Treachery in the Kingdom Page 18

  “There they are,” Alnese pleasantly gasps as she stares at the specks of blue light.

  “So that’s what the city looked like,” Maurin grins as she examines the illusionary re-creation of this part of the Melar forest.

  “It doesn’t seem that far away,” Alnese states, “Perhaps five hundred G.P.”

  “We’ll have them by tomorrow,” Maurin says as she continues to stare at the magic.

  “Everyone,” Alnese calls out, “Come here. Study this projection and memorize the path of the roadway. Saprin, go fetch Ralic and Kedal.”

  In response to Alnese’s command, the young man darts off into the woods at magically enhanced speeds while the other twenty three men and women gather near the magic.

  After a moment of silence, Alnese speaks up, “We’ll leave our gear here. We won’t need it anymore. If we run all night, we can catch up to Iltar’s friends; by tomorrow evening they will be in grandfather’s hands and on their way to the Castle.”

  9

  Confrontation

  Early the next morning, many of the members of Iltar and Cornar’s expedition are fast asleep in the camp set up within the sixth floor of the ruinous building north of the broken archway.

  The party is resting in a large room with ceilings that rise thirteen phineals in height. The space is rectangular, running from north to south. Along the middle of its western and eastern sides are openings which house two curving stairwells that descend completely to the first floor, with landings placed at every floor. Four hallways branch off from the large room, two at the northern end and two in the center which curve along the stairwells.

  Much of the space is decayed with dormant vines clinging to the walls and floor.

  Empty window frames line the southern wall of the space, rising from floor to ceiling; they allow a view out to the archway and the clearing to the south of the ruins.

  At the center window, Nordal and Tilthan are quietly keeping watch; the latter has his magical lenses upon his face.

  Meanwhile, in the center of the room, Cornar abruptly awakens. He sits straight up in his makeshift bedding upon the ruinous floor and looks around at each of the members of his expedition, all of which are still sound asleep besides the thief and warrior keeping watch and the elven maid, Remnillia.

  “This place is terrifying,” Remnillia states as she looks to the warrior then wryly queries, “Isn’t it?”

  The warrior briefly glares at the elven maid and grabs his weapons then quickly rises to his feet and walks toward Tilthan and Nordal while securing his tools of war to his belt.

  “When did Ordreth return?” Cornar asks as he takes a seat next to Nordal.

  “Sometime before we took watch,” Nordal remarks, “I think during Kalder’s shift. Kalder mentioned that they found something.”

  “Did he say what?”

  “Not exact–”

  “Uhh!” Tilthan blurts out and rises to his feet while pointing to the dormant trees in the distance; he stumbles backward and trips over Cornar’s foot.

  “What’s wrong?” Cornar demands and looks to the thief with a puzzled expression.

  “I saw someone!” the thief blurts out as he regains his footing, “In the trees!”

  “Give me your lenses!” Cornar demands and reaches forward.

  Tilthan quickly complies and moves across the large room toward his bedding and pack where several of the other members of the party have stirred from the thief’s outburst.

  The warrior gently places the golden rimmed spectacles on his face and carefully scans the clearing: At the southern end of the clearing faint outlines are mingled within the trees, shrouded by invisibility magic. Seeing this, Cornar’s features turn grim.

  “Is there someone there?” Nordal asks.

  “I count twelve,” Cornar responds, “They’re just waiting there in the trees.”

  “Okay,” Tilthan hurriedly states as he returns to Cornar and Nordal, “Give me back my lenses!”

  “What’s going on?” Menal asks as he drowsily rises from his bedding and picks up his fanisar. He braces himself against it as he walks near the two warriors and thief.

  Hagen and Nemral also rise from their beds and follow after Menal.

  “I’d like to know that as well,” Remnillia remarks as she approaches those at the empty window.

  “It’s the mages!” Hagen blurts out, “They’ve come into the forest to apprehend us!”

  “I don’t think they’d defy the Edicts to capture us,” Nordal retorts, “They’re paragons of lawfulness.”

  “The mages are not the only ones who know about this place,” Remnillia cryptically replies.

  “I don’t think we should stay,” Menal whispers and looks directly at Cornar, “We should leave the ruins and make our way to Arbath. Perhaps we’ll find another means to rescue Iltar.”

  “As much as I don’t like it,” Cornar states, “I think you’re right. We can’t take the chance of staying here if these are the Mages of Alath.

  “Nordal, wake everyone.”

  Without a word, the aforementioned warrior quickly moves to the members of the party who are resting in the middle of the room. One by one he rouses them from their slumber.

  A brief moment passes when Tilthan speaks up, “They’re moving through the trees and now they’re running!”

  “Wh-what are we going to do?” Hagen stammers, “If we all go back we’ll have no way to return to the mainland!”

  Ignoring the illusionist, Cornar pushes himself up and walks back toward the waking members of the party. The warrior kneels down near Amendal and shakes him while calling him by name.

  “Fench…” the old conjurer mutters, “It’s too early… I don’t want to go play with the other mages. Have mommy tell them to go away.”

  “Amendal!” Cornar snarls through clenched teeth, “Wake up!”

  “Uh?” Amendal opens one eye and lazily looks to Cornar.

  “Get up and summon a bird, but move into one of those back rooms first.”

  “Why do you suddenly have a craving for fowl?” Amendal asks and sits up while rubbing his chin, “Gangolin meat is much better.”

  “You crazy fool!” Hagen shouts as he comes up behind Cornar, “The mages are coming after us!”

  “Did you just realized that?” the old conjurer quizzically looks at the illusionist.

  “Amendal,” Cornar grabs the conjurer by the shoulders and rattles him, “Pick up the anchor, summon a hawk, put the anchor in its mouth, cast invisibility on it and make it fly east! Go!”

  As the old conjurer rises to his feet and walks to the anchor to pick it up, Cornar turns toward the others who are now all awake and grabbing their weapons or putting on their armor.

  “You’re all going back to the White Duchess! Nemral, give me your cloak and lenses. Dith, open a portal now.”

  Without a word, Nemral quickly complies with Cornar’s orders while several of the others voice concerns about their leader’s actions.

  “Uncle,” Ordreth demands, “What are you thinking?”

  “Cor,” Kalder shakes his head, “Don’t be foolish!”

  “What about you?” Hex asks, “And we’ll have come all this way for nothing.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Cornar sternly answers, “Amendal and I will return to the White Duchess tonight if all goes well. If not, go live out your lives with the loot from Merda.”

  “Everyone to me,” Menal firmly calls out.

  In response, each of the seventeen other members of the expedition come to Menal’s side as well as the elven maid. The later wryly smiles at Cornar while Dith clutches a small rogulin crystal and utters the incantation to open a portal back to the White Duchess.

  “Don’t underestimate them,” Remnillia states, “Those qui’sha are relentless.”

  Golden light immediately surrounds those gathered together and quickly pulls back toward the crystal in Dith’s hands, causing the party to vanish.

  Once the others ha
ve traveled through the portal back to Captain Kenard’s ship, Cornar places the silver rimmed spectacles upon his face and shawls the shimmering cloak over his shoulders.

  The warrior quickly crosses to the northern part of the room, latching the cloak as he does so and disappears from sight.

  Cornar’s footsteps echo down the far corridor leading to the east of the building. He passes several opened doorways and collapsed portions of walls when he sees Amendal crouched along a wall in the furthest room exposed to the outside.

  The warrior softly whistles as he enters the room, but the old conjurer doesn’t stir from his trance-like stare.

  “How far away is the hawk?”

  “It’s still in the ruins,” Amendal answers.

  “Once it’s in the woods, use a crystal to open a portal to the anchor its carrying. I am going to check on our pursuers.”

  With that said, Cornar quietly moves back into the hallway and toward the room they had set up camp in. He steps up to the empty window frames and gazes out into the area surrounding the building; none of the invisible figures can be seen through the lenses.

  “Perhaps they passed by,” Cornar thinks to himself, “I wo–”

  At that same moment, the warrior hears a faint sound from the curving stairwell to his left. He carefully creeps toward the broken rail and looks down six stories below.

  Three figures shrouded in invisibility magic are slowly moving along the crumbling stairwell.

  “They couldn’t know where we are,” Cornar thinks to himself and steps across the room to the other stairwell, “Could they?”

  On the other set of stairs, nearly a third of the way up its length, four other shrouded figures are carefully ascending the steps.

  Seeing them, Cornar softly steps back through the room and into the corridor.

  As he returns to the exposed room with the old conjurer, Cornar comes to Amendal’s side and whispers, “We need to leave now, they’re in the building.”

  “Wait…” Amendal mutters amid his trance-like stare.

  Several moments pass when faint footsteps echo down the corridor adjacent to the room the leading warrior and old conjurer are hiding in.

  “Now Amendal,” Cornar whispers through clenched teeth.

  “Wait…”

  Cornar grabs the conjurer’s arm, which causes Amendal’s sleeve to visibly wrinkle from the invisible touch.

  “There,” Amendal mutters then softly utters a magical incantation.

  All the while, Cornar stares at the broken doorway of the room.

  Just as Amendal is part way through his incantation, a shrouded female figure passes the doorway; she briefly turns back and notices the old conjurer huddled against the wall.

  As she moves through the doorway a sharp sound echoes from her lips, “Si’tak.”

  In an instant, lime green magical light gathers in her right hand then immediately erupts into a long sharp shaft of shimmering energy resembling the blade of a sword, all this happening within a second.

  Golden light erupts from Amendal’s hands and Cornar can see the invisible figure lunge toward them while raising her right hand in the air. The golden magic blinds the warrior’s vision just as the invisible figure reaches him and Amendal.

  Suddenly, the blinding light vanishes and the scenery drastically changes from the ruinous stone walls of the ancient elven building to the eerie leafless woodland.

  “That was too close!” Cornar shouts and unlatches the shimmering cloak, coming into view and sitting next to Amendal on the forest floor.

  “Well,” Amendal dryly retorts, “If you would have woken me up sooner, it wouldn’t have been so close.”

  Laughing at the conjurer’s reply, Cornar removes the silver rimmed spectacles from his face and places them within a pocket on the inside of his tunic.

  “Who was that anyway?” Amendal asks and rises to his feet and shakes off the brown grass from his robe, “I’ve never heard a weaponizing incantation like that before. It was too short!”

  “I don’t know,” Cornar replies then pushes himself up from the ground.

  “It sounded almost like an abbreviation; how did that spell go?”

  “We have more important things to worry about, Amendal. We need to keep putting distance between us and those mages.

  “I am guessing they followed us by our tracks; we should use the hawk to portal-jump across the forest. We could probably put a considerable amount of distance between us if we do so. And they won’t be able to track us.”

  Rubbing his chin, Amendal replies, “Not bad for such a brutish mind. I don’t think I would have even thought of that.”

  Shaking his head, Cornar leans down and picks up the conjuration anchor from the ground. The warrior extends his other arm and after a brief moment, a light colored hawk circles above him and Amendal, then lands on his extended forearm.

  “Here you go,” the warrior says and gently slides the black conjuration anchor into the hawk’s beak.

  Without hesitation, the bird rapidly takes to flight, slightly startling Cornar and causing him to stumble backward.

  * * * * *

  Meanwhile, within the room Cornar and Amendal had magically egressed from, the invisible figure relinquishes the magic concealing herself. Her black curly hair bounces as she shakes her head and she lets out a low grumble then violently shoves the magically composed blade into the ruinous stone floor.

  “What’s wrong Maurin?” a male voice calls out from the hallway.

  “They escaped!”

  With that said, Maurin quickly turns back toward the doorway and pushes past her invisible companion. She stomps through the corridor and back into the large room where Iltar and Cornar’s expedition had set up camp.

  “Alnese! They’re gone!”

  In reaction to Maurin’s words, eight men and women emerge from invisibility within the large room. Amid their center is Alnese, who is carefully examining some of the gear left behind by the members of the dark necromancer’s expedition.

  “They’re quite cunning,” Alnese remarks as she continues to study the gear, “And they left in a hurry.”

  “I saw who I believe was the old conjurer and Melthas’s son. They opened a portal just as I was about to apprehend them.”

  “They couldn’t have gone far,” one of the men interjects, “And I doubt they would all go back to the White Duchess.”

  “You’re probably right,” Alnese responds and rises to her feet.

  “Do you think they could have utilized the same strategy they used to bypass the Frontier Guard in Klath?” another man asks generally.

  “If so,” Maurin sighs, “We will have lost their trail.”

  “Was Melar home to a magical essence?” a woman asks from near the west corridor by the stairs.

  “No,” Alnese shakes her head, “And I don’t think these ruins have the capacity to listen to any plot they were planning before they left. They are much too damaged.

  “Any viewings that we can find will probably be from ages ago.”

  “Then we’ve failed,” one of the men sighs.

  “We should return to Dorith,” Maurin states, “Have him inform the leaders of the search parties to focus on the borders of the forest.”

  “I don’t think that’s wise,” the same woman who spoke up earlier states, “Grandpa won’t like that; it would raise too many questions and possibly endanger his position as Grandmaster of the Estate.”

  Clearing her throat, Alnese sternly addresses the others, “I doubt they will leave the Kingdom; if they wanted to do that, they would have all traveled to the White Duchess. No, they need to be within Los to free Iltar.

  “We’ll simply have to continue searching the Kingdom; they’re bound to show up in one of the cities.

  “For now, let’s search around the ruins and see if we can pick up on a possible trail. If we can’t find them within a month, we’ll return to Alath to be reassigned by Almar. And no one must know we were ever in the fo
rest.”

  * * * * *

  What would be later that evening in the Melar forest, golden light gathers at the bow of the White Duchess just above the conjuration anchor; four of the warriors, Kalder, Nordal, Menal and Ordreth, are positioned around the ancient magical device with their bows drawn and arrows notched.

  “I hope we have enough arrows…” Nordal sarcastically remarks.

  Within the golden light, two figures take shape then the leading warrior and old conjurer step through the mystical doorway.

  Seeing their companions, the four warriors let out deep sighs of relief and lower their bows.

  Without acknowledging his warrior’s paranoid preparedness, Cornar sternly states, “Gather the others. We’ll meet in the galley.”

  Cornar tiredly moves toward the warriors and each of them clear a path for their mentor, with the exception of Ordreth who comes to his uncle’s side.

  “I’m glad you’re safe,” the younger warrior wraps his arm around Cornar’s shoulder and both of them walk toward the aft portion of the White Duchess.

  “We put enough distance between us and the ruins,” Cornar tiredly states, “Those mages almost overtook us. But, enough of that, I heard you found something.”

  “Yes I did,” Ordreth states as they pass the rearmost mast and walk toward the covered entrance to the main deck’s aft quarters. “A ring, it can shape-shift you when you put it on.

  “Remnillia says it was a toy an elven child used to play with. When we found it in the ruins, I put it on and it changed me into a strange creature, the likes the others had never seen before.”

  “That’s interesting,” Cornar mumbles and steps into the starboard corridor with Ordreth still at his side as they traverse the hallway.

  “We played around with it today; if you cast dispelling magic on the illusion it doesn’t take effect. In fact, when Hemrin was wearing it, he felt like the creature, I mean when we touched him. Hagen thinks it’s more transmutive than illusionary in nature.”