Marie interjected, “A favor?”
I nodded, “Here’s the plan…”
When I finished the explanation of what I believed would happen, and what I wanted them to do, Timothy and Daniel looked pissed. The queen and Marie looked thoughtful.
Maybe it was just men that were jerks? I smiled and shook my head.
Maria asked, “You’re sure about this?”
I nodded, “Yes, I’m sure.”
Maria said, “Very well, I’ll pass the orders on to Michael.”
Timothy’s face flashed with disgust and contempt at his mother’s words, I might not have seen it if I wasn’t watching him and Daniel so closely.
I considered again plumbing his mind, but the amulet he wore would fight me if I tried. I could overpower it, but that could damage his mind if I put too much power behind it. Plus, it would get me busted, I didn’t need to get caught reading the mind of the heir apparent, no matter what I suspected.
Daniel just stared at me a moment, “It took you fifteen hours to make that staff?”
I nodded, “Sort of. I could enchant another in three hours, the ritual took twelve hours to create, maybe a bit longer.”
He looked confused, which I had admit was better than hateful. I was tempted to reach out and touch him, so I clasped my hands on my lap.
“What is it?”
He shook his head stubbornly and his face went stony as he muttered, “Nothing.”
Men! I thought with disgust, and finished eating.
After breakfast, I sent Bell to study. Marie followed me as I went toward the front of the castle. It was only after I’d walked away from the table that a thought occurred to me.
“Where is princess Lena? And where do you think you’re going?”
Marie snickered, “My mother had a fast carriage and twenty knights, along with Lena and her honor guard leave last night. They’re taking the northern road along the coast, which only has farmland and farms, no villages or inns. Mom decided that we were in too much danger, and didn’t want to risk the heir to the Mendell throne in a battle that we didn’t think we could win.
“At least not until you came back. As for where I’m going, I’m going to watch, the safest place is next to you.”
I considered arguing, but she was the princess, “Fine, but if I tell you to do something, do it. Why were you laughing?”
Marie cleared her throat, “Well, no inns on the northern road, so she’s going to be camping out on the ground for the next week. Then of course, there was the big fight between her and Daniel, about you. I think the marriage is off.”
“But… that makes no sense, all we did was yell at each other.”
Marie nodded, “Trust me. There was a lot more to it than just that. The tension between you two had been almost palpable. She said he never showed so much passion before, and she could tell he didn’t really care about her at all. She didn’t mind a political marriage, but didn’t want a loveless one. She was also less than impressed at his loss of dignity and his word choices.
“Plus, didn’t you notice how changed he was this morning? He was off verifying all the stories yesterday evening, all the ones that I’d told him about you on the way back from Mendell.”
I wasn’t sure what to say about that. Granted, I’d have rather he simply trusted the stories, but then I had lied to him for a couple of months, so I couldn’t blame him. He was looking at me earlier with a measuring look, as if reevaluating what he knew. He didn’t say anything, but we’d also had an audience at the time. Damn hope, my stomach fluttered. I changed the subject.
“Are you sure? It’s going to be dangerous.”
She asked, “Won’t the ritual work?”
I nodded, “It will, but it also has a limited range, a half mile maybe. Which means if he decides to blast the wall into rubble I could die before I get a chance to use it. I have to wait for all thousand to be in range, and he’s in the front of the army.”
She frowned, “Can’t you fly above or something?”
I nodded slowly and said, “Sure, but if he’s wary enough he’ll swat anything he sees out of the sky. He has no idea there are no mages left in Lethia besides me, I’m sure he expects to be challenged. Real birds tend to avoid an army of three thousand men, demons, and elementals.”
Marie shrugged helplessly and then grinned, “Well, if you die were all screwed anyway.”
I shook my head, “Maybe not, he’ll feel the magical power surge and might strike at it and kill me, but the ritual would still finish. It will take about three seconds to cycle through the glyphs.”
Marie frowned, “There’s got to be a better way. Can you activate the ritual and throw the staff through a portal?”
I giggled, “Good idea, but no.”
She tried one more time, “Can an elemental activate the ritual?”
I shook my head, “It can provide power, and charge enchantments, but it can’t provide the focus to start a ritual.”
She nodded, “We’ll just have to duck.”
I thought she’d been joking, but I wasn’t sure.
“You’re crazy. You should go back.”
She sniggered, “Takes one to know one.”
I had no argument for that…
Chapter 28
I actually did come up with an idea. I summoned all nine energy elementals, which were waiting above in the clouds. They’d all attack on my signal, and hopefully distract him long enough for me to activate the ritual.
Really, it came down to who attached first, I had nothing defensively that could stop a full out attack by the master mage from Zual. So that left distraction as the best and only tactic.
As far as my ritual staff, my dark ritual staff, I was ready to go.
We stood on the outskirts of the city, and the knights and soldiers were out here too. I’d tried a couple of times to talk Marie into going back, but she insisted on staying.
It was a terrifying sight, as I watched demons, elementals, and a thousand dark mages move into the large field before the capitol. Despite the power in my hands, I was intimidated. I didn’t wait to see if he’d talk first, I simply attacked.
The nine elementals dove down and each of them sent a stream of pure energy at the master mage. He was hit with what amounted to thirty-six times my base magical power, and he just laughed and shrugged it off, and sent a return attack that destroyed two.
Now that he was distracted, I activated the staff.
He was so focused on the other seven elementals, that he didn’t notice the aura of magical power building up until it was too late. It built and built to a power that dwarfed even his aura of magic, and then exploded outward in a circle, affecting every mage within a quarter mile.
Including me.
Which is probably why Marie was so insistent on being with me, it was a part of the plan.
Not even the master mage with a thousand mages slaved to his will could resist this power. Of course, this ritual only targeted mages, the people of the city would be perfectly safe.
It dug deep into my mind, all of our minds. It searched our minds for desires to rape, to destroy, to revel in wanton murder, and hate. It looked for those that were excited by control over others, and who loved to hate, and to cause pain in others.
I’d named the dark ritual well, when I’d called it judgement, because that’s exactly what it did. It judged all of us. Nothing so simple as the desire to murder, because I knew some people needed killing, after all, that’s what this ritual would do. No, it went after the people that liked to murder, torture, and rape.
When it made its judgement, it would act.
I’d avoided destructive spells directly from the ritual, because of the possible fall out to others as it would be too large to contain. But only directly.
For those it judged guilty, it would force them to cast a glyph of elemental fire, just strong enough to destroy their own bodies and nothing else, to turn them to ash. Because they’d be casting it on themselv
es, their protections were useless, there was no protecting someone from themselves.
The mages that were left, the ones judged not guilty, would be forced to dismiss their elementals, and cast a glyph of sleep on themselves. I could only assume it all worked to plan, as I fell unconscious myself.
Even though those mages that were judged not to be guilty were still enemy mages. The favor I’d asked the queen was to let those who lived through the spell, to live, and not kill them all in their sleep. They would be rounded up, and guarded. I had no idea how many, but I figured there’d be enough knights for at least a two to one ratio to keep them in check.
Maybe it was pessimistic, but I imagined it would be fifty or less out of a thousand that weren’t twisted and corrupted by Zual society.
Then I would wake up and offer them a ride home, and perhaps a better way to rule themselves. The ones that lived would be like I had, a dark mage, but not evil, just stuck and enslaved in an evil society. They could perhaps, build a new kind of demesne together.
But I realized that part of my plan had gone awry, when I woke up and screamed in pain.
I’d been betrayed.
I was lying on the floor, in the work room in my hideaway, and I could scent the blood that flowed from the wound in my chest. However, the betrayal hadn’t taken into account my contingency that I’d set up with the gods. Which I’d chosen from Niall’s suggestion almost word for word. If I was unconscious, on the battlefield, and bleeding, then I’d be transported to my hideaway.
I cast a glyph of healing which took an enormous amount of effort to focus on, it took a few minutes before my mind completely cleared, and I felt like myself. I looked down at my body, and there were two bloody holes in my robes, one in my chest, and one in my leg.
I stood, angry beyond belief, and verified the staff was here too. It was, and I saw no reason to use it ever again, so it would stay here. I opened a portal back to where I was while my anger continued to build, and then I stepped through.
Chapter 29
I took it all in a glance. There were soldiers out in the field, and they stabbed the unconscious mages, there were close to a hundred out there, more than I’d thought, and they were dying. More importantly, Marie was going crazy and fighting the grip of two soldiers who screamed at her to calm down. Three others had blood on their swords, they must have hacked at my protections until they got through.
Bastards.
Five duplicate custom glyphs appeared in my mind, and not the harmless one.
I bright flash of light, as five energy attacks took their heads clean off, disintegrated their heads really, and they fell to the ground dead. I wasn’t sure what I was more pissed about, that they tried to kill me in my sleep, or that they manhandled the princess.
I turned to the field, and switched glyphs, and started taking all the guards down. Luckily, when the swords dispelled my shields they also must have dispelled my sleep spell when it broke through my protections. Otherwise I’d probably have bled out while asleep back in the hideaway.
Marie gaped at me and then started to cry. She ran at me and hugged me tight.
“I thought you were dead.”
“Not yet,” I said, as I took six more guards down, “I’m a bit busy though, any idea what’s happening?”
She shook her head, “They came as soon as you passed out, and started to attack you. I tried to stop them, but they just laughed and said they had orders already, and mine weren’t as important. I didn’t believe them, I don’t’ think mom would do this!”
I shushed her as I kept knocking out the knights, they’d killed at least half the hundred, and I was trying to save the rest.
“I don’t think it was her either, I have a feeling Timothy is behind this, he about spat on your mom this morning when she agreed to pass on the orders. We’ll sort it out later, obviously someone didn’t tell the soldiers not to kill the sleeping ones that were left. I also have a feeling these assholes were hand-picked, since I don’t think most of the soldiers want me dead anymore.”
Which was why I’d only killed them, and played nicer with the rest.
“Although, after this battle they might,” I added ruefully, as I knocked down another six knights.
Marie screamed, “Stand down!”
To my surprise, the soldiers out in the field stopped, so I stopped knocking them down and sticking them to the ground. I activated the portal ritual, and opened a portal to my old demesne, it looked empty, so I recast the nine elementals and moved all the mages through. It took less than a minute.
It wasn’t the plan, I’d wanted to talk to them first, but we had bigger problems. I had a sick feeling in my chest on what might be going on back at the palace. Surely Timothy didn’t expect to get away with this, not if he left his mother alive that is.
I closed the one to Zual, and opened a portal directly inside the throne room, and Marie followed me through. As did the nine elementals. We were too late.
The queen lay on the ground, dead.
Her son Timothy sat on the throne with a smirk on his face, a smirk that he lost rather quickly when he saw Marie and I stood there. There were also about twenty more knights in the room. Marie lost it and ran over to her mother’s body. I had a moment of worry for my apprentice, but she was safe, and focused on her studies.
“Are these the last of the knights that have betrayed their queen?”
Timothy sneered, but his face turned shocked as he answered, I’d hit him with a truth spell of course.
“No, there are four more outside the mage hallway, waiting for the brat.”
Four of my elementals obeyed my thoughts, and before I could blink there were four more knights in the room. I really, really, wanted to kill them all.
Instead, I hit them all with sleep glyphs, six at a time. They tried to rush me, but awake my protections along with the nine elementals were more than adequate to safeguard me. I had my elementals disarm them, and had them taken to the dungeon. I didn’t have a key to the cells, so I ordered one of the elementals to weld the door shut, I could get them out later.
“Where is Daniel?”
I hoped to the gods he wasn’t involved in this madness. I really couldn’t imagine it.
Timothy grunted and clenched his jaw, but then he answered, “In a cell.”
I closed my eyes breathed out in relief. He wasn’t dead, nor was he involved. I casted a glyph of scrying and searched the dungeon, when I found him I opened a portal to his cell, and waved him out.
Marie looked up at her brother and demanded in a rage of anger and tears, “Why! What have you done!”
Of course, that instigated a full confession.
He growled, “Because she was a fool. She was swayed by this one’s lies,” he pointed at me, “and started to tell me we needed to change, that we’d been angry and blinded for too long. I didn’t fall for it. All mages are evil, the bitch had to die. I knew then the queen was too weak to do what was required, she would have to die too so I could lead us with strength.
“So I volunteered to pass on her orders to Michael, but I gave my own orders instead, to kill any enemy that remained after the bitch’s spell knocked them out. Then I talked to those knights that I knew from my service, and who thought as I did. They’d all lost family to evil mages, and knew the truth. They agreed with me, and helped by getting Daniel out of the way. They overcame his protections easily with five swords, and knocked him out and dragged him to the dungeon.
“I was fairly sure he’d agree with me, but didn’t want to chance it. Not after the hard on he had over the magical bitch. Lastly, five of them volunteered to kill the bitch mage when she passed out after the spell. None of the other knights were in on it, so they were all assigned at the front, and were told to charge and kill them immediately when the ritual was complete.
“After that it was easy, I just had to lure the queen from the dais, and then I ran her through. I made it quick.”
It was disturbing how he kept
referring to his mother as the queen, as if he wasn’t her son. The guy was off his cracker, completely nuts. I nailed him with a glyph of sleep, and he slumped back in the throne.
Daniel whispered, “I’m so sorry, is that what I sounded like?”
I shook my head, “No, he’s crazy. You were just… hurt, and angry, and missed your father. What do you want to do your majesty?”
He gulped, “Me?”
I shrugged, “Well we can’t let the nut ball over there continue with the job. Unless you want to decline the throne, and pass it on to Marie, you’re stuck with it. I’m… sorry.”
He touched me then, put his hand on my shoulder. I felt my stomach jump, which was so wrong, because his mother was dead not ten feet away, with my best friend in the world weeping over her body.
“It’s not your fault. As for the throne, I’m not making any decisions right now, but I’ll take prince and heir presumptive for now. Can we put him in a cell for now?”
I nodded, and opened a portal to the cell Daniel was stuck in, and then had an elemental carry Timothy through, and weld that door shut, just in case we missed someone that would free him and could get the key.
We both approached Marie and went down on our knees on either side of her. I wasn’t sure what to say, what could be said. I touched her back comfortingly but didn’t say anything. I also looked down at the queen. She was only forty something, and we had just started to respect each other, maybe even started to like each other. Who knew how close I’d have been with her over another forty years.
Now I’d never know.
How could I have been so successful at what I started out to do, the reason I’d come here, and in so short a time? Shorter than I’d ever expected. Yet, at the same time, I was a complete and utter failure. The royal family were supportive of me now, of an actual mage, yet they’d lost half their family in the process. One to insanity, although I kind of doubted he was sane when I got here, and of course, the other lost to matricide.
I’d no idea how to deal with that. I knew it wasn’t my fault Timothy lost it, but on the other hand it was my presence that was the catalyst. I’d just have to hope I’d done more good than harm by staking a claim here and making it stick.
The Rise of a Dark Mage Page 16