War of Power (The Trouble with Magic Book 3) (17 page)

Miqhal clasped his hands, his dark eyes glistening with satisfaction. For the first time in almost a thousand years the artefacts were all together in one place. Once again the deep alcove cut into the rock wall of a tunnel far below the desert sands held the objects for which it was designed. The Locator, the Navigator, the large box which was found to contain other essential items, along with the grey box and the pieces Miqhal had removed from Ghian’s room, were now all stowed securely awaiting the time, not too far off, when their true purpose would be revealed. After placing a strong warding across the alcove, Miqhal removed himself to a nearby cavern to admire the clean smooth simplicity of the fourth artefact. He longed for the moment when he could bring them all together, to unleash their incredible power, but he knew that the time was not yet. With the fire of anticipation kindling in his belly, he left the cavern.

* * *

Despite the sophisticated elegance of Lady Evalin’s small but impressive palace, and the splendour of the beautiful grounds which surrounded it, Bardeen was totally unprepared for what Evalin was soon to reveal. Having chosen to materialise at the edge of a tastefully laid out parterre, she hurried Bardeen indoors and through the polished corridors of the house. She stopped in front of a magnificent tapestry and pulled it to one side. With a slight hand gesture she opened the door behind it and led the magician down a long wooden staircase to another door. This opened onto yet another stairway cut into solid rock, leading steeply downwards in so many staggered flights that Bardeen thought they would never end. Eventually they reached the bottom and stood facing a blank wall of rock. With another small gesture, Evalin opened a shimmering portal, and they stepped through.

Bardeen stopped and stared. He continued to stare until Evalin’s tweaking of his sleeve prompted him to step hesitantly forward. They stood in a massive cavern filled with a soft, blue-green shadow-less light. The object which had Bardeen so completely mesmerised occupied an area in the centre of the chamber. A huge and perfect hemisphere of highly polished crystal, it seemed to be supported by unseen hands an arm’s length above the smooth rock floor. It was not this in itself that Bardeen found so incredible. The same distance above the impossibly large crystal, and floating on a cloud of golden light, Karryl lay, hands folded on his chest in an attitude of repose. The air within the circular cavern held a resonance, an almost subsonic and continuous humming which reached into Bardeen through the surface of his skin and the soles of his feet.

Turning to Evalin, he swallowed hard, blinked and gestured towards Karryl’s suspended form. “Will he…I mean…is he…?”

Evalin placed a hand gently on the magician’s arm. “He is alive, but barely within reach. As long as he remains within the influence of the crystal his present state will be maintained.”

Bardeen reached into the pocket of his robe and drew out the letter from Vailin, the note of instructions and the tiny pouch Miqhal had given him. He thrust them into Evalin’s hands. “Please, do what you can with this. Miqhal says the poison is Naborian snake venom. He gave me the antidote. The instructions are there.”

Recognising the writing, she tucked the letter from Vailin into the embroidered pouch which hung at her waist before quickly unfolding Miqhal’s note. Bardeen watched her face as she read it. His heart sank at the despair registered in her deep blue eyes. Looking up from the note she gazed unspeaking at Karryl, apparently peaceful and unharmed, suspended above the crystal. Eventually she turned away, tucking the pouch of antidote and its accompanying note into her own pouch.

Her troubled eyes met Bardeen’s. “Until such time as we can find a way to administer the antidote without removing him from the safety of the crystal’s influence, Karryl must remain where he is.”

Bardeen’s eyes widened and Evalin held up a hand to check the impending protest. “In most cases speed would be vital, but the poisoned dart has been removed and Master Karryl is now in stasis. He and the poison within his body are as they were when he was first placed here only minutes after the attack. That is how he will remain. Only when he is moved away will the poison continue its advance.”

Bardeen glowered at her. “Master Karryl is well within reach. What is the difficulty?”

Evalin’s eyes glinted. Her mouth set in a grim line she motioned Bardeen forward. Taking a couple of paces towards the massive crystal, the magician felt the deep resonance more strongly as he moved closer.

Evalin pointed towards the golden light which seemed to be supporting Karryl above it. “Should anything disturb the light or touch the surface of the crystal, its power will fade. In the time it takes to renew the process, Karryl could be dead. If you will look closely you will see that the only way to reach him is from above.”

Her voice tinged with reproach, she spoke while maintaining her gaze on Karryl’s inert form. “Can you fly, Master Bardeen?”

Shaking his head, Bardeen fought an almost irresistible urge to reach out and touch the crystal’s shining unfaceted surface. Resolutely he folded his arms and turned to Evalin. “I would have thought that you of all people would have command of some kind of power that would overcome this problem.”

Evalin looked at him long and hard before replying. “If everything could be cured by magic, what need would we have for physicians? Believe me Master Bardeen; it is not for want of trying that our friend still lies where he does.”

Unperturbed by her scathing tone, Bardeen considered her words for a few moments then gestured towards the huge crystal. “What kind of magic is this? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Evalin beckoned Bardeen towards her. “To be sure I barely understand it myself, although it has been here as long as I can remember. I know how to use it, and that it is from a world far beyond this one. When Karryl is no more in need of it, the crystal will turn dark and lifeless and sink to the floor; more than that I cannot tell you.”

The two stood side by side for quite some time, each lost in their own thoughts as they gazed at the inert form of their friend and colleague. Eventually, with a deep sigh Evalin turned away and left the cavern, Bardeen a short step behind her.

As she closed the portal, concealing the cavern from prying eyes, she gave the magician a little smile. “I’m thinking that perhaps you’ll be wanting a bit of breakfast before you go back.”

Bardeen nodded but found himself unable to return her smile. Slowly he followed as Evalin led the way back up to the comfort of the main house.

* * *

Unseen and unheard, Miqhal placed the note on Ghian’s desk and left the same way he had entered. Returning to the vast encampment of the Jadhrahin, he summoned the elders of the tribal council and began making preparations while he awaited developments.

* * *

Bardeen sat by his fire and gazed into the dancing flames, recent events tumbling over and over in his mind like fallen leaves caught in an errant breeze. Disheartened and dismayed by Evalin’s inability and apparent unwillingness to use the antidote after all his efforts, he was determined to find a solution to this perplexing problem. Sounds from the street went unheard and darkness fell un-noticed as he sat and pondered, frequently thinking out loud, voicing the problem and discarding possible solutions one by one.

His thoughts constantly returned to one single phrase. “Can you fly, Master Bardeen?”

He couldn’t fly. Even translocation gave him the jitters, but he could do it faultlessly when the need arose. It still didn’t give him the ability to fly.

The automatic responses of his body jerked him back from the edge of sleep. Rubbing his hands over his face, he looked slowly round the room, peering into the deep shadows cast by the soft glow of the street-light shining through the window. With a sigh he pushed himself wearily out of his chair. He mended the dying fire, lit a couple of lamps and drew the curtains to shut out the depressing night, then returned to his fireside chair. Catching the glimmer of the renewed flames, a pair of mismatched eyes regarded him steadily from the chair opposite.

Bardeen gave a weak little smile. “Hello Moonstone. How are we going to solve this problem then?”

The big tortoiseshell cat flicked an ear then wrapped his thick black-tipped tail around his paws.
“It’s quite easy really. My problem is finding a way of conveying it to you.”

Settling lower in the comfortable cushion of the chair, the cat closed his eyes and began to purr. He didn’t have long to wait. Succumbing to the deep and soothingly regular sound, Bardeen’s eyes gradually closed. His head drooped forward and he began to snore in gentle synchrony with Moonstone’s purring. Knowing that the door would be left slightly ajar in case any of the cats wanted to go into the kitchen, the big tortoiseshell waited a while longer. Assured that the magician was sound asleep he slipped quietly out into the hall, but the kitchen was not his intended destination. Instead, he bounded up the stairs and hurried along the landing and hallways of the first floor. Another dusty flight of wooden stairs took him to the unused second floor. He squirmed through a rat-chewed hole at the bottom of a small door and padded swiftly up into a dusty attic. Squeaks and rustlings in the darkness filled him with a determination to come back this way. He scrambled up into the rafters and slipped out through a gap in the eaves. For now his mind was set on a different kind of hunting.

With orders to suppress their blood-curdling screams, a half dozen grelfons under the command of three black-clad and armoured riders lifted high above the city. Barbed and bat-like wings pounded the sun-seared air until they were no more than barely visible specks against the white heat-haze. Fists clenched at his sides, Ghian stood at the edge of the platform high above the arena and watched them out of sight, his stomach churning with anticipation. As soon as these advance scouts had located the desert camp of the despised Jadhrahin, the hundred or more Vedran soldiers who waited in readiness would be led by himself on his grelfon queen in an all-out attack. A further three-score were standing by, reinforcements prepared to follow at their lord’s command.

When the location of the artefacts was discovered he would order the camp obliterated and its inhabitants slaughtered by whatever means were necessary. The Jadhrahin would be no more, apart from one who would be returning to the city of Vedra, a prisoner of the Grelfi along with their prize. As Ghian and his devoted priests fully availed themselves of the power which would then be rightfully theirs, the prisoner would be allowed to watch. Finally, wounded and broken in body and mind, he would be left to suffer a slow and painful death.

With these images burning like acid into his brain, Ghian turned away and hurried down the long flight of stone stairs into the street below. Through the shadowed high-walled canyons of the deserted and neglected streets, he could hear the priests chanting in the temple as they waited for him to lead them in a ceremony of sacrifice. This time his grelfon would not be allowed to feed. Within a few hours she would be in kill-flight. He needed her to be hungry.

Although the complete annihilation of the force sent to Vellethen was still tormentingly fresh in his mind, he had felt little compassion for the riders who had died for his cause, and even less for the grelfons who had lost their lives for the same reason. The fact that they had come nowhere near achieving their objective had incensed him, an effect further compounded by the mocking tone of the note left for him by the man who had, for the past two years been his most trusted servant, the Jadhra warrior Miqhal.

Building on a foundation of anger, his fury had risen to become an incandescent rage. He had stormed into the temple, his dark mind focussing as now, on the painful and humiliating ways he would make the man suffer, but only after annihilating his desert dwelling tribe. For now, he could draw some consolation from knowing that despite the failure and subsequent total death of the Assassin-Wraith, his chief adversary had been otherwise eliminated and was in all probability dead. Counterpoint to his blind contempt for anything or anyone that threatened to thwart his plans, Ghian now experienced manifestations of invincibility, a sensation which until now had lurked just below the dark and frequently storm riven surface of his persona. Embryonic self-doubts finally succumbed to the ancient power of the Blood that coursed through his veins, and he strode once more into the temple to await the return of his advance scouts and to offer sacrifice to the dark god to whom he owed his powers, and to whom he had sworn his allegiance.

* * *

At the inlet of a narrow wadi, surrounded by a vast piling ocean of wind-sculpted dunes, the rider sat his grelfon and waited, watching and listening. The hot desert wind ruffled black clothing and blue-black feathers, the only sound the coarse hiss of swirling sand grains.

Lifting its huge lizard-like head, the grelfon snuffed the air, turning its aural orifices into the rising breeze.
“They come, flying very high, some with riders.”

Slipping his booted feet into the leather stirrups, Miqhal leaned forward and patted Jaknu firmly at the base of his sinuous neck. “Well done. Now we will overfly the camp site to check that all is clear, then we will shift. Are you ready?”

The grelfon began to lift its wings in response. As Jaknu widened his spread, Miqhal made a last check of his harness. Amid swirling clouds of pink hued sand, the great beating wings effortlessly lifted the beast and his rider high into the air. Catching a thermal, they soared over the place which had once been the camp-site of the Jadhrahin. Nothing remained. Not a piece of fabric, forgotten pole or discarded pot lay in the scuffled sand to indicate that a camp had ever been there. After flying twice over and around the site, Miqhal flew his grelfon back about a quarter mile but still within sight of the abandoned area. Jaknu held station fifty feet above the ridge of a massive dune. Releasing the reins Miqhal stood in the stirrups to stretch his body high, both arms held out to his sides. Slowly he raised them until the palms of his hands met above his head, his gaze firmly fixed on the empty camp site. The scuffled sand began to stir. Rippling and sliding with a sound like a thousand hissing snakes, it gathered into deep mounds and high ridges hundreds of feet long and dozens wide. Minutes later the last grains of the last dune, just one more among many, slithered into place. Their sculptor and the beast which carried him had vanished.

* * *

The penetrating chill of a desert night had already cut its relentless way into Vedra’s dark and ancient stones when the scouts returned. Frustrated, angry, baffled, but most of all fearful, the riders returned their beasts to the deep and noisome caverns they inhabited, before presenting themselves to their Grelfine Lord to report the failure of their mission. It was not necessary for them to offer any explanation or even to speak at all. Ghian sensed their gnawing dread of his reaction as one by one he looked down on their bowed heads, willing one of them to dare to meet his gaze. He enjoyed their misery, revelled in their fear of him and the knowledge that their lives were his to do with as he wished. His greatest satisfaction was in knowing that the result was what he had expected. It would have been a hollow victory had the Jadhrahin left themselves open to discovery and capture.

Almost three months still remained before the long awaited conjunction which would awaken the power of the artefacts. Once he had gained possession of that power he would be granted communion with the dark god and would be unstoppable. The world would be his. Frequently he slaked his thirst for supremacy by conjuring up vivid images of slave raids on Nebir, his mouth literally watering as he anticipated a limitless supply of sacrifices for the temple’s dark altar, and screaming fodder for his grelfons. The blood ran more freely when the terror was highest.

The failure of the scouts to discover the Jadhrahin was, for the time being, no more than an irritation. He had thought it all through very carefully and had come up with what he considered to be a very cunning plan, but with Miqhal turned traitor he had no-one with whom he could share his thoughts and aspirations. Tonight he would take the priestess Andra to his bed and she would listen, willing or not, to his scheme. He had plans for her too, but she wouldn’t be hearing about those. Not yet. With a snarl of contempt he kicked the nearest grelfon rider to the ground. Turning away, he stormed out leaving the Grelfi staring after him, open-mouthed and aghast, yet relieved that their Lord had chosen not to exact a stronger and more lasting punishment.