Benjamin Ashwood Box Set 2

by A. C. Cobble

  “I found this little thing in the wardrobe,” said Amelie, a finger lifting one of the straps that kept the gown clinging precariously to her shoulders. “I can only imagine what kind of women are normally in this place, wearing this kind of thing. You wouldn’t think badly of me if I wore it to bed, though, would you?”

  Ben, speechless, could only shake his head.

  Amelie gave him a smile that made the half bell of waiting all worth it. Then, she pounced onto the bed. Ben reached for her, suddenly not tired at all.

  When Ben woke, he slipped out of bed while Amelie still slumbered. He tugged on his britches and shirt and stood, smiling down at her. The fact that she was there, lying naked in his bed, was something he thought he’d never get used to. A year ago, he’d been a simple brewer in a small village. Now, he couldn’t believe his luck.

  The apartments were quiet, but he smelled freshly brewed kaf. After so long on the road, it called to him. He stepped out of the room into the common area and stopped. At their table was the rogue mage Sincell. She was seated in front of a steaming ceramic pot that had to be the kaf. She was sipping from a small mug.

  “The Rat tells me you live for this stuff,” she remarked.

  Ben conceded, “That and ale.”

  “It’s a bit early for me to have an ale. Come, have some kaf,” said the woman, gesturing to a chair opposite of her.

  Ben settled in and poured himself a mug. The rich, earthy aroma soaked into his nostrils, dragging him to full wakefulness.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said,” remarked Sincell as Ben tried the kaf. “Good, isn’t it?”

  He nodded and indicated she should continue.

  “I assume you’re exaggerating about these demons, but I’ve faced a swarm or two in my time. They’re not something you can ignore. If even half of what you say is true…” She took a sip of her drink and eyed Ben over the rim of her mug.

  “It’s all true,” assured Ben. “Why would we have any reason to lie?”

  “That’s what I’ve been thinking about the last few days. If Northport really fell, the City will know about it soon enough. What would you gain by telling us demons overran the place if they did not? It’d be such an easy lie to disprove.”

  Ben drank his kaf in silence, letting the woman have time to sort out her thoughts.

  “I’ve decided you are telling the truth about that, but the five of you aren’t enough to stand against an army of demons,” declared Sincell. “Even with some special mage-wrought weapon that the Veil herself wants to get her hands on, it’s not enough to stand against what you’ve been telling us about.”

  “I know,” said Ben. “We have other allies, but even then, it is not enough.”

  “You need more men,” said Sincell, leaning forward with her forearms resting on the table. “Well, not necessarily men, but warriors. Soldiers, armies, even mages if you can get some.”

  “You know anyone who wants to help?” asked Ben.

  The woman sat back.

  “I ran from the Sanctuary nigh twenty years ago,” she said. “Didn’t come back within five hundred leagues of here for fifteen of those years. I was drawn back, though, pulled by the promise of the Sanctuary.”

  Ben poured himself another mug of kaf and let her continue.

  “It’s not all bad, you know,” explained Sincell. “They’re capable of awful things, and I suspect you know even more about that than I do, but they’re also capable of good. There are good people there. Friends of mine, mentors. People I know who wouldn’t lift a finger to harm another. People who would be appalled if they knew the things you told us a few days back. That’s why I came back to the City, because some of the members of the Sanctuary are the best people I know.”

  Ben nodded. “Lady Towaal was a mage there for, well, I don’t even know how long. A long time though, for sure. Amelie was an initiate for a brief span. They had no idea what kind of machinations the Veil was up to when they were there.”

  Sincell, seemingly encouraged by Ben’s words, continued, “I’m certain that if some of the people I know heard what you have to say, they’d run from behind those white walls just as quick as I did. Most of them went to that place to do good. Sitting on an island, safe and sound, while an army of demons storms across the continent? That’s not what they signed up for.”

  Ben sipped at his drink. “I think you’re probably right, but it’s not like the Veil’s inviting me to come in and do a speech in front of her mages. It’s not like she’d even let us live if she knew we were here. You know that. Towaal thinks she knows some mages who would be willing to join us, but how do we get ahold of them? We’ve thought about writing a letter, but what if she was wrong about the person’s character, or what if the letter fell into the wrong hands? We’d be cooked before we knew what was happening.”

  Sincell spun her mug on the table, watching the kaf swirl within it. “You need to find folks you know can keep a secret from the Veil.”

  Ben, sensing where the conversation was going, asked again, “You know of anyone?”

  The woman smiled. “I may know a few,” she answered. “There are some I see from time to time. They’ve kept my secret safe for the last few years, and I know they aren’t satisfied with the current Veil. They have a meeting tonight. You could come talk to them if you want, and try to bring them over to your cause.”

  “Let me think about it,” murmured Ben.

  “Of course,” responded Sincell. “Lady Towaal is up on the roof.” The runaway mage stood and left.

  Ben sat for a long moment, thinking about what she’d said. Then, he went to wake Amelie and find Towaal.

  That afternoon, they crept through the warrens of the City’s slums. Ben hadn’t realized how extensive the network was of dilapidated housing, unsavory taverns, and durhang dens.

  “Anywhere that has rich people is going to have poor people,” muttered Renfro as he led them from building to building, alley to alley.

  They were bundled tightly in their cloaks, hoods pulled up, eyes cast down. They appeared entirely suspicious, but that wasn’t an unusual look in the neighborhoods Renfro took them through. Half the people they passed didn’t want to be noticed and had even less interest in noticing who was around them.

  “I don’t think I would like living in a city,” remarked Prem.

  “It’s not all like this. I promise,” assured Amelie.

  “This isn’t so bad,” claimed Renfro. “There are far worse places to live, like on a farm.”

  “Fresh air, open space?” responded Ben. “A farm doesn’t sound that terrible.”

  “Pre-dawn wake-up times, filthy animals, no women,” retorted Renfro.

  They fell silent as they scurried across a busy street, and then, they found themselves entering the lobby of a soaring tower. The space was clean but not wealthy. A far sight better than what they’d been trooping through but not so high class that anyone affiliated with the Sanctuary was likely to be staying there.

  A guard at the door merely glanced at a subtle hand gesture from Renfro, and his eyes snapped back to the streets in front of the tower. They slipped by him, and Renfro led them to a tiny, narrow staircase at the back of the lobby. Ben eyed a broad, limestone one that they passed.

  “What’s wrong with that stair?” he hissed.

  “Too public,” answered Renfro. “All of these tall places have at least two. In case there is a fire, they’ve got another way out if one gets blocked. If you ask me, living in a place where you have to worry about that kind of thing is your first problem.”

  “I thought you liked the city,” challenged Amelie. “Big cities come with big towers.”

  “Big cities come with basements too,” declared Renfro.

  He started up the narrow stairs. Ben immediately felt a creeping sense of dread. Not from any magical wards, a sixth sense about watchers, or anything like that. Instead, he found himself sandwiched between his friends in a staircase that was barely wider than hi
s shoulders. As far as he could see, it extended up above them, story after story. It was nothing but wall and stairs, with the occasional opening into a narrow hallway when they passed another floor.

  “Imagine racing twenty stories down this thing, stuck behind hundreds of people, and the place is burning above you,” said Rhys.

  Ben groaned.

  “You can’t help yourself, can you?” Amelie asked the rogue.

  “Don’t want our leader getting a big head,” he responded.

  Ben breathed deep and tried to ignore the man.

  A quarter bell passed, and Ben’s legs were burning with the strain of climbing stair after stair.

  “Sorry about this,” gasped Renfro. The little thief looked like at any moment he could lose it and go tumbling back down the stairs to the bottom. He’d never been in good shape, and Ben doubted lurking in basement lairs, drinking fine wine, and carousing had done anything to improve his constitution.

  Finally, they reached the floor they were climbing to. Renfro led them into a wide-open room and flopped to the floor, his back resting against a circular column.

  Ben walked across the empty floor and peered out the window. They were twenty stories above the City on the northern edge of the island. The window Ben peered out overlooked the grounds of the Sanctuary.

  “It’s like spying on ants,” said Prem. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just far-see?”

  “Oh, yeah,” muttered Renfro. He dug a tube out of his cloak and rolled it across the floor to them.

  “Far-seeing could alert the mages to our presence,” explained Towaal. “Generally, it is not intrusive, but there are centuries of wards laid over that place. It’s possible they could detect us. Remember, they have the mask from the First Mages. As we discussed back in your village, they’ve called on power that I do not entirely understand to provide protection.”

  The mage bent and scooped up the tube Renfro had produced. She held it to one eye, looking out the window. Then, she flipped it around and looked again. For long moments, she studied the grounds of the Sanctuary. Finally, she passed the device to Amelie.

  “This will work,” Towaal said to Renfro.

  “If he’s able to slip in unnoticed, Milo won’t be able to move around the grounds without us seeing him,” said Amelie, peering at the Sanctuary below. “Once we figure out which building he’s staying in, we should be able to form a plan.”

  “I can’t believe you’re going to break into that place,” said Renfro.

  Ben shrugged. “It worked before.”

  The little thief clambered to his feet. “When they catch you, make sure you forget my name.”

  “Of course,” said Ben. He paused. “Thanks for the help, Renfro.”

  Renfro paused at the door to the stairwell. “You helped me when I needed it most. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t pay you back.”

  “You’re an honorable man,” said Ben.

  His old friend started down the stairs without a response.

  “An honorable man?” questioned Rhys once the little thief was out of earshot. “You know he steals from people for a living, right?”

  Ben shrugged. “He needs to hear it. Maybe someday, he really will be.”

  “If you say so,” responded the rogue.

  “You used to kill people for a living,” reminded Ben.

  Rhys grunted and moved to stand beside Amelie.

  “Another bell here then Towaal and I need to go speak with Sincell’s mages,” said Ben. “The rest of you can keep an eye on the Sanctuary. Look for anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Of course. You sure you don’t want me to go with you to meet the mages?” asked Amelie.

  Ben shook his head. “They’ll be nervous, I think. The fewer of us who are there, the better. Towaal lends a certain credibility and may know some of them.”

  “I’m not credible?” asked Amelie with an eyebrow raised.

  “You’re…” Ben paused, thinking of ways to extract his foot from his mouth.

  “An initiate to these women,” said Towaal.

  Amelie winced, and Ben shrugged.

  Ben and Towaal, cloaks pulled over their heads, entered the Wily Goose. It was a place Rhys would have appreciated. Dark corners filled with uncouth figures, gambling, girls, and copious amounts of ale flowing from the taps in a constant waterfall of drunkenness.

  “I don’t think the Veil will stumble across us in here,” remarked Towaal.

  “I’m not sure anyone we meet in here will be any better,” said Ben, eyeing a group of unsavory-looking characters at a table nearby. He led them to a backroom where Sincell had promised a group of mages would be waiting for them. Friendly mages. Mages who didn’t want to immediately run back to the Sanctuary and turn them in, she had said. Ben put his hand on the door and breathed deeply. He glanced back at Towaal.

  “I’m ready.”

  He pushed the door open and strode inside.

  8

  The Mages

  Half a dozen women sat looking at him from the other side of a table. They’d arranged themselves with their backs against the wall, facing the door. To join them, his back would be to the door. He grunted. The Sanctuary’s mages would naturally put themselves at an advantage. They’d do it without thinking, he hoped. If they’d intentionally put him in a weaker position, then this meeting wasn’t starting well.

  “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me,” he said, trying to sound confident. “Sincell tells me you are interested in talking to me.”

  “The girl is a runaway and I have very little interest in her claims,” remarked one of the women coldly. Her face was wrinkled like old leather and her stark white hair was pulled back into a severe bun, but her eyes blazed bright blue. “I don’t really care what you have to say either. I’m told…”

  Towaal stepped forward and flipped back the hood of her cloak. “Still a bitch, I see. You should listen to what he says, Hadra, before judging the merit of those words. I believe you taught me something like that, once.”

  The woman, Hadra, threw back her head and laughed. “Still as impulsive as ever, Karina. I was sure it would be you who was with this young man, but I had to see it myself. This boy is nothing to us, but you, you have a story we want to hear. Why did you leave, Karina? Why did you betray us?”

  Ben saw the other mages nodding along with Hadra. He was suddenly glad he’d insisted Towaal come along for the meeting.

  Towaal smiled bitterly at the group. “Did I betray the Sanctuary, or is the Sanctuary betraying its purpose and us?”

  The mages looked back at her, waiting on Hadra to respond, but the woman did not. She merely gestured to the empty chairs at the table. Towaal took one, and Ben sat beside her.

  “Since I have been gone,” began Towaal, “I have learned many things, things that were difficult to believe in some cases, and things that I do not think you would believe if I told you right now. I have seen horrors that I never could have imagined, and I’ve seen the courage it took to defeat those horrors. We’ve traveled from the City, to the Wilds, to Irrefort, to Qooten, to Akew Woods. I’ve met mages who have been alive since before the Sanctuary was formed and defeated mages who had been dead for months but kept on fighting.”

  Hadra’s eyebrows rose. Ben suspected the woman had spent hundreds of years practicing a blank face, but she couldn’t keep the look of shock out of her eyes as Towaal continued.

  “One thing I suspected and have only been able to confirm recently is that the Veil herself is behind many of the ills that our world faces. Her schemes and her double-dealing have led us to a precipice. Below is chaos and death, perhaps for the entire continent. Northport has already fallen to a swarm of demons like this world has never seen. Other cities will fall as well if no one acts. On the cliff, though, is even worse in some ways. There, the Veil intends to rule over us as an immortal queen, and she may be able to do it if we don’t stop her. There is a weapon which will give her power that is, literally, beyond
your belief. I know, because I wouldn’t have believed it either if I hadn’t held the device in my hands.”

  In the tavern around them, the sounds of revelry bled through the walls and door, but the mages were stunned, speechless. Silence blanketed the room for a long moment.

  “You’ve said more than we expected you to,” murmured Hadra. “We-we thought you would tell us about the Veil’s political machinations, her disregard for helping those she could. This is, well, I’m not sure what to make of what you’ve said.”

  “It seems fantastical, Karina,” mentioned another of the women. “The Veil has gone astray, I agree, but it sounds like you are claiming she is evil. I know you were friends with her and that friendship ended badly, but calling her evil is a rather large leap, isn’t it?”

  Grim-faced, Towaal pulled a bag from under her cloak.

  Ben looked away. He heard a thump and the gasp of indrawn breath.

  “Look closely,” instructed Towaal.

  “What the hell are you thinking, Karina!” shouted Hadra. “Why are you walking around with something like that? That is disgusting!”

  “Look closely.”

  Ben risked a glance and swallowed hard to keep the bile from blowing out of his gullet. He could only see the back of it, which didn’t make it any more pleasant. He knew exactly what the front looked like. Instinctively, he gripped the scar on his arm, the one that had been dug into him when the undead mage Eldred had sunk her teeth into his flesh and torn off a chunk.

  “Is t-that…” stammered one of the mages. “No, that is not possible.”

  “It is Eldred,” stated Towaal.

  One of the woman stood, calmly turned, shoved open the shutters that looked out the back of the tavern, and got violently sick.

  “Eldred was killed when the initiate Amelie fled,” muttered another mage. “She’s been dead for nearly a year. I went to the woman’s funeral. Where did you get this?”