Quin just shrugged without looking up at her. “I’m an Arcanist. Making artifacts used to be my passion. I’m just glad I had the common sense to hide most of my collection in a place where they’d never think to look for it.”
“What place was that?” Braden wondered.
“The Lyceum,” Quin smiled proudly. He pointed at Thar’gon, which Braden wore hanging from his war belt. “That talisman’s the greatest asset we have, actually. Almost like carrying a Circle of Convergence around in your pocket. I don’t have anything nearly so powerful or so versatile. But I do have these.”
Loosening a leather cord, he unrolled a long, quiver-like case. From within its folds he produced two wooden staves, which he held crossed before him, one in each hand. The staff in his right hand was thin and black, longer than he was tall. The staff in his left hand was much shorter and squat, made of golden wood polished to a glossy sheen.
“Light or shadow?” he inquired of Sephana.
“Light,” she responded without hesitation. She had to reach up fast, barely managing to catch the golden staff he tossed her way.
“It’s a light staff,” Quin explained in answer to Braden’s unspoken question. “It’s also imbued with amplification and shielding characters.”
Braden nodded, feeling somewhat comforted. Between the three of them, Sephana was the weakest member of their group. It was good that she was a Querer, but she was still only third tier. She would need all of the help she could get.
“Is that your old shadow staff?” Braden wondered, indicating the tall ebony staff Quin retained in his own hands.
Quin shook his head. “I made a new one,” he admitted. “This one has a few extra tricks the other didn’t have.”
Braden picked up one of many palm-sized copper cubes worked with detailed geometric designs that had spilled from Quin’s leather pack. They were surprisingly light. “What are these?” he wondered.
“Disruption charges,” Quin replied. He tossed another over to Braden. “Here, take a few of them. They come in handy.”
He then picked up a black leather scabbard and strapped it on around his waist. Braden recognized the ivory hilt of his brother’s sword immediately. It was a long scimitar with a gracefully thin blade. Known as Zanikar, the blade was wickedly curved. The shape rendered it unwieldy to use, difficult to even draw from its scabbard. But it was infused with dampening, the rarest and most difficult character to imbue. Of all the items in Quin’s collection, Zanikar was by far the most invaluable. It was unique, the only dampening sword in existence.
Loosening Zanikar’s hilt in its scabbard, Quin leaned forward and demanded of his brother, “So what, exactly, is going to be our strategy?”
Braden rose from a crouch, still holding the two disruption charges in his hand. He slid them both into a pocket as he paced away a few steps. He leaned back against the mud bricks of the wall, one finger hooked around his belt.
“Our mission is to prevent Renquist and his associates from unsealing the Well of Tears and unleashing the power of the Onslaught,” he explained rigidly. “Our best chance for success is to impede their mobility. They’ve been relying heavily on the transfer portal system. If we can destroy the Chamber of Egress, then that should prevent them from achieving both their primary and secondary objectives.”
Still leaning against his knee, Quin stared at him blankly. “You do realize there’s no way to collapse the Chamber of Egress without bringing down the whole Lyceum?”
Braden shook his head. “Not the whole Lyceum. Just the Grand Dome.”
“And the Circle of Convergence beneath it,” Quin reminded him, obviously disapproving of the idea.
Braden pushed his weight off the wall, pacing away from Quinlan. “But that works to our advantage, don’t you see?” he insisted, gesturing with his hands. “They will need all eight Circles of Convergence tied in together in order to stabilize the magic field. If they lose even one of the Circles, there won’t be a reason to open the Well of Tears. They’ll have already lost.”
Quin stood up straight to confront his brother. “Braden, there are only three Greater Circles left in the entire world. You are talking about destroying one of them.”
“I know I am,” Braden assured him. “Believe me, I’ve thought about it long and hard. It’s not like it’s going to matter, anyway. Nobody left alive after today is going to know or care what a Circle of Convergence even is. You’re the Arcanist, Quin. So answer me this: is it even possible?”
Quin narrowed his eyes, looking almost ready to turn his back on his brother and stalk out of the room again. Fortunately, he didn’t. He took a few deep breaths, striving for composure. With his hands in the pockets of his black coat, he informed them:
“The Circle of Convergence is built over a series of barrel vaults supported by load-bearing columns. If we can damage enough of the columns, then the whole Circle will give way. It should even take out the Chamber of Egress below it.”
Braden nodded, his dark eyes gazing up and to the side in thought. He shifted his weight, bringing a hand up to scratch the whiskers on his face as he asked, “How do you propose we destroy the columns?”
Quin indicated Braden’s weapon with a wave of his hand. “Thar’gon has a strong motive character. It was designed to level walls, so it should make short work of a few columns. We could also use the disruption charges to try to buy us time to get out from underneath it. It would really help if the Circle was already in play before we activate the charges. It would be like using its own resonance against it.”
Braden nodded his agreement. “I already took care of that. With luck, the Circle should already be in use by the time we arrive.”
From her seat on the bed, Sephana sat bolt upright. “You’re talking about the horse clans, aren’t you?”
“What about the Jenn?” Quin demanded, whirling to face his brother with unrestrained aggression in his eyes. “Braden, tell me you didn’t involve our people.”
Braden glared his brother in the eye, his stare firm and unwavering. “By sunset tonight, Bryn Calazar will be besieged by fifty thousand clansmen. With the regular army already deployed against the Rhen, they will have no choice but to use the Circle of Convergence to defend the walls.”
Quinlan growled, raising his hand in a fist as he swiped out at the air. “Why?” he all but shouted. “They’ll be defenseless against the kind of power the Circle is capable of throwing at them—it will be genocide!”
“Would they really do that?” Sephana wondered with a horrified expression on her face. “Use the Circle of Convergence against their own people?”
Braden grimaced. “It’s been done before in the past.”
“That’s barbaric,” she maintained.
“It’s what I’m counting on,” Braden assured her. “We need their attention focused away from us. That’s the only way we’ll be able to penetrate far enough into the Lyceum to do any good.”
A deep and rolling thunder emanating from outside resonated within his chest, trembling the very foundations of the inn. At the same time every line of the magic field seemed to writhe and distort. The roaring sound of thunder swelled, lingering in the air, far longer than it reasonably should have. The normally peaceful song of the magic field became a tortuous standing wave that wracked the inside of Braden’s head.
“What is that?” Sephana cried out in pain.
Braden took Sephana by the arm and guided her out the door and into the hallway, which was filled with patrons fleeing their rooms in panic. The terrible thundering noise continued as Braden fought his way through the commotion of the crowd, jostling past people toward the back door of the inn. Throwing it open, he staggered out into the yard, gazing up.
An expansive layer of clouds choked the sky overhead, though unlike any storm clouds Braden had ever seen. These were atrociously dark, churning across the sky as they raced to cover the eastern horizon. Brief flashes of light seemed to emanate from deep within the dark bank of clou
ds. An icy wind had picked up ahead of the storm, tossing dust and debris about the yard of the inn.
A tongued fork of lightning streaked upward from the ground. The crackling noise of thunder followed immediately, rattling the air. The magic field oscillated for a moment, finally restoring itself. It never quite returned to normal, though. Subtle vibrations in the field lines yet remained, like quavering aftershocks.
Braden lowered his hands from his head, turning slowly as his eyes took in the entire blackened expanse of sky. The wind howled in his ears, tossing his hair forward and tugging at his clothes. He glanced to Sephana, making certain she was all right.
Over the noise of the scolding wind he could hear the ominous tones of his brother’s voice. “We’d better make a good account of ourselves today. It seems we’ll be sleeping in hell tonight.” Another harsh stab of lightning seemed to punctuate his words.
Braden turned to face his companions. Scowling, he uttered, “Let’s go get our things.”
Once back in the room, they gathered up the remainder of Quin’s trinkets from off the floor. Sephana took the light staff into her hand, holding it up before her face as she rotated it slowly in admiration. She closed her eyes. A diffuse glow brightened above the end of the staff, like a flickering flame in the shape of an upturned crescent moon.
“That’s good,” Quin praised her with a nod. “Do you feel the amplification?”
“I do.” She smiled, her eyes on the glowing end of the staff. The flickering brilliance increased until it chased away the shadows of the room, bathing them all in a dazzling golden glow. Sephana let the light diminish, allowing the staff to go once again dormant.
Quin clapped her on the back. Braden regarded the two of them with a smile of his own. But then the door to the room opened, and the expression on his face instantly faltered.
Merris stood in the doorway.
Only, it wasn’t the Merris he remembered.
Immediately, Braden opened his mind to the magic field and saturated himself with it, drawing violently upon that well of power until his mind was filled with its raging intensity. Amber ripples of energy coruscated over his body, bleeding away the excess energies his flesh could not contain. He already had a shield thrown up and an attack at ready by the time Sephana’s shrill cry stopped him short:
“Braden, no!”
“Release!” Quin bellowed, slamming Braden back against the wall with the full force of his body.
Shaken, Braden severed his connection with the magic field, allowing the turbulent energies to drain slowly away. Drawing himself upright, he fought to stop shaking. He gazed back at Merris with eyes wide with panic, mind reeling in confusion.
“It’s just Merris!” Quin shouted at him. “What the hell’s wrong with you? You could have killed her!”
Braden looked back and forth between the woman and his brother, blinking as if bludgeoned. Quin was right; it was just Merris. But there was something very different about the girl.
“It’s not just Merris,” he insisted. “Quin, it’s not!” He turned to confront the woman standing in the doorway. “What happened?” he demanded. “What did they do to you?”
The woman who used to be Merris glided casually forward into the room, a confident smile on her face. The smile widened as she passed by Braden, trailing a finger over his cheek as she brushed by. The creature paused before Quin, smiling as she gazed up endearingly into his eyes. Then she leaned forward and kissed him full on the mouth.
Quin was panting and breathless by the time he pulled back away from her. His face had gone very pale, eyes clouded with concern.
Braden opened himself again to the field. But this time he pulled at the energies more slowly, saturating himself cautiously, instead of trying to take it in all at once.
“What did they do to you?” he repeated.
The woman who used to be Merris slowly turned to regard him, eyebrows raised. The smile on her face was a haughty, self-satisfied smirk.
“My name isn’t Merris,” she informed him, her voice low and husky. She giggled, reveling in his puzzlement.
“Then who are you?” Braden insisted. He took a step to the left, circling away from her, holding her pale blue eyes severely with his own.
“I go by a different name now.” She took a step forward, closing the distance between them. “Call me Arden Hannah.”
Braden frowned, his hand going to his side to finger Thar’gon’s leather-wrapped haft. “What do you want?”
The woman who had once been Merris Bryar smirked, her face radiant with delight. “I want what you have,” she informed him bluntly. “What’s inside you. I want your power, Braden. And I’m going to take it.”
Braden raised the morning star up before him, holding the weapon in a warding stance. “I don’t think I’m going to let you do that,” he assured the malicious creature before him. “Tell me, Arden, if that really is your name, why are you here?”
The woman who called herself Arden Hannah grinned as she entwined her fingers around a lock of her long, spiraling hair, twisting it slowly around her fingertips.
“I’ve been sent to deliver a message.” The expression on her face was something akin to a challenge or even a dare. Or a cold and sinister seduction. He wasn’t sure which one. Regardless, it sent icy shivers through his nerves, raking down his spine. The hungering look in her eyes made him feel like he’d never been so defiled in all his life.
“What’s the message?” Braden held Thar’gon up before him as he slowly circled around her, trying to put his back to the open doorway while keeping Arden between his brother and himself.
The woman reached out toward him, the smile on her face playful and eager. She caressed the side of his face with the back of her hand. “Master Devrim Remzi has agreed to meet with you, Braden. Only you. He will be waiting in the forecourt under the Fountain House in one hour’s time.”
“What makes you think I would do that?” Braden demanded softly, his gaze unwavering from the pale intensity of her eyes. “I don’t understand.”
“Because if you don’t, Renquist promises to kill him instead of you.”
Arden grinned up at him triumphantly, excitement shimmering in her eyes. “Think about it, my sweet. You have no idea how the sequence works; you have no way to seal the Well of Tears once it’s opened. But Master Remzi does.”
She leaned forward, kissing Braden softly on the cheek. Then she turned her back to him and glided smoothly toward the door.
Braden almost formed a thought that would have killed her. Almost. He came very close to actually doing it.
But then he thought better of it and stayed his hand.
“What happened to Merris?” he called after her.
She turned back around with a small, amused grin. “I’ve always been Arden Hannah,” she informed him. “Merris was just a figment of my imagination.”
13
Assault on the Lyceum
“Tell me you’re not seriously considering this, Braden.” Sephana was livid, her cheeks reddened with anger.
Braden shrugged, reminding her, “We’ll need Master Remzi alive if they open the Well of Tears.”
He paced over to the wall and leaned with his back up against it, slouching. His body still felt a little unsteady from drawing so strongly on the magic field. With the field as unpredictable as it was, his action had been downright dangerous. Especially here in the eye of Bryn Calazar’s vortex, where the lines of power converged, greatly magnifying the field’s intensity.
“We won’t need Remzi at all if we stop them before they can open it,” Quin remarked dismally. He was sitting against a wall on the opposite side of the room, holding his hat in his hands. It was the first thing he’d spoken since Merris had left.
Braden pointed out, “We have no way of knowing they haven’t opened the Well of Tears already.”
Quin frowned, seeming to mull Braden’s remark in his head. “I think we’d know it if they did. I mean, something like tha
t … we would feel it, don’t you think?”
Braden could only offer him a shrug. “I honestly don’t know,” he admitted.
Staring down at his hat in his hands, Quin shook his head and muttered, “I miss Merris.”
Braden felt profoundly saddened for his brother. For just a little while, Quin had been living under the illusion that he had stumbled on to something actually good, had found new reason to enjoy living. That reason had turned out to be nothing more than a mirage of false hopes and manipulation.
Braden told him sincerely, “I’m sorry, Quin.”
His brother gazed drearily off to the side, eyes introspective in thought. “I didn’t see that coming. There was just something about her that I found irresistibly attractive. Funny, how the very thing that I found most beguiling about her was the fact that she reminded me … of me. Indeed, I wonder what that says about my own character,” he mused.
Just then, the entire magic field seemed to spasm, the lines of the field folding as if jostled by a tremor.
“We need to get out of here,” Braden growled.
Quin and Sephana swept quickly into motion, gathering their things. Quin caught his leather pack up in his hand, commenting as he did, “I wonder what hell feels like this time of year. Do you suppose I should bring along a jacket?”
Braden held open the door to the room, hardly sparing him a glance as he let Sephana out into the hallway. “Bring it along, Quin.”
Quin tossed his head, drawing his black longcoat on over his body. He then shouldered his pack and grabbed his staff, carrying it in the crook of his arm. He trotted forward out the door, sidling past Braden as he hurried to catch up with Sephana.
Braden let the door swing closed behind them then followed his brother down the dim hallway. Stepping outside, he glanced up and took in the dark expanse of cloud cover that now completely obscured the sky. Strange lights flickered deep within the bank of clouds, almost like lightning, but colorful and more diffuse. The entire magic field was off kilter, timid one moment and then hostile the next. The wind was up, rippling Quin’s coat out before him and crackling the skirt of Sephana’s dress.
The Complete Rhenwars Saga: An Epic Fantasy Pentalogy Page 166
