to it for their personal use. I’d seen furniture being moved in over the last couple of days, and I could see the sense in the arrangement now. Although I wasn’t entirely sure why they had two rooms instead of sharing one.
Cerise didn’t especially happy about my question, but she nodded. “Yes. Promises, huh? I guess this is Tina’s lucky night? ”
“She’s waited long enough.”
I sighed, and uncertainly moved to hug Cerise. She let me, to my considerably relief. After a moment of stiffness she relaxed, and hugged me back.
“Thanks for playing peacemaker, Cerise. Whatever else may or may not happen, you’re a good friend. Avilla is lucky to have you.”
“Same goes for you, big guy. Thanks for being patient. We’ll work this thing out, you’ll see.”
Then she grinned impishly. “Now don’t forget, Tina’s totally juicing over the idea of being turned into your personal sex toy with all kinds of dark magic bindings and shit. So put on a good show, and make her pass out at least once. Have you figured out a way to mark her like she wants? If not, I found this ritual that turns her shadow into a set of chains that’ll fondle her all the time to keep her hot, and tie her up whenever you want some action.”
I chuckled. “Never change, Cerise. But no, that sounds more like something you’d get off on. I think I’ve come up with something that suits her, and actually has useful fringe benefits too.”
“You’re just too much of a softie to actually do something like that,” she said. “That’s fine, I know how much you like Tina. I do too, really. Once you admit she’s not just a maid and make her your personal harem girl I’m totally going to seduce her.”
“I suspect she’s curious enough to let you. But that’s for later. Right now I need to see if I can make some real progress with Elin.”
The experiment with the disenchantment vessel had succeeded, eventually leaving me with a sample of ordinary non-magical mercury. The device took several hours to work, and I expected that the more material was loaded into it the longer it would take. But I was confident that I could keep the golem fragments contained long enough for the vessel to render them harmless, and it was only early afternoon. So I stopped by Elin’s room, one of the unfinished chambers on the floor below mine, and let her know I was ready to try for some real progress.
To her credit, Elin was considerably less perturbed by having to sit and watch me carve golem fragments out of her scarred body than I was by doing the cutting. She just put up a pain block and watched, fascinated, as I carefully made one incision after another.
“This is actually quite an ingenious technique, sir,” she told me. “Healers are usually so focused on not doing harm that it would never occur to us to simply cut out a problem area and replace it. I can see numerous other applications. Removing cursed wounds, for example, or extracting buried bone fragments.”
“Well, I can’t really claim credit for thinking of the idea,” I told her. “Back home this is fairly common. We don’t have much in the way of direct magical healing, but there are a lot of problems that the body can handle with a little bit of mechanical help. Skin can be sewn back together like torn cloth, and I know there are techniques for doing the same thing with a lot of other tissues. Blood vessels, tendons and even bones.”
Elin looked intrigued. “That’s fascinating, sir. I wonder if I could do the same? It’s so easy to exhaust my power when I have a lot of patients to heal. But the sight of dire wounds has never disturbed me the way it does people. If I could learn to do some of the mending with physical tools it might help me stretch out my magic. Although I suppose taking a knife to my patients wouldn’t do my reputations any good.”
I shrugged. “Saving the patient is the important thing. But you don’t consider yourself a person?”
To my surprise her chin came up, and the look she gave me was almost defiant.
“No, sir. I’m a monster to the core, and there’s no sense denying it. Blood and gore don’t disturb me because they’re really quite appetizing, and I’ve never lost the craving for human flesh. I feel the call of the sea as well, but I don’t dare transform. If I leave this shape for more than a minute or two I start to lose my senses, and revert to something more bestial.”
“But I can try to be a monster who does good, sir, instead of evil. I can heal people with my mother’s magic. I can command water when that’s needed. Once I’m healed I can shift loads that would otherwise take a crane to move. I just can’t let myself forget that in doing so I’m denying my own nature. I’ll always have to be on guard, so I don’t slip up and do something terrible.”
“Sounds like you and Cerise have a lot in common,” I commented. “She started out human, but when she kills a monster she absorbs part of its nature along with its power. It’s a constant struggle for control. We actually had to put a binding on her once, when she had to kill too many demons at once and lost control.”
“A binding, sir?”
�
�To be herself,” I explained. “Not a perfect solution, but it worked in the short term. She’s been using some secret techniques to gradually rid herself of the most problematic influences, and we have hopes that we’ll be able to remove it in a few weeks.”
I finished with Elin’s arms, and hesitated. “This seems to be working like I expected, and there’s room for more mercury in the vessel. What do you want to concentrate on next?”
Now she stared at the floor. “I’m concerned about the inclusions nearest my organs, sir. Some of them are large enough that they’ve been slowly doing damage, and that could go very badly if one reaches my liver or kidneys. But, um… it’s not a pretty sight.”
“I’ll survive, Elin. Let’s make sure you do, too.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll just…”
She unbuttoned her simple linen dress, and let it fall to the floor. That still left her pretty well covered up, between her underclothes and the bandages covering her many injuries. But I had to privately admit that it really was disturbing. Her whole body was badly misshapen, bent and twisted with no regard for symmetry or even functionality. She could very easily have featured in a horror movie, playing the part of an inbred hillbilly cannibal maybe. Or a mutant Neanderthal, considering her heavy bone structure and irregular patches of thick body hair.
But I’d seen that kind of thing in movies often enough to be a bit desensitized to it. I reminded myself that this brave, intelligent, remarkably selfless young woman sure as hell hadn’t asked for the body she was born with, and focused on the task at hand.
It was odd, though. With all of my previous patients I’d had a sense that their body was built to a logical plan, all the parts fitting together just so to create a functioning whole. With Elin it was like several different plans had been randomly jumbled together, forming a lurching ramshackle travesty of biology that barely even worked. A considerable amount of magic was tied up in papering over all the disjointed connections between conflicting plans, making body parts function in spite of a bewildering variety of mismatches.
Black Coven (Daniel Black Book 2) Page 20