“I have received your good news that Barnesnob is sending forces to Avaleen to preserve the law. Wither, a member of your own forces, is on his way to request such help. When they meet, let him bring them back to Avaleen,” Silas proposed. “I look forward to seeing Barnesnob’s forces here.”
His message was complete, and he was pleased with the prospect of the Barnesnob forces already being in motion. Every following action would be able to happen that much quicker. He stood, wondering what to do next, then decided to go back to Lexy’s grave. He strolled back up the hill, then sat down on the turf next to the grave.
“Lexy, this part would be as tough for you as it is for me,” he spoke out loud. “You wouldn’t want to have to wait like this; you’d want to go right into Avaleen and destroy Maze. But I have to wait, and it’s not easy.
“It will all be for the best though,” he told the silent earthen mound next to him. “When Carlton arrives and Barnesnob arrives I’ll be able to finally do what I want.
“I wish you would talk back,” he said wistfully after a long pause. He felt restless.
Silas stood up. He decided to send a message to Amenozume, to let the island know that Barnesnob’s forces would be arriving to help Carlton. The nobleman was hopefully on his way already, sailing across the sea.
“Silas, a Speaker near Ivaric, is sending a Wind Word message to Sloeleen, the Speaker of the palace at Amenozume,” he began. “Silas is sending Word to Sloeleen.
“Barnesnob will send troops to Ivaric to help keep the peace after Carlton arrives. There will be forces available to help keep order while Carlton organizes the leaders of the nation,” he announced. And then he found he really didn’t have anything else to say. Without someone to respond, without a voice and a face, there wasn’t any satisfaction in speaking further. “This is Silas, saying farewell to Sloeleen, and all my friends in Amenozume.”
He walked back down the hill to the enlarged camp, one that was bustling with the arrival of the additional troops.
“Reese,” he caught the Barnesnob soldier who had been in his original squad, “do you want to go into the city with me to listen to the latest news?” he asked.
“Should you go in there?” she asked skeptically, until Silas explained the blindfold he would wear while she walked with him.
The pair were soon on the road and reached the city gates minutes later.
“Your blind friend seems to come into the city a lot, and it’s always with a different pretty girl,” one of the guards commented. “Why don’t you girls come in on your own sometime?” he laughed. “Of course, right now might not be the best time for a woman to enter the city unprepared – stay with us and we’ll protect you, at least for another day or so.”
“What’s making the city unsafe?” Reese immediately asked, pleasing Silas, who was just as curious about the comment.
“Maze has left the city, and he’s pulling out the whole Ivaric garrison. We gate guards will be about the last to leave the city the day after tomorrow,” the guard answered.
“Maze is gone?” Silas asked in astonishment.
“He snuck out in the middle of a whole brigade of guards last night,” the guard reported. “He’s on his way back to Ivaric, for ‘consultation’ he says, but we all know he’s running for his life to escape the Abomination,” the guard gave a brief snicker.
“Let’s go back,” Silas told Reese.
“Go back?” his companion asked in astonishment.
”Come on, it’s not safe here,” Silas excused the change in plans. He pulled on Reese, and they turned around to hurry back up the road away from the city.
“We have a change in plans,” Silas said as quickly as they were out of earshot of the gate. “I’m going to go after Maze. The rest of you are going to move into the city and keep the order as best you can until the Barnesnob guards arrive.”
“You have to take someone with you, someone to keep an eye out for you,” Reese protested. “Someone will need to stand watch with you while you sleep.”
“I’ll take Keen,” Silas answered, recognizing the merit of the argument.
“Better not to take him; he won’t want to risk capture by his former comrades. It’s better that you take me,” Reese told him.
“I knew that was where this would lead,” Silas grinned. “You’ve got training; it’s not a bad idea. Let’s go tell the camp and then be on our way,” he capitulated.
They returned to camp and faced a great deal of discussion before Silas ended the conversation and asserted his intent.
“I’m counting on your dream about Krusima to carry the day,” Jimes said as Silas prepared to leave. “I want to see you back in the city in a day or two with a fresh report of Maze’s demise.”
Chapter 22
Silas and Reese left camp and hurried to, then through the city, Silas using only a hood to hide his eyes while the pair passed through the thinly-traveled streets. The people of the city would return once they learned Maze was gone, the object of Silas’s anger, the two pursuers decided. They left behind a string of rumored sightings of the Abomination walking among the streets of the city.
They exited the north gate and began to jog along through the countryside, driven by Silas’s desire to catch Maze.
“How will we know that we’re on the right track?” Reese asked an hour after they left the city.
“We’ll just have to catch him before he tries anything tricky,” Silas answered.
“I wish we had a Tracker,” she spoke longingly. “We could go off on a wrong turn and never find him.”
Silas skidded to a stop. “I’m a Tracker. I could do it,” he took the suggestion seriously. “But I’d have to go back to the city and study some of his belongings or his home to get a sense of him.”
“We’d lose a couple of hours, but it could be worth it,” Reese looked at Silas.
He stood in the road as the sky started to darken, while he tried to weigh the choices.
“Alright,” he decided. “We’ll still have time to catch him. We can travel faster than him – I can see to that. Let’s go back and get his Track.”
They abruptly pivoted and began walking back towards the city.
“What exactly will we do in the city?” Reese asked.
“We’ll have to go to Maze’s residence, the palace or whatever place he was staying, and I’ll have to look at his belongings, touch them, get a sense of who he is, and that should be enough to set me on the Track to be able to trace him,” Silas explained. He knew the theoretical mechanics of how to begin tracking, though he’d never accomplished it himself. His ability to pick up a track had so far been limited to tracking people he already knew intimately well, which had allowed him to deviate from the typical manner of success. But he expected the usual manner to work fine.
The pair walked quickly, anxious not to waste time. By the time they reached the north gates of the city once again, they were perspiring heavily, and they were happy to slow down for their passage through the lightly-manned gate. Silas had his hood up, his face down, and though one guard seemed to stare at him, there was no alarm as the pair re-entered Avaleen.
“I think we’re being followed,” Reese told Silas five minutes later as they worked their way through the city streets on their way to the palace in the center of the city, where Silas assumed Maze had resided.
“Who is it?” Silas turned and looked back over his shoulder.
“The man in the red coat; he just ducked into a doorway when you looked,” Reese answered.
A wagon in front of them suddenly lost a wheel, causing a load of vegetables to spill across the street, confining traffic. A bell began to toll from somewhere nearby.
“Let’s get out of here,” Silas said, uneasy about the confining circumstances. The pair pushed their way to an alley entrance, and ducked quickly through to the adjacent street, where they resumed walking at their usual pace.
“I don’t see him following us anymore,” Reese confirm
ed to Silas a minute later. “I think we’re safe.”
Silas nodded his head, then suddenly grabbed hold of his cowl, as a strong wind blew through the street, pressing people backwards and knocking over vendors’ stands along the sidewalks.
A bright red light suddenly appeared directly overhead, only a few score feet above Silas.
“Reese, get back,” he urged instinctively. He pressed the soldier to one side, then bolted forward, trying to protect her by putting space between the two of them.
Silas! Wait!” she shouted as she tried to regain her balance, but before she followed after him, the red light in the sky dropped much lower. Men and women on the street screamed and began to run out from under the red light, except for one man whose back was to Silas, and who stood still looking straight up at the light.
Within moments, only Silas and the man were standing in the vicinity of the light, and it suddenly expanded into a red, crystalline dome, one whose sides dropped down to touch the street surface and the sides of the buildings in a complete circle around Silas, becoming a cage that trapped him and the other man.
“A trap has been sprung, unexpectedly, I’m happy to say,” the other man under the dome with Silas spoke clearly. He turned and faced Silas, revealing that he was Maze.
“We’ve learned that your strength is channeling the winds, so L’Anvien has graciously granted the use of his strength to cut you off from your weapon of choice,” Maze spoke. “And we’ve caught you here unprepared, through our ruse about a retreat from the city.
“And,” the evil warrior-priest continued, “we’ve found that the most effective weapon against you are the jewels of L’Anvien, drawn from his own mine into the depths of the earth in L’Anvien’s holy city of Capacal. Here are your jewels,” Maze suddenly reached into his cape with both hands and flung forward handfuls of glowing red jewels, throwing them all at his opponent.
Silas saw the hailstorm of evil crystals flying towards him, and he reached for his energy, and created a protective cylinder around himself. The jewels struck the opaque yellow cylinder – some exploded, some stuck to it, and some bounced off or dropped down, leaving Silas nearly surrounded by the evil red items.
Silas felt surprised at first, but as he accepted the circumstances, he felt his anger return. He thought of Lexy, now lying beneath the soil of Avaleen, and he remembered his vow to wreak revenge upon Maze.
He had pushed Reese away protectively as a reflex, a remembered new instinct that Lexy’s death had taught him – that to let others get too close to him in a moment of magical battle was to put them directly in danger’s way.
He felt clear-headed. He felt the impact of his anger upon his energy, focusing it directly upon Maze, and he felt a new release from worry and conflict. He no longer was consumed by thoughts about his relationships with Mata and Lumene. His awkward efforts to manage his feelings with the two women had receded into his past since he had left them so far behind, and since he had allowed his life to become so filled with the other pressing issues of his war against L’Anvien. He felt an emptiness, but also a focus. It was a trade-off, one that he might not always believe was best, but at the moment of the battle with Maze, it was essential.
Silas looked up at the dome above. He looked at his protective yellow cylinder, with the speckles of red stuck to it in several places. He could take action, and demonstrate to Maze that his dome was no impediment to Silas’s energy; he commanded the air within the dome to begin to swirl, and then to lift, so that the red jewels on the ground rose from the cobblestones of the street and flew in whirling motions, making Maze duck to avoid being painfully struck by his own devices. Despite his efforts, a few of the jewels did pelt him painfully, making him yelp, before they all were swirled around again into the center and stuck against Silas’s protective curtain.
Silas abruptly ended the wind storm in the dome.
“Is that the best you can do?” Maze sneered.
“No, but it’s something,” Silas answered. “I didn’t want you to lose all your jewels.” He refocused his power and rolled the yellow shield up, curling it in upon itself so that the jewels were all embedded and trapped inside the device, and then Silas flung the resulting circular mass upward, forcing it to stick against the interior apex of the red dome.
Maze shrugged, as though unimpressed.
“You still cannot access the winds outside this dome. You will find that your efforts are going to be neutralized, and then you will be neutralized as well,” Maze threatened.
Silas frowned at the assertion. He reached out with his power to grab a mass of cold air from the upper atmosphere and felt the air ready to react to his command.
“Drop down,” he whispered the order, and pulled a needle-thin thread of air down, a shaft intended to target and harm only one man, Maze. Silas pulled the air, making it pick up speed as it dropped from high above, so that as it reached the level of the city rooftops, a thin, screaming whistle was evidence of its approach.
And then it struck the red dome. The wind causing a loud cracking sound, an explosion of energy that turned the dome from red to pink, and made an indentation in the smooth surface of the energy. But the dome held, and fragmentary streams of the dropping wind shattered and dispersed in all directions, rattling windows and rustling flags and awnings in the vicinity.
Silas’s yellow ball of energy, holding the captive red jewels, shook loose from the top of the energy dome and fell to the pavement.
“And so now we see that you have lost your regular weapon, and cannot mount an attack,” Maze chuckled indulgently, as he felt himself in a position of strength. He gave a minute nod of his head, and the red dome shuddered, shrinking slightly, growing tighter and leaving less space for Silas to use or retreat within.
“So, let us see if you can defend yourself repeatedly,” Maze continued.
“L’Anvien, emerge,” he pointed at the yellow mass on the pavement, red jewels embedded in it.
Silas’s used yellow defensive shield shuddered, then shrieked as if it were a beam of metal being twisted mercilessly. A red jewel suddenly exploded upward, then hurled itself at Silas.
With a hasty wave of his hand, the boy used his own energy to stop the jewel. He had used a great deal of energy already, easily and without stress. But he began to feel the end of his unfettered access to his powers, and he realized that danger could strike. Despite his arrogant expectation that he would be able to fight Maze and rely on his own anger over Lexy’s death to drive him to victory, Silas realized that he faced a true struggle now.
Another jewel flew out of its trap, and it too shot towards Silas, only to be stopped by his defenses. Two more shot forth, and Silas blocked them as well. The jewels hung in the air in front of him, glittering and sparkling madly, expressing their malice towards him.
He held the four jewels at arms’ length. He knew he could fight off more, a few more, but not too many more. He was stronger, fighting better than he had when he’d been ambushed by Cinda in Heathrin, but he felt a limit to what he could fight.
He watched the collapsed yellow shield shudder once more, and he happened to notice the cobblestones it rested on as it released another of the captive red jewels. If he were as strong as the granite cobble stones, he would be impregnable to the jewels, able to ignore them as they bounced off his exterior; he could focus his energies on attacking Maze, as he fiercely wanted to do.
The cobblestones were strong, a foundation of strength. His mind suddenly recalled the advice he’d been given by Krusima in a dream, the suggestion that he “apply his powers to the foundations underneath people.”
It made sense; it was Krusima speaking from his own strength in the stones of the earth. And it was advice Silas could apply. He didn’t have to call the air down from above to carry out his attacks and defenses – he could also be like Krusima and strike from below.
Silas looked at the granite cobbles in front of him, and he focused his energy on one stone, a stone to which h
e gave a purpose and then released.
His energy roared beneath the stone, which trembled for a fraction of a second, and then blew straight upward faster that the eye could follow. The stone struck an airborne jewel from beneath and blasted the red stone straight up, then pressed it against the red dome ceiling above.
There was a squealing sound, and then a bright explosion, and the jewel and the cobblestone both exploded into a shower of fragments and dust, as well as blew a hole in the dome.
“What did you do?” Maze screamed angrily. “That jewel is a part of the great dark god’s own power! How dare you attack it!”
Silas grinned, then focused his attention on two more stones in the pavement, and wretched each of them upward at their unavoidable velocity, so that they too struck jewels and pulverized the jewels against the dome, which suffered further damage.
“That’s what I think of your dark lord,” Silas shouted.
“And here’s what I think of you!” he launched a flurry of stones from the street at Maze, and then he watched the evil priest busily cast his own energy out to knock the missiles aside.
“You can’t really touch me, can you child?” Maze asked mockingly.
It was time for Silas to finish off the man he had sworn to assassinate.
“Perhaps. How would you describe this?” Silas asked, and he applied his waning energy to the foundation beneath Maze’s own feet. The earth suddenly gave way beneath Maze, as Silas focused on concentrating his energy at the foundations that Maze stood upon.
The evil opponent plummeted downward into the hole that suddenly gapped beneath his feet.
“No you don’t – not so fast,” Maze shouted angrily. He focused his energy upon himself and he began to rise out of the pit Silas had created.
“Not so fast for yourself,” Silas shouted angrily. He began to launch more of the paving stones at Maze, firing them at high velocity just above surface of the pavement. The heavy stones truck Maze forcefully, crushing the bones in his torso and inflicting terrible damage.
Foundations Broken and Built Page 18