Children of Prophecy (8 page)

They spent the night as the inn. In the morning, Car came down to look for the innkeeper, leaving Tal to sleep. He found the man in the kitchen, busying himself getting ready for the day.

“Innkeeper, can I talk to you?” he asked. Last night’s rage had faded and now Car felt only a tightly focused determination to bring the men who had broken their Oaths, and tarnished everything he stood for, to justice.

The man looked at Car and nodded. “Certainly, Battlemage,” he agreed quickly, a vast change from his previous reactions. With a gesture he pushed the onions he’d been chopping over to one of the servants. “Chir, do these for me as well, will you?”

As the servant nodded, and combined the pile with his own, the innkeeper turned back to Car. He gestured out the door, “If you would, milord?”

They took seats at one of the plain wooden tables in the taproom, and Car laid his hands down on the table and steepled them. “Innkeeper, when was the last time those Magi came through here?” he asked bluntly.

The innkeeper’s eyes seemed to focus on Car’s hands. “About three weeks ago,” he replied, needing no convincing to speak now. “They took Tor’hen’s last cow and half of the inn’s wine cellar.”

Car’s hands clenched together on the table, the slight burn scars left from wielding fire showing white against his skin. “So they won’t be back for a few more weeks,” he concluded aloud. “Good.” He looked down at his hands and realized what he was doing. He released his breath in a sigh, and forced his hands to unclench. “Do you know where they are based?”

The innkeeper nodded. “Yes, Mage,” he said respectfully. “There is one of your fort-academies near Kahir City. To the best of my knowledge, there are no students or Life Magi there, but I’m not certain of that.”

“Can you give me directions and lend me a pair of horses?” Knowing that the only Battlemagi this man had seen recently had been thieves, he added: “I will pay.”

The man nodded slowly. “Yes, I can provide horses. Directions are not hard; the fort is to the northeast of Kahir City, and the area around has been cleared, but isn’t farmed.”

Car un-twined his hands from each other, and pushed himself up from the table. “In that case,” he told the other man, “I shall go wake my apprentice. If you could have the horses ready for us in twenty minutes?”

“Certainly, Battlemage,” the innkeeper replied with a bow.

As he began to walk out, Jor’nial suddenly spoke in his head:
You are going to pay the man, right? He’s had more than enough of his supposed protectors walking off and leaving him with less than he had before. He probably considers your promise of justice worth what he gave you, but nonetheless.

Car paused and nodded to the dead man. He reached down into his purse, and removed two gold coins. He turned back and laid it down on the table next to the innkeeper. “One for the horses and one for the rooms and your assistance, innkeeper,” he said as he laid the coins down.

The man opened his mouth to protest but Car cut him off with a raised hand. “Take it,” he insisted gently. “Consider it the first installment of a repayment for what those Magi did.”

The fort was of the same style as every other fort like it across Vishni. It looked almost exactly the same as the one at Telnar where Car had met and adopted Tal. Somehow, however, the same building gave a very different impression. Where that fort had looked over its city like a guard dog with its flock, this one seemed to look over Kahir like a wolf, eyeing that same flock.

Car stopped just in sight of the building and waited for Tal to catch up. “While I fear the entire company of the fort has been compromised,” he warned Tal, “it is possible that those Magi were renegades. In which case, the fort commander is guilty of incompetence, so even then the fort is not safe.” He looked at his apprentice. “Nonetheless, they are Battlemagi,” he told Tal, “so we must assume that they are friendly until and unless they prove otherwise.”

He held Tal’s eye for a moment, until the youth nodded.

“Good.”

From there, it took mere minutes to reach the fort on horseback. They were sighted well short of it, though, and were met by a group of three Magi, dressed in the plain black robes of Death Magi.

Their leader stepped out to meet Car and Tal. He looked up and froze for a moment as his eyes settled on Car’s face. He bowed deeply, showing that he had clearly recognized who Car was.

Damn. Oh well, I guess it makes things easier – to a certain extent,
Car thought.

“Hawk Car’raen, welcome to our fort. I am Bear Mage Lik’nar.” A sweeping, hooded, black cloak prevented Car from seeing the man’s face. “What brings you so far south?”

“The High Law,” Car said quietly. “I am in pursuit of a group of the Fallen.” The Fallen were Magi who had forsworn their Oath and turned to Chaos.

“The Fallen?” Lik’nar queried, then nodded slowly. “Yes, there are a group of them in Kahir. We’ve been trying to hunt them down, but they seem to know exactly when and where we look for them and they evade us every time.” He sounded truly frustrated. “Perhaps if we join forces, we can finally catch the murderous scum.”

Car looked at the man for a moment, hesitating, before he nodded. “Yes. Perhaps we can.”

“Come, Hawk Car’raen,” Lik’nar said firmly. “We will speak in more comfortable surroundings.” With that, Lik’nar led the group of Magi into the fort.

Once in the courtyard, Car dismounted and motioned Tal to do likewise. Looking over the Magi, he gestured the youth over to him. “Tal, I want you to stay with the horses,” he told him. “Just in case.”

The boy nodded and led the animals over to a hitching post as Car walked over to Lik’nar. “Come, Battlemage,” he said to the other Mage. “Let us discuss these Fallen.”

Lik’nar bowed, and led the way. The two Magi who had come out with him turned back into the courtyard.
They must be the gate guards
, Car thought.

He followed the Mage deeper into the fort, to a room that appeared to functions as the man’s office. A small desk was pushed against one wall, with a chair next to it. A handful of other chairs were there, but the room was otherwise bare.

“Now, Lik’nar, we must discuss these traitors.”

“Yes, we must…
discuss
many things” Lik’nar said and Car’s head snapped up at the tone of the Mage’s voice. He turned back from the desk, to face Car, and his hands came up, his sleeves falling back from them. “Now!” he barked.

Car spun around in time to see the last of five more Magi file silently into the room. All five raised chaos-crystal-tipped black staves, and in that moment he
knew
how badly he’d been fooled.

He raised his own staff, intending to stop them, only to have it knocked from his hand by another chaos staff from behind him. Then he felt the magics weaving around him. He raised his shields, desperately trying to stave off the assault. But against six Chaos Magi, even
his
power was not enough. They overloaded his shields with brute force, binding away his magic.

With a desperate cry, he grabbed at his sword and lunged for the nearest of them. A blast of rainbow light caught him halfway, picking him up and throwing against the wall.

He crumpled and watched, helplessly, as Lik’nar’s robes gave up the illusion of being black, becoming the constantly shifting purple of a Chaos Mage, and the Mage slowly walked over to him.

Lik’nar lowered the tip of his staff to Car’s left arm, and touched it. Pain flashed through Car, incredible, searing pain, like his arm had been dipped in acid, ice and fire at the same time.

The Chaos Mage lifted his staff away, and the pain stopped. “That was a small electrical impulse to every single nerve in your left arm,” he explained in a professorial tone. “It is the perfect form of torture, as it requires almost no effort on my part and doesn’t even really hurt you.” The Mage’s eyes were cold. “Now you will tell us what we want to know.”

Tal stood by the horses in the stable, watching as the two Magi walked back out of the main building into the courtyard. He nodded greeting to them and they replied with might have been small nods, hidden in the cowls of their robes.

He walked over to the horses, using a stream of Air to comb out their manes, practicing using his powers. It only took him a minute or so, much less than it would have taken with a normal horse comb.

The sound of footsteps behind him caused him to turn around. He found that a third Mage, equally shrouded in plain black robes, had joined the pair of Magi in the courtyard.

A small flick of fire began to play around Tal’s hands as he watched them. He glanced over to the horses, checking that they were all right. Blazer whinnied and he reached over to pet him. Halfway to the horse’s head, he stopped, realizing his hand was still on fire. A slight touch of focus and the fire faded, allowing him to scratch Blazer’s ears.

He glanced back to the Magi, noting that they had stopped arguing, and were now walking over to him. A thought struck him.
Now would be the perfect time to practice Form Sight
.
I haven’t tried it on any Magi except Car and Shris.
Form Sight was a Gray ability that allowed a Mage to see the other form of another Mage. The other form indicated many things, including the type of Mage you were Seeing and their level of ability, but it took some focus and power. It took a powerful Mage to Form See. Tal was capable of it, but it was still difficult for him.

A small ritual ran through his head and his sight began to shimmer slightly. He looked over at the Magi, and Saw them.
That can’t be right
, he thought. The forms superimposed on the Magi were those of two crows and a jackal on the lead figure.
But crows and jackals are the forms of…
Chaos Magi! In that instant, Tal knew they’d been deceived. The Magi of this fort weren’t hunting the Fallen; they
were
the Fallen.

He dropped the Sight, stepping away from Blazer in the hope he could keep the horse out of this.
Three Magi. Fully trained, and Chaos Magi are stronger anyway. I have to kill them
fast
, before they can warn the others.

A quick gesture, hidden from the Fallen by his robes, removed the strap over Kove’s sword. He loosened the Islander blade in its sheath. This would have to be finished quickly.

He cocked his head to one side, as if questioning why they were coming over to him. The leader inclined his head.

“Greetings, Battlemage.”

Tal hesitated, then gave in to his urge towards melodrama. “Greetings and defiance, Fallen Ones,” he said; the formal challenge of a Battlemage to Chaos Magi. Almost before the words were out of his mouth, his left hand snapped up, sending a sleep charm hurtling at the Jackal Mage.

“Oh shiii…” the sleep charm cut the Fallen One off in mid-curse, crumpling him to the floor in unconsciousness.

Tal’s left hand twisted around to send fire lancing for the right-side Crow Mage as his right hand drew his sword. The Chaos Mage hadn’t even managed to raise his shield and died with his mouth still open in shock.

The second Crow Mage managed to react in the time it took Tal to kill his companion. His shields flickered into place just in time to stave off the same sort of quick firebolt that had dropped the other. As the man raised his hand to launch an attack, Tal lunged forward. The deadly perfect Islander steel of his longsword slid through both shield and flesh with a sickening ease, the sharp steel sliding through the Crow’s ribs to punch through his heart.

Tal pulled the blade out and spun around, releasing the blade as he faced the rising Jackal Mage. Twists of air steadied the sword and lightning flickered into existence along the blued steel blade. Magic and kinetic energy combined to slice through the Chaos Mage’s shield with contemptuous ease and bury the blade in the Jackal’s stomach.

The Battlemage knelt next to his foe, his shields in place. “Let me put this simply: you tell me where Car is, and I’ll kill you quickly. You don’t, and I’ll pull that sword out and let you bleed to death.”

Tal’s eyes were cold as he met the dying Fallen One’s stare of horror. The man coughed, twice, then slowly spoke, “In the downstairs training room,” cough, “but he’s blocked. You’d have to fight them alone,” cough, “and you aren’t that strong…” the man’s speech faded into a paroxysm of coughing.

“I’m afraid you are still underestimating me, Fallen One.” A quick jerk brought the longsword out of the Chaos Mage’s stomach, along with a flow of blood. Tal looked at him with ice of frozen gold, then flashed fire from his hand – incinerating the man’s head and fulfilling his word.

A rag from the dead man’s cloak cleaned the dripping blood from the old blade as he wracked his memory to remember where the downstairs training room would be in one of these forts.

Death stalked the halls of the tiny fort. Tal’s face was frozen, completely focused on his magic and his sword. The blued Islander blade extended out in front of him, slowly waving from side to side to cover any approach.

The crash of a door opening sent Tal spinning around, his sword flashing up to touch the throat of the white-robed Life Mage who’d opened it. A blonde-haired young woman, she froze as the cold steel touched her flesh.