by William Ray
Gus dragged Doctor Phand back, away from the group, relieved to discover that as the chanting faltered, the man was far more easily led. The elf and his knife-wielding Wardens stood between them and the hallway, but moving to the back of the room, Gus could see into the hidden alcove and the dark hall that lay beyond it. The hallway led to stairs going downward, but he couldn’t be sure of finding an exit above ground if they went that way.
Then the monstrous voice below them spoke much more clearly, the sound of the words distinct even if their meaning was not. Strangely, Miss Aliyah Gale said nothing.
Gus looked back at her and saw that she glowered at Sylvester, but the elf stepped backwards as if he had understood whatever had been left untranslated. Whatever he had heard, the remaining entranced Wardens had stopped chanting and looked around at each other in clear confusion.
Sylvester turned to his followers and shouted, “Kill her! Kill her now!”
The newly uncertain Wardens began to close in on Miss Aliyah Gale but then halted as she convulsed. She made a retching sound, and her mouth opened wide, water burbling out as if she had just taken a drink. Even Sylvester looked momentarily confused as her mouth opened wider still, with more and more water pouring out, pooling at their feet and rolling across the marble floor in a spreading pool.
She leaned forward, and the water kept pouring from her open lips and onto the floor—more water than she could ever have contained. In a panicky voice, Sylvester shouted again, “Kill her!”
A loud rumble below shook the house, and the angry voice continued below them. The room rocked from side to side, and the Wardens stumbled, a few even slipping in the water on the floor as they tried to keep their feet. Gus grabbed Phand and yanked him back into the alcove.
Behind them, the marble floors cracked, buckling upwards as something shoved through them from below. The floor exploded, great chunks of marble knocking green-cloaked Wardens in every direction as a terrible head emerged. A great scaled maw large enough to swallow men whole rose from the floor. It looked as much like a wolf as a lizard, with great black teeth and a raging inferno behind them.
Daring to look no longer, Gus pulled Phand and ran, half-dragging the fat man behind him as he pulled desperately toward the stair. Men and women screamed behind them, their desperate cries nearly drowned out by the horrible roar of what had come for them.
Gus was relieved to discover that although the stairway continued further downward, there was a doorway on the ground floor leading from the stair and into a servants’ passage.
Everything around them shook, and Phand stumbled. As Gus paused to pull him back to his feet, an enormous serpentine coil crashed through the wall, and a gargantuan clawed limb anchored itself on the floor ahead of them, pushing the reptilian form further upward. In the process, it tore through the wall, exposing the parlor Gus had passed through on his way in.
Gus tugged Phand through the new opening just as marble tiles from the floor above them began raining down into the collapsing passageway behind them. The house creaked and groaned, artwork falling from the walls as the building around them cracked and twisted. He rushed Phand through the foyer, shoved him out the front door, and then dragged him all the way to the curb before turning to look at the chaos behind.
The walls crumbled, and pipes burst from the ground, spilling a spray of water across the lawn. Scattered blue flames began cropping up inside from broken gas lines as Sylvester’s house collapsed, slowly joined by orange and red as the wooden frame caught alight. One of the electrical lines snapped from the frame and fell to the ground nearby, sparking fitfully.
The earth shook as the house rocked back and forth, collapsing inwards on itself. A gas pipe burst up from the ground in the front yard and sent up a steady gout of blue flame in a fountain of light. Gus pulled Doctor Phand a little further down the street, towards the jumble of tram-line construction, but was unable to take his eyes from the scene. Even as the house crumpled, the wreckage undulated as the great beast destroyed the entire structure from within.
A figure in green emerged from the shifting wreckage and fled, some panicked Warden who discarded his hood and robes as he ran down the street and away from the scene. Gus watched warily as another began crawling free and was caught entirely off guard when the elf’s thin, reedy voice piped up behind him, “That was entirely unexpected. Is that who you’ve really been working for all this time?”
~
“Fraud Unmasked in Mazhar”
In a shocking turn of events, the supposed queen of Tulsmonia residing in Mazhar has been unmasked as a fraud. The exiled Duke of Errapol arrived in Sakloch to great pomp from other exiled Tuls aristocrats gathered in Sakloch. His Grace, a long-time confidant of the magnar, was personally acquainted with the magnar’s royal physician and immediately recognized that the man identified to him as Doctor Gleb Nichols was not who he claimed to be.
After questioning by the Sultan’s security personnel, the charlatan confessed to his deception, and he will have been beheaded by the time this report sees print. His true identity has not been established to our sources in Mazhar, but despite official silence on the topic, it is well known that his female accomplice fled the palace with several items of value that had been presented to her by admirers taken in by the deceit.
– Khanom Daily Converser, 17 Tal. 389
~
- CHAPTER 33 -
The terrible beast spat out the flaming corpse of one of Dorna’s fellow Wardens and then lunged for another. She looked for the Master, but he had vanished, and for a terrible moment, she feared he had already been consumed.
The floor tilted wildly, and with a loud crash, it vanished from beneath her feet. Tumbling down, she desperately tried to grab for anything, but everything within reach just came crashing down with her.
The breath was knocked from her lungs as she hit the ground floor, and on pure adrenaline she managed to clamber down the corridor as more of the level above began collapsing behind her.
She pushed off her hood to get a better look around and saw another Warden trapped under a fallen beam behind her, so she rushed to his aid. Working together, she managed to free him but felt a pang of heartbreak to see the smudged face of the Elven queen lay beneath him. The rest of the tapestry was pinned under marble tiles she knew she hadn’t the strength to move.
Dorna pondered trying to slide the tapestry out, but as she paused, the wall beside her cracked, and a broken pipe began spitting fire. Singed but not alight, she sprang back, but then serpentine coils tore through everything, and there was no time to save any of the Master’s treasures. The other Warden turned and fled the house, and despairing, Dorna followed.
Once outside, she turned to look at the wreckage behind them, wondering if any others made it out. Surely the Master had escaped, but Marjorie, Terry, all the others ….
She glanced over at the Warden she had rescued and was shocked to see him tearing off his robes and casting them aside. Dorna felt a bitter pang upon discovering the Warden she had saved was Sandal Ulm, of all people. He glanced at her only briefly, not even uttering a word of thanks for his rescue before turning to run away.
Looking around as she tried to catch her breath, Dorna saw that a few of the Master’s neighbors had stepped outside and were watching the destruction of his house with bewildered horror. With an enormous surge of relief, she saw that there, in the street, stood the Master. He had lost his robes but not yet taken on his human guise.
Across from him stood Baston—her mistake.
She had tried so hard to follow the Master’s plan, but somehow that man had ruined all of it, and somehow, with so many precious things destroyed in his wake, Baston had escaped with Phand.
For the first time in her life, the Master seemed suddenly fragile. He did not age, but despite all their power, Elves could still be killed, and now he faced a true killer and stood unarmed. She headed towards them, but battered and still breathless,
she feared she wouldn’t make it in time. She wished the Master had some sort of weapon, and as if in answer, a pistol suddenly appeared in his hand.
With a surge of relief, Dorna watched as he took charge of the situation. She stepped behind him, to stand at the Master’s shoulder and be the silent support he needed in this dark hour.
Dorna felt her confidence rewarded by the Master’s fearlessness. He would make everything as it should be. That was his mission.
The Master’s features softened and broadened, rolling back like wax melting from a candle. His elf’s body widened and swelled, taking on more human proportions until once again he donned his familiar disguise as Maurice Sylvester, captain of industry.
Sylvester stretched a little and rolled his wider jaw as he settled into the new shape. He kept his gaze on Baston and, even his voice made human, he said, “Truly? Amazing how far you people will go for so little money. You’ve certainly made shambles of my work here. I’ll have to change faces again and start over someplace else, likely with considerably less capital on hand.”
In the distance, the fire bell began ringing. Dorna glanced around to see if any of the neighbors had noticed the Master’s transformation, but their eyes all seemed fixed upon the fiery destruction of his house.
Sylvester smiled and waved the pistol casually toward Baston as he said, “Well, after all this, I can’t just let you go. Step away from Doctor Phand if you please.”
Instead, Baston pulled Phand a little farther back, putting the doctor directly behind him. She had no idea what had become of Baston’s pistol, but as he glanced around at the ground, it was obvious he was unarmed and looking for a weapon. There was some scattered detritus from the tram line’s construction, but they had already finished installing the junction box. The only thing left behind that might be dangerous to the Master was a discarded iron bar, so Dorna angled herself to intercept Baston if he went after it.
With a cocky grin that seemed entirely out of place in his circumstances, Baston said, “Before you shoot me though, just tell me, all that Great Restoration stuff—that was a scam, right? I mean, obviously no one left you any treasure, and you’ve been as sharp at crime as a career criminal.”
The remark about treasure bit at Dorna. Had the Elven queen truly left nothing for her Master? That ill-fitted the tales of her generosity and foresight, and it seemed unlike the Master to make that sort of mistake.
Then Sylvester chuckled and said, “You know, I only came to Khanom because I thought they might have forgotten something here. I never expected to find vast vaults of gold below the city. I knew they were watched by something, of course, but in so vast a space, it was easy enough to be quiet and avoid being caught.”
That struck her like a blow to the chest. He had known! He had known nothing was left for him and had hoped that the perfect queen had just … forgotten something?
Baston glanced at her and then added, “So you’re not some Elven agent at all then. Why are you still here?”
Dorna took a breath to angrily refute that insolence, but before she could, the Master laughed and replied, “No idea! No one bothered to consult me on it at all!”
She felt dizzy, her world seeming to melt into alien new shapes, just as the Master’s face had done moments before. As terrible as that confession was, he continued blithely on, and she realized he had no idea she was standing behind him. “I was a prisoner, actually. It was the strangest jailbreak of all time—I went to sleep in my cell and awoke in an empty field with no idea what had happened.”
Baston laughed with him and said, “Magic, huh?” He glanced her way again, and Dorna felt like she might be sick.
The Master went on, unaware of her and thus entirely heedless of her distress. “Indeed! You know, the funny thing is, before they all left, the handful of charms and such that I knew were nearly useless. The ley lines were tapped by an entire civilization, but now that I’m the only one drawing on them, it’s amazing what I can do. It’s a different world, but you’d hardly notice since humans have always been more resistant to magical energies.”
His voice was full of a breezy confidence he only occasionally used in her presence. She’d always considered it a sign of her status as a trusted companion. Now Baston took her place, seeming to mock her as he replied, “Oh?”
Sylvester, seemingly pleased to have someone to confess it to, nodded as he said, “Iron in the blood or something. It makes some minds more difficult to entrance than others.”
Baston glanced at her again and then asked, “Like Dorna’s father? I’ve seen your supposed gold mine, so I know there was no chance of a cave in or whatever you said killed him.”
As he said that, something clicked together in her mind, two pieces of information she had always had yet held intractably separate for years: her father had died because of corrupt mine owners, and he had worked in Sylvester’s mines. How had she not realized that before? Had that been his magic too?
Too cruel just to leave it with that, Baston added, “You wanted him out of the way to keep the copper mine from unionizing.”
Dorna looked back at Baston, shocked. She had no idea how he knew her father was involved in that, but the Master had always said he supported ….
“Oh, yes, I couldn’t have that!” Sylvester replied, seeming amused at the very notion. “Pulling him out of the real mine extinguished the union talk, but unfortunately, once we had him up here, he was just too resistant to sit quietly. It was a shame to get rid of him, but I couldn’t have him running around once he’d seen so much.”
An incandescent rage blossomed in Dorna’s chest. The world narrowed to the man standing in front of her, blithely confessing to the murder of her father. He had killed her father out of pure greed. Despite that though, the Master had still taken her in, and he had raised her ….
“The girl was an unexpected bonus—you see, too many charms rots the human brain over time, but then I thought that if I started with a young one that was a little resistant by blood and just trained her to use the spells on herself—”
There was a sudden scream, and from the soreness of her throat, Dorna realized it was hers. Her arms thrust forward, shoving Sylvester and nearly knocking him from his feet. She was shocked by it for only a moment because once the floodgates of that outrage had burst, every bit of her fury felt undeniably righteousness.
Sylvester staggered forward, and as he turned to face her, she swept up the iron bar she had been guarding. She swung it, catching him hard on his left shoulder, but as he staggered back from the blow, he shot his pistol.
At first, she thought he had missed, but an instant later there was a terrible burning at the back of her right shoulder. She tried to swing the iron bar again, but her arm didn’t raise like it should. Looking down, she saw the bullet had torn through her shoulder, and it was all she could do not to drop her weapon.
Rubbing at his own injured shoulder, Sylvester sighed and in a voice of strained patience began a recitation in Elven. A panicked expression crossed Dorna’s face as she recognized the sound. It was a chant he used on his enemies.
She’d seen him use it on Baston’s girl and knew it was powerful, but he had never turned it on her. Looking over, she saw Doctor Phand already swaying to the words, and everything became blurry as the Master’s Elven prayer seemed to infuse her with a numb warmth. Sleepily, she noticed that even Baston was no match and was also beginning to gently sway to the rhythm of the Master’s chant.
They were no match for it. The Elves were the true rulers of mankind as it had always been meant to be. Time seemed to slow as she drifted away, but then a strange, discordant tweet caught her attention.
There was another and another after that. She could turn her head, and when she did, she discovered that Baston was the source of the noise.
The world snapped into focus.
Baston was whistling something, and Sylvester was staring at him curiously, his head cocked at the sound
as if recognizing it.
Dorna’s shoulder throbbed with momentarily forgotten pain, but she felt the iron bar still in her hand. She surged forward, crying out to marshal her strength as she gripped the iron bar in both hands. Sylvester turned back to her as she drove her weapon deep into his chest.
The Master had always seemed to know everything, and the shocked look on his face was utterly alien to her. He screamed and blazed his pistol wildly several times, and she felt a hard blow to her stomach that knocked her from her feet.
Blood pooled around her, hers she supposed, and with a triumphant snarl, Sylvester turned his back on her to face Baston. The iron bar had gone all the way through Sylvester’s chest, and she could see part of it protruding from his back. His inhuman grace faltered, but he kept his feet and his grip on the pistol.
Sylvester ignored her, and as she felt the warmth leaving her body through a hole in her lower back, Dorna wondered if that inattention meant she was already dead. He looked down at the iron bar she had buried in his chest and then back to Baston and panted out, “So … as you can see … resistance is … troublesome. You … you’ve proven quite resistant … yourself … Mister Baston.”
Troublesome was all she had managed. She tried to move, and it was agonizing, but despite that agony, her legs responded. Clenching her teeth, Dorna turned onto her side and pushed herself up to her knees.
Still faced with the pistol, Baston raised his hands and said, “It was a trick I learned in army, when we fought the Lich King.”
Sylvester coughed up a bit of blood and then paused to wipe it from his lips. She had hurt him after all. Either because he was giddy from the blood loss or simply arrogant, rather than shoot, Sylvester asked Baston, “Oh? Did the Lich King use … use this kind of magic?”