Deceptions (Ascendant Book 3)

by Craig Alanson

  Ertau extended his senses before quickly pulling them back, for they were not needed. Hearing alone was the only sense he needed, for the creaking of a chair on the other side of a curtain alerted him to the presence of his quarry, his prey. The chair creaked, and a shadow moved on the curtain as the leader of his enemy moved in her chair, her motions illustrated by the candles on the desk in front of her. He stepped around the curtain, his feet making absolutely no sound on the plush carpets. And he saw her. The Regent and crown princess, heir to the throne of Tarador and of the house Trehayme, was sitting on a chair at a portable desk, reading a scroll, her back to him. He could be on her in a flash, his dagger plunged into her back, the poisoned blade rotting her blood from within. It would be satisfying to watch his hated enemy writhing in uncontrollable agony as the poison worked its cruel havoc, watching her staring up at him helplessly. A hand crept to the hilt of the dagger, then he pulled his hand away.

  No.

  No dagger, no knife would be used that night. He was a wizard, he would use the power of the spirit world to kill Ariana Trehayme, and Tarador with her.

  The princess moved suddenly, jerking her head up as if she had heard a sound, but Ertau knew his careful footsteps on the heavy carpets had not made any noise at all. He froze, then jerked backwards himself as the princess stood and turned to face him.

  “You!” Ertau spat with a gasp.

  “You were expecting the princess?” Olivia shed the auburn wig, shaking her own golden hair to fall onto her shoulders.

  “You witch!”

  “I am a wizard,” Olivia corrected her evil enemy, though the bravado of her words was betrayed by her tremulous voice and shivering lips. Without another word for she feared her strength would fail, she squinted with concentration and summoned power to flare into a fireball above her right palm.

  And the ball of magical fire was snuffed out with a contemptuous gesture by the wizard of Acedor, as he also held up a hand to conjure an invisible, vise-like hand around her throat. Another invisible hand pinned her right hand closed, and Olivia struggled to breathe. She could not even call out to the guards! “I, uh, I-” Invisible fingers dug into her windpipe, making her choke.

  “What? What would you say to me, foul witch?” He spat in disgusted rage. “Save what little breath you have left. Soon you will pass into the unseen world, and my master will be waiting to claim your soul there in the endless darkness.” He lifted a hand to strike the witch with the poisoned dagger, then halted with irritation as her lips moved and she struggled to say something. “What?” He demanded.

  “I have-” Olivia’s strangled throat could barely squeak out the words.

  “You have what? You have to beg for your life?” Ertau laughed, enjoying a moment of pure, blissful cruelty. He may have failed that night, been tricked by the witch, and his dark master would not forgive his inexcusable failure, not after Ertau had been entrusted with the power of fourteen other wizards to ensure his success. If he were to die that night and be consumed by the demon, he wanted the witch to suffer before he did. He needed to hear her pathetically beg for her life, so he relaxed his iron-like magical grip for her to talk. “Speak, foul witch, before you die. What do you have?”

  Even with an invisible vise no longer quite crushing her neck, Olivia could almost not make her throat move enough to choke out a breath, but even so she smiled as she uttered the words. “I have,” she hiccupped in the barest of breath, “this,” she said loud and clear enough for the evil enemy wizard to understand. And as the word left her lips, her eyes turned to the large ring on the middle finger of her left hand, while her thumb curled inward to touch the golden hoop there.

  A lightning bolt leapt from the gemstone of the ring to strike the enemy in the chest, a lightning bolt that was surprisingly and disappointingly thin and watery and dull to Olivia’s eye. When Madame Chu had explained the plan, Olivia had hoped and expected the ring to emit a searing fire. For a heart-stopping moment, she thought the tiny magical device had failed, as after his initial shock of fear, the enemy appeared unscathed by the lightning bolt’s effect. Had Madame Chu underestimated their enemy?

  The dark wizard smiled, a horrible sight. “Is that the best you can manage?” He hissed in anticipation of the savoring an even sweeter revenge than he had dreamed of. The witch had been about to die, now she would die knowing she had failed. Whatever her plan had been, her pitiful powers were no match for a true master wizard of Acedor. “Now you will-”

  Ertau’s smile vanished. He could not move. And then he realized with gut-wrenching horror what the witch had done to him. The lightning bolt from her ring was never intended to harm him. Its purpose was to hold him frozen, not only in place but in time. The words he had spoken had not reached the ear of the witch, who also appeared to be frozen in time, but Ertau knew that was because the entire world outside of his little bubble of existence was lost to him. He could not move, he could not act, he could-

  He gasped and his blood turned to ice.

  He could not break the connection to his fellow wizards.

  Madame Chu felt the presence of the new magic spell before she saw the effect, and she knew the enemy wizards also had felt the spell approaching them. They must have sensed something strange, something unexpected, something wrong, through their connection with their fellow wizard to the east. From their startled expressions, Wing knew the enemy had sensed the danger and tried to react, but they were too late. Their connection through the spirit world could not be sundered in the mere blink of an eye; they were firmly tied to the assassin wizard and would not break that bond quickly enough to save themselves.

  The fourteen wizards, still clutching each other’s hands, had their contorted faces frozen in horror as they realized what was about to happen to them. What had already happened to them. They were frozen, suspended in time. Wing waited a breathless moment, not daring to move herself, before she was certain the spell had a firm hold on her enemy.

  The time-freezing spell she had used was not well known even among master wizards, it was not widely taught, and appeared only in obscure scrolls and books about magic. The reason few wizards knew of the spell was the extreme danger it posed to the spell-caster. Many, even most, wizards who attempted to weave that spell found themselves trapped by their own creation and in need of skilled help to save themselves. The problem with any attempt at rescue is a wizard atempting to help one trapped within the spell could all too easily become trapped also. Wing herself had successfully cast that spell less than a dozen times before, and not recently. Ironically, the enemy sending power through the spirit world had made it easier for Wing to use the spell, and for the spell to hold long enough to doom the enemy.

  She stepped forward, reaching between two wizards to lightly touch the undulating flow of power that was invisible to the untrained eye. She felt the power the wizards had pulled from the spirit world, surprised and alarmed by the awesome surge of power the enemy handled so casually. Within the magical lightning that bound the fourteen wizards together and to the assassin wizard, she sensed the deceptively weak force of the spell she had cast, a spell which was holding all fifteen affected wizards frozen in time. Holding her breath for fear she might also be pulled into her own spell’s effect, she pulled power from the spirit world, unleashing a flare of force upon the real world.

  Wing gasped, losing her concentration as the spirit power burst forth in a blaze of light. Around her, enemy soldiers shouted cries of alarm and her cloak of concealment vanished, swept away by the hellish power she had let loose. Squeezing her eyes shut, she pulled a barrier around her but it was too little, too late.

  Olivia had fallen to the floor when the assassin wizard’s grip on her had been broken, now she pushed herself to her knees, massaging her injured windpipe with one hand. The other hand she stretched out toward the frozen enemy, a tiny flicker of flame glowing there, ready to be pulled into a deadly fireball if the enemy so much as twitched. Madame Chu had warned her not
to touch the enemy while he was trapped in time, and also not to attempt using magic on the evil man lest she too, become trapped and her fate entangled with his. Rising to her feet, she backed away, fascinated to watch the wizard of Acedor standing like a statue.

  Madame Chu had also warned her the spell was dangerous, unpredictable, and its effect could be short-lived. Glancing at the ring on her finger now in fear, Olivia used the sleeve of her robe to pull the ring off and drop it into the carpeted floor, being careful not to touch the ring with her bare skin. Wondering what the master wizard had meant exactly by ‘short-lived’, Olivia backed up until she was behind the desk and used both hands to draw a fireball to spin above her right palm. If the spell suddenly broke and the enemy moved, she was not going to waste time.

  Before she had the fireball teased into its full power, the body of the enemy glowed, first bright yellow then an intense blue-white heat that caused her to fling up her hands to protect her eyes, her fireball blinking out of existence. Even with eyes tightly shut behind both hands, the light made spots swim in her vision so that when the light snapped out, she had to blink several times before she could see anything other than ghosts of white fire dancing in her vision.

  As her tender eyes took in the astonishing sight, the body of the wizard became a charcoal pillar of dust roughly the shape of the man, then the dust collapsed into a sooty pile on the carpet. And the enemy was gone.

  “Ah!” Cecil Mwazo was struck by a wave of dizziness and his legs gave out beneath him. Unaware, he fell to the ground and skidded down the slope, pebbles spinning away as he tumbled out of control.

  “Cecil!” Paedris shouted in panic, forgetting the need for them to be quiet in the heart of Acedor. “No!” The court wizard of Tarador raced down the slope after his friend, his own feet skidding on the dusty ground. The other wizard’s eyes were again open in his own panic, arms flung out to halt his rolling down the slope. One arm got painfully wrapped under him and he stopped rolling over, but the energy of his momentum was transferred into him spinning on his backside, small stones rolling under him and his body digging furrows in the dusty soil. Heedless of the danger to himself, Paedris leaped for Cecil’s outstretched hand, missed, and wrapped around a foot. That was good enough, except they both then slid down the slope, until one of Peadris’ knees bashed into a rock and he ground to a halt.

  “Oof,” Cecil gasped, his chin hanging over the edge of the cliff. As he watched, rocks and pebbles and sand he had knocked off the slope spilled over the edge and tumbled out into space. Mesmerized, he watched one white stone arcing down, down, down to crack against rocks at the bottom of the cliff. That could have been me, he thought with an icy shudder, blinking away a tear induced by rocks scraped against his ribs.

  “Are you all right?” Paedris asked, holding securely onto his friend’s foot with both hands.

  “I would not say all right,” Lord Mwazo grunted, wiggling fingers and toes, assuring himself all major body parts were still working. “I can move. Let’s get away from the edge of this cliff, it is making me nervous,” he said as more pebbles tumbled over the edge. The two wizards helped each other to their knees, and on hands and knees, they endured a slow, undignified crawl back up to the narrow goat track they had been walking on when Cecil suddenly fell without warning.

  Sitting on the goat track, legs braced to keep themselves from sliding back down the slope, Paedris offered a flask of water to his fellow wizard. “Drink this. Are you well?”

  “Well enough,” Cecil answered over a mouthful of water, feeling his tender ribs. He was bleeding in a few places, nothing particularly to worry about. He sat upright, scanning the sun-blasted hills around them. “Did anyone hear us, you think?”

  Paedris considered the question. Other than the dust cloud from where the two wizards had nearly fallen over a cliff, nothing was moving. It was difficult to see in the light of the quarter moon even though the sky was cloudless, but the night air was still and he did not hear anything. No shouts of alarm. He did not see any torches carried by soldiers of the enemy, nor signal fires warning of intruders. “I believe we are safe for now. Cecil, what happened? I know you did not simply lose your footing in the darkness.”

  The other wizard laughed softly. “Your girlfriend is what happened.”

  “My girl-” His cheeks reddened even though they could hardly be seen in the thin, gray light of the moon. “Madame Chu is not my ‘girlfriend’. She sent a message to you?” Paedris thought that odd, for Wing usually sent messages to him, and they had to be extremely careful while inside Acedor. Only messages of the most vital importance could justify the risk of the demon learning that wizards of Tarador were within its borders.

  “I received a message, but not from Wing. Not directly,” Cecil shook his head. “Paedris, the demon received a great shock, and I felt it.” He had connected to the demon enough times through the spirit world that now he could not fully break the connection. It was only the faintest of impressions, a tickle at the back of his mind, usually something he could almost ignore. But the enormous, world-crushing power of the demon was always just at the edge of Cecil’s consciousness. “Ten, or a dozen or more of the demon’s most powerful wizards were suddenly snuffed out, burned from inside by fire from the spirit world.”

  “A dozen wizards killed all at once?” Paedris’ mouth gaped open in astonishment. All the wizard on the side of Tarador did not possess the power to strike such a blow, not even if he had been with them.

  “Yes. A dozen or more, you understand I could not get an exact count. The demon is hurt badly, enraged, frightened. This is the last thing it expected. I get the impression our enemy is also disappointed, as if it anticipated a great victory tonight, and all its plans have turned to dust. I can’t imagine how, but,” he smiled, his teeth shining even in the half moonlight. “For a dozen of the enemy’s most powerful wizards to have been destroyed in one blow, Chu Wing has to be involved. No one else could do that.”

  “Yes,” Paedris stared off into space with a look of wonder on his face. Wonderment, and pride. “No one else could,” he added, and on his face appeared the goofy smile of a love-struck teenage boy. Chu Wing was not his girlfriend, although- His heart swelled when he thought of that wizard from the distant land of Ching-Do, and pride at her skill, courage and accomplishments was not the only feeling he had for her.

  Cecil gritted his teeth as he felt his tender ribs, assuring himself nothing was broken. Carefully, he stood up. “Paedris, we must get moving. The enemy has been dealt a great defeat, and the demon is frightened. And it is angry. It will strike against Tarador sooner than the demon planned, and the blow will fall more heavily. I sense the demon has now lost patience for assassinations and tricks of wizardry, and now is the time to crush Tarador with the great host on this side of the border. The hammer will fall against the Royal Army, and it will fall sooner and heavier than it otherwise would have. Paedris, the death of those wizards has weakened the enemy measurably, but we are out of time. We must move now, swiftly and without pause.”

  Madame Chu had been propelled up and backwards by the eruption of power from the spirit world, protected only by the spell she had woven around herself at the last moment. The spell had offered only partial protection, she felt the skin on one side of her face was hot and painful as if she had suffered a terrible sunburn though it was the middle of the night. Over the general stench of burnt soot in the area, she sniffed the distinctive scent of singed hair. Her own, she realized as a scorched lock of her black hair snapped off in her hand. The hood of her cloak had shielded most of her hair from the brief and intense fire, yet she did not want to consider what had happened to her eyebrows, and the skin of her forehead was too sensitive for her to touch.

  The ground all around her was blackened, clear even in the thin moonlight. As she pushed herself unsteadily to her feet, her hands left light-colored streaks on the ground, sweeping away the soot. Carefully placing one foot in front of the other, she walked
back to see where the dark wizards had been. Nothing. Where they had been standing in a circle was nothing but sooty dust which stirred in the breeze, black wisps dancing in the darkness. The dark wizards were gone, utterly erased from the world of the real. Extending her senses for her eyes still swam with bright dots and her hearing was muffled, she could feel no trace of the wizards, not even an echo of their presence. They were gone.

  What was that? Something loud enough for even Wing’s abused ears to hear caught her attention and she turned to look behind her. Enemy soldiers, also shaking their heads to clear their rattled brains, were approaching her slowly, warily. They saw burned bodies of soldiers who had been too close to the wizards, and closer still were mounds of soot that once may have been soldiers. The approaching men had no idea what had happened, where their powerful wizards had gone, and who was the hooded figure standing before them, but they knew the figure did not belong there. One of the soldiers, running a hand across his face to wipe away gritty soot, shouted something at Wing, but she could not hear, the sound was so muffled.

  The man raised his sword, shouting at soldiers to his left and right, urging them to charge forward with him. Wing tried to take a deep breath, her lungs feeling seared threw her into a fit of coughing. She had no strength for a fight against a squad or more of soldiers, and the only weapon she had brought with her was a dagger. Five soldiers screamed as one, their insults barely registering in her hearing. Two other soldiers remained behind, fitting arrows to bows. The soldiers of Acedor were bewildered and frightened by the loss of the wizards they had been entrusted to guard and they knew their dark master had no mercy for those who failed. Though the magical compulsion that had brought them across the border into Tarador had evaporated when the wizards were destroyed, they acted from long-standing habit when they ran toward the wizard of Tarador.