Pawn Of The Planewalker (Book 5)

by Ron Collins

  A dark green shiver ran through him.

  Pullini seemed to think the planes were there for his own entertainment. He constantly stretched the rules, pushing residents as far as the guidelines would allow and then sometimes further. Braxidane wouldn’t mind it so much, but Pullini did nothing of any value with the extras he gleaned. Instead, he consumed and consumed, and when he went too far and got himself dragged before Joint Authority he always complained he was being persecuted.

  Pullini was a coward.

  Braxidane slipped through connective tissues between the planes, enjoying the process of travel despite the pall brother Pullini put over him.

  Rastella lie ahead, a world that he owned, and that—due to its direct link to Talin—was rich with highly evolved and elegantly crafted magic. He was interested in a mage there, a child still, but showing talents as natural as Garrick’s had been.

  Braxidane reached for the gate, hoping for a taste of its unique flavor, and maybe the briefest update on the child. But it scalded him at his touch, and when he pulled the tendril back he smelled the odor of smoke.

  He drew on media to heal the wound, and once the pain subsided, he triaged the damage. He had lost a chunk of himself, easily resolved by dipping into his node and pulling from his worlds. But as he touched the wounds, a sensation of dread filled him.

  Hezarin.

  Her flavoring was clear and unmistakable.

  His sister had been busy.

  She had taken over Rastella, and had warded it with powerful controls.

  He hesitated, not wanting to confront her while he was still in pain. But this had to be done, and it was best to get it over with now. So Braxidane flowed until he drew close enough to spread himself around Hezarin’s node. She was alone, relaxing languidly and soaking energy from the flow around her. Nervous tension built as he stepped through the membrane of her cell.

  “I was wondering when you would come,” Hezarin said.

  “What are you doing?” Braxidane replied.

  “What does it look like I’m doing, brother? I’m occupying my node and listening to the flow.”

  “You’ve taken Rastella.”

  “So?”

  “I want it back.”

  She laughed. “Go away, Braxidane.”

  “Are you begging to be brought before Joint Authority?”

  Hezarin’s movement then was slow and graceful, like a sheet billowing in the spring breeze. She folded on herself, gathering from the outside until she stood with physical presence before him.

  “I’ve committed no crime greater than you did when you entered Adruin to save your champion there.”

  He blanched.

  “You didn’t think I knew about that, did you?”

  Braxidane was silent.

  It was all some time ago. Garrick had been drowning, and if he had died Braxidane’s efforts would have been for naught. Braxidane thought he had been subtle. He thought he had slipped into the plane without creating a ripple, and he thought his alteration was small enough to pass unnoticed—it was, after all, merely a single casting. He rationalized that saving Garrick then had not directly affected a battle, and therefore had not harmed the efforts of any other planewalker. But that argument would be unlikely to stand in Joint Authority any better than Hezarin’s decision to take Rastella from him would.

  “How did you find out?” he finally said.

  Hezarin laughed again. “Put me up on Joint Authority if you wish, Braxidane. We’ll share whatever punishments the collective decides to dole out.”

  “Be very careful playing this game, sister,” Braxidane said. “There will be others who will notice, and many of them may be less … motivated … to give you leeway.”

  “Just the thought of you providing cautionary advice on how to make such arrangements makes me laugh.”

  “I’m serious.”

  Hezarin mocked him. “I’m serious.”

  Ignoring her, Braxidane pressed on. “None of us in Existence are very good at following the agreement.”

  “Shocking, isn’t it?”

  “And there are a hundred such deals between us all—maybe a thousand.”

  “Are you done being boring, yet?”

  “You don’t see it, do you? All it takes is one agreement to break with enough vehemence, and a domino chain could cascade throughout All of Existence. One of us blows up and calls in an agreement on another, who, in turn, calls in their own chits. Let’s not create another domino in the chain, sister. You’ve made your point. Now give me back Rastella.”

  “This is the best you can do, Braxidane? Seriously?”

  “It should be enough.”

  “Go away,” Hezarin said.

  Braxidane waited for a moment, then, realizing it was a hopeless cause, he slipped out of Hezarin’s node.

  An unsettled taste flared within him. Hezarin wasn’t going to back down, and if she controlled Rastella she was certain to discover his candidate. Braxidane returned to his node in a cloud of contemplation. He had to do something. This action from his sister could not be left to stand. He saw two options—let her have the plane and risk losing the mage, or take it back and risk what could turn out to be an ugly chain of events.

  He spread out in his node, dipped his consciousness into the flow, and began to consider the possibilities.

  Chapter 9

  Raucous voices echoed through Dorfort’s royal ballroom—a cavernous grand hall that was often used for events of state, celebrations, and festivals. Garrick sat at the head of the table with Darien and Reynard. Mages filled the rest of the seats. Will and several apprentices cleared plates and filled mugs.

  Arabel, a mage of some respect, spoke.

  “Even if we grant the council needs to oversee all research, how can we create proposals if we can’t experiment to decide what’s achievable?”

  He sat down in a huff, smoothing his robes and twisting his beard as the rest of the mages buzzed with agreement.

  This wasn’t going to be good, Garrick saw.

  Darien dabbed at the corner of his mouth, then placed the cloth napkin beside a plate that held the remains of his roasted cormorant.

  “I understand, Arabel. This oversight board will slow the development of magic. But both my advisors have told me progress can be attained in this fashion.”

  “That’s horse dung,” Elaina, a sorceress from the northeastern ranges, said. “Just because something is achievable, does not mean it is wise.”

  Mages grumbled their assent.

  Darien replied. “I understand why you would say that, but the fact remains that it is important for the House of the Freeborn to be aligned to the city. And, despite the fact that the people of Dorfort are among the most enlightened citizens on the plane, they still fear you. You have to face the fact that they tolerate the presence of this order today only because I have given them my assurances. This approach will change their perspective of the order.”

  “What we do will make their lives easier,” Elaina replied. “If they can’t see that, then they don’t matter.”

  “That is the attitude that created the citizens’ fear of the orders to begin with,” Darien said. “I want our house to leverage the talents of all its members to help the common good. That was Sunathri’s vision, after all. We all want that. If a mage finds a spell that protects against all disease and aging, it is of no use unless people are willing to endure it.”

  Darien paused to let the audience consider his point.

  “What we’re really arguing about is time,” he finally said.

  “Time?”

  “Yes. If we constrain ourselves today, the population will accept us. As that occurs I foresee a time when we can release our self-imposed constraints. Can you all see that vision? Can we agree that this is the true situation?”

  Two mages toward the back of the room stood, scowls pasted on their faces.

  Boots from the mages scraped discordantly against the polished floor, and the ceramic cl
atter of plates being pushed along bare tabletops created a collage of sound that said the Freeborn most definitely did not see anything at all like Darien suggested they should.

  Elaina wrapped her walking shawl over her shoulders.

  Voices rose. The order was disbanding before Garrick’s very eyes.

  He stood without thinking.

  The mages turned, quieting almost as one.

  He felt pressure as red heat against his hunger. Something stirred inside him, a fragrance—so brief, so brief—but it was her, wasn’t it? Sunathri. It felt like it. Was it Sunathri’s life force, turning inside him?

  He didn’t know.

  “Which is better?” he said as he collected himself.

  Expressions across the room grew quizzical. Motion came to a halt.

  “To live in an order that advocates the careful application of magic, or to go it alone?”

  Garrick turned his hand out in supplication. He spoke almost without thinking, feeling oddly calm, sensing himself in the same role he had often watched Alistair provide as his superior had counseled other mages.

  “I don’t know,” he answered himself. “But that is the question on the table today. You see that, don’t you? This is a question of whether we have an order or not.

  “There will always be Torean wizardry. It was here before Sunathri came and bound you up together. It will be here long after we are all dead and gone. Her idea, though, was that a group of independent wizards could do such good work that, when they combined, people would love them, and that the connection between mage and citizen would change the world. Darien’s proposal makes that connection paramount, it says the Freeborn will be part of the world no matter what. The counter position accentuates the portion of Sunathri’s vision that is lodged in personal freedom, that a mage can make his or her own choice at all times, just as I did on the battlefields surrounding God’s Tower, and just as I do today. I want you to see that. I want you to see that Darien holds no personal bias against magic. He wants it to flourish.”

  The mages grumbled, and Darien nodded.

  “But I want Darien to see that a mage must be free to make their own way. This is the message that must be sent to the public of Dorfort.”

  “Hear, hear,” a mage said.

  Garrick fought a surge from his hunger as he waited for the hall to quiet. His vision waivered, and he had to catch his breath. It was growing. He had only a little time.

  “So that question: how will the Torean House be built, how will it exist, is a question you each have to ask yourself. And those answers feel to me like they could decide much in the course of history. I’ve been in the field recently. I know a little of what I speak. The Koradictines and Lectodinians are lying fallow, licking their wounds, but I can say for certain that they are not gone. The Lectodinians are still particularly strong. And if I make my mark, there will be more pain from these orders, and that pain will come sooner rather than later. Darien asked if you saw his version of the future as ringing true. I ask if you feel my version, also. I ask if you can see a future wherein it is deadly to be so independent that we are each alone.”

  Heads nodded.

  Garrick opened his mouth to speak further.

  He felt suddenly disoriented, and he clutched the table to avoid falling.

  “I …”

  His vision waivered, and pressure pounded against his forehead—he felt a wind, a lightness under his feet, a swirling in the hunger within him. Then he smelled the telltale scent of Braxidane’s magic, heavy with the sickly sweet taste of sugar burnt on a griddle. He saw a tunnel billowing toward him, dark blue clouds turning like a cyclone.

  “Garrick?”

  It was Darien. His voice echoed from somewhere distant.

  “Are you well, Lord Garrick?” Reynard said.

  He felt Will coming toward him.

  But mostly he felt Braxidane’s pull, and as blackness crackled over his body and his hunger folded in on itself, the skin around his eyes grew tight with a gale of wind that grew to a banshee’s howl.

  “Stop!” he screamed, but knew the word was not audible.

  And suddenly he was flying through air that was gray and silver.

  In that moment, with all eyes upon him, Garrick disappeared.

  Gone.

  One moment he was there, standing before the house of the Torean Freeborn and laying the framework of a plan, then he was gone, blinked out of existence leaving nothing but his half-eaten lunch to show he had ever existed.

  Darien gasped.

  The mages became deathly silent. Then Elaina cleared her throat and bedlam ensued. Mages cried out, speaking to each other in rapid-fire bursts. Tables and chairs groaned. Ceramic plates clattered.

  “The orders have taken him!” a voice yelled.

  Reynard cast a quick spell to scry for danger, but apparently found nothing. Another mage cast a shield over himself and a few others within his reach.

  Darien stood, calling for calm that didn’t come.

  Finally, Reynard leapt to the table, and cast a strobe of light.

  “Enough!”

  The mages came to an abrupt quiet.

  “What’s happened?” Elaina asked.

  “I don’t know,” Reynard responded. “But I motion we bring this discussion to a halt and break into groups to investigate.”

  “I agree,” Darien said. “We need to find the truth.”

  The gathering seemed to accept this.

  Reynard selected Elaina and three other mages.

  “You’ll help Darien and I work on a plan. The rest of you are excused for now. I want you all available at a moment’s notice, though. We’ll call our next session soon.”

  Arabel spoke.

  “What if this is an attack? The orders could be at the city gates as we speak.”

  “If this were a full-out attack we would be hearing the horns blare by now,” Darien said. “But it could be a foreshadowing. So, I suggest Reynard lead our magical response, and I brief Lord Ellesadil so he can prepare for defense.”

  Reynard nodded. “That seems wise.”

  Elaina sat down.

  “All right, then,” Darien said, pushing the sleeves of his tunic up to his elbows. “Let’s get to it.”

  Chapter 10

  Garrick pried open his eyes. He lay with his cheek pressed flat against hard stone. His body ached. His head throbbed. His mouth felt like it was filled with wool. He rolled to his side, then sat up and ran his hand through his hair. The wind here was cold and dry. Clouds of lavender and scarlet stretched across a panorama of rock that stretched as far as he could see. There was a faint scent about the place, the reek of wine left out overnight. In the distance, brown smoke rose into the darkened sky.

  A water skin and a rune-encrusted sword lay on the stone beside him.

  Where was he?

  What was Braxidane up to?

  He stood up, swaying until he got his bearings.

  He wore Torean black—a sleeveless tunic and breeches tucked into a pair of soft boots. He flexed his fingers, feeling the ache of muscle all the way up his arms. Oddly, his hunger was far away.

  “What do you want?” Garrick called aloud, expecting Braxidane could hear him.

  The wind carried his voice, but no one answered.

  “Braxidane!”

  Still nothing.

  Garrick scowled. His skin prickled with the shrill wind. He had learned the hard way that his superior could be fickle, that Braxidane would pick and choose his own time and place for meetings. It made him angry.

  He picked up the water skin and sniffed its contents.

  The drink had a sugary aroma.

  He sipped. It tasted good, so he drank.

  The sword was the length of his forearm and had a curved blade that was etched with flowing rune work he could not read. He held it for a moment—feeling a power within that he could not define—then he placed it in a sheath he found a short distance away.

  This he hitched to
his belt.

  Were the water and the blade gifts from Braxidane? He didn’t know, nor at this time did he particularly care.

  The column of smoke still marked the horizon.

  Garrick didn’t trust Braxidane, and he hated the idea of following the obvious. But his superior held all the cards in this game, and finding the source of the smoke seemed the best way to orient himself. Perhaps it was a city. So he took a final draught of the water, cursed Braxidane’s meddling, and headed toward the column.

  As he walked, a snarling growl came from over his shoulder.

  He spun, but not in time to slip under the hurling white weight that struck him high on the shoulder. The beast was huge and cat-like, its teeth were gnarled fangs stained yellow and purple, its claws extended like daggers.

  Garrick rolled to the ground, and reached for his link to the plane of magic, trying to set a gate. There was nothing there, though. No gate, no rushing current of Talin’s magestuff. He felt nothing except the bitter wind and the burn of his hunger as it boiled beneath the surface of his mind.

  The cat’s fur stood on end as it hunched down, then leaped.

  Garrick dodged, but the beast’s claw ripped along his ribcage. The cat growled in triumph and turned, barring its purple teeth once again.

  He reached for the sword and felt it pulse with the familiar tang of magestuff. It was a source, Garrick thought, a store of magical energy.

  The cat struck again.

  This time Garrick was quick enough to slice across its chest, bringing a vivid blue line of blood over its white fur. The cat’s scream was as coarse as shattering rock. The smell of its blood pulled on Garrick’s hunger.

  He set a new gate, and this time magestuff flowed through the blade like a river.

  The cat sniffed the wind, the folds above its nose gathering in fleshy mounds.

  Garrick threw the sword with a simple, overhand motion, and the weapon flew gracefully, looping once before it buried itself deeply into the creature’s chest.

  It was dead before it hit the ground.