He didn’t like not having a choice, but he would stay true to his oaths, just as Cassandra would. That meant guarding the princess with his life, even if it seemed hopeless. He just, tried very hard not to think of what could happen. Tanner was an asshole, and he was only being gracious about his victory to gloat. If that victory was endangered, chances were that he would start killing. Tanner certainly wouldn’t just give up, to be charged and executed for attempted regicide, treason, and sedition.
He had no clue where the prince and other three were, but they were too short on time for him to be asking lots of questions.
Delphine asked, “Suggestions?”
He said, “His whole plan depends on you dying before the other masters can recover, or the masters down south can come to your defense and take him to task. If any of you live, he will lose. I’m afraid that leaves running, your majesty. If need be, let him rule for a day or two and sit on your throne, as long as you and your children live, we can fix it.”
Lia said, “I concur, your majesty. Although I wouldn’t have been so blunt.”
He shrugged, “Small village blacksmith.”
Lia smirked, but then sobered, killing their habitual byplay, given the circumstances.
Delphine said, “All those mages have guarded us, multiple times, it won’t be long before they get here. They even know all our emergency procedures, so we have to throw them out and do something different.”
A royal guard ran up breathlessly, “They have the exits covered by two master mages each, I barely escaped the spell that knocked out the rest of the guards near there. We won’t make it out of the castle.”
Another royal guard said, “Not all of the emergency procedures.”
Delphine nodded, “We do have a few fallback plans that it seemed prudent not to inform the mages of, since they were made for a mage rebellion.”
A guard said cautiously, “Your majesty,” but she held up a hand cutting off what else he might have said.
She said, “We must trust them, or we’ve already lost. If some mages weren’t true to their word and oaths, our family would have fallen long ago. Enough talk, it’s time to act, before it’s too late.”
The royal guard grunted, “Very well, follow me.”
Then to his surprise, the guard moved farther into the suite, and through the middle bedroom to the princess’s. It was the first time he’d ever been in there, and it was neater than he expected, but then they had maids. There was a large four poster bed with elaborate carvings all over, two end tables equally as elaborate. There was a very long nine drawer dresser that was about waist height, with a long mirror over it. Next to that was the biggest wardrobe that he’d ever seen, with six doors.
There was also a bookcase on the other side of the room, which the guard pulled away from the wall. It must’ve been hinged, because it moved without a sound, and it revealed a thin and steep circular stairwell behind it. Even he grabbed the arm rails for stability, as he followed them down the steep steps in a tight spiral. The stairwell continued, even after he’d long estimated they’d gone down the seven stories to the ground level, and he suspected they were underground.
Deep underground.
The stairwell stopped at another door, the queen removed a key and unlocked the large iron door, and they went though. The prince, more royal guards, and the three other mages were already in the large underground bunker room. One of the guards engaged the lock, and the bolts, then picked up a metal bar which acted as a crossbar slid between two rings embedded in the walls on either side of the door, adding a third lock to the door.
The queen said, “This bolt-hole was made in secret by my ancestors. While we trust the ten of you with our lives, as you’ve just seen some mages are not as trustworthy. Which is the reason for this next order. You are all forbidden to ever speak of this room, even to your masters, or write it down anywhere. Even amongst yourselves. It may be needed by my family again in the future, and as such it must remain a secret you take to your graves.”
They all agreed, though Andrew and Levi looked annoyed. He wondered just how much those two had argued the last week, but he pushed it out of his head as unimportant.
“How far down are we?”
Delphine answered, “Far enough that their detection spells won’t reach us.”
He shook his head, “If I were Tanner, when I discovered I couldn’t find you, I’d spell the rest of the council asleep. They couldn’t stop it in their weakened state. Then I’d wake up and question the royal guards. I’m assuming most of them know about this?”
A guard growled, “We wouldn’t talk.”
He added, “With magic. Question them with magic. Not torture, it isn’t something they could resist with will alone, no matter how strong or loyal.”
Delphine sighed, “So we’ve just bought ourselves an hour or so, that isn’t enough time.”
“There’s no secret way out of the castle?”
Vida shook her head, “Too insecure, those only exist in stories,” then looked apologetically at Delphine.
Delphine nodded, “So, it gained us enough time to plan, there has to be something we can do.”
He suggested, “A northern village? I think going south would be a mistake. With ten of us, and Lia being gifted, we should be able to open a portal of our own.”
Carolynn snorted, “You might know the runes, but that spell is mostly cast by masters. Very few mages know it, it’s a very long spell, and tiring and exacting. Most of us don’t know it. In fact, that spell is one of the major tests to qualify as a master mage, at least in our tower.”
Oh. Well, crap.
He said, “We could request help, Lia could contact her parents, but it would weaken our defenses on the border. Still, our priority has to be the royal family.”
Delphine shook her head, “No, it isn’t. I’ll not preserve my family and dynasty at the cost of a whole village of people, not to mention granting the enemy a foothold in our kingdom. Better to let the council of mages rule than to allow that to happen.”
He frowned, and he looked around. No one else had any ideas past that, it seemed, but they had some time to figure something out. It’d take time for the searching master mages to give up looking, and to go back to Tanner for orders on what to do next. Even more time would pass, as they woke up royal guards and questioned them under magic, which would compel them to answer and do so truthfully.
Still, not that long. An hour, two at the most, and they’d have master mages knocking down that sturdy looking metal door. Actually, it’d probably be easier to just put another hole in the wall.
Chapter Seven
That last sarcastic thought gave him another idea.
“What if we create our own escape tunnel. We do have four earth mages in this room, not to mention Lia and myself.”
Levi snorted, “No good, already checked, otherwise I’d have suggested it myself. It was the first thing I thought of. The castle and towers were built on bedrock, but given how deep we are below the ground, we wouldn’t go all that far until we got passed that, and we’d find ourselves in an underground lake. The water table is all around us, and what fills all the wells in the city above us. We could go most of the way back up, and tunnel from fifty feet underground, but then we’d be in range of detection.”
He looked at the water mages, who just shook their heads. Right, there was no way they could hold back a lake of water. At least he hadn’t asked that stupid question out loud. On the other hand, he was the only one giving suggestions, were there really no options?
He looked at Lia, the smartest person he knew, and even she looked defeated.
“No other ideas?”
They were mages for goodness sake. Of course, they were young mages being hunted by old canny master mages.
All the more experienced mages looked uncomfortable under his gaze.
He had one other solution, unfortunately it wasn’t a very good one. He could at best save two of them. It would a
lso most likely expose him for what he was, at least to all the people in that room, and beyond once it became known what he did. He had no doubt it would. Even if they wouldn’t on purpose, they’d betray him once Tanner got his hands on them and extracted the truth with magic.
He’d decided to not share that information, that he was a mystic, to preserve his life. He wasn’t all that sure what people would do truthfully, it just didn’t seem worth the risk considering how history had painted his kind as evil men and women. True or not, it was the way it was.
But… he’d given his oath to protect the royal family with his life, and if spending that life in another way, one he’d never considered before, was the cost of saving them, then so be it.
He grimaced, “With Lia’s help I can get Princess Vida somewhere safe, Prince Jonah too, if he sits in her lap it should work okay. But not all three of you. It’s a spell similar to gate, but it’s an immediate thing and not very useful. Or at least, I didn’t think it would be all that useful until now. It’s designed to send one person through a split-second gate. Most of the cost of the gate spell is for duration, but even the modified one for one person would drain two or three normal mages. Given Lia’s greater power, and me adding my own, I think we’ll have enough.”
Vida frowned, “I’m not leaving my mother behind.”
Delphine ignored that, “Where?”
He grimaced, “I shouldn’t answer that, your majesty. In fact, I’m hoping Lia will have enough magic left to excise that information from my mind. Any mage familiar with your daughter will be able to open a communications spell when it’s safe, and ask her where she is, so we can go get her. When Tanner’s mages find us, it’s critical that none of us know where she was sent, or we’ll just be delaying the inevitable for another day or two at best. Probably less. Suffice it to say, somewhere I believe safe.”
Delphine looked thoughtful for a second, Vida looked pissed, like it was his fault his spell sucked and he was killing her mother. Lia looked scared for him, and the rest of the mages looked confused. Obviously, they’d never heard of such a spell before.
Still, he might be able to play it off as a rune spell they had, as long as no one asked directly and assumed that was the answer. He wasn’t going to lie about it. It was a thin hope, to keep hold of his secret, but that was all he had.
Delphine said, “You will send my son and daughter away, then we will all go upstairs and confront Tanner. I’m ordering you all not to attempt to fight that man, I won’t have any of you die needlessly in vain. Perhaps when he realizes both heirs are out of his reach, he will choose to flee Reton rather than fight a civil war and spark a war within the mage towers themselves.”
He doubted it, but it was possible. He knew Tanner hadn’t made any moves earlier because he didn’t want to see his fire tower in a mage civil war against four other towers. It wasn’t entirely certain that air and death would side with Tanner either, if he went that far, and that meant he’d lose, and a lot of people would die for nothing.
That said, Tanner was past the point of no return in that moment, and the old mage might judge it worth the risk of an all or nothing gambit in his pride and ambition. There was no way to know, until they faced him and he realized his plans just went up in flames with the heirs out of his reach.
Assuming he had enough time to scribe the spell.
He didn’t hesitate another moment, as he powered a rune of earth, and the floor in the corner of the room became perfectly smooth and polished. Then he pulled out his scriber, and he got to work. There had to be an easier way of scribing spells, but he had no time to come up with one, and the teleport spell took a lot of runes, almost as many as a gate spell.
Lia asked, “How does it work?”
He replied, “Much like a gate, but it’s only open for a split second, a very small part of a second, which makes it much cheaper to cast although still demanding in requirements, and almost completely useless outside of these unique circumstances. The gate itself moves in that split second, it’d be impossible for a person to move through that quickly. Mass matters a little, but volume matters more. If the princess sits on the rune construct, with her legs crossed and her brother in her lap, they’ll be very small in profile. The less area the gate needs to move, the cheaper it will be to cast.”
Carolynn’s eyes narrowed, “You don’t know the spell?”
Lia shook her head, “Do you know every spell in your tower library?”
He winced, it wasn’t really a lie, not at all, but it implied and led to false assumptions. The love of his life was definitely trying to cover for him.
Carolynn said, “It just seems like a strange spell, I’ve never heard of it.”
Lia nodded, “In time, I’d be able to cast it myself, without exhausting myself.”
That was true enough, most rune mage masters never could, but the rare few at the top end of the magic scale as far as power would be able to cast it alone by the time they earned master mage status, and had grown even further in power over a decade or so.
Delphine said, “My daughter and son need commoner clothes, and some coin. I assume there will be an inn or something similar where you’re sending them?”
One of the guards moved deeper into the bolt-hole and opened up a crate of supplies. No one could say the royal guards weren’t prepared for everything.
He replied, “Yes, your majesty.”
The guards pulled out some clothes a servant or a servant’s children might wear, and took the coin purse off of his own body. The prince and princess who really didn’t look happy about this, moved off into the next room to change. He hoped the future queen wouldn’t hate him too much, if his plan to save her got her mother killed.
Lia frowned, “Can I pick the destination, then erase it from my own mind? I’ve been to more places than you have. All Tanner would have to do is retrace your steps from your home village to the city, and he’d likely find her.”
He nodded, and then kept drawing runes as fast as he could while he answered.
“That might work better, you can have primary control of the spell, I’ll just add what power I have to it. You need to second guess yourself a few times, because tanner will ask where you’d send the princess to keep her safe. So, your first response now will most likely be your first response then.”
Lia grinned, “Don’t worry, already thought of that.”
Karina sighed, “That’s a lot of runes, are you sure you remember them all right?”
He nodded, “Yes, and I’m only about a third done.”
That was one thing he truly didn’t have to worry about. The rune spell would feel right to him, when it was right, and he’d never forgotten a rune. He supposed it was what made mystics so dangerous. Within the laws and theory of magic he was grounded in, he could make new spells all day long without an element of danger to it, thanks to that hard work of the past. Sure, there was probably a lot they didn’t know, not just about the permanent spells on the towers and arena, and the other questions about magic he had, but whole new questions and theories he didn’t even know existed yet and possibly never would.
But… transportation spell theory was very well defined in the advanced library. He wouldn’t put the princess in danger like that if he had any doubts about the spell.
The tension grew in the room as time went on, and the conversation had faltered as no one wanted to distract him anymore. The longer he took to scribe the spell the higher the chance Tanner’s mages would find them before he finished. He was tempted to put his mind toward creating a better scribing spell, but what if there wasn’t a better way? It would be wasted time.
Still, even he could make a stupid mistake, and if he went too fast, he’d be wasting time on erasing a bad rune and rewriting it. It was a balance of effort, and he did his best.
It was enough, and almost forty minutes later when he finished.
“It’s ready,” he said simply.
The princess had tears in her eyes,
and the young prince just looked to be in shock, while Delphine gave them both a tight hug.
He felt a frog in his throat the emotional sight, and he looked away as if he was some sort of voyeur.
Delphine said, “Go, be safe, keep your head’s down. Don’t trust any mage that contacts you through power, unless it’s one of these ten, or their tower masters.”
Vida looked at him, and he directed her where and how to sit, her brother clung to her as he sat in her lap, twelve or not, he’d regressed in the stress of the moment.
He told Lia as he pointed, “Here, and I’ll connect here. Close your eyes when the spell activates, or you’ll be temporarily blinded.”
It was going to happen right in their faces after all, as they had to touch the outer runes to power the spell.
He channeled his magic as quickly as he could, and he sunk it into the power rune until it was all gone. He maintained his focus on the rune, even as a deep exhaustion fell on his body, as Lia poured more magic into the spell than he could currently create in a week’s time.
The prince and princess were surrounded by a flashing two-and-a-half-foot diameter cylinder of bright light, which flashed blindingly in a split second. Then they were gone.
Lia collapsed against him, she looked as wrung out as he felt. It’d be hours before he’d be able to light a candle, but then the rest of his magic would come back much faster. At least his channeling practice was done for the day.
He shook his head at that ridiculous and random thought.
Then he felt another spell rune activate, a life spell, as Lia removed her own memory of where she’d sent the heirs to the throne. Fortunately, it was a spell that took very little power, especially since she didn’t fight it, or shield against it.
The queen was frowning at the spot her children had just been in, “Did something go wrong? That didn’t look like a gate.”
Rune Mage: The Rune Mystic: Book Two Page 6
