Tangled Engagements (The Memory Stones Series Book 4)

by Jeffrey Quyle

  If he put it around his neck, he would no longer have the use of his white magic, he knew. He would be in the dark middle of the Stoke army encampment.

  “Theus, what are we doing?” Forgon asked.

  “You can take your hand off my shoulder now,” Theus said calmly.

  “What are you going to do now?” Forgon asked as he lifted his hand from Theus.

  Theus turned to face him. His grip on his sword tightened. In the dim light of the camp, Forgon’s facial features resembled Coriae’s, reminding Theus of the relationship between the two, as well as reminding him of the pain he felt from Coriae’s dishonesty.

  “Wear the pendant,” Limber’s voice spoke again.

  Theus lifted the chain over his head, and slid it down to his chest. His hand lifted the stone and tucked it inside the tunic he wore.

  “Theus, what do we do now?” Forgon repeated.

  “We’re going to try to find the prisoner they have here,” Theus answered. “I just don’t know how.”

  “Can’t we just become invisible again?” his companion asked.

  Theus felt better. The taint of the dark magic, the foul feel of the effects of the demon’s plane, was fading fast.

  “No,” Theus said softly. “It’s too dangerous.”

  A pair of soldiers approached them.

  “Step back here,” Theus stepped behind a tree, and the soldiers started to pass them in the darkness.

  “Get them!” he urgently whispered to Forgon suddenly. “We need their uniforms!”

  Theus dropped his sword and pulled his staff free, as he leapt out of hiding and swung his staff at the head of one of the two unsuspecting guards. His swing caught the closest guard squarely on the forehead, and the man fell as though he’d been poleaxed.

  “What are you doing?” the second guard turned to look at Theus in astonishment, before Forgon clubbed him and knocked him out.

  “Now, we wear their uniforms as disguises,” Theus explained. He began to pull one of their victims behind the nearby bushes, and quickly exchanged clothes with the man.

  Minutes later, the pair of adventurers stood in their ill-fitting uniforms, and began to wander through the sleeping camp. They were pleased to learn that the camp site was not extensive; the number of soldiers blockading the city were fewer than Theus had feared – it was not a full-fledged force, suitable for invasion.

  After an hour of walking through the paths and among the trees and tents that were scattered about, they found a cluster of tents with guards stationed around the perimeter, with an ominous scaffold constructed in front of the center tent.

  “I’m going to go inside the tent to see if Alsman is the captive,” Theus told Forgon. “Can you provide a distraction?”

  “I think there’s something that will distract them,” the Great Forks nobleman nodded his head. He was looking at an unattended fire pit, where a bed of smoldering coals provided a dull red glow without any soldiers left in attendance.

  “Give me ten minutes to get started,” he said, then slapped Theus on the back, and started to walk away. “Where should I meet you?” he turned and asked.

  “Right back here,” Theus ripped a strip of dingy white cloth from the bottom of his tunic, then tied it so that it hung from the branch of a tree.

  “See you soon,” Forgon agreed in a soft voice, and then he crouched over to the fire pit.

  Theus began to walk in a wide circle around the guarded perimeter, seeking to find the rear side of the guarded tent. There was only a single guard standing by the blank wall of canvas in the back of the tent. Theus dropped to his hands and knees, and slowly approached the tent.

  As he did, his mind wandered to thoughts of the first tent he had ever visited, the residence of Grant the trader. He had been baffled by the obvious contradiction between the outward appearance of the small tent compared to its spacious interior. It had to be some application of magic, he decided, as he crept through the grass. But he couldn’t imagine Grant being a black magician – the kindly man’s actions and words were completely opposite of those of a practitioner of the dark arts. Which would seem to mean that Grant had been a white magician. But Theus had been told by the stone from Coriae’s ring that there had been no such white magicians in hundreds of years.

  Theus hadn’t thought of Grant in a long time, and he’d never managed to analyze the strangeness of the man, he realized. Theus had been so naïve and inexperienced when he first began serving the trader, that the boy hadn’t known what was ordinary in the outside world, versus what was out of the ordinary. And much of what Grant had done had been far out of the ordinary. Even up to and including his disappearance.

  When all his adventures were over, Theus thought, he would investigate more and try to learn the truth of his mysterious early mentor.

  He suddenly stopped moving, as he realized he had crept too close to the tent and guard while he had been distracted by his thoughts. He was only paces away from the negligent guard. Theus flattened himself against the ground, and held his breath as he hoped that Forgon was about to immediately launch a distraction that would draw the man away from the tent.

  Theus lay in the grass, and began to feel itches on his body. He wanted to suddenly scratch himself in a dozen different places, whether from blades of grass or insects or simply from his overactive imagination, but he forced himself to hold still, clenching his teeth in distress.

  A faint sound of crackling reached his ears, and then there was a shout of “Fire!” not far away to the left. The guard looked up, alert at last. Theus realized that he was between the guard and the shouted warning. No sooner did he begin to extrapolate what was likely to happen than it did happen; the guard began to run towards the shouts, and he ran on a line directly towards Theus.

  Theus prepared to nestle down as unobtrusively as possible, but the running guard managed to stride right in the middle of his back, then tripped and flew forward. Theus groaned in pain, but rolled and then pounced on the man, swinging his staff to knock him unconscious.

  He heard other men starting to run toward the shouts that were multiplying off to the left. Theus grabbed the arms of his victim and pulled the man towards the tent, away from the lane that other firefighters might tend to run in.

  He ran forward, and lifted the bottom of the tent, then rolled underneath, and into the interior of the small structure.

  “Alsman? Alsman, are you here?” Theus desperately wished that he could use his magic to create a light, so that he could illuminate the tent and see what he had sprung into.

  “Who’s there?” a high voice called alertly. The voice wasn’t Alsman.

  “Is Alsman here? Is there a prisoner here?” Theus asked, as he began to edge back towards the wall of the tent. He realized that he might have to abandon his quest in a hurry.

  “Have they caught Alsman?” the other voice asked in despair.

  “I hope not,” Theus replied. “I just heard there was a captive here, and I thought it was Alsman. I came to rescue him.”

  “Who are you?” the other voice in the darkness asked, suspiciously.

  He hesitated to give out his name to an unknown person. Yet there could be no harm, he decided.

  “I’m Theus. Who are you?” he replied.

  He heard footsteps, but in the dark interior he could see nothing until a shadow was just a foot away. He started to swing his staff, when he heard a voice. “Theus, it’s me Eiren!” and then the girl’s body was pressed against his in a fierce embrace.

  “Theus, we’re free!” she said.

  “Theus? Theus of Great Forks?” another voice called from the interior of the tent.

  “Who in Currense’s name is that?” Theus demanded. He felt the shock to his system threatened to overwhelm him, as he tried to accept the fact that Eiren was the captive in the tent, not Alsman. And now to have another person recognize him by name made no sense.

  “Don’t trust him; his own people don’t trust him. That’s why they’ve
jailed him with me,” Eiren hissed.

  “Who are you?” Theus needed some information, some answer.

  “It’s me, Holco,” the voice replied in the dark. The voice and the name matched in Theus’s memory. It seemed true.

  “Who is your aunt, and who is her house guest?” Theus asked.

  “My aunt is the duchess Holstem, and her guest was the lovely girl you gifted us with, Princess Amelia,” the voice replied.

  “Fire! Another fire!” voices outside the tent began to cry, from the right side of the encampment. Forgon was establishing a great deal of distraction for the Stoke warriors to deal with.

  The shouts outside were a reminder to Theus. He needed to get out of the tent – the whole purpose of the fires was to create the chaos to allow him to escape with his prisoner, or prisoners, as it turned out.

  “Come on, both of you, we have to go,” he said with determination. “We’ll go under the back wall; there’s no guard there. Let’s go,” he removed Eiren’s arms from his shoulders, and held her hand as he dropped down to his knees. Then he released her as he rolled beneath the heavy coarse cloth of the tent wall and rose to his knees outside.

  The sky was bright to his right side, as he faced away from the tent. Something was well ablaze.

  “We’re lucky to have that distracting them,” Eiren spoke as she rose beside him.

  “It has nothing to do with luck,” Theus replied. He could see her clearly in the light put off by the pillar of light reflecting off of the roiling column of smoke. Without a doubt, she was Eiren, the same maturing Eiren he had last seen when he had left Greenfalls.

  “Here, we need to get you into a disguise,” he spotted the unconscious soldier who had tripped over him, and instantly grasped the value of using the man’s uniform.

  “How in the world did you come to be here?” Holco popped up on Theus’s other side, and the light in the sky also allowed Theus to see that the man’s features were those he expected.

  Regardless of what Eiren’s distrust might be, Theus was glad to help the prince gain his freedom.

  “I’ll explain later; let’s get this uniform off the guard and onto Eiren,” Theus directed, as he stepped forward and began to remove the boots on the soldier.

  “What are we planning on doing?” Holco asked.

  “Turn around – don’t you look back here at me!” Eiren commanded the prince as he unintentionally turned to her as she undressed so that she could slip the Stoke uniform on.

  “I have soldiers outside the city,” Theus replied. “We were marching from Great Forks to Limber, when we discovered that there’s a war going on in Greenfalls. The three of us will meet Forgon, and then go back to our army outside the city,” he summarized.

  “Forgon’s here? In the camp? With you?” Holco asked in surprise.

  “Did you fight the war in Great Forks?” Eiren asked, as Theus blindly handed articles of clothing backwards over his shoulder to her.

  “It’s all complicated. I’ll explain later,” Theus couldn’t answer questions while trying to adjust to the rapidly changing circumstances.

  “Let’s go,” he urged, and he rose to his feet, then began to walk rapidly with crouched posture.

  “I haven’t buttoned up yet!” Eiren protested from behind him.

  “Do it while you run, and try to look like a boy,” he barked back over his shoulder.

  “If you tell me I look like a boy I’ll teach you something about manners,” Eiren’s voice carried real hostility.

  Theus led the pair of escapees around to the left, and they entered the milling traffic of numerous others who were awake and moving through the camp. Twin pillars of light rose from either side of them as they slowed to a walk and tried to blend into the flow of others in the camp.

  “Sabotage. Traitors. Attack. Careless accident,” Theus heard words and bits of conversation as the occupants of the Stoke encampment tried to explain what was happening.

  Theus arrived at the tree with the white scrape hanging from the branch, but found Forgon not yet arrived.

  “We’ll wait here for Forgon,” Theus told the other two. “Tell me what’s happening here. Why were the two of you captives?” he asked.

  “I came to negotiate the terms of the conference between the invaders and the city leadership,” Eiren answered promptly. “But their Prince Eudie declared me to be a traitor and took me captive! It’s unbelievable! You should use your magical powers to take us all away to safety, then come back here and turn him into a toad!” she said emphatically.

  “Keep your voice down,” Holco hissed urgently. “We don’t want to draw attention right now.”

  “Why are you a captive?” Theus asked Holco.

  “I protested against making her a captive, and the way Eudie was handling the situation. He claimed I was trying to usurp his role as the heir to the throne, and declared me a traitor,” Holco explained.

  “Don’t trust him Theus,” Eiren warned. “He’s friendly with a lot of the guards, and they’re friendly with him.”

  “I’m friendly with him too,” Theus told her. “He’s a good man. I trust Holco, just like I trust you.”

  Forgon arrived just then, breathing heavily, as he held onto the tree branch overhead with one hand extended high for support.

  “You did a good job creating a distraction,” Theus said wryly.

  “Is that Holco? Holco!” Forgon belatedly recognized his friend. “What are you doing here? Is this where you disappeared to?”

  “Forgon? What are you doing here? The two of you?” Holco asked as the two friends embraced.

  “Let’s try to get back to our forces outside the city and then figure out our next step,” Theus suggested. “We’ll be safe there.”

  “No; I need to go back to the city, to let Alsman know I’m safe,” Eiren protested. “He’ll be worried sick about me.”

  Something in her voice caught Theus’s ear, and he studied her closely, suspicious of the relationship that might have developed between the two unlikely co-conspirators in the overthrow of the governor of Greenfalls.

  “We’ll be safe with my army,” Theus said staunchly. “And we can figure out how to get you back in the city from there.

  “And we need to get moving, while the fires are still such a distraction,” he added. “They’ll have things under control before too long, and we’ll be trapped here in the Stoke camp.” He gestured for them to follow him as he began to walk back through the shadows and the smoke of the camp, on his way towards freedom, or so he hoped.

  The group traveled discreetly along the length of the camp, pausing frequently and hiding among shadows and trees when needed. At length they traveled far enough that they had both of Forgon’s diminishing fires far behind them, and Theus judged they were ready to turn and try to worm their way past the Stoke pickets and out into the farm fields that extended to the north of the besieged city.

  “We probably won’t find the checkpoint unmanned any longer,” Forgon pointed out, when the quartet crouched down in the grass near the river road. “Do you have a plan?”

  “Why not just use your white magic to move us all to safety?” Eiren asked sincerely.

  “I fought a battle – magic against magic. The black magician gave me a wound that taints my magic. It makes it bad and evil, and it gives me pain to use it,” Theus replied. “I tried to use it on the way in here, and it nearly was a disaster,” he avoided looking at Forgon as he spoke, not wanting to have to acknowledge that thoughts of murdering Forgon had crossed his mind while he was under the influence of Donal’s dark infection.

  “So, if I try to use my magic, it could end up worse than not using it at all. I could do something,” he paused, “terrible.

  “Let’s just see how we do with our escape, and react to what we find,” he suggested.

  He began to move forward, cautiously looking ahead and to the sides as he advanced. There were noises along the road and in the trees, though he couldn’t discern if the
y were soldiers or animals, or even his imagination. He was tense and jumpy and finally realizing how much he had come to rely on his white magic. He’d possessed the abilities for only a relatively short amount of time, and he had barely scratched the surface of understanding them. But his mind was filled with strategies and plots and opportunities that all were beyond reach without the powers of magic.

  “Who’s there?” a voice called from just ten feet away, and Theus froze in place.

  Eiren behind him bumped into him, making them both grunt. A light suddenly fell upon them as a lantern door was opened.

  “What do we have here? Deserters?” a voice asked.

  There were rustling noises on either side, and Theus knew they were surrounded. He didn’t know how many guards were around them though. It might be possible to fight their way to freedom, but it might not be as well.

  “We just want to stretch our legs,” Theus said lamely.

  “By stretch your legs, do you mean smuggle a harlot out of camp, since you evidently smuggled one in?” a voice was beside him, a guard he couldn’t see in the glare of the lantern that blinded his eyes.

  “Get your hands off me!” he heard Eiren say.

  “Don’t touch the girl,” Holco supported her.

  Another lantern light flipped open beside them.

  “What do we have here? An escaped prisoner? I saw the prince taken into custody,” a third voice spoke up.

  Instinct told Theus that the group was in trouble. He realized that despite his protests and concerns and fears, he was going to call upon magic to help his friends and himself escape.

  “Help me please Limber,” he whispered the prayer, in the hopes that the god would once again rein in his use of the diseased energy.

  “I cannot protect you from your own stupidity,” the god replied.

  Theus detected a sense of finality in the statement.

  “Let’s turn them around, put them under guard, and figure out what we have here,” another voice spoke up from the darkness.

  Theus stuck his hand down under his shirt and grasped the ruby pendant. It felt warm, as though it were being overworked in its efforts to constrain the evil contamination of Theus’s body and soul. He lifted the pendant over his head.