Daisy stared at me wide-eyed, then checked all three faster than I thought her little body could waddle. She nodded to me, eyes still wide with fear and shock. I nodded back. Then I woke up my court wizard.
Dranus! I yelled at him, through the link. It took more power to force someone to listen to you, but I was lavish. My keep was under attack. Wake up!
Magelord? He asked, sleepily.
No time to explain – grab your blade and your staff and come guard Alya at my hall, now!
I – Aye, Magelord! I’ll be there in a nonce!
I turned back to the Tal, who were looking around in wonder, as if they weren’t certain that they’d done what they’d done to the intruder. “Good work, my friends,” I encouraged, with more patience than I felt. “Master Dranus will be here to take charge in a moment – can you secure her until he gets here? And then explain what happened?”
Nummet, the largest of them all, silently sat on Mask’s chest with a grunt. She wasn’t going anywhere, his look told me.
“Thank you. I’ll be back anon; hold the hall secure until I return!”
Master! Dara begged into my mind. Gareth is down! I’m not going to be able to hold him off much longer!
I was about to ask who she was holding off, but I decided I should see for myself. I tossed Blizzard to Dowlie, our hall butler, and the little fuzzball caught it and brought it to guard resolutely . . . though the weapon towered over him. Clover, one of the nursery attendants, snatched up Mask’s fallen mageblade and held it near her, threateningly.
Time to go. I drew Twilight as I summoned the Ways, and then I was in my tower sitting room. As the disorientation passed I cast my gaze around and realized that the sounds of fighting were coming from upstairs . . . in my workshop. I activated my warmagic augmentations again and raced up the stairs without my toes touching the stone treads. Magesight came to me with a thought. Twilight burst into flame with a command, and I rushed through the heavy wooden door into an even more chaotic situation than I’d discovered in my hall.
My workshop had been devastated. Tables and desks were knocked over and months’ worth of parchment notes and correspondences littered the floor. The air in front of me was lit up with the sizzle of spells and the smell of ozone. But instead of a half-dozen balls of fur engaged in a fray, there were feathers. A lot of feathers. And one very desperate hawklady apprentice.
Dara had taken cover behind an overturned stone table, where she had dragged Gareth’s body. She had a warwand in one hand and her curved mageblade, Talon, in the other. I have to give her credit, too. For a non-warmage, she had done an excellent job of building a quick defensive position, both physically and arcanely. And she had summoned help. There were five falcons and hawks in the air, diving and attacking the intruders.
There were two of them . . . and they were Alka Alon. Short form.
Both wore a vaguely familiar clingy black garment that might have been armor of some sort. Each also had a bag slung around their shoulder, something I was unaccustomed to seeing. Even more unusual was seeing them with the Alkan equivalent of warwands in their hands. These were warriors, I could tell, and each bore a small bow and quiver on their back in addition to a belt of pouches and weaponry.
Even augmented, I could tell they were moving just as fast. And in perfect coordination.
I had no time to wonder what the hells was going on – since when did the Alka Alon attack us? Especially in collusion with a renegade warmage? I had to rescue my people, and stop whatever it was from happening.
I began with a bright concussive blast from the point of Twilight, then followed with a sound-dampening spell. That might not seem like a serious threat, but when most of your magic depends on music, not being able to sing properly hampers you.
Unfortunately, my entrance was noted. Not in time for them to stop the silence spell, but in time for the Alakan closest to me to wave his little wand at me and then start to close.
That wand sent a bolt of lightning as wide as my thigh toward my chest. If I hadn’t had Twilight out – and if Master Cormoran hadn’t enchanted the blade to absorb such power – I would have been fried on the spot. As it was I smelled more ozone and singed feathers . . . and the beautiful sight of the wicked Alkan’s face exploding in a flurry of talon and beak as Frightful – I think it was Frightful – took the opportunity to attack. I don’t know if Dara was guiding her or not, but the bird distracted the invader long enough for me to close with him.
The second Alkan saved his friend from decapitation only because he intervened his own stick in the path. He then got the rare pleasure of watching his magical rod explode in shards as Twilight’s offensive enchantments took hold. It had been designed to fight gurvani shamans, so when it came in contact with a powerful magical weapon it got mean. The blast tore the blade from my hand and sent it flying, but it sent him flying, too – and he was a lot lighter than me. I was forced back four steps. He was blown against the wall of my tower, under a lantern sconce that was purely ornamentive.
A very specific wall. The wall I had put one of the very first interdimensional pockets I’d ever built.
“Armari!” I said in Old Cormeeran as I signaled my intent. The dimensional pocket opened, and the startled-looking Alka faded from existence.
I glanced at his mate, who looked startled behind a cloud of diving hawks . . . but before I could turn to face him, find my sword, draw a wand, anything, he himself disappeared. Using the Ways.
“Were there any more?” I shouted to Dara over the screeling hawks.
“Just the two!” she shouted back, her eyes following her flying charges. “Can I dismiss them, now?” she pleaded.
“Please!” I called. She closed her eyes and in a moment the birds left by the window, the way they came.
“That . . . was . . . exciting,” she said, panting heavily. She had a scratch on her cheek that was bleeding freely. “Oh, Ishi’s tits! Gareth!” she said, suddenly remembering the wounded thaumaturge.
She ran to him and checked his pulse, while I did the same for the other body in the room: Master Ulin. Both proved to be merely unconscious, not dead. But neither one was certain of what happened. They had both fallen prey to an Alkan sung charm that had sent them senseless.
Ulin had gone down almost instantly. Gareth had survived the first attack and had fought back before he was eventually subdued. Dara would have gone under just as quickly if she hadn’t sent for her sleepy birds and commanded them to the tower. As it was she had taken a couple of hard hits, though she maintained that Talon had slashed in return.
Magelord, Dranus reported dutifully, as I surveyed the wreckage, I regret to inform you that your prisoner has escaped.
Escaped? How did that happen? She should have been out for hours!
Apparently she had some charm to mitigate her susceptibility to such hexes. She awoke while my back was turned, took a weapon from one of the Tal, and escaped out the window to the roof. She was preternaturally fast, he informed me, apologetically.
She was using warmagic. And she’s just sneaky that way.
One more thing, Sire, he added, delicately. The weapon that she took . . . it was your warstaff. I did not anticipate her regaining consciousness so quickly, and neglected to secure it properly. I hold myself responsible.
I sighed again. Forget about it. I took her stick, she thinks she got back at me by taking mine. Most of the enchantments on it she won’t even be able to use. It’s more about her pride than anything else. What they were really after was here, in the tower. The stones. They got . . . I don’t what they got, exactly. We’re still figuring up the damage. But alert the guards and raise the alarm. I want every inch of the castle searched.
When we were certain there were no more intruders in the tower, I set Gareth and Dara on guard, and they began straightening up and trying to help Master Ulin determine just what was taken.
Meanwhile Dranus raised the alarm. Within a half hour I had dozens of men searching the grounds
by magelight for any sign of Mask or the Alka Alon. I was pretty certain they wouldn’t find any. If the Alkan had used the Ways to escape – and likely invade my home in the first place, bypassing the guards – then it was just as likely that Mask had escaped the same way.
I had wondered where she had gotten her new witchstone. I had assumed, because of the traces of gurvani spellwork she had left in Amel Wood, that she had found a way to acquire another stone from the gurvani.
But if she was working with the Alka Alon, that changed everything. For me, for her . . . and for the Alka Alon. Unfortunately, most of them were still gone. But I did have one I could question. Sometime around dawn I sent my sleepy page in search of Onranion, and summoned him to my tower. He arrived about an hour after breakfast.
“I hear we had a scuffle in the night,” he said, cheerfully.
“A failed assassination attempt. And a successful robbery.”
“A . . . robbery? Thieves?” he asked, looking delighted. I’ll never understand Onranion’s “appreciation” of my culture.
“And assassination. Luckily, I returned in time with Dara and Gareth. But the raid was designed to occur when my attention was elsewhere. In Alshar, right now, dozens of bands of gurvani have taken advantage of the Conclave to raid outside of the Penumbralands. I’m assuming that they assumed I’d be in the thick of it, since I’m the only wizard who can use the Ways to transport folk. Until tonight,” I added.
“Ah! So you did teach them!”
“Gareth did,” I admitted. “Enough so that they could get back to Alshar and raise a defense. But I was too tired. And I had a feeling, so I returned here. Just in time to catch them in the act.”
“I’ve always wanted to see a housebreaking!” Onranion said, eagerly. “What did they take? Who were they? Did they wear masks?”
“Only one was masked: the assassin warmage, Lady Mask, late of service with Sheruel’s renegades. If you recall I encountered her last year in Alshar, with a couple of hundred hobgoblins. It was a memorable occasion. The other two didn’t wear masks. They were Alka Alon,” I informed him.
“Alka?” he asked, surprised and troubled.
“Yes. Which begs the question why the Alka Alon would want to steal from me?”
“I . . . I don’t know. If we knew which Alka Alon it was, that might help. But if they got away . . .” he shrugged.
“I didn’t say they got away,” I said, walking over to where my magical closet was. “In fact, I got one the easy way.” I dilated the hoxter pocket. The little black-clad body tumbled lifeless to the floor. That got a reaction from Onranion.
“Damn it, Min! Don’t do that!” he said, leaping back, startled at the sudden appearance of a corpse in our pleasant conversation. Then he realized that the body was, indeed, one of his own. He bent to examine it, then looked up sorrowfully.
“Well, he is Alka,” he agreed, slowly. “But taking a grievance to the Council won’t do you much good, even if they did have time to listen to it. This Alkan is an outlaw.”
“An outlaw? I didn’t think that there were Alka outlaws?”
“Why not? We have a long and tangled history. We dislike putting our criminals to death – pure sentimentality, if you ask me. So we tend to resort to exile, internal exile, and outlawry.”
“So this Alkan is a criminal?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Onranion said, straightening until he was taller than me. “He belongs to a rather fanatical faction of my folk. They insist on rigid adherence to customs and rules long abandoned by more sensible folk under the guise of tradition. The problem is that they are insistent enough in their beliefs to want to enforce them on everyone else. They see themselves as insurgents and revolutionaries, which makes them even more fanatical. They’re called the Enshadowed.”
That name sounded familiar, for some reason. “What is their issue with me?”
“I don’t know,” Onranion shrugged, expressively. “I think you’re rather cute, myself. But the Enshadowed have always hated treating with other races – even other Alon. Thanks to some . . . misunderstandings about six, seven hundred years ago, some of which were purposeful, they really dislike you humani. Even more than they dislike the ‘degenerate’ Alka Alon.”
“Hey! What did we do?”
“You usurped attention from their cause. The Enshadowed were conspiring to take control of the Council about the time that the humani belched forth from the Void and asked permission to settle these lands. At the time, the Council saw little harm from it, because they doubted the viability of a non-magic using race on Callidore. The novelty was just too good to pass up, though, and when you presented us with all of your beautiful trees . . . well, even if you all died, we would have done just about anything for those.”
“So the Enshadowed were jealous? Because we stole their attention?”
“Oh, it was worse than that. They hated you from the start, because you represented aberration in the natural order of things. Then you gave us wonders, and delighted us with your culture, and flattered us. Most of the issues the Enshadowed were concerned with were forgotten amongst the novelty of the humani. So they struck back, or struck first, depending on who you talk to. That got them outlawed and banished by the Council, but the Enshadowed are as fanatical as they are militant. They retreated to the dark places of the world: remote groves, ancient caverns, hidden refuges of their own.”
“And they just decided to come out now? To rob my tower and slay my family?”
“You obviously had something they wanted. The Enshadowed don’t really have a lot of stigma against stealing from non-Alon. Kind of like how your kind usually feel about the Tal. But that makes me wonder what they took.”
“Me, too. I had Master Ulin make a list of the artifacts he was working with when he was attacked. Thankfully a prisoner recently tipped me to the fact that someone had designs on my treasury, and I have tightened security as a result. Artefacts are only taken out as needed. Unfortunately, Master Ulin was working on a fairly major piece, when he was attacked. He had a lot of stones out. One of the two got away . . . so whatever isn’t in this satchel got stolen.”
“Let’s take a look!” he said, eagerly. He seemed totally unperturbed by the idea of assassins running around the castle grounds or thieves imperiling our security. In anyone else I would take it as an indication of guilt, perhaps, but Onranion was just like that.
We went through the dead Alka’s satchel and discovered several erstwhile prizes, including a few Waystones, some snow quartz, and a Library Stone Ulin had been using. But most importantly we discovered the large, unique Apophylyte crystal we’d used to translate the Celestial Mother into the Snowflake.
“That would have been a tragedy to lose,” Onranion assured me. “So what did they get?”
“Not as much as I feared,” I sighed. “They took one of the lesser magratheite – the pocket stones. That’s a blow. And two Empathy Stones, as well as one of the Telepathy Stones. More quartz, more waystones, sixteen stones of unknown property Ulin was examining . . .” I said, wondering just what they did.
We still had assayed only a tithe of the gems we’d recovered, and the secret cave in the Kennel was stuffed with boxes of raw, unsorted crystals and other stones the gemsingers had harvested. They could be – could do – virtually anything. The spell that had created the Snow That Never Melted had had a remarkable effect on the structure of any silica-bearing crystals in the vicinity.
Nor had it been, as we had discovered, entirely confined to the circle. There were outlying flecks of the effect as far away as Hosendor, thanks to the refractory nature of the rocks in the surrounding ridges. Or the whims of the goddess who had a hand in it. I wasn’t certain . . . and, supposedly, neither was the goddess.
“They didn’t get the Alaran Stone?” Onranion asked, suddenly anxious.
The enneagrammatic affixer crystal was truly unique. It had power over the gods, themselves. As such I trusted it with no one but myself. It was in a
hoxter in my necklace. “I have it. No one would use that stone without my willing permission.
“Good thinking,” he sighed with relief. “I’d hate to think what . . . oh . . .” he said, a disturbing thought suddenly occurring to him.
“What is it?” I demanded. Onranion had a nasty habit of forgetting to mention something vital, just because he assumed you already knew. He was getting better, over the time he spent among mortals. A little.
“I think I know who is behind this . . . conspiracy,” he said, at last. He looked even more disturbed than before.
“Who? I thought it was the Enshadowed?”
“Oh, they’re decidedly involved,” he assured me, looking at the corpse at our feet. “That is their preferred style of dress, a uniform that is now a relic of a dead age. The fact that they display it openly means that they are feeling empowered, not pursued. And while I can imagine that recent events have led them to be emboldened, I can think of only one alliance that would compel them to take this kind of audacious action. Thank your gods that they were not successful.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you see, my boy?” the ancient Alkan said, his strong humanoid form belying his great age. “They were after the Alaran stone. The rest were mere trinkets.”
“Hardly trinkets,” I countered.
“Oh, they have value, in their way, but that wasn’t what they were after. They had to be after the Alaran stone. Their master would demand it, crave it, once he learned of it. He would insist that they spared no effort in retrieving it, whatever the cost. Even at the risk of exposure, or their very lives.”
“Why would Sheruel want the Alaran Stone so badly?” I asked. “And why would the Enshadowed want to serve the gurvani?”
“Sheruel? No doubt he played a role, as he would have found their help useful, and vice versa. But the Enshadowed would never be subordinate to a mere gurvani, however powerful. They might use him, as he they, if their purposes were aligned. No, they would only risk this audacity for one being; the head of their line, so to speak, a spiritual ancestor. Perhaps a real one.”
Enchanter (Book 7) Page 61