Alexander nodded and stood up.
“Thank you, gentlemen, your advice is greatly appreciated.”
With that, he left the council chamber and opened his eyes. Chloe was sitting on his knee watching him.
“Did you learn anything of value, My Love?”
“Quite a bit, actually,” Alexander said as he got up and stretched his legs.
“You’ve been gone for many hours, My Love.”
He pulled the heavy curtain aside and saw that it was fully dark outside.
“Are Isabel and Abigail back yet?”
“No, My Love. Boaberous guards your door. I told him to disturb you only if they returned.”
Alexander frowned and sat back down. “I’ll be back soon, Little One. I just want to see where they are.”
It took several minutes to focus his mind and empty his thoughts before he was floating on the firmament. Then with a flick of thought he was in a dark stone room. There were two beds and the door was barred and locked. He looked at the figures sleeping in the beds and could see Isabel from her colors at once. Abigail was in the other bed. He drifted up through the ceiling and found himself within a keep. He rose straight up into the air over the city until he recognized it as Southport.
With a sigh of relief he returned to his body. They would be safe in Southport and could exchange information with Kevin. Good enough.
Chapter 13
“Over the coming weeks and months, I have a set of tasks I need you to focus on,” Alexander said to Lucky.
They were in his private study along with Kelvin and Chloe. She was sitting cross-legged on the armrest of Alexander’s comfortable chair. They had just finished breakfast with Jack, Anatoly, and Alexander’s parents. Nearly everyone had arrived at the Keep for the war council. Erik was coordinating the guests’ lodging and providing additional security for each of them. Alexander knew that bringing in more men wasn’t the way to defend against a shade but he had to do something even if for appearances. He had a busy day ahead of him. There was much to be done, especially considering that he was planning on leaving the safety of Blackstone Keep within the week.
“Of course, Alexander, whatever you need, but I thought I would be accompanying you on your journey,” Lucky said.
“It’s that obvious I’m planning a trip?”
“I’ve known you since you were a boy,” Lucky said with a genuine smile. “You have that sense of urgency about you again.”
Alexander nodded. “I guess I do. There’s so much to be done and too little time. I plan to leave a few days after the war council.”
“And you’d like me to stay here?” Lucky asked. His tone was measured but Alexander could see a sense of loss swell within his colors.
“I’m afraid so, Lucky. I think you’ll understand in a minute, but before I explain, I need to impress upon you both the necessity of keeping this conversation and everything related to it a complete and total secret from everyone.”
Lucky and Kelvin became more serious, both nodding agreement.
“Making Wizard’s Dust requires an arch mage of any calling or a mage alchemist,” Alexander said. “Lucky, I need you to become a mage.”
Lucky was uncharacteristically speechless. Kelvin nodded somberly.
“If we had the necessary quantity of Wizard’s Dust, I would suggest that you attempt the mage’s fast, Kelvin, but we don’t, so I need you to help Lucky with his studies and mentor him through the process.”
“Of course,” Kelvin said.
“We have a few problems that need to be addressed,” Alexander continued. “The heartstone of the Keep is imbalanced. The sovereigns tell me that it will eventually fail, leaving Blackstone Keep without its magical defenses. The only way to repair the damage is for an arch mage enchanter to re-enchant the heartstone and set it spinning correctly again. So, if you’re willing, Kelvin, I need you to prepare for the mage’s fast in anticipation of the time when Lucky can create Wizard’s Dust.”
“How long until the heartstone fails?” Kelvin asked.
“There’s no way to know. It could be anytime now or sometime next spring. One thing is certain though, it will fail. And without magic, the Keep will be vulnerable to all manner of attacks by Phane and his minions.”
“I’ll be ready when the time comes,” Kelvin said. Alexander could see a slight tremor of trepidation ripple through his colors. The mage’s fast hadn’t been attempted in centuries. The last few to attempt it had died in the process.
“I have no doubt of that, Kelvin, but I’ll still ask the sovereigns for guidance to help you through the process. They have knowledge that will help ensure success.”
“I certainly welcome their advice.”
Alexander turned to Lucky. “The sovereigns gave me an exercise to start you out with, Lucky. It should help you expand your link with the firmament.”
Alexander spent the next half hour teaching both Lucky and Kelvin the exercise until they had a firm grasp of the process.
“Practice diligently. The ability to make Wizard’s Dust may be the deciding factor in this war,” Alexander said.
“I will devote myself to it,” Lucky said.
“Good, but before you do, I need you to make a transference potion for me.”
Lucky frowned. “I’m unfamiliar with such a potion. What’s its purpose?”
“It will allow me to close Mage Cedric’s Wizard’s Den,” Alexander said. “I plan to trap the shade inside and close him away forever.”
Kelvin sat back, his mind on fire. Lucky broke into a broad smile.
“I was wondering how we were going to defeat him,” Lucky said.
“You’ll need to sacrifice the collar I created to make your plan work,” Kelvin said. “I’ll begin fashioning another immediately.”
“Good. I’d like to take one with me when I leave,” Alexander said.
Alexander spent several minutes explaining the process of creating a transference potion, recalling every detail of Balthazar’s instructions with exacting precision. Once he’d explained the basic process, Lucky started nodding with understanding as his experience began to fill in the blanks. After they were both satisfied, Lucky smiled approvingly at Alexander.
“And so you have become the teacher.”
“More like the messenger, in this case,” Alexander said but he smiled at his old mentor nonetheless.
“Do you have a blowtube with sleeping powder?” Alexander asked. “You once described such a thing to me when discussing deathwalker root.”
“Of course,” Lucky said as he began rummaging around in his bag. “Ah, here we are.” He handed Alexander three small tubes, each not more than four inches long and sealed on either end with paper.
“Just blow hard on one end and the dust will be propelled into a cloud about five feet in front of you. One whiff and your target will fall unconscious. Be careful to wait a few moments for the powder to settle before approaching your target or you may find yourself asleep as well,” Lucky said with a little smile.
Alexander nodded, tucking the vials away into his pouch.
“All right,” he said, standing up. “I’m heading to the top of the wizard’s tower. I was hoping you’d accompany me, Kelvin. I need to clear out Cedric’s Wizard’s Den and I could use your help.”
“Absolutely, just let me make a stop in my workshop to give my assistants instructions so they can begin preparations for fashioning another collar.”
“Good. Meet me at the base of the tower in an hour or so,” Alexander said. “I have an errand to run in the meantime.”
***
Alexander opened the door quietly. Boaberous had guided him to the chamber where Jataan was recuperating from his grievous wound. The battle mage lay on his side, facing the door. He appeared to be sleeping but opened his eyes when Alexander stepped into the room.
“Lord Reishi, forgive me,” Jataan whispered hoarsely.
Alexander shook his head as he drew a chair up next to the be
d.
“There’s nothing to forgive, Jataan. The enemy got the best of you. It happens.”
“Never before to me,” Jataan said.
“No, I don’t imagine, but that’s not important. What matters now is that you heal.”
“The wound is slow to mend,” Jataan said. “The healers speak encouraging words, but I can see in their eyes that it is beyond their ability. In truth, I may not survive.”
“Nonsense,” Alexander said. “It will take time but you can and will heal.”
“I’ve heard them whispering of dark magic bound up in the wound.”
Alexander nodded. “The wraithkin leave a taint in the wound that prevents magical healing. The only thing that’s proven effective is fairy dust but it nearly killed me. In fact, they tell me my heart stopped for a time.”
“I would have you give me fairy dust,” Jataan said. “I would rather risk death than fail to stand in my place between you and danger.”
Alexander smiled sadly and shook his head.
“The healers tell me it would almost certainly kill you. My wound was just a gash on the arm; yours is life-threatening and it’s drained your strength.”
Jataan hesitated for a long moment.
“I have killed many men with a blade, but this is the first time in my life that I’ve felt the pain of a serious wound. During the many hours I’ve had to myself here, I’ve been wondering what the last moments of my victims must have been like for them. My conscience weighs on me.”
“My conscience weighs on me, too, Jataan.”
“For most of my life I thought that I served the Old Law, but I’ve come to realize that I saw the Old Law and the Reishi as one in the same. I believed that serving the will of the Reishi was service to the Old Law, even when I violated the life, liberty, or property of others. I’ve come to see things differently since I met you and I find that I have guilt where once there was certainty.”
“We can’t change the past,” Alexander said. “We can only learn from it. If you feel guilt for things you’ve done, then face it and own it because it truly does belong to you, maybe more than anything else in the world. But also learn from it. Let it guide you to act in a way that doesn’t lead you to feel guilty ever again.”
Jataan nodded slowly, thinking about Alexander’s words.
“It would seem that I will have plenty of time to reflect on my past and come to terms with the things I’ve done.”
“Take the time you need to heal,” Alexander said. “Don’t push yourself too much or you’ll reopen your wound.”
“I will do what I must to recover quickly, so that I can stand with you again. But while I’m recuperating, I plan to reorganize the Reishi Protectorate. For centuries, we’ve been a far-flung and loosely organized group of largely independent operatives that shared information and sought out potential threats to the Reishi. Now that the line has been reconstituted, we must become more than we were.”
“I agree,” Alexander said. “I’d like you to create a number of small teams, three to five highly capable people each, who can be sent on important tasks. There always seems to be too many things to do, so it would be helpful to have reliable people to assign some of the more difficult jobs.”
“I’ll begin immediately,” Jataan said. “Is there anything else I should focus on?”
“Healing,” Alexander said. “I’ll be leaving soon and I plan to take Boaberous with me.”
“I assumed as much,” Jataan said. “May I ask where you’ll be going?”
“Truthfully, I’m not entirely sure of that yet,” Alexander said. “I want to take counsel from all of our allies before I decide where to focus my attention. We have too many enemies and not enough resources to face them all at once.”
“I would like to attend your war council,” Jataan said. “I may have insight into Prince Phane’s thinking that would prove useful.”
“If you feel up to it, I’d like to have you there,” Alexander said. “But only if the healers think you can be moved without aggravating your injury.”
Boaberous was standing in the corridor outside Jataan’s room when Alexander opened the door. His face and colors revealed concern for his commander. The giant of a man was typically stoic and only displayed emotion in the heat of battle, but Jataan’s injury had shaken him. The battle mage was a match for most mortal enemies but the wraithkin had bested him. Alexander suspected that Lieutenant Grudge was worried that he wouldn’t be able to defend against Phane’s unnatural creations.
Grudge fell in behind him as he headed for the tower. Alexander tried to organize the enemies he faced as he walked, giving them each a priority based on both the immediacy and magnitude of the danger they represented. He had a pretty good idea where he would focus his attention but he still wanted to hear the counsel of his allies before he made any decisions, if for no other reason than to include them in the decision-making process so they would buy into his plans more fully. He realized he was thinking like a noble and felt a brief sense of revulsion. He hated the idea of manipulating people, but the stakes were simply too high to allow any advantage to be wasted. He needed every single edge he could get.
When he arrived at the entrance to the tower, Kelvin was waiting for him. Alexander dismissed the stone wall sealing the doorway and they began the long climb. Alexander’s legs burned from the exertion, especially after all of the stairs he’d climbed the previous day, but he pressed on through the pain and reached the top of the tower relatively quickly. The little room just below Mage Cedric’s meditation chamber was just as he had left it, just as it had been for thousands of years. He left Kelvin and Boaberous there and pushed through the shield that guarded the highest room in the entire Keep.
He carefully gathered up Barnabas Cedric’s dry and brittle bones, wrapping them in the blanket from the little bed inside the Wizard’s Den. Next he took the books from the bookshelf and carefully moved them to the top of the staircase. Finally he dragged all of the furniture from the room, leaving nothing but a bare stone room that existed in its own dimension.
He spent the next several minutes moving everything down to the room below. Alexander didn’t see an aura of magic in any of the items, but he asked Kelvin to examine them just the same.
“Nothing is enchanted, but several of these books are quite interesting,” Kelvin said.
“How so?”
“This one appears to be a treatise on the creation of a magical keep including the enchantment of a heartstone,” Kelvin said. “This one is a spellbook detailing the creation of a Wizard’s Den, and this one is a spell capable of calling forth a mountain range. I suspect he used this spell to create Glen Morillian. Of course, all three of these spells can only be cast by an arch mage. These other books contain a variety of spells that can be cast by master- or mage-level wizards. Some are quite powerful. Most are known spells but I believe a few of them are unique.”
“Take the ones you can make good use of but leave the Wizard’s-Den and the mountain-range spells here,” Alexander said.
They carefully wrapped the spellbooks in a bed sheet and began the long descent. When they reached the level with the bridge leading to the wyvern aerie, they stopped for a break. Alexander watched the horizon, hoping to see his wife and sister returning from their outing. He wanted to be angry with Abigail for leaving without warning but he was more concerned for her well-being and worried about burdening her with power. She wanted to live a simple life and he was asking her to give that up. It wasn’t fair and he knew it, but he also knew with certainty that it was necessary.
He waited for an hour or so, until about noon, when he saw them in the distance. He breathed a sigh of relief as he started across the long bridge spanning the distance between the tower and the aerie.
He was standing on the platform when they floated in for a gentle landing. Isabel pulled her release strap, unbuckling her armor from her saddle, slipped off Asteroth and went straight to Alexander. She hugged him without a wo
rd, then said, “I’m sorry I left without telling you.”
“You were helping Abigail. I’m just glad you’re both safe.”
Abigail dismounted and faced Alexander with a mixture of defiance and chagrin. She knew it had been foolish to leave the Keep, but she was still angry that he was asking so much of her.
“Did you find what you needed?” Alexander asked.
She nodded with resignation.
“Our home is gone, Alex. Burned to the ground. I guess I always thought we’d be able to go back to our lives once this was over, but I can see now that the lives we had are gone. I don’t like it, but I accept it. Deal in what is, not what if, right?”
Alexander smiled softly and hugged his sister.
“I seem to remember hearing that once or twice when we were children,” Alexander said.
“Anything happen while we were away?” Isabel asked.
Alexander’s mood darkened as he nodded.
“Quite a bit actually,” Alexander said. “Shivini is loose in the Keep. He killed a couple of young women and attacked Wren, beat her up pretty good, but nothing that won’t heal.”
“Where is she?” Isabel asked.
“Safe in her quarters. Her wounds should be mended by now. That’s not the worst of it, though. Shivini has damaged the Keep. It’s only a matter of time before Blackstone loses all of its magical protections and weapons.”
“Dear Maker,” Isabel whispered.
“There’s more,” Alexander said. “I consulted the sovereigns and they believe you’re in great danger from the taint left by the wraithkin. They gave me two possible solutions but both are difficult, to say the least. For now, it’s important that you don’t use your link to the realm of light.”
“What do we have to do to get rid of the wraithkin’s taint?” she asked.
“Either kill the wraith that Phane summoned to create the wraithkin in the first place or make a potion with some very difficult-to-obtain ingredients that might kill you anyway.”
“I vote we kill the wraith,” Abigail said, “whatever that is.”
“I tend to agree,” Alexander said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a banishing spell and the thing can’t actually be destroyed.”
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