Choice (Majaos Book 3)

by Gary Stringer

  “Thanks for that image,” Toli said, sarcastically. “I hate insects.”

  Bunny grinned and apologised.

  “I know what you mean, though. There's magic here and it's playing havoc with our senses.”

  “Life Eddy, then?” Bunny prompted.

  “Yes, you're quite right.”

  “With any luck, Granite might have found his way there," Bunny suggested, hopefully. "He's a Catalyst maybe he knows more about what's going on than we do.”

  “I'm almost sure he does,” Toli agreed under her breath.

  When they reached the Life Eddy, however, it wasn't Granite who was waiting for them, but Jayne.

  Toli was getting a distinct sense of deja vu.

  “Jayne!” Bunny called out. “You've found it, then, I see.”

  “Just now, Miss Bernice,” she answered.

  “`Just now`? What are you talking about?” Toli demanded, but the half-orc ignored her.

  “Yeah,” Bunny chimed in. “You're supposed to be our Chief Life Node Finder but our Life Calling magician friend found it first. Damn,” she cursed. “I should have placed a wager on that, too.”

  “But I didn't find it first!” Toli protested.

  “Oh, so Granite beat us all to it, did he!” It was more of a statement than a question.

  “Erm, who are you talking to, Miss Bernice?” Jayne asked. Bunny rolled her eyes. “Come on, the fog isn't that thick,” she said. “Though maybe you are,” she added under her breath. “You remember Toli? Tolbrietta Hobbnobb? Hobbit, magician, Eilidh's best friend? About, ooh, so high?” She said, placing a hand on top of Toli's head. She whistled. “A Catalyst found the Life Eddy first, eh?” she said to herself. “I could have got some great odds on that. I must be slipping!”

  “Yes, you must!” a female voice came from behind her, and before Bunny could react, she felt the point of a blade pressing into the small of her back, ready to sever her spinal cord.

  Toli cried out the name in horror.

  “Z'rcona!” * * * * * “Well, well, well, what have we here?” Z'rcona mocked, ignoring the hobbit completely. “Let's see, shall we?” She gestured to the sky and with some form of magic Toli couldn't identify, caused the fog to lift suddenly, giving way to a blue, cloudless sky and bright sunshine. “Ah yes, it's clear now,” Z'rcona taunted. “A pair of freaks of nature that need exterminating!”

  Bunny was furious with herself. She couldn't believe she had allowed someone to sneak up on her like that. She was supposed to be the sneaky one and she hated to be out-sneaked. If Phaer were in this position, she knew what she'd tell him - it was her favourite saying. She'd never realised before how unhelpful it was.

  Jayne wanted to go for the elf bitch, but the threat to Miss Bernice stayed her hand. Toli, on the other hand, chose to risk it. Z'rcona would surely kill Bunny either way and she was sorry for that, but she couldn't allow her hesitation to cost her the chance to escape and get back to Eilidh. She had to think of the bigger picture. She'd been doing a lot of work on her magic on her travels, thanks to the magical tutorial books Prince Garald had generously supplied. She wasn't limited to cooking spells any longer. Z'rcona was powerful and Toli knew she had to go for a single shot with her best weapon. If it failed, she wouldn't get a second attempt anyway even if she did have a Catalyst to replenish her Life Store - which of course she didn't. She committed to the act, blocking out all else, executing her very first casting of Shockwave.

  Unlike their Earth Secret cousins the conjurors, a magician's art lay not in creating things from magic, but in affecting physical phenomena - taking what already existed and changing it, altering it, enhancing it. There were static charged particles in the air all around them. Normally they were harmless, but sometimes people would get a small static shock when they touched a metallic object. Z'rcona was holding a dagger with a metal handle - the potential was there. What Shockwave did was magnify that to produce a much larger and more dangerous discharge. It could seriously fry the nerves.

  The spell hit home and Z'rcona yelped, leaping back away from Bunny and reflexively dropping her knife. Bunny wasn't going to be caught napping twice, jumping clear herself and using her sorcery to create an illusory copy of the charging half-orc.

  “Well, well, well, what have we here?” Bernice mocked Z'rcona in revenge. “Ah yes - something to really get my teeth stuck into!” Toli had never been so happy to see someone turn into a vampire, and ran to her side, but her delight turned to horror as Z'rcona lashed out with magic, sending a lightning bolt fizzing from each hand to slam into the bodies of her attackers. Jayne fell immediately, but Bunny’s sumorityl nature had a small measure of resistance - just enough to turn her otherwise instant death into a prolonged, agonising torture.

  “Attack me with the illusion of lighting, would you?” The dark elf growled. “How do you like the real thing?” Bunny dropped lifeless to the ground.

  “Nothing to say?” Z'rcona laughed in derision. Assuming she was talking to her, Toli was defiant. “You monster! It wasn't even her magic, it was mine! So why don't you get the target right, this time?” Z'rcona said nothing. “Come on! What are you waiting for? Get it over with! Kill me!”

  But Z'rcona just acted as if the hobbit wasn't there and walked way, muttering to herself. “Well, that was a pleasant little workout, but I’d better get back to Her Divine Excellency.” She pulled out a piece of paper from her left breast pocket. Toli risked taking a look herself, since Z'rcona was continuing to ignore her. What she saw was a list of the Nine Secrets. Written next to the first eight was a location and an object, and the first seven were ticked. Just then, Z'rcona folded the paper over once before the hobbit had time to read the top half properly, but she could still see the bottom half. It read:

  5. Shadow - Avidon gate - City Crest - tick

  6. Spirit - Gold Crypt - Great Key - tick

  7. Techmagic - Iciconia Cave – Crystal Wand - tick

  8. Time - Temporal Trap - Silver Hourglass Z'rcona took out a silver hourglass, as if to check it hadn't fallen out or got damaged in the struggle, and then used a charcoal writing implement to tick it off on the list. The last line of the list was written in capitals:

  9. LIFE - WELL OF LIFE

  Clearly, a space had been left for the location to be written in, once Niltsiar worked out where it was.

  Apparently satisfied with a job well done, Z'rcona put her things back in her pockets, pulled out her teleportation device and activated it, vanishing from sight. Toli looked down at the still bodies of her companions. It had all been for nothing. They had failed. Even if Toli could get out of here and reach Eilidh, it was too late. In a matter of seconds, their enemy would have her hands on the last of the eight objects that would tell her the location of the Well of Life. She was going to get there first.

  Toli burst into tears and ran.

  Niltsiar had won. Toli ran wildly, her sense of direction deserting her. Though the fog was gone and the sun was shining brightly, her tears blinded her just as surely. So much so that she didn't see the two figures up ahead until she almost ran into them. Stopping herself just in time, she was startled to see Granite, but it was the other person that she was wholly unprepared for.

  Standing there with him, clear as day, alive and well, was the half-orc she had just seen slain. Toli stared, open mouthed for a moment and then fainted on the spot...

  Chapter 17

  When Tanya reached the summit of one of the smaller peaks, she took out her far-seeing lens from her pack and scanned the area.

  “Oh dear,” she said with typical Knightly understatement. “That's a bit worrying.” Another similar group of chaos creatures was only minutes away, but that wasn't what worried her. Beyond that, perhaps six hours away, was a much larger swarm. Not as large as that which her fellow Knights of Balance had massacred a few weeks ago, preventing them from descending upon Shakaran, but still they numbered in their hundreds. Far too many for just three Knights to take on.

&nb
sp; “That means we only have six hours to find this Life Eddy and...Oh!” She broke off, surprised as she turned one hundred and eighty degrees and immediately found it, blazing away over a nearby mountain peak. Only the lay of the land with the interwoven lattice of peaks and valleys had prevented the Knights from spotting it from below. For a moment, Tanya thought they might have broken all records for the easiest quest in history, but then she spotted something else. Focussing in closer, she saw a number of small figures moving around in the vicinity of the Life Eddy. It seemed to be a settlement of some sort and there was no way of knowing how many people there might be hidden from her view.

  “Nothing's ever easy!” She sighed, noting the bearings and putting her lens away before making her way back down the hill to rejoin the others. Her two comrades were just finishing the grizzly process of going through the bodies and stabbing any that they thought might be not quite dead. It was unpleasant, but necessary. `Never leave an enemy behind you`: That was a cardinal rule in all three orders and good practice for warriors the world over. Many a careless soldier had found himself stabbed by an enemy who was feigning death on the battlefield. As mistakes in battle went, that was one of the more embarrassing ones and the most difficult to live down...assuming the wound wasn't fatal.

  “How goes thy scouting?” Hannah asked her by way of greeting. “Well, it's kind of a good news bad news situation,” she replied, quite forgetting about schooling her use of language. “Good news: There’s another small group of chaos creatures close by, no more trouble than this lot,” she indicated the corpses littered around. “Bad news: the next lot are far too many to even think about fighting. Good news: the swarm is six hours away and I've found the Life Eddy, so we shouldn’t need to stick around long enough for them to get anywhere close to us. Bad news: this chaos swarm is heading straight for the Life Eddy like moths to a flame and there's a settlement directly in the path of the swarm.”

  “We must needs warn them!” Sir Quentin insisted. “'Tis dishonourable to bring about the deaths of innocent parties, either through action or inaction, when such deaths do nothing to advance the cause of the mission.”

  Hannah considered that, thoughtfully. “The Sacred Code of Paladinius doth state: 'Tis dishonourable to bring about the deaths of innocent parties, either through action or inaction, when saving those lives is not likely to lead to further innocent deaths.”

  Tanya knew they were pressed for time, but decided it would do no harm to briefly contribute. “Frankly,” she said, “in the Knights of Balance, we take both into account. “On the one hand, Knights of Balance prefer to avoid the loss of innocent life wherever possible, but sometimes, stopping to save those innocents would put the mission at risk and sometimes - depending on the situation - the value of the mission outweighs the value of those individual lives. Perhaps completing the mission will save the lives of many others. Equally, sometimes bringing about the deaths of innocents, directly advances the cause and can be justified. For example, suppose an enemy knows that you will not attack a target building where innocent civilians live and work. In response, he might order that as many innocent civilians as possible are stationed in all key military installations. What do you do then? Surrender? Those civilian casualties, while regrettable, send the message that this tactic will not work and so, in a way, advance your cause and perhaps prevent your enemy from abusing people this way in the future. It’s not rational to accept the blame for the actions of others - that's what the enemy wants you to do. He might say, `If you kill these innocent people, it will be on your conscience` but that is a lie. It is the enemy who deliberately places them in danger and it is he who causes those deaths. An enemy who uses such tactics cannot be allowed to continue; therefore you are justified in taking whatever action is necessary. To shy away from what must be done will only encourage him to continue doing the same to other innocents.

  “In this case,” Tanya continued, “it’s imperative that we get back to report to Eilidh. That is our cause, our mission. All else is secondary. However, from my observations, I've estimated we’ve got about six hours before the swarm hits. Other than this second small group, there's nothing stopping us from warning and rescuing these people. It's not far. We'll have plenty of time to get out of the path of the swarm and get back on the trail to the Corridor entrance long before six hours are up.”

  “I concur,” Hannah agreed. “As the scout, I should to be the one to go to these people,” said Tanya, “but I'm worried that they might not take my silver armour seriously. To most people, Knights of Balance are nothing more than a myth, a fairytale. The secrecy suits us, for the most part, but it does have its drawbacks.”

  “As I am an Infantry Knight,” Hannah offered, “it doth seem to me that I shalt be best suited to the task of despatching the small group thou didst mention.”

  Quentin nodded. “If thou art confident of taking care of those beasts, I shalt accompany our silver armoured friend. Rest assured, those people shalt most definitely move for me!”

  “I don't doubt it!” Tanya blanched. Hannah's eyes widened, slightly. It was strange how she had grown so accustomed to Sir Quentin Marr that she no longer really noticed the skull-encrusted black armour. When she had first been faced with the prospect of working with the Dark Knights at Eilidh's insistence - it being the only way to get inside the city of Avidon - she had hated the Dark Knights with a passion. They were an abomination, a perversion, a grave insult to her Knighthood, the true Knighthood as far as she was concerned. But if there was one good thing to come out of the threat of Niltsiar and the chaos creatures, it was that people who had been deadly enemies were now fighting together side-by-side. The leaders of both Knighthoods had recognised the reality: alone each was vulnerable; together they were a force to be reckoned with. That they could no longer afford to fight each other was a given - that would simply allow the enemy to win without even having to fight. They might as well surrender - it would amount to the same thing in the end. But a simple nonaggression pact was not enough. They had to actively work together, integrate communications. Otherwise, they might both decide on the same action while leaving a vital area undefended. Still, orders from one's Commanding Officers was all very easy - it was the Knight Warriors out in the field who had to bear the consequences of those orders and Hannah was certain every other warrior - on both sides, she supposed would have hated it as much as she.

  So what had changed? Hannah was still dedicated to the Father of Light and Quentin to the Mistress of Death. Her armour was no less golden and his was no less black. So why did it now come as a surprise when he obliquely pointed out that fact? The answer was simple: in her time working with Sir Quentin, she had ceased to treat him as a member of a group and begun instead to treat him as an individual. Whatever else he was, he was a brave and honourable man. To fail to acknowledge that would be to insult a fellow Knight and so dishonour herself. These were strange times and she knew she would never be the same again.

  As for Lady Tanya Nightingale, Hannah was unsure how the not-so-mythical Knights of Balance fitted into her world view. Her manner was strange for a Knight, but again she was brave and honourable and the Paladin hoped she would have the opportunity to get to know her better in the future.

  “Indeed,” Hannah agreed, continuing the discussion, “but thou shouldst make haste. Worry ye not for my sake. I shalt be perfectly well down here...” she paused and smiled, “...warming my blood.” Tanya grinned. So there was a sense of humour underneath all that discipline, after all! Oh for the chance to sit down with Hannah and talk. Surely after all their efforts, the world owed them, at the very least, a long conversation.

  “Don't follow us,” she advised Hannah. “This is just a simple rescue.” “Our comrade is correct,” Sir Quentin agreed. “Thy primary objective must needs be to return unto Eilidh with the news. In fact, since I doth hold the rank of Knight Officer, I wouldst be remiss in my duties were I not to makest that an order.”

  Hannah salu
ted. “Yes, sir!” she acknowledged. The command structure across the orders under the terms of the alliance was something of a grey area, but his order made sense and she intended to do it anyway, so it was courtesy to accept the order as such.

  * * * * * Tanya and Quentin scaled to a trail that Tanya had spotted, which led gradually upwards through the hills and mountains to the settlement. They were both fit and well trained, and the distance was short, so they were able to make good time. They were but a few hundred yards away when the piercing shriek of an opalescent dragon scared ten years off Tanya's life as it whooshed overhead. She supposed `whooshed` wasn't a very Knightish word, but it was the one that came to mind and it fitted the scene. It hurtled towards the settlement and the two Knights started running, fearing what this new development might mean for the people they sought to protect. It was most unlike an opalescent winter dragon to exhibit such heated vehemence, but this one was clearly enraged about something and looked set to take it out on the settlers. The dragon swooped down towards the large cave entrance in the side of what Tanya could only describe as a mountain on a mountain. Tanya had studied geography and this didn't look natural to her eyes. It was as if the mountain reached a peak, which was then flattened and another small peak stuck on top, like adding a cup of sand to add an extra random tower on top of a perfectly good sandcastle, with the sole aim of making it a bit higher at the expense of the aesthetics of the overall design.

  An incredibly powerful concussive blast rang out from the tower, knocking the dragon from the sky and sending it plummeting to the ground where it lay in a crumpled heap, unconscious. The two Knights were at the very edge of the blast, but even they were forced back a few feet. As a Knight of Balance, Tanya was trained to greatly value jewelled dragons and to see one tossed to the ground like a rag doll had her incensed. Sure, it looked like it was attacking the settlement but given the level of power that apparently defended it, and the usual calm nature of opal dragons, she couldn't help but wonder who the real aggressor was in this scene.