As the strongest in the party, Vee expected this, and she nodded without argument.
“Good.” Maksohm turned to Chi. “You’ve got five minutes, go.”
Chi moved off and despite the fallen leaves, bushes, twigs and everything else littering the forest floor, he didn’t make a sound. Shadows made more noise than he did. My eyebrows rose into my hairline. I was more than a little impressed. How was he doing that? Maybe he’d teach me later.
We waited in taut stillness, echoes of forest life drifting past us without any real attention on our parts. After a while, several distinct knocks could be heard, like a woodpecker beating on a particularly stubborn piece of wood. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Five of them,” Maksohm said with a frown. “Just five? And they gave Nora and three agents trouble?”
“Something doesn’t seem right about that,” Vee agreed, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other. “Even if she did have baby agents with her. What was her mission, again?”
“Just a scouting mission, investigating a rumor about…” Maksohm’s eyes closed in fatalistic realization. “Stolen magical artifacts. Of course. The bandits must be using the artifacts against them.”
I felt like swearing. “Thunderation. How many do you think they have?”
Maksohm looked like he bit into something rotten as he admitted sourly, “I don’t know. It wasn’t in the report.”
“I love operating blind,” Bannen said cheerfully. “Stick with the plan?”
“Yes,” Maksohm said decisively. “Go. Rena, where’s the thinnest wall to the hill?”
I studied the ground for a moment, evaluating. “There. Follow me…” I paused before I even put a single foot in front of me. “Um, how do I move quietly to avoid getting their attention?”
Bannen moved ahead and said over his shoulder, “Step where I step, guide me.”
We’d done this before, where I used my hands on his shoulders to steer him, even as he put his body in between me and danger. I nodded understanding, put my hands against his shoulder blades, and carefully only stepped where he did. It took only a few strides for me to realize what he was doing—he found the moist places, the damp leaves, the patches of moss, things that wouldn’t crackle or snap under pressure.
Clever. I must remember this trick.
With gentle touches, I steered Bannen the way we needed to go, further away from the opening, but still uncomfortably close to the bandits’ campfire. With the bulk of the hill between us and them, it blocked their view of our approach, even though we stayed close to enough to hear them clearly. It never got too steep, easy enough to walk up, but hopefully the slope of the hill proved enough of a deterrent that none of the bandits wanted to come up this direction unless necessary.
As soon as I could, I focused on the area, crafting out a doorway that stood tall and wide enough for two men to comfortably walk through. If we were going to be carrying people out of here, I wanted to make sure no one had to squeeze through. Then I realized, belatedly, that Vee would be carrying people through, and made the opening even taller still. First layer, two feet deep, gone. Next layer, more rock than top soil, gone. Next layer, rock with a few tree roots dangling in, gone. I could sense more than see that I only had a few more feet to go until we hit the narrow cave inside the hill.
Which, of course, meant the bandits realized we had discovered them in that moment. Or at least Chi had.
A shout went up, rough voices and coarse language, then the whistle of an arrow piercing the air and a scream before a body hit the ground with a heavy thud. Vee swore and dove for the front of the hill, going to Chi’s aid. Bannen spun, putting his back to my shoulder, ready to face anything that came near us.
The entrance to the cave would be a battlefield, not the best place to try a rescue from. I focused intently on my own work, as we desperately needed a new way in now. I could feel the sweat bead on my forehead as I focused, but previous experiences of working magic in chaotic, dangerous situations helped me to remain on task. Next layer gone. One more?
I pushed a little deeper this time, working my way into the last of the rock, and it dissipated with a puff of somewhat stale air. Cave air always had a damp, earthy flavor to it, not unpleasant, but strange.
Maksohm dove through, calling as he went, “Nora!”
I couldn’t help with the injured, my magic was useless in that regard. I could slap bandages on people and that was about it. I entered the cave for entirely different reasons, as I needed to work some magic, Bannen needed to be in a defensible position if the bandits discovered our new doorway, and working magic through a shield had never been an impediment.
The inside of the cave felt just as damp and cool as I expected it to, although thankfully Maksohm had thrown up enough mage lights that it wasn’t oppressively dim. I strode right through to the front entrance, ignoring the three junior agents on the ground. I did spare a glance for the woman Maksohm had beelined for. The dark blue MISD uniform, looking a little worse for wear, did nothing to disguise her very nice figure. She had the same skin tone, dark hair and eyes that Maksohm did, and the family resemblance could be seen in a glance. She didn’t seem hurt, just mad, judging by that thunderous expression on her face.
Yells of alarm in deep, guttural voices; frantic footsteps; cloth rasping on stone; all sounds indicating that people were frantically diving for cover. Leaves rustled once, sharply, and I had a feeling that Chi had found a branch somewhere to sit on. There were several magical signatures, their patterns overlapping, giving off sparks of reflections that I could just see through the narrow opening of the cave. I could hear the sounds of fighting from outside and it didn’t take a genius to realize that the bandits were idiots, but clever idiots, and some of them had magical artifacts in their hands that made fighting them challenging. If Vee weren’t a mage herself, Chi might well have been blasted out of the tree by now.
I stopped just in front of the shield and took a good look at the situation. I only had two feet of visibility due to the narrow confines of the cave opening, but that proved to be enough. Three bandits, all rough and scraggly looking, formed a defensive line behind a massive log, popping up to wave the magic artifacts in their hands like a whip. I did not for a second believe that any magical device should be used in such a way but magic likes intent, and the intent to attack was obvious, so the devices responded accordingly. They left huge magical gouges in the ground, thick and wide, and only Vee’s shields and Seton’s own magic kept her and Chi from being cleaved in half. Chi didn’t have the vantage necessary to get around the trunk and, in this situation, couldn’t move out of the tree either, leaving him pinned.
Well, this was a fine pickle.
Growling, I focused on the men. I didn’t want to kill anyone, that left a bad taste in my mouth, but surely Chi and Vee could subdue them if the devices weren’t in their hands. I focused there, then blinked and backed out to stare at just one. Magical devices were never simple, but these had a more complex design than I’d anticipated. Tackling three magic devices at once might be a bit much.
“Who is this?” a female voice demanded behind me. “Her magic is strange and—you, young lady, you can’t just work magic through a barrier, do you realize the consequences? It’ll backlash and—Maksohm, let go of me.”
“It’s fine, she can work through a barrier,” Maksohm soothed. “Let’s focus on getting them ready for transport.”
“What do you mean ‘it’s fine,’” she responded incredulously. “Of course it’s not fine!”
“That is Rena Rocci, Void Mage,” Bannen interrupted before the argument could really get underway. “And her magic works very differently than yours does…”
I let him explain as I worked. Sometimes, I think half the reason why I needed a human familiar was so he could distract people and explain, so that I could focus on the job itself. The thought made me smile even as the first magical device turned into dust motes and air.
The band
it holding it yelped in panic, diving down and looking about frantically, as if the device had been spirited away instead of destroyed. I laughed to myself, amused, especially since the female agent behind me echoed the same yelp of surprise. Surprising people never got old. Grinning to myself, I focused on the second one.
It took less than five minutes to destroy both of the remaining devices, leaving the bandits unprotected. With no magic to aid them, Vee quickly pressed her advantage and Chi flipped neatly to the ground, arrows firing quickly. In a heartbeat the fight ended, the bandits no longer a threat to anyone.
Only then did I realize I had some very impressive silence behind me. Turning, I glanced about. The three junior agents looked at me as if I had mushrooms sprouting out of my ears—their expressions were actually so convincing that I reached up with both hands to check—and the senior agent, who I assumed to be Nora, gave me the most intense scrutiny I had ever been subjected to in my life.
“Void Mage, you say,” she breathed and those words put a chill up my spine. Something about her tone suggested she thought things I didn’t want to know about. “Your magic excels in destruction, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” I admitted and then forcefully turned the conversation in another direction. “I’ll get Vee in here, let’s get the wounded out and to the station. There’s a clinic attached to the station, isn’t there?”
Bannen seemed to understand my intent and played along. “There is. Here, let’s make sure the area is clear, that there were only those bandits to contend with.”
We stepped out of the cave together and I whispered under my breath, “Do you get the feeling that she’s scheming something?”
“Oh yeah,” Bannen agreed with feeling. “I have no idea what and I don’t want to know.”
At least we agreed on that point. “Let’s put her on board a train and then go the opposite way as quickly as possible, before she suggests some other job I’m not going to like.”
“That sounds like a great plan.”
Vee carried two of the junior agents without strain, Chi piggy-backing the other one. Nora handed a sack of magical artifacts to Rena with the very limited instruction of “Catalogue these.” I normally would have pitched in, but being out here in the open put familiar instincts on overdrive and I found myself grateful no one asked me to do anything more taxing than watching our backs.
Nora Maksohm whispered frantically to her cousin most of the hike back to the train station, her voice low, occasionally rising as she vehemently made some point, so that I only caught snatches. I didn’t like what I did overhear. She kept mentioning Toh’sellor, and Rena, and those two things in conjunction did not spell good things to my mind. Thankfully, Maksohm seemed to oppose whatever she kept proposing, so it didn’t look like we’d be tossed into more danger than we’d signed up for.
At least, not right this minute.
Rena didn’t say anything as we put the injured agents into the clinic, turned over the surviving magical artifacts, and wrote up a formal report for Nora to turn in later. She didn’t need to. Her eyes, when they caught mine, spoke volumes. She’d caught parts of that too, then.
Part of me wanted to demand of Maksohm what Nora was on about, but I felt that by doing so, I’d be drawn into a discussion on whether or not it would be possible, and I didn’t want Rena associated with destroying Toh’sellor any more than she already was. The shards were bad enough, thank you very much.
Thankfully, we managed to leave Nora rather quickly behind us, as she would take the injured agents by train back down to Foxboro for recuperation while we continued north on our original mission of the Njorage shard. The next northbound train arrived thirty minutes after we finished our reports and dinner, and I hopped on board in abject relief. Not that it carried us far, simply to the next station, three hours further down the line. We had to disembark again and stay the night at a hotel before continuing on.
Because we had to stop every night, lodging at a hotel, the trip north took another four and a half days by train to reach Njorage. During that time, Rena and Vee often put their heads together, talking about things that only women seemed to really enjoy. I caught them sharing confidences, a little, mostly preconceptions they’d had to battle as female mages who owned peculiar familiars. I didn’t think I imagined it that they bonded a little and I felt relieved to see it, as Rena sorely missed the camaraderie she’d had with her girlfriends in Corcoran.
When not swapping stories and such with Vee, Rena kept her own company happily enough. Rena as a rule loved to travel because she liked to read and traveling gave her the perfect excuse to lounge about and devour one book after another. She went through a book a day, happy as a clam.
The other three weathered the trip well, though I didn’t expect otherwise—after all, they traveled a lot in their profession. I just found it interesting how they did it. Maksohm, like Rena, chose to read the majority of the time, although half of his reading material seemed to be mission reports. Vee, likely because she felt crammed into the train car, often took long walks up and down the hallway, but when she did choose to sit in the car I got the best stories from her.
Chi proved the most difficult to settle. He just had too much spare energy. We took to burning it off with card games and wrestling matches, sometimes hand stand competitions in the corner of the car. (His bloody nose when he got knocked over was not my fault.)
To my absolute relief, we arrived at the city with no hard feelings. We all still liked each other and no one seemed inclined toward murdering anyone in their beds. Trips made or broke a group and this one had encouraged our bonds to each other, praise the deities.
I let the window down as we pulled toward the station, getting a good look at the city as we came in. Njorage strangely reminded me of Z’gher—in architecture at least. Most of the roofs were overlapping tile, each building connected tightly to the next by walls, the front yards enclosed behind stone and gates. The city gave a cramped impression, at least here, and I wondered at that because Njorage had a reputation for being a vacation destination. The hot springs up here carried rumors of being good for health and relaxation, so shouldn’t the city give off the same vibe?
We gathered up bags and stepped off the train, the crowd around us thickening as the other passengers got off. It felt humid here, more so than I’m used to, and a slight smell of sulfur drifted through the air, likely because of the hot springs. I’d expected cold weather, and it did have a nip to the air, but the heat of the hot springs offset this enough that it never became truly uncomfortable. I kept Rena in front of me, a hand at her waist, not only to keep from losing her in the crowd, but because my instincts stirred uneasily. There was some sort of atmosphere too that set me on edge, although I couldn’t pinpoint why. The place seemed clean enough, and there wasn’t anything toxic or smelly in the air aside from the whiff of sulfur. Come to think of it, Maksohm hadn’t mentioned where exactly the shard stood in Njorage. Could that be the reason for this tension? Was it in a bad location?
“I forgot to ask, but where is the shard, anyway?”
“It appeared near the center of the town square,” Vee said grimly.
I blanched. “How many people were caught up in it?”
“We don’t have a firm number on that.”
That many? So many they couldn’t confirm it? Or was this more a matter of Vee didn’t have all the facts handily stored in her head? I prayed it was the second option as the first disturbed me badly.
Rena made a distressed sound. “That’s…extremely not good.”
Glancing back, Maksohm asked, “Didn’t I tell you?”
“No,” Rena denied faintly, so faintly that I wasn’t sure he heard her over the din of noise. I barely did. She looked grey, and for a moment I felt myself cast back into the past, when I’d first met her, when even walking stole her stamina. Alarmed, I made an aborted movement toward her, but she reached out first, tangling her fingers in with mine. The firmness of the grip told m
e physically she felt fine. It was just her heart breaking at the grimness of the situation.
I held her firmly back, glaring at Maksohm, even if it wasn’t his fault.
His glance relayed a sense of apology, but we couldn’t hold a proper conversation in this crush, and we dropped the topic, making it a priority to get free and clear of the station.
I expected us to head toward a hotel first and put our luggage away, but instead we were led to the MISD headquarters here. Maksohm introduced us to the Man-in-Charge, a humorless fellow by the name of Cartwright. Me being me, I didn’t like him because I had a fundamental distrust of people with no sense of humor. I was convinced they were magical constructs gone wrong. He seemed competent, though, I’d give him that. He gave Rena and me a very thorough briefing of the situation and didn’t spare us the details. Including details I wasn’t sure I wanted.
An estimated fifteen hundred people waited inside that barrier. Or at least, they were once people. Not any longer.
A part of me wished he had held back, because while I might be battle hardened, Rena was not. Having the magical equivalent of zombies wandering around under the barrier with no chance of turning them back to themselves, well…she didn’t take that well. Maksohm’s barrier would come extremely handy in helping us to lower the casualties, true, as we wouldn’t have to fight all of them to get in there. Assuming his barrier didn’t become completely overwhelmed, we had a fighting chance of making it to the shard and giving Rena time to do her magic.
But the odds of that happening were about fifty-fifty and I didn’t need to do the math for Rena on this one. I could tell from the look on her face that she knew deaths were likely to happen.
The Void Mage (The Familiar and Mage Book 2) Page 8