Deceptions (Ascendant Book 3)

by Craig Alanson

  “This ship. This very ship,” Paedris whispered to himself.

  Reed took that as a cue, and an opportunity, to make his way out of the cabin. “If you esteemed gentlemen will excuse me, I must go on deck to see to the sails.”

  “Certainly, Captain Reed,” Cecil said dismissively, distracted by his thoughts. When Reed closed the cabin door behind him, the dark-skinned wizard from a land even more distant than Estada rose and selected a bottle of wine from a cabinet. That bottle was not chilled from having been lowered on a line into the water, but Cecil preferred red wine at a warm temperature anyway. And right then, he thought Paedris simply needed wine in his goblet, regardless of type temperature. “Drink this,” Cecil held up the goblet for his mesmerized friend, and gently shook his shoulder.

  “Eh? Oh, thank you.” The goblet was only halfway to his lips when Paedris paused. “This ship. This same ship! Cecil, surely that cannot be a coincidence, that we hire the very vessel Koren used to escape from Tarador?”

  “You are certain this boy ‘Kedrun’ is really Koren Bladewell?”

  “Who else could it be?” Paedris raised eyebrows in disbelief.

  “I agree wholeheartedly,” Cecil hastened to assure his fellow wizard.

  “You are our lore master, Mwazo, what could this mean?”

  “Lore?” Cecil poured wine for himself, swirled it in his goblet, then took a sip to test the new bottle. He nodded approvingly. “This is not necessarily a matter of lore.”

  “Cecil-”

  “I know what you are asking. Think on this. Koren returned from the South Isles because the Lady Hildegard was swift enough to carry Koren past a pirate blockade-”

  “With Koren’s help,” Paedris added with irritation.

  “Yes, then the Hildegard survived sailing from Gertaborg without Koren, and you purchased her because she is the swiftest and best-maintained ship in the harbor. Both Koren, and we, require a swift ship, so that part requires no coincidence.”

  “Is that what you truly believe?”

  “No. My intention was to remind you that not everything in this world requires magical intervention by the spirits. However,” he took a swig of wine and smacked his lips in appreciation, “even the skeptic in me finds it difficult to believe this ship was available to us, now, purely by coincidence. Also, Paedris?”

  “Yes?”

  “Koren Bladewell coming back into Tarador at this time can also not be coincidence. Just when our need is most dire, he comes back to us.”

  “Except he did not come back to us! He is,” Paedris pounded the table with a fist, “wandering the wilderness, and we know not where!”

  “We do know where he is going,” Cecil chided gently. “He seeks a dwarf wizard. We need only to look at a map, to see the best route from Gertaborg to the dwarf lands.”

  “No,” Paedris shook his head. He rose and rummaged through the captain’s chart locker to find the map he needed. Almost all the maps showed seacoasts, of course, as ships did not travel inland. Finally, near the bottom, he found a tightly-rolled old map of Tarador and the surrounding nations. Being careful not to damage the fragile old parchment, he unrolled the map and placed it on the table, using discarded soup bowls to weight down the edges. “Look here,” he jabbed a finger at the great port of Gertaborg. “From Gertaborg, Koren almost certainly traveled up the river. My guess is he wished to avoid crossing into Tarador on a major road, so,” his lips pursed in a grimace, “he could have crossed anywhere. None of that matters. I know when Thunderbolt, his horse,” he reminded Mwazo, “jumped the fence and ran away, the wind was from the northeast. Koren must have already been over the border and inside Tarador. The problem for us is that area is thinly populated with few roads, it is too close to the orc strongholds in the northern mountains,” he shuddered slightly thinking of Koren Bladewell wandering alone across northeastern Tarador.

  “Paedris, Koren seeks a dwarf wizard. We do not need to search all of northeastern Tarador, we can concentrate on the places he could have crossed into the dwarf homeland. Those cannot be many? I heard the dwarves have effectively sealed their borders to outsiders.”

  “Yes. Cecil, we can do nothing from here. Shomas and Captain Raddick are already searching for him, and now we know they are in the right place!” He clapped his fellow wizard on the back with a smile. “I begin to have hope again!”

  Cecil Mwazo forced a smile, while inwardly he felt a chill of fear. Most dwarf wizards would be with their army. To meet such a wizard, Koren would need to expose himself to danger at the front lines.

  Paedris stood staring at his wine glass, contemplating whether he could have another sip. “We know one thing for certain, Cecil. Koren has not yet found a dwarf wizard to speak with, or we would have been notified immediately.”

  Regin Falco left his hasty audience with the crown princess with his jaw set in fearful anger. After a brief visit to Kyre in the hospital, he returned to his fine apartments in the royal palace and removed his jacket. Flinging the garment on a desk, and poured himself a glass of whiskey, downing half the liquid in one gulp. Almost he reached for the bell cord to summon his advisor Niles Forne before remembering he could not discuss the issue, this one all-important, all-consuming issue, with Forne. His chief advisor was an amoral, scheming, sneaky, underhanded devious genius who had carried out many acts that even Regin considered unsavory, and had proposed other schemes Regin had rejected as going too far beyond the pale. But Niles Forne was at heart a Taradoran patriot and would never support Regin’s latest move to regain the throne for the Falco family. Would never allow it! In spite of his long, loyal service to the Falcos, and his family line’s service in the duchy before him, Forne would be horrified to learn his duke had joined forces with Tarador’s ancient enemy.

  In a rage, Regin swallowed the rest of the whiskey, then threw the heavy glass into the empty fireplace, nearly catching a shard in the face as it exploded back at him. Loudly, he cursed himself for his foolishness and weakness and immediately there was a pounding on the door. “Do you need help, my Lord?” The muffled voice of a guard called to him.

  “I am fine!” Regin wished the glass had cut him so he could feel pain at his own stupidity and weakness. “Stay out,” he ordered. The servants could clean up the mess later, and he cared not if any of those wretched underlings cut themselves. He reached for the whiskey, stared at the bottle, then slammed it down on the table. This was not the time to appear drunk or in any way compromised within the halls of the royal palace.

  Damn it! He had risked everything, everything, to do as the enemy asked. He had done exactly as the enemy requested, no, ordered him to do, and the enemy had failed! That evening, he should be pretending to mourn for the princess while consolidating his grip on power, rather than fearing that young wizard brat would discover his treasonous part in the assassination attempt.

  Stupid! He had been stupid, foolish, an idiot to trust the enemy. Worse, he had been a traitor to align himself and the house of Falco with Acedor. Now he was trapped, with no way to back out of his deal with the evil that was the power behind Acedor. From within the royal palace, he could not even communicate with the wizard that was his only link to the enemy. With magical wards around the palace, and a young wizard who had proved much more capable that Regin expected, the enemy dared not contact Regin within the walls of the palace. He would need to make up an excuse to go to the Falco mansion in the city of Linden, outside the gates. He would need to be in the mansion overnight, for the enemy only spoke with him in the darkest of nights. How to do that? With the attempt on the life of Tarador’s Regent, palace security would want all royal and important persons within the castle walls where it is easier to ensure their safety. He would need a very good excuse to stay a night in the Falco mansion, and he did not have any excuse at all. He sat down heavily in a chair, burying his face in his hands. If he did go to his mansion, a contingent of royal guards would insist on accompanying him, so he would have no peace there at all. He
needed to know soon, he needed to understand what to do next, and if anything-

  No, he slowly realized. He did not need to act quickly. If the enemy required him to act further, then the damned enemy could figure out a way to get word to him! Surely with the forces of Acedor still east of the River Fasse and a massive army poised on the western shore, the princess would be going back out to accompany the Royal Army on some ill-advised and ultimately doomed campaign. Regin had already heard rumors of the princess planning to return to the field soon, after assuring her position as Regent was secure within the Council, and after gaining promises of additional funds and troops from the seven dukes and duchesses. With the great victories of the past month, Ariana had to be supremely hopeful of getting whatever she wanted from the Council.

  Yes, Regin decided. What he could do, what he needed to do, was exactly what Chancellor Kallron requested! He would do his utmost to secure the full support of the Council for Ariana. The sooner she had such support, the sooner she would be away from the safety of the palace. Traveling in the field, even with an army surrounding her, Ariana would be more vulnerable than she was behind the thick walls of the palace. It was extremely unlikely Regin could bring magical devices inside the palace a second time, not with that damned blonde girl wizard watching everything like a hawk.

  Satisfied he had a solution to his immediate problem, he picked up the whiskey bottle again, then set it down. No, he was a duke, and now at least a grudgingly trusted member of the royal household. Why should he drink alone in his apartments? He would take his dinner in the great hall, at the head of the table, where everyone could see his great concern for the safety of the crown princess. A hearty dinner, with food and wine provided by the Trehaymes, when he could discuss grand strategy of war with Niles Forne. That was what he needed that evening.

  As to what to do about his larger problem, of having betrayed Tarador and his own family for absolutely no gain, he could worry about that later. “Guard!” He shouted. Someone needed to come in and clean up the shattered pieces of the glass, it would not do to have the duke’s fine boots crunching on glass shards as he dressed for dinner.

  Olivia was not able to get into the Citadel for two days after the explosion, the Royal Army engineers feared the internal structure of the tower had been seriously weakened and they thought the third floor might collapse onto the second. It took one day to carefully clean up debris and inspect the damage, then another day to shore up the third floor with heavy wood beams. By the afternoon of the third day, with the royal engineers still fretting that stones might fall away from where the window used to be, Olivia stomped a foot on the entrance to the Citadel’s third floor. “Sir, I must get closer to where the explosion happened,” she explained to the man in charge of the engineering team. “With every hour’s delay, the signature of dark magic fades and soon I will not be able to understand anything about the nature of the device that, as you tell me, nearly toppled this most secure tower!”

  The man’s face turned red, then white as he wavered between irritation at the young wizard rushing what was a very delicate operation, and fear that she had spoken the truth. The Citadel had stood for centuries as the ultimate safehold for the royal family within the palace, yet a single explosive device had significantly compromised the integrity of the tower. The royal engineers were dismayed and ashamed to see how weak the tower truly was, and they were frantically working around the clock to understand how they could make it strong as its ancient reputation held it to be. “Lady Dupres, there is still danger.”

  “Your people are in there,” she took a step forward and craned her neck around the man to get a better view down the hallway.

  “My people know the risks, and frankly,” he lowered his voice, “all our lives do not add up to the value of the only wizard in the castle. If you are injured, or lost,” he looked away, “then who will protect the princess?”

  Ariana knew the man was attempting to make her feel guilty about wanting to risk herself, and she was not falling for his ploy. “The best way for me to protect Princess Ariana is to learn what I can about the device that was used, and who placed it there. The agent of the enemy could still be among us!”

  “That,” he hesitated, “is a good point to consider, certainly.” If an enemy agent had placed additional devices of dark magic around the palace, he absolutely needed to know about that. “Could, perhaps, my people bring some of the debris out to you, here, rather than you placing your Ladyship at risk-”

  “Mister Crawley,” she protested and moved forward slowly, forcing the hapless man to step back. “I am a wizard. If the floor collapsed on me suddenly, I can fly out the window to safety.” For a change, Olivia could let a silly and annoying notion about wizards work in her favor.

  Crawley sputtered, then nodded and stepped aside. He had been about to remark that if wizards truly could fly, then why had Lady Dupres fallen into the moat with the princess, but he held his tongue. Rumor held that only magic could explain how the two girls had managed to avoid fatally striking the half-open drawbridge on their plunge into the moat, so if the wizard were injured in the unsteady structure, or even twisted an ankle on the wobbly floor, he knew the blame would fall on him. On the other hand, if the wizard found something that prevented another attack on the princess, that could only be good for Tarador, the Royal Army and Crawley himself. “Very well, Lady Dupres, I am sure a wizard can best trust her own judgment. Please, do be careful?”

  Olivia was bitterly disappointed and frustrated to leave the Citadel half a glass later, knowing little more than she did before she risked life and limb by making her way through the hastily-installed supports to the yawning, charred gap where the explosive had detonated. Mr. Crawley the engineer had not been overcautious as Olivia supposed, the third floor of the tower was indeed alarmingly shaky. To get close enough for her still-developing wizard senses to reach into the spirit world and detect anything useful, she had been forced to clamber among temporary scaffolding that bridged out into where the unfortunate door had been.

  One thing she knew was she had been just in time to save Ariana’s life, and that throwing the princess out the window truly had been the only way to save both their lives. Holding out her palm to shatter the window before Ariana was smashed against it had also protected them from the full force of the explosion, an unintended benefit of the spell she had instinctively cast in a split second. If she had not acted as she did, both she and Ariana would have been incinerated in the furnace-like heat of the explosion, likely after their bodies were crushed by flying pieces of the heavy steel-clad door to which the explosive had been attached. That was the fate of all the guards who had been protecting Ariana when the device exploded, the engineers were still engaged in the sickening task of picking up burned, crushed parts of the guards tangled in the debris on the first level.

  Olivia was not sure how to feel about knowing she had done the only thing that could have saved the princess. Should she be happy that her actions had been correct? Or should she be terrified how close she come to death? No, not mere death, she faced death every day. She should be terrified how close she had come to disaster for Tarador, for the entire free world. Perhaps a combination of happiness and terror was appropriate, along with one other emotion; anger!

  Lord Salva and the other fully-trained, fully capable adult members of the Wizard’s Council should never have placed Olivia in the position of being Ariana’s guardian. A half-trained young wizard who had barely glimpsed the potential of her power had no business being the sole, or even primary guarantor of Tarador’s future monarch. She felt like sending a scathing message to Lord Salva right that very minute. Except she did not know how to send messages through the spirit world, having not yet been given that training. Which was exactly why she should not have been thrust into a responsibility that would be a challenge even for an adult wizard!

  “What did you learn, my Lady?” Crawley asked, once they were safely out of the danger zone, on the
solid floor of the palace outside the Citadel.

  She shook her head and suppressed a shudder. “I learned the enemy wished to be certain the princess did not survive the explosion, that is why it was so powerful.”

  “The device sensed the presence of the princess?” Crawley guessed.

  “No. There are such spells, and the enemy is capable of infusing a device with such power. But those seeker spells are,” she used a work non-wizards could understand, “noisy. I would have sensed such a spell from inside the palace proper. My guess is the device was set to explode when that door was opened.”

  Crawley’s mouth gaped open. “The door to the inner Citadel is to be opened only in the presence of the royals,” his expression was deeply troubled.

  “Exactly,” she agreed. “The enemy somehow placed a device of dark and powerful magic in the most secure part of the palace, they knew the procedures of the guard force. They knew the guards were trained not to open that door until the princess was there and ready to be brought within the sanctum. I do not know which is worse; that the enemy smuggled dark magic inside the Citadel, or that they knew how the guards would respond.”

  Crawley appeared puzzled. “The guards told me they opened that door, to inspect the inner Citadel, only days ago. In fact,” he tapped a finger on his chin, “Duke Falco insisted the guards open the door for him, so he could verify the condition of the Citadel. Why did the door not explode then?” What Crawley thought and did not say was the door exploding the and killing the duke rather than threatening the life of the princess would have been preferable. Even desirable, to remove Duke Falco from the great game of Taradoran politics. While he would have been sorry if guards were killed, Crawley would not shed any tears for Regin Falco.

  “That is a good question,” Olivia admitted. The assassin had gained entrance to the palace through an aqueduct, by forcing open a cover held in place by weakened rings. Duke Falco had been in the tunnels also, could he have- No, Olivia pushed the thought from her mind. Sowing fear and suspicion among the powerful of Tarador was exactly what the enemy wanted. The idea of Duke Falco having set the assassination in motion was ridiculous; where could the duke have gotten such powerful dark magic? “Once set in place,” she explained, “the device could have been set to remain dormant for a set number of days, and the date of the princess returning to the palace was no great secret. Once the device became active, it would explode the next time the door was opened. A wizard should have inspected the Citadel, only through magical means could a device of dark magic have been detected,” she declared, having no confidence that she could have found the device even if she had inspected the Citadel. Madame Chu certainly would have seen the danger, but that powerful wizard from Ching-Do was in the field with the Royal Army, leaving Olivia to perform a vital task she was not trained or ready for. She shook her head wearily. There would be many more sleepless nights protecting the princess, and days spent tramping about the corridors of the palace, her senses open to listen for signs of magical intrusion.