“Right.” Shelley picked up one of the assassin’s knives. “I’ll keep this. Hard to get decent weapons these days.”
“That’s fair.” Tate approached the house. “C’mon, everyone. We’ve gotta pack up and move. Only bring what you need, that clear?”
While Shelley went into the house to wrangle the spirit mages into packing up for their impromptu holiday to the Death King’s castle, Miles walked over to join me. “You okay? I didn’t know you were coming here.”
“I went to see the Houses today, but it didn’t turn out well.”
He arched a brow. “You asked them to join the Death King?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “Harris didn’t let me get that far. In fairness, I may have yelled at him a bit.”
“I imagine he deserved it,” he said.
“I wanted to find out if the elf trader was here in Elysium or not, too,” I explained. “He’s likely to be working with the Family directly, and this is the closest city to their base. Harris didn’t seem to know what I was talking about when I asked, though.”
“I don’t know that the Houses will have seen him,” he said. “They wouldn’t have any use for elf artefacts. Cantrips, they can always use.”
“Speaking of cantrips, I thought Dawson might be able to give us a clue about the situation here,” I said. “Or his assistant, if he’s around.”
“You mean if he’s still alive,” said Miles. “Given that he was here when those cantrips were infecting everyone and he’s the reason they spread so far to begin with, I have my doubts.”
“Whether he is or not, he was the one supplying the mages working with the Family with their illegal cantrips,” I said. “Maybe it’s worth finding out if he knows about their most recent plans. If not the elves, then the cantrip which showed up on the Death King’s doorstep marked with the Family’s signature.”
“You aren’t wrong,” said Miles. “I doubt Dawson’s still around, but we can see if anyone’s moved into his place.”
“Miles, are you coming?” Shelley walked out of the house with a backpack slung over her shoulder, two of the assassins’ knives strapped to her waist. “If you two are gonna stand there nattering all day, we’ll leave you behind.”
“You go on ahead,” Miles said. “Bria and I need to have a word with our former cantrip trader before we leave.”
“All right,” said Shelley. “You can come and grab your own stuff later when you come back. Also, you’ll probably get the shittiest room at the castle by the time you catch up.”
“That’s fair.” Miles began to walk away from the house. “Pretty sure there’s only dorms for visitors at the castle anyway, not individual rooms. I doubt the Death King will be willing to donate his suite to us.”
“You can always sleep in my room,” I said, before realising what I’d implied. Not that I was averse to the idea, but Shelley’s raised eyebrows told me I’d inadvertently opened myself up to questions I didn’t want to answer at the moment.
Luckily, some of the others interrupted by coming out of the house carrying an array of bags and weaponry, talking loudly among themselves. Miles and I let them pass by, and I stole a glance at his face, which displayed no obvious reaction towards my comment. Deciding to come back to that later, I watched the others walk towards the node and then turned back to Miles.
“Are you absolutely certain none of Shawn’s allies are hiding among the Spirit Agents?” I lowered my voice in case any stragglers overheard. “Because if they are, we’re rendering the Death King’s security measures useless by sending everyone into the castle.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s a risk we’ll have to take, if we want everyone to survive. We’ve lost too many people already.”
I had to agree. “Do you think Dawson survived?”
“If he did, he hasn’t tried to get in touch, not since we ambushed his assistant helping those earth mages.”
“Either he’s dead or he’s lying low.”
Considering Dawson had likely also known the Spirit Agents’ address, it was a miracle they’d managed to stay in the city for so long after the battle without an open attack. While I couldn’t quite dispel the lingering feeling that I’d been partly responsible for the assassins’ arrival, the Spirit Agents had long been the Death King’s allies and had even been betrayed by some of their own people as a consequence.
The last I’d seen of Shawn, Miles’s former second-in-command, he’d been ditched by the Family amid a warehouse full of the corpses of the people they’d murdered after forcing them to carve illegal cantrips for their own use. I sometimes wished I’d killed him right there and then, but the guy was below average on the danger scale compared to our other enemies.
The last Spirit Agents vanished into the node in a flash, at which point Miles gave one last glance at the house and then turned away. “There won’t be anything there the two of us can’t handle, don’t worry.”
“I’m not.” I fell into step with him as we walked. “Those cantrips, though? I hoped we’d seen the last of them.”
“I think we have,” said Miles. “If Dawson’s alive, I guarantee he’ll think twice about picking up dodgy cantrips again.”
Admittedly, it’d been Dawson’s apprentice who’d helped spread the cursed cantrips which had claimed hundreds of lives across the city, but I didn’t believe Dawson himself was entirely innocent either.
Miles knew the way to the supplier’s shop, which was a good thing, because I’d forgotten. The streets to the south of the Houses all looked the same, while the debris from the battle hadn’t all been cleared away yet. While the Houses had cleaned up the streets around their own headquarters, Dawson’s shop was in a sorry state and so was the surrounding area. Broken glass crunched underfoot, the windows were boarded up, and the door hung from its hinges. Not a good sign.
When Miles pushed the door inwards, we found an empty room waiting for us on the other side. “The cowardly knobhead ran off.”
Nothing more than a few empty boxes on bare floorboards remained inside the shop. Even most of the furniture had gone, aside from a wooden table with burn marks from old cantrips etched deep into its surface.
Miles stepped inside. “Let’s poke around and see if he left anything behind.”
I didn’t hold out much hope, but I circled the whole room and came to a halt behind the wooden table. A glint underneath caught my eye. Had he left a cantrip behind? I crouched down to look, and the ground stirred below my feet as though a tremor had passed under the surface. Something’s underground.
Miles’s alarmed gaze met mine. “Is that an earth mage?”
I rose to my feet, but not fast enough. The ground heaved, and a crack zigzagged through the wooden floorboards from one side of the room to the other. Another heave shook the walls, and something sharp and pointy appeared in the crack between the floorboards.
“Yeah, that’s not a mage.” Miles backed up to the door, but he’d been left on one side of the rapidly expanding crack in the floor while I was on the other. The crack expanded, revealing more and more sharp points until the distinct shape of a mouth full of teeth became visible.
“Wyrm.” I shuffled back, trying to find an obvious escape route. Ah, damn. I’d have to jump over the crack in the floor to get to the exit.
Miles’s eyes widened. “Bria…”
“Don’t look down,” I told myself. “Don’t look…”
I jumped over the gap. Teeth snapped inches from my feet, and as I slammed down on the other side as its tail whipped up in a shower of dirt and splintered wooden boards. Miles snagged my arm, and we ran out of the door into the street.
The sounds of the beast thrashing about reverberated behind us. How it’d had the patience to lie in wait all this time, I had no idea. Either it’d been sleeping, or someone with unusually high influence over magical beings had ordered it to be quiet up until someone came into the shop.
Inspiration struck. Before I lost my nerve, I sprinted back to the
open door and yelled at the beast. “Hey, you!”
The beast’s head swung in my direction, its teeth closing on thin air as I sprang back to avoid its bite. Miles ran behind me. “Bria, what are you doing?”
“Testing a theory.” I faced the wyrm, certain it must be the same one I’d previously encountered. I’d know if the Family had kept more than one of them on their estate. “Do you remember me? I’m Bria. You liked my friend, Trix, when you met.”
Without taking my eyes off its sharp teeth, I reached for my pendant and turned off the cantrip hiding my pointed ears. The beast’s head shook from side to side, displaying more confusion than anger.
“You don’t have to attack us,” I said. “You don’t have to do anything they told you to. If you leave the city, you can be free. Fly far away from here…”
Miles’s nails dug into my arm. “Bria…”
The wyrm let out a screeching cry and reared back, and I finally let Miles pull me out of range. A shower of dirt and wooden fragments erupted from the house as the beast slammed back into the ground. The resulting tremors echoed throughout the air, rocked the earth beneath our feet… but before we’d reached the street’s end, I glanced back and saw that despite the growing cloud of dust, the wyrm hadn’t come out to attack anyone in the city.
It’d gone back underground.
“I think it listened to me.”
Miles’s eyes were wide. “Since when could you mind-control a wyrm?”
“Trix taught me, but it’s the first time I’ve tried it on a creature that size.” I took a few hesitant steps towards the gutted shop. “I think it recognised me from before.”
“Lucky it did.” Miles overtook me, and then quickened his pace. “Look at that.”
I caught him up outside the shop, where the wyrm’s departure had exposed a large hole in the ground. Or rather… “That’s a tunnel. It dug its way in.”
Miles eyed the upturned soil. “Are you sure? That looks more like an earth mage’s work.”
So it did. If I looked past the mess the beast had made of the floorboards, the tunnel’s edges were far too neat to have been made by a subterranean monster. I knew an earth mage’s handiwork when I saw it.
I grinned. “Whoever did this, they’ve left us a direct route to their hideout.”
11
Needless to say, Miles wasn’t keen on taking a trip into the tunnel we’d found. “That beast is still underground, Bria. What if your spell wears off?”
“I’ll cast another one.” For now, I turned my cantrip back on, hiding my ears from sight. “Besides, it’ll have headed for the nearest exit, which might take us directly to the person who dug the tunnel. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to know if there are more of those rogue earth mages lurking underground.”
Miles swore under his breath. “I don’t like this, but you’re right. Let me go in first.”
I crouched beside the upturned earth and watched him lower himself into the hole in the ground before helping me climb down to join him. The wyrm had left a clear way into the tunnel open and we had to crawl at first, but we soon reached a wider tunnel with a high enough ceiling for us to stand in. Several earth mages could comfortably walk side by side, and while it looked like a couple of alternative routes had been closed off by barriers of earth, the main route led in the opposite direction from the cantrip store. We headed that way, relying on the dim light of a flame in my hands to illuminate our path.
“This is weird,” I remarked. “I don’t think this is one of the routes the earth mages used when they were spreading those cantrips around. It’s too far south.”
“We aren’t underneath the Houses,” Miles agreed. “I think we’re going away from the main part of the city.”
He was right. The tunnel was circuitous, but it headed in the opposite direction to the citadel and the Houses. “Then we’ll see where it ends.”
We walked in silence for a few minutes. The tunnel mostly took us in a straight line without any detours, but it showed no signs of coming to an end.
“Maybe I should have warned the Death King I’d be gone all day,” I said after a while.
“At this rate, we’ll end up in Arcadia,” Miles said. “We’ve come too far to turn back, though. We’ll have to follow the tunnel to the end, unless you have a shovel somewhere on you.”
“I forgot to pack one,” I said wryly. “This took some planning, though. They must have been digging these tunnels for days. Even earth mages can only go so fast.”
“True,” he said. “On the plus side, it confirms the people who dug this really didn’t want to be followed out of Elysium. Which means whatever we find on the other side ought to be worth the time and effort.”
All the same, the lack of any openings to the surface made me uneasy. Even with my elf speed, I’d tire out eventually, and Miles didn’t have the same advantage. Just when I was about to suggest turning back and finding another way to track the tunnel to its end, a glint near my foot caught my eye.
“Hello, cantrip.” I crouched down to examine the cantrip without touching it in case it turned out to be a cursed one left over from the battle… and spotted a familiar signature on the back.
“The Family,” Miles said.
“I think we’re close.” I glanced at the packed earth ceiling. “Must be.”
We walked for a few more minutes until natural light began to filter in from somewhere ahead, allowing me to extinguish the flame in my hand. Before long, an opening led aboveground, via a ladder. I checked for traps before climbing up to the surface.
Miles followed, shielding his eyes against the bright daylight. “Doesn’t look like there’s much out here.”
“Doubt they’d leave their hideout in the open.” I scanned the barren ground and spotted the shimmering lights of a concealment spell. Upon closer inspection, the spell covered a large area… a warehouse-sized area.
So this was where the illegal cantrips were being manufactured.
“This is the second warehouse.” Miles whistled, the truth dawning on him. “That caved-in tunnel way back in Elysium… I bet that one led to the other warehouse near the citadel. The one the Family already abandoned.”
“Then this one is probably still active.” But not for long. I trod closer to the huge concealed shape of the warehouse. Glass and debris crunched beneath my feet, while the carcasses of smaller buildings lay in ruins all around us and an overall air of abandonment filled the surrounding area.
“This used to be a town,” Miles said. “Or village.”
“We aren’t near the Death King’s territory, I don’t think.”
I’d lived in the Parallel my whole life, but the sheer scale of the damage the last war had caused had always been a distant, abstract concept to me. Elysium, for all its flaws, had weathered the storm better than most towns and villages without any magical protections. While I’d spend years running from one abandoned house to another, dodging phantoms and other beasts which made their homes in the abandoned corners of the city… none of that compared to the expanse of devastated landscape stretching in all directions, without the towering shape of the Death King’s castle as a landmark. Anyone who’d lived out here had fled to the cities, or they’d been trampled flat.
This is what the spirit mages did. What some of them are still trying to do, and the Family would be happy to help them do it.
“We don’t have to go and confront whoever’s in the warehouse yet,” said Miles.
I dragged my gaze away from our dismal surroundings. “Huh?”
“If we find a node, then we’ll be able to come back here at any time,” he said. “Besides, I think we should plan an escape route before we walk inside that illusion spell.”
“Good point.” If the warehouse turned out to be booby-trapped, the only way out was to run back into the tunnels or out into the wilderness, and there might be hordes of monsters out there for all we knew. Besides, if the people inside had been imprisoned against their will li
ke the ones at the other warehouse, I doubted we’d be able to herd everyone underground. Better to find a node instead. If the Family had picked out this area for a reason, there must be one nearby.
Miles and I trod around the flickering illusion surrounding the warehouse, and sure enough, I made out the shape of a current of bright energy within walking distance.
“Good,” said Miles. “That’s our way out.”
With one eye on the node, I circled the illusion hiding the warehouse. Miles did likewise, and his foot scuffed against a cantrip hidden in a pile of rocks.
“That’s our illusion.” I gave a nod. “Okay. I’m ready.”
Miles turned off the cantrip. An instant later, the large shape of the warehouse appeared out of thin air, occupying the entire area in front of us. Its smooth walls displayed no doors or windows, but I tilted my head, spotting another camouflage cantrip near the front wall. When Miles turned that one off, a door popped into existence.
Approaching, I tried an unlocking charm, and the door clicked open. Taking in a deep breath, I pushed the door inward.
Part of me was braced to find another massacre inside. Instead, rows and rows of people filled the space within the warehouse, standing at long wooden tables and carving cantrips with delicate tools. People with pointed ears, lank dark hair, and weary, elegant features.
“Elves,” I murmured.
Miles swore under his breath. “This shouldn’t be legal. But it’s the Parallel, so…”
I stepped into the warehouse and took in each piece of the scene before us. At the very back of the warehouse, a large chunk of gold took up a sizeable amount of space, surrounded by a group of elves. The elves wielded tools which must have been brought straight from the Family’s mines, chipping pieces of the golden substance away and throwing them into wheelbarrows. When each wheelbarrow was full, someone would wheel it over to a row of tables nearby where more elves were expertly chiselling the pieces of gold into perfect circular cantrip shapes. At the front of the warehouse, piles of newly chiselled cantrips lay on tables where the nearest group of elves etched runes onto the surface of each coin to turn them into spells.
Tower of Fire (Parallel Magic Book 3) Page 10
