Trial of the Thaumaturge (Scions of Nexus Book 3)

by Gregory Mattix

  After a moment, Creel lowered his head again, evidently unable to see her. He must have sensed me somehow. Now, where are they keeping Sianna?

  She passed through the wall of the nearest tent, finding more men dicing and drinking within. In the next tent, men were snoring in their sleep.

  Then she reached the largest, the apparent command tent, and inside she found Sianna. The queen was chained to a pole by a manacle around her ankle and lay on a cot at one side of the tent, curled up and facing away. A blond woman sat on the ground beside her cot, elbows on knees and head lowered, hair obscuring her features. A dozen or so officers sat around a large table, eating, dicing, and drinking liberally, judging by several decanters of wine on the table.

  Excited at finding Sianna and the others, Mira passed through the wall and back outside. She concentrated until she could make out the faint golden tether leading back to her body. Following the golden thread, she raced back toward her companions.

  Passing near a campfire, she noticed a group of Nebarans standing and pointing into the darkness. Mira looked up and saw red and green bursts of fire alternately streaking across the night sky in the direction of where she had left her friends.

  There’s trouble, and I’m unable to protect Taren! Fear gripped her, and she redoubled her pace.

  ***

  Taren was speaking with Sirath when Mira suddenly came awake with a jolt. She sprang to her feet, hands raised defensively and casting around for danger.

  “Easy, Mira,” he said.

  “Taren?” She saw him and relaxed visibly although not completely, regarding Sirath with distrust.

  “It’s all over now,” he replied, pointing at the seared corpse of Scaixal lying in the grass. “Sirath saved us from being ambushed by that fiend.”

  Mira exhaled in relief. Then she clutched his arm with about as much excitement as she ever exhibited. “I found her! And you won’t believe who else.”

  “Creel. And some other men,” Taren said wryly.

  Her eyebrows rose in surprise. “Yes. How did you know?”

  “Sirath told us of their failed rescue attempt three nights ago.”

  “Oh. Well, Rafe is with them and three others whom I don’t know.” She explained the layout of the camp—where Sianna was being held and Creel and the others chained up.

  Taren nodded thoughtfully. “We shouldn’t tarry much longer. I suspect they’ve already seen the spell effects lighting up the sky and will send a patrol to investigate. Are you ready?”

  “Ready as ever,” Mira replied. “And yes, they have taken note of the magical battle.”

  “Again, you have our gratitude, Sirath,” Taren said.

  “I wish you good fortune, Neratiri’s son.” Sirath pumped her wings and sailed gracefully up into the sky and was lost in the darkness.

  “All right, then,” Taren said. “I hope to be able to free Sianna and our friends and gate all of us out of there. However, that takes some time as well as a large mana expenditure, so I might not be able to do so, depending on how many of them we have to fight. If that plan fails, then we’ll try to escape by any means necessary. The Nebarans will be on their guard now that something is amiss, so we need to try to be in and out as quickly as possible. Anything I haven’t mentioned?” When Mira and Ferret shook their heads, he added, “Stand close to me.”

  The two women both moved close beside Taren, and he drew steadily on the earth magic, forming a disc of force as Nera had said his father had used to good effect in the past. He’d done it once before in training but only to move himself a short distance. The principle is the same. He guided them to step forward until all three were on the disc. Concentrating, he levitated the platform into the air then sent it scudding forward several feet off the ground. Mira adjusted her stance nervously, planting her staff for balance.

  “We’re flying!” Ferret sounded awed as she clutched his arm.

  Taren grinned in exhilaration. We need to go higher. If we’re lucky, they won’t see us then.

  As they drew nearer the camp, he raised them higher into the sky until they were sailing about a hundred feet above the ground. A mounted patrol of about a dozen Nebarans were riding in the general direction whence they’d come, going to investigate the earlier battle. With Taren’s and Mira’s horses fled, the patrol would find only the corpse of Scaixal out there. He held his breath, but the horsemen didn’t look up, instead focused on the way ahead of them. Taren and his friends passed over the perimeter of the encampment, where more nervous sentries stood peering into the night, unaware of their passage.

  “Ready yourselves. I’ll take us down onto the parade ground. I’m going for Sianna. Mira, stick with me. Ferret, try to free Creel and the others.” With his second sight, he studied the hill at the center of camp with the officer pavilions but saw no hidden dangers other than a large number of soldiers assigned to the surrounding tents.

  Nothing we can’t handle. I hope.

  He eased them down right in front of the command pavilion Mira pointed out. They were literally on top of the guards posted at the pavilion entrance when they were spotted by a guard across the parade ground, who shouted a warning. Mira leaped off the platform, still three or four paces in the air, and attacked the pair outside the command tent. Her foot slammed down atop one man’s head, snapping his neck and felling him instantly. The second man cried out in alarm, reaching to draw his sword. Mira landed nimbly then jabbed him in the throat with the butt of her staff. He choked and staggered away. She cracked him in the head with a swing of her staff and he dropped, unmoving.

  Ferret sprang off the opposite edge of the disc, racing toward the prisoners.

  Taren saw Creel glance up, clearly astonished at their appearance, before he turned his attention toward Sianna’s tent. He dispelled his disc, then Mira led the way through the tent flap, with Taren right on her heels. The stink of pipe smoke and unwashed bodies struck him the moment he got inside. Their entry elicited startled curses from a dozen men already rising to their feet from around a long table, roused by the guard’s cry. The Nebarans drew steel and moved to engage.

  He spotted Sianna to his left, lying on a cot. She sat up, alarmed by the sudden commotion. Iris glanced up from where she sat on the carpet beside the cot, looking equally startled.

  Then the guards were upon them. An alarm bell began sounding somewhere, clanging loudly. Taren thrust out one hand, sending a wall of force before him like a battering ram. Six guards rushing him were lifted off their feet and thrown backward into the table, overturning it and spilling men, dice, stacks of coins, wine goblets, and the remains of a meal all onto the floor. A pair of officers who hadn’t rounded the table yet were also slammed backward, colliding with the rear tent wall and ripping it open as stakes tore free of the ground.

  Mira became a spinning whirlwind, staff and fists and feet lashing out. Men either fell before her or staggered away, stunned and battered. One man grabbed the monk’s arm, but she dipped low and pulled, hurling the man over her hip and onto the ground. A swift blow to the face from the butt of her staff stilled him.

  “Taren!” Sianna was on her feet, running toward him, Iris a few steps behind. The queen’s face registered hope and fear.

  Sianna’s chain snapped taut when she reached the end of its length, secured as it was to the tent pole. She would’ve fallen had Taren not caught her in his arms. She hugged him fiercely.

  “I knew you’d come—I had faith. They let me keep the stone you gave me.” Her eyes were shining, and she looked beautiful despite the dark circles under her eyes and mussed hair, still darkened from the dye she had used to disguise herself back in Llantry. “But Nesnys… she knows about the stone! This is another trap!”

  He briefly hugged her back then released her. “Right. We have to go. There isn’t much time.”

  “What about Creel and the others?” Sianna asked. “They yet live, I think.”

  “Ferret is freeing them.” Taren knelt down and gripped the mana
cle around Sianna’s ankle. With a push of magic, he tried to shatter the steel, but it resisted, throwing off sparks, the magic rebuffed.

  Magically strengthened. Trying another approach, he felt out the enchantment, sensing the bindings of power and durability, a remarkably complex spell that he didn’t have time to fully decipher. He simply unmade the layered enchantments, absorbing the spell as easily as he would the earth magic. The spell unraveled, turning the manacle to ordinary steel. He started as something reverberated at the edge of his senses a moment, and he cursed, realizing the manacle must have had a warding among its layered enchantments.

  Nesnys will know now—we need to hurry.

  The manacle shattered easily from his magic, and Sianna was freed. Iris was bound with an ordinary chain, which he broke also. Sianna quickly scooped up a short sword that had fallen during the fighting. Iris followed her lead and recovered a dagger.

  Mira stood over a pile of fallen soldiers, a trickle of blood running from the corner of a split lip. Another cut bled on her arm. The tent was free of attackers for the moment. A number of men lay groaning on the ground, while others were unconscious or dead.

  “Mira? Are you all right?” he asked.

  She nodded. “More are coming.”

  Shouts and the drumming of booted feet sounded outside the tent. Taren looked about with his second sight and saw many more approaching. The whole camp seemed to be charging the hill. Ferret was still freeing the others on the parade ground nearby.

  “Quick, outside to the field,” he said.

  “Just a moment.” Sianna ran to a large chest and threw it open, then lifted out an armful of weapons. Iris went to help her.

  There’s too many of them. I won’t have time to open a gate. We’ll have to do this the hard way. Taren took a deep breath and stepped back outside, only to face an army of soldiers.

  ***

  Creel stared at Ferret uncomprehendingly as she ran up to him.

  “Ferret?” he finally managed.

  “Aye, it’s me, Dak.” She couldn’t form a smile but felt one warming her on the inside all the same.

  The nearest pair of soldiers rushed her, one with a spear, the other a sword. She grabbed the spear in her hand and easily ripped it out of the man’s hand. The other stabbed at her, the blade tearing her bulky tunic and deflecting off her breastplate. She spun the spear in her hand like a staff and cracked the swordsman in the head with it hard enough for the wooden shaft to break. The stunned spearman groped for his sword, but she stepped up and punched him in the chest. Bone crunched as he was launched into a nearby tent.

  Ferret turned back to Creel. She grasped the links of chain attached to his wrist manacles and snapped them easily in her hands. She freed Rafe next then the other two humans and finally the dwarf on the other side of Creel.

  “Gods, it’s good to see you, Ferret,” Rafe said with a grin. He rubbed at the loop of steel chafing his wrist.

  “Here come the reinforcements,” the dwarf growled.

  Ferret whirled to see a dozen or more soldiers rushing at them from all directions. The other posted guards must have hesitated after seeing how easily she had dispatched the first two, until they had more favorable numbers. Creel intercepted one man, seizing his sword arm. The two wrestled a moment before Creel threw his opponent to the ground, then punched him in the face a couple of times and came away with the Nebaran’s sword. Ferret grabbed the nearest wooden pole, eight feet in length and as thick as her waist, and ripped it from the ground. She swung it like a gigantic club and blasted the nearest three attackers off their feet. She waded into the knot of charging Nebarans, swinging the pole and sending men flying with each blow. The rest quickly wised up and retreated out of her range.

  By then, Rafe and the other prisoners had all recovered weapons from the fallen men. They formed a defensive ring as more soldiers poured out of nearby tents. An alarm bell was ringing somewhere, summoning ever-increasing numbers of reinforcements.

  Gods, there must be more than half a hundred of them! Ferret fell back to defend Creel and the others while the soldiers moved to hem them in with a ring of steel.

  The command pavilion abruptly ballooned outward and tore free of its moorings then flew across the clearing to smother a large group of soldiers. Men cursed and blades poked through the canvas as they sought to free themselves.

  If Ferret had still had a heart, it might have soared at the awesome sight of Taren striding toward them across the field, his eyes blazing like stoked coals. Mira, Sianna, and Iris were a few steps behind him. Taren threw his hands in the air, and a curtain of fire billowed up from the ground, crackling and streaking across to encircle the entire clearing. Tents instantly caught fire around them, and men shrieked in pain and cried out in fear. About a dozen Nebarans remained trapped inside the ring of flame, the bulk of their numbers trapped on the outside. The soldiers remaining inside the ring regarded the mage warily, balking at Taren’s display of magic.

  “We have your weapons,” Sianna announced. She and Iris carried armloads of swords and other arms.

  Creel and the others gratefully reclaimed their weapons. The monster hunter kicked off his one boot so that he was barefooted rather than wearing only a single boot.

  Ferret saw one group of soldiers circling around to join their comrades. She charged them, the wooden post held horizontally in her hands. One soldier lost his nerve and turned and leaped through the curtain of fire. His clothes ignited instantly, and he tumbled to the ground, crying and thrashing around. The other four stood undecided, so Ferret decided for them. She plowed into them, the thick post knocking them back into the flames. One man dove aside, and when she turned to level him as well, he threw down his sword.

  “I surrender! Mercy!” He dropped to his knees, hands raised.

  “Like you’ve shown mercy on the Ketanian people?” she growled, slowly advancing.

  Pleading, the man’s eyes went to the others then to his fellow soldiers, but he found no help there. Instead, Creel, Rafe, and the other former prisoners were cutting the remaining soldiers down. Three men surrendered and were herded over near the posts.

  “Ferret,” Creel called. He shook his head when she glanced over. “He’s surrendering, lass.”

  “They’ve murdered and pillaged their way across the countryside. I’ve seen their mercy in Ammon Nor and Mitterwel.”

  “Aye, but their leaders are the responsible ones. This lot likely just does as they’re told, afraid to disobey or desert. We’re not like them.”

  Ferret sighed and lowered the pole, knowing Creel was right. To have the strength to fight back against these invaders felt tremendous, even though the price of doing so was the loss of her humanity. She gestured sharply with the pole, and the soldier scurried over to join the others who had surrendered.

  Creel nodded in approval then turned toward Taren with a smile on his face. “Well met, Taren! You’re faring a bit better than we did.”

  Taren smiled. “Yes, but this won’t hold them for long. We need to come up with a plan to escape.”

  “You don’t have an escape plan?” Iris asked, pulling free of Rafe’s embrace, her joy turning to dismay.

  “Well, I think I’ve expended too much energy to form a gate at the moment. We did have a couple horses until they bolted when a fiend attacked us out there in the darkness.” He shrugged. “How did you all get here?”

  “We had horses too,” Iris replied. “After the men were captured, they sent out patrols and found me and the horses waiting. They brought me to join Sianna, and the horses were added to their stables.”

  “So we take more from the paddock,” Creel said.

  A man Ferret didn’t recognize approached Sianna. He was beaten pretty badly, but she saw he’d have been handsome normally, almost pretty. Rafe and the dwarf scowled at him.

  “Sianna, I plead for your forgiveness.” The man fell to his knees before her. “Allow me to prove my worth to you once more, my love.”

&
nbsp; Sianna’s face was hard to read as emotions flashed across it, but Ferret thought she saw affection replaced swiftly by anger and then disgust. “Now is not the time, Sir Edwin. See us valiantly to safety, and then perhaps I shall listen to what you have to say.”

  Sir Edwin bowed low, his forehead nearly on the ground. “I shall sacrifice all to regain your favor if that is what it takes.”

  The dwarf snorted beside Ferret. When she looked at him, he nodded at Edwin. “Bastard had the chance to get to yer queen, but he turned tail and fled to save his own skin there at the end.” He spat on the ground then stuck out a hand. “Name’s Kulnor Strongaxe, of Silver Anvil Hall.” He looked at her curiously but didn’t remark on her appearance.

  She liked him for that and shook his hand. “Ferret.”

  “That’s Jahn over there.” He pointed at the last man, an older veteran, by the look of him, who was watching over the Nebarans who had surrendered.

  “And that’s Taren and Mira. Friends of mine.” The two were huddled with Creel, Sianna, and Iris. Hopefully, they’re coming up with a plan to get us out of here. The ring of flames still crackled around them, but she could see the soldiers on the other side, waiting to get at them.

  A crossbow bolt suddenly shot through the curtain of flame, igniting as it flew. It struck an invisible barrier near Taren and splintered, the tiny flame guttering in the grass.

  “We’d better go now,” Mira said, looking warily at the soldiers milling outside the flames.

  Aye, let’s be away.

  “Everyone, gather round,” Taren called. “I’ll try to levitate us all—”

  The air suddenly distorted in the center of the clearing, next to where Taren and the others were standing. Creel cursed, waving for the others to back away. Dark shapes shimmered and then solidified into a group of cloaked soldiers surrounding a tall woman with black wings.

  Ferret felt a sudden rush of fear. Too late to get away now.