Battle Mage: Forging New Steel (Tales of Alus Book 9) (3 page)

He was also distracted by a knock from the door before a note was slipped under it into his room. The note was from Mecklin, the battle mage who had taken the lead of his team after his disappearance. As the eldest of his team, the others had followed the falcon easily. There had been little left to do anyway. After splitting off four of their members to watch for his return in New Harbor, Mecklin with Gerid and Maura agreed to return to Hala to warn the king of developments with their ally, Sileoth.

One man’s disappearance, even if it was the owl Sebastian, was of little importance compared to the machinations of the emperor and thousands who would be in danger to the south. The island of Litsarin was in the crosshairs of the Dark One and the cities of Sileoth’s colony on the west side of the massive island were in danger. Word had needed to be brought without any more delay.

His staff, Bairh’loore, had been brought along with his other belongings on the Sea Dragon. His bag of clothes had been brought to his room already giving him more clothing, though he had purchased a few other things to replace clothing patched up and torn over the months he had been away. Having his bag meant that he had nearly everything he owned in the world. Only a new account at the bank created by the kings’ men in his absence was beyond his grasp in the hotel room.

Quickly reading the note, Sebastian smiled. It mostly contained a message from Mecklin saying that the others had been put up at the local guild and corps housing. Both were outside of the inner ring, though the king kept a lesser force both inside his castle and in key buildings within the ring. While peace had been long lasting inside the city, defenses were maintained as well.

Being outside of the inner city, Mecklin had sent word of where the others planned to meet for dinner upon learning of his return from the void.

The door opened from the centralized restroom for the suite and Ashleen was revealed wearing just a towel wrapped around her torso. Touching her thighs, she was covered, if only just. Recognizing yet another attempt to encourage him to come to her, Sebastian looked to her face avoiding the bared, tan flesh from months aboard the ship and sunny islands.

“Mecklin asked me to join them at a restaurant outside the inner wall called, the Eternal Phoenix, if you are interested.”

She nodded and asked, “How soon do we need to be there?”

“Let me get cleaned up and dressed. We should have an hour or so before the dinner crowd makes it too hard to find seats.”

“Won’t Mecklin and others save places for us anyway?” the girl asked playing with the fold of the cloth causing the bottom to flutter a bit revealing a little more flesh tauntingly.

“Probably, but we don’t want to keep them waiting all night.”

He picked up his change of clothing waving her before him to make the girl return to her room. As he closed the door barring Ashleen from the bathroom, he noted her flick the towel free. Shaking his head, the mage managed to close the door without a full show.

Refilling the tub to halfway, the mage quickly scrubbed and washed his hair. Scented shampoos and soaps were unusual, but he cared less about the smells than washing away what felt like months of dirt. Winters in Southwall were hard to deal with when it came to being clean as well. The cold seemed to be everywhere, though castles like Windmeer had bathhouses which were probably the warmest places in the castle.

Still having his own bath, with hot water immediately available and no long walk to the communal baths was something he could easily get used to; but Sebastian knew that it would be short lived. Once he was through with whatever celebrations the king had in store for him to attend to properly welcome Gerid, the Grimnal and king of kings; life would return to normal. If he could help it, the mage would move to the Black Smith Inn for awhile and work on the experiments with metal that he had planned.

Sebastian’s mind began to think of all the things he wished to figure out as he hoped to be able to make more weapons like the Hollow Sword. Like any weapon, there were issues with making such a powerful artifact. Others could use it, but that was one of the reasons he hoped to make more. Thinking of a corps of battle mages holding the powerful weapons in battle, made him smile. With dozens of the weapons, battle mages could direct magic on par with a wizard even if it was mostly destructive elemental magic.

While battle mages rarely showed off the finesse of more delicate spells that their more powerful cousins could achieve simply because they had larger reserves of magic, in battle using flame or the newer light and darkness spells as powerfully as a wizard would allow a single mage to destroy the larger monsters of the Dark One’s armies much easier. It was just his hope that he could make more and bring the weapons to bear against the dark armies, since they had begun using armor treated to absorb basic elemental spells. A wizard using fire was nearly useless against an armored wizard hunter, though powerful light spells could break down the gear. Still, any creature in the Dark One’s army could wear the armor and help overwhelm Southwall’s defense.

The Hollow Sword might be able to offset such trickery, though he had also acquired a couple pieces of the armor along the way as well. Maura still had them and had hoped to do more research to discover how to make such gear for Southwall in the future.

While his mind considered the next days, he quickly finished and dressed in the more casual shirt and pants of a falcon.

He unlocked the bathroom door and Ashleen entered following him into his half of the suite as soon as she heard the click. Her blue dress was made of a satin that rippled with light with each step. A Southwall made dress, it was still somewhat short coming above her knees, but it was a summer dress and made of lightweight material. She carried a pair of shoes that were a nearly perfect match for the light blue of her dress.

Sitting on the side of his bed, instead of using one of the chairs scattered around the room, Ashleen crossed her legs before placing the first slipper as she realized that he was ready to go. “You were fast,” she commented.

With a teasing smile, Sebastian replied, “Well, not all of us feel free to just relax in a bath all afternoon; besides we need to meet the others so I didn’t have a lot of time to waste. I do have to admit that I enjoy the convenience of the Two Circles’ private baths. I wonder how they maintain the flows of water as well as the heat.”

Shaking her head, Ashleen stated, “I try not to worry over that stuff. The water was warm and I just wanted to enjoy it. You forget to enjoy things because you are always trying to figure out how they work.”

With her slippers in place, Sebastian slipped a key into his pocket. Ashleen left hers behind in her room since it only took one key to unlock the door.

His eyes strayed towards the eastern sky and the first moon of the night. One of the three brother gods, Epsilon the god of the harvest, was half in shadow casting less of his silver light on the city this evening. Lamps were already lit throughout inner Hala to keep those walking outside safer by their light. Guardsmen made their patrols as well, but the capitol city was considered a fairly safe place to walk, especially near Grimnal castle.

Exiting through one of the inner gates, Sebastian walked beside the girl in silence. They had been together so much of late that sometimes it was just nice to walk together without saying a word. It wasn’t that he didn’t want Ashleen to speak or hated the sound of her voice. In truth it was quite the opposite. The girl’s voice was quite pretty, which went well with her appearance, and she was intelligent also.

“There?” Ashleen asked pointing towards a large two story building on their left. Large windows spilled light into the street as well as the sound of people eating and talking. Silverware clanked on ceramic plates filling in for a lack of music while voices rose in a constant hum.

The entry door was open as well and Sebastian led Ashleen inside. While the summer air outside was starting to cool, the air inside the restaurant was still warm and probably growing warmer with the many bodies seated at dozens of tables. With most of the tables filled, he was glad to see Mecklin stand up and wave them over to a long table filled with people he knew well.

Waving to the falcon as the two navigated the room, the men met with a clasp of hands.

“Good to see you again, Bas,” Mecklin greeted him while Liam, dressed in his blue water wizard tunic and black pants stood as well.

“It’s good to see you all again as well,” Sebastian agreed noting only the two men sat with Serrena and Frell. The table was big enough for eight, so their six felt too few after months with his larger team.

Holding Ashleen’s seat for her on one side, the mage moved to the opposite side of the table as they used the six seats along the length to face each other. Serrena looked from the falcon to the wilder curiously and he just waited for her to speak. Since they had met, Serrena had acted more like his apprentice than a fire wizard. She was also older than he was, so such a teacher student relationship would seem unlikely from all perspectives.

“So what happened to you?” the fire wizard with her curly, auburn hair asked with a slight shake of her head. Green eyes were curious and he thought that Serrena hoped for a good story.

He had a feeling that he was going to disappoint the fiery young woman, but he answered truthfully, “When Palose attacked us in the plaza in New Harbor, we fought each other using what we had learned since last we saw each other. I doubt that we tapped into everything, but one of his new tricks was to slip through a portal and shift to a new position nearby to renew his attack.”

“He can cast them that quickly?” Serrena asked in surprise interrupting. Only Liam and Ashleen had been there that day and both had been fighting other wizards at the same time. The Betrayer apparently had friends and it was believed that they had been returned to life from death like Palose had a year earlier.

Sebastian nodded slowly and thought back on the fight so many days ago already that it seemed like a year. “He used darkness spells in a different way than I had seen and cast them like I do, like a battle mage. The portal spell was slower, but he made sure to try and distract my eyes with other attacks to disguise the spell casting. I don’t think he can cast the gates like a battle mage yet.”

The way Sebastian finished with yet made Frell ask, “Yet, as in you figured it out?”

With a slight frown at the idea, he couldn’t quite decide how to answer the question.

Ashleen surprised them by saying, “With the two of us working together, we were able to use a one word spell to escape to Hala. It took both of us pooling our magic to do it, but we managed to do the actual spell minimally like a battle mage.

“He drew a line to concentrate on by the pond and we tried to concentrate on that staff he always carried around. Maura brought it here, so that’s why we wound up in Hala.”

Waving off the wilder’s words, Serrena asked in confusion, “Pond? What pond? Where were you?”

Mecklin clarified better as he channeled the girl’s questions towards an answer they all needed, “You were fighting Palose and he used a portal spell. What happened then?”

Sebastian took over the story again and said, “The first time he used the spell, Palose maneuvered behind me and it simply switched the fight to close combat for a moment. When he tried the spell a second time, I tackled him and we went through the gateway together.

“Something happened to the portal surprising Palose as much as me. He said that there had been a mistake and that it shouldn’t have happened. We were on an island surrounded by silver light. Other islands hovered in sight, though they were all far enough away that we would have needed to fly to reach even the closest ones.

“When Ashleen crashed into me, Palose seemed to believe that her surge of lightning caused the portal to misfire. Unfortunately when she ran into me; it allowed Palose get away through another doorway to leave us trapped there.”

Ashleen looked a bit sheepish and added, “I was close to Sebastian at that point and tried to just reach for the portal to hold it open like we saw the warlocks, but my lightning came out in my fright at seeing Sebastian disappear. It stayed open long enough for me to follow them though and I crashed into Sebastian like he said.”

Taking back over, Sebastian said, “Well, were stranded on that island, but we were lucky enough that there was water and food to be found. Small animals could be hunted easily by a battle mage or we could fish in the large pond. That was where we were for what we thought was only about two weeks, but we’re told that it was closer to a month here.”

Frell shook her head and replied, “Was that another world?”

“We were told enough by the warlocks we grilled about this magic to know that these islands were once part of the elves’ old world. The emperor’s black magic bound it to him and he pulled it into this silver void of his new prison, but somehow the Dark One figured out how to break free into our world. So in essence the Silver World is now another world as big, or even larger, than ours.”

“How did you finally manage to break free of the prison?” Mecklin asked bringing the questions back to how once more.

Not sure if he should tell of how they used the extra power coming from the ground by using the Hollow Sword to tap the energy, Sebastian was glad when Ashleen glossed over the fact by saying, “Once he realized that he could feel his magic inside of the staff which was still in Southwall, we worked together to pool our energy to punch our way through the last barrier.”