Secrets of Arkana Fortress (43 page)

              ‘It helps concentrate the magical incantation I’m about to use on it.’

              ‘And then what’ll happen?’

              Byde huffed and raised an eyebrow at his friend. ‘Ever heard of patience being a virtue?’

              ‘Sorry… I’m just anxious is all.’

              ‘I understand, but I need you to stay quiet now.’ Byde cracked each one of his knuckles in turn and smoothed his long hair back from his face. A brief pause followed.  Yet again Byde’s lips moved from words unknown to Mikos. He would have loved to have known what was being said.

              Minutes of soft, ancient language passed.

              The shrine was now changing; not physically, but magically. The pale light around it grew dense and started to develop what seemed like some form of mythical sentience. The sudden presence touched them both, their minds flickering with images of secrets long buried; of magic powers lost in the depths of time, and of the souls of innocent people left to be tormented in the living world.

              ‘And… what do you call this then?’ asked Mikos, staring at the walls as they flashed with words lost to him. He had never seen such a language before, regardless of how much he had studied all those books, scrolls, and parchments over the years.

              Byde breathed heavily, leaning both hands on his knees. Whatever he had done to activate the old caster shrine had taken a lot from him, made him weaker. ‘It’s… an old language used by… the casters,’ he panted, desperately trying to regain some strength. ‘Does anything look familiar to you? Sometimes your magic can link to it if you’re not sure on how to read it. It’s how I learned to read it.’

              Mikos looked at the words again, this time with more intensity. He racked his mind for an echo of understanding; strained his eyes for a distant recollection, but found nothing familiar. With a sigh he shook his head, defeated. His natural curiosity for new information had been let down.

              ‘Don’t recognise a thing. Nothing’s speaking to me, or anything weird like that either.’ He looked around again, this time focusing on the shrine. ‘I hope it’ll come to me.’

              With a small chuckle Byde nodded reassuringly. ‘It should do. As I said, it’s how I learned it originally.’

              ‘Is… whatever you’re going to do going to work?’ asked Mikos, changing the subject.

              ‘Well as I said, the shrines were all linked. What they could also do was map sources of extreme magical power no matter what sort it was. If there’s a powerful magic at work in Salarias, then I’m hoping there’s enough energy left in this shrine to help us find out where its focal point is.’

              This all sounded intriguing to Mikos… up to a point that was. He had a sufficient lack of understanding about how magic worked in the various ways that it did. He knew the fundamentals about it like everyone else did – magical people had a section of their body that was the central source of their abilities. With Byde, he had noticed, it was his blood. Most people with magic tended to have things like feet, hands, eyes, or arms as their sources; however, there were the rare ones such as organs of the body like the heart, kidneys, and lungs. People who had the use of rarer parts of their bodies tended to be much more powerful as they could tap into higher reserves of bodily energy to fuel the magic.

              ‘Where’s the source of my magic?’

              Byde blinked to himself rapidly out of confusion. ‘Where’d that question suddenly come from?’

              ‘I was just thinking about yours, and I suddenly wondered where mine was.’

              ‘I thought it would’ve been obvious, Mikos.’ Byde concentrated on activating the magic in the shrine.

              ‘Obvious to who, exactly? Every human, feline, and Bullwark?’

              ‘Come on, Mikos, you’re a clever man with a powerful mind.’ Byde smirked to himself, his back still turned.

              ‘Are you…’ It dawned on him. ‘My mind? Isn’t that kind of… unheard of?’

              ‘Not exactly. There are some people about with magical minds. Could you let me do this, already?’ A low grumble came from his mouth as he recited something. ‘Here we go.’ He took a stuttering step back as the shrine roared with a series of colourful lights that shot upwards to the ceiling then outwards, surrounding them with twisters of magic. ‘Look at that.’ He pointed.

              Mikos froze on the spot, his face full of wonder and awe at the magical projection of Salarias on the wall. ‘The map’s different, not by much, but it’s different.’

              ‘Well pardon us for not updating the thing. We’ve been gone for a while, remember?’

              ‘Sorry.’

              ‘The location of the powerful magic source will be the same.’ He stopped as the map changed colour from a light blue-green to a patchy blackened red. ‘There,’ he pointed. ‘To the east of Donnol; that island.’

              Mikos strained his eyes to see past the patches. ‘What is that island?’

              ‘I’ve… no idea,’ Byde admitted. ‘But it’s where we need to go.’

***

‘Vicana? Vicana!’ Blaigen was a picture of pure rage, tossing his arms up into the air like a rag doll. ‘We have a problem, and quite a big one.’

              Vicana sniffed the alchemic odours in her room and put a couple of vials down on the table top. ‘What is it now?’ she asked, tired.

              ‘Do you ever stop playing with those damn things? You have magic for a reason… just dispense with that alchemy shit already.’

              This got her back up, as it always did when someone attacked her interest in the dark arts. ‘I do it to relax, OK?’

              Blaigen rolled his eyes, his pristine face wrinkling at the edges. ‘Well, whatever… something else has come up.’

              ‘The mages gone awry or something? Keeled over dead?’

              ‘Don’t be stupid, woman. That caster we sent the Faceless agent after… he’s fucking alive! Still living.’

              Vicana stood up straight. ‘What? It reported that it killed him
and
his companion.’

              ‘I know that! I don’t get how that Byde character could’ve come back from the dead. His water magic isn’t enough to kill a Faceless, so what the fuck’s going on?’

              ‘That’s a good question.’ She picked up her staff from the side of her bed and marched with Blaigen into the main hall. ‘How did you find this out anyway?’ she asked.

              ‘The spire picked up a caster shrine being activated on an island in the northern seas – we’re lucky that thing goes wild when it gets touched by other magic. It can only be that Byde doing this. I suspect he’s trying to find out where we are.’

              ‘Well the spire is a big magical giveaway. I heard those shrines can pinpoint sources of extreme magic, but I thought we took care of them all?’

              ‘This one was very well hidden from our agent.’

              ‘Where is he at the moment?’

              Blaigen ground his teeth, his body seething. ‘He’s still hunting that Lupian tome that was taken to Traseken. The people who had it slipped through his damn fingers, but he’s back on the trail.’

              ‘So… what the hell do we do about this Byde character?’ Vicana tapped her staff onto the floor thoughtfully.

              Blaigen breathed out steadily. ‘Have you ever ridden the shroud?’

              Vicana angled her head at him. ‘You what?’

              ‘Ah, that’s OK then,’ he leered. ‘Just stand next to me and close your eyes.’

              Regardless of how little she trusted him, she went to his side and shut her eyes. There was a momentary boom of thunder and all she felt was lightness as if she was full of air.

***

‘Now what are we going to do?’ Mikos asked uncertainly, a void in his chest. All he had seen was a misted up map, and had heard nothing except Byde’s reassurances since finding it. He wanted to know what the next course of action was in order to save his own mind, let alone the rest of the people in Salrias.

              Byde pushed a curtain of giant leaves aside. His mouth was a fine line, as if troubles did nothing but plague him. ‘We need to work that out.’ After the shrine’s powers had dissipated the cave had vanished, leaving them in the middle of the forest once more. Byde had been glad that Mikos had not asked the stupid question as to what had happened to the cave and accepted that the mystifying things occurring around them were just unexplainable, even for a caster of his experiences.

              The forest was still inactive; only the disturbances the pair made in the undergrowth rippled through the distilled air. Mikos felt like a monkey being submerged in so much greenery; all he needed was a banana or two, or maybe to start searching Byde’s scalp for nits. He decided against that course of action… his friend had too much hair.

              ‘Do you hear that?’

              Byde stopped and shifted his head to one side. ‘Hear what?’

              Mikos raised a hand to quiet him then held up his forefinger to indicate him to focus. A soft rustling could be heard, slowly growing louder. The pair of them, suddenly on edge, scanned their surroundings for what they both hoped was just another wolf.

              Nothing.

              ‘What the…? Someone else is here.’ Byde was now on full alert, adrenaline rapidly pumping through his body. No one other than a caster, or a magically powerful individual, could venture this far into the area encasing the shrine… and seeing they were the only casters left it could only mean one thing. That one thing was squashing Byde’s stomach into a virtual pancake.

              Mikos instinctively went for his sword, but remembered that he had left it in Donnol. He glanced around, searching for a heavy branch or something similar. ‘Who else could be here?’

              ‘Nobody on our side; I expect we gave away our location when we activated the shrine.’

              ‘You what? Why didn’t you mention that we could’ve been found when using that bloody thing?’

              Byde’s mouth twitched at the sides. ‘I didn’t think it would actually happen. I wasn’t sure whether or not it was possible to find our location anyway.’

              ‘Wasn’t sure? Or forgot?’

              He bit his tongue out of embarrassment.

              Mikos groaned. ‘Brilliant… I hope you’re going to do all the magic because I’m still in the stage of ‘
How the fuck do I use mine?
’ You realise that don’t you?’

              Byde leaned towards him and spoke in a firm whisper. ‘When you’re faced with your enemy you have to will your magic to come forth.’

              ‘How?’

              ‘However you did it back in that alleyway.’

              ‘I can’t remember how I did it – it just… happened.’

              ‘Try and recall how you felt when it happened.’

              ‘What? Shit scared? That’s easy.’

              Byde shot Mikos a stony look. ‘Then we’ll be fine.’

              The movements grew closer and closer.

              ‘Announce yourself,’ Byde ordered aloud, masking the tension in his voice.

              Two strong trees parted to their left, moved by magic.

              They both stood still as a slender woman with shoulder length white hair and a gnarled staff in her hand glided through, the glint of purple in her eyes. She smiled at them both and banged her staff on the ground, creating a magical echo. ‘I’m sorry.’

              ‘Sorry for what?’ asked Mikos stupidly. He got his answer when a ball of energy collided with his back. He flew forward like an avalanche, tumbling onto his front.

              ‘I believe you got your answer,’ a second voice said, this time from the right.

              Byde whipped his head around to see a tall man, also with white hair, with an even bigger smile on his face. ‘You must be… Byde, the caster,’ he said with a deep, threatening laugh.

              ‘And what if I am?’ He looked at Mikos, now unconscious, and cursed in his head.

              ‘You’re a troublesome little shit, aren’t you?’ the man growled. His entire body surged, eyes aglow with a piercing magic that destroyed any hope within its wake.

              Byde’s breathing grew stinted as he prepared for the inevitable confrontation. ‘I do what I must, stranger.’

              ‘It’s
Lord
Blaigen.’ He bowed mockingly. ‘Not a complete pleasure to make your acquaintance.’

              ‘Likewise.’ Byde’s veins pulsed not only with his magic, but a considerable amount of loathing.

              ‘My lord, we’re not here for a chat,’ the woman said in a fatigued tone.

              ‘Vicana, you fail to understand the dance that is happening right now,’ Blaigen chuckled. ‘It’s a necessary part of the byplay in situations like this.’