Enchanter (Book 7) (78 page)

I found Gareth and Dara in the anteroom to my apartment, Dara curled up on the daybed and Gareth sprawled on the floor.  I looked at both of them, still dressed in court finery for the Conclave.  I hesitated to awaken them, especially Gareth.

But then I felt the presence of some element of the Celestial Mother, and I was compelled to act.

“Wake up!  Both of you!  We’re going back home.  Right now.”

They stumbled and stammered into consciousness, both of them confused about my motives and my direction.  But the useful thing about apprentices and retainers is that when you tell them what to do, they tend to do it. 

“Why the hurry, Master?” Dara asked, as she grabbed her things.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.  “I just . . . have a feeling.  A dream, maybe.  But I want to get home.  Now.”

“Intuition, Master?” Gareth asked as he slung his bag over his shoulder.  He looked bleary-eyed from all of the Waypoint travel he’d done.

“The gods are whispering to me, perhaps,” I shrugged.  “But I feel strongly enough about it to go.”

“Do you expect trouble?” Dara asked, worriedly, as she strapped Talon to her thigh.

“When is it wise not to expect trouble?” I pointed out.  I summoned Blizzard and Twilight to emphasize the point.  Gareth swallowed, his eyes wide, and pulled a warwand out of his belt.  At least I hope it was a warwand.  When they both nodded to me, I did the spell and we were away.

I was unsure of what might be triggering my unease, and uncertain of where to go.  I settled on the Waystone I’d placed on the mantle in the Great Hall as a good place to start.

At that time of night the hall was nearly deserted.  A few folk were sleeping on benches or on bedrolls on the floor, but there were not many, and they were undisturbed.  The guard on duty waved sleepily to me.  My men were used to such strange occurrences as three wizards appearing out of nowhere, by now.

“Any news . . . Emys?” I asked, remembering the man’s name.

“All is well, Magelord,” he assured me, curiously.  I nodded.

“Gareth, go check my tower.  Dara, check with the castellan.  See if anything unusual has happened while we’ve been gone.”

They both ran off to their duties, while I quietly walked outside, the great door held open by Emys.  I scanned the battlements and towers, looked around the bailey with magesight, but I saw nothing untoward.

Clearly the Celestial Mother was just screwing with me, I sighed, chiding myself.

And then I heard the scream.  Coming from my hall.

Chapter Thirty Six

Thieves In The Night

There is a certain feeling of cold doom that spawns in the pit of your stomach when you hear screams of alarm coming from the building you know your wife and children are in.  Everything stops.  All of their faces swim in front of you as you imagine them all in pain.  I started running toward the hall, which was missing a guard on the door, when I realized that the screaming wasn’t coming from a human throat.

That perplexed me, but my body was already in motion, adrenaline pumping my heart and righteous fury propelling my limbs.  I got to the door and tried to open it, but it was locked.  I tapped it with the base of Blizzard and the door blew back in its frame.  Using magesight I plunged into the gloomy darkness, summoning the spearpoint on my warstaff.

I reached the stairs and had to stop.  There was something in my way.  Indeed, it seemed as if every Tal Alon servant in the house was angrily trying to get upstairs.

That was confusing – ordinarily the Tal are docile, humble, or even obsequious.  Timid, even, although some individuals can be quite brave.

But I had never seen them like this.  Their lips were pulled back and their teeth were exposed, and they all emitted a kind of angry growl.  Their eyes were wide and not blinking, and their hair was standing up on end as they pushed to get up the stairs to my chamber.

I paused, despite my haste, because I simply could not get past the half-dozen servants in the way.  They poured up the stairs, growling and ignoring me, and I was forced to follow as quickly as I could.  As I finally entered the room where my wife and I slept, my magesight revealed a startling scene.

There was, indeed, an intruder, and from the size and how she moved I concluded that it was Lady Mask . . . and I felt an anger burn in me I have rarely felt.  But it wasn’t looking like I was going to get a chance to fight her.  The Tal were doing that for me. 

The diminutive warmage had retreated toward one side of the room and was trying to defend herself against the onslaught of the Tal, one of her short swords held up to ward them away while she hid her face from their snarling teeth and flailing arms.  The Tal were literally throwing themselves at her, teeth bared, their little hands turned into claws or fists.  They were doing a good job of avoiding her sword largely because she wasn’t using it well – she was too overwhelmed by the unexpected ferocity of the hairy, angry rodent-like creatures.

I pieced together the story, later.  Mask had disabled the guard right after his rounds, then scaled the exterior of the hall and slipped into our chamber through a window.  She had a sword in hand and murder in her heart as she approached my bed, intent on slaying Alya.

But as stealthy as she was, she couldn’t avoid her scent.  Daisy, our very-pregnant Tal maid, had been sleeping uneasily at the foot of the bed.  Alya had encouraged her, as she refused to stop coming to work and the distance back to Hollyburrow was great for such a rotund little creature.  So she made up a bed in our chamber where Alya could keep watch on her, and vice versa.

When Mask slipped through the window, her footsteps silenced by a spell, she had neglected to take a pregnant Tal Alon’s sense of smell into account.  Under ordinary circumstances the Tal have remarkable olfactory senses, as nasute as a bloodhound.  When they’re pregnant . . . Alya told me about Daisy smelling wild strawberries that had recently come into fruit . . . behind the castle.

She hadn’t been sleeping well, and when Mask brought a strange scent into the chamber, Daisy panicked.  She started keening a specialized cry that not only brought every Tal in the house running, it brought them running
mad.
 

But not just mad.  I’d observed a phenomenon in certain Alon, specifically the Alka and Karshak, of highly synchronized movement while working or in combat.  I’d never seen the same in the Tal, until that night.  When Daisy started keening all of the other Tal reacted by entering a kind of ferocious trance state, and then fighting off the intruder with the same level of coordination I’d seen with the Alka and Karshak.  Not really what I was expecting to see.

I took a moment to check on Alya and the children.  To my immense relief all three were still asleep, which seemed outrageous, considering the din – and then I detected the residue of a soporific spell.  Mask’s charm must have only affected humans, I reasoned, not the Tal.  I was in time, and thankful.  At least they wouldn’t witness what I was about to do.

The Tal had surrounded Mask, now, too close for her to use her sword to any good effect.  Their claws and fists and teeth were nipping at her relentlessly, and the keening and the united growl of purposeful action had to be difficult distractions.  Her one advantage in the unequal contest was the relatively light impact of the Tal’s small hands.  They landed with precision, but against her light armor they did little to harm her. 

Except for the largest Tal, a drudge named Nummet, who had grabbed stool in his fervor.  He made the contest a lot more interesting when a lucky swing connected with Mask’s wrist and sent her sword flying.

It was time to intervene.  I laid a spell I had hung within Blizzard, a mild concussive display designed to get the attention of troops in battle or crowds at the Fair.  The light and noise of the spell decisively stopped the encounter.  The Tal went sprawling, unharmed, and Mask was blown back against the wall.

I followed with a tremendously bright magelight behind my head that instantly bathed the room in white light.  I pointed Blizzard’s sharp spearpoint at the warmage and took three steps to close the distance between us.

“This was a poor idea,” I said in a growl, as I kicked her sword under my bed.  “Haven’t you learned by now?  You had a poor showing attacking me in another’s keep.  Did you really expect to have better luck attacking me in my own?”

“Damn you!” she said, her eyes above her mask filled with loathing.  “You were supposed to be in Castabriel!”

“I’m exactly where I needed to be,” I countered, evenly.  “Do you yield?” I asked, Blizzard two feet from her throat.

“You know, you haven’t won,” she said, as she heaved for breath after her skirmish.  The Tal were starting to come to their senses around us.  “In fact, you’re doing just what you’re supposed to be doing!”

“Killing you?” I asked, moving another six inches closer.

“You flatter yourself,” she snorted.  “Is this not the third time you’ve thought you were doing so?  I’m harder to kill than you think!”

“I really haven’t put the effort into it,” I said, moving another six inches closer.  “I’m thinking about taking the matter more seriously.  Breaking into my home crosses a line.”

“You ruined my home,” she reminded me, accusingly.

“A fair point,” I conceded.  “So if we are at war, then there should be no question of me slaying you in defense of the attack.”

“If this was an actual attack,” she said, slyly, “that might be reasonable.  But it’s not.  It’s a distraction.”

That caught me short.  At that moment, Dara’s voice burst into my head, full of panic.

Master, someone’s attacking your tower!
She screamed. 
Gareth is fighting them, but he’s way overmatched!

A distraction.
  Threatening my family, occupying my attention, leaving my tower unprotected.  I felt like a novice playing rushes for the first time.  The realization was profound, but it worked against me tactically.  Mask used the chance of Dara’s message to hold out her hand and summon her sword.  Knot coral in the hilt, no doubt.  It flew across the room and unerringly into her palm.  She completed the move by throwing a vicious strike at me I barely caught on the blade of my spear to avoid it taking off my nose.

Then I was very busy, as Mask slashed that delicate, deadly little blade at me with the speed and ferocity only possible with warmagic.  I cast my own augmentation to compensate.  Then we were dueling, short sword on spear, as fast as we both could in the space of the chamber.

She was wickedly good, using her small mageblade with dexterity and discipline.  She did her best to close quickly and get within the range of my spearpoint, a sensible precaution for one armed with a single weapon against a pole arm. 

But Blizzard wasn’t merely a spear – it was the most advanced magical weapon I’d ever created.  It was time to show Mask just how far I had pushed the state of warmagic enchantment.

As she closed I pivoted back into range and added a double cantrip – while one made a small pop and distracting flash, the other changed the coefficient of friction on a spot in the floor about two feet wide.  I could see the area in magesight, but it was unlikely Mask would notice.  She didn’t.  The heel of her right foot landed in the snare and it jerked her out of position.

I swung the butt of Blizzard up sharply and rapped her elbow, hard.  She nearly dropped her sword again, and was forced to do a summersault roll over the dizzy Tal to keep from going down.  It kept her on her feet, but it also kept her at comfortable range for Blizzard.  I followed her roll with a sonic blast that forced her back two steps further . . . but apparently she was warded against such things.  It didn’t do near the damage I’d intended.

Mask managed to fling something at me with her left arm.  As I was augmented, I caught her precursor movements and was prepared.  It proved to be a small sphere of thin thaumaturgical glass that I suspected would have done me great harm.  I used a repulsion spell to send it smashing harmlessly against a pillar.  A quick concussion from her mageblade followed, and I was able to mostly avoid it, but it did take me back a few steps out of physical range of the foe.

By this time the Tal had awoken from their frenzied state and were now flinging themselves out of the way of the magical battle that was developing.  A thin stream of blue fire raged over their heads as Mask tried to close again.  I countered with a harmless flash of light followed by a counterspell designed to knock her out of her augmented state. 

She wasn’t expecting that.  Suddenly she was moving as slowly as the Tal, and I was still at speed.  Closing with her was a simple matter then.  Two steps and I was looming over her.  I considered just blasting her out of existence, but using such potent magic in my bedroom where my family slept was just too risky.  I wanted her dead.  But there was still too much advantage in taking her alive.

I settled for a powerful sedative charm that should keep her out for hours.  Only when her head slumped forward did I breathe a premature sigh of relief.  I glanced over to where Daisy was cowering in my bed over Alya. 

“Is she okay?”  I asked.  “The babies?”

Daisy stared at me wide-eyed, then checked all three faster than I thought her little body could waddle.  She nodded to me, eyes still wide with fear and shock.  I nodded back.  Then I woke up my court wizard.