“Lucian, aren’t you dead?” I asked as I walked up and stood beside Kieran, leaning on his shoulder casually. “I seem to remember digging up a casket recently and finding a body and everything, yet here you sit…” Kieran got angry fast and was well on his way to blowing up. “Calm down, brother. He’s not worth a stroke and we can restore the balance before going home again.”
“There is that,” he agreed, grinning down at me sideways. “So Lucian, how did you manage to fool me so well? How didn’t you die?”
Lucian screamed in abject fear and pain. My cage broke the binding that kept the memory of the tortures of the past few days at bay. Marchand chuckled in surprise, letting his sadistic side remain in the light now that it was out. I shifted the cage to exclude him and feed energy back into the binding until we could get some answers. Healing him only to kill him seemed senseless and we still hadn’t gotten to the bottom of how much responsibility he bore in the destruction of the Pacthome. His story was highly suspect now. Dad hauled him up none too gently and shoved him against the hall wall until he could recover somewhat.
“Well, Louis, it looks like the Council made a good decision when it ousted you,” Kieran said glaring at the Norwegian. “You’ve been very bad.”
Marchand snorted. “Self-righteous prig. You have no rights here and you have no right to order us around. Even the European Council has no legal sway here. In fact… you’re trespassing!”
“D’you hear that, Ehran? We’re trespassing,” I repeated, chuckling.
“He does have a point, though. Legally, we don’t have a leg to stand on,” Kieran said. “But trespassing? We did ring the doorbell, after all, and nothing blocked our path from the road.” Except the gate and four armed guards, but we didn’t come that way.
“We did only come to talk to him, after all,” I answered. “We didn’t expect to find Lucian. Is he any better, Dad?”
“Looks like he’ll be able to talk in a few minutes,” Dad answered, standing over Lucian as he shook violently against the wall. I don’t think he was getting quite what he expected out of his deal with Marchand.
“Are you members of his fraternal order? Is that the secret to your seemingly wondrous abilities?” Marchand asked with a gleam in his eye.
“Mine?” Kieran asked. “No, no. Years of study followed by more years of study while he—” Kieran jabbed me in the side with a finger playfully, grinning at me—“is picking it up in his sleep. And what ‘fraternal order’ would that be?”
“Yes, I would expect that sort of answer,” Marchand said, a suspicious smile beginning to creep across his face. “For hundreds of years, there have been rumors of a group of men, usually attached to Merlin and those like him, who keep the secrets of magic that man has not seen since the gods walked the Earth.”
“Wow, with those kinds of secrets you’d think they’d run the world,” Peter said sarcastically from Kieran’s right. “Why are they hidden, then, if they’re that knowledgeable?”
“I’ve asked a number of questions in a similar vein and it quickly turned into a purely circular philosophical discussion with him,” Marchand said. “And he claims to be of the upper echelon.”
“Does he?” Peter asked cheerfully, turning to where Lucian huddled against the wall. “Robert, would you ask him, please? I’d love to hear this one.”
“So would I. Luke? You awake yet?” Dad asked, squatting down to one side of him. “It’s Robert. We need to ask a few questions, Luke. Are you with me yet, Lucian?” As he asked each question, Dad touched different parts of Lucian’s body firmly, sinking physical probes from his skin into Lucian. There were just four of them, tiny little things, injected through Lucian’s clothing and into his thighs and neck. I didn’t know why he did it, but I assumed he had a reason. “Luke, wakey, wakey.”
Lucian looked up, bleary-eyed and still shaking, and stammered, “R-Robert? Is—Is that you?”
“Yes, Lucian, it’s Robert,” he answered gently. “I need to ask you some questions and it’s very important. Lucian, did you tell Louis Marchand that you are a member of some sort of secret society of secret keepers? He says you told him you were in the upper echelons of this society.”
“No, I never admitted to that or even hinted,” Lucian said, almost sadly. His aura mirrored the truth and the sentiment. “We spoke at length about the possibility of such a group existing and speculating how they might exist and why. Frankly, I found his ideas rather pedestrian and unimaginative.”
“Why did you leave the castle during the battle, Lucian? Why did you desert us?” Ethan asked, still gently. Dad knelt beside Lucian totally implacable. He was fantastically deft at manipulating his aura and hid his homicidal rage well. Thankfully Kieran’s was invisible because he wasn’t controlling his anger as well.
“This is a wonderful spell,” Marchand complimented as he tested the cage, reaching for magic in several directions. “Very dynamic. Who is maintaining it? You must teach it to me.”
“What spell?” Kieran asked innocently.
“This… cage that is keeping magic away from me. It feels like a magnetic bottle,” Marchand said, still probing.
“That’s not a spell, Louie,” Peter said chuckling. “That’s a contest of wills. You’re just losing.” Ooh, score one for Peter on the trash talk!
“His army is going to be here any minute,” I said, seeing forerunners beginning to surround the house.
“I wonder how the German government would feel about a private army within its borders, Louis, complete with battle-trained wizards. You’re risking declaring magic to the world, Louis,” Kieran said cheerfully. “And look at what you’re wearing… Dark magic! From a council member. Shame, Louie, shame. You seem to be the benefactor of whatever vile ceremony you’re going to do tonight. What exactly is your goal?”
Marchand looked panicked for a quick second then said dully, “We are summoning the power of Isis and Ra to charge some amulets.” He adeptly adjusted his aura, but the lie was still evident, clear as a bell across the foggy hills in the morning. Several men just entered through the back door and a stream of men started down the back hallway.
Kneeling down beside Lucian, I did what I didn’t want to do and dove into his mind. Marchand did a lot to break down his psychic shields, but the Pactholders are taught shield spells stronger than most. His were still weak. I slipped easily past them and into his memory. Truly an unpleasant task as it defined his guilt in exacting detail from his own perspective. I saw what the plan was. Lucian was an absolute idiot. Even if it worked, he was dog meat.
Dropping into my cavern, I called my brothers in. “He did leave the Pacthome on several occasions many years ago in his pre-Librarian days. Never told anybody he left and nobody saw him come and go. He met Sondre during one of those trips of depression and she showed him a few tricks to get un-depressed. One thing led to another and he decided he wanted out so that he could be with her all the time. Now we know the end of that story. Apparently, they don’t.” Kieran clamped his eyes shut, stifling a laugh. Peter and Ethan just stared at me in awe.
I just kept going. “Marchand spotted him at a party because three elves were stalking him at an odd position in the crowd and having fun doing it. There’s a rumor among the elves that if two Seelie and one Unseelie can find a Secretkeeper unaware of them and form triangles with the Secretkeeper as the center that the elves will be given brief visions of the Pact as it moves. They consider it a great wonder since it’s basically their version of heaven.”
“But how did they know Lucian was a Pactholder?” Kieran asked.
“And how likely is it that he was followed home?” asked Ethan. “He’s not exactly on the keen and savvy side of life.”
“I have the lock but I talk about it freely. Is it just because I feel like I never agreed to it that I’m not bound by it?” I asked.
“You weren’t bound by its sister power either, the Unseelie Accords,” Kieran said. “They are highly related in history and simul
taneously bound by the Architect in a language so staggeringly complex that no one since has ever understood the smallest part of it. So I guess this makes sense too. If it’s not binding, then you can give it up at any moment.”
“Yeah, but I gotta find somebody good enough to give it, too, and strong enough to rebuild new clans from outsiders. This isn’t a wimp’s job. And dumb ass there just helped devastate the entire pool of candidates. And that fool thinks he can pull that same working that Sondre did and jump into Lucian and steal the Pact from him that way. But to answer your original question, the Pact Lock is intact. Lucian did not lie when he said he admitted to nothing and made no insinuations or inferences to Marchand.” I kept to myself the fact that Marchand brought in Sidhe to test that rumor. We’d deal with that later.
“Where does Murrik fit in?” Peter asked.
“He’s the channel, the blender,” I explained. “He will take the spell and the energy from the sacrifices, put them together, and move the resulting structure into the reservoir, in this case, Lucian.”
“Where does that put us with everybody else here?” Ethan asked.
“You tell me. I don’t really know what to make of them. I mean, the mercenaries I can understand. They’re paid. It’s the battle wizards I don’t get. Why are they here? Is it just for the money, too? Or is there something going on behind it? Am I being paranoid?” I drew in the house around us in wire-frame and placed the soldiers around us. They were unable to open any of the doors to the foyer even though the handsets turned easily enough. Wedging the doors shut was a simple trick. The men moved in slow motion compared to us.
“I say we give Lucian to your Dad,” Peter said. “He deserves it for how well he’s holding it together. It’s like your dad knew when he saw Lucian. Talk to a battle mage or two and find out, then kill Marchand and Murrik. They’re both so fucking ready to die anyway.”
We had a quick discussion about the other things that we had to do, like find the other blood magicians and have a few words with them, delve into their spy network, find out who else they worked with, and a whole laundry list of things to know. That meant keeping some of them alive, though we’d prefer leaving them all that way. A knock at the front door told us we were running down the clock. Decisions were made and it was time to go to work.
The first thing to do was seize control of Marchand and his trained monkeys in the foyer with us. I opted for a fascination instead of compulsion and had them gather the uniforms from the guards that Pete sent into the hills naked. They huddled in the far corner with the ripped-up shirts over their heads, happy as clams in the surf. Kieran and Peter headed for the door while Ethan watched the back, just in case. I headed for the far more odious task of Lucian and Dad.
Daybreak faded quickly from my face as I stood before Lucian. Dad looked up at me when he saw the two-inch privacy shield encircling us with a ten-foot diameter. He stepped back anxiously, letting his anger show finally as the rest of the room disappeared. “Stand up, Lucian,” I commanded, loudly, in that voice that could not be ignored. This was Pact magic; I could feel the Lock shifting with purpose to my will. Lucian scrambled up, using the wall for support until he stood wavering in his silk bathrobe. “Lucian, did you cause the dimensional rift into the Pacthome to be opened?”
“Yes, Seth, asked that way, I do have to admit to that,” Lucian said sadly. “She made me do it, you know. You saw that, too. What she put me through.”
“No, you sick m—” I couldn’t bring myself to say it in front of my father. Ain’t that sad? “You don’t get to blame any of this on her. This is all you. You are a traitor to the Pact and guilty of genocide. Why?”
“Because everything we’re doing is wrong!” Lucian snarled. “We can’t keep hiding and waiting for the elves to make a mistake. We’ve hidden too much magic away from the world and we need to put some back.”
“And how does murdering everybody get that done?” Dad asked.
“That way I can add who I want to the Pact and possibly change the binding,” Lucian said gloating. “Make a true mark for our people!”
“Lucian, for the crime of revealing the Pact to outsiders and submitting to black magic that endangers your soul and your Pact’s connection,” I said, but the voice that rang through the privacy shield didn’t sound like mine. Even Dad looked a little spooked by it. “You have lost the right to carry a Pact and you are branded a traitor to our kind.” I removed the Pact using functions within the library that had never been used. Weren’t ever supposed to be used.
“Yes!” he hissed. “That’s all I ever really wanted.” He had his arms spread out against the wall, his movement jerky and spastic.
“I really draw out the psychotic in them, don’t I?” I muttered, then carried on, that voice “from above” following me. “Further, you lose all knowledge of any magic learned while under the tutelage of the Pact, including its existence. For the genocide of your people, I pronounce your life null and void. Anyone can kill you, and should kill you, at any time.” I paused to let that sink in. Exactly how much magic would he have left once the Pact Lock shut down his memory? I didn’t resist checking and wasn’t surprised at the damage.
“Dad?” I asked softly, turning to look at his back. “This isn’t exactly an honor, but do you want to be the one? Of all of us, you’ve suffered the most egregiously because of him.”
Behind the privacy screen, Dad let a crack show, a hint of the murderous rage he’d kept locked up till now. He turned on Lucian, ready to yell and vent his anger. “You took his Pact?” he asked instead, shocked.
“Yes, it’s a never-before used function of the Librarian. There are several areas that no one has ever used for good reason.”
Dad paused, then asked what would happen if we allowed the ceremony to proceed, so I quickly outlined what would happen in best case and worst case scenarios. Glancing through the shield, I saw Kieran and Peter negotiating with the leader of the mercenaries for Marchand’s release, or more realistically, stonewalling the leader.
“Why don’t we let them finish their rite, then?” Dad asked. “Let them take care of each other for us. That way, we can be right where we need to be to destroy the blood rites whatever the result is.”
“And smack in the middle of an army of mercenaries and battle mages,” I reminded him. “There’s a lot that can go wrong with that idea.”
“Yes, but that’s the same position we’re in now,” he said, waving a hand around us vaguely. “I rather like the irony and I still get the kill the son of a bitch.”
Chuckling at my dad’s sense of revenge, I said, “I’ll see what I can arrange.”
Chapter 66
Kieran talked them into it. He could be particularly charming when he wanted to be, especially since the subjects of the discussion were so heavily fascinated at the time. He convinced the mercs to delay long enough to fake a magical battle with them as the winners. Shortly the foyer was full of men with automatic weapons and bad attitudes and I was letting wizards reach for power again. Yeah, no way any of this could go wrong.
Marchand gloated behind his altered memories and slightly hazy reality. He slipped right into Kieran’s plan and slapped a containment field around us, ranting about our incompetence and inability. He ignored the mercenary leader’s pleas to shoot us and be done with us. It was nerve-wracking for us to watch our ploy play out in front of us, knowing it shouldn’t work. Apparently, my fascination and Kieran’s lead were strong enough to force Marchand to overcome the suspicious nature of the mercenary. Within ten minutes, we were following Marchand and his group of magicians down a dark path with torches, a dozen guns in our backs and confined within a weak containment field generated by two of our four greeters.
Just outside the mercenary encampment, a small squad of battle mages swerved into our path and surrounded us. They formed their own confinement and containment fields, relieving the other wizards of the task and freeing them for the ceremony ahead. There were eight of them holdi
ng it and it was stronger and more compact. No less breakable, but stronger. The mages were extremely nervous and anxious, and rightly so. At the end of this long dark path was a temple building filled with dark, roiling energy and they’d been warned repeatedly to stay away from it.
Even Marchand was quiet after the mercenary camp. No one spoke for the fifteen minute walk to the temple, except to grunt or groan about a tree limb in the face or a root in the path. The way seemed to narrow and darken as we got closer and the energies around us got less appealing to feel. To me, it felt like being close to Dieter, just plain creepy. A trio of priests stood in the center of the clearing when we finally broke clear of the path about a twenty yards before the temple. They greeted Marchand formally in an old Persian language. Our guards ushered us to an out-of-the-way place and waited while Marchand spoke with them. Then everyone went inside the temple, leaving us alone with the mercenaries and the battle mages.
Silence reigned for ten minutes while we watched the magic of the temple begin to focus then relapse into chaos. Ethan laughed. “This could take a while,” he muttered. “Should we offer to help?”
“Shuddup in there!” growled a man in front of our “cages.” He hit them with a long, thin knife, causing a cascade of energy through the containment field that would have hurt if we were connected to them.
“Nah, they got another hour, hour and a half before they’re ready,” I said, stepping out of the cage beside the camouflage-wearing Australian. “We’d rather talk while we’re waiting.” His head swung sharply to me when he realized where I was standing. His head swung the other way when Peter stepped out the other side. When he looked behind him, he saw his companions doing what they were supposed to be doing—supporting the confinement of their five prisoners. It just so happened that Kieran was operating a perfectly valid elven fascination of his own and had dozens of guards within visual range believing we were still in their grasp. I didn’t know he could do that, but Shrank called him the “Free Lord.” I should damn well believe it!
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