Extermination (Daniel Black Book 3) (44 page)

“A warding ring that can withstand dragon fire? Well, yes, actually. But it’s too small to fit on his fingers, so I’ll have to resize it.”

Now he was looming over me instead of Othvin. “Show me.”

I reached into my belt pouch, and made my earth talisman shape itself into a ring of polished obsidian sized to fit an elven finger. Then I took it out, and showed it to him.

He frowned at it. “It’s stone. Won’t it break?”

“It’s enchanted to be unbreakable,” I told him. “It won’t stand up to Thor’s hammer, but you could punch out a dragon while wearing it.”

He plucked it out of my hand, and tried to crush it between his fingers. The pressure put a surprisingly large load on the talisman’s structural reinforcement spell, but not nearly enough to break it.

“Huh.” He tossed the ring back to me. “Fix it.”

“Of course. Ah, it will take me a little time-”

“No tricks, you little shitstain. You sit down right there and fix it. I’ll wait.”

He folded his arms, and stood there glaring at me. Crap.

I wasn’t enthused about giving an enemy my earth talisman, even if it was replaceable. But if we wanted to avoid attention I’d have to play along for now. I took a seat next to the heating stone, and started pretending to enlarge the ring while actually putting a fire resistance spell on it. Fortunately that was a simple effect, and the talisman already had a power source and a good-size energy reserve. So it should hold up well enough to anything he might do to test it.

Then an ugly thought occurred to me. I added a little failsafe, just in case.

It was a little tricky, but I think I managed to make it look convincing. When it looked about the right size I had Korak try it on, and fiddled with minor adjustments until he was satisfied. Then he put it on, and picked up the heating stone.

“Huh. Doesn’t even feel hot,” he noted.

He looked at the stone in his hand for a moment, considering something. Then his lips slowly curled into an ugly smile.

“Finally, something that might get the job done. Rendall is going to flip his shit when he finds out he’s not the only one who can pull this off anymore. Fuck, this is gonna be great. You little fudge packers better not go anywhere, now. I’m going to go test this thing out. If it doesn’t work like it’s supposed to, I’ll be back.”

He walked away. The elves all watched him nervously until he disappeared around a corner. Then they turned questioning eyes my way.

“Were you really just randomly walking around with a device that can resist dragon fire?” Othvin asked.

I shrugged. “You never know when you might have to fight a dragon. It does a lot of other things too, so I’m not real happy about letting it go. If you’ll excuse me, I need to do something about making a replacement.”

In reality I was planning to steal it back, but I wasn’t going to say that out loud in Gaea’s realm. For all I knew she might be listening.

I finished the project I’d originally been working on, and then turned my attention to making a plausible-looking copy of the ‘ring’ I’d given Korak. An obsidian ring with a good-size power battery, fed by ambient mana. A fire resistance spell, a basic structural reinforcement, and a divination ward of the same design as the one I’d added to my talisman. Korak hadn’t seemed very perceptive, so that should make it look the same to whatever magical senses he might have. But unlike my earth talisman, this ring would quickly run out of power if it was used in a serious fight. Too bad I wouldn’t be able to see the look on his face when that happened.

Of course, I still had to figure out a way to make the switch. The link between the talisman and my control ring would let me find it anywhere, but sneaking into Gaea’s palace didn’t seem like a good idea. Maybe I could catch him out carousing in town, or something?

I looked up from my work to find Telvaris calmly watching me.

“It got dark a couple of hours ago,” he said. “Town’s getting pretty quiet now.”

“Good. I suppose I’ve done all I can here for now. Let me have another look at that map.”

I’d been amused to discover that Tavrin had a detailed map of this part of Skogheim, despite the fact that the andregi had no cartographers of their own and supposedly didn’t let visitors go wandering around. I probably could have done this mission without it, but it was handy to actually be able to see how the area around the gate was laid out.

The map arbitrarily designated one of the poles as North, with the other compass directions based around that. Ugrot was located in a wide stretch of tropical jungle, bounded by a mountain range several hundred miles to the west and an inland sea eighty miles to the east. More usefully, there was a major river than ran past both the town and the Halls of Slumber. That was the landmark I’d be using to find my way on what would hopefully be a short trip. But if I got completely lost I could always go east until I hit the coast, and then follow the river back up to town.

I’d wondered at first how a place like Skogheim could even have nights, but the answer was pretty straightforward. For ten hours out of every day the sun shrank into a tiny ball of fire, shedding only a dim glow across the landscape. The yellow light was a strange contrast to normal moonlight, but with elven night vision it should be more than enough to let me find my way.

Othvin was waiting when I emerged from the tent.

“How’d we do?” I asked.

“We’ll be ready to leave by midday tomorrow,” he assured me.

“That was fast.”

“These little deals don’t take much time to arrange. There are always some matriarchs looking for new jewelry, and word gets around fast when a party of elves comes to town. The andregi don’t do any mining of their own, so we’re their only source of the gems they like. I, ah, apologize about the ring business.”

I waved off his concern. “It’s not your fault. I’ll deal with it, one way or another. So, I’ve got the location, but what exactly does this place look like?”

“Watch for the magic,” he advised. “It’s unmistakable. Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

I took another look around, verifying again that there were no andregi watching us. The trees cast deep shadows all around us, but my new eyes could pierce the darkness just fine. We were alone.

I rose silently into the air.

It was a good thing I’d taken the time to figure out how to fly, because I’d never have been able to pull this off otherwise. I threaded my way between the branches of the trees that towered overhead, until I emerged into the somewhat brighter air above the forest canopy.

From there a sea of green stretched out in all directions as far as the eye could see. There was no horizon, of course. Instead, in the far distance the ground gradually curved up until it vanished in the haze of endless miles of air. Higher up, more distant lands emerged from the haze to form walls that seemed to merge into a dome high overhead.

That told me that Skogheim’s atmosphere was just like Earth’s, thinning with altitude until it finally faded to vacuum. Air isn’t perfectly transparent, and Skogheim was nearly two thousand miles in diameter. If there was air all the way up the far side would be invisible, and even the sun would probably just be an indistinct bright patch in the sky.

Not that the local astronomy meant much to me at the moment. I scanned the sky for air cavalry, and cautiously rose a few hundred feet when I didn’t find any. From there I could see the river I meant to follow.

I paused to cast a minor enchantment on the top of the nearest tree, basically just a marker so I’d be able to pick it out with my magic sight when I returned. Then I set out for the river.

There didn’t seem to be any air patrols, which I’d hoped would be the case since flying at night is suicide unless you’ve got some amazing night vision. But there could still be watchtowers, or detection wards, or even ground patrols in the wrong place at the wrong time. So I stayed down near the treetops, and kept a sharp eye on my surroundings.

It took about an hour to find the Halls of Slumber, and just as Othvin had said it was the magic I spotted first. As I’d expected by this point it wasn’t a conventional building at all, but rather a vast expanse of strangely mutated plants.

A dense hedge two stories tall surrounded the complex, and inside were wide expanses of odd-looking dwarf trees that grew in dense tangles much shorter than the surrounding jungle. There were a lot of those glowing gourds set up around the entrances to the complex and various parts of the interior, and hundreds of andregi on guard. Not to mention an army of several thousand encamped just outside, ready to respond to any disturbance.

That was fine, though. I didn’t need to fight the army, and the fact that the guards were all standing in bright light made it easy to sneak up on them. I carefully drifted closer, using the taller trees as cover just in case, until I had a decent view of the layout.

Beneath the thin branches of the dwarf trees there were hundreds of long, wandering paths. Lining each path were endless rows of big green pods glowing with magic. I studied the magic on them for a moment, thankful that my metamagic sorcery made it so easy to figure out enchantments just by looking at them.

Yeah, just like I’d thought. They were suspended animation pods. Each one held an andregi warrior in an enchanted sleep, kept alive by the twisted life magic coursing through the trees. It was a strange form of magic, and not very tightly woven either. Wisps of magic leaked out of the trees, forming a haze of distorted enchantment that could have all sorts of unpleasant effects on visitors who were careless enough to fall asleep.

There were wards over the whole place, too. I picked a vantage point near the edge of the warding dome, and spent a few minutes studying it.

Multiple detection wards, mostly focused on spotting humans and divination magic. Barriers to keep out fire, lightning and a variety of curses and attack spells. Several curses that would attach themselves to any human who entered the area, and a holy ground effect that would suppress the magic of any mage who wasn’t properly attuned to it.

Nothing to stop physical objects from flying over the area, though, and the holy ground effect was tied to physical contact with the earth inside the protected zone. Perfect. I’d hoped that would be the case, since sealing off the plants from natural rainfall would be both a major logistical hassle and a violation of Gaea’s whole back to nature philosophy.

I dropped a perfectly normal-looking pebble on the ground a decent distance back from the edge of the wards, and then backed off and began to circle around the edge of the perimeter.

That trip really drove home how enormous this place was. The hedge just went on and on, an endless wall of green dividing the tangled maze of suspended animation trees from the jungle outside. I kept track of my pace as well as I could, and dropped another pebble every half mile or so.

I passed a section of much bigger paths lined with huge pods, each big enough to hold a dinosaur. Cavalry, apparently. The trees were bigger there as well, and the magical leakage was denser. Strong enough to be dangerous even to waking people, if they lingered too long. Was that an extra layer of defense, or was Gaea just sloppy about her spell work?

I dropped a pebble, and went on.

I passed an area where the pods had been cut down from the trees, and torn open. Thousands of withered brown husks were strewn haphazardly across the paths, and here and there I saw a body lying among the refuse. Perhaps the suspended animation process wasn’t completely reliable?

I shrugged, and went on. Flitting carefully across the treetops, and dropping a marker pebble every so often. Good thing I could fly now, because this trip would have taken all day on foot.

Maybe more. I’d started with forty of those pebbles, but I was down to less than a dozen when I finally found myself back at my starting point in front of the main entrance. That was, what, a fourteen mile perimeter? Something like ten or twelve square miles covered in mutant plants, each of them bearing dozens of those pods.

I suppressed a shiver. This had better work, or we were going to end up buried in andregi. Even with the weapons I was building, Gaea could field an army big enough to overwhelm us whenever she wanted. I was guessing that logistics were the only reason she hadn’t already done that. Her sleeping warriors had only a few weeks’ worth of rations, and her people didn’t have the infrastructure to feed millions of active fighters for very long. But if she decided to send two hundred thousand troops to attack Kozalin instead of twenty thousand, the city would fall in a day.

Well, I wasn’t going to let that happen. The pebbles would serve to mark the boundaries of the target zone. Time to set up the rest of my little surprise.

I backed off again, retreating a mile or so from the edge of the warded area, and picked out a good vantage point to set up the most complex magical device I’d created to date. It didn’t look like much, just a stone cylinder a few inches long with a couple of bumps in the middle. Those bumps grew at my direction, wrapping around the branch I’d selected and holding the device securely in place.

Aside from that, it would do nothing at all until I moved far enough away to break the link between it and my control ring. That would arm it, but even then it would remain quiescent until the next time the light sensor I’d cobbled together detected a change from daylight to darkness.