by John Daulton
Black Sander saw the marchioness’ small clean room in his mind, in the concert mind, a teleportation chamber outside on the grounds. He saw it, and saw it disappear from beside the great house. It appeared in the spell, barely, the seer only just holding on to the view.
But there it was, the marchioness’ teleportation chamber, sitting crooked atop the bodies nearest the central crimson stool. On Citadel.
Four mechs erupted through the clean room wall. So carefully built into it as they had been, now they burst forth from it in a spray of bullets. In seconds, half of the remaining wizards in the room were gone.
Two men climbed out of the wrecked stone box after the mechs. Black Sander recognized one to be his big brute henchman Twane. Twane held a truncheon nearly as big as a mammoth leg. With one stroke, he dropped the elf to unconsciousness even as the Royal Assassin was clambering to his feet.
“Hurry, you fool,” Black Sander heard the marchioness say breathlessly.
Twane bound the elf up quickly.
The conduit was casting more teleports; another clean room flashed through Black Sander’s mind, the concept of it more than a vision, larger perhaps, or perhaps just a crate of wood. It all went so fast, he could hardly hold on to ideas. Again he felt as if he were going to have his brain ripped out. He couldn’t understand how the conduit was casting in such a way. The mana wasn’t working properly. It was as if … as if it had turned to water somehow.
Then he realized that the conduit must have Liquefying Stone. Suddenly he understood. The marchioness had one. She’d had it all along. Or perhaps she’d gotten it from the ancient priest. But she had one.
Black Sander knew enough of its power to hope that idiot addict didn’t get them all killed. He considered letting go of the spell. But he was second in the cast. If he did so, the release would whip back through the chain and kill all the rest.
Still, it was better than dying himself.
But the next part of the spell was cast. He still had his life and his magic intact. For now.
The other man that had emerged with Twane was Black Sander’s right-hand man, Belor. Belor looked pale and doughy compared to all the rest. It was obvious the screaming, silent in the seeing spell but apparent in all the O-shaped mouths of the wounded wizards who had survived, unnerved him. It must have been a tremendous cacophony. It embarrassed Black Sander to see how timidly Belor picked his way over the bodies in the concert hall. He held a sack limply in hands that trembled. Perhaps they should have let El Segador go instead, as the man had asked.
But Belor did as he was supposed to, if too slowly for Black Sander or the marchioness, and he gingerly pulled the sack over the elf’s head and handed Twane a length of cord. The burly young sailor, long used to working with rope and tying knots, made quick and secure work of it from there. And just like that, the elf was rendered harmless, a simple anti-magic spell and a plain old burlap sack, the former the invention of the Queen’s own favorite enchanter, Peppercorn.
“Take us up top. Quickly. I need to see.” That, of course, from the marchioness.
The conduit had to fuss with poor, addled Kalafrand, for the seer was terrified. But eventually he managed to get the spell under way, and the vision fed to Black Sander, at first, and once again, lots of flashing light and dark as the sight slid through the floors of Citadel up to the battlement. By the time the sight magic emerged, the scene was much the same as it had been in the concert hall, bodies strewn all over the redoubt decks. The tightly packed combat towers were littered with dead wizards and dead invaders from … well, from the alien world they were on, apparently, dead human aliens—again. The remaining Prosperion wizards—having repelled the invaders as had the Queen and those in the concert hall below—had not been so lucky against the unexpected attack of the marchioness. They were already being herded together by ten more mechs, sent in one of the large shipping containers used for freight on Earth. It sat crookedly, bridging the space of two redoubts and looking just as alien as any of the bodies lying there.
The Citadel commander, Aderbury in his brown robes, stood among them, looking angry and holding a cloth to an enormous bleeding cut at the back of his head.
The marchioness’ men, Jefe’s men, had done their job.
“All right,” commanded the marchioness. “It’s time to do the rest. Send our friends to Citadel so that Master Jefe can claim his armor from the Queen. And Councilman Gangue, get your people at that Amphitrite TGS depot near Earth to send the rest of my mechs to the Palace. Vorvington is waiting for us by the entrance he’s built for us in the wall. The time has come to take Kurr back from the ruinous reign of the War Queen.”
THE END
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Table of Contents
Series
Title
ISBN
Dedication
Map
Chapter_1
Chapter_2
Chapter_3
Chapter_4
Chapter_5
Chapter_6
Chapter_7
Chapter_8
Chapter_9
Chapter_10
Chapter_11
Chapter_12
Chapter_13
Chapter_14
Chapter_15
Chapter_16
Chapter_17
Chapter_18
Chapter_19
Chapter_20
Chapter_21
Chapter_22
Chapter_23
Chapter_24
Chapter_25
Chapter_26
Chapter_27
Chapter_28
Chapter_29
Chapter_30
Chapter_31
Chapter_32
Chapter_33
Chapter_34
Chapter_35
Chapter_36
Chapter_37
Chapter_38
Chapter_39
Chapter_40
Chapter_41
Chapter_42
Chapter_43
Chapter_44
Chapter_45
Chapter_46
Chapter_47
Chapter_48
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