His vision darkened and a red haze filled the space between Kevon and the young assassin. The Warsmith forced himself to calm down, evened his breathing, and made his way back to the quarters he was sharing with Alanna.
The Guildmistress was not in, and he was not sure when she would return. Kevon drew the painted blade, and began sword practice.
It was evident he had foregone his workouts for the last few weeks. Muscles groaned and knotted with the unfamiliar motions, his arms heavy with the unworked muscling of a Journeyman Blacksmith. His actions were painful, sluggish. A powered Movement rune corrected his speed, but redoubled his pain. Kevon stopped and stretched out, not something he was used to having to do. His stint as a Mage, coupled with his recent captivity, had taken their toll.
Half an hour into his workout, drenched with sweat, laboring to breathe, Kevon whirled around and stopped the painted sword’s blade just shy of where Alanna’s neck had been. The assassin rebounded off the wall, having cartwheeled away from the initial swing with a lilting burst of laughter. She slapped the flat of the blade down and away as she dove into a rolling kick that swept one of Kevon’s legs out from under him.
Kevon turned with the kick, recovering his control of the wooden sword, pulling it in and whipping it around to the side to shift his center of gravity to recover from Alanna’s attack. He turned to look in the direction she’d rolled, to find nothing. He scanned quickly to both sides before turning his gaze upwards.
She hurtled from the low rafters like a catapult stone, striking the exhausted Warsmith in the right shoulder with an outstretched heel. Something twinged, and his arm went numb, spasmed, his hand twitching to cast the replica sword aside, clattering to the floor. Using the stricken shoulder as a stepping stone, Alanna kicked Kevon lightly alongside the head with her other foot, and launched herself into a backflip before he had even finished falling to the bed behind him.
Determined to push through the fatigue and let her know who she was dealing with, Kevon rolled forward to the floor, scooped up the wooden blade, and sprang at Alanna. He fell short, slamming to the floor with a sharp pain in his back where she had stepped while leaping over him. He regained his feet a bit slower, turning to face her as she leaned against the bedpost, smirking.
The runes formed easily, Movement and Illusion danced through his mind, and he latched onto them, fed them reserves he had not yet touched. The Movement spell settled over Kevon, and his muscles relaxed. He returned the crooked smile, and the sword he held appeared to burst into flames.
Before he could take a step forward, Alanna was halfway across the room, daggers appearing in both hands as if from nowhere. Kevon spent a moment forming a Light rune as he blinked, expending a ridiculous amount of energy for a brilliant flash of light between himself and Alanna. Opening his eyes, he shifted the focus of the Illusion rune from his sword to his feet, muffling his steps as he dodged to the left, but the soft padding noises shuffled off to the right.
The rushing flurry of Alanna’s feet stuttered for an instant, long enough for Kevon’s sidestep to work. He swung the blade and thwacked her smartly across the buttocks as she slashed crosswise with her knives at the empty air in front of her. She twisted and lashed a foot out to kick at the wall she had been running toward, stopping her mad rush before writhing around into a defensive crouch, blinking and bristling with fury. She took a step toward where Kevon wanted her to believe he was, and he smiled.
The dagger she hurled caught his cloak beneath his arm and thunked deep into the wardrobe behind him, pinning Kevon loosely to the large wooden cabinet. He shrugged his shoulders and dropped, releasing the wooden blade as he did so, slipping out of the cloak as Alanna planted a foot where his chest had just been.
Kevon’s concentration blurred as he hit the floor and the door of the wardrobe reverberated into his head several times from the impact of Alanna’s foot. He retained enough presence of mind to aim a kick upward at her outstretched leg, reinforcing the strength of the blow with his Art.
The force of the attack flipped his attacker backwards, heels over head. For an instant, her feet touched down, and then she was flipping backward again with the grace of a court acrobat in the Great Hall in the palace in Navlia. Kevon picked up the wooden sword yet again, and climbed to his feet as Alanna finished another backflip to land in front of the door to the hallway outside.
“Need reinforcements?” he chided the squinting assassin, who then began a slow advance toward him, her neck craning at odd angles to take stock of Kevon and his surroundings. As she closed to within a dozen feet, she spun into an impossibly fast cartwheel, striking out to her right to try and outflank Kevon on his left.
Smiling, Kevon wound up and flashed the sword in a magic-fueled arc across his body to intersect with her advance.
Swish.
The momentum of the unimpeded stroke spun Kevon just enough to shift his field of vision away from the battle for a second, at best. Panic struck when he jerked his gaze back, and Alanna was nowhere to be seen.
Without the barest whisper of a warning, the knife was at his throat, his magic drained away. Alanna’s arms twined around him from behind, precisely angled pressure forcing the wooden blade to the ground yet again. “We may not have the same understandings in place as we did before,” she hissed into Kevon’s ear, “But you should know better than to come into my house and do the very thing I hate the most.” She shoved him away, barely removing the blade from his neck before sending him sprawling to the floor. “You’d best behave until we can get the situation outside under control. Do your part, and we’ll discuss whether you have a future or not.” Alanna paused at the doorway after she stepped over his trembling form. “Don’t make me get the chains.”
Chapter 38
The sky was overcast, an easy transition from the tunnels behind them to the wide open spaces that lay ahead. Mirsa held Rhysabeth-Dane’s hand as they sat in the back of the wagon on sacks of grain, backs against tarpaulin-covered bales of fodder. The librarian, petite by even Dwarven standards, reminded the Master Mage of a curious child seeing her first Feastday celebration in one of the Inner Cities.
And we’re not even clear of the mountains yet, she thought, smiling and squeezing her companion’s hand reassuringly.
Bertus and Kylgren-Wode rode on the front bench, the Ambassador asking more questions about the outside world now that they were making their way into it.
“This ‘Kevon’ of yers,” Kylgren inquired after a while. “Ye speak of him often, what’s his part in all this?”
“Kevon is different,” Bertus explained after a minute. “There are things about him that only he can explain. He’s twice the hero I am.”
“Yer quick te say that,” Kylgren cautioned, “But I’m slow te believe it. Ye might want te rethink yer opinion of yerself.”
“He leads us, after a fashion.” Bertus continued. “We’re all agents of Prince Alacrit now, but we were sent to Eastport on Kevon’s say-so. He sent us on in case there was danger looking for us in the city.”
“And ye expected him te meet ye by now?”
“If there was business he could finish quickly, or if he needed our help with something more difficult, yes.”
“Yer likely worried about nothing,” the Dwarf reassured him. “He’s-”
“We should have been in contact by now,” Mirsa interjected. “I fear something has gone wrong.”
Kylgren-Wode shrugged, and turned his attention back to the road ahead.
* * *
The mouth of the pass that led to the Dwarven Hold was hours behind them, and the strange Earth magic lingered only in the mountain to Mirsa’s right as the wagon sped south down the track toward Eastport. Rhysabeth-Dane had withdrawn further into herself, clinging to Mirsa, burying her face in the Master Mage’s robes as the sky above widened and the morning clouds burned away.
“Shall we stop for lunch?” she asked, clasping the clinging Dwarf tighter to her side.
Calli
ng out to the team, Bertus reined them in to a halt before leaping into the back of the wagon to dig through the supplies.
Mirsa stood to stretch her legs, and Rhysabeth-Dane squeaked and leapt over the side of the wagon to scurry beneath it.
“Should we…?” Bertus asked, leaning on the brake mechanism to make sure it was fully engaged.
“She’s never been outside before,” Kylgren explained. “Yer never quite sure how someone’s going te take it.”
After taking Rhysabeth’s and her rations from Bertus, Mirsa stepped down from the back of the wagon and peered beneath it.
The librarian was sitting with her back to one of the wheels, head buried in her hands, rocking back and forth, moaning.
Taking care not to stir up the road dust as she approached the panic-stricken Dwarf, Mirsa crawled beneath the wagon. She leaned back against the wheel next to Rhysabeth, careful not to hit her head on the axle the Dwarven librarian was safely beneath.
“Here, now,” she said, offering some of the bread and cured venison to her frightened companion.
Rhysabeth-Dane huddled up even tighter, groaning as if she had been run through with a blade.
Digging into her robe pocket, Mirsa fished out the book, and slid it into Rhysabeth’s hands.
The librarian traced her fingers over the pattern on the cover, and seemed to calm down, breathe easier.
“Is it the sky? Is it too much to look at?” Mirsa asked, wrapping her arm around Rhysabeth-Dane, hoping even the sound of her voice would further calm the Dwarf.
“No,” Rhysabeth whispered. “I cannot feel the mountain.”
Chapter 39
The shadows of late evening stretched from building to building, cloaking all but small sections of the widest roadways in a darkened veil. Street traffic, less crowded and more wary than Kevon remembered from his time spent here before, was winding down to disappear as the last light did the same.
“Is it the Magi, or Alanna they’re afraid of more?” he muttered under his breath.
“I’d love to take all the credit,” the assassin said, beside him without a whisper of warning. “But I think it’s both.”
The shame he had begun to feel when surprised by Alanna’s sudden appearances was all but gone. Some of the other guild members moved nearly as quietly as she, but no one else had caught him as completely off-guard as she was constantly doing. “What now?”
Her smile twisted past the point of charm. “Do I need a reason to check in on my favorite heretic?” She sighed. “Our scouts are getting less information, and putting themselves at more risk than usual. We’ve lost another two, in as many days. Not full-fledged assassins, mind you, but still…”
“Why bother me with this?”
“We did find one of theirs, burned to a cinder in the middle of the street last night,” she chuckled. “Your work?”
Kevon shook his head. “It’s all I can do to get within twenty yards of them without doubting the strength of my Illusions. And seeing one alone?” He snorted. “That’s a trick I’d like to learn.”
“One is easy to surprise,” Alanna mused, her cool green eye sweeping slowly across the empty street before them. “But getting them to split up after the first few times… Not even I can do that anymore. Something else must be at play here.”
“How many are there now?”
“Thirty is our best estimate,” Alanna sighed. “Twelve black-robes, at least. I barely have a dozen assassins left, and only a handful of loyal informants.”
“Which area are they sweeping tonight?”
“Near the south gate. They should be going through the safehouse you first woke up in shortly, if their pattern holds.” Alanna turned her gaze to meet his. “The real battle may begin tonight.”
The Warsmith nodded. The traps he had helped set might tilt the odds more toward their favor, but they would certainly mobilize the rest of the Magi that were not patrolling.
“You realize that we haven’t been able to keep all of the gates under constant watch,” Alanna reminded him.
The previous week had been bursting with frantic activity. Amidst the usual opportune ambushes, the Magi had begun clearing out sections of the city using small teams moving in tandem, never in numbers fewer than nine, and up to a dozen at times. Pretending authority granted by the Prince himself, they searched indiscriminately, and put to death any they thought were working against them. Kevon and his new allies had been forced to move twice already to avoid a confrontation they were not prepared to win.
The traps Kevon had rigged were a special surprise for the Magi. He’d scribed several small scraps of parchment, both sides with multiple fire runes, until the power was barely contained. He’d failed three attempts, scorching his fingers and losing inks and quills in the process. These he set in half-empty bags of flour, after slipping on his steel-laced armbands to shield the parchment from unintended magical attention. Over each of these, the assassins had upended pouches of Dwarven mining powder, and a double handful of horseshoeing nails. They were refilled with flour and stitched up to match the regular flour bags, and stacked around the warehouse side of the abandoned hideout. Seeing what Kevon intended, some of Alanna’s men began pulling nails from support beams and shifting the placement of the rigged bags nearer to the sabotaged supports.
Not quite the same camaraderie as one sees at the Warrior’s Guild, Kevon thought as he helped move the last few sacks of flour into place before they abandoned the place for good. But I can begin to see what Alanna is building here, harnessing one evil to balance against others.
Kevon snapped back to full awareness as the bells began clanging, and over the buildings to the south, a plume of black smoke began to roil upward.
“Let’s hope we are all as prepared for this as you pretend to be,” Alanna laughed, pulling her hood over and melting into the confused crowd that surged toward the fire.
Chapter 40
“You can’t feel the mountain?” Mirsa repeated, mind racing as she pondered the possible implications of the Dwarf’s statement. My own discomfort with the change in local magical conditions has barely ended, and now this. Could there be a connection? Is she…
“You speak Common?” the Master Mage recoiled from the tiny librarian, peering at her through narrowed eyeslits.
“Some of the books in the library are in Common,” Rhysabeth-Dane shrugged. “I wanted to read them.”
“But who taught you?” Mirsa prodded, barely containing her excitement. “You don’t have the accent that Kylgren-Wode or the others do.”
The tiny librarian shook her head. “No one. I just read until it made sense. And I have been practicing thinking in Common since I met you. Kylgren probably is not doing that.”
“I have some ideas about your connection to the mountain,” Mirsa said, pushing the bread and dried meat at Rhysabeth-Dane. “We’ll explore them once we are settled for the evening. For now, we eat.”
* * *
“Yer telling me ye have been able te speak Common fer years?” Kylgren fumed over the campfire once the horses were brushed and fed, picketed a short distance away.
Rhysabeth-Dane looked up from the book enough to glare at the Ambassador. “Was it something you needed to know?”
“Well!” Kylgren-Wode huffed. “It seems like it would have been good te know at some point before we-”
“Are you glad to be away from the Hold?” the librarian snapped.
“Ahem. I suppose…”
“Glad to be out in the world, being what you pretended for decades?”
“Aye. It is a wonder te be looked at with respect, te be useful fer a change.” Kylgren took a bite of bread and shook the crust at her. “What of it?”
“Would Bargthar-Stoun have sent both of us, knowing I spoke Common?”
The ambassador stopped mid-chew.
“You are welcome.” Rhysabeth-Dane returned to her study, mouthing out words in her native tongue.
Bertus chuckled, shaking his head
at the Dwarves and continuing to secure the supplies the way Rhysabeth had shown them to prevent the Gnomes from taking too much. He left bits of food on the back of the opened wagon, and the rest of the rations were stored in tightly wrapped sacks stacked under the hay and grain for the horses near the front.
“Curious,” Rhysabeth-Dane said, rifling through a satchel for a fresh sheet of parchment. “There is a pattern here. Every… Five!” The librarian began scribbling quick reproductions of the runes in the book into columns of five on her empty sheet. “Most of these runes are in a more ancient form of Dwarven. But beginning with the second…” she pointed down the short row of symbols she had scrawled, “These all appear more current. I could have a fifth of the book translated in a very short time.”
Rhysabeth-Dane scowled at the other figures on the page. “There are more patterns here, I cannot tell for sure what they are.”
“We know far more now than we did moments ago,” Mirsa consoled the miniature scholar. “I’m sure in time, you’ll decipher the rest.”
Scowling, the dwarf returned to her writing, filling up the rest of her page and beginning another.
“She’s odd,” Kylgren-Wode grunted to Bertus as he climbed into the wagon to help check over the supplies. “But she’ll figure yer problem out fer ye.”
Berus shrugged. “She seems to like you well enough.”
The dwarf sputtered, yanking the corner of burlap he’d been tucking out of place. “I don’t think tha-”
“If she hadn’t held her tongue, you’d be back at the Hold, right?” Bertus snugged down the last bit of the rough covering and patted the bundle of food down with a handful of loose hay to complete the effect. “I thought she’d been glaring at you this whole time.” The Seeker chuckled at the Ambassador’s dumbfounded expression and hopped down from the wagon. “This makes more sense.”
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