Dire Prophecy Read online

  We began probing the stone walls of the keep, looking for a shielded room. We decided to eliminate the areas where the staff congregated since they didn’t know where the king was. Finding one or a small group of mages was our secondary goal. It looked like all the remaining people were scattered around the bottom floor of the keep, with no one on the top floors.

  Before the collapse, elegant furnishings must have filled the corridor. Now, gray dust covered paintings, and tapestries on the floor or where they had been knocked awry, still clinging to the walls. Furniture mixed with chunks of stone from the ceiling and walls.

  Most of the magical light sconces were on the floor. Their coating of dust created an eerie quality to the small amount of the escaping light.

  As we left the collapsed section behind, the rubble underfoot decreased until all that was left were broken furnishings and a thick coating of stone dust. Some of the doors were open into side rooms. These were mostly untouched, with only a slight patina of dust. Other doors were stuck closed. Either they were empty when the collapse occurred, or those trapped inside perished sometime during the past three weeks. From the lack of footprints, no one had come looking for survivors in this area.

  We began to see footprints as we neared a cross corridor. A large group of people had pried open one of the room doors. One assumed it was a rescue, but they might just have wanted to get into that room. The door led to a guest suite of rooms. The chairs lay on their side. People had tracked a lot of dust into the room, but otherwise, it was ready for guests.

  Clean up had begun in the east-west corridor where there was increasing signs of activity. We crossed this higher traffic corridor and continued to the north, entering the servants' area. A few rooms had a dust-free space immediately in front of the doors. They were unoccupied, but we suspected the servants who lived there had survived the collapse. Most rooms had not been opened since the explosion.

  We backtracked to the busy cross corridor and turned west toward the majority of the people we sensed. We flicked on our invisibility spell as we reached the more populated areas. I monitored the rooms to our left and Argon those to our right, looking for anything unusual. We stopped several times as servants passed us in the corridor.

  Occasionally two-person patrols by former king's guards walked past us. The guards weren't sure what they were supposed to be guarding, but they knew better than to ask any questions. They were to report any suspicious behavior. In this new reality, they weren't even sure what constituted suspicious behavior.

  Everyone had an armband.

  I felt the tug of an unusual ward at the next intersection. The corridor to our left, led south, back toward the collapsed area. There were a lot of dusty footprints from there entering the main hallway. We could sense a few people in nearby rooms, but none had any new information.

  Our magic smudged our footprints as we searched for the unusual ward. The tug became a pull as we crept south along the corridor. The magical tingle was detectable along the right wall of this corridor. There had been a significant volume of foot traffic along this side with only a few errant steps into the nearly pristine dust on the corridor's left side. Someone had swept much of the dust off a narrow path, and most everyone had used this cleared area. This made it impossible to judge whether five or 100 people had walked this way.

  We didn't sense anyone down this corridor, so that meant we had found a shielded room or it was a dead end.

  The path through the dust ended about 50 feet short of the collapsed end of the corridor. There was some medium-sized rubble in the hallway and about 2 inches of dust. A few hardy souls had walked toward the blockage. Their return footsteps suggested they had neither stayed nor found another exit.

  The swept section ended at a shielded door. A shield this strong should have been difficult to detect. I would have expected something akin to the emergency escape door of the keep. Argon speculated the room might have shifted in the collapse. A physical gap could affect the spell's integrity and make it more detectable. She reminded me we couldn’t detect it until we were almost on top of it.

  Heavy force magic reinforced the door. We retreated to the room past the warded area to find the best way to break in.

  The door to the next suite of rooms was wedged shut. I banished a hole through the wall to get us in and replaced it after we were inside. The explosion had damaged the suite walls nearest the collapse, and the ceiling was sagging severely. Chunks of stone and dust covered nearly every surface of the room. Fearing a ceiling collapse, I conjured a stone column to support it.

  The odor of decomposition was strong in the room, but we found no bodies inside the suite.

  The wall shared with the target room vibrated with magical energy as strong wards attempted to maintain its integrity. The power draw for the ward protecting the adjacent room from collapse was significant. Monitoring it showed it was nearly out of power and would fail sometime soon. Whether the room would then collapse wasn't clear, but the room would definitely shift once the ward gave way. The ward had probably prevented the collapse of this entire set of rooms on the day of the collapse. The mind shield portion of the ward was still quite strong.

  We had no interest in letting the rooms collapse around us. Argon built a series of columns and walls to hold up the ceiling while I added a force spell to keep the wall between our suite and the target room strong. We were lucky the anti-tamper ward was no longer active. It had likely failed when the room shifted during the collapse. This left us free to enter the shielded room by cutting our own opening.

  With no idea where people might be in the target room, we went to the back of our suite to make a spy hole in the wall.

  If the ward worked like the one in the tunnel, we would actually have to be inside the room to scan those inside.

  All the first spy hole showed was pitch black space. We listened at it for several minutes but could hear nothing. I risked a larger crawl hole at floor level. We could poke our head through, and if it appeared safe, we could crawl the rest of the way into the room. Argon insisted on going first. I reluctantly agreed.

  Argon slid into the room next door and paused. She had become mentally invisible to me once she slid halfway in.

  I touched her leg, and our bond snapped back in place. I couldn't read her thoughts, but her emotions reflected strong components of both excitement and puzzlement. I lost even that contact as she moved fully into the room.

  I contained my fear for her and stood ready to banish a larger door and come to her aid. After several long minutes, she enlarged the entry so I could get through without crawling on my belly.

  Our minds reconnected and I learned we were in an empty room in the back of the target suite. There were three mages in the other room and an unconscious person. The mages each had strong personal shields.

  Whether the mages were healers or secret police was not clear. We also didn't know whether they were expecting relief anytime soon or not. I banished a spy hole to determine the mage locations and prepared a layered spell to open larger windows so we could knock all three unconscious without giving them a chance to react.

  Argon took tactical charge, and we prepared spells to execute with a single command. Our mental bond pulsed with excitement as she prepared the layers.

  I banished the two windows, with Argon assigned to take out two mages and I targeted the third.

  It worked like clockwork. One moment the mages were awake and the next moment they were slumped on the floor. The unconscious person on the bed could be the king, but his injuries were too severe to be sure. We grabbed him together and 'ported to the hospital location in Klee as arranged.

  We left him in Alba's hands and 'ported back to the room.

  Right into a hornet's nest. Our unconscious mages were still out, but two more mages and two secret police had joined them.

  The element of surprise affected everyone. I swore I would never 'port into another site without having some type of stun or paralyze spell key
ed up. I charged straight at the nearest mage, pinning him to the wall. His wards made him slippery, but he was not expecting a frontal assault. I gained a moment to hit him with a strong dispel spell causing his force ward to collapse. A hard punch to the side of his head and he crumbled to the floor.

  Argon's mage was a lot more powerful. I turned to help her, pounding him with a series of blasts of dispel. The mage ignored me and kept hammering Argon with alternating blasts of mind and earth magic. I could tell she was weakening and I went ballistic. I grabbed my sword and began whacking him with it. Between Argon's spells, my dispel blasts, and the swordplay we began to break him down.

  Argon took charge of our attack. Once our coordinated assault began, she took advantage of the mage's distraction to stun him. As he fell at our feet, we turned to the secret police.

  By now, the two men were running out the door with me in hot pursuit. I stopped them by turning the floor into mud and then solidifying it. I stunned them, but by then I learned a third man had left to sound the alarm just before we arrived back in the sickroom.

  I hauled them back into the king's room and shut the door. Not knowing how long before Arbos and his minions would arrive we pulled the five mages into a pile and 'ported them to the secret tunnel.

  We hoped none of the enemy mages had read the two mundanes during their brief escape or they would know we were here.

  I left Argon to sort out the restraints for our mage captives while I retrieved the secret police. Once I controlled the captives, I broke the force ward holding the room together and banished several walls toward the collapsed section. The ceiling was already dropping into the shielded room as we 'ported out.

  No one would be teleporting back there.

  When my two captives and I arrived in the escape tunnel, Argon had finished restraining the five mages. She had established individual paralysis wards to hold them in place and prevent them from accessing their magic. Establishing these for five persons had noticeably drained both her force and mind magic power supplies. My magic supplies were still overflowing, but I still didn't have enough finesse to help.

  I secured our secret police, as we discussed which one to question first.

  We decided the last two mages would know what Arbos would do after the alarm was raised.

  We wanted the last mage to return to a state of consciousness where we could raid his brain, but not so conscious he would violently resist. To save Argon's mind magic for the more delicate interrogation, I used mine to break the man's wards. It was similar to the way we squeezed Jarus, the spying private eye when we first arrived in Klee.

  The first mage questioned was Feron. He had strong mental skills but a much-depleted magical power supply, which shut down most of his shields after my brief but heavy-handed probe.

  This allowed Argon to peel him like an onion.

  Feron confirmed the infirm man on the bed was King Rufix. He and his fellow mage dropped in to check on the king's status and found the three mages knocked out. They sent one of the secret police to get help while they investigated. That's when we dropped in. They only let the mundanes into the king's suite after confirming the king was missing.

  Once the runner gave his message to Arbos, Feron was not sure what Arbos would do. Arbos was the leader of the assassination ring. Feron thought it likely the mages would kill all within the keep and then vanish.

  Feron provided details on how they executed the takeover. A team of mages joined Arbos the morning of the collapse, each with an assignment to make sure certain individuals were either trapped in the collapse or killed outright. They made all the bodies disappear except for those caught under the rubble. The exception was the commander of the king's guard who had seriously injured the mage sent to kill him.

  The one thing missing was "Why?"

  At Feron's core, Argon discovered a strongly hidden ward she could not open. She had never seen anything like it. She had read about them but never thought she would see one.

  It was a black geas. If breached, the ward would kill Feron.

  We only knew one mage who might get the information we needed.

  Argon left me with our charges and went outside the shielded area to call Inoa.

  By the time she rejoined me, Inoa and Tobron were in the escape tunnel with us.

  Tobron brought five sets of mage cuffs to secure the prisoners. The enchanted cuffs intercepted a mage's magical power making them essentially mundanes as long as they wore them. Manacles only interrupted new spells cast but didn't affect spells already in place.

  Inoa confirmed Feron had a black geas. She monitored the other four mages we caught and confirmed three had the geas as well. The fourth was a low-level healer from the Augun Mage Guild. She had been a captive, keeping King Rufix alive but forbidden to heal him.

  The Augun Mage Guild sent the healer to help with the keep’s injured soon after the explosion. She had arrived eager to help. At first, she attributed her conflicting orders to the chaos caused by the explosion. When she persisted in demanding answers, she became a captive. Since becoming a prisoner, she had never left the king's suite. She knew the assassins were planning to kill her, but she refused to escape and let the king die. Why the assassins wanted to keep the king alive was another mystery.

  We agreed we had to prevent the predicted mundane massacre if possible.

  Inoa and Tobron were taking our prisoners back to Klee to learn more details about the leadership. Inoa was very concerned about a similar attempt in Klee and wanted to warn Cleon. She asked Tobron to contact Cleon to arrange for a quick prisoner transfer.

  Inoa urged us to do what we could to save the Augun staff but warned the mages we faced were quite skilled. "Don't give them a chance," she warned. "They have already shown an eagerness to kill."

  She confirmed our mind shields should give us a head start because even she could not tell we were in the room with her. She also cautioned some of the mage assassins might have shields good enough to prevent us from spotting them, too.

  Tobron returned, bringing all the mage cuffs left in Klee.

  She and Tobron grabbed the first two black geas' mages for transport. "We've got this," Tobron said, freeing us to leave the shielded area. He handed us 10 sets of cuffs. "You may need these; they are so expensive I was surprised we even had this many. If you need to 'port any prisoners back, use this location," Tobron shared a new teleport location with us.

  ◆◆◆

  Chapter 22

  We slipped into our new tunnel to check for movement of the mages. I was surprised they hadn't started dispersing since our last check. We speculated they might be waiting for the two mages who sent the runner to report in with their findings.

  We 'ported to an empty room along the main corridor we had identified earlier as a good teleport site. No one was in the hallway, and we stepped out under cover of our invisibility spell.

  I was in the lead, having the most mind magic left. We planned to stun anyone who wasn't a mage and leave them where they dropped. We navigated toward the secret police staging room.

  By now, I had built a solid mental map of the keep. There were three large corridors going east-to-west and three going north-to-south. A series of smaller hallways broke up the large areas into clusters of rooms. The collapse blocked the middle corridors in all directions.

  We were in the main corridor heading west, located north of the collapsed middle of the keep. The secret police cluster was near this corridor's intersection with the farthest north-to-south corridor.

  Very few people were in the corridor, and we left them behind us to sleep it off.

  As we approached the target intersection, the secret police began spilling out of their ready room. This was the expected response to the king's rescue. My mind-reading app confirmed the police had orders to round up everyone and take them to the palace ballroom for questioning.

  There were too many to knock out all at once. About half were headed our way.

  I stunned t
he first group who reached us, dropping them into a jumbled heap in the middle of the corridor. We ran down the corridor wanting to intercept the next group before they could spot their stunned peers.

  Argon pinned the next group of about 20 against the corridor wall with an air blast. I stunned them one at a time, monitoring my mind magic power source. It was depleting, but not as badly as I had feared.

  I was tweaking the stun spell each time and now had a quick, lean, and effective version, which I shared with Argon.

  Killing them would have used less magic, but I wanted to keep the number of casualties to a minimum. Especially since the conspirators duped even the secret police.

  I really wanted to capture the mages, especially Arbos, but that had a lot more to do with gaining intel, than mercy.

  Argon repeated Inoa's warning the mages we were hunting were already mass murderers. "Survival is more important than intel," she sent. "We will capture them if we can do it safely. We are all that stands between these murderers and those still alive in the keep."

  "That is true, but intel from one of the core group may provide the key to save Klee. I'll be careful," I sent.

  The secret police ready room was empty when we slipped into it. There were still a handful of mages in the rooms beyond. I cut a spy hole in the corner of the room, to prepare to enter the next room. Four mages were standing at a table in the center of the room, looking at a map. Two of them were gesticulating wildly and shouting at the other two. I didn't need air magic to hear the recriminations.

  Seemed a good time to crash the party.

  Argon slipped into tactical control, preparing a quick takedown.

  I banished a large section of wall. Argon and I stunned two, while the others gawked. Argon slammed the second two to the ceiling as I stunned them. We couldn't tell whether they had called for help or not.

  We rushed through the wall into the inner sanctum and stunned the sole mage inside.

  With only five mages in the ready room, that meant there were a lot of others causing trouble elsewhere. We identified Arbos as the captive stunned in the inner sanctum. His mind magic was so strong Argon set him aside for Inoa to deal with. Between Argon and I we cracked the other four easily, except for the black geas. We didn't have time to do more than skim the surface.