Battle Mage Visions (A Tale of Alus Book 12) (46 page)

"If they bound his magic, it might feels snuffed out," the girl mused. "Done in a complete, restrictive way, a wilder's power grows and virtually explodes when it grows too powerful to contain. If he was bound up in some way, even a mage might have this power reaction unexpectedly."

Palose understood enough to get the concept and nodded. "Well, it doesn't matter then. He's already left the city as far as I can tell. They can look all that they want. Urlic won't be calling on me for that at least."

"I wonder what happened to the warlocks working on him though," Sylvaine said in a contemplative way. "I also wonder how Dorgred is doing. If he does as you told him and doesn't find a Visionary in Mariport, will he head east and eventually cover the same cities that we are?"

Shrugging, the young man replied, "It was more to keep him busy. Maybe he will find one in Mariport or Siltrene. We can look in the other big cities, but I kind of worry that Kolban has given me this as an impossible task."

"Why would he do that? He usually has you doing important work directly for him. Unless you have done something to break that trust, we can assume that he believes that you can find one.

"My biggest question is why?"

"I've been worrying about that too," Palose said thoughtfully. "He gave me the task, but I almost think that he knows the answer already. Maybe Kolban has the power to see the future and just wants to find one of these Visionaries to compare notes."

"Maybe he doesn't like what he has seen and hopes for an answer that is better," Sylvaine offered sounding a little worried by the thought. They were tied to Ensolus whether they liked it or not, and Palose to the emperor's family in particular. What would happen if something was going to happen to them or the city in the future?

"Kolban implied that I should be thinking about contingency ideas to keep Acheri safe," the mage finally told her one part of the conversation he had failed to mention to her sooner.

Sylvaine looked a little alarmed and said, "If you keep her safe, will she try to kill me again?"

Giving her an extra squeeze of her hand for comfort, Palose smiled at the girl and said, "If it comes to keeping you safe or her, you know that I will always pick you over Acheri."

With a worried smile, Sylvaine replied, "Maybe you need more than one contingency plan to deal with her?"

He laughed, though the mage didn't totally feel it. "Well, let's try to find this fortune teller or get them to find us depending on what you've decided to believe."

Dorgred walked out of the eleventh so called fortune teller of yet another day and uttered an incomprehensible groan of annoyance.

"Another fake?" Evic questioned with a raised eyebrow.

As the wizard stared at his guide, he was equally annoyed with the boy as he was this quest to find someone who could see the future in a broad way. The man had doubted the legitimacy of the quest that Palose had set him on in the first place, but he had yet to meet someone that he could believe had truly seen any bit of the future. One charlatan after another wasted his time, but Dorgred hadn't spent a coin on these fakes.

Going into each meeting, the man had warned one fortune teller after another that he would only pay if they could make him believe that they actually had the gift. So far, most hadn't wasted more than five minutes of his time. Some he had waited to speak to longer than the conversation lasted. Dorgred told them that he wanted to know more than just his fortune and they smiled telling him that they delivered for coin; but not one could read that he was a wizard so he refused to give them anything before walking out the door.

"That one might have been the weakest scammer of the bunch!" the wizard complained. "When I asked him to tell my fortune to prove himself, he actually was clueless enough to talk about my future sailing. Bah, I went on one extended trip by boat. I am not some captain that he can read my stars and wish me a good voyage... the idiot."

Evic nodded and pushed off his seat, a bench outside the latest pretend psychic. The boy was chewing on a snack from a vendor a couple stalls away prompting Dorgred to point at the food and say, "I am not paying for that either. You've made me go to all these useless hacks for nothing, Evic, so the odds of you earning your coin are beginning to look as likely as my payment of these incompetents."

"I promised to guide you to every fortune teller or seer in town, just because you keep finding that they're fakes doesn't mean I haven't done my part," the boy said cocking his head to the side coyly. "Well, I guess your failure is my failure though, isn't it?"

Folding his arms and grunting dismissively at the boy, Dorgred was less than yielding. He was the one that was supposed to judge if the kid had earned his coin and what kind, the useless running around of Mariport for days was only making the wizard's feet sore and his attitude grumpier by the minute.

Evic looked thoughtful as he rubbed his chin. "Well, you certainly have been hard to please. These have been all well known and somewhat lesser known in their field, so let me ask what you are truly looking to find in this search?"

"I've told you time and time again. I need to find a seer that can tell more than just a single person's future. If he can't tell me what is going to happen with Ensolus and Southwall, the Dark One and this war, then he is useless."

"Hmm," the boy hummed and spent nearly a full minute before he acted like he had come to a decision. "Well, I guess that there is only one other that might be able to help you here. Come, I'll take you to her."

"Evic, don't waste my time," Dorgred warned but found his feet following the boy anyway.

He turned and followed a side street for a couple blocks before turning back to the same street they had originally been on in the first place prompting Dorgred to call out, "What was that for? We could have stayed on this street the whole time and saved an extra two blocks of walking."

"There was an accident in the way. A pair of carts collided blocking the street. It would have taken a lot longer just to wait for them to clear the path," Evic replied barely slowing his steps.

Dorgred looked back and, as the boy had said, the wizard could see the crowd formed around a pair of men yelling at each other beside a pair of overturned carts. He hadn't been able to see them so far away from where they left the street to move to the side street. Chalking it up to a good set of eyes or perhaps the boy had taken the time to scout the path ahead while he had been with the last fake fortune teller.

They continued for a way before Evic stopped in the lane to wait. Some men were using a block and tackle to raise a heavy crate to the upper level of a warehouse creating a space to be avoided by foot traffic. While the wizard was impatient, he supposed that it was just safe thinking to wait.

A shout from above them preceded a loud snap as the rope broke. The crate dropped to the stone paving narrowly avoiding the men below with their guide ropes that had been used to lift the crate. Dorgred noted the cracks formed in the pavers realizing that the box had been even heavier than he realized and very solid. The wood outer casing cracked making the proposed lift all but impossible now until they either shored up the weakened bottom and sides or found a new box.

Seeing the danger over with, Evic led Dorgred on without commenting.

Turning from the road a couple blocks past the accident, Evic led him up a smaller street with less foot traffic. A man was leading a pair of horses pulling a loaded wagon filled with canvas bags filled with grain. The wheels creaked and groaned on the axle with the weight. Like the crate, Dorgred was surprised at the apparent weight of the cart.

Evic was catching up to the back of the cart when he moved to the left making the few people walking there annoyed by the shift of his walking into their path. Dorgred followed wondering at the boy's behavior when a loud crack was heard and a rumble moved through the ground to be felt through the soles of the wizard's boots.

Looking at the merchant's wagon, as the man cursed, Dorgred was surprised along with the other passersby to see the cart tilting drastically to the right. The horses whinnied as they tried not to be tugged over with the weight of the load. Thinking that the axle had probably broken on the rickety wagon, the wizard noted that the wheel had broken, but not because of the weight in the cart. A large hole held the wagon's wheel in its broken form.

The hole hadn't been there only a moment before, but an apparent sink hole had let the stone above give way with nothing below it to hold the pavers for a few feet.

Dorgred looked at Evic and the boy looked at him in surprise. "Aren't you coming?"

"How did you know to step away from that?"

Shrugging, the boy waved him onward without explanation.

When they arrived at a gate, Evic pushed his way inside without knocking or otherwise giving the owner notice. Dorgred looked around at the serene garden of someone with a green thumb that could rival a nature wizard's. Plants were in bloom here, though in Ensolus winter made it below freezing. Grass and flowers were huddled under blankets of snow or ice not trying to show off the brilliance of their blooms.

There were benches to sit and a statue standing in a fountain. A woman blindfolded held a pitcher tilted to pour water from it back into the pool at her feet. Dorgred didn't feel magic at work, but wondered how they maintained the flow of water without it.

Hurrying to catch up to Evic as he dawdled to take in the sights in the garden, the bigger man noted the boy walk up a few steps and enter the building. Feeling a bit suspicious, Dorgred paused on the small porch trying to figure out who might live there. The house wasn't too large, but the wood work enhancing the look of the building must have been made by very skilled craftsmen.

"Come on," Evic beckoned from the first room through the doorway. "This is the last shot, but she's someone I know well enough. I am pretty sure that you won't be disappointed."

Frowning at the strange boy, the wizard entered closing the door behind him. It was actually warm enough that he had heard and seen a few insects during the day of walking around the city. No bug would have come out of their burrows north of the wall, though much of Southwall could be said to be the same.

Leading him to a room that might have served as a study, Dorgred stopped in the doorway to see an attractive woman perhaps his age drinking tea from a cup while holding a saucer in her other hand. The woman looked over her shoulder at the pair entering her chamber. Before the lady was a painting that looked remarkably like her, though Dorgred thought that the frame and paint showed some age. It was like it had been painted decades ago.

"Hello, Wizard Dorgred," the woman said with a voice pleasant to his ears.

Swallowing hard as she turned, the wizard noted her slender figure in a rich green, satin dress. Her auburn hair stood out glimmering with the light of a fire in the fireplace to the right. Placing her cup and saucer on the small table next to a stuffed chair colored burgundy to match another across from it, the woman then straightened her dress with her hands brushing at her waist though his eyes saw no wrinkles in the exquisite dress to worry over at all.

"You know my name?" the wizard asked slightly surprised before his suspicions arose. He had been in the various fortune tellers throughout the past few days. If Evic wanted, the boy might have been able to find this beautiful woman long enough to tell her about him. Some scams involved someone getting to know the mark first to make the executor of the ploy look infallible. Wanting to set his jaw firmly, the woman's grace and beauty unnerved him making it hard to think.

"I saw this moment awhile ago, nearly a year past in fact; though I would assume that you will doubt my claim. That also was seen," she stated with a smile that showed no teeth. It was a look that the woman held naturally and only served to make her look more beautiful.

"Evic must have sent word then," the wizard replied but the statement lacked the gruffness that he had held towards most of the frauds that he had met this day.

"No, I sent Evic to meet you near the market. You wouldn't have believed me right away, so he took you to the... competition, I suppose that you could call them. Many try to see the future. Some try to manipulate those who wish to know the future and tell them what they want to hear."

"And what do you do?" Dorgred asked still reserving judgment. The woman's blue eyes seemed to see right through him and the wizard wasn't sure how to feel about that.

She stepped towards him slowly gazing at the man's bearded face. A flick of pale flesh at her hem revealed that she was barefoot. It was her home, he supposed, and warm enough to be able to enjoy the temperature. A plush carpet that closely matched the chairs, except that there were thin, gold lines separating the burgundy fibers in a twisting design that circled the center less than a foot from the outer edge, was beneath her feet. It would make being barefoot enjoyable, especially in a stone castle, but this was a home made of wood. Natural wood flooring stained dark brown absorbed the light, but revealed the colors of the rug and furniture surprisingly well.

"That is a rather vague question," the woman stated. "What I do and what I am are often very different things in my life.

"I use what I am to make money to buy things that I like. My money can supply helpers to keep up my home and complete other work that I do not have the time to do; though I suppose if I am honest it is often work that I don't want to do as well.