The Archimage Wars: Wizard of Abal (38 page)

“
No, not yet. Did you want
to join us now?” I asked hesitantly. I found I really did want to
see the sorceress in person again.

She hesitated, and then replied, “Yes,
I miss you, Nick.”

My heart did flip-flops in my chest at
her statement.

But she didn’t know about my heart
gymnastics, so she continued talking, “…but it would be a bad idea.
I think The Dragon’s eye is on me right now, and it is better if I
keep him from finding you. I’ll lead him off on a false trail if I
can. You should contact me later, after you have left the Ivory
Castle, and I will try to join you if I feel I have eluded The
Dragon’s spies. Until then, do not contact me like this again
unless you are in great need, The Dragon might already have tracked
you from this communication, let alone more. Be wary! If things
become too difficult, you may want to abandon your attempts to
reach The White Enchantress. There is an army besieging her castle;
and if The Dragon comes…”

“
Got it, the risk might not
be worth the gain,” I agreed. “If I have to turn back, where can I
find you?”

“
Contact Pox, he can be our
intermediary,” Fiona suggested. “Fare thee well,
Nicholas.”

Then the cold wind stopped and I knew
Fiona was gone.

There was a warm sensation in my body
from talking to her, and I couldn’t help but picture her beautiful
face, those shapely legs, the swell of her rounded… but my thoughts
were interrupted when I thought I saw movement in the brush. I
tried to move over casually to see what or who was out there
watching, but they backed off. I soon returned to our campsite, all
three of my companions were on their bedrolls.

I kept a sharp eye out, but nothing
else seemed to move, so when it was Toji’s turn, I told him I might
have seen movement, but couldn’t be sure, and to be on
guard.

The following day we had to hide in
the brush off the road three times as troops of soldiers passed us
on the road. They were all double timing it toward the battle front
ahead. Most of these were normal saerans, wearing the purple
uniforms of the Island Witch’s army. There were a few necromages,
but seldom more than one per troop. We could probably have taken
any one of them, with three and a half mages against one necromage
and mundanes, but someone might escape and alert people to our
approach. It was better to remain undetected.

I was saddened to see the regular
saeran folk fighting on the side of the Island Witch, but history
has shown people can easily be swayed to an ideology if they think
things will be better for them and their families. Some probably
fought for other reasons, like money, while others were probably
coerced by threats to their family or village or just physical
harm.

But regardless of why, saerans were
killing saerans all across this world, and had been for a long time
now. From what I understood, the Archimage of Abal would have
stopped this civil conflict, but I knew he was trapped by Morgain,
locked away somewhere so his line didn’t end, but where he could do
nothing to stop the Civil War on his planet.

But we were unlikely to find pitched
battles or battlefields of the dead like we had seen before. This
was a siege, and there wouldn’t be much more to see until we got
close to the Ivory Castle.

We were in the foothills now, climbing
constantly toward distant mountains. These weren’t the pyramid
shaped mountains of typical Earth ranges; these were all made of
some kind of stone. The bases had sloped shale, but then they
reached mostly vertical slopes of smooth white stone which jutted
up many thousands of feet to reach jagged tops.

“
Now you know where these
mountains get their name,” Toji noted.

“
The Giant Teeth,” I said
for him.

And when you really looked at the
shape and white color of the mountains, it was no wonder they had
that title.

Then I saw it, Ivory
Castle.

“
Holy mother of pearl,” I
exclaimed, “It’s no WONDER this castle hasn’t fallen to the siege
yet!”

Perched on one of the highest white
teeth of the mountains, far from any other peak, was a very tall
and intricately towered castle. It was made out of marble cut from
the same white rock as the mountain peaks, but stood taller, with
thin rounded spires upon spires, all reaching up high into the
sky.

I could barely make out flying
creatures swooping around the castle, but none of them got too
close for some reason, so they could not drop anything on the
castle, or attack any defenders who might be guarding the
walls.

Hydan grinned like a tourist in
Bermuda shorts looking at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris for the
first time. He exclaimed, “That must be Ivory Castle.”

No one said anything, what else could
it be?

That’s when I saw the army below;
there were thousands of troops working like an army of ants. They
were busy cutting a road up the slope, widening the smaller path
which already led up toward the castle. They wanted to get it wide
enough to allow more troops, and perhaps a battering ram, to reach
the massive white gates of the castle high above.

I wished them luck and wondered how
they were going to deal with the sheer cliff which led up to the
gates. I could just make out a thin staircase, going up the white
cliff in switchbacks toward the castle entrance. I guess they must
have had a plan, but I couldn’t imagine them completing it for many
years to come.

Our problem was simple, like
Ouroboros, we needed to get past the troops, and into Ivory Castle,
but this time there were no trebuchets capable of lobbing us over
the wall. Ivory Castle was several thousand feet above the
plain.

“
Holy cat humping a
mountain goat!” I said, looking at the impenetrable castle. “We are
NEVER getting in there!”

Myrka pointed to the stairway climbing
the white rock face, “If we can fight our way to the staircase,
they cannot come at us in numbers. We can then hold them at bay as
we ascend.”

I shook my head, “You want to attack
the army, and then walk BACKWARDS up two thousand feet of
switchback stairs while fighting an army two at a time?”

She just looked at me like I was the
crazy one for not wanting to attempt such a plan.

“
You know she has something
there,” Hydan said.

Even Myrka was surprised by Hydan
agreeing with her.

“
Exsqueeze me?” I
exclaimed.

Hydan was shading his eyes and looking
at the stairs, “They are the only easy way up that face. I mean, we
could cut our own way up another side, but we would be bound to be
spotted by the army, and then attacked. However, if we were to go
up the stairs with all the other soldiers...”

“
What do you mean, with all
the others soldiers?” I interrupted.

He answered patiently, “Well, take a
look, there are soldiers using those stairs, they are just staying
some distance from the top, where I would guess the defenders are,
well, defending. But, up until that point, you can just walk up the
stairs.”

“
If you are part of their
army,” I noted.

“
Welcome to the Island
Witch’s army,” Hydan said, and his clothing suddenly changed to
their type of purple military uniform.

Myrka scoffed, “You wish to sneak in
as spies?”

“
Not spies, since we aren’t
trying to learn anything, but sneak, yes,” he agreed. “Just
remember, we are going to have to reveal ourselves near the top, or
The White Enchantress is not going to let us in, which means we
will have to do some fighting at that point.”

Myrka looked back at the stairs for a
moment, and then said, “As long as I get to kill some of the enemy,
fine.”

“
Like a little blood with
your thirsty, Myrka?” I noted.

“
They have taken Ziny,” she
replied.

My eyes hardened, that hit me hard as
well.

I turned to Hydan, “So what is the
plan, slip in and join the other soldiers?”

He shrugged, “We could try that, but
the first time we were challenged, and could not name our
commander, then what? I have a much better idea.”

I scowled at him, “I’m not going to
like this, am I?”

Hydan smiled, “If it helps, Toji is
going to like it a whole lot less.”

Now it was Toji’s turn to
frown.

I trudged up the road toward the base
of the road construction ahead, moving through the workers and
troops. I kept my head down, as a prisoner should. Shackled in
front of me was a very disgruntled Toji, and behind me was Myrka.
Walking alongside us with a whip in hand was Hydan. We were all in
the Island Witch’s uniforms, though Myrka’s, Toji’s and mine were
well soiled and torn while Hydan’s was crisp and neat, and he
showed the insignia of a Captain.

“
Who goes there!” a guard
finally stated, lowering a spear into Hydan’s path as we tried to
start working our way up the widened road leading up toward the
stairs far above.

“
Don’t point that spear at
me, Sergeant!” Hydan exclaimed, “Or I will see it stuck so far up
your ass you’ll see the point come out your head.”

“
My orders are to keep all
unessential personnel off the road, which includes any rank short
of General. Who are these… soldiers?” he asked disdainfully, noting
the poor state of our uniforms.

“
Deserters!” Hydan
exclaimed, “Sent by Medrod himself to man the top of the stairs as
punishment.”

“
What?” the guard
exclaimed.

“
You heard me! I was sent
here via Traveling Star by Medrod’s personal necromage guard, with
the express orders to bring these three to the top of the stairs;
here, read this!”

Hydan presented a page with some
official looking text on it and as the guard looked at it, Hydan
made sure it said, and showed the right seal, to be just what the
man thought he should be seeing.

The guard looked at what had been ‘Ten
potatoes’ earlier like it was the ruler of the planet’s official
seal, which is what it was at this point.

“
I see; this is highly
irregular!”

Hydan sniffed, “Fine, call a necromage
out here and we will verify this swiftly. I’m waiting.”

The guard nodded and started to turn
to call to another soldier, but that’s when Hydan muttered, “It
will be very amusing when he turns you into a rock and rolls you
down this hill, but I can wait.”

The man had his hand up, and mouth
open, but suddenly he snapped his mouth shut and handed the paper
back to Hydan, “Proceed.”

“
Really, you don’t want to
call someone? I can wait,” Hydan said, crossing his
arms.

“
No, you may go,” the man
said sheepishly.

Hydan sniffed one more time, folded
his grocery list, and then said to us, “March up the road and
double-time it!”

Toji gave him a really dirty look, but
we started shuffling faster up the road.

I muttered to Hydan, “Don’t overplay
the role.”

“
Oh, I’m barely getting
started!” he exclaimed exuberantly.

Myrka spoke softly when no one was
near, “And what are you going to say if a necromage actually shows
up and sees your Glyph?”

“
I will show him my right
profile, and if you keep your heads bowed down he won’t see yours!”
Hydan noted, without a care in the world.

We just kept going, the further we got
up the road the fewer we would have to fight to get to the stairs
is the way Myrka figured it.

The military loves their checkpoints,
so we were accosted three more times before reaching the bottom of
the stairs, with the same basic results. However, now we were faced
with a higher ranking officer, a major, and ‘Captain’ Hydan was
going to have a harder time bullying him into
acquiescence.

“
What do you have here,
Captain?” he demanded, already holding out a hand for Hydan’s
orders. Hydan handed him the grocery list.

The Major gave it a perfunctory look
and then said, “I will need to get corroborating orders. Whom is it
who gave you these soldiers?”

“
Whom indeed? That is a
question which is difficult to answer,” Hydan noted.

The saeran Major started getting blue
in the face, and I knew this wasn’t going to go well.

“
Well, you WILL answer it,
Captain!” he exclaimed.

Hydan continued, thoughtfully, “I
mean, who are we all, in the grand scheme of things?”

The Major looked perplexed, “What are
you babbling about?”

“
Well,” Hydan said as if
relishing his answer thoroughly, “Who assumes there is someone
beyond me, which is a perception very hard to prove!”

“
You will
answer…”

“
All right, I’ll do my
best. For there to be a ‘whom’, who gave me these orders, one could
assume, from our senses, there are other minds, I mean, the truth
of this belief is so manifestly obvious and self-evident as to need
no justification on the part of the person who believes
it.”