At this early hour of the morning, most guests of the hotel were still abed, leaving the room mostly to us. All of the tables were set up, ready for people, and a buffet table along one wall hosted everything from meats to breads to a variety of fruits. I paused there long enough to fill up a plate, and a large cup of hot tea, before venturing over to the corner table where Mari sat.
“Good morning.”
She glanced up with a quick smile. “Good morning. You’re actually awake this morning.”
“It’s a miracle,” I admitted. I don’t usually wake up easily although I do alright once I get moving. Sitting at the table, I set my breakfast down and started eating. “Any thoughts?”
“Too many, actually.” She made a face like she’d just bitten into a sour lemon before sitting back. “There’s two major bridges in Bellden and Trickett, a temple in northern Teancum and of course there’s a major trading city in northern Warwick that’s just chock full of likely targets. But none of these are really ‘close’ to us. Even by dragon, Trickett is a good five hour flight.”
I vaguely remembered it on the flight down. It sat at the mouth of a major river…I thought. Fine, I admit, I hadn’t been paying a lot of attention to the landscape below. There hadn’t been a need to. Mari had the map, after all.
Frowning, I thought it through, trying to break this down logically. “The arsonist doesn’t have a quick method of travel like we do. He’s either on foot or on horse.”
Mari stopped eating and regarded me steadily. “Right. Where are you going with this?”
“How long would it take for a man on horseback to go from here to Trickett?”
“In fair weather and with good roads? About three days.”
“And from Trickett to Bellden?”
“A day and a half, maybe two.”
“So we could safely go to Trickett and wait to see if he does anything there. Give it a day. If he hasn’t, then we can go to Bellden and still be ahead of him.”
She opened her mouth to respond, stopped, thought about it, and then bent forward to stare at the map again. “Even if we don’t stay ahead of him, it’s only about an hour, two hour flight from Trickett to Bellden. We still might catch up to him.”
“See? Perfect plan.”
“That only works if we can catch him.” Mari popped the last bite of muffin into her mouth, frowning at the map. “I really hope we’re right about this.”
“Me too.” But then, if we were wishing, I still wished we’d managed to catch him last night.
Mari studied my face in silence for a long moment. “You’re thinking dark thoughts. What is it?”
“I’m bothered by how he’s setting fires,” I admitted. Losing my appetite, I put my fork down and sat back in my chair. “It’s too quick, too clean. It smacks of being magical.”
“A Fire Mage?” she asked incredulously. “Would you be able to tell?”
“The fire doesn’t have a magical glow to it.” Which didn’t make sense. “But if he used just a spark of his magic and a lot of oil, I might not be able to tell. The glow of magic is very close to the look of open flame. It’s hard to discern between the two unless it’s a particularly large fire.” I let out a groan. “And with the temple and the forest, there was so much smoke in the way, I wouldn’t have been able to see the difference.”
“What about the man himself? You said most magicians can see other magicians.”
“Key word there,” I responded with a frustrated growl. “I have to see him to be sure. I’m not like some of the others, where I can feel magicians from far away. Even the mages have to be relatively close before I can tell they’re in my area. If he’s a budding Fire Mage, not using much of his magic, then he’s not going to register with me.”
“Fire Mage. Are you so sure he is one?” Mari looked disturbed by the idea.
“No.” I was just very afraid he was. “No, he might have found or fashioned some sort of tool that let him do this. I’m praying that’s the case, actually.”
Blowing out a long breath, she sat back as well. “All right, worst case scenario: he’s a mage or some other magician. What do we do?”
“I fight him into submission, knock him out cold, and take him directly to Del’Hain. They summon up a circle and strip him of his magic.”
Mari looked at me with wide eyes. “Krys, it’s a three day flight to Del’Hain from here!”
“Closer to four, actually. But the only other choice is to take him to Strae, and that’s not any closer. It takes a full circle of magicians to strip a magician of his magic. I can’t do it by myself.” I rubbed my face with both hands, suddenly feeling tired and old beyond my age. “I’m really hoping he’s not a magician.”
“You and me both. If he sets something larger on fire, though, you’ll be able to tell. Right?” she asked uncertainly.
“I should be able to, assuming I’m not completely blinded by smoke this time.” And with the new goggles, I shouldn’t be.
“Then let’s pause this conversation here and pick it back up later?”
Sounded good to me. It was far too depressing to focus on this anyway.
Shoving back from the table, she folded the map back up. “Finish breakfast. I’ll go report to the coordinator here that we’re leaving for Trickett.”
“Fine. Meet you on the roof?”
She nodded and with a pat on my shoulder, left.
I turned in my seat just enough to watch her go. We’d been so busy, so preoccupied trying to catch this arsonist that I hadn’t had a chance to really push our relationship forward. I had Cora’s report on their conversation to encourage me. And I had made strides, since Mari was now officially my partner. But, well, it didn’t completely satisfy me. I wanted more than this.
With a sigh, I went back to breakfast. Now was not the time to try anything romantic. It would have to wait until after we had that madman safely behind bars.
Hopefully, that would happen sooner rather than later.
~*~
Mari, with her usual efficiency, had everything arranged within an hour. Since she knew where we needed to go in Trickett and report, I let her sit in front and guide Kaya. (No, having a valid reason to hold Mari for two hours had nothing to do with that decision.)
We flew around the edge of Trickett, taking in the sight of the city and the very large bridge that lay just beyond it. Aside from the bridge, I saw only minor differences between Trickett and Goddard. Still a trader’s town, still with that very logical pattern to the city’s layout, still crowded with people. I supposed that when you’d seen one city in Sol, you’d pretty much seen them all.
This city didn’t seem nearly as crowded, however, and we found a fairly empty park to land in. Mari hopped down and called up to me, “The Coordinator’s office is just across the street. Stay here.”
I saluted to her with a lazy wave of the hand but still got out of the saddle. After two hours of sitting, I felt the need to move around some and get the blood flowing again. I stretched my back out, then my legs, looking around idly as I did so. After Kaya landed, the locals had more or less spooked and run for cover. But as she just sat there, docilely, some of the braver ones ventured back again for a peek.
Kaya’s tail started thumping, eyes fixated on a large tree ahead of her. “Small Kryses!”
I rolled my eyes to the heavens. I swear there was a child magnet in her somewhere.
Hearing footsteps approaching us, I turned around and found Mari and an unknown man approaching. He looked older, in his sixties perhaps, with heavily greyed hair and darkly tanned skin. He wore the dark grey uniform of this city with a certain inherent dignity. I liked the general impression the man gave off. He looked reassuringly professional.
“Krys, this is Coordinator Mastan. Sir, this is Haikrysen, a Fire Mage and his familiar, Kaya.”
Mastan stared at Kaya in astonishment for two seconds before he collected himself and gave me a proper greeting. “Ainlie, Magus.”
I tou
ched palms with the man and said, “Ainlie. Thank you for hosting us.”
“Not at all, Magus, not at all. We’re actually quite glad for your help. We don’t have the know-how to catch this man. And we’ve been very curious about your dragon familiar.” He glanced up at Kaya, eyes lingering on her for a long moment. “We’ve had different reports of her, of course, but I never imagined I’d see her myself. She’s incredibly large. Are all dragon’s this size?”
“No, she’s actually on the small side.”
Mastan’s jaw dropped slightly. “Small?”
“She’s a young adult, you see,” I explained with a shrug, trying not to let my amusement show. “She’s still got a little growing left to do. And the females are never as big as the males.”
“Oh.” He didn’t seem to know what else to say.
“I know from experience that finding an inn that will host her is rather difficult,” I continued so that the silence wouldn’t become awkward. “Did you manage to find one?”
“Well, actually, I did but I’m not sure if—”
From the center of the city, a bell rang out. I’ve lived in Sol long enough to distinguish the difference between an alarm bell and the clock’s bell. They have a distinctly deeper tone to them. But the code for their meanings varies slightly from city to city. I knew there was a fire, but I couldn’t decipher the tempo of the rings well enough to know where.
Mari and I whirled on Mastan and demanded in sync, “Where’s the fire?!”
The man looked grey, eyes wide with horror. “The bridge. The bridge is burning. Magus—” he turned to me, pleading. “Go!”
I didn’t need his request. In pure instinct, I was already running for Kaya, scrambling up into her saddle. She had her wings half-unfurled before I even made it on board. Mari was on my heels, calling, “Go, go, go!” even as she latched onto my waist.
Kaya shot up into the sky hard enough to jostle us around but I didn’t chide her for the haste. She twirled in the sky once, changing directions with lightning speed so that she faced the northeast section of town, and then she shot in the direction of the bridge so fast that it nearly stole the air from my lungs. As she flew, Mari snapped the goggles on my head and then the mask before she put her own gear on. I automatically put up my shields as well, preparing for the fire ahead.
Bridge fires were the worst ones to fight for two reasons. One, because they were totally exposed to the air, the wind could encourage the fire to spread and there was nothing to check it. Two, it was hard for anyone to get close enough to the fire to approach it without endangering lives. Often the only clear structure to stand on had already been burned, making it terribly weakened. Either that, or the clearest place to be was totally covered in smoke. It was a little hard to fight a fire you couldn’t properly see while you were struggling to breathe.
I’d only seen one before this point, early on in my training, on the northern coast of Halliburton. I’d been called in because it took mere minutes to get me over there and I was more effective than the veteran fighters, despite my lack of training. I thought that to be the reason why they called me in here. Bridge fires, after all, were hard for a ground crew to contain.
But now I saw that was only half the problem.
People were on the bridge.
I started to mentally swear. I now understood the full depth of Mastan’s panic. Evacuating people off the bridge fast enough to save them from the fire would be nearly impossible.
As we came in at ferocious speed, I saw that a long line of fire along the top of the bridge and several of the support pillars were blazing orange. The wind was strong here, strong enough to turn the river below choppy on the surface, and that wind spread the fire out along the wooden planks at mindboggling speed. The middle section of the bridge was already ablaze and it was spreading fast, leaving whole sections of pedestrians trapped on the top.
“Mari, spot me,” I yelled over the wind.
She squeezed my shoulder in reassurance.
All right, let’s put this out. I focused on the nearest section of the bridge as we came closer to it, magic suppressing it and extinguishing each section as fast I could manage. But Kaya’s speed was such that I could barely get one patch done and then we shot past, out over the river. I pulled at the reins, urging her back around, then stroked both sides of her neck, signally for her to slow down.
Kaya back flapped twice, braking in mid-air, cutting her speed in half. It jerked me a bit in the saddle, but I tried not to let that disrupt my focus as I concentrated on the bridge. On this northern section, the smoke obscured my sight, and I led Kaya more toward the south so that I had a clearer view.
The bridge had been built so that four wagons abreast could travel down it without crowding and the fire had spread so that it covered the width of it. It took more than a minute for me to deal with all of it. Once I had, we ducked down to the water level so that I could deal with the fire consuming the support beams. I looked every direction, but didn’t see anything else. “Mari?”
“You’re good,” she assured me next to my ear. “It’s all out. South side of the bridge is clear of people, but there’s a few on the far north end that is trapped up there. I don’t think the firefighters here can get to them.”
Uh-oh. I urged Kaya up and around so I could see the situation for myself. Yes, she was right, the group had been caught on a clear spot so they weren’t burned, but the area all around them had been. Worse, the top part looked fairly safe, but the support beams underneath were little better than char. It wouldn’t hold any kind of real weight.
Well. This just got better and better.
“Kaya!” I leaned forward to make sure that she could hear me. “We need to rescue the people. Can you carry them?”
She bobbed her head. “Can. Two.”
Two at a time would do. “Then let’s start. Carry them to the grass where the other people are, all right?”
“Will,” she assured me, already turning around and angling for the people. We came in at a quicker pace than I thought safe, but Kaya scooped two people up in either arm like a pro without missing a beat. As she flew toward the ground, I called down to her scared passengers, “Don’t worry! She won’t drop you!”
One of them, a man, called back in a scared voice, “All right!”
Kaya, no doubt realizing that the people in her arms were scared spitless, made sure to slow down enough to drop them gently to the earth, giving them plenty of time to gauge the distance to the earth and land well. Then she swerved back up toward the sky, wings flapping to gain altitude and go for another pass at the bridge.
The dozen or so people left on the bridge, after seeing the safe rescue of the other two, waved their hands above their heads and called for help. Kaya paused just above them, confused by too many possible targets, I think. I patted her on the neck and instructed, “Start on the right, Kaya, and then work your way over. The right section is the weakest.”
Bobbing her head in agreement, she swooped down again, aiming for a mother and a young boy standing next to her. With her usual finesse, she grabbed them up, making the other people on the bridge duck slightly to avoid being knocked down by her wings. From the front, I heard a high-pitched laugh. The boy? Sounded like it. Well, at least someone was having fun.
It took five more trips to get everyone off, and then Kaya, out of the goodness of her heart, went back three more times for the carts and a horse. (The horse didn’t take the aerial trip as well as the humans. I wasn’t sure which made it panic more, the fact that its hooves weren’t touching the ground, or that it was being carried by something that could eat it for dinner.)
With everything off the bridge, she found a clear patch of ground and landed with a gentle bump. Mari and I both slid off, although why, I don’t know. We’d done everything that we could at this point. Maybe it was sheer habit that prodded us into heading toward the firefighters. We didn’t get more than two steps before people swarmed us, all of them saying thank
s for us coming so quickly to their aid. Even Kaya got thanked, some people going as far as stroking her nose and praising her. Not used to this sort of attention, my dragon blinked in surprise and then started lapping it up.
Mari and I accepted the thanks as graciously as we could, trying to wade through to the firefighting crew, but it soon became apparent that they didn’t really need our help. So we focused on asking everyone we could if they had seen anyone start the fire or pour oil on the bridge. No one had, but it didn’t surprise me. The arsonist had proven himself to be remarkably good at avoiding people’s eyes.
It took a few hours for the crowd to disperse. As it did, we headed back for Kaya, satisfied at putting the fire out, but frustrated at once again losing our prey. Only one thing made the situation better. To Mari, I said quietly, “It wasn’t magical.”
She perked up, taking a step closer to me. “At all?”
“No, the fire was started quite normally with oil. He still laid it down amazingly fast, though.”
“It’s true, I didn’t see much of a variance in the burn pattern.” She frowned in thought, idly tugging at the mask’s strap. “I wonder how he’s doing it? Can a person buy a magical devise and use it without having any magical talent of their own?”
“Well, there’s some things that can do that, sure.” I rubbed at my chin as I thought about it. “I can’t think of anything fire oriented, but I’m not an authority on all of the products that wizards and witches can make, either.” I turned and walked backwards for a few feet, studying the bridge and doing some quick mental calculations. “I can say this. Magical device or no, it would take a lot of oil to pull off what he just did.”
“Then maybe we should ask around town and see if anyone remembers him.” Mari hummed to herself, brows furrowed. “Although in a city of this size, that might take a while.”
“You think Mastan will help us?”
“I bet he will if we ask.”
“Then let’s ask.” Blowing off my frustration, I ran a rough hand through my hair. “Let’s go find that inn Mastan booked for us.”
Dragon's Mage (An Advent Mage Novel), The - Raconteur, Honor Page 24