Into The Ruins (77 page)

“Indeed it was,” Rigo agreed.  “I had a feeling you might still be out there, and if word somehow leaked of this ceremony, you would be unable to resist.  It was a risk, but a small one.”  Rigo pointed behind the former Guild leader, and she saw that several wizards were arranged, no longer hidden by magic spells.  Climbing down out of a pair of trees some thirty paces away were Daria and Kaler, armed with the bows.  They had been well hidden, but had a clear shot at the participants in the ruse.  The exact location the group had stopped to talk had been carefully chosen.

“You did this to me,” Carif hissed, when Daria approached.

Daria met the dying woman’s eyes and said, “I’m glad you’ve been able to hang on and enjoy it as long as you have.  I guess you have only a short time left.  Just enough for a Reading to be performed so we can learn about who is left of your little group.”

Carif was led away to her fate.  Rigo turned to Mitty.  “Are you ready to do this for real?” he asked.

Mitty beamed at him.  She had insisted she be part of the trap.  Rigo had wanted it to be simply Lyes and Nycoh using illusions to pretend to be himself and Queen Rosul, but Mitty hadn’t believed it would look real.  Given her strong will, Rigo had been forced to agree.  Daria and Kaler had been in place to ensure her safety.  She nodded happily, and they walked back to tell the others.  Moments later a
Bypass
was opened back into Nals where the Queen waited with the real ceremony that was planned for that evening.  With Carif finally in their hands, it would be more of a celebration than ever.

The Reading performed on Carif revealed that three other Casters and Shym were still at large.  All had elected to follow their own path, and had deserted Carif some weeks before.  She had no idea where they had gone, and was willing to reveal their existence as revenge for their desertion.  Shym had indicated it was over and wanted to die on her own terms.  The other Casters had simply disappeared.  None of them were as powerful as any of the Eight, and the Reading revealed none of them had one of the amulets that would allow them to cross the Ruins.  Mande had been the source of those, and she and Ensay had worn the only ones that remained.  They recovered the one that Daim had made and used as a pattern by the rebel Casters from around the neck of Carif. 

Other matters Carif was less willing to reveal to them.  Despite the ravages of the poison, she remained stubborn and determinedly resisted their efforts.  Twice they had to use westerner healers to prevent her from dying.  She fought giving up the secret trigger for the green beams, knowing they desperately wanted the knowledge.  In the end, her stubbornness, and her weakened body, defeated their efforts.  She died before the knowledge could be extracted from her.

At least it was over.  The attacks and terror that the former head of the Guild had unleashed was now a thing of the past.  They could all sleep peacefully now.

Rigo was startled from his sound sleep by Mitty’s loud yell.  He woke wondering where he was and what she had said.  The fear was clear in his memory, but the word was lost.  He glanced over at her and saw her staring with wide-open eyes toward the other end of the room.  Quickly he looked in the same direction, expecting to see whatever had frightened her.  Whatever she was seeing wasn’t in the room with them.

Mitty?” he asked worriedly.  He reached to comfort her, assuming the dream had returned again.

“Baldari,” she whispered, the softness of her voice conflicting with the image the single word brought to mind.

“Baldari?” he asked.  Everyone had been a little surprised that the Baldari had disappeared for so long.  He wouldn’t be surprised that they would reappear one of these days.  It was a bit of unfinished business that faced Sedfair.  Then it dawned on him.  Mitty was telling him what she was seeing.  She was revealing one of her dreams.  An attack by the Baldari was coming.

“When?” he asked.  “Where?  Somewhere along the southern border?”  If Mitty could tell them where they would attack, the military could be in place and prepared to face them.  That would significantly cut the losses.

Mitty shook her head violently back and forth.  “You don’t understand.  They are attacking right now.  They are destroying a monastery, killing everyone.”  She gasped as if something particularly horrible had just been witnessed.

Rigo wrapped his arms around her.  He tried to soothe her as best he could.  “Now?” he asked.  Rigo believed Mitty was some kind of Seer, much like Queen Mos’pera.  Seer’s didn’t see current events, but caught images of what was to be.  Mitty must be mistaken.

“Has something changed?” he inquired, wanting at the moment only to distract her from her vision.  They could discuss when and where this was to happen later.  “Did something make you realize you can now share what you are seeing?”

Mitty stared at him, her light brown eyes wide with the horrors she had been witnessing.  She shook her head to indicate that hadn’t happened.  “I don’t care,” she said.  “This cannot be allowed to continue.  People are dying, and many more will unless something is done to stop them.  More than a thousand of the Baldari crossed the border on their strange mounts.  They are headed for Roin.”

It took Rigo a moment for Mitty’s words to sink in.  “Roin is in Kellmore,” he said finally.  “It is their southern port city.  The Baldari don’t attack the Three Kingdoms.”

Mitty nodded at his understanding of the situation.  “They do now.  They were moving along the southern border when they came upon the monastery.”

A chill ran up Rigo’s spine.  The Baldari had never struck within the Three Kingdoms before.  Somehow they had become aware of the existence of the western lands.  Perhaps they saw it as an easier target than Sedfair which had resisted their attacks for years.  Perhaps they had become aware of the difference in magic between the two lands, and hoped they could find what they sought in the west.  He turned to Mitty.  “Can you describe this monastery?”

She had only begun to describe the place before Rigo knew the truth of it.  It was Ald-del.  The monastery which he had visited so long ago and to which Kaler’s brother had once belonged. 

“We’ll have to warn them,” Rigo said, preparing to get out of bed.  “When will this happen?  Do you have any idea?”

Mitty looked at him sadly.  “There is no one to warn.  It is too late.  There is no one left alive there any longer.”

The look Mitty gave him made Rigo suddenly understand that it really was something she believed was happening now.  “Get dressed,” he said.  “We have to inform the Outpost.  The Baldari will have to be found and stopped.”

*                            *                            *                            *                            *

They waited on top of the hills, watching as the riders approached from the east.  Daim, Nycoh, Jeen, Ash’urn, Rigo, Burke, and more than thirty other wizards.  No one had survived in Ald-del.  They had gone and checked.  Mitty’s vision had been true.  No magic had been used, but that hadn’t saved the inhabitants of the order.  They had been slaughtered to a man, and what could burn, had been burned.  Even stone walls had been cracked and torn down in places.  How the Baldari had managed it so quickly wasn’t known.

“How did they get here?” Daim asked.  “Southern Lopal isn’t the most populated part of the kingdom, but with the Hoplani watch there are sufficient guardsmen that some sign of the Baldari should have been discovered before this.”

“They came up the Great Central River,” Mitty said.

“That’s impossible,” Ash’urn said.  “The river is fast and deep at that point, and flows to the south with a current that one could not overcome.  I studied it myself for years when I contemplated searching to the south of the great mountains.”

“That is how they came,” Mitty said with certainty.  Something in her voice made the others understand she was right, even if they couldn’t envision a means by which they had come.

“Here they come,” Burke said, bringing the conversation to an end.  The Baldari were almost to the point at which the attack would begin.

They had chosen the location for the bunching up of the invaders that would be inevitable.  The hills provided protection against any counterattack, and the Baldari were in the open.  Fields of fire had been established so that each could unleash his magic without fear of endangering another.  The Baldari would be caught in a crossfire that would be impossible to escape.

Rigo held his breath as the Baldari moved closer to the point where the hidden wizards would begin the assault.  They moved quickly, yet it seemed forever before the first of the small riders crossed the trigger point.

Immediately, the first beams of
Brightfire
lashed out.  Five, then ten, then more than twenty.  Sheets of swirling fire followed, and from across the way, Burke released dozens of balls of targeted and concentrated fire magic.  Rigo had seen the Baldari before, and he knew that they were fearsome warriors, but they had no defense against magic.  Ardra had shown him the burned bodies of the Baldari that had been mowed down in droves by the Casters in Sedfair.  He was therefore completely unprepared when the magic of more than three dozen of the Outpost’s most accomplished wizards was totally ineffective against the advancing army.  The beams lashed out and struck some kind of barrier that surrounded the Baldari.  The energies flared and spread, following the protective band around the advancing horde, flashing in all colors of the spectrum.  None of the energy broke through to strike the Baldari warriors.  Not a single of the enemy was harmed.

“Link!” Rigo commanded, and he quickly joined with a dozen of the nearby wizards.  Even the enhanced beam from the joined magic was insufficient to penetrate the barrier.  The band around the Baldari glowed whitely, faint trails of energy dissipating into the sky above them, but none were harmed.

No counterattack was triggered.  The Baldari continued to advance, almost as if the wizards hadn’t been there.  No magic lashed out from within the protected barrier.  Soon, the Baldari were moving past the position and were effectively out of range.

Nycoh looked at Daim.  “Have you ever known of a means of deflecting magic as they have just done?”

Daim shook his head.  “I have never known of the methods you use, and this is far more effective.  How can we stop them if our magic cannot reach the warriors?”

“Take the squad,” Nycoh commanded.  “Warn those ahead what is coming.  Alert the Guard.  Perhaps conventional weapons will not be affected by whatever is prohibiting our magic.”

“What about you?” Daim asked.

“I want to try something,” Nycoh said.  Pointing to her friends, she made a
Bypass
and they disappeared into it.”

“What do you expect to accomplish here?” Ash’urn asked.  They stood atop a peak of rugged rock, a field of ragged dark stone scattered across the valley below.  Rigo, Jeen, Mitty, and Burke stood beside them.

“They are protected somehow,” Nycoh said, “but they do not fight back.  It is as though something or someone wishes them to reach some destination before they are released to attack.  I do not believe they are the source of the protective barrier.”

The group had jumped far enough ahead of the advancing Baldari, it took almost a glass before the horde filled the valley below.

“Now what?” Jeen asked.  “She knew that Nycoh had learned some magic that none of the rest of them had mastered, but what she hoped to do here that she couldn’t have done back at the ambush wasn’t clear.

Nycoh didn’t answer, her face set in a determined frown.  She scanned the valley below, then suddenly stabbed her staff into the ground in front of her.  The hard rock gave little, but a small crack formed at the tip of the staff, and snaked its way quickly down the hill toward the valley below.  Within a few paces it was invisible to Rigo and the others, but it continued down the hill, splitting and increasing in number.  Then, in the distance below, Rigo heard a sharp crack, as if something brittle had been broken.  All across the valley floor wide cracks were forming in the blackened rock that covered the area.  It was as if the floor was made of ice covering a large lake that suddenly was breaking into hundreds, if not thousands, of separate pieces.  The sections were a man height in thickness, and quite large.  Like the chunks of ice on a lake, they were also unstable.  The Baldari found themselves fighting for balance on top of hundreds of tipping and turning sections of unstable stone. 

Underneath the stone, a reddish glow became more apparent as the gaps between the pieces grew.  Many of the sections flipped over, turning a glowing bottom toward the sky.  As the sections flipped, the Baldari and their mounts were thrown into the fiery sea under the stones.  Nycoh’s companions could only stare at what she had somehow managed to cause to happen.

“Lava” Rigo whispered.  “I could see this was an ancient volcano, but I wouldn’t have guessed the lava was still so close to the surface.”

“It wasn’t until a moment ago,” Nycoh answered, her concentration on the fiery sea below them.  She was still doing something that was causing the lava to swirl and become even more treacherous to the Baldari that still survived.

“The barrier doesn’t protect them from this,” Burke shouted gleefully.  He watched as the last of the mounted warriors lost their footing and plunged into the boiling sea of molten rock to their deaths.

Soon enough, there were none left.  Nycoh leaned back, sweat flowing down her face from the effort she had exerted.  “It’s done,” she said.

“What of the lava?” Rigo asked.

“It will cool soon enough,” Nycoh said.  “I haven’t the strength left to try and speed the process.  Out here no one will care anyway.”

“We better tell the others,” Jeen said.  “At least it is over.”

Mitty shook her head.  “It isn’t over.  This is just the beginning.  There will be thousands more like them coming soon.  Something or someone in the south is driving them this way.”

The End of
Into The Ruins

The adventure will conclude in
The Baldari