The Archmage unbound m-3

by Michael G. Manning

  She was right of course, and her words only gave voice to my deepest fears. Still I couldn’t accept things as they were. “He hasn’t made his ‘acquisition’ known to me yet so I at least have some time to think before I have to respond to any demands. How long do you think I have before he reveals his hand to me?”

  The duchess had her head down, for she was focusing on writing a letter. “Not long. He will want to solidify his hold upon you as quickly as possible. Most particularly if he already has something in mind he desires to gain from you,” she speculated as she wrote.

  I straightened up, “I’m going to Albamarl. I don’t want to waste what time I have.”

  She glanced up, “Anything specific you want me to tell James?”

  “Stay here and stay ready, if I need him I’ll arrive suddenly and probably need to depart again just as quickly,” I replied, striding purposefully for the door. I paused with my hand on the knob, “Thank you Genevieve. I’ll never be able to say that enough.”

  Ignoring my words she replied instead, “Don’t do anything rash Mordecai. As long as Edward is unaware of your knowledge you are still free to act on your own. Once he communicates with you your every action will be viewed and evaluated carefully, and any consequences will fall upon Dorian and your wife.”

  I interrupted Walter and Harold’s brief lunch and within a few minutes I had taken us on to my house in Albamarl. I began searching for Marc and Rose as soon as we arrived. I held out little hope of finding either of my two friends in residence but luck was on my side for a change. Marcus was lounging in the downstairs parlor, one leg thrown over the arm of a well cushioned chair. He had a wine bottle in one hand, and another now empty bottle, lay on the floor.

  I took one look at him and asked Walter and Harold to give us some privacy. They excused themselves and went looking for the kitchen, most likely to finish the meal I had interrupted in Lancaster. Once they were gone I closed the parlor door.

  “You’re drunk,” I started with a vindictive tone. Marc stared up at me bleary eyed but gave no sign of responding yet so I continued, “Did you even bother trying to discover any information while I was gone? Or did you just spend your time whoring around with priestesses?” My frustration with my situation was definitely spilling over and finding Marcus drunk when I needed him most had pushed me over the edge.

  His eyes focused on me finally, “I’m not drunk. I’m a gods-damned heretic!” He held up a sheet of paper and waved it haphazardly in my direction. “See! I have papersh to prove it.”

  “You’re a waste of air is what you are! It isn’t as if I have very many friends left. I’m up to my eyeballs in trouble and when I need your help you’ve gone and pickled what little brains you have left with wine!”

  “You think I don’t know that?!” yelled Marc. “It should have been me! They were my besht friends! If I had any faith left I’d be praying to thoshe asshole gods to take me instead.”

  I felt my heart grow cold at his words. “You think I wish you were dead in their place?” I could see the pain in his eyes even as I said the words.

  “No idiot! I wish I was dead in their place. You need to learn how to lishen better.” He stood suddenly and shoved his paper in my direction, “Read thish damnitt.”

  I plucked the sheet from his hand and then gave him a brisk push, sending him falling backward into the chair he had just risen from. “Sit down before you hurt yourself.”

  Scanning the page I was surprised to see that it bore a reasonable likeness to Marc’s face drawn upon it. The top line read in bold letters, “Warning! This man is no priest of Doron or any of the other shining gods…” It went on to detail his real identity as an ex-priest of Millicenth and a disinherited heir of the duchy of Lancaster. Near the end it labeled him, ‘Marcus the Heretic’ and included strong instructions to deny him entry to any of the temples of the shining gods.

  “How did you manage this?” I asked forgetting my anger.

  “They caught me sneaking around in the high priest’s shtudy. I was trying to find invoices detailing what they’ve been shipping to that shecret compound of theirs,” he explained with a bit less slur in his voice.

  I raised an eyebrow, “I’m surprised you weren’t locked up.”

  “Ha! They might’a tried that but it was jus’ the high priest his pox-ridden self that caught me.” He punctuated his declaration with a soft belch.

  “What did you do?”

  He grinned sloppily, “I popped the fat bashtard right in his puffy face. You should have seen how surprished he was!”

  “And then?” I prompted.

  “He started screeching like a little girl so I hit him again, but he still wouldn’t be quiet. I wound up beating him half to death before he finally passed out. For such a weak man he took one hell of a pounding. I hafta’ give him that. Anyway, after he finally shut up I had to take my leave suddenly. I was lucky to get out before they sealed the whole damn place.” After he finished he began miming the high priest’s expression when he surprised him. “Whupsh! Pardon me Father, was that your nose!?”

  It might have been funny if he had been sober. “When did all this happen?”

  “Yesterday morning… they had those warningsh posted by mid-afternoon,” he replied. “I don’t think Marissha is going to want to see me anymore… now that she knowsh I’m a heretic.” He looked around for his wine bottle but I had already removed it from his vicinity.

  “No more of that,” I told him, “I need you sober.”

  “Why?”

  “Dorian and Penny are alive,” I said abruptly.

  His eyes widened and began to well with incipient tears. “Don’t do that to me Mort. That’s not fair.”

  “I’m not making jokes you drunken fool. They’re alive and somewhere in this city. After you sober up you and Rose are going to help me find them.” I leaned in closely and my hand reached into the collar of his shirt. A moment later I had found the necklace I had given him.

  “How? I don’t understand,” he said, trying to shake me off as I unclasped the pendant.

  “I’ll explain when you wake up. I don’t feel like having to repeat myself,” I told him as I pulled the chain away and stood back.

  His eyes widened as he realized I was about to put him to sleep. “Wait, I have more news. I found their hidden compound. It’s several miles…”

  “Shibal,” I said quietly and he sagged back into the chair. “You can tell me about it when you’re sober.” After that I called Harold in and with his help we got him upstairs to his room.

  Once Marc was safely tucked in Harold spoke, “What was that all about?”

  “I need him sober and the best way to manage that is to let him sleep it off. Hopefully Rose will be here by the time he wakes up and I can explain things to both of them at the same time,” I said. As we walked back downstairs I could smell something good frying and my stomach began rumbling. It had been quite a while since I had eaten and my last food had been a cold camp breakfast. “What’s that smell?” I asked.

  “It appears Walter is a passably fair cook,” Harold responded. “Once he got a good look at the pantry he decided to throw something together.”

  My mouth was watering already. I decided to eat first before trying to magically locate Dorian and Penny in the city. I was pretty sure the king would have them kept somewhere far enough away that I wouldn’t find them anyway. Still I had to try.

  The afternoon passed slowly into dusk. I spent most of that time in a sort of focused meditation as I searched the area within a mile or so of the house. As expected I didn’t find any sign of my wife or my friend, but I had to be sure. The city itself covered a much larger area, since it was at least two miles in diameter and simple math dictated that I would have to move at least four or five times to completely cover the area just contained within the outer walls. The King wouldn’t be such a fool as to keep them within the city.

  Rose still hadn’t returned by the time the sun had gone do
wn, which left me to believe she probably was staying at her own house again. Unfortunately that simply wouldn’t do. I couldn’t afford to wait several days for her to check in, and that meant I would have to go out and find her. Normally that wouldn’t have been a problem, but considering the fact that I didn’t want the King to know I was back in the capital I had to make sure I wasn’t seen. Once he knew I was here he would be able to send a summons or message, and my freedom to act would be greatly limited. Until he found me he couldn’t effectively leverage my wife and friend against me.

  Naturally my house was being watched. I had already spotted the men loitering suspiciously outside with my magesight. The building across the street was also being used. Either that or the people that lived there had developed an intense interest in staring at my house for hours on end.

  Luckily I had a secret tool in my arsenal, Walter Prathion, and after some consideration we hatched a plan. I disguised Harold to look like Marcus, since he was still sleeping upstairs. Walter used his talents to make both of us invisible and the two of us slipped out while Harold opened the door and looked out as if he were checking the street. Once we were past him he stepped back in and shut the door. Presumably the King’s spies already knew Marc was staying at my address, so we hadn’t made his situation any worse.

  Rather than take chances Walter kept us unseen while we walked to Rose’s home. It was the first time I had ever been invisible while walking through a city and the experience was entirely different from the one I had had underground surrounded by shiggreth. The main difference being since we only needed to be invisible to normal vision we were able to use our magesight. For some reason walking in and around people on the street who didn’t even know I was there brought out my inner voyeur.

  “You can just go anywhere like this can’t you?” I whispered to Walter as we approached Rose’s home at last.

  “Pretty much,” he replied.

  After we had reached her door I considered knocking but quickly discarded the idea. Sneaking was simply too much fun. Instead I used my arcane senses to make sure no one was in the vicinity of the door inside the house, and then, with a few words in Lycian I let us in.

  “You really know an amazing variety of spells,” Walter observed quietly after we were inside. “Where did you learn them all?”

  “I got some from a journal I found and the others I just made up, though I did have to study Lycian quite a while before I understood it well enough to really do anything complicated like the door back there,” I replied off-handedly.

  “You know Lycian?” he asked in a tone of wonder.

  I frowned, “I thought it was a requirement of sorts. Isn’t it?”

  “It’s been a dead language for several thousand years and there haven’t been more than a handful of wizards for at least six or seven generations. Most of them just passed along what useful spells and phrases they already knew,” he replied.

  I hadn’t considered things in that light before, and frankly I was shocked. “Well I guess if you really needed to do something and you didn’t have the words you could just do it without words,” I said quietly.

  Walter sighed and shrugged his shoulders invisibly, “That’s incredibly difficult, not to mention dangerous.” He said it as if it weren’t really an option.

  I decided not to pursue the conversation further. I had done quite a few things without words in the past and while it did take a considerably greater expenditure of energy I hadn’t really thought it was dangerous or difficult, just tiring. Somehow I knew Walter would be shocked, and probably disapproving so I figured it wasn’t something we needed to discuss.

  I had already mentally located Rose so we headed down the hallway and toward the small study where she was currently reading something. As we went I had a sudden thought. “You must be the world’s greatest peeping tom,” I said to Walter.

  He coughed uncomfortably, “Well that is one of the particular uses for my ability.”

  I nudged him, “I don’t mean just ‘spying’ like you were doing for the King, I mean women, ladies and such.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” he replied.

  “You mean you never thought about it?” I asked incredulously. “Are you sure you’re feeling well?”

  He shook his head, “Well I mean, obviously I’ve ‘considered’ it, but I’ve never abused the ability in that way.”

  “Bullshit,” I declared.

  “Look, Mordecai,” he began, “you don’t honestly expect me to stand here in the hallway and tell the man I was sent to spy upon for several months that I enjoy sneaking around and looking at women undressing and such… do you?”

  It took a moment for that to percolate through my head. Eventually it got through to me though, “You pervert! You’ve peeped at Penny haven’t you!?”

  If he hadn’t been invisible Walter would have been incredibly red. “No! But that is exactly why we are not having this conversation! Rest assured I am a married man and I wouldn’t waste my time creeping about and looking in on naked women.”

  My eyes narrowed, though I wasn’t using them anyway. “You haven’t seen your wife in four years you said.”

  Walter finally lost his temper, “Do you realize how stupid you sound!? You’re a wizard. It isn’t as if you have to be invisible anyway! Hell they don’t even have to be naked you moron! Obviously you can simply examine them anytime you want… clothes or no clothes. So why in the hell are you getting worked up over the fact that I can turn invisible?!”

  His observations were dead on and I felt a bit sheepish. “You’re right Walter. Not that I would do that. I just didn’t think it through properly.”

  Rose spoke up from the study doorway, “As I recall just the other day you were observing our friend Marcus while he was behind closed doors with his lady friend. What was her name? Oh yes, Marissa, that was it!”

  I spun about and stared agape at her. “That’s not what happened! You told me to check on him!”

  She smiled, “I didn’t have to try very hard to convince you to do it, now did I? This really isn’t fair Mordecai. I’m sure your face must be priceless to look at right now. You may as well make yourselves visible so I can see you.”

  Chapter 40

  “You don’t startle easily do you?” I asked as we sat in her study. I had already taken the opportunity to introduce her to Walter.

  Rose laughed, “It is difficult to be startled when the culprits sneaking into your home are having a shouting match in the hall.”

  “We weren’t shouting,” I responded while she shook her head in disagreement with me. “Walter, tell her we weren’t shouting,” I said looking to him for support.

  The older wizard shrugged, “Well… we did get rather loud.”

  “Fine… we got rather loud. That’s not why we’re here anyway,” I said grumpily.

  “I’m assuming you noticed the men watching your house,” said Rose.

  I nodded, “That’s why we used Walter’s invisibility to arrive here unseen.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t use a disguise, or just lose them once you were away from your house. Marcus and I have been managing that way for the past few days,” she commented.

  “I’m afraid that isn’t good enough Rose. I can’t afford to let the King know that I’m back in the city.”

  That piqued her interest. “I assume you have some new development to relate,” she replied.

  “I have good and bad news,” I said, unsure how to begin.

  She tapped her fingers on the desk. “I’ve already heard the worst so don’t think to spare me.”

  “Dorian and Penny are alive and probably aren’t far from the capital,” I said abruptly.

  She stood and put her back to us with a speed that surprised me. “Walter would you mind stepping outside,” she said carefully.

  He rose and headed for the door, “Certainly. I’ll wait in the hall.”

  After he had gone she looked toward me and her appearance shocked me
, red eyes and tear stained cheeks where just moments before she had been composed and flawless. “Mordecai, are you sure? If this is some trick I won’t be able to handle it.”

  I shook my head, “I don’t have any way to be sure yet Rose. I only found out this morning and the circumstances were unusual, to say the very least.” I crossed the room and put my arm around her shoulders.

  “You haven’t said yet what the bad news is,” she said with her head against my chest. Before I could answer I felt her stiffen and she pushed me out to arm’s length, “Oh Gods! It’s the King isn’t it? Edward has them!”

  Since I hadn’t told her any of the details yet I was rather astonished at her guess. “Yes. How did you figure that out?”

  “We already had good evidence he was the one that sent the original abductors to Lancaster. Now you tell me they are alive and I just got news of something unusual that occurred the other night,” she answered. “Mordecai, do you have any idea what he wants?”

  “Slow down,” I told her. “I still don’t know what you’ve learned.”

  “Why don’t you tell me how you discovered that they are alive,” she suggested.

  “In a moment, first I want to know what you found out about the other night,” I countered.

  She shrugged, “Not much really, just that the King dismissed the guards at the palace’s postern gate for several hours. I had no clue what his reason was, but I knew he had to be meeting someone secretly, or moving something that needed to be kept hidden. Now that you tell me they’re alive… you can see how my thoughts lined up.”

  If I had ever doubted how keenly sharp Rose’s mind was I had all the evidence I needed to prove otherwise now. Her mind was a weapon. If we did ever manage to rescue Dorian I almost felt sorry for him. He’d never be able to get anything past her. Good thing he was honest to a fault. “I’m still amazed at your quick wits Rose,” I told her.

  She was trying to mend her appearance by dabbing at her cheeks with a small cloth she had produced from a drawer in her desk. “Let’s hear your story Mordecai,” she reminded me but before I could start she crossed over to the door and opened it. “You can come back in Walter, thank you.”