The Mages' Winter of Death: The Healers of Glastamear: Volume Two (14 page)

Abruptly, he noticed something strange and landed near a two-paces long object covered in snow. He converted back to his normal form but remained invisible while keeping his warm blanket spell in place. When he brushed away four hands deep snow, he found the body of a young man of perhaps seventeen years. With his healer senses he could tell that many bones had been broken as if the man had fallen from a great height, but where he lay was not directly below the castle’s walls. Michael also noticed that the nude body had been bound with cords around his hands and feet. He saw other shapes he assumed were also bodies in the snow. He gasped. He knew exactly where he was. This was the valley of the hallowed Winnowing Castle of the Knight Protectors. Their most sacred and secret base.

He knew that the ancient myths and stories were true. He was standing below the location where every knight protector in the past fifteen centuries had come to be initiated into their secret brotherhood. No one who failed his knight’s test at Winnowing Castle ever returned. He had read an account of the winnowing in a book written by a knight protector, now dead for eight hundred years, and these bodies were proof of its truth. Failure was rewarded by expulsion in a most dramatic fashion, via catapult. The ancient tome had been in a locked safe in William’s library because the church had proscribed it under penalty of death, but it had described in detail the death of the author’s closest friend in this manner when he failed one of the winnowing tests.

Michael walked along the line of bodies; soon he needed his dwarfish senses to detect them because they were imbedded in the ice. He followed them down the ice river for two thousand paces before he quit. Each body was buried deeper in the ice as he walked away from the castle. Every century at least two hundred young men who failed their tests had been bound and shot by a catapult onto this ice river. Fifteen centuries of bodies were moving slowing toward some distant lake or sea.

It was difficult to imagine their anger if the knight protectors learned that some group had invaded their most holy fortress and stolen the healer children from under their noses. Michael smiled. He looked forward to their frantic reaction and astonishment. Although they were officially under the supervision of the Holy Son of Perry Ascendant, the knight protectors had their own hierarchy. There were many levels, but all of them reported to the Holy Commander of Perry’s Warriors; he was their general-in-charge. Michael hoped the powerful fire mage manna sign indicated that the Commander was present in the Winnowing Castle. It would be even more fun to steal the children from directly under his upturned nose.

He resumed his eagle form and continued his search for a way into the castle. It was after dawn when he discovered the white painted wooden doors in the side of a rock wall about three thousand paces from the castle. Snow had drifted against the opening making the entrance almost invisible. Michael converted to his human form and cleared the snow away from the double doors. He pulled open one side of the creaking door and glanced into the darkness. After casting
night surgery
, Michael saw a tunnel extending in a nearly straight line into the cliff. The natural tunnel had been extensively modified. Along one side a deep channel for water about one pace wide was directed into a large grate in the bottom of the channel. The water was frozen solid and none was actually flowing into the drain, but it was clear that the objective of the stonework was to keep the roadway next to the channel free of water during the summer melt. Next to the water channel was a road wide enough for a large wagon. The top of the passage was high enough for the wagon’s driver not to need to worry about the roof clearance of the tunnel.

Michael realized that it must have taken decades of work to refine this underground passage for the easy transport of supplies. It showed the slow impact of time. The stone roadway had indentations from the passage of thousands of wagons. The place was ancient but maintained for regular use. Michael saw horse droppings dried and frozen near the entrance. He walked forward pulling the door shut behind him.

On and on he walked through the pitch-black tunnel as it followed the bends in the road next to the frozen stream. After half an hour, he reached an open area of storage with a wooden turning wheel for wagons. He found a room for stabling horses with a large supply of hay, but there were no horses.

His dwarfish rock sense told him that this chamber was ten paces underground and had a layer of ice that was at least twice as thick above the surface rock. A wagon had been left next to a huge coal bin. The coal surprised him because fire mages did not normally use it for heating. Instead they heated large stone blocks with magic. The wagon had a harness for a single horse and two oil lanterns on either side of the driver’s seat. Behind a stout wooden door he found an abattoir for the preparation of meat and a hanging locker dug into a frozen crack in the rock surface that was loaded with frozen beef, pork, and horsemeat. There were other storage rooms for grain and for preserved and dried fruits and vegetables. Michael found vastly greater supplies than the forty knights and eighteen children would need for the winter, and he assumed the fortress was designed to hold many more men than its current complement.

Michael heard the screech of an iron-reinforced door being opened and ducked behind a side of beef in the meat locker. He was invisible, but the air was so cold his breath was visible each time he exhaled. Michael held his breath. A man dressed in a quilted blue robe with the insignia of the knight protectors embroidered over the heart entered the room and took the side of beef nearest the door. He hefted it onto his powerful shoulder and left the room. Michael heard the screech of the door being closed and decided he needed more information about the Winnowing Castle before creating a plan to rescue the children.

Chapter 22

Michael thought about the danger and the difficulty of escape if he was noticed within the castle. Even if he escaped, being detected would let the knights know their secret fortress had been discovered. He grinned and followed the knight anyway. A side passage though a locked door led directly under the castle. He stayed about two turns behind the knight who carried the side of beef as he ascended the spiral stone staircase. After a steep climb, Michael reached the top of the stairs and followed the knight toward a kitchen area. Michael smelled the food and heard the kitchen workers talking, but it was not his objective. He was searching for the healer children, and he continued up another spiral stairway until it was about half way up the central tower to the level where the children were housed. There were a score of knights’ manna signs on this level. It seemed to be the most occupied part of the enormous castle.

Michael watched the movement of all the fire mages by using
detect all manna
. He dodged into closets, took side passageways to avoid the knights, and at times just stood completely still and tried not to breathe as they passed. He moved slowly always keeping the children’s manna in sight and working his way towards it. After half an hour of exploration, he found a locked door. Behind that door were both the children and four knight protectors.

Michael had learned the forest magic spell
forest vapor
while he studied with the Fairy Folk of Fay Woods. The spell allowed fairies to pass through even the smallest crack because it reduced their forms to unsubstantiated vapors. He had never used the spell except when entering the fairies’ barrow. It had the disadvantage of being a vapor; he could carry nothing and could not interact with the real world except by forest magic. He found an empty barrel. He stood in it so that his black traveling clothing would fall into it when he transformed. He became a vapor floating near the ceiling. His awareness of his surroundings was strange as if he were looking at the world from another place or time.

After passing through the crack between the door and its frame, Michael floated as a transparent and unsubstantial ghost observing a classroom. The windowless chamber had two rows of small chairs occupied by the eighteen youngsters. Along the back wall were stacked cages holding small animals, mostly small dogs, but also ferrets, foxes, rodents, ducks, and chickens. Two knights sat in padded chairs at the back of the room observing as a small boy, no older than seven, tried a healing spell on a small white dog. There were two teachers in the front of the room giving instructions. They had written the ancient Elfish words for
clear lungs
and
healing hands
on a slate board.

Michael drifted into an adjoining room that had rows of bunk beds stacked three high along the walls and a short table with eighteen small chairs in the middle. Michael assumed that the children would be confined to these two rooms and a nearby bathroom. If his assumption were true, he would know where he would find the children when the time came to get them out of the castle. He noticed on the night tables next to some of the beds were a few stuffed unicorns, the most common toy for children in Glastamear. Other tables held toy swords imitating those two handed blades carried by the knights. He also saw toy replicas of knight protectors cast in lead and painted silver and blue.

As far as Michael could tell in his brief visit, the children were not being mistreated, but he knew that many of them had been taken by force from their parents. Parents who resisted had been killed. He was anxious to remove the children before they were fully indoctrinated by the knights. Most of them had already been here for two or three months, and Michael worried it might be too late for some. If they had been abused, it might have been easier to persuade them to escape, but at this point, he was uncertain how to get them to leave with him when the time came to depart.

While Michael was drifting near the ceiling of the dormitory room trying to decide how he could get the children to safety, two knights came in through a side door and placed eighteen bowls of stew on the table in the center of the room. One of the knights was the same man who he’d seen retrieving the beef from the storage room. They talked as they placed the bowls. He assumed that the side door through which they’d entered led to another stairway connected to the kitchens. He needed to discover if it was an easier way of reaching the children’s quarters without passing though so many of the rooms occupied by knight protectors. Without some shortcut, their exit would be impossible without the children being discovered.

The man who retrieved the side of beef said, “I don’t see why we need to coddle these spoiled brats. They should have been killed with the rest of the healers.”

“Our order needs healing magic, but only the type of healing magic we can control. These brats can learn that type of magic, and we can’t.”

“They hate our guts. I’d never trust one to cast spells on me.”

“Many of them lost their parents. It will take time to forget their loss.”

“Perry’s Balls, they didn’t lose parents as if they might find them again. In most cases, we killed their parents when be took them. They’d all murder us at their first opportunity or maybe turn us into worms or something revolting if they knew any such spells. I say they need a lot more discipline. The teachers never use those studded straps for punishment that were used on us as apprentices; they use the smooth leather ones on these little brats. I learned a lot from those studded ones when I was an apprentice.”

“You learned how to bandage a bloody ass and not much else. Don’t ever let the commander hear you say anything about these children or you’ll visit the catapult on top of the High Tower. This is his special project. That’s why he’s spending the winter here.”

They exited through the side door, and Michael followed them. He discovered a direct route from the kitchen to the dormitory, a much easier and shorter route than the complicated way he’d taken to find the children. He drifted back up to check on the children’s room, and soon after, the apprentice healers entered through the door to their schoolroom.

A little blonde girl with curly hair was crying. She spoke to a nearby boy, “Why did they kill the puppy? He was so cute and they hurt him.”

“Grendel, Marko was supposed to heal it, but he couldn’t.”

She ran over and hugged one of the stuffed unicorn dolls still crying. Looking at the doll, she said, “Robbie, you won’t let them hurt me will you?”

Michael reacted almost instantly. He used mage thought-talk, one of the few magic tools available to him in his disembodied state.

“Don’t worry Grendel, I’ll come for you soon and get you and your friends out of this castle. We’ll go someplace much nicer. You’ll see. In about a week, we’ll go someplace better.”

Grendel seemed surprised that Robbie had actually answered. “Are unicorns real?” she said out loud.

A boy named Nathan was nearby. He heard Grendel’s question and said, “It is just old threadbare cloth stuffed with cotton. There are no real unicorns.”

Michael thought to him, “Nathan, do not make fun of what you don’t understand. When the time comes, you must follow the unicorn down into the tunnel below the castle. We’ll go someplace much nicer.”

Nathan looked at the unicorn doll in Grendel’s arms and asked, “Did you really say that, Robbie?”

“Yes Nathan. Tell the other children to follow the unicorn when it comes in about a week. We’ll leave this place of fire mages and go somewhere better.”

Nathan put his hand on the unicorn’s head while it was still in Grendel’s arms and said, “Yes, I’ll tell the others Robbie. I hate this place where they kill puppies, but Robbie, my parents are dead. I have no place else to go.”

“Nathan, there is a better school where no one kills puppies and the teachers actually know healing magic. It’s on an island far from these evil knights. I’ll come for you in a week. Tell the others. I need to leave now, but I’ll be back.”

Michael sent a mage thought to all of the children. It said simply, “Watch for the unicorn in a week. Nathan and Grendel know that I’ll come for you.” He saw the children looking around to find the source of the mental message as he drifted through the doorway and the schoolroom, back to the barrel where he’d dropped his clothing. He converted to his normal form, dressed, cast
transparency
, and found his way through the maze of rooms to the spiral staircase that led towards the underground entrance.”

He had two close calls when knights walked within a few hands width of him, but he escaped the Winnowing Castle without being noticed by a single knight protector. He now had the beginnings of a plan.

Once he left the tunnel and converted back to an eagle, he flew along the snow-covered road that was the only path to the tunnel entrance, He circled and followed the route until he was certain he could find the road that led to the knights’ mountain stronghold from the flat snowfields between Crow Crossing and the castle.