“Plastic explosive,” I said. “Do you have any?” Rogomil nodded. “That seam there, along the center of the door? It’s a flaw in the design. Some Italian company makes these. Hit it with enough force, and that steel plate will roll back like aluminium foil. There are five tumbler pins inside, and I can release them in about forty-five seconds. Easy as pie.”
I kept my expression blank. I had just told Rogomil a load of steaming nonsense, and anyone who knew the slightest thing about security doors would spot it at once. No one built seams in the middle of security doors. If Rogomil realized that I was lying to him, he would shoot me on the spot.
Instead, he bought it.
“Who had the explosive?” he said. One of the Rebels in paramilitary gear stepped forward. “You. Apply it over that seam. How much do we need?”
“Uh,” I said, my mind racing. I had one chance to do this right. “Enough to cover the seam. So, a lot.”
“Move it,” said Rogomil, and the Rebel in paramilitary gear ran forward, producing a tube of something that looked a bit like gray bathtub putty but wasn’t. “The rest of you take cover. As soon as the doors are open, we shall storm the Capitol. Focus upon Rimethur. Any targets in our way are considered expendable.”
Right. That meant the minute I opened the doors, he would shoot me and stride over my corpse. Assuming Anton didn’t shoot me first. I felt Anton’s eyes digging into me like knives.
“Take cover,” said Rogomil, waving his pistol at me. I moved away from the Capitol’s doors, taking deep breaths as I cleared my will and summoned magical power. Rogomil kept his pistol in his right hand, but with his left he pulled out his phone, unlocked it, and began jabbing text messages into the screen. Likely he was summoning the rest of his men for the attack.
The paramilitary Rebel finished placing plastic explosive over the seam, jabbed a wireless detonator into the stuff, and then pulled out his phone. For a moment he fiddled with his phone as he synced it to the detonator as Rogomil alternated between glaring at him, glaring at me, and thumb-stabbing more messages into his phone.
“Ready!” said the paramilitary Rebel, running to join us.
I took one more deep breath, gathering my will and my magic for the spell. I had never tried something like this before, but I thought it should work.
I hoped it would work.
“Clear!” shouted the Rebel, tapping a command into his phone. The other Rebels ducked and covered. I started to follow suit, and as they did, I straightened up and cast a spell, making sure I wasn’t looking at the doors.
The plastic explosive blasted apart with a flash of light, a plume of dust, and a thunderous cracking sound. It didn’t do much to the door. It did, however, distract the Rebels long enough for me to cast a Masking spell around myself.
As I did, I started to scream at the top of my lungs. All the Rebels looked at me as the Mask flared to life. I didn’t Mask myself as a Rebel, or as an Elven noble, or even as any living thing.
Instead, I Masked myself as the sun.
It worked more spectacularly than I could have hoped. The Rebels reeled back, shielding their eyes, and as they did, I summoned power for another spell even as I held the Mask in place. I cast the spell to release locks at the doors, my will focusing into telekinetic bursts of force, and I heard the clang as the locks released.
There wasn’t a moment to lose. I sprinted forward, my heels clacking against the paving stones.
A bullet whined off the wall next to my head. I glanced back and saw Rogomil sprinting after me, lining up for another shot. I ducked, and his bullet went wild, ricocheting off the ground. Rogomil was bigger than me, but he was also faster. If he caught up to me, he wouldn’t need his gun to kill me. He was strong enough to snap my neck without trying hard.
Frantic, I cast another spell, and as he drew closer I whirled and drove my hand at him. He sneered and caught my wrist with his phone hand…which made it easy for the globe of lightning I had conjured to slam into his chest. There hadn’t been enough time to put something powerful together, but the jolt of lightning still knocked him backwards, eyes bulging, legs jittering. Something dropped from his hand and I caught it, thinking it was his gun, but it was only his phone, the screen still flashing with incoming messages.
I whirled and ran like hell for the doors. They had only opened a little, but I wasn’t large, and I thought I could slip through. Behind me Rogomil staggered to one knee, and a mob of Rebels came up the stairs, guns leveled. I threw myself forward and slipped through the doors and into the Capitol rotunda just as the Rebels opened fire. The rotunda was gloomy, lit only by a peculiar blue light, but I didn’t have time to focus on that.
The roar of bullets bouncing off the security doors drowned out everything.
I grabbed the crash bar and pulled backwards with all my strength, and the heavy door swung shut with a resounding clang. The locks clicked into place, and I stumbled back, breathing hard, a hysterical laugh threatening to bubble up in my throat. I had gotten away from Rogomil. Despite all the odds, I had gotten away from Rogomil.
There was something heavy in my hand, and I blinked at it. It was a rectangular black smartphone from a cheap manufacturer in the Chinese Imperium, and the screen kept flashing with messages…
I didn’t laugh, but a wild grin spread over my face.
Rogomil’s phone. I had Sergei Rogomil’s phone…and he hadn’t locked it again before he dropped it. I hit the home button with my thumb, and saw all kinds of neatly organized files – maps, contact lists, spreadsheets, photos, inventories, all kinds of useful information for the leader of a Rebel cell. The Inquisition could take remote control of any cell phone, listening through the microphones and watching through the cameras, though no doubt Rogomil had disabled that feature.
It still had network access, though, and the Inquisition had an email address where informants could anonymously send tips.
When Alexandra had given me her phone, I could have destroyed her life with a few emails. I hadn’t done that to her…but Rogomil seemed like a more deserving candidate.
Grinning, I configured the phone to send its entire contents to a specified address, entered the Inquisition’s anonymous inbox, and hit the SEND button. The phone chimed and began emailing every single file in its storage to the Inquisition. I wiped down the phone with the hem of my sandwich coat to remove any prints and then set it next to the doors, the sound of gunfire drumming against the steel security doors.
“Enjoy running from the Inquisition,” I muttered. Even if Rogomil fled Madison right now, all the information I had just emailed to the Inquisition would make it all the harder for him to run. I hated Punishment Day and I hated Punishment Day videos, but if the Inquisition caught up to Rogomil, I would make an exception to watch his execution.
I had gotten away from the Rebels. Now all I had to do was steal the Ringbyrne Amulet, escape back to Grayhold, free Alexandra, and return to Morvilind.
Looking around, I realized that might be even harder than I thought.
Chapter 9: Enemy Of My Enemy
Ice filled the rotunda of the Wisconsin State Capitol.
I had never been inside the Capitol before, but I had seen it plenty of times. Criticizing the High Queen and the Elven nobles might get you lynched for elfophobia or a visit from the Inquisition, but neither Homeland Security nor the Inquisition cared what people said about human politicians. The governor and the state legislature were often the target of ferocious criticism on social media and the news, and so long as nobody criticized the Elves, the Inquisition turned a blind eye to it. I had seen lots of articles about the state government on the Internet accompanied by pictures of the Capitol, with captions like “HEROIC GOVERNOR OFFERS BOLD NEW VISION FOR WISCONSIN” or “IMBECILIC GOVERNOR REACHES BOLD NEW HEIGHTS OF INCOMPETENCE”, stuff like that. Consequently I knew that the rotunda was a big octagonal room built of shiny green and yellow stone, with a bunch of paintings and statues meant to represent freedom and the peop
le of Wisconsin. The net result made it look like a fancy round church, which I thought was a bit excessive, given how often corrupt politicians got flogged and sold into slavery on Punishment Day for bribery and extortion and the like.
The rotunda didn’t look anything like a church at the moment.
A layer of crystalline ice covered the walls, giving off a faint blue light. More of the ice spread across the floor, glimmering beneath a veil of pale white mist. Four grand staircases rose up the sides of the rotunda, and they too had been sheathed in ice. It looked strangely, eerily beautiful, but it was a dangerous sort of beauty.
Like the Shadowlands, come to think of it.
Belatedly I realized that it was cold, horribly cold, yet the chill did not seem to touch me. At first I thought it was because I was wearing a blouse, a blazer, and the sandwich worker’s long coat, but all three garments were light. Besides, I was in a knee-length skirt, and the chill ought to have been blasting up my legs. Objectively I knew I was cold, I knew that I should have been freezing, yet I felt…comfortable.
The answer came to me, and I pulled up my sleeve. The twisted bracelet of silver still wrested against my left wrist, and the pale blue gems shone with a harsh azure glow. I gestured with my right hand, summoning power and casting the spell to sense the presence of magical force. At once I felt the power surrounding me and surging through the Capitol. Rimethur and his guards had summoned tremendous amounts of elemental magic, wrapping the Capitol with it. Likely they had done so to defend themselves from any Rebels that broke inside. Yet I also sensed powerful magic within the bracelet. Warding spells, I thought, to defend against elemental magic. Without it, in my light clothes I might have frozen to death in a few minutes.
The Knight had told the truth about that much. The bracelet did indeed defend from elemental magic.
Was that why the Knight had given the bracelet to me? Did he want me to live long enough steal the amulet so he could claim it for himself? The Knight had said this was an audition.
An audition for what?
Between the Rebels and the Knight and the frost giants, I was caught in some sort of game I did not understand. I wondered if Morvilind had known about it. Maybe he had, and he simply had not cared. Maybe he though it some sick way of making me stronger and more capable and therefore a more useful servant for him.
The clang of metal from one of the grand stairways to the upper balcony of the rotunda caught my attention. For a moment I thought that Rogomil and the Rebels had somehow blasted through the dome overhead. Then I realized that the clang of metal sounded like armored footsteps, and a far more simple explanation occurred to me.
The frost giants wore armor, and one of them had come to see what had caused the racket at the doors.
I cast a spell and Cloaked myself, and a minute later one of Rimethur’s frost giant bodyguards came down the grand staircase, ducking to avoid smacking his head on the balcony overhead. Like the other frost giants I had seen, he was nine or ten feet tall, and clad head to foot in steel armor. Unlike Rimethur’s armor, his was plain and unadorned, though it look thick enough to stop military-grade bullets. His hair and beard were black and glossy, stark against his silvery-blue skin, and his eyes glowed with the harsh white light of the sun striking snow in the heart of winter. On his left arm rested a shield that could likely have replaced one of the security doors, and in his right hand he carried an enormous axe that could have peeled back the roof of my van like foil. If he hit me with that thing, it would turn me into a pile of hamburger.
The frost giant stopped at the base of the stairs and looked around the rotunda with a scowl, his glowing eyes narrowed. I stayed motionless, my breathing slow and deep, my mind focused on the Cloak. Belatedly I wondered if he could see the glow from the screen of Rogomil’s phone as it uploaded the Rebels’ secrets to the Inquisition. Had I remembered to set on the floor screen down? The frost giant took one more look around the rotunda, muttered something irritated-sounding under his breath, and turned away. He climbed up the stairs, vanishing out of sight. The minute he did I released my Cloak with a sigh of relief, a headache twitching behind my eyes. The frost giant was one of Rimethur’s bodyguards, and he would return to his master. I need only follow him.
I cast another spell, one far weaker than a Cloak or even a Mask. I had learned it from a scroll I had found in Paul McCade’s weird little temple. It was a minor spell of mind magic called an Occlusion. It didn’t turn me invisible like a Cloak, or disguise my appearance like a Mask. It just made me…unobtrusive. Unnoticeable. Part of the background scenery. So long as I didn’t do anything threatening or take any aggressive actions, the frost giants shouldn’t notice me.
In short, I would be Occluded.
I hoped.
I started across the rotunda floor, moving as quietly as I could manage in high heels, which wasn’t very quiet. I heard the frost giant’s steady tread continue up the stairs. I followed him, moving as quietly as I could, one hand running along the stone railing. It felt icy cold beneath my fingers, though the chill didn’t touch me. I considered discarding my shoes, but decided against it. I didn’t want to leave any more physical evidence of my presence behind than necessary, and if I lost my bracelet, walking around barefoot in here would be an excellent way to contract frostbite.
The frost giant climbed to the upper level of the rotunda, and I followed. Jarl Rimethur stood against an ancient painting of Wisconsin’s farmers and workers, his sword in hand, and five other warriors waited with him. The strange bluish haze danced and shimmered around their weapons, the magical aura that would inflict frostfever on anyone wounded by one of those blades.
My father had been wounded by one of those swords. My brother would have died from it, if not for Morvilind’s magic.
Rimethur turned, and the guard started to speak in the jagged, rasping language of the frost giants. I could speak English, Spanish, Chinese, and the Elven language, but Morvilind’s tutors had never bothered to teach me the speech of the frost giants.
Yet to my astonishment, I could understand him. I didn’t know the language, and his words should have been meaningless noise, yet I understood their meaning. The bracelet was vibrating against my wrist in time to the words. Apparently warding its bearer against frost magic wasn’t the limit of its abilities.
With an uneasy feeling I wondered what else the bracelet might do to me.
“What news, Valjakar?” said Rimethur.
“Nothing,” said the guard, presumably named Valjakar. “I thought the door had opened, but it had not. The voidtouched humans must have used heavier explosives, but the Duke’s defenses are sound. I doubt they will be able to enter.”
Voidtouched? I wondered what that meant.
Rimethur let out a rumbling grunt. “Very well. Let the fools waste their bullets. Soon the Duke will sweep them from the field like the chaff they are.”
Valjakar scowled. “This does not sit well with me, my lord Jarl. Shall we cower in an Elven shelter like old women while the foe circles without? Let us sally forth and teach the voidtouched scum to fear. It has been too long since my blade has drank of human blood.”
“Your martial spirit does you honor, Valjakar,” said Rimethur. “But for now, wisdom suggests that we must remain in the Capitol. The plan of the voidtouched is obvious and childish, but it might well succeed if we venture forth. Should I be slain, the Great King would have no choice but to demand restitution of the High Queen. That would renew the war between our worlds, and the only victors in such a war would be the Archon dogs and the voidtouched human apes.”
Valjakar scowled. “The Archons were fools to challenge us.”
“Truly,” said Rimethur. “The Elves were our ancient foes. Yet the folly of the Archons and their human allies upon Earth threatens us all. Therefore we shall carry out the Great King’s will. We shall make alliance with proud Tarlia and her vassals…and we shall remain inside the Capitol until Duke Carothrace kills the voidtouched and their fol
lowers. The human rabble will not disrupt the Great King’s designs.”
He turned, stepping closer to the railing, and I saw the Ringbyrne Amulet glinting against the ornate armor of his cuirass.
It was so close. Twenty yards or so and I could snatch it and run. There were a few problems with that plan, though. For one thing, it rested against Rimethur’s chest, which it was a good eighteen inches above my head. I suspected the frost giant Jarl and his bodyguards would react poorly if some random human woman started climbing up his torso. For that matter, I couldn’t outrun the frost giants. It didn’t matter how fast I was – their long strides would permit them to catch me without much effort. The only option was to grab the amulet and cast a rift way spell to escape into the Shadowlands, and that would take a few seconds to work, which was more than enough time for the frost giants to gut me on the spot.
I had to think of something clever. Like, right now.
“I am surprised to find the voidtouched upon this world,” said another of the frost giants. “The humans are simple, short-lived creatures. Yet that in itself is a shield, for I thought they would not possess the magical aptitude to fall into such evil.”
Valjakar shrugged. “Tarlia can blame herself for that. She was the one who breached the umbra around Earth. Magical aptitude was rare among the humans before the Conquest, or so I understand. If she did not want voidtouched among the humans, then she should not have fled here for her exile.”
“No,” rumbled Rimethur. “Tarlia did not breach the umbra around Earth and open the way for the Elven exiles. Lord Kaethran Morvilind worked the spell, and he found this world.”
“Morvilind?” said another frost giant. “The High Queen ought to execute him. If there was ever an overmighty subject, it is Morvilind the Magebreaker.”
Magebreaker? There was yet another name for Morvilind I had never heard before. But, then…I didn’t really know that much about Morvilind, did I? I had known him for fifteen years, three-quarters of my life. Morvilind had lived for centuries, perhaps even for more than a thousand years, and those fifteen years were but a tiny drop in the ocean of the centuries he had seen.
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