by Greg Curtis
“Then what did you call us here for?” Dariya asked, obviously dejected.
“Because I can't be in two places at once. And if I'm out hunting down your uncle, I can't be here issuing new decrees. Or –” he nodded at his great uncle “– looking after him.”
“I heard that!” Great Uncle Mortimer's voice came floating back from the other side of the roof. Apparently he wasn't as asleep as he'd looked. “We all did!” But then he launched into a conversation with the invisible people all around him. It was a somewhat animated conversation with a lot of hand waving and the occasional bit of cursing.
“And someone needs to get Aunt Millie out, continuing her work,” he carried on. “That's important for her as well as for everyone else.” He was convinced now, that a lot of her problems stemmed from her having been left alone for so long. But having said that, her gift also played a part. It clearly dominated a lot of her life.
“We can't do anything to violate the Concord,” J'bel reminded him.
“No, but Dariya here can do these things without violating the Concord. She's not from the Hallows. And I've drafted the next five days of decrees already. All she has to do is change the tags on the pigeons' legs. Meanwhile you can use the printing press to continue your work, and if possible do a little research for me.”
“Research?”
“The circlet. I've been searching for it. Looking through every document in every library I can find. But so far I’ve come up with nothing. I can't find the circlet. And we need two things to end this battle between the mad King and his uncle. Dariya and the circlet. The heir and the proof. All I can think is that her mother must have stashed it somewhere. But I have no idea where – or even when.”
“Three things,” Dariya contradicted him. “You need three things. Me, the circlet and my making a claim. And I don't want the throne. Not even if I can truly claim it.”
“Then get rid of it!” He snapped at her, a little more harshly than he had intended. “Name a regent! Abdicate in favour of another! End the monarchy! Just do something. Because we can't simply continue as we are with a pitiful excuse for a King and his conniving uncle at war.”
And that was the truth of it. King Richmond was a poor excuse for a King. His advisers reined in the worst of his mistakes, but still he made some horrible decisions. Which ironically was probably the very reason many believed even the most ridiculous of the decrees he had been writing for him. They imagined King Richmond might actually make them. But the Duke would be even worse if he somehow gained the throne. The Realm would be exchanging someone who was incompetent, possibly crazy and utterly ruthless for someone who was – well, evil. They needed some fresh blood on the throne. Or the throne itself gone.
“I don't think it's that easy!” Dariya responded bluntly. She was still listening though. Not arguing.
“I didn't say it would be. But something has to be done.”
“You're forgetting something.” J'bel piped up. “If you catch the Duke, he'll likely escape again – unless you kill him. He obviously has help. Magical help. And if you kill him the people here will still be left under the rule of a King who has likely been exposed as having a false claim to the throne. That will lead to chaos.”
“Unless I take away the Duke's magic and leave him a prisoner for Richmond or the next King or Queen to lock away for the rest of his days. And I have a way to do that.”
Baen had developed an enchantment that would bind a gifted person’s powers. It wasn’t perfect and he feared what would happen if the enchantment might become common knowledge. Because if it did, then sooner or later it would be used against those like him. It was in the end a weapon, and weapons never stayed only in the hands of those who created them. And they were never only used on bad people.
There was another problem too. Even if he captured the Duke, bound his magic, stopped his friends from helping him escape, and then presented him to Richmond to lock away for the rest of his days, the Duke was old. Sooner or later he would die. And then whatever proof he had that Richmond was not the true King would be released. Grenland would be in chaos again. But it still seemed like the best option. Sometimes there were no perfect answers.
“You are a juggler!” Nyri unexpectedly told him. She'd been quiet until then. “So many plans. So many balls flying in the air at once.”
“I know,” he agreed. “And I've got to keep them all flying for as long as possible before everything comes crashing down on our heads. But if I can keep them flying long enough, the crash at the end won't be so bad.”
“We will do what we can,” J'bel announced. “We will not break the Concord. So we will not grow the trees in the city. But we will support your aunt as she does so. And we will not change the messages on the pigeons' legs either. But Dariya can do that. However, we will continue to look for this circlet and look after your great uncle.”
“I can look after myself you impudent upstart!” The man in question interjected.
“And your Aunt Millie, and the rest of your family,” J'bel continued as if he hadn't been interrupted. “You can be sure of their well being.”
“Thank you.” And really that was all he could have hoped for, Baen knew. But it was enough. If he could recapture the Duke and give him back to Richmond in the next five days, it would be everything he could have hoped for. But that was a big “if”.
Chapter Twenty Five
It had been good to get out on the road again. The wheeler had torn up the road beneath him, shattering the air with its thunder, and the wind had blown in his face as he'd raced at break neck speeds. Baen was learning to love the machine he'd bought more and more. He’d even loved the nights he spent on the trail. In some ways it was a pity that he had reached his destination – the cliff where they had found the Duke last time. Baen would have loved to have just kept on riding. Still, he was ready for what lay ahead.
This he knew as he pulled the wheeler over beside a tree, was the time to prepare for battle.
The cliff face with its caverns lay ahead of him, and he was almost certain his prey was inside. Despite what he'd said to the others, he'd never really imagined that the Duke would have headed back to Castle Alldrake. There was nothing left there – except for soldiers still busy digging up bodies. So though he had checked it out, he hadn't been surprised to find nothing there. This had always been the most likely one.
The question was, why had the man chosen this place? What was it about this place that drew the Duke here? Because he had come here for a reason. To recover his strength and heal? Or something else. It was the first question Baen intended to ask when he caught him.
After shutting down his wheeler and taking a sip of water, he began marking out his first circle. A circle of knowledge.
It took time to draw, and he was worried that the Duke might spot him as he worked. He thought it unlikely however. Though he was on a small rise, it was surely a thousand yards back from the entrance to the cavern, there were some bushes between them and he was wearing an amulet of insignificance. It was simply nerves. He couldn't let them distract him as he drew out the lines and symbols to create the spell.
Fifteen or so minutes later he was ready, and he was pretty sure he still hadn’t been spotted. Everything was at peace. The sky was blue, the wind blew gently, and the only sounds were those of the various woodland creatures nearby. The entrance to the cavern looked just as empty as it had before.
Baen took his place inside the circle and focused on the various runes. Holding them in his thoughts he let the magic flow through him into them. And just as it had the day before at Castle Alldrake the circle came to life, allowing him to see far more clearly than any mortal man could. More importantly it allowed him to see through things.
The enchantment was called the Eye of the Gods, and he had to admit it was a good name for it. Because his vision was now completely unencumbered. Distance was no barrier. He just focused and he saw things as if they were right in front of him. Darkness didn't
matter either. Even having a mountain of rock between him and what he was staring at was no problem. Baen focused on the distant cliff ahead and what lay inside.
The only problem he had was that there was so much to see. Because as he peered through the granite he could see all the tunnels and all the veins of minerals and water inside it. Nothing was hidden from him. Which meant he had to search everything. Finding a man inside a large mountain labyrinth would not be an easy task because in the end, a man was a very small creature.
Baen began his search at the mouth of the cavern and then followed the convoluted path through the darkness into the antechamber. Actually he wasn't sure that that was the right term for what it was. It was more like an open chamber with lots of pathways branching off it. Once there he headed further inside the mountain. One thing he noticed immediately; this was that this was no natural structure. It had not been formed by the flow of water over millennia. Someone had carved these tunnels. Someone had evened out the floors and made sure they were all tall enough for people to stand upright in them.
They'd also carve runes into the walls. They were old runes shaped and carved long before either Darish or Swalini had been spoken or written. Unsurprisingly there were a number he didn’t recognise. Others though he did. The runes for light and health for example were everywhere. So that people could see and be well he assumed. There was also one that spoke of wind which he guessed was for fresh air – important in a cavern. But that was less important than the fact that some of them had magic flowing through them. Someone was at home.
His heart started beating a little faster.
It took a moment but Baen quickly mastered his fear. Magic required concentration. Were he to give into his fear nothing would work properly. Besides, he reminded himself, he was a long way back from the mountain and well protected. The Duke would never spot him.
His fear under control once again, Baen moved on, exploring all of the tunnels extending off from the primary one, and generally stopped when he ran into a rock fall which he guessed were the results of the shiny steel and glass bombs the King's dragoons had thrown. There was no doubt that they were powerful weapons. The rock falls were extensive. He could have peered through the rock falls, but as the Duke couldn’t have gone through, there was no point continuing.
Not all the tunnels were blocked by rock falls. Most of those that were he suspected, ran back to other entrances in the cliff face. The soldiers had sealed them to make sure that there could be no escape. But the ones that didn't go there but instead tunnelled deeper into the mountain, were free of blockages. So those he followed. They usually opened up into other, larger chambers, some of which had more tunnels running off them.
What he was looking at he realised was almost an underground town of tunnels and chambers instead of streets and houses. Tunnels that ran not just deeper into the mountain but also higher and lower. A town built in three dimensions. Who had carved them, he wondered? And why?
Baen continued his search, putting his questions aside. He knew he would find no answers. But he took careful note of what each of the chambers contained. Whether they had once been sleeping chambers as suggested by the flat slabs of rock that looked like they might have been beds. Or perhaps places of worship, which was the only way he could explain what looked like podiums and altars in some of them. Actually a lot of them. Maybe this ancient cave system had once been a rock cathedral of some sort?
But he forgot about such things in a hurry when he noticed a bright light ahead. A very bright light. He was close!
He became more convinced of that when he spotted streams of magic flowing in lines through the tunnel floor leading to the light. Traps, he assumed. Whether those traps could have responded to him, he didn't know. He couldn't see how they would when it was only his sight that was there. But he decided not to risk it when he didn't need to. Instead he sent his vision through the rock walls to the chamber ahead.
And there he finally found his prey.
Duke Barnly was sitting on a stone staircase leading up to another chamber, reading a book and looking relaxed. His face was still burnt as was the side of his head, and none of his hair had regrown. But he was clearly greatly healed. The scars looked like they were many years old, the colour having faded from them, and there was no sign of discomfort. Certainly there was no bleeding or puss anywhere. More importantly, the Duke gave no sign that he had spotted Baen.
But what shocked Baen was that the Duke wasn't alone. He had a woman with him. And when Baen studied her a little more closely, he realised with surprise that she was Fae. A middle aged or perhaps slightly older woman, who didn't appear to be under any sort of duress. Moreover a woman who appeared to be making potions. She was standing at a stone workbench, mixing ingredients in glass jars and adding water before she started boiling them over open flames.
She was making potions. He could clearly see the magical essence within them glowing. And yet they weren't enchanted. Not as he would create a potion. These were distilled creations. Potions that took their magic from the ingredients they were made from. Ingredients that he could see stockpiled up in jars, stacked on shelves that covered two complete sides of the chambers. Clearly this was no new enterprise. These ingredients hadn't just been collected. Instead the large collection of them, together with the stains and chips on the stone bench suggested that this woman had been here for many years, distilling her potions.
What really caught him by surprise though, was that she was talking to the Duke. Every so often he looked up from his book and said something to her and she answered him. There was no sign of unwillingness to respond on her part. No trace of her being under duress. In fact, a couple of times he thought he caught a trace of a smile on her face.
For the longest time Baen sat there, staring, wondering what was happening. Because nothing in what he was seeing made sense. The Duke was a monster! He had made potions out of Fae blood to grant him his magical power. No Fae woman would willingly work with him, surely?!
And then a name came to him – Estor. The Duke's old tutor in magic. The woman he had supposedly killed. Whose magic he had then stolen. Though he had no evidence to support his theory, Baen knew that it was her. Not dead but rather still alive after all these years. Still tutoring her student in the dark magical arts. And apparently still friends.
With that came another understanding. She was the one granting the Duke his magical abilities. She had been doing so for a very long time. And the two of them had been working together for all of those years.
So why had the Duke told Dariya and her mother all those years ago that he'd killed her? Claimed to have stolen her magic for himself? He could understand wanting to keep her a secret – but from them? They weren't enemies. Or at least they hadn't been.
But most important of all, he suddenly had an answer to one of the most puzzling aspects of the Duke’s attack on G’lorenvale. How the Duke's men had known where the Glade of Grace was and were able to invade G'lorenvale unseen. How they'd been seemingly protected against all the Fae's most powerful weapons. And how they’d had the ability to run for days dragging their prisoners back with them. This woman was the reason why! The woman who'd given them all the potions they needed to keep running day and night.
Nyri had said at the time that for the attack to have been successful they had to have had a traitor in their midst, but who that was she hadn't known. It looked like he'd just found her.
But why? What was the purpose of the attack? Because as he suddenly realised, it hadn't been so that Duke Barnly could drink more Fae blood to become more powerful. That was just a story told to Dariya and her mother all those years ago. Now he knew it had been a lie. Because this woman was distilling potions from rare magical ingredients to grant him his magic. The Duke didn't need the Fae. Which meant that the woman did.
She was the one who had masterminded the attack. Duke Barnly might have hired the men, but she had directed them. She had told them where to go and given them
the potions that would get them there undetected and let them fight their way back after the attack. She was the Fae's true enemy. The Duke for his part probably didn't even care about them. He had only ever wanted one thing; the throne of Grenland.
Baen let his concentration lapse after that as the questions screamed at him. So many of them. And because of that the enchantment failed and he returned to his normal sight. But that was alright. They hadn't seen him and he needed to think about what he'd discovered. Nothing was as it seemed. His enemy wasn't even who he'd thought he was. And now that it turned out she was a woman he didn't know who she was or why she had done what she had.
But that didn't matter, he finally told himself as he sat there trying to still his curiosity. He still had an enemy to vanquish. Two in fact, though only the Duke would be going to the King to spend the rest of his days in a cell. The woman, Estor, would have to answer to her own people for what she'd done. The people of Grenland would never find out about her – because if they did there would be uncomfortable questions asked about who had actually been responsible for the attack. Questions that might make the Fae's actions in setting up their Trading Missions less justifiable. And that could in turn lead to war. Whatever else she was, the woman was a political disaster. But his plan hadn't changed. Capture the Duke. Bind his magic. Hand him over to the King. Now he just had an extra part to it. Capture the woman, bind her powers and hand her over to her own people.