Alec continued to look out for danger as he scanned from right to left and back again. Only the black standing stones and what appeared to be petrified trees littered the countryside as far as he could see. There were no hollows or living dragaoin aside from Helios. Glancing up towards the dark gray clouds above them with the red glints of light trying to poke through, he realized that there were no birds nearby. He hadn't seen anything resembling them the entire time he had been on Atropos. There had been animals in the jungle and near the lake from time to time, but never any birds.
"Did Atropos have birds?" he asked.
Shaking her head behind him, Shaelamee replied, "They are rare here. The dust consumed most of them."
"But the larger animals managed to survive?"
"And things which could burrow or hide from the sand," the girl confirmed. "The sand tends to move through the air in clouds. There is no protection in the trees, so if they were where the sand was released, then the populations died with the trees and anything that couldn't protect themselves."
"If the sand touches you," Helios stated noting the conversation as the three rode slower now. "It doesn't matter where it strikes. You age with a single mote of dust. A handful touching you would add decades in an instant.
"Some wizards used magic to fend it off. The tower we saw on the way to the lake was one of those places where the magic of my people won... well, more accurately where it helped them survive. You saw the city beyond the jungle. They had magic too, but the dark elves fought them with other weapons and spells as well. They killed those with the right kinds of magic to protect the city and without them it was cleansed of life.
"It is just now starting to recover."
"I can see why the Zmaj we met would be angry against the Ciemnosci and those who joined them then," the boy replied.
A light punch from Shaelamee came with her whispered word, "Alec!"
He hadn't meant to be so blunt and hoped that Helios wasn't offended. Shaelamee might be lumped into the same category as the dragaoin which had left Atropos to join the Ciemnosci. While they might be forgiving of their attackers, Alec couldn't imagine the people of Alus being as graceful in defeat.
"I can understand their anger," the silver sorcerer replied. "They have tried to appeal to that part of me which sees the offense and they hoped to sway me to their side. Unfortunately, what was done is done. We can't change the past, but we have tried to make peace with our former enemies. These Haileni, as they call themselves, would rather wage war once more. I can't see how it would benefit them. They have less power now than our ancestors did before the war.
"Fighting against the Ciemnosci and their allies would be suicide."
Alec heard Helios' words but noted that it was less that the dragaoin didn't want to turn on the dark elves, but more that he didn't see a way to win. The boy didn't want to challenge the sorcerer anymore than he had and chose not to speak his thoughts further. There was too much danger in returning to the fort anyway. He didn't want to distract Helios or Shaelamee just in case the Zmaj wizards hadn't lied to them.
Darkness was starting to creep over the land to the east. The red glints in the sky had begun to fade which let those living on this world know that night was coming soon.
Helios sped up the pace slightly to get them to Naermere's front gates. To their surprise, the large doors were ajar. Getting closer, Alec thought that one of them even looked to be sagging. The twin doors standing over ten feet tall had been solid and appeared virtually impregnable, at least by normal means; but now the boy could see that they would need repair if the fort hoped to be defendable again.
"Something's obviously wrong," Shaelamee stated and received nods from the others. "These doors never stay open for long."
"They look broken," the boy in front of her added even though he was fairly certain that the other two had noticed the state of the doors hundreds of feet away.
"Go inside," Helios ordered. "I will set up a wind barrier here until we can fix the doors."
Passing through the large doors, Alec was surprised when Shaelamee slid off of the blue salamander. When he looked at the girl, she didn't appear to notice. Her attention was already on the doors.
Shae moved behind the door on the right to try to see what was wrong. "The top hinge looks melted or like it was dissolved somehow."
Alec looked away from the genasi girl. "Guys, I don't think that they lied after all. We are just too late."
When the others looked at the young wizard, he pointed to the right. Just out of immediate sight around the corner of the inner part of the outer wall, a body could be seen. It was one of the creatures that reminded him of the Minotaur legend. The smaller of the two called, Duerog, this mino was still close to eight feet tall when standing. It would have made Alec wonder what could have killed the soldier, but a sickening looking wound on its back gave him more than enough clarity.
Shaelamee moved closer, but stayed back to avoid the bloody ground.
"The blood still looks wet," the girl commented even as Helios continued assembling the rods for his spell. "This was a magic spell."
Judging the angle of the fallen body, Alec looked on the line that would have been required to hit the mino in the back. It came from the keep.
"He was shot in the back by a spell caster," the young wizard said. "Unless a Zmaj wizard flew over one of the walls to get behind him, this came from a wizard in the keep."
Shaelamee shot him a look of warning. "You can't accuse someone you don't even know of that. Like you said, he could have been attacked by someone sneaking up from behind. With magic, it wouldn't even require flight. I can move with a magic door. Though I need to see where I am going to use my spell; another wizard might be able to use a portal into the fort without that."
"I barely knew any of them, but that means that I am trying to read the story of the scene without bringing personal feelings into this. You lived with these people for a long time. They might have been your friends or not, but you had to rely on their loyalty." He gestured to the dead minotaur and added, "He did too. Maybe someone did betray the fort?"
Behind them, Helios called on his spell. Three rods tall this time, Alec noticed a different version of the barrier spell.
Lightning crackled between the rods now. Nearly as tall as the doorway, the three rods contained the magic holding a lightning version of the shield instead.
"Let them try coming through that," Helios dared the air as he walked towards the others still standing in the courtyard near to the gate.
The dragaoin looked to the other two seriously and said, "We need to push into the fort carefully. We need to see if it has completely fallen. Maybe someone survived."
Alec pointed to the upper wall about thirty feet from the gate area. The arm and shoulders of one of the koze hung over the edge of the walkway running around the walls between the towers.
Sighing, Shaelamee announced his name, "Ashram too."
They couldn't make out the wound on the goat headed soldier, but it wasn't important enough to divert their attention from the keep ahead of them. Alec noticed the front doors remained open, but unlike the main gates they didn't look broken.
Leaving the two salamanders in the courtyard, the three started up the steps into the keep. Alec trailed the others and began going over possible spells to protect him in case they might be attacked inside. Tight spaces and fighting in them was a wizard's worst case scenario. If they were attacked in the fort, there was a good chance that he would have to fend them off at arm's length and the boy wasn't confident of surviving that at all. He was no soldier or fighter after all.
Chapter 18- Traitors and Assassins
Alec cast the spell to enhance his senses once more. The smell of blood and death came to his nostrils making his nose wrinkle in distaste immediately. As they moved up the steps in front of the door, the first signs of the enemy were found. Two hollows practically chopped in half were strewn across the floor just inside the doo
rway.
Leading the way, Helios made a formidable looking obstacle, even if he was a magic caster. Normally, at least in Alus, those who specialized in magic weren't necessarily physically imposing though he supposed there were tall wizards and those who ate too much. Most, however, were only minimally trained in weapons preferring to use their magic in most situations. Only the battle mages were known to be deadly both with magic and weapons combat. They were weaker in magic with smaller reserves of power, but their spells tended to accentuate their fighting abilities. The spells were quick and didn't require as much power to use making them ideal for the less magical mages.
At least that was how it had been explained to him both as a child in a city where both served as guardians of a great wall keeping the Dark One's armies at bay and at White Hall a school for magic training as well as combat for soldiers and battle mages alike. It was a theory that had been held as truth for centuries, but lately it had shown cracks because of a battle mage who had developed new spells and even defeated wizards in their own tournament. The mage's sister, Katya was also someone challenging the wizards' beliefs that their magic was supposed to be the best and he had watched her since they were both novices brought in at the same time to begin their training as wizards.
Now Alec wished that he had been trained as a battle mage, since the hallway before him suddenly felt really tight and cramped to him.
Shaelamee had her sword in hand again while Helios had his dagger in his left hand so that he could use his attack magic with his right. Alec's hands were empty. All he had was his magic and for once he felt as bare as the blue girl's back in front of him.
They hadn't gone much farther before they found the second of the two minotaurs slumped against the wall of a side hall. More hollows were torn apart around him. An axe still remained clenched in his hand in a dead man's grip. Numerous wounds from the claws and teeth of the hollows could be seen, a few might have been from weapons since he could see a few spears and rusty short swords on the ground among the dead bodies.
"Torok too, first Duerog and Ashram outside and now we find him dead as well. I don't like this, Helios. We might be walking into a death trap," Shae whispered worriedly.
"We need to see if anyone lives and to check on the gate room also," the silver dragaoin replied without taking his eyes off the end of the hallway. He glanced down the crossing hall and saw nothing aside from the dead.
"I can try to look for anyone with magic," Alec suggested breathily. His nervousness was noticeable even attempting to whisper.
Shaelamee looked at the boy with lifted eyebrows and she questioned, "You can do that inside even with these stone walls?"
"I can see auras around magic users like us. The stone limits the range, but I can usually see through several walls, or floors, before my sight is cut off," he informed the genasi warlock quietly.
"Try," Helios ordered in a deep hushed tone. Again the sorcerer tried to keep his eyes on the ends of the halls moving his vision from one corridor to another regularly.
Pushing his magic into his eyes to see auras, he quickly noticed and filtered out the glow surrounding Helios and Shaelamee. He looked left, right and panned his vision across the walls to either side of the hallway that they had been following before lifting his sight to the ceiling above them. A faint glimmer of a magic aura could be seen. It was either dim from the stone between them or the wizard's magic was low, he thought.
Pointing upward on an angle towards the interior of the keep, Alec said, "There."
The three pushed onward quickly. No more hollows were found before they reached the next hallway. A few bodies lay at the bottom of the stairs and a couple more were stranded where they had fallen further on making walking up the stone steps more dangerous. They were trip hazards and their brackish blood was still freshly spread enough to be slippery in places.
At the top of the stairs they found the second koze.
"Waerd," Shaelamee continued her list of the dead. "That only leaves Nadron, Ediyem and Glint who might be left."
"Unless Nadron is our traitor," Helios nearly growled his anger.
"We don't know if there is a traitor, Helios," the girl reminded him. "There are other ways for them to find out information about us since they are wizards with magic."
"If they could ride the winds," Alec continued her thought, "they could remain unseen listening to any conversations between you. If you and Nadron ever spoke outside or near an open window..."
Blue eyes narrowed at the boy for a moment before Helios relented slightly. He looked ahead of them again and asked, "Which way?"
Pushing his magic to add to his vision again, Alec found the glow of a magical aura. It was stronger than from the first floor, he noted. Pretty certain that it was the stone masking this aura from his sight, Alec felt hopeful that whoever it belonged to wasn't dying at least. At that point, the boy wished that he had tried to read Ediyem and Nadron when he had first met the magic users. It would have let him know which the aura belonged to or even let him know if it belonged to someone else entirely.
Again the dragaoin pushed ahead following Alec's finger as it pointed inward to their left. There was a wall where he pointed and Helios tentatively peeked around the corner into the next hallway just in case there might be enemies ahead. The list of defenders had diminished drastically, so their ignorance of what lay ahead meant that more hollows could have pushed past and might still be inside the keep.
Alec looked around the larger sorcerer and saw only an empty hall.
They pushed onward until they stood before a door which seemed to mask the aura he sensed. Pointing at wooden barrier, Helios nodded.
"Nadron!" the silver scaled dragaoin spoke out gruffly. His volume made the others cringe.
At first there was no movement and Alec was afraid that maybe he had been incorrect about the condition of whomever the aura belonged to inside. Maybe they were wounded after all.
The aura moved closer and Alec tapped the sorcerer on the forearm nodding to the door. He tried to signal that someone was coming closer, but a moment later they heard a frightened whisper, "Helios, is that you?"
"Yes, Nadron, we're back. Open the door and tell us what happened."
A brief glow of light shimmered across all of the wood of the door. The boy wondered if had been a spell to strengthen the defensive ability of the wood or if it had been a possible magical trap instead. Maybe Helios' instinct to call out had saved them all from harm.
The doorknob turned and a large brown eye in a bronze scaled face peeked through a small gap in the partially open door.
"It is you!" the dragaoin wizard inside the room said sounding relieved. "I can't believe that anyone else survived."
When Nadron opened the door further, Alec saw that the bronze scales looked dull in places. A couple cloths on his right arm looked bloody, but not to the point that the dragaoin was in drastically bad health.
"What happened?" Helios asked again, but the silver man appeared to relax slightly. Perhaps seeing the condition of the more lizard like bronze dragaoin served to make him believe that Nadron wasn't the traitor he had begun to assume he was.
Nadron didn't answer immediately and the novice wizard suddenly felt the question of why popping up in the back of his mind.
"I wasn't outside when the fighting began. Someone rang the warning bell. I ran down the stairs to see several dragaoin wizards in the courtyard. The doors were open and broken. I think one of them must have disabled the hinges with their magic.
"Anyway, I saw Duerog lying in the dirt, smoke still coming from him after a fireball, I would assume, and then the hollows swarmed into the courtyard. We fell back to the keep, but couldn't seal the doors in time. The others fought in front of me even as we fell back."
Shaking his head, the bronze wizard added, "Torok and Waerd did their best, but there were just too many of them."
"What happened to Ediyem?" Shaelamee asked after the story had been given.
/> Nothing felt wrong to Alec as he watched the dragaoin's face exactly, but something still didn't seem right. It wasn't just the death around him.
"Bah, that dark elf never showed her face. I had to run to my room and use a spell to protect myself from the beasts. I thought for sure that they would break it down even so, or maybe dig through the stone of the walls around me.
"I've been hiding in my room ever since."
Nadron pointed at the bandages and added, "A few tried to stop me, but I managed to slip free just long enough to make it inside and bar the door."
Looking at the hallway between them and the fallen koze, Alec could see no further signs of struggle between here and the stairs. "Did you use magic to get away from them?"
The brown eyes narrowed slightly at the boy's question and Nadron almost appeared annoyed to be questioned by the human. "Waerd bought me enough time that I didn't need to do more than cast the lock on the door, boy. Still it was a tenuous flight. Too bad about the others though. I truly thought that I was going to die as well many times."
Trying to recall the entire scene from the outer wall into the keep and up the stairs to the wizard's room, Alec tried to remember seeing any signs of magic being used.
"What kinds of spells did you use to fight them? I am impressed that you could fight so many and get away with only a few scratches. My teachers taught us many spells, but I feel dreadfully unprepared for fighting so close to an enemy in these halls," the young wizard confessed.
"I tried to enhance our fighters and supported them. Like you say, it is a little tight to cast wind or fire when your allies are between you and an enemy in such small spaces. Until they were dead, I would have likely killed one of them by striking them in the back. Once they had fallen, I couldn't hope to keep all those hollows off of me.
"Like I said, that's when I ran for this room and used my magic to keep them from breaking the door down."
Smart Alec in the Dark Lands Page 23