by Greg Curtis
Edouard could see many more beasts scattered around the nearby streets. For the moment they were eating peacefully, untroubled by the people all around them or the carnage they'd wrought. But then they were simple beasts, and the fear from whatever had scared them and caused them to stampede had long been forgotten. Now they were just hungry.
“Stop the carriage please Lord Edouard. My sister and I need to begin our work here.” Kyriel leaned forward from her seat behind him and spoke into his ear. He had to admit that hers was a pleasant enough sounding voice to have in his ear.
As requested he pulled the carriage to a halt, pushing the lever that disconnected the flywheel from the rear axle and then gently applying the handbrake. Once the vehicle had stopped he leapt out and folded down the small ornate steps, and then offered his hand to help. To his surprise it was accepted without comment. Maybe away from their Honoured Mother they weren't quite so disapproving of men. Or maybe when they had been at the temple they just hadn't wanted to accept his brother’s hand given his – then – lack of attire.
“Are you sure you'll be able to handle the beasts?”
Seeing the immense size of the beasts he wondered about that and worried a little for them. One or both of them might have the spark of dominion, or perhaps something that Tyrel had given them to help instead. But these were mammoths not dogs. The slightest mistake could leave them broken and bloodied. It was hard to imagine anyone controlling them. He gestured to the nearest guards as he asked, calling them over.
“Quite sure.”
Mara answered him somewhat curtly, seemingly annoyed by his question. As if she considered he had called their abilities into doubt. Perhaps he had. Presumably Tyrel would have given her handmaidens whatever they needed.
Rather than saying anything else and risk causing greater offence Edouard turned to introduce the handmaidens to the nearby guards and explained what they were there to do, and that they should be given anything they needed. And though it was not his place to order the city guards around, Marcus was there beside him, and it was certainly his. Marcus simply nodded and the guards jumped to obey. Moments later the women were ready to begin their work.
“And is there anything else I can assist you with good maidens?”
“Just a ride back from here to your home when the sun sets. It seems there will be nowhere for us to stay here this night,” Kyriel answered.
“Of course.”
Edouard nodded respectfully to them and then stood back and watched as they walked slowly off toward the nearest of the living mountains of shaggy hair and tusks. Hopefully the gifts the Mother had granted them would keep them safe. Meanwhile he apparently was to have guests for the night. Edouard didn't know why they would be staying with him, but he knew that he would have to be the perfect host. Their Honoured Mother had demanded it and he would not dare to upset Tyrel. Not when she'd let him live.
“And I need to go and find some clothes too.”
Marcus was already down on the ground, not having bothered with the folding staircase. He'd just jumped, bold and direct as was ever his way. “I'll return with you tonight as well little brother since the royal guards quarters are no longer standing.”
“And the family?” Edouard knew they were alive and well and that by some miracle the estate had not been touched. Marcus had told him as much the previous night and his brother wouldn't lie to him. But somehow being told it just didn't seem enough. Not when he was looking around and seeing the terrible damage done to the city, not to mention all the dead and injured.
“I'll check on them again. Last night I checked before I left and the manor had not been damaged in the attack, but I expect it will be overflowing with family for the moment.”
He was probably right Edouard realised. The family estate was large but even the manor had only so many rooms, and with three children in the family still at home, six ex-wives and the mothers of those children also calling it home, not to mention his sister Leona's husband and children, and the live in servants, it was normally busy. Now he suspected everyone who could, would be bringing their families there. It would be crowded.
“Thank you. And remind them that if any need more room they can always stay with me.”
Edouard made the offer as would be expected. In truth though it wasn't necessary. They knew that they could just arrive at his door without asking and be welcome for however long they wanted to stay. Family came first; always.
The hardest part was that he wanted to go to the manor for himself and see that everyone was all right with his own eyes, and then offer the shelter of his home directly to them. But he had been asked to help and that had to come first. He was of noble birth and in times of crisis he had obligations that could not be set aside. Even if he hadn't specifically been asked to investigate, the king would expect it of him. So would his father. Besides, as with any crime, the sooner you started investigating the more likely you were to find evidence. And the scene of the crime was already nearly a day old.
“I'll be in front of the city at the portal where the beasts arrived.”
It was where he knew he needed to be. Even if he was carrying weapons that might be useful if there was another charge by the great beasts, his skills as a spark and arcanist were more important for the moment. The first thing they needed was knowledge of who had done this terrible thing, and how.
Edouard grabbed his equipment bag which he'd stowed in the back of the carriage before they'd left that morning, and headed towards the portal. It was easy enough to find because it was simply the place where the muddied destruction of the grass began as the mammoths had arrived, already charging for the city. Then too it was also the area where a dozen guards and at least as many advisers had turned up later to trample the ground a little more as they hunted for clues.
Of course there weren't going to be a lot of clues. Edouard realised that the moment he stepped on to the torn up ground. This was only a receiving ground, not a true portal. He hadn't expected that. Normally a portal was in two parts. One to send and one to receive. And then of course to swap functions as people were sent back. Not this time.
Though he could feel the magical echoes of the great spell still charging the air all around him – it was so powerful that it would be weeks before it finally dissipated – he knew that the land hadn't been prepared. There was no sign of a specific ward. Nor he knew, would there be an ancient artefact buried somewhere that could have done this. Though it was a problem throughout much of Therion – the land had been occupied on and off for thousands of years and there were ruins everywhere – it wasn't an issue anywhere near the city. Too many generations had ploughed the land for such artefacts to remain buried.
It appeared that the portal had been built wherever the mammoths had come from, and there he would no doubt find the charged wards carefully laid out. This was just where the beasts had arrived, and nothing had been prepared at all.
That surprised him, though it still told him something. It told him for a start that whoever had sent the great beasts through was if possible even more powerful than he'd realised. It was one thing to create a pair of matching portals. A flame with time, knowledge and the magic of dimension could do it. Even a spark could though not so easily. But to do it all from one single portal – sending the great beasts through from one portal and also determining where they would arrive from it – that took serious power. It took strength of will, immense concentration and certain knowledge of the destination. Otherwise the beasts could have arrived anywhere. Or more likely everywhere. He wasn't sure that many flames could do that.
Theria had a very powerful enemy. Maybe even a power. And the one thing that was certain was that he wasn't anywhere nearby. Not unless he could travel a thousand or more leagues in a day – which as Edouard suddenly realised – he could. He could have come through the portal with the mammoths. Even now there could be a new power somewhere in the city. That was not a comforting thought, though as even a lowly spark he wou
ld have thought he would have felt him if he were close.
Edouard took out his crystal compass and began criss-crossing the receiving ground with it in his hands. Even though this was not a true portal, it still had portal magic flowing through it from having been directly connected to one. The compass could detect that. Mostly he used the device to track down other magical devices or enchantments. Every so often someone did find an ancient artefact and the compass could tell him instantly if it had any magic. It was amazing how often they did.
The compass was a very simple machine; a bronze compass with a needle made of enchanted crystal instead of magnetised steel. But instead of pointing north it pointed towards the greatest concentration of magic. It was a useful device, invaluable when he misplaced something he was working on. He'd also made a lot of the devices for treasure hunters who found them just as invaluable as they scoured ancient ruins.
The compass quickly led him to the heart of where the portal had opened, and he marked it with a brass peg so that he could tie a string to it and mark his measurements from it. After that it became a matter of plotting out the strength of the portal field as he wandered away from the epicentre. For that he had to use his valance jars.
The jars too were simple devices, being little more than small vials that glowed in the presence of magic. But they could do one thing that no other device could. They could show the strength of that magic field simply by glowing brighter. Of course near to the epicentre they were glowing furiously, and currently were blinding as they shone brighter than the sun. But that was to be expected and he quickly paced out twenty yards from that point to where the valance jars shone at an only mildly eye watering level of intensity.
After that it was simply a matter of holding the string to the epicentre of the portal taut as he circled it, and plotting the brightest points. There were two of course; one on each side of the epicentre, and together the three of them formed a perfectly straight line. A line that gave him the direction he needed. A portal was always a pair of straight lines connecting two locations. The first line of the portal received those who entered; the second line released them somewhere else. Actually it was one line magically split lengthwise so that it occupied two different locations.
Normally that would be of only academic interest, save for one thing; the lines were parallel. They had to be. Which meant that he could use them to plot the sender's location. Somewhere on a perpendicular line to the portal line he would find the location of the primary portal. It was much like a railway line with a sleeper separating the two tracks. The only difference being that this sleeper wasn't four feet long but possibly hundreds or even thousands of leagues.
From there he plotted out the perpendicular line and soon had the direction of the primary portal. It was either twenty two degrees north or two hundred and two degrees south, depending on which direction of the line the mammoths had come. Logic said that it could be either but given that the southern lands were hotter and mammoths lived in the icy northern lands, he favoured the first.
After that Edouard drew the line on a world map to see where it led. He pulled out the collapsible table from his bag, shook it to open, and then planted it firmly in the trampled grass. After that a map, ruler and protractor followed and soon he had the angles plotted and the line drawn. Drawing the line was easy enough, but studying what it crossed on the map was far less so. Especially when, as he'd feared it would, the line ran straight through the northern wasteland known as Ealdis. More importantly though it ran straight through the part of the area known as the troll wastes. No one and nothing else lived there. That was troubling.
Trolls! It made sense in the same way that a nightmare always should. They were ill-disposed creatures. Eight feet tall and unutterably savage they were gifted with some basic level of intelligence and magic. The magic of rock and the hunt. And of course their main food was mammoth which also lived in the wastes.
There were many tales of trolls recounted in the alehouses, and all of them shared one thing in common. Trolls had a hatred of men. They would attack them on sight, usually in a frenzy, and then they would do the one thing no civilised man would ever do. They would eat them. It was that even more than their ferocity that made them the fodder for the bards' tall tales.
That left him with some obvious questions. And the very first of them was why? Why would the trolls send a herd of mammoths so far south just to attack a human city? A city that they had never seen and likely would never see? But even if they wanted to send the mammoths here, could they? Their magic from what he knew wasn't that powerful or complex. It was mostly that of the hunt. It made no sense.
Still, others could ask those questions. He could only provide the information he found. So he gestured to one of the guards watching and had him take the map to the king along with his words. It wasn't a long journey – King Byron was actually just inside the wall directing the artisans and workers in their duties – but Edouard didn't want to disturb him. The king was normally a pleasant sort, and remarkably relaxed with the sons of his friend and Left Hand. But not this day Edouard suspected. This day he cut a tragic looking figure as he directed the workforce. And why wouldn't he? His home had been attacked, his people hurt, and he took that personally.
So Edouard let the guard take the map to him, and instead concentrated on the next part of his investigation. Trying to work out what sort of magic had been used. Or rather, since they already knew the magic was one of dimension, what sort of caster had cast it. And despite the fact that the main portal had been opened in the troll wastes he rather suspected the caster hadn't been a troll. Even standing there without having readied himself mentally, what he could feel of the magical residue was too orderly for such a savage creature.
But he also knew as he prepared himself mentally for the effort of tasting the magic, that this would be a far more difficult and less accurate analysis. But that was always the way. You did the easy analyses and got the easy answers first. Then you toiled away for much longer at the harder analyses for poorer answers.
Still, it had to be done if they were to find who had done this thing.
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Mara approached the beast carefully from the front while Kyriel looked on nervously. Her sister was making herself look far from threatening, and she knew how to handle the great beasts, but still she had to be cautious. Mammoths were skittish and it didn't take much for them to change their minds about what was a threat and what wasn't. And when they thought something was dangerous, they really had only two responses. They either ran or they trampled and gored whatever it was until there was nothing left but paste. Thin, red paste. To make things more treacherous the beast Mara was approaching was injured. There was blood running down its great neck, probably from falling masonry as it had smashed its way through walls much larger than it.
Her sister was taking a risk in approaching the beast Kyriel knew. But it had to be done. They couldn't leave these poor beasts in the city to be killed. Or potentially to kill others.
Still, while her thoughts should have been with her sister, Kyriel was actually wondering about the two brothers. Both so outwardly different that she wouldn't have imagined that they could have come from the same father, yet inwardly the same.
First there was Marcus, the hugely powerful warrior, clearly steeped in weapons training since birth. He looked big and slow, but he moved with the grace of a dancer, and the mind behind those eyes was far sharper than she would have expected. Better trained, better mannered. To the casual observer he looked exactly the same as any number of other barbarian soldiers spread across the realms, but what lay inside was far different.
And then there was Edouard. Bookish and gifted with the spark as well as a knowledge of technology. He looked thin and soft, the sort who spent his days behind a desk studying arcane tomes rather than outside breathing the fresh air. But again what he looked like and who he actually was were two different things. He carried a sword naturally, and walked with
confidence wherever he went. She was certain he had weapons training. Also, the two muskets his brother had picked up when he'd returned to the horseless buggy were strange pieces. Four barrels apiece, too big and heavy to be useful hand weapons she would have thought, and yet looking at the way he carried them so respectfully, she suspected they would be more dangerous than they looked.
Two brothers, one big and hulking, the other bookish and quiet, and yet somehow more alike than they seemed. Both she suspected, were clever and dangerous men if they chose to be.
Both were of the nobility as well. Though she wasn't from this realm and didn't know them, their manners betrayed their origins. As did the respect that the people paid to them. They were both well liked, something that was unusual among her own people.
Actually it was unknown. Among the Tenarri the nobles were always armed and well defended and they never went anywhere without their guards. They had to be careful. All of the noble houses were constantly vying with one another for towns and cities, and the people of lower birth were forgotten about in the endless tussle. As such they often got trampled on. Too often they got killed. But then every so often they got their own back with a revolution and then the nobility learned to fear them once more. Until they were conquered again and returned to their place of servitude. It was a tough land.