To Be Grand Maestro (Book 5) (3 page)

The negative reports mounted up until the next event made them pale in significance. The life force energy in the amulet within Vance’s array linked to Brockhouse’s mind suddenly ceased to exist, and there was only one way for that to happen; the commander of Serpent West must have died.

“No!” Othello Sherman and Sera Cray both shouted at the same time.

“I’ve lost communications with every associate in my array,” she stated out loud for all to hear.

The battle was not going at all the way Vance expected and cracks in the demeanor of the team leaders around him like Blassoff, Cray, and Baler did not improve the situation.

“So have I, at least the half that is on Shantear,” Sherman added.

All of the other operations commanders reported the same information and all of them were staring at Vance with widened eyes as if unsure of what to do. “Are they all dead?” he had to ask in order to break the sudden stupor. This was turning into a catastrophe.

“Most are, but some of them seem to be asleep,” Othello answered while rubbing his pointed chin as if the motion would stimulate his thinking.

“My invisible observers are also asleep,” Sera confirmed, with her eyes blinking rapidly.

“Even my shielded associates have been overwhelmed by the spell,” Craggy- faced Commander Sancarn Bur added his report to the others.

“Benhannon must have somehow overcome the Symphonic Shield and gained control of the Great Crystal,” Rex Badger, all the way from Serpent East, added his opinion. “The seven-bolt Accomplished is capable of casting a sleep spell powerful enough to overwhelm most any shields the rest of us could summon.”

And he would know, having once been within the focal point of such a spell, as were all who survived the destruction of Serpent Central; the location of the now famous duel between the late and lamented Maestro Balen Tamm and Daniel Benhannon.

Vance had the uncomfortable feeling his second-in-command’s assessment could be correct. He focused on the room full of commanders. “Each of you send another thou..,” he began to say when harmonic waves washed through the world.

“I feel it all the way on this side of the continent,” Rex sent his thought. “There could be two, maybe three Grand Symphonies being focused through the Great Crystal.”

Half a mark crept by and Vance continued to order his forces to Shantear and even so, by all reports, not a single guild member remained alive at Serpent West. Refusing to admit defeat, he ordered still another team into battle.

“Maestro, this is Emit Bryson, a High Powered spell about as wide as a mountain has just washed over us and is being focused toward the Supreme Maestro. What are your orders?” the commander of the guild forces stationed in the vicinity of Mount Kelgotha sent.

It only took a moment for Vance to organize his thoughts, which was a wonder considering the worst case scenario seemed to be happening. “Teleport with all of your associates to Shantear, Benhannon must be stopped,” he replied. An additional five thousand Aakacarns would certainly help, he hoped.

Time marched on and the harmonic waves cut off abruptly, yet the vibration in the mind continued for a bit longer while Vance made the mental adjustment. No one alive had ever experienced such an intense ripple effect or for so long of a duration. It must have rattled the teeth of every living thing in the world.

“Maestro Cummin, this is Serena Lowell. The Supreme Maestro has ordered me to give you a message,” the Most Favored guild member sent.

“I am eager to receive your words,” Vance replied through the link she established by the amulet he had given to her many months ago. None of the ones created by her were currently within his array.

“Tarin Conn has instructed me to tell you, ‘Daniel Benhannon has succeeded in establishing a shield on me of his own making.’ The Great One also says, ‘I will soon find a way to overcome this new barrier to my potential. Shantear is lost for now and you are to cease sending teams,” Serena calmly sent. “Vance, if you doubt the validity of what I say you can cast a sleep spell upon yourself and ask the Supreme Maestro in person.”

Vance actually welcomed the order to stand down. He doubted even Serena would have the audacity to deliver such a message if it was untrue. With the Supreme Maestro’s acknowledgement of the loss of Serpent West, there was no point in sending any more associates to fight a lost cause. Nearly thirty-one thousand, one fifth of the entire guild, were now dead, and Vance had no desire to report the huge loss just yet. Clearly he had underestimated his opponent. The spells employed by Benhannon’s guild in the attack certainly proved to be lethal, even in the face of overwhelming numbers in opposition. Vance decided to acknowledge the order without elaborating. “I am sure the great Tarin Conn will enter my dreams and confirm the order when next I sleep, even so the command to stand down will go out immediately.”

Serena’s link to his mind cut off and Vance issued the orders through the operations commanders and also decided it was time to reactivate his hidden forces within the kingdom of Ducaun, each unit with the chief goal of finding ways to make Daniel and his Atlantan Guild suffer for what happened today. Pay they would, but when vengeance could be served up methodically, cold and painful, the way Vance preferred to dish out retribution.

-----

Deep within the crystal-lined vault beneath Mount Kelgotha, Tarin Conn, six and a half cubits from head to toe, lay stretched out on a marble slab, his bed for slightly over one thousand years. The countless crystals embedded in the ten cubits by ten cubits square granite container prevented all but a trickle of the life force energy at his command from affecting the outside world. That trickle, among other things, allowed him to form links to the minds of all who visited his mountain, the primary way he communicated with his followers whenever they slept, no matter how far they traveled after the connections were initially made. Through them he gained knowledge of events occurring on the surface world. He recently composed a new Melody, Ties That Bind, to allow him to visit the minds of people awake or asleep. To date he had only cast it on Serena and her inner circle but he would eventually increase his ties to others, the most eminent of which will be Vance Cummin, who would rightly see it as an honor.

The spell, Nourishment, constantly repeating due to a Da Capo tied to his life force, provided all of the sustenance Tarin needed in order to stay alive. The moisture drawn from his body whenever he summoned the potential to focus his melodious spells, particularly the one he used to batter against the spell keeping him immobilized, came from his surroundings and created, over many centuries, the desert around Kelgotha. The same spell oxygenated his blood and provided nutrients to keep his body healthy. The spell, Flex, stimulated his muscles periodically, preserving them from atrophy, and keeping him physically fit. The spell, Ageless, kept him young and only needed to be cast once every century, unlike the age retarding spell used in Aakadon that needed to be cast annually. These were but three among the many spells he composed over the course of his extraordinarily long life, yet they were the reason for his incredible longevity.

He opened his eyes even though the only sight, as always, was his own reflection in the mirror directly above him. The glow of his potential provided more than enough light to see by. His thick black hair and neatly trimmed mustache were virtually unchanged since the day he was spelled to sleep, at the age of two hundred, and later woke up to this place that has been his prison for over a millennium. He lay clothed in a black silk shirt and pants with gold trim and black boots that had never lost their polish.

He recently added the fifteenth golden lightning bolt on his left shoulder to match the fifteen on his right, thus displaying his rank as a Thirty-bolt Accomplished, not that there was anyone in the vicinity to see or appreciate his high status. The light brown skin of his Serinian birth had faded due to him having been deprived of sunshine for so long a time and he could now almost pass for a Ducaunan, a condition that would change once his pigment was again exposed to the radiant orb. This of course was not the image he created in the sleeping minds of his hosts. His audiences with them were always in a more formal setting, with him seated in royal splendor fit for a god; the exception being some of his more recent visits with Serena Lowell, who was a special case.

His mind wandered to the thirty-six crystalline gems under his skin that prevented him from teleporting. The melodious spell in each stone, powered by thirty bolts of potential, would rip his body apart if he tried to transport himself elsewhere. He hoped his personal potential was finally now more than a match for the spells constraining him. If so, it was only a matter of concentrating all of his life force energy at each spell until, one by one, they would collapse. He first needed to overpower the immobilization spell, it being the easiest. The Melody was just as powerful as those in the gems, but did not require the simultaneous healing he would have to perform while disintegrating and removing each stone.

It was nearing the middle of the night, not that he could actually sense the time physically; he knew this by the quantity of sleeping minds linked to him. He just finished his schedule of visitations, most of which his slumbering hosts knew about while others of them would wake up never knowing they had been visited. This method allowed him to receive reports and then later peruse individual dreams in order to learn their secret desires, and determine how much each person could be trusted. In many ways survival of the fittest was the general rule under which he ran his guild, which meant he needed to keep tabs on those who were only serving him out of fear or greed, and those who were actually loyal to him. He could make use of them all but would only advance the careers of those who revered him.

He knew of the guild teams from Aakadon and their goal of reaching Shantear and strengthening the spells constraining him. The face in the mirror above frowned back at him. He was so close to breaking free, within a day, maybe within the mark, yet now there was a real possibility of failure, a major setback at the least. If Daniel had not interfered, Reese and his teams would still be well east of the Tollus River, deep in the kingdom of Ducaun, with more than four hundred spans to cover before reaching his goal, and the mission would have had zero probability of success. The Maestro of the Eagle Guild should have arrested Daniel, not sought his help! Tarin rarely admitted to making a mistake, but teaching the spell, Teleportation, to the young Aakasear had him on the verge of making such admittance. The young man had a gift for taking Tarin’s own compositions and using them against him. He had a grudging pride in how well his counterpart used the knowledge, yet would not allow that minimal emotion to stop him from crushing the young man. The battle for control of the mountain would happen soon and hopefully put an end to the troublesome spell-caster.

All of his Accomplisheds involved in the defense of Serpent West were wide awake, so Tarin would have to wait until the conclusion before any of them, primarily Vance, would spell themselves to sleep, and be available to give a report. Rather than spend time wondering what was happening on the other side of the continent, it seemed prudent to work on overpowering the immobilization spell. The Melody, Free Me, played in Tarin’s mind, summoning the potential, and he focused it at the offending spell. It took slightly under a minute to project all of his thirty bolts and he smiled, knowing every living being in the world could feel the harmonic ripples and were no doubt trembling in their beds. He ceased the spell after it became apparent he did not yet have the strength to break free, but it was close, oh, so close.

A short time passed, Tarin could feel mental links vanishing from his mind and knew each absence meant some of his Aakacarns were dead with more dying by the moment. The battle for Shantear had just begun. Scores, then hundreds, and a few minutes more, over a thousand links were gone. Clearly the battle was not going well for his guild and the proof came when he felt the first outer pulse of a harmonic ripple. The powerful wave was soon followed by another and Tarin could sense by the shortening space between each successive ripple that a major spell originated from the southwest and was heading in his direction.

After about half a mark transpired, tens of thousands were dead and the Grand Symphonies, he sensed two, enveloped his prison. It took only a few minutes more for the spells to seep in through the miniscule flaws in the settings between the crystals.
Which Maestro was conducting, Daniel Benhannon or Talmon Reese?
The answer did not matter as much as whether or not the potential in the gems and immobilization spell were about to be increased. There was still time. Tarin knew well the same properties that allowed him to send only a trickle of his vast potential out into the world also kept those Symphonic spells from striking him with their full potential.

Tarin summoned and focused all of his life force energy into overpowering the immobilization spell, hoping to break free before it could be strengthened. Something slammed into the top of his vault and by the sound, shattered on impact. The conductor of the symphonies must have figured out he needed to break through the vault in order to strengthen the spells. Tarin summoned a fist of potential, diverting a little from his effort to rip apart the spell holding him, in order to fend off whatever penetrated the ceiling, while also maintaining his assault on the immobilization spell.

A narrow-pointed shaft of granite broke through the mirror, lancing toward Tarin’s chest. He slammed the fist of potential at the skewer, knocking it aside with ease. A topaz blue glow around the shaft not only indicated it was shielded by a spell, it also revealed the caster. He was intimately familiar with the owner of that particular hue; Daniel Benhannon was conducting the Symphonies. Even with the amplifying properties of the Crystal Chamber and the aid of a small number of Aakacarn associates, it was surprising the young Aakasear could maintain that much potential for over half a mark. The drain on his life force energy must be enormous, even if the reports of him gaining a seventh lightning bolt proved to be accurate.