“You do not think the Emperor…?” General Corbett did not finish the sentence.
“No,” Steve replied.
It was not the word, but the tone that told everyone present the young wizard barely controlled the rage inside him—both for himself and the sorcerer. This is on me, he thought. Every mother, father, sister, brother, child…every death is on my head because I can’t figure out how to stop it. A hand touched his shoulder and he turned as though bitten.
Haldorum was there. “Are you all right, Steven?”
“Am I all right?” he hissed. “Do they look all right?” He pointed first to his left and then to his right. “Do any of them look all right? How could I possibly be all right, Haldorum? I am supposed to save these people—could save them—right here and now—but I’ve no idea how I’m supposed to do it!”
Haldorum kept his voice low. “You did not kill them.”
“It’s just the same if I had slit their throats with my own hand. You brought me here to save lives—and look around!” he spat in an angry whisper. “Who have I saved?” He threw his arms out and turned around in a gesture meant to encompass the entire realm. He then stopped suddenly and pointed to one of the cells. “It certainly wasn’t these people!”
“But I’ve done at least one thing,” he continued. “I saved Azinon a whole lot of trouble, because he doesn’t have to kill them. He will just throw his enemies down here and watch them rot—all the while smiling in my face because I – can’t – stop it.” The young man’s gaze dropped to the floor and he shook his head angrily. “Some savior.”
No one spoke a word for long moments. Kayliss alone approached him, his head nudging up against the young man’s leg in affectionate sympathy. Steve reached down and scratched behind the tiger’s ear.
He nodded.
Everyone then quick-timed to catch up to him, so suddenly did he stride away from them with the look of a thundercloud in his eyes. Remembering the words of that other presence he said to himself, “The essence of daemonkind flows through your veins. Let’s just find out what that means.”
General Corbett’s voice was a near-panicked whisper, “Steven, what are you doing?”
“Not dallying, General,” he replied without turning. He walked straight to the heavy oak door across the way and tried the latch. It rattled but did not turn. He sheathed his sword and peered out the barred window to the horizontal passageway stretching out to the left and right.
“Haldorum, if you do not stop him, I will!” Corbett said in a harsh whisper.
The old wizard did not look at him and merely motioned for the man to be still. “I think I know what he is doing.”
Two guards appeared in the outside passageway far to the left. Steve ducked below the window of the door and began whistling an old sea chantey that was a favorite of his father’s. He continued to whistle even as their footsteps drew nearer to his hiding place, and he watched closely the square of light on the floor shining in through the barred window above him.
A shadow appeared.
With a resounding boom, the door flew out of the approach and flattened the guard behind it against the opposite wall. Steve stepped into the corridor directly in front of the startled second guard who was already drawing his sword. With the crystal singing in his ears, he held up a hand with fingers splayed apart and the guard went rigid. The man’s eyes then went wide as he slowly rose into the air, buoyed upward by a crushing force that barely allowed him room to breathe. The young wizard closed his hand just slightly and the guard let slip his sword to the stone floor with a painful moan.
“You know where the Emperor is held, yes?” Steve asked.
The man’s eyes could not get any wider. He looked about in stark terror, seemingly oblivious to the question.
“Answer me!”
The shout drew his attention suddenly and his gaze snapped to Steve as though drawn by a black hole. The pressure increased painfully on his body, and he quickly spit out, “Aaahhgg—the Emperor is dead! H—He died the very day my lord cast him from the throne.” The pressure increased. “Please! I speak the truth!”
Steve held him there as he considered the man’s words. Chances were good he was telling what he believed to be the truth, for Azinon had led the entire city to believe their Emperor was long dead. Why would these guards be any exception?
He dropped his hand and the guard fell in a collapsed heap to the floor. Kicking the sword away, he then hauled the black-clad man up from the floor by the front of his chain-mail shirt. He held him there, the guard’s boots dangling a few inches above the floor as he asked, “How many prisoners are down here?”
The guard glanced with fearful eyes to the shining crystal and then back. “Please,” he pleaded. “If I say anything…”
“Do I look all that patient to you?” Steve pressed with frightening chill. “Just imagine what I will do if you don’t say anything.” The guard’s face blanched and Steve concluded the man could be credited with a vivid imagination.
“There is only one,” he stammered quickly. “Until today he was kept on the second level—but he was moved. He is in the palace now.”
“And you know where,” Steve stated more than asked.
The man nodded with the eagerness of the desperate.
Haldorum entered the passageway, glancing briefly to the unconscious guard behind the door in passing. He then nodded once to the young wizard.
Steve returned the nod but he felt none of the satisfaction. He held out his free hand and the guard’s discarded sword flew to it hilt first. Snatching it out of the air, he then smashed the flat of the weapon against the stone wall with magic-infused strength, and broke it nearly to the hilt. He returned the stump to the guard’s sheath saying, “We wouldn’t want you to look out of place,” – Steve put him down – “would we?”
Steve looked to the two brothers as they next appeared from the cell room. “Lojur, Rabal, take the lead with our friend here; he is going to show us to the palace. If he tries anything… kill him.”
The two warriors took their places to either side, and one pace behind, of their prisoner without questioning the word of their young commander.
“I believe it is my turn,” Haldorum said. He waved his hands over the forms of Lojur and Rabal, their uniforms blurring a moment and then shifted to mimic those of the guard’s own.
“But what about the rest of us?” Kamarine asked.
Haldorum rapped his staff on the floor and the blue light went out like a match stick in a puff of wind. “I was getting to that.” He reached into one of the pouches belted around his waist and withdrew seven small vials filled with a liquid that looked like cloudy water.
“Invisibility,” he said, “is much too difficult a spell for me to perform upon so many individually; however, these little darlings will produce the same effect with only one small drawback. It is a very fragile spell, tenuous in form. If you move too quickly or abruptly…”
“The spell breaks,” Lurin finished for him, “and we will be visible again.”
“Precisely.”
Kamarine reached out and plucked a vial from the wizard’s hand. “No problem. We just do not kill anybody unless they’re really asking for it.” He pulled the cork and downed the contents in a single gulp. For a moment, the assassin’s form appeared to cloud and became less defined, then he faded away entirely.
“Not bad,” they heard him say. “Not bad at all.”
Haldorum handed out the remaining vials and everyone vanished one at a time. Steve took two, feeding one to Kayliss and drinking the other himself.
Rabal leaned close to the guard saying, “If I suspect you for even an instant, I will break your neck and peel your face from your skull before you lose consciousness.” He pressed the point of his dagger up beneath the guard’s hauberk for emphasis. The guard swallowed once.
Haze and Lurin tied and gagged the other guard with a section of the rope Kamarine brought with him. It looked very strange, f
or the assassin had been wearing the rope over his shoulder when he had taken the wizard’s potion: two invisible men tying a man up with an invisible rope. Once finished, they dragged him into the dungeon and replaced the door in the approach.
With the point of a dagger as incentive, the first guard moved into the lead with Rabal and Lojur only a half a step behind. He led them out of the extensive lower levels of the dungeon, through a series of spiraling staircases and upward sloping ramps. A few of the guards they passed along the way glanced in their direction but took no further notice.
“He is taking us to the chamber once used for receiving foreign delegations,” General Corbett whispered.
“Fitting,” Haldorum replied.
They proceeded through a broad central hallway set in rich décor and carpeted in luxurious red. Ornate stained glass windows above, and master-crafted marble statues to either side, told all who walked this hall the presiding power here was not lacking in good taste. At the end of the corridor, they stopped before the closed double doors of the reception hall. Four guards stood watch, two on either side, with expressions that clearly stated visitors were unwelcome.
The burliest of them stepped forward bearing a wicked bearded-blade axe on his hip. “I think you boys are lost,” he flatly stated.
Rabal pressed his blade.
“I – we have been sent by Lord Azinon to check on the prisoner,” the guard blurted out in return.
“I have received no such word,” the axman replied. He smiled cruelly then. “Besides, what does it matter? He will be dead in the morning.”
Lojur stepped forward into the sneering man’s personal space, stopping only a scant few inches away. He smiled nastily. “Our lord wants him tenderized a bit before his execution, but I’m sure he will understand your refusal. Between you and me, how do you think he will repay this affront? Kill you outright or let you rot away on the third level of the dungeon?”
The man lost his smile. Those who particularly displeased Azinon—and they were many—never died a quick death. If they were not disemboweled or transformed into shangee, they died a much slower, agonizing death on the third level.
“Far be it for me to interfere in our lord’s wishes,” he said with a conciliatory tilt of his head, “but I must know the order came from Lord Azinon.” He held up two fingers and flexed his wrist forward, sending one of the three remaining men away at a jog.
“And things were going so well,” came Kamarine’s voice.
The guard stopped abruptly as though arrested by his collar and then a red line appeared across his neck. His hands flew to his throat as his life’s blood poured out between his fingers. He struggled mightily against his invisible restraint for a few moments more before sinking slowly to the floor with Kamarine’s dark-clad form appearing over him with bloody dagger in hand.
The three remaining men drew their weapons in alarm and rushed to the attack as one, but were surprised yet again as Lojur and Rabal intercepted them halfway. Kamarine’s bloody dagger sailed from his hand and buried itself between the shoulder blades of the guard who had led them here, his sneak attack against Lojur halted before it could finish.
Haze appeared next behind the black-clad guards with his blade already in motion. He dropped two men in as many strokes of his longsword. The third and final guard of the original four lunged clumsily, a novice with the blade, and Lojur parried, throwing the man’s weapon up high only to then reverse himself and split his foe with a savage downward slice. The guard had time to witness his own insides spilling out before collapsing into the arms of death.
Kamarine hopped one corpse and then quickly retrieved his dagger from their ‘guide’, unceremoniously wiping it on the man’s breeches before returning it to its sheath, while Haze, Lojur and Rabal shoved the chamber doors open. Steve, Haldorum, Lurin, General Corbett and Kayliss—still invisible themselves—moved swiftly inside without any thought to hide their booted footfalls on the marble floor within. They rushed to the side of the aged man chained down spread eagle in the center of a high-ceilinged hall. Pillars lined the perimeter and supported a second tier balcony level that circumnavigated the entire chamber.
General Corbett reached him last but it took only a moment to realize their peril. “This is not him!” he exclaimed.
Haldorum raised his gaze from the man with a start. “What?!”
“Company!” Haze shouted. He and Lojur grabbed the doors to the chamber and pushed, seeing a squad of Azinon’s guard appear at the far end of the corridor in a running formation. The doors boomed shut and Rabal slammed the heavy bolt into place.
Above them, archers filed out of the adjoining arched approaches and lined the upper tier of the chamber. They drew back on their powerful bows and lowered their aim into the room below.
Kamarine threw up his hands while shaking his head. “A damn trap!”
Chilling laughter echoed in the room, reminding Steve of something out of a horror movie come to life. Azinon appeared then, the archers parting along the right side as he stepped forward with the true Emperor chained and gagged by his side.
“Of course,” the sorcerer said with a smile. “Did you really think I would suspect nothing? Oh, I admit at first I was quite taken up in your plan, but then I started thinking. I prepare to kill the emperor, and a riot appears in the streets at the same time the Resistance shows up on my doorstep.” He tapped his chin as he feigned deep contemplation. “It just seemed a little too convenient to be coincidence.”
“Haldorum,” Steve whispered. A few moments passed and he felt the old wizard’s invisible hand come to rest on his shoulder. He leaned in close and told the older wizard his plan.
“Although,” Azinon continued, “I had expected to find something more.” His eyes scanned the room. “Where are you, Haldorum? Show yourself or watch these men die before your very eyes.”
“Right hunch. Wrong wizard,” Steve answered loudly. He drew his sword and cut the air with a rapid slice, the movement so quick the fragile web of the spell cloaking him in invisibility fell away. Steve’s heart pounded in his chest but he stood firm as a dozen or more bowmen adjusted their aim to this new target.
Azinon smiled like the cat that just ate the canary. “The Third Power of Mithal,” he said coolly and in a tone that said he should have known. “Do not get me wrong, for this is indeed a most pleasant surprise, but I am no fool.”
Steve swallowed his fear, and only through great mental discipline did he keep his growing anxiousness from his face. For his plan to work the sorcerer had to believe. “Fool isn’t exactly the word I was thinking of,” he replied with more bravery than he felt.
The smile did not fade from the sorcerer’s face as he slowly shook his head. “Your attempt to hide your fear from me is noble” – he sneered – “but woefully inadequate. I can see it in your eyes that I frighten you. No, a plan this audacious would require that doddering old wizard. Now where is he?”
Steve extended his arm out to his side and, as he slowly opened his fist, a shimmering blue portal coalesced inches from his fingertips. The exit appeared simultaneously on the upper balcony twenty feet behind Azinon. A few of the sorcerer’s closest archers turned suddenly at the abrupt magical display.
“I don’t need him,” Steve said calmly lowering his hand. “There is little anymore the First Power can do that I cannot. And so much more I can do that he can’t.”
Azinon looked slowly to the portal over his shoulder, and then back again to the young wizard below him. Steve could almost see the gears turning in the sorcerer’s mind as he weighed the magical evidence before him. And then abruptly he reached a decision.
“Kill them all and be done with it,” he said.
“Azinon!”
The sorcerer turned in alarm at the sudden shout behind him, just in time to catch the magically charged end of Haldorum’s staff across his face. Brilliant azure light flashed on impact, sending Azinon spinning over the rail and blinding those closest with its i
ntensity. The archers nearest them unleashed their arrows in a sightless, panicked volley that struck a few of their own, killing one instantly and wounding a few others. Haldorum then grabbed the Emperor by the front of his ragged tunic and vanished in a column of intense blue portal light.
To Steve’s right, Lurin became visible from a small alcove below as he unleashed an arrow that claimed an archer’s heart. The woodsman was already nocking another as chaos erupted above. Twelve hundred pounds of tigrine flesh tore into the startled and half blinded ranks of archers on the right side balcony, slashing and ripping through skin and leather armor with primal savagery.
Steve heard the steady booming from the double doors as the guards outside the chamber battered with what sounded like some kind of improvised ram. This he only noticed in passing; his true focus narrowed in on the fallen man before him. He knew that had the sorcerer not instinctively summoned his magic at the last moment the fall would have crippled—if not outright killed him. But he was wounded and disoriented from Haldorum’s strike! There would never be another chance like this.
The crystal around the young wizard’s neck burst to life like a newborn star and he let the power infuse him. With inhuman quickness, Steve turned his shoulder and the arrow meant for him sliced the air harmlessly by. He dived to the side, dodging two more, and rolled to his feet just as General Corbett became visible on the upper left side of the tier and beheaded two redcrest archers in a single horizontal slash of his longsword. A third man went down before even realizing his two compatriots were dead.
Below, Haze and Rabal threw their shoulders against the doors in an attempt to slow the guards outside. Lojur was there beside them with a shield in either hand providing cover. He cursed as an arrow ricocheted off his right-hand shield, then smiled grimly when Kamarine’s dagger found a home in the offending archer’s throat.
Azinon staggered to his feet, clutching one hand to a cheek that bled profusely through his fingers. He looked up with eyes slowly focusing, and then scowled when he saw the chaos inflicted by General Corbett on one side of the second-tier balcony above and the great cat on the other.
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