by Bob Blink
As he examined the tender spots that were already bruising, he knew he’d have been killed without the vest. When he’d been hit, he’d felt the sharp blows but he’d been fully engaged in the battle and had tried not to react and show any sign he’d been struck. Never give your enemy any indication of your status if it could be helped. Now he’d like to call for the healers to heal the damage and relieve the pain, but was concerned that word might get out. He was sore, but not really damaged, so it might be best to accept the pain as a worthy lesson and let it heal on its own.
If he learned nothing else from the two bruises, he now knew for certain that he was no more immune from being killed by the copper projectiles than any other wizard. His great powers couldn’t protect him, and if the bullets that struck his back had been directed at his head, he would have been killed this day. It was something to keep in mind when planning future actions. As much as he would love to jump into the midst of his enemies and destroy them with his power, they had made it clear they had some of the metal that meant anyone, even a lowly commoner, could kill him with a carefully placed shot. He would have to continue to send others into the front, and try and devise a way he could confront his enemies but be safe from the weapons they carried. The bruising he’d received today had come from one of the small hand weapons. He shuddered to think what might have happened had he been shot with one of the more powerful long guns.
Satisfied for the moment, he slipped on his robes once again and made his way back to the room where he’d held the woman prisoner for so many months. He’d made a serious mistake in judgement with regards to her. The woman had tricked him. While acting as if she’d been beaten by her captivity, she’d been busy finding a way to escape her cage. He wondered how long she’d been able to get out, and what she might have learned and done while everyone thought her safely locked up. How much damage had she done that they had yet to discover? He had no doubt she’d been out before. It would be simply too great a coincidence that she’d been able to get out for the first time at just the right moment to interfere with his mind pairing. It irked him that she had escaped. He thought he knew how, which represented another problem Ale’ald faced.
Cheurt ran his hands over the bars of the cage, sensing the power flowing within. His mind sent sensors to check the whole. At first he was surprised, finding all of the bars flowed with power as expected, but then he picked up small discrepancies. The amount of power was a little low in one spot, and a little too high in another. He mapped the flows building a mental picture. Before long he understood what she had managed to do. She was clever beyond words. The cage looked intact, but not only was there a section where she could step past the constraints of the cage, she had built a small zone in the cage near where she sat most of the time that was open to the power. This hadn’t been done quickly, and must have been possible because of some flaw in the cage. Cheurt was willing to bet that she wouldn’t have been able to do this with the original smaller cage he’d had her in. He slammed his hands on the bars and then walked away.
He made his way back into his private rooms and opened the secure storage where he kept items that needed a bit of extra care. Inside was a small leather bag, which he carefully withdrew. He sat at the small table, his staff in his right hand, his left clasped around a bundle of the loose hairs that he took from the bag. Jolan had been careless, most likely from ignorance, to let some of his body be left undestroyed. It had taken Cheurt’s mole a very long time to gain access to the cast off clippings from his haircut some time before and months for the bag to reach him. He’d only had it for the past couple of weeks. It had already paid off. Cheurt routinely burned his own hair and nail clippings against just such intrusions. With his staff Farsight and the products of Jolan’s flesh, Cheurt could create a vision of where the man was at present, seeing what and who surrounded him. The visions were very short, and could only be performed once a day under the best of conditions, but had already given him advance warning of what to prepare for. He’d seen Jolan in Ale’ald a couple of days ago. He’d also seen him in Cobalo a day later. The visions seemed contradictory, but were consistent with some of the reports he’d received over the past several months. Now Cheurt thought he knew how it was possible. Having seen his enemy so close, Cheurt had been careful to maintain his shield at all times and had been alert to anything unusual. That meant he hadn’t been surprised when the friend of Jolan’s had broken into his quarters earlier in the day.
As he relaxed, Cheurt felt the vision form. His anger grew as the picture in his mind cleared. He’d hoped that he’d killed the man earlier in the day, but had been surprised by the violent blast that had occurred in response to his attack. That had never happened before, and the unusual nature of the response had made him wonder if Jolan had somehow managed to escape. Now he could see his fears were well founded. Jolan was back in Cobalo, and even worse the damned woman was with him. The Shyar woman was holding a staff similar to his own as she walked with Jolan down the hallway. Cheurt didn’t know what the staff could do, but even a glance told him it was one of the special staffs. Since the woman was already strong, in some ways her inherent powers seemed to exceed even his own, she would be an even more formidable adversary the next time they met. He’d have to keep that in mind.
Cheurt sighed as the vision faded. He would get no more until tomorrow at the soonest, but he knew he had to continue planning on ways to finally remove Jolan from Gaea. His interference had frustrated Cheurt’s efforts and turned a certain victory into a questionable situation. The past month had been a series of major losses. One of the reasons was now clear to Cheurt. His country and the captured land of Kimlelm were a sieve. He’d considered the forces that formed the perimeter effective at keeping out his enemy. Now he knew that they had hundreds of doors that allowed them to slip past all of his preparations and appear almost anywhere. Those damn stone structures were some kind of door that allowed them to travel instantaneously from wherever they were to wherever they wanted. No wonder their spies had been able to get in and out undetected.
He couldn’t think of how to deal with the problem just yet. He knew from past experience the structures were protected by some power greater than his own. He’d wanted to destroy one some years ago to make room for other construction, and found he couldn’t even mark the structure let alone destroy it. Given how many there were, he didn’t know how they would be able to locate them all and place a guard, but something like that was going to be necessary.
Thinking back to the portals brought him to the topic that most frustrated him. The man called Ronoron had been a fool, but a man with knowledge that might have completely changed the situation. Cheurt had been unprepared for what he would find when he had delved into the man’s mind. He had expected to learn about Jolan, where he was and what his plan to attack Cheurt and rescue the woman might be. Instead he’d immediately been swamped with multiple enticing facts that hinted at places and events that were of great interest to Cheurt. He’d seen the name Ygooro almost immediately, and realized it was a place that Ronoron had been. They’d found it! Cheurt had tried for a couple of years, hoping for the treasure trove of information that was supposed to be there. The surprise had been amplified when he realized they had also found Tilano. The city looked in ruins in Ronoron’s mind, but a major find regardless.
Rather than complete his initial scan to determine what information was important and the proper order to go after it, Cheurt had delayed, enthralled in the astonishment of this surprise. Once he forced himself on, he had barely caught a glimpse of knowledge of a true Nexus and the secret of the portals. He could see how they worked, and learned how to activate the portal, remotely if the address was known. He was just starting to sort through hundreds of addresses that were jumbled and confused in the man’s mind when disaster struck and pounded his brain as the woman killed the man he was probing. He was fortunate to have escaped such an encounter unharmed.
There was so much he could have
learned. The woman robbed him of so much! He saw there was another Nexus, a more effective point for traveling to the Earth. He didn’t learn where before the man’s mind was obliterated, but he knew he was seeing the truth. He’d known all along that Jolan had been behind the death of his friend on Earth, and now he suspected he was the cause of the Nexus node disappearing. Maybe there was still a chance for him to return to Earth if he could just find out where they’d found the other transfer point. Clearly, he’d have to seek out another of their group for the knowledge they contained.
While he knew of the portals and had gained a limited amount of information about how they operated, he had less than a handful of locations. The rest had been lost. He knew where Ygooro was, and would have to see about getting some people there. His knowledge of Tilano, on the other hand, was limited. It appeared that it had been hidden under a vast lake that they had somehow managed to drain to reveal it. His enemies were resourceful he realized. He knew of only one huge lake, up near Trailways. He’d have to send someone to check and see if that was the location.
While he’d uncovered nothing on the strange shields the man had worn, it was because he’d barely gotten to examining that part of the man’s brain. He’d been looking at spells for the portals, and hadn’t done the initial scan to see what else might be there. He suspected there were a number of useful items that had been lost. He knew now, however, that scanning for shields was not a sure way to locate his enemy. They had found a way to defeat the telltale power draw.
Cheurt shook his head. While he was far more aware of the incredible knowledge his enemy had against him, he could have been so much better off. Another five minutes and he’d have known it all. Dragons curse the woman!
In the morning Cheurt would get things moving. Two of the portals he had addresses for were located nearby. He wondered how they found the addresses. Maybe it would become obvious once he actually was at the portals. He wanted to activate the two portals nearby and send a couple of his wizards through them to verify they operated as he believed. Then he would see about the other addresses he’d acquired, and try to figure out how to learn more. He could send men into their midst just as they had been doing to him. If he could locate Jolan at the right time close to one of the portals, he might just pay the man a visit. He couldn’t keep escaping unharmed forever.
Chapter 159
Although there were daily meetings and planning sessions, often several, Jolan and Shyar had been able to spend much of the past week together, re-establishing an interrupted relationship and gradually exchanging details of their respective adventures since they had been separated. Jolan was astounded by the ingenuity shown by Shyar, and she in turn was completely amazed at the extent of the discoveries his team had made. She was a bit saddened she had missed the adventures on Earth, but Jolan reminded her the link was still there, and when the time was right they would make the journey.
Tishe and Shyar had formed a special bond as a result of their unique form of communication. Jolan could sense that the youngster felt a bit left out, but he wasn’t about to share any of the extra time he had with Shyar. Asari also had something on his mind, and Jolan could tell he was almost bursting with the desire to pursue the matter with Jolan, but that too would have to wait.
Morin had just finished recounting the activity that had been noted in Ale’ald earlier in the day. Two of the portals in Ale’ald had been activated, the two that Jolan’s team had previously located closest to the castle and the Academy in fact. That suggested Cheurt might be operating on information taken from Ronoron since those addresses would have been fresh and foremost in his mind. They had remained open for a bit over an hour, and then had been closed down again.
“It seems pretty certain that Cheurt knows how to activate one of the portals,” Vaen observed after Morin completed his presentation. “Is there any way we can tell if he knows about remote activation?”
“This was the first activation and it comes almost a week after the encounter. Our guess is Cheurt is experimenting to learn whether the portals really work and what is involved in operating them, much as we did in the beginning. There is no way to tell directly if the second portal was opened by someone locally, which would imply he’s shared the knowledge of how to activate them, or whether he activated it remotely. The closest to a suggestion one way or the other is that the second portal was activated less than five minutes after the first. It is hard to imagine how they could coordinate so well, unless they were working to a pre-arranged schedule.”
“Is there any way we can tell what they are doing?” Jolan asked. “What about the capability to monitor through one of the portals?”
“That’s a bit tricky,” Buris said. “In the past we’ve linked our idle portal to the portal we wanted to look through. The act of doing this has been to effectively take the portal to be monitored out of the active list. Once someone is using it, it’s a bit hard to make that happen. Of course, it might have confused them a bit had we been fast enough. We were able to get a quick look about the time they were closing things down. We could see three wizards at the portal near the village, but none of them appeared to be Cheurt.”
“So we can’t monitor any portal they open to see what they might be up to?” Vaen asked.
“I can’t say it’s impossible, but at the moment we haven’t figured it out.”
“They made no attempt to come here?” Vaen asked.
“As soon as Morin told my men the portals were active, we had two teams with their rifles pointed at the point any arrivals would appear in the portal. They had to have seen the open address when they entered their portal, and it’s likely they knew what it represented. If they learned about the portals and how to operate them from Ronoron, then that address would be burned into his mind. It would be convenient if we could permanently shut down a site, but Buris tells me that is something we have never learned how to do. In any event, no one showed.”
“Do we think we could have stopped them if they’d made the attempt?” Vaen asked.
“We think so. There remains a bit of concern about the problem Asari had when he tried to shoot Cheurt, but Jolan is certain he was wearing some kind of special body armor. We have the men trained for two targets at the moment. One squad is to target the head, and the second the pelvis, since Jolan says the armor typically doesn’t extend that far. A shot in either should end the matter, but we have yet to try it.”
“What if they know how to lock the portal open and start coming through en masse?”
“We could put them down quick enough to make getting through difficult. Any wizards coming through would get a surprise because Shyar found a way to implement a permanent dead zone around the portals. They would come through and, other than any shield they already had in place, would find themselves unable to execute any spells. While they were trying to figure it out, my men would be taking them down. There are also two war mages in the room. They are positioned outside of the no magic zone, so they could be attacking anyone coming through. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best we can come up with at the moment.”
“I don’t like the fact they can potentially come right into the Council building,” Vaen complained.
“Actually, it might be wise to move everyone out for the duration, and set up in the facility nearer the Queen. If they did manage to get in here, at least the key people would be elsewhere.”
“I don’t like being chased out of my own office, but I suspect you are right. Now that we have verification that they are aware of some aspects of the portals, I’ll have everyone move out today.”
“What about the other portals we listed the other day?”
“The portal in Seret which Tomas will be using has shifted to another more securely located portal which will be configured much as the one we have here in terms of security,” Jolan explained. “It is normally off the net, and when use is desired the operating procedure will be to activate it only when no unknown portals are observed. That wi
ll help keep the address a secret, and since it wasn’t ever used before, Ronoron couldn’t have known of the address. We are hoping that Cheurt hasn’t learned how to determine addresses, and we doubt he has a reference to the many addresses, like we found in Ygooro.”
“Did you set up your traps at the old location?”
“That has been done at all of the locations we listed except the second portal at Ygooro,” Wylan said. “That one shouldn’t be known to them anyway, and by tonight the effort will be completed there. Once everyone is out, we’ll rig it the same way. Anyone passing through will certainly trigger the claymores, and these particular devices should be deadly to wizards and soldiers alike. Hopefully they will trigger one or two. It might make them cautious.”
“None of those sites have been activated by anyone other than us, have they?”
Morin shook his head. “I’ll inform both you and Major Wylan the minute such a thing happens. Afterwards, we will use the peek ability to see what we can at the other end.”
“How is the war going in general?” Vaen asked.
“We are still pushing them back in most places, but I don’t think we have seen the full effect of Ale’ald’s awareness of the portals as yet. Normal operations seldom used them, so it isn’t a surprise we are still winning on that front. However, the clandestine operations are certain to suffer.”
“Because they know we’ve been getting in that way?” Jolan asked.
“Of course,” Wylan responded. “We have been getting word that they are trying to watch all of the portals. One team had to make a quick exit, and found the enemy was waiting for them when they got near the portal. They lost two men, but managed to get back. Before, they paid no attention to the structures. Now they know that’s where to find us. It is going to be a serious limitation in the occupied areas.”