A Life Less Ordinary (15 page)

Cardonel frowned. “Are you absolutely sure about this?”

“No,” I said. There was something in his voice I didn’t like. I wasn’t sure if it was his reluctance or something else. “I’m not sure about this, but I am doing it anyway. It has to be done.”

I reached for the door and pushed it open. “Come on,” I hissed. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Thirteen

Cardonel followed me as I stepped out into the hallway, pulling a glamour-spell around his own body too. I took a moment to confirm my earlier check for security spells and then started walking. I knew spells that would allow me to see in the dark, but thankfully the halls were illuminated by a dim glow that seemed to shine down from high overhead, lending the building a vaguely creepy appearance. I suspected that we wouldn’t get into trouble if we were caught here – the people who hired the rooms had to go home afterwards, after all – yet the further we went into the building, the greater the chance of being caught. I didn’t want to know what would happen if they found us trying to free their slaves.

“This way,” Cardonel hissed, pulling me down a darkened corridor. The light was fading now, leaving us in the dark. Cardonel muttered a charm under his breath and a ball of light appeared in his hand, illuminating the way forward. I smiled, impressed despite myself. The spell only provided light to the caster and those the caster chose to add into the spell. Anyone else wouldn’t be able to see us using the light. “We need to move quickly.”

A moment later, we pressed ourselves into a doorway as four of the muscle-men walked past, yawning with obvious exhaustion. Up close, they stank; a uniquely male scent that made me want to throw up again. I watched the muscles moving under their shirts and found myself wondering what spells they’d used to enhance themselves. The chances were good that they, like Cardonel, were burning the candle at both ends, shortening their lives in exchange for power. They tramped off into the distance, pushing and shoving at each other, and I found myself smiling. They had no idea how close they’d come to catching the pair of us.

Cardonel waved to me to follow him as we reached a staircase leading down into the basement. The half-elf was almost invisible in the gloom, despite the light he carried, leaving me to pick my own way down the steps. I almost ran into him at the bottom and he caught me before I could step forward. The door ahead of us was protected by a concealed charm, one that would have entrapped us both if we had touched the wood without proper preparation. The magician who had created it was amazingly confident or stupid, I decided as I examined it carefully; normally, such a spell would have a list of people it wasn’t allowed to bite, but this spell had no safe list. The owner of the building could find himself entrapped as easily as a thief. It was odd, to say the least.

I focused my mind and muttered a charm under my breath, focusing a spell that was just enough to counter and deactivate the security spell. It resisted being deactivated for a moment and then collapsed, too easily. Even if the person who had established it had done it by rote, it shouldn’t have been that easy to push it aside. I checked, my suspicions aroused, and discovered a second – nastier – spell hidden in the stonework. This one would have turned us both into statues until the owner came along and discovered what had happened. We would have been helpless prisoners. I deactivated the second spell too and pushed the door open with a finger. Nothing else rose up to greet us.

“Come on,” I hissed, and slipped into the slave chambers. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to see, but it looked like a stone dungeon, complete with manacles hanging from the wall. They were empty, yet I could see crusted blood around them that suggested that they had, at one time, been used frequently. The stone walls played host to another security spell, although this one seemed configured to prevent anyone from teleporting in and snatching the slaves. I deactivated it anyway, on general principles, before we slipped further into the dungeons. We had to find the slaves before it was too late.

“In here,” Cardonel hissed. I followed his gaze. There were four men standing in the room, all wearing slave collars. The door was unlocked, which puzzled me for a moment until I realised that the collars would prevent them from leaving and escaping. The defences were designed to keep people out, rather than keep them in. “I cannot see the women.”

“They’ll be here somewhere,” I said. It was more of a hope than absolute certainty. If we couldn’t find them before we had to leave, we would have to escape, leaving them in enemy hands. I could imagine just what could be happening to them, right now, and shivered at the thought. How badly would I treat someone who had no choice, but to do as I ordered? “Help me open the door.”

Master Revels had lectured me quite heavily on slave spells and what they actually did. The slave had no choice. He or she had to show absolute and unquestioning obedience to their owner, no matter what they were ordered to do, but they maintained a considerable amount of free will. The men in front of me were still as smart and capable as they had ever been – if they had ever been smart and capable, as they had been enslaved – and they could be dangerous. The slave instructions they’d been given after they’d been fitted with the collars probably included a command not to obey anyone, but their master.

The door slid open and I stepped inside. The slaves gaped at me and then opened their mouths and started shouting for their master, screaming that they were being kidnapped. I cast a freeze spell at once, shutting them up quickly and brutally; they might have had no choice, but the racket could have brought the security team down on our heads. In the sudden silence, I could hear nothing apart from the beating of my heart. The sound hadn’t alerted anyone, I hoped.

“Don’t worry,” I said, as I studied the first slave’s collar. It was a nasty little thing. The spell concealed in the iron collar looked as if it wanted to bite me. It was more complex than I had expected – the result, I guessed, of the commands given to the slaves and ingrained within the spell – but it was fairly easy to dismantle and neutralise. “I’ll get you out of here, one way or the other.”

Once the first slave was freed, I worked my way through the others, before releasing the freeze spell. The slaves collapsed at once, although more because of the effects of the spell than because of any lingering after-effects from their enslavement. Cardonel helped them to their feet and pointed to the door, ordering them out into the basement. I left the collars there – after rigging them with a spell of my own to give anyone who picked them up a nasty surprise – and followed them. The men were free. Now all we had to do was liberate the women.

“Thank you,” one of the boys said. He was around seventeen years old and would have been quite handsome, in a manner of speaking, if his face hadn’t been so haunted by everything he’d seen over the last few days. He looked bitterly vulnerable and distraught. I had been told that slave spells could be addictive at times, with people choosing – as insane as it seemed – to be enslaved and give up their own free will to someone else. It was enough to make me feel sick. “Who are you?”

“No names,” Cardonel said, before I could say anything. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”

I nodded and resumed the search for the women. It took us several moments to find them and, when we did, it became apparent that rescuing them was going to be harder. They were all gathered in a cell, not unlike the men, but they were protected by layers of more complex spells, each one carefully designed to keep out intruders. I wasn’t too surprised. Female slaves, it seemed, were worth more than male slaves.

“I’ll stay on guard,” Cardonel hissed. “You concentrate on the spells.”

“Understood,” I said. My heart was pounding away as I started to dismantle the first set of spells. It was far harder than anything I’d done before, because the first set was interlinked with the second and third set, but I had no choice now. I felt sweat running down my back as I isolated the first set, cut the links between the second and third set and then started brushing them away. The owners hadn’t wasted their money on this set of wards. I doubted that anyone else could have brought the wards down quicker. “Hang on…”

The fifth and six sets of wards collapsed, almost like a giant spider’s web. I caught and isolated them with my mind, realising that the spell was alarmingly complex and likely to start trying to rebuild itself. Unless it was shattered beyond hope of self-repair…I pulled it apart completely and absorbed the traces of magic into my own magical field. I opened the door and cast the freeze spell at once, without waiting for the women to start screaming. Once was quite enough.

“Don’t worry,” I said, as I slipped through the door. “We’re here to get you out of this nightmare.”

The women were bound by the same spells as the men, although some of them had more complex spells than others. I guessed that they’d been given different orders, although there was no time to read the spells and find out what they had been…and besides, I didn’t want to know. I was undoing the last set of wards when disaster struck and I broke a ward I hadn’t realised was there. I should have known – the girl was stunningly pretty, yet far too young for trouble and strife – but there was no time to waste in recriminations. The wards would already be sounding the alarm.

“We have to get out of here,” I snapped, as I broke the last slave spell and pushed the girls towards the door. A thought crossed my mind as I felt, rather than heard, doors slamming closed above us. I felt the wards around the building coming alive and starting to hunt for the intruders. They’d discover that I’d dismantled too many of them for safety. The owners would have to rebuild everything before their base was secure again. Not that it would matter to us, one way or the other. I heard the sound of heavy footsteps above us and knew that the muscle-men were on their way.

“There’s only one way out,” Cardonel said. I didn’t hear any recriminations in his voice, but I knew that they were there. God alone knew what the owners would do to us if they caught us. “How do you think we can get past an army?”

I smiled as a thought occurred to me. I could get the women out, at least. I pulled the Sisterhood’s pendant from below my shirt and held it up, triggering it with a single thought. The pendant grew brighter and a Gateway started to form, leading outwards in a direction that seemed to exist at right angles to reality. Human minds were not built to comprehend the true nature of the multiverse. I’d been told that those who looked too closely went mad. It sounded quite believable to me.

“Get the women through the Gate,” I ordered. Cardonel looked surprised, but did as he was told. The women were reluctant to leave their male relatives, yet they had no choice. When they hesitated, I pushed Compulsion into my voice and compelled them into the Gateway. The Sisterhood would take care of them, I hoped. At the very least, they wouldn’t return them to slavery. “Everyone else…”

“We could go too,” one of the boys protested. I wondered at his attitude and then realised that he wouldn’t understand the price. “Why…?”

“You can’t walk that path and remain a man,” I said, tartly. I had no idea what it would do to Cardonel, but I knew what it would do to a pure human. “We have to fight our way out of this.”

The doorway burst open and a stream of muscle-men marched down towards us, cracking their knuckles in tune with their walk. Cardonel stood up and extended his hands, growing claws and sharp teeth; I prepared what magical tricks I could, wishing that I’d had more training in self-defence. The wards were pushing in now and they would help protect the muscle-men from my magic. I wasn’t keen to see what would happen if I had to fight them hand to hand.

They stopped as a hooded figure appeared behind them. “Give up now and be enslaved, or be beaten and then enslaved,” the manager said. He didn’t sound too happy. I guessed that he’d realised that the women were beyond his reach. Well, apart from one woman; me. “There is no way that you can escape.”

“Get fucked,” I said, tartly. I was not going to go out without a fight.

“What she said,” Cardonel said. He held up his claws and the light glittered off them, daring the muscle-men to move forward. He looked very inhuman and yet, somehow, truly magnificent. Absurdly, I found myself wondering where he’d hidden those claws. “Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough.”

The manager’s face, what little we could see of it, turned an alarming shade of purple. “Capture them and bring them to me alive,” he ordered. The muscle-men straightened and started to advance towards us. “Do not kill them.”

Magic flared from my fingertips and lashed out towards the advancing men. Three fell dead on the ground – part of me was shocked, even though I had no time to think about what I’d done – and two more staggered backwards before the wards started to press in on me. The muscle-men stepped over their dead comrades and kept advancing, pressing their hands together in an unholy benison. Cardonel leapt forward, howling a chant in a language that hurt my ears, and started to lash out at the men. He moved with blindingly inhuman speed, too quickly for them to catch or hurt, yet I knew that it couldn’t last forever. The more he called on his gift, his heritage from his unwanted father, the more the magic would burn away at his human form. How many years of his life was he throwing away for me?

Two muscle-men bypassed him and advanced towards me. There was something frighteningly inhuman about their faces, as if they weren’t quite connected to what they were doing. There was no sense of emotion at all. They were neither driven by duty nor sadism. They just were. I lifted my hands, trying to draw on my magic, yet the wards were pressing down too hard. I was trapped. I’d led them all to their deaths. At least I’d gotten the women out. Perhaps the thought would console me afterwards, if there was an afterwards.

A thought struck me and I snatched at the ring I’d been given. The dragon-face lit up at once. A moment later, space and time twisted around us – so badly that my head screamed in pain, unable to comprehend how the universe was being pulled out of shape – and a full-sized dragon was in the room with us. It roared loudly, blowing a wave of fire towards the muscle-men, who simply evaporated and disintegrated in the heat. The wards, which hadn’t been prepared to handle a dragon, faded away as the dragon lunged forward. My head threatened to explode again. I couldn’t understand how the dragon could fit into such a confined space, let alone spread its wings. Bright red eyes shone out and focused on me. I realised, far later than I should have realised, that Fiona had come to my rescue. She was no longer tiny.