by Blink, Bob
“Have the other two appeared?” Suline asked. She had been pleased at how easily the two men had been taken. After Ferkle’s panicked description of their ability with magic the previous evening, she’d expected far more problems restraining the strangers. Thus far, she’d seen nothing that indicated they had any ability with magic. They’d stared at her and the glyphs used to block them without understanding. Anyone who could create a Doorway should have been fully aware of what had been done to them. If it hadn’t been for the confirmation of the Sergeant and several soldiers who had participated in the altercation the night before and the obvious fact they had arrived by Doorway she might have doubted Ferkle.
“They haven’t been seen,” Lieutenant Tekes replied respectfully. “We have squads out and watching as you directed. Caster Tanss is with them. We will continue to monitor in case they appear.” Tekes was pleased that the two they had captured had been accommodating enough to appear in the inn where they had set the trap. Had they appeared in the open, a more difficult situation would have been developed. It is possible that Caster Suline could have blocked them there as well, but it would have been far less certain, especially given there were two of them. Special arrows had been provided by Suline which were engraved with runes to make them more immune to magic. They would have used those if necessary.
“Maintain the patrols as I directed,” she replied. “I will remain available for a while, then I must return to Nals to inform the Guild what has taken place here.” She turned to Ferkle. “Go with him. More with the gift than just Tanss might be required if the others we seek reappear.”
Lieutenant Tekes nodded his understanding, and left the building to see to his men. Ferkle followed after him, clearly uncomfortable without his staff. She’d have to see to getting him another while in Nals.
Senior Caster Suline sat and thought after the two men had left. When the rider Tanss had sent to her village had arrived with the panicked news, she’d been uncertain what to think. Now it appeared the tales had some merit. The two men were clearly strangers. She believed they didn’t understand the language and were not attempting to fake ignorance. She was certain the dark-haired one wished to communicate. It was important that they weren’t Baldari as some of the rumors circulating through the village had claimed. But she didn’t know who they were, and while they appeared to be able to perform magic, they didn’t carry any of the usual aids required. What bothered her most was the origin of the Doorway they had used to come here. They hadn’t taken the most obvious precaution of masking their origin, and Suline sensed the spot far out in the Wastelands from which they had come. Perhaps they were unable to do so, but she would have expected a group trying to sneak into the kingdom would travel with one who was able. For a Caster with her ability the fact a Doorway had been created was impossible to conceal if she took the time to look and was close enough to the origin or end point. That much was true whether then ends were masked or not. If the creator of the Doorway didn’t mask the end points, then she was able to sense where both ends were located, beginning and ending, even if the origin was far away as it was in this instance. The same would be true if she were near the origin of an unmasked Doorway. In that case she would be able to tell where it ended, even if it was at the far end of Sedfair. It was a useful skill, and not many had it. It was rarer than those with the ability to mask their Doorways.
She knew a little about Sedfair’s exploration into the Wastelands, and no one had ever ventured anywhere near that far into them. Only the Baldari were suspected of venturing that deep into the forbidden lands, yet these two had come from there. She wished that Ferkle had picked up on that critical point when they had fled the previous night, but then he was only moderately skilled. She would have gone to Nals and had reinforcements sent here the previous night had she known then what she knew now. However, it took a Senior Caster with the right abilities to be able to detect such nuances.
The Guild must be informed of these events promptly. She’d go now, except for the fact that she felt she needed to be here in case the other two strangers returned with their magic and her skills were required to subdue them. There might even be more of them. Who knew what kind of force might be waiting at the origin of their Doorway? That thought almost made her change her mind and go to Nals immediately, but what were the chances of being heard this time of night, and if the alarm was false, she would take much of the blame.
The Wastelands scared her, but perhaps it was time to be bold. There was opportunity here, as well as danger. Suline was more capable than one would have thought from her assignment here in a small village along the border. Politics had seen her banished to the frontier. She was far more capable than Tanss, Slipi’s Village Caster. She was more capable than most realized, even more than those who were responsible for her being assigned to the border region. Her friend Tanss knew Suline had abilities that exceeded the norm, and had known she was one who could create a Doorway back to Nals. That is why Tanss had sent the rider for her. Perhaps she should exercise her ability and check out the origin of the stranger’s Doorway? There wasn’t much time remaining. The trace that led to the location was weakening rapidly. She would have to follow it soon, or she would not be able to go to the point of origin. Her ability would allow her to go where the other Doorway had originated without having been there before, using the signal as an anchor, but only as long as the trace was there. Once it faded, she would be restricted by not being able to create an image of the location.
“You should have seen them,” Fen told his father excitedly. “They released magic with speed I have never seen before, and they didn’t require any obvious magical artifacts to make their magic work.”
“You know that isn’t possible,” Major Olar Kalner told his son as they walked toward the barracks where the prisoners were being kept. The Lieutenant had asked that Fen have a look at the captured prisoners to verify they were among those he’d seen before. The Senior Caster wanted to be sure that there weren’t more than four who had been seen. “Even the strongest Casters can only produce the most marginal magic without the appropriate runes. That is why our Casters carry their staffs with the key spells readily at hand.”
Fen knew better than to argue with his father, but he knew what he had seen. They had been able to perform magic of great power without the very tools that Fen himself had struggled to master over the years. The fact the man had been every bit as strong, if not stronger than the woman who led them hadn’t been lost on Fen either. He didn’t know if they were a new enemy that Sedfair would have to face up to, but Fen knew they had something he desperately wished to learn.
“It’s them,” Fen confirmed when he’d had a chance to look through the cell bars at the two men inside. The dark-haired one who had tried to speak with him the day before was there. The other had been farther back, but there was no doubt he was one of the four. The woman and the older man were the ones who were missing. Fen provided a description of the two remaining strangers to Caster Suline.
“That’s the kid we saw the other day,” Lorl said when the young boy had left the room.
“I think he’s the one that alerted them to our presence,” Rigo guessed. “They probably wanted him to identify us.”
“Meddling little bastard,” Lorl swore. “If it hadn’t been for him, we might not be in this fix.”
Rigo shrugged. Odds had been against them. They would have had to speak to the authorities sooner or later. They had no knowledge of this place, limited gold, and no way of communicating. They needed to make allies here, or they would never get home.
“I don’t think they know about us,” Rigo said after a few moments silence.
“What do you mean?” Lorl asked.
“They appear surprised and confused by our presence. We are clearly different than whomever they are at war with, and they don’t act as if they knew we existed. I don’t think they are behind the Hoplani attacks. It just doesn’t feel right.”
“So yo
u think we can make some kind of truce with them?”
“That’s difficult to say. We have no idea what their agenda or goals might be. Perhaps they are the aggressors in whatever war they are fighting. Knowing about us might just offer them another prospective target.”
“We need Ash’urn. He’d have a better chance making himself understood. He’s always been good at that. Do you think he and Orna are okay?”
“I hope so. I just don’t know what they can do. Sooner or later they will have to come here as well, and odds are they will be captured. This group knows about them and is prepared to take them on. I’d hate to see them get hurt. They certainly don’t have the ability to rescue us as we planned. This group is more capable than I would have thought from the initial encounter we had last night.”
Later in the afternoon Rigo and Lorl were surprised as the guards supported by Caster Suline marched Orna and Ash’urn into the stockade. They placed them in the adjacent large cell. Rigo noted that both had the same bands wrapped around their wrists and neck.
“What happened?” Rigo asked, when their friends were locked in the adjacent cell.
“They surprised us,” Orna explained. “We were waiting in the oasis. We had discussed what to do when you didn’t return and were going to come and have a look around later tonight. They just appeared and before we could react they had us bound. Somehow they blocked our magic.”
Chapter 25
Rigo could understand his friends having been surprised. They had never encountered anyone in the Ruins at any oasis, other than a Dunerider, and that had been far from where they were now. It was the one area they had felt relatively safe, and there was no reason to believe the locals had any idea where they might be. But then, perhaps they knew more about the Ruins than he realized, and that was the only location in the nearby Ruins that could reach the village. He hadn’t considered that.
“How did they find you?” he asked even as the thoughts were going through his mind.
“I have no idea,” Orna replied with a frown. “But they knew we were there somehow. When they appeared, it wasn’t one or two. There were three wizards and a number of their guardsmen, including that little guy whose staff you vaporized. The woman who escorted them in here with the guards was in charge, and another younger woman, also carrying a staff was with them. They seem to have a lot of the staffs. All of them are a lot fancier than ours were. I can’t help wondering if they have the same capabilities. Maybe if we can get our hands on one of them we might be able to get back home.”
“They knew you were at the oasis?” Rigo asked, to confirm what Orna had implied.
Orna nodded. “It was as if they had somehow scouted the area, knew there were just the two of us, and the best place to come at us from. One minute we were sitting on the rocks at the edge of camp, and then there they were, coming out of the Bypass. The crystal globes on the top of the staffs of the wizards were glowing, and the soldiers had their swords drawn and ready. They tossed some kind of net over us, and that’s when I realized I couldn’t access my power.”
“It was probably marked with symbols,” Rigo guessed.
“Yeah, it was. It had strips of leather sewn into it, and each of them had some odd markings. I didn’t think much about it. Is it important?”
Rigo pointed to the bands. “The same symbols are on those bands. I’m certain that they have something to do with the blockage we are experiencing. Lorl and I haven’t been able to use any magic since we arrived.”
“How did they catch you?” Ash’urn asked.
“They guessed where we might return,” Rigo explained. “The inside of the inn where we arrived had been painted with more of the symbols. We stepped into an area where magic simply didn’t work. They were waiting with a number of soldiers and that woman. I agree that she’s the one in charge. She has been very effective in rounding us all up.”
As they spoke Ash’urn had been studying the symbols on the bracelet he was wearing. “Curious he said. I believe you are right about the symbols. It also might explain the staffs they carry. Each is heavily engraved with a variety of symbols. I would be willing to believe the symbols represent key spells they expect to use, and by having them on the staffs, they are available for immediate use. When the woman opened the Bypass to bring us back here she was careful to position the staff a certain way.”
“Why would they go to such trouble?” Lorl asked. “Magic doesn’t require all that fuss.”
“Ours doesn’t,” Rigo said. “Perhaps their magic works differently. Maybe they can’t trigger spontaneous magic the way we do.”
“They did seem startled last night when we used magic on them,” Orna said. “At first I thought it might be they hadn’t seen much magic, but that’s obviously false.”
“There’s something else that is curious,” Ash’urn said. “When they execute a spell, they trigger it with spoken magic. I could hear the woman softly reciting a string of words as she positioned her staff and triggered her spell. She did the same thing when she fused the bands, although she didn’t use her staff that time. Perhaps the symbols on the bands were sufficient.”
“Spoken magic?” Rigo asked. “You mean similar to the spells you learned and passed to the Hoplani Patrols?”
Ash’urn nodded. “More than just similar. I thought it odd at the time, but the structure of the phrases and a few of the sounds are very much like some I have learned. I would bet it is based on the same core spoken magic.”
“How would it remain unchanged for so long?” Orna scoffed. “It would change just like the language has. You must be mistaken.”
“Not so,” Ash’urn corrected her. “Language would be free to shift and change as the society changed, but the language of magic would remain unaltered. It would have to. Spoken correctly, a spell would execute. Spoken incorrectly, and the spell would fail. We saw that with those we taught. Many couldn’t articulate the spell properly and were never able to bring forth the required magic. The very nature of the art would force a consistency.”
“You think you know their magic?” Rigo asked.
“Nothing nearly so useful,” Ash’urn corrected him. “I suspect there is a common base, but their usage is far more complete and sophisticated than that which we have stumbled upon back home. But it might be learned with time.”
“If the symbols are so important to their magic, then perhaps if we damage these bracelets and alter the markings, they might fail,” Orna said, looking more closely at the symbols encircling the band on her right wrist.
“I would guess that has been considered,” Ash’urn replied doubtfully. “The fact they had them on hand suggests they have been developed to contact those with an understanding of the local magic. I would bet they are extremely resistant to alteration.”
“We need to face reality,” Rigo said softly. “Even if we can get loose, regain access to our magic, and perhaps even escape out of the village, what can we hope to accomplish? The Ruins don’t offer us sanctuary any longer, and we know nothing of this land and how things work. We are prisoners of those with access to magic, some of which we don’t understand and is perhaps more capable than our own. We have no funds, and no means of communicating with the people here. It would appear our only chance is to bide our time and try to cooperate. We’ll have to hope we learn some of their language, or they ours. All the while, we need to minimize what we reveal about ourselves and where we came from. We don’t know if these people would be a threat to the Three Kingdoms or not.”
The conversation was interrupted when a pair of guards came into the cell room carrying bowls of food. They handed them through a narrow horizontal slot designed for that purpose, and then passed through a single large skin of water. The meal didn’t look nearly as inviting as the food they had had the previous evening, but all were hungry with no other options available. They proceeded to eat silently.
Midway through the meal another prisoner was brought into the cell-room and locked into one of th
e single prisoner cells on the opposite side of the walkway. The man stared openly at them for a while, even trying to talk until he decided they either wouldn’t or couldn’t respond. Finally he shrugged, yelled something that brought the guards. One of them returned shortly with a large skin of water which he passed to the noisy prisoner, then left. Twice during the night, the prisoner woke them when he yelled for something. Once he was allowed out of his cell to visit the latrines where Rigo and his friends had been taken after their meal.
The following morning they were taken from the cell, one at a time. Each was led off to a room in the outer area, where they were questioned by two of the wizards and several military types. They were shown written words and exposed to what appeared to be a couple of dialects or language variations. It was a waste of time. None of them, including Ash’urn, could make any sense out of the sessions. Communication remained restricted to basic hand signals. By midday, they were all back in the cell being ignored.
“They must be worried about us by now?” Lorl said as he walked over where Rigo sat on the floor.
“Back home?” Rigo asked.
Lorl nodded. “They know we have been gone too long. They will have to be wondering what happened.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Rigo replied, wondering how Nycoh would take their disappearance. He was certain she would blame herself, but that wouldn’t be fair. He hoped she would realize that while it hadn’t turned out well, the risk had been necessary. “There’s nothing they can do. We took both staffs, so there would be no way for them to follow, even if they knew where we were.”