Battle Mage: Forging New Steel (Tales of Alus Book 9) (51 page)

“Do you ever wish that they weren’t dark marks on your skin?”

She shrugged. “It is just the way of a rune warrior or so my brother tells me.”

Holding up his left arm, the mage willed the color back into his protection runes. Her eyes widened in surprise and she asked, “How did you do that?”

“Magic. Let me show you,” he said and touched her arm. His magic flowed into her runes and they both watched as the blue markings turned clear.

Gasping in fear, Ulia cried, “You made them go away! Where did they go?”

“Watch,” Sebastian said with a smile and slapped down hard on the left arm he had touched. The runes glowed with the strike and slowly faded again. “See, you are still protected. You just don’t have to look at them all the time. I think it makes it more of a surprise if an enemy doesn’t know that you have special protection don’t you?”

The girl’s eyes turned big with wonder. “Yes, I can see that it would take an enemy by surprise. Having a weapon ready that they can not see would give an advantage in a fight.”

Sebastian stepped back making his runes disappear from sight again. He had finished changing the magic in the stones and spread them to either side drawing Ulia’s frown again.

“What were you doing with those stones?”

“Oh, I just picked them up out of curiosity when I arrived.” He decided not to tell the girl of their importance, but asked, “Can you tell Shaman Porleyr that I was here and show him how I made the runes transparent?”

The girl nodded.

Picking up his staff once more; the mage said, “Thank you, Ulia. Now I had better go home. It is about time for breakfast where I came from today.”

“Door,” he ordered and stepped through the glowing portal with his map. Fixing the point could be done in Hala rather than in front of the girl, Sebastian decided as he returned home to Ashleen.

Chapter 28- A Mage’s Interference

“Master Darius, welcome back!” Hilda greeted the wizard as he entered leading a handful of men and Rilena.

“Good morning, Hilda,” Darius greeted her warmly. The high wizard had a way of making people comfortable around him. He was very likeable, Sebastian thought, as he sat with Ashleen and the mermaids waiting for the wizard to sit.

Elzen quickly flipped a chair around to sit in it backwards beside Naoromi.

“Well, hello, pretty ladies,” he greeted the girls sweeping his eyes across all three even though he knew that Ashleen only had eyes for Sebastian.

Rilena sat on his other side placing a lock of her brunette hair over her right ear as if to make sure that she could keep an eye on the younger mage who was now to her right. Her look was disapproving as she complained, “Do you have to do that so early, Elzen?”

“What? I am merely greeting these ladies and complimenting them on their beauty. If you feel left out, well, you look very pretty this morning too,” he stated with a smirk as he elicited a blush from the girl as she pulled away slightly in surprise.

There were smiles, some hidden by hands, around the table. Rilena continued to fight her attraction for the younger mage; but it was obvious to those who knew them well that she was struggling against her feelings for him.

Darius chuckled while he sat and nodded, “Well, he is correct. This table does have quite a few pretty ladies sitting here; but unless I miss my guess, you had a different reason for calling me here today.”

Sebastian had left word with the wizard guild as well as Rilena and Elzen, to let Darius know that he wished to speak with him about portal magic. Nodding to the immortal wizard, the mage said, “Yes, but if you haven’t eaten, it can wait before we talk magic business.”

“I am fine for now. My morning started early. We have established gates in all the fortress cities now and I visited Falcon’s Keep to work with some wizards who show an aptitude for the gate magic.

“What is it that you needed to show me?” the high wizard asked getting straight to business with the mage presenting a warm smile.

Laying out the map on the table, Sebastian explained, “You’ll notice the markers in Southwall. The black are mine and the blue are yours. These red markers are those set by Palose. Since I have seen the stones he has used and knew his magic from them, I was able to track where he has left his portals around our country and beyond.”

He pointed to two more red marks on the map in the mountains north of the wall. There were also green markers and the mage explained, “If he is based in Ensolus, then we can assume this red mark over here is the emperor’s capitol. When I checked the map two days ago, I found a red mark tied to these green dots.”

Identifying several green dots in the mountains and on Litsarin including the overlapping marks of the two from Palose, he further explained, “These green marks match the larger permanent gate reformed above Banosh.”

“So the other green markers would be where the empire has made other set gates,” Darius mused rubbing his chin. “With this information, Southwall and its allies could track down each city’s gate to try and destroy them one at a time, though I fear he will not make such a feat easy. The Dark One isn’t a fool and I would hazard a guess that each is well fortified.”

Sebastian nodded answering, “We were warned by the warlocks who taught us what we know of the magic that each gate was in a chamber protected by guards. The opening of a doorway would alert them if we use them, so we can expect that there will be other safeguards to his cities as well.”

“Have you told your raven or through him, the king?”

“I wanted to get your opinion on the marks first,” the mage replied. “In particular, there are a couple anomalies here.”

Pointing to a red mark east of Windmeer perhaps halfway to the Twins and the Cadhalla River crossing; Sebastian queried, “This marker would seem to have little obvious military value, though it is behind the wall. The one to the west of Windmeer is somewhat closer and since you have destroyed or trapped the other gates in Windmeer; I can guess that it was a back up to avoid a wizard’s search of the city.”

“Well, I did miss both,” Darius answered with a nod. “It would take maybe an hour’s walk to attend to the one close to Windmeer, but the other would take a rider a day or more. It is an odd place to find a portal, but maybe it isn’t there for bringing spies.”

Rilena had been listening with the others and asked out of curiosity, “If it isn’t there as a back up to the Windmeer or Twins gates or for other military reasons, why is it there?”

Rubbing his chin, the high wizard finally shrugged, “Well, I guess without looking, we will never know.”

Darius looked to Sebastian and asked, “Do you plan on getting rid of all of this Palose’s gates?”

“In Southwall, I would think that it would be wise,” the mage replied looking at roughly a dozen portals marked in red. He originally thought to destroy them all swiftly, but after the Grimnal Island encounter with the rune warrior, Sebastian had paused to see if Palose would respond. If the Betrayer could just return to his portals without the markers, then the owl’s turning of the gates would only give them the same access. At least if they left them alone, guards could be set to destroy any who tried to use them.

“They might serve better as traps,” the high wizard commented thinking along the same line as Sebastian. He had discussed it with Ashleen and his other friends over dinner the past two nights.

“I will need to see what Raven Leros and the other leaders think before I do more. We can still use Palose’s gates to travel to each of the cities speeding the work that you have already started,” Sebastian finished looking to the high wizard thinking that the riders sent from Windmeer to spread the wizard’s markers might have wasted their time doing so.

“Not every city has been given a portal, especially in the south,” Elzen stated before Darius could reply, though the immortal nodded at the conclusion made by the young falcon. “There have been so many rumors of unrest there; Master Darius wasn’t sure that it would be wise to seed those cities. If we go there, training wizards in those cities means that they would also know how to attack Hala and the other fortress cities.”

Frowning at the thought, Sebastian complained aloud what everyone was already thinking, “Great, now it isn’t just the Dark One we need to worry about, but our own cities turning against us.”

“The Dark One’s spies have done well to fracture the southern cities as far as they have from what I have heard,” Darius commented. It wasn’t his country being affected and the wizard knew much less of the workings within Southwall. While he could repeat what he heard, Sebastian was quickly coming to realize that he needed to speak to Raven Leros and maybe even King Alain with his advisors.

Palose stood in his home and noted something was wrong. He had been prepared to create a portal to the main gate chamber when the mage noticed a gap in his memory. Holding each established gate in his mind like using an internal map, there were now three missing. Had another wizard appeared to close the portal in Litsarin? During the summer, Sebastian had traveled with a wizard capable of closing gates permanently.

Kolban had skirted around the problem by sending warlocks through the Parik gate to reestablish the gate above Banosh, while he had been told to bury his lodestones deeper inside the mines to avoid notice. The mine had served to block the scanning wizard and he had left a dummy gate on the ridge above the mine to throw the men from Southwall off besides. Now the Banosh gate was gone and the one in New Harbor as well; but strangest of all the island gate he had created on the north end of the prison island had also disappeared.

“What’s wrong?” the warm feminine voice asked as he stood in place longer than normal before using a gate.

Turning to look into the captivating violet eyes of the curly, dark haired young woman behind him, Palose answered with a smile, “I think a wizard has shut down three of my gates recently, Sylvaine. I don’t know if the one from this summer has returned to Banosh or not, but New Harbor, Banosh and that island the emperor requested that I place a gateway marker on have all disappeared.”

Sylvaine frowned and said, “That would either take three wizards to find or maybe someone who could move between your gates quickly. Did they all disappear the same day?”

He shook his head and answered with a sigh, “I only noticed it today, but whether they happened in one day or spread out over two days; the odds of the three gates spread out so far closing at nearly the same time is no coincidence. Someone must have found a way to travel between the points to close them.”

The girl looked worried for him and asked, “Will you tell the emperor?”

“I have to,” he responded without delay. “If his plans involve any of the three and I can’t open a gate, I will be in trouble for not telling him.”

Sylvaine wasn’t particularly good at casting portals, but the girl was the one who had helped him to learn by guiding him to the books of spells he needed when the resurrection man had first been brought to the city by Atrouseon, the warlock who had saved him from death. While Palose had found a kinship to the magic of Atrouseon’s specialties; only Dorgred, the fire wizard he had resurrected after his death at the hands of Wizard Hunters, had become any good at creating portals so far. He often wondered why he felt kinship to the other wizards and the others seemed less in tune with him.

Moving from the distracting thoughts, Palose asked the girl, “Is there a way that another wizard could somehow track or use my portals against me?”

Sylvaine looked thoughtful, but quickly was forced to shake her head to confess, “I am not sure. Since I could never use the magic properly when I was involved in holding the gates, I never led the spells in locating the points. When you can’t even learn the basic magic, do you bother learning the more detailed parts of the school of magic?”

While she wasn’t trying to reproach him for asking, the mage chose to turn her words around and he asked, “If I go to the library, which books would have such information? Between the two of us, we might discover the source of such magic.”

The girl nodded slowly and ventured cautiously, “Or you could just ask him or Acheri. They seem to know everything about the magic of Ensolus.”

Shaking his head, Palose replied, “I don’t think even Kolban knows everything about every spell, but I can ask. You know, one of these days, you really need to get back to training to be a full wizard again.”

Sylvaine wrinkled her nose in distaste before her face assumed a frown and she answered, “If they won’t kill me for being a resurrection man, er, woman; maybe I could go to the library again.”

It had been months since he had responded to an emergency call from the girl in the field. Nomads had turned on the band of warlocks and soldiers sent supposedly to establish restrictions on a tribe’s territory. They had been disrupting the emperor’s army movements and this group had been sent to negotiate before bothering to send force.

The negotiations had never happened and the tribesmen attacked killing everyone in the small band; but not before Sylvaine used a special lodestone to call him to her. He had held her in his arms as she had died. The dark mage went into a rage at the sight and used his darkest spells. One of the other types of magic that he used easily thanks to his former bond with Atrouseon was necromancy.

Turning every dead man and woman, every warlock, soldier and fallen nomad; the dark mage had raised a small army of dead and sent them to kill every last nomad that they could find. The warriors had tried to kill the resurrection man as well, but his hatred and magic had made him invincible as the dead turned on them. With no way to kill those already dead, the warriors of the nomads were still dying by the time he returned to Ensolus with Sylvaine’s lifeless body.

He still believed that Acheri had been behind the whole thing somehow. The princess was young and looked like she wouldn’t have such a malicious aspect to her personality; but he had heard rumors. If she was jealous of attention given to the apprentice, who had taken his heart; then Sylvaine would be in danger if the princess ever learned of her return. On top of that, the warlocks would demand to know how she had returned and no one else in her squad had.

“You might be able to go to the library and at least read. The librarians might question you, if you tried to check out anything,” he mused.

Suddenly the girl giggled and she pointed at the mage saying, “You sound like you are the one who doesn’t want to do the work of finding out this information, Palose. Now I understand why you want me to go to the library for you.”

Palose crossed the distance between them quickly and kissed her on the lips, not for the first time that hour. “I’ll argue with you about it later. I had better get to the chamber before I get into trouble for being late.”

“They are attacking Litsarin then?”

He nodded before calling up a portal directly to the gate chamber.

Palose assisted in sending the division gathered in Ensolus to the hills east of Helsen. It was the largest of Sileoth’s cities on Litsarin and had to be taken first. If they started with one of the smaller cities, they would simply find a more prepared fortress ready to fight the forces of Ensolus.

Afterwards, the mage went to the central spire of Ensolus. A giant column, organic in its outer shape, had been hollowed out to make the castle of the emperor. A large wall with towers built of stone bricks ringed Kolban’s castle making it the most secure part of the city, though there were other spires made for lesser nobles and generals as well.

Palose was well known to the guards of the castle by now. He seemed to go there almost every day lately with the need to coordinate the gates, spies and various other goings on of Kolban’s plans. When the mage arrived asking to see the emperor, word was sent while he waited inside of a large entry hall.

Like the castles of Southwall, the hall had been decorated with wall hangings. Several benches lined the walls, though there were no petitioners waiting to see the emperor aside from him at this point in the day. Many who would have needed to speak with Kolban were now in Litsarin leading the army as they prepared to take the city.

When a messenger came to bring him to Kolban, the mage noticed his pointed ears. It often amazed him at the number of elven folk serving the empire. In Southwall, they always talked of the men who had turned to serve the Dark One or the orcs, goblins and trolls. Various beasts were used besides those with more intelligence including creatures made from joining wolves with other intelligent races. That the elves had supposedly been the emperor’s enemy in their old world, was commonly believed in Southwall; but before men ever served the empire, elves and orcs had led his armies into battle.

The room he was taken to was relatively small and to his surprise Palose did not see Kolban but Acheri. Her other brother, Lanquer, was on hand looking sullen.

“Palose, it is good to see you first!” Acheri greeted him jumping up from a padded chair. The princess wore a short, sleeveless dress that looked more like a button up shirt for a man in size. She was slightly tall for a girl, so a man’s shirt might work as well; but it was soft silk and patterned in a pink flowered pattern. Such a piece could only be afforded by royalty, he thought.

Her long legs were bare including her feet. Like a girl enjoying her home, the princess didn’t seem to care what she looked like inside of the emperor’s castle. It was her home and her power was such that Acheri didn’t seem to care what the servants and guards thought of her.

Her arms were bare and the buttons opened low enough to touch her upper stomach revealing her creamy white skin. Acheri had commandeered his early trips outside of Ensolus, but that had been winter and she hadn’t been able to enjoy the southern sun very often since then with all the maneuvering of Kolban this summer.

“Good afternoon, princess,” he began.

“Acheri to you. You know me too well to call me a princess,” the girl responded with a little pout on her lips as she sauntered towards him. It was the walk of a woman who knew how to entice men, not some girl newly hatched from a birthing chamber during the winter. Her voice held sugar in an effort to draw him in like a fly.

“Acheri, I came to see Kolban. A strange thing has happened and I thought that I should warn him immediately.”

The girl’s playful teasing halted as her eyes took on the look of a queen in charge of her kingdom. “What strange thing would bring you here without an appointment? My brother is always busy these days as he works to coordinate a war in Litsarin and the destruction of part of Southwall’s wall.”

“Three of my gates were destroyed over the last couple days.”

“That wizard has returned to Banosh to try and close us off from Litsarin?” she asked revealing that Acheri knew even important pieces of information like the wizard with Sebastian apparently.

“I’ve lost Banosh, New Harbor and Grimnal’s island in less than two days,” he stated gravely.

“Did they happen the same day or over a larger span of time?”

“I am not positive. I noticed they were missing while readying to join the warlocks at the portal chamber. Would it matter? Even if it took two days between the three, no one can move that far in such a short time without using portal magic.”

The dark haired girl looked off in thought as she mused, “They are all places that this mizard you talk about has been to, are they not?”

He nodded.

“This wizard who closed the gates is with him. Unless you think that your friend could do such a thing, then I would hazard that this wizard has figured out how to open the gates and use them against us, or at least you,” she said as her dark blue eyes returned to Palose. There was none of the playful girl in the look. She was being serious and working out the true problem.

“The gates in New Harbor and Banosh I might see, since they were there and knew that I had been as well. A portal wizard might track the magic and find the lodestones; but how would they know about the island?”

Her right foot began patting the cool stone beneath her feet as she thought. “You know how the portal custodians keep track of the various portals both in the empire and outside of it, don’t you?”

“I have never seen them use the magic, but I have used a map to concentrate on my portal points like the teachings say. I believe that they use maps to keep the points straight since the gates are formed by others. When it isn’t their magic, using the map marks each portal and leads them to find the point back.

“How does this affect someone tracking down my particular portals? Have the custodians had the same problem?”

Puffing out a little breath in annoyance, Acheri stated with a frown, “It has everything to do with it. If a warlock or wizard were to learn of the way you make your lodestones, they can trace the magic using a map. It is pretty simple once you know how to use it.”

This led Palose to frown in return and his mind went over those who might be responsible for such a deed. “How could they have learned such an elite technique?”

Shrugging which caused the left shoulder strap to slip down her shoulder revealing more of her upper chest drawing the man’s eyes despite himself, Acheri responded with a slight smile on her lips, “It might be an advanced technique for someone who has learned portal magic in the way Ensolus teaches it, but it is also a crutch. If someone can’t hold the number of portals in their minds properly, a map would assist them in setting the spells to remember each gate.

“Now turn that around to someone who knows your magic. Once they use the map to mark one of your gates; if they choose to expand their search on that map looking for more doorways, they can find any lodestone attuned to your magic with little effort. They can also use your gates if they have any talent for making portals.”

The door behind him opened permitting a pair of orc guards before Kolban entered the room. He had no need for the masking black smoke when seeing Palose who had seen both his old withered body and the vessel which he had taken for his new. The teenage boy’s eyes looked at him with a tired smile showing his affection for the resurrection man. They had somehow formed a bond, which Kolban had never put into words, but Palose knew it was there.

“Palose, what did you need?” His eyes looked past the mage to his brother and sister shaking his head slightly at the state of dress of the princess before returning his gaze to the mage.

“I was telling Acheri that three of my gates have been closed in the past two days. New Harbor, Banosh and the Grimnal’s prison island have been removed.”

Kolban sighed and shook his head. “It was inevitable that someone would discover more about the portal magic. Wizards have been trying to close the gates between dimensions since before my warlocks discovered this world.

“Apparently, someone has finally figured it out.”

His eyes looked away a moment as the boy’s hand settled under his chin while his other hand held his elbow against the side of his stomach in thought. “There have been rumors that the immortal wizard who helped seal me in Silver World has been seen throughout parts of Southwall. This sounds like something he might be able to do. He was always clever.”

Acheri stepped around Palose and said, “We think that either the wizard traveling with the annoying mage, or the mage himself, could be involved. They knew that Palose was in two of the three places and might have traced his lodestones to the island.”

Kolban moved towards the girl and took his finger to slide the strap back into place on her shoulder as if it was an afterthought. “That mage friend of yours continues to be a thorn in my side. I was hoping that we had heard the last of him. He hasn’t caused any trouble for us since Parik, as far as I’ve heard,” the emperor finished looking at Palose.

The mage had never told Kolban or his siblings of his battle in New Harbor with Sebastian. He had stranded the mage and the blond haired wizard in Silver World. While he didn’t doubt that Sebastian might find a way to open a portal home again, Palose couldn’t believe that all this trouble could be from Sebastian.

Thinking of the warlocks’ description of the mage who had killed the shrikes with a wind arrow, however, Palose wondered. “Are you sure that he hasn’t caused trouble? That fight with the fire urchins and shrikes sounds like something Sebastian might do.”

Kolban breathed a big sigh and nodded, “Perhaps, but would he have the power to open a gate by himself?”

It was Acheri who had a smile on her lips as she stated, “If he understood the magic, all he would need is a wizard or two to grant him their strength to make a portal. The mage doesn’t need the strength to do it himself.”

Thinking of the girl stranded with Sebastian in Silver World, Palose wanted to grind his teeth in frustration. He might have left the very power needed to escape the void with the mage. Sebastian was certainly intuitive enough to figure out almost any magic, he merely needed the power to assist him.