by Devin Hanson
“Not exactly,” Andrew replied. “You work for Lord Priah?”
The tip of the mercenary’s sword dropped a few inches and Andrew could see the uncertainty on his face. “Sure ‘nuff. I ain’t seen yer like before. What’s with them creepy masks?”
All mercenary eyes were on Andrew and none noticed a shadow detach itself from the wall and glide up behind one of the mercenaries standing back a few paces from his fellows. A blade flickered and the mercenary coughed before slumping into the arms of the warden, who lowered his victim silently to the ground.
Andrew kept his eyes fixed forward on the leader, but watched with his peripheral vision as more wardens crept up on the unaware mercenaries. “Did Lord Priah give you any instructions?”
“He said we could loot once the fight went out of these stupid alchemists.”
Andrew nodded. “Is Priah here?”
“I dunno, but I saw a squad of them heavy armor types march through a while back. Mayhap he was with them. Hey, how come you don’t know none of this yusself? We was told this morning after that surprise attack on the airships.”
“That’s because we weren’t at the muster,” Andrew said.
The leader understood then, and his sword came up, but it was too late. The wardens struck with lethal speed into the unaware mercenaries. The leader took a half step forward before arrows feathered his chest and he collapsed, knocked sprawling by the force of the impacts.
“We head for the Archives,” Andrew announced.
Chapter 25
The Academy Alchemic
Professor Milkin sat up with a start as an explosion rattled the windows. With bleary eyes he checked the sunlight streaming through the windows to get a sense of time. The steep slant coming through the western windows told him it was late afternoon, an hour or two before sunset.
He struggled to his feet and brushed off a scrap of paper that had stuck to his arm while he slept at his desk. He was so tired all the time these days, and the little cat-naps he managed to sneak in hardly did anything to help clear his mind.
Shouts followed the explosion, and Milkin fumbled for his cane. Outside Milkin’s office, people were streaming down the hallway toward the north courtyard, toward the sound of the explosion. With a sigh, Milkin joined the flow, moving as fast as his stiff joints would let him.
As Milkin reached the crowd forming in the north courtyard, it quickly became obvious what damage the explosion had caused. The gate portal that granted passage through the Academy’s shield had been reduced to scattered clumps of smoking splinters. The stone of the Academy’s wall was behind the shield and pristine, a stark contrast to the blasted and blackened cobblestones leading up to the gate.
Outside the ruined portal, a force of mercenaries was arrayed with a man in alchemists robes standing in front, burly arms crossed over his chest.
Bircham Lameda.
A glance over the crowd confirmed that nobody else was going to approach the rogue alchemist, so Milkin walked forward, his cane clicking against the courtyard stones. “Good afternoon, Bircham,” Milkin said with a polite smile.
“Milkin,” the hulking man snarled. Bircham looked unkempt, his normally unruly hair matted on one side, the other snarled and sticking up at wild angles. He looked ill, his face slightly drawn, his complexion paler than Milkin remembered, but his eyes were filled with a feverish energy. Bircham strode forward up to the edge of the shield, halting just shy of it. His motions were jerky, as if he suddenly had more strength than he was used to and was having trouble controlling his muscles. A tic jumped under one eye.
“You’re looking well,” Milkin said blandly, taking a quiet pleasure from the way his polite words were digging into Bircham like a barbed flog.
“Was it your idea, old man, to destroy all the airships?”
“It wasn’t, but I’m happy to hear it was such a success. All the airships?”
“You’ve doomed Andronath with that action,” Bircham snarled. “Salia will have no choice now but to retaliate.”
“Doomed?” Milkin returned wryly. “Your master is not operating with the blessings of his king. This is a personal vendetta and one the nation of Salia is unlikely to support. You might as well save your pointless posturing.”
Rather than throwing Bircham into a rage like Milkin expected, his words had the opposite effect. Bircham’s features smoothed out and he gave a feral smile. “I’ve fed well after your attack, Milkin. I’ve power now that you would kill to have a fraction of.”
Milkin felt his stomach twist. Fed? What did that mean? “I doubt that,” he said, but he knew his face had betrayed his unease.
Bircham laughed, a high-pitched shriek of manic glee, and abruptly as it started, he cut it off. “Oh, Professor, how little you know. Sadly for you, you’ll never find out how badly you have miscalculated. We’re taking the Academy. Because we’re feeling nice, I’ll let anyone who wants to join us do so, if they decide immediately.”
Milkin made a half turn and scanned the people watching. None so much as blinked. He turned back to Bircham with a smile. “Go burn yourself, Lameda,” he said pleasantly.
A fit of giggles wrenched out of Bircham, contrasting the twisting rage on his face. He spun on his heel and screamed out, “Kill them all!”
The mercenaries raised a cry and ran forward. The front row had shields raised and escorted a wagon, a large iron ring propped up on the lip of the bed.
“They’re attempting to breech the shield,” someone said at Milkin’s elbow.
Milkin turned to find Alexi Fontaine, the Fraternity “representative” at his elbow. “With what? That wagon?”
“It’s a breaching ring, used to create a portal in the shield.” Alexi was looking at the wagon approach with studied impassiveness.
Milkin spun back to look at the wagon with its cargo. There was nothing they could do to prevent the ring from approaching. The shield worked both ways and with the gate destroyed, there was no opening they could use. “But to create a portal, they’d have to know exactly how the runes are laid out in the shield! There’s no way they could have created it.”
“The Fraternity created the plans for one, as a failsafe in case Incantors seized control of the Academy and raised the shield.”
“Then how did Trent create one? If that’s a breaching ring like you say it is, they had to have planned this attack months in advance!”
“The Fraternity is betrayed,” Alexi shook his head, his nondescript features carefully devoid of emotion, but his voice shook.
“What do we do?”
“The only thing we can. We fight.”
Iria led the forward spear of wardens through the maze of buildings that made up the Academy. In a way, the Academy Alchemic was similar to the Palace of a Thousand Arches: both had an expansive network of underground tunnels and rooms, both had convoluted thoroughfares and winding, unintuitive passages. But that was where the similarities ended. The Palace had been built solidly, with cunning joints and guided by geometry, where the Academy was seemingly built by children with its simplistic structural elements, but everything seemed impossible to her eyes. Thin columns that couldn’t possibly support even their own weight lofted a causeway high into the air. Delicate tracery supported thousands of tons of stone. A cantilevered roadway spiraled up a tower before launching off in a lazy arch to a neighboring tower without even a token nod to physics. The alchemists who had designed and built these structures used their runes and alchemy to force the stone to obey their will.
Voices around the next corner suddenly rose in argument, and Iria snapped up a clenched fist. Behind her, the six wardens of her spear came to a halt and shifted into the deeper shadows. This far into the Academy, moonlight rarely made it through the buildings, and light was provided by alchemical lanterns. Most of these had either been neglected or destroyed, leaving inky blackness only sporadically broken.
Moving forward on soft-soled sandals, Iria crept to the edge of the building and peered
around the corner. A cluster of men and women in robes were huddled around a lantern, pointing at a map laid out on a desk.
Iria knelt down and found a bit of shattered pottery by her feet, which she sent skipping across the flagstones toward the group.
“Ban!” one of them cried, and an alchemical shield sprang up around the group.
Iria stepped out of the shadows and raised her sand mask. “Greetings,” she called. “I am Iria Mian, friend of Lady Jules Vierra and Warden of the Dragon Speaker.”
Silence, then one of the alchemists, an older woman with purple silk lining her cloak and riotously frizzy hair, stepped forward to the edge of the shield. “Are you friend or foe?” she asked.
“I oppose the forces of Trent Priah. Does that make us friends?” Iria returned. Behind her, she sensed the rest of her spear readying in the shadows.
“Friends, then. I am Merin Tithy, of the Guild Council. Where’re the Speaker and Lady Vierra?”
“Following. There is much ground to cover, and the wardens would not leave the Speaker open to attack.”
Merin gestured and the shield wavered out of existence. “You called yourself a warden? What is that?”
Iria gestured and the rest of her spear slipped from the shadows. The alchemists stiffened, not expecting the numbers. “We serve the Speaker,” Iria explained. Was not that obvious?
“I know those masks,” one of the alchemists said. “You’re balai, from Nas Shahr!”
Iria cut the air with the blade of her hand in a gesture rejecting the explanation. “No longer.”
“Are you foresworn, then?” The alchemist challenged. “The balai do not take their oaths to the empire lightly.”
“The Emperor is dead and the empire fallen,” Iria snapped back. “The Speaker guides us in our vengeance.”
The alchemists looked taken aback at the news. “Enough, Toral,” Merin said. “They’re here to help us.” She bobbed a curtsy to Iria. “We were cut off, but still stand against Priah and his mercenaries.”
“That is good,” Iria nodded an acknowledgement. “The Speaker heads to the Archives. He will need all the support he can get.”
“The Archives!” Merin’s eyes widened. “That’s what Trent is after? You’re a long way off.” She turned her head, planning a path to the destination. “How many wardens are with you?”
“I have what you see here, though we number forty in all.”
“The rest are with Andrew and Jules?”
Iria shook her head. “We clear the path for the Speaker. He travels with the Speaker’s Guard, but the other spears scout.” She looked around at the strange architecture and shook her head. “I am beginning to suspect we have lost our way.”
“We will travel with you,” Merin offered. “I know the Academy and can get you to the Archives.”
Iria nodded. “Very well. Lead the way and we will follow.”
Andrew walked behind Jules and tried to keep his attention on the buildings about them. The Academy was huge. From the outside it was impressively large, but you couldn’t see the true scope until you were wandering through the place.
Adnan Hakhim paced along beside Andrew, and the rest of the Guard formed a loose circle about them. Part of Andrew still rebelled at the idea of having a personal guard, and not just one, but a full eight men and women. The king of Salia didn’t even have that many!
Iria had taken a spear and gone scouting, as did Fakhir al Din. A third spear trailed behind, watching their back, and the last group of eight had stayed behind at the Academy gate to secure their retreat. Andrew didn’t like leaving a fifth of his force behind, but Iria had insisted on it and even Jules agreed. Reluctantly, he gave in to their advice. There was a lot about combat that Andrew had no education in at all.
There were many bodies lying in the streets. Mercenaries in their ragged leathers, soldiers in Salian uniform, even the occasional heavily armored trooper. They had been killed by arrows and bladed weapons and alchemical energies; on some the wounds were devastating, scorched flesh and blasted organs, while others looked like they had simply fallen asleep. The deaths of Trent’s forces had little emotional impact on Andrew. They had attacked the Academy. Their deaths at the hands of the alchemists and the citizens of Andronath was just.
It was the other bodies tangled in among the invaders that set Andrew’s teeth on edge and built a slow furnace of rage burning within him: alchemists, some even younger than he was, others old enough to be his parents or grandparents, and normal people, craftsmen and laborers that were citizens of Andronath, forced to take up arms to protect their city.
He had to focus on the mission. They were here to find Trent and kill him if possible, foil the plans of the Incantors and restore order to the Academy. Andrew tried ignoring the bodies, but the strain started making him sweat and his hands tremble. Some of the bodies were freshly killed, blood still seeping from open wounds, victims of the wardens clearing the way.
“What is it, Andrew?”
It took him a second to realize Jules was speaking to him, one hand on his arm. “Nothing.” Andrew shook his head and swallowed as his gorge threatened to rise. “It’s nothing.”
Jules looked around as if seeing the bodies for the first time. He noticed that she was looking pale herself, but her eyes burned with carefully tamped anger. “You have to focus, Andrew. The Archives are getting close, and we’ll need every bit of alchemy we can muster.” She gripped his arm tight and gave him a little shake.
“I know.” Andrew closed his eyes for a moment and almost stumbled over a discarded boot. “But all these people!”
“Take a deep breath,” Jules instructed. “Do that meditation thing you do. Something. But you need to focus.”
Andrew nodded. He couldn’t meditate while walking, not really, but he could filter out some of his emotions. Trusting Jules and the wardens to keep him safe, he stopped paying attention to his surroundings and started examining his emotions, blocking off the non-productive aspects that had him on the brink of collapsing into tears. It wasn’t that the emotions were wrong. On the contrary, they were vital to maintain who he was as a person. It was just that, at the moment, being wholly Andrew was likely to get him and everyone else killed.
And so he walled off the grief and the fear, the aching hollowness of despair and the trembling nausea. He closed away the pieces of Andrew that made him want to crawl under a blanket and cry, the pieces that wouldn’t let him look upon the death and destruction with measured calm.
He cleared it all away until he could think again, in the cold certainty of unencumbered logic. It worked, but he knew he had lost a part of himself, something vital that made him what he was.
Andrew opened his eyes and found they had made their way inside at some point, or perhaps underground, given the vaulted ceilings. Jules was several paces in front of him, her hand out-thrust. Brilliant light coruscated through hues of red and orange in front of her, conforming to the curved shield she held. The alchemical fire faded and Jules spat out a saying, sending spikes of ice snapping through the air. Someone down the passage screamed and Jules threw up the shield again.
Hakhim had Andrew by the arm, a grim look on his face. The warden’s mask had been knocked free at some point and blood sheeted down the side of his face, glinting wetly in the glow of alchemical combat.
“I’m back, Adnan,” Andrew said, then repeated himself in a shout after an explosion drowned out his words.
The warden looked at him in surprise, relief flooding his face, and shouted, “Lady Vierra, the Speaker has finished!”
“Andrew!” Jules cried. “Give me a hand up here!”
Andrew stepped forward, only noticing as an afterthought that he had to stretch his legs to go over the crumpled form of one of the wardens, smoke rising from seared flesh. He didn’t know the woman’s name, but recognized what was left of her face. The sight sent emotions clawing at the bubble of calm he had manufactured. Action offered a reprieve from the view. He held ou
t a hand and cried, “Ban!” Additional syllables came to him and he spoke them without thinking, forming the shield to his desire.
A lambent glow filled the passage as the shield pulsed forward, driving the smoke and haze that filled the passage in front of it. A pair of alchemists were revealed and were knocked sprawling by the shield. The Saying twisted in Andrew’s mouth, and the shield split into two bubbles, trapping the alchemists against the ground where they lay. Behind the alchemists, a force of Trent’s mercenaries waited, spearheaded by a man in runed plate armor.
Hakhim shouted a Maari battle cry and sprang down the passage, three wardens on his heels. Andrew kept his focus on the alchemists he had trapped, counting on the wardens to deal with the mercenaries. He jogged forward with Jules and knelt beside one of the alchemists, a man only a few years older than he was, face twisted in pain with one of Jules’s ice shards stabbed through his leg.
Raising his voice to be heard over the clamor of combat, Andrew said, “I am Andrew Condign, Dragon Speaker. Give me your name.”
“Tiny gods,” the alchemist groaned, clutching at his leg and staring at the shield with wide eyes, “how did you do that?”
“His name is Fillys,” Jules answered for him. “Son of a baron, I think.”
Jules’s voice seemed to snap Fillys out of his shock. “Jules! My father has money!” he cried, “He can pay whatever ransom you want.”
“It’s too late for that,” Jules said. “You know the law of the Guild. There is only one punishment for what you have done.”
“Oh, burn the Guild!” Fillys screamed, “They’re done for anyway. Let me live; I’ll see to it you’re rewarded.”
Jules stood up, brushed her hands against her pants. “There’s nothing he’ll tell us of value.”
Andrew nodded, spoke a fresh phrase to the Song quivering in his mind and the shield collapsed. With a shout, Fillys surged forward, the pleading in his eyes transformed into vengeful hate and slammed into Jules’s runed blade. The air whooshed out of his lungs and he coughed, gurgled wetly, and fell back. Jules tugged the blade free with a jerk and wiped the worst of the blood off on Fillys’ coat.