Changing Of The Guard (Book 6) (2 page)

He looked into the darkening sky and hoped Reynard’s group was being more successful than his.

“All right,” he said. “Mount up. We’ve got time for at least one more pass.”

Reynard was certain that the Koradictines would travel north—as certain as he had been about anything—and he was the type who was certain about almost everything there was to be certain about. He was leading his team now, riding point through the pass. They had traveled most of the day, far enough they would need to make camp in the woods rather than return to the city. But they had found nothing. It was annoying, and the fact that the mages’ enthusiasm had waned as they realized they were in for a night out in the cold did not help anything.

He smirked, wondering if Darien’s troupe was faring any better. More than anything, Reynard wanted to be the one to bring Will back.

It would be the last straw, the act that drew away the few stragglers of the Freeborn who remained loyal to Darien. The guardsman was a fine man at heart, but he was no mage. And, no matter what Garrick said, mages could not be led by someone without magic. If Reynard were the one who recovered Will, then even Darien would no longer be able to deny that the Freeborn wanted him to be their leader.

All afternoon Reynard had dwelled in daydreams of parading the Koradictines down Dorfort’s streets. He imagined Ellesadil honoring him, Darien backing down, and the Toreans cheering.

Now it was growing dark, and the rest were as tired as he was.

Reynard brought his horse up in a clear meadow ringed by towering white birch trees, and waited for his mages to catch up. They could build a fire in the leeward corner of the clearing where the trees would protect the blaze from the wind.

“We’re not going to find a better place to stop,” he said. “We’ll camp here for the evening, and start fresh tomorrow.”

Yes, tomorrow they could hunt again.

Chapter 3

Neuma sat quietly on the bench seat she had drug into Ettril’s tent. The space inside was large enough to hold twice as many as the four of them, but suddenly seemed much smaller. For the first time since Ettril accepted her plan, things were not going her way.

Yes, they had succeeded in taking the Torean god-touched’s apprentice. The boy, Will, lay in a deep corner, incapacitated by Ettril’s sorcery. But Garrick himself had not been there, and Quin Sar, the second-ranked mage of their order and a life-long friend of High Superior Ettril Dor-Entfar, was now dead. Neuma had, of course, killed Quin Sar with her own hands and then made it appear as if a stable boy had surprised them. But none of the rest knew that, and she had no intention of letting them find out. The remaining Koradictines had gathered at the established point and made their way to this safe camp under the cloak of Ettril’s spell work, which served to protect them from scrying eyes. No one could get near without him knowing.

Now, with things settled, the high superior wanted to know the truth.

“What happened to Quin Sar?” Ettril said, his crystalline blue eyes staring her down with birdlike intensity.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” Neuma said. She spoke the words exactly as she had practiced them throughout most of their hastily beat retreat. “The boy surprised us.”

“You’re telling me that one of the strongest wizards in the order was bested by a stable boy?”

“You’ve said yourself, sir: no matter how good the spell, a knife in the gut can spoil a perfectly good day.”

“I don’t believe it,” Hirl-enat said.

“What
do
you believe?” Neuma snapped back. This was Ettril Dor-Entfar’s interrogation, which was bad enough as it was. She wasn’t about to let Hirl-enat make it any worse.

Hirl-enat glared at her.

Perhaps she could use his anger to her advantage.

“Go ahead and say it,” Neuma said. “You think I killed Quin Sar myself, don’t you? Go ahead and say it if that’s what you think. At least then I can respect you for speaking your mind.”

“I wouldn’t be the only one who thought it.”

“Enough!” Ettril said, his lips drawing into a tight line. He had been close to Quin Sar, and the loss was obviously difficult to bear. “I’ll not have this argument now. Quin Sar is dead. And you can believe me when I say that I will get to the bottom of what happened, and that I will take whatever steps are required.”

Silence ensued.

Neuma finally spoke. “It seems we have a bigger problem to solve now, though, Superior.”

Ettril Dor-Entfar nodded. “Yes, we do.”

Hirl-enat stewed.

Fil, as usual, remained neutral.

“Where is Garrick?” Ettril said, staring at Neuma.

“I don’t know any better than you do. I can’t believe he wasn’t there. Perhaps he’s on an assignment? Did either Darien or Ellesadil have anything to say about him?”

“No, they did not. And they were each uncomfortable at my questions regarding him. I think his absence is as much a quandary to them as it is to us.”

Neuma, happy the conversation had shifted, scratched at her cheekbone and thought about the problem. She had been counting on the Torean god-touched to remove Ettril from the picture—and Ettril to weaken Garrick enough that Neuma might best him by herself. Worst case, even if Ettril could not remove Garrick, the superior’s fall, combined with Quin Sar’s death would have left the superiorship open for the taking. But Garrick was gone, so that part of the plan was in trouble.

She nodded unconsciously.

“Garrick will come as soon as he discovers the boy is gone. I’m sure of it.”

“Don’t we have an even more immediate issue?” Hirl-enat said.

“And that would be?” Ettril replied.

“The vigilantes from Dorfort are gathering. I suggest we need to get away as soon as we can.”

“I agree with that,” Ettril said. “I cannot maintain this cover forever, nor can I keep the link isolating the boy going for much longer.” He had spent the past several weeks creating a holding chamber for their captive, tying it to himself such that any damage done to him would be equally performed on the boy. This, he felt, would pull Garrick’s attention away and give him free reign to deal with the god-touched on his own terms. But it was a difficult spell, requiring constant upkeep of the link. The effort slowed their progress.

“We’ll have to do something else,” Neuma said.

Ettril gave a grunt and nodded.

“We need to get rid of those who follow us,” Fil added. “Sooner is better.”

“I have a plan,” Neuma said, glancing at Ettril and seeing an edge grow on his gaze. “That is, I have a plan, if anyone would care to hear it, of course.”

Chapter 4

Braxidane must pay,
Hezarin thought as she crashed through the currents of All Existence, flinging herself forward and letting energy scour her body as if it were a sandstorm. The flow burned through the sheerness of her span, and sizzled with a golden boil. She veered, barely noting the anomaly she would have run into had she not made a last moment adjustment.

It was a game she had played since the days when she was a newling. She loved the wildest streams, the ones that boiled and churned with their fury. She searched them out in the most remote zones of Existence, where she could be alone to enjoy the glorious
now
that grew from standing against the raw nature of life itself, letting it flow through her, getting caught in its eddies, its sink holes, and its crashing rapids.

It was a dangerous game, but one that made her feel alive.

And today she needed to feel more alive than others.

Braxidane must die,
she thought.

It was Braxidane’s mage who had ruined her plans, and it was Braxidane who refused to do anything about it.

Yes,
she thought,
Braxidane must surely pay.

She stretched herself even more thinly, daring the current to split her if it could. Then she collapsed into a ball and let herself be carried into a temporary stasis lull. The flow of life force raced past, whispering in calls that rasped like a shower of boiling oil, a million voices that Hezarin let roll through her senses for just the briefest of moments.

“Damn them,” she said. “Damn them all.”

She leaped back into the flow.

Another anomaly slid past her.

A long passage loomed ahead, and she narrowed her profile, putting more energy into her run so she could build enough speed to shoot the gap. Sparks flared, and streaks of green and crimson wrapped around her, fading to dull turquoise. Electric fingers of neon broke over her skin as she careened through Existence.

Then she slowed, drawing herself into a protective orb and letting the current carry her away again until the rage subsided and she could hear herself think.

Hezarin breathed. She was satisfied. Content.

Her entire being tingled with exertion.

She flexed her outer shell and smiled at the thin edge of pain the movement brought her.

Refreshed and of better mind, she flashed the color of a sigh and thought more clearly about Braxidane. Her brother had sent Garrick to Rastella, and Garrick had destroyed her hold on that plane. She should punish Braxidane for that directly, but as much as she enjoyed the prospect of that idea, as much as she yearned to see his expression fade as she ground him into the flow, Hezarin knew that Joint Authority would never let her destroy her brother.

A planewalker could live forever, and yet they had nothing of their own. They were, in effect, no more than vessels for life force—controllers at their best. Once the construct that made up a planewalker was gone, it was gone forever. Given this most reasonable justification, the council of Joint Authority tended to view simple trespasses against each other as acceptable, but killing another planewalker was the greatest crime she could commit.

Worse, her brother was a master politician, linked in a hundred places she knew of and probably a thousand more she didn’t. Killing Braxidane would mean trouble, and given how the network was growing more sensitive each day, it could even lead to total war throughout All of Existence.

She flared the orange of deep thought and the aroma of a smile, as she trailed a filament restfully behind, using it as a leisurely rudder as the flow carried her along. She couldn’t kill Braxidane, but Garrick was another matter. Hezarin knew how to do it, too. Ettril Dor-Entfar, the High Superior of a sect of mages who flew her banner on Garrick’s plane, had reported that Braxidane’s god-touched had a weakness, a connection to a stable boy that Garrick had saved from a droll life.

She could use the boy.

And she could use Ettril Dor-Entfar, too. The mage had been smug as he reported his kidnapping the boy, as if his previous failures could be washed away with this single act of cunning.

Hezarin rolled into her node, and relaxed.

She reached a thin rivulet of red out through the multiple layers of Existence until she touched the gateway to Adruin. Braxidane had braced the entryway, but had obviously not felt confident enough to completely block it.

She would make him pay for that weakness.

A moment later, she had wrapped mage work around the life force of Ettril Dor-Entfar, pleased to find the sorcerer’s essence already tied to the stable boy’s. Perhaps the mage actually was a cut above the rest.

When she was done, she retreated to her node.

She found herself dancing and singing to herself as she hashed out her plans. She couldn’t wait to see Braxidane’s anger. Just the thought of his expression made her feel better now than she had in a long while.

When she was ready, she flared with crimson power, lifted Braxidane’s barrier, and slipped into the plane.

She had a debt to call, and there was no time to waste.

Chapter 5