by Bob Blink
“You mean he could spy on me any time he wants?”
“He has to have something from you to make it work. A lock of hair or a bag of fingernails was said to be common. A lopped off finger would work also.”
“You seem to know a lot about this staff.”
“I knew the holder of Farsight more than sixty years ago. He disappeared, and we presumed the staff lost. I would like to know how it came into Cheurt’s hands. He wasn’t even born when the staff went missing.”
“You’re sure it’s the same staff?”
“I think so. The blue jewel is very unusual, and the rest of the description fits. Cheurt wouldn’t be carrying just anything with him.”
“Is that how he was able to create the magic that killed Luzoke?”
“No,” Vaen said slowly. “He has at least one ring. In this case, he must have one with a green stone. I saw what you just described once before, over three hundred years ago. The person who killed in such a manner wore one of the rings with such a stone. I saw one more of the green rings years later, but the wearer said he knew nothing about such an ability. He was passing through where I was at the time, and I never saw him again. I had almost forgotten about it.”
“So Cheurt has a staff, a ring, and now the amplifier, in addition to being one of the most powerful wizards alive. It is not a good combination.”
“How dangerous is the amplifier in his hands?” Vaen asked.
“I wish I knew. The brief testing I did with it showed it reacted differently with each person. That’s why Ronoron was so eager to put his hands on it. It effectively raised him from a level three to a level seven. It was more typical to get a boost of a level or at most two.”
“So Cheurt could expect to gain at least a level, and maybe more?”
“I expect so. He certainly seemed invincible, but it would be hard to say how much was due to his other magical implements.”
“Is there anything we can do about the amplifier?”
“Wait,” Jolan said.
Vaen looked at him in confusion.
“The amplifier relies on a small power source inside. The power source is always active, and I know the current draw. The battery is good for a couple more months, then it will fail. Once it fails, the device won’t work at all. He can’t get a replacement here on Gaea, so that should be the end of its usefulness to him.”
“How much damage can he do in the meantime?”
“That’s certainly the question.”
“He’s immune to bullets,” Asari said suddenly.
“What?” Vaen asked. “That would have been the only thing we know that could limit him.”
“I shot him twice during the battle. He wasn’t even fazed by my attempt.”
“He’s right,” Jolan said. “I saw him shoot. In fact, the lighting was right so I could actually see the bullets in flight. It’s something I saw a few times before when the sun was behind me and low on the horizon. They were right on target, and I’m certain they passed through his shields.”
“However are we going to stop him?”
“I haven’t had time to think it through, but I don’t think it’s as bad as we think. I am guessing that Cheurt got a special Kevlar vest on Earth at some point when he learned that we were using coppered bullets for many attacks. It isn’t perfect, but would give him protection against the normally targeted shots.” Seeing their confusion, Jolan explained. “It’s a special material, that has the ability to stop most pistol bullets, and offers a little protection against rifle bullets, especially those in the black powder arms we make. I doubt it would help against one of our sniper rifles. What it means is, we might have to aim for his head if we get another chance, unless we have a rifle or something powerful enough to penetrate his vest.”
“This truly has turned out to be an unfortunate development.”
“It’s my fault,” Jolan said. “I should have been more careful.”
“It’s Ronoron’s fault,” Vaen said. “That stupid fool has put everything at risk.”
“We haven’t talked about the worst of this,” Jolan said. “How much did Cheurt learn from Ronoron? He has been part of a great many of our secrets. If Cheurt has been able to learn what Ronoron knew, then we have a number of serious problems. Just knowing about the portals is going to change how we operate from this point on. If he knows how to use them, we have a whole different problem.”
“You talk as though Ronoron is dead. Do we know that for certain? Cheurt might be probing him even now.”
“He’s quite dead,” Shyar said as she stepped suddenly into the conference room, Tishe following right behind her. “I killed him while Cheurt was trying to strip his mind. He had no chance of living, and I wanted to prevent Cheurt from getting anymore than he had. I don’t know if I was fast enough or what he might have learned before I could act.”
A stunned silence greeted her words. Jolan was shocked to silence, then his eyes watered as he jumped to his feet and rushed over to embrace her. She held him strongly in return, and it was several minutes before the two separated, and looked meaningfully at each other.
“How?” he croaked, unable to speak normally.
“Tishe,” Shyar said. “She led me to one of your portals and came and got me. Just in time I might add. You have come up with some interesting discoveries while I have been gone. No wonder Cheurt is at such a loss to deal with you.”
When people started to get over their shock, Vaen asked. “Do you have any sense of what Cheurt might have learned from Ronoron?”
“He’d just started his probe when I killed Ronoron. He couldn’t have had time to learn much, but I have no idea what areas he might have been probing. I had no time to see from his actions or words what might have come from the probe. He was still somewhat stunned when I fled.”
For the first time Shyar looked directly at the woman sitting in the Chancellor’s seat, and her eye’s widened in shock. “Chancellor?”
Looking a healthy thirty-five, Chancellor Vaen smiled back at her, knowing what she was seeing.
“They tried to kill me at the same time they captured you. Whatever they infected me with activated something in my system. When everything settled down, I had reverted to this. Not bad for being almost four hundred years old, is it?”
“You look fabulous,” Shyar said, and walked over when Vaen beckoned her.
“I know you have had a trying ordeal, but I think we are going to need to ask you a lot of questions. Just when it seemed things were getting under control, we suddenly have a major upset on our hands.”
Jolan’s emotions were out of control. He’d lost a couple of long time friends today. He had led Luzoke to his death. He’d also gotten the three spy-mages killed, something he regretted, but since he had only known them a short time, the impact was less. He didn’t know what to think about Ronoron. On the one hand, he wished he was alive so he could kill him himself. On the other, Jolan thought he understood the man’s motivation. Shyar’s unexpected escape and return pushed him the other way, into a euphoria that he could hardly contain. He wanted to take her away from this meeting and be able to talk with her privately. Unfortunately he knew they needed to understand what dangers they now faced and what precautions needed to be taken immediately.
Forcing himself to focus, Jolan said, “We need to make a list of everything we think Ronoron knew about and the implications if any or all of it was learned by Cheurt.”
Vaen agreed and they started going over those matters that Ronoron had been involved in. Many of the items they listed caused Shyar to want to question what they knew, but she held back knowing she’d have time later. In the end, the list was extremely damaging.
Jolan went over the list. “In addition to a deep knowledge about the College and its operations, he knew about Ygooro, Tilano, the true Nexus, and Earth. In addition, he knew many of the new spells we have learned and much about the operation of the portals. Fortunately he didn’t know about some of the new capabil
ities, such as our being able to peek at a location, but he knew how to activate a portal and control them remotely. He also knew far too many addresses. Being on the mapping team for portals in Seret, he was exposed to over a hundred portal locations. He had to know the addresses for Tomas’ place in Seret, the Oasis, Ygooro, both portals here at the Inner Court, Tilano, and of course, the ones in Ale’ald we have been using.”
“I believe he only knew the portal addresses for the old portal in Ygooro, not the one we are using now, Vaen said. He also probably only knew the address of the portal above the lake, not the one down in the city of Tilano itself.”
“So if Cheurt has learned how to use the portals, and if he managed to get those addresses and knows what they mean, he could send attacks through at any time. We need to get soldiers and mages in place with proper weapons at each location that matters until we figure out how to deal with this. We also need to monitor even more closely the actual opening of remote portals. It might tell us what Cheurt knows.”
“For the moment, I think we need to get Rifod and Nerila and their team back out of Ygooro. They could be at risk if Cheurt shows up there.”
Vaen sent her assistant to take care of the matter. Asari was sent to get Buris and Gene. Someone was sent to get Wylan. Vaen wanted a couple of trusted staff involved, so they were summoned as well. The planning was going to run into the wee hours, and the time that Jolan so wanted to spend alone with Shyar was going to have to wait. He consoled himself with looking at her frequently and knowing she was safe.
* * * *
It was almost morning when the tired group decided they’d run out of ideas, at least for the moment. The necessity of some of their actions would only be known with time, but joint agreement suggested they needed to take precautions. First, of course, was to increase the number of guards in the portal room in the Mages Council building and in the Buris Portal. It had generally operated without guards, but from this point on it would be staffed with a half dozen, all armed with rifles firing coppered bullets. Both of these portals Ronoron had been fully familiar with and had made literally hundreds of trips from the one two floors down. If any address was firm in his mind it would be that one. Similarly, the Buris Portal had been the last one he’d used, which gave it a high priority.
Their main portal in the capital of Seret was on Tomas’ estate. Asari would leave shortly and make arrangements with Tomas for that one to be guarded full time as well. In addition, a new location would be selected for their normal travel to Seret, which would actually please Tomas. Since his father had died, he was seldom at the estate, and going there for trips or to coordinate had been burdensome. There was a portal closer to the Palace that they could adapt as the new center in short order.
The portals at Ygooro were a different matter. While Ronoron had never been exposed to the one currently in use, it wouldn’t do for Cheurt or one of his wizards to arrive unannounced at the older one. Even though they would send a crew to hide the tunnel to the library, it remained an unacceptable risk. If he was clever, and Cheurt had showed every sign of being brilliant, he might notice the similarity of addresses between the old and current portals used for Ygooro. That might lead him exactly where they didn’t want him.
“Maybe it’s finally time to move everything out of there,” Vaen said. “We have the new facility ready, we just didn’t want to reveal the portals to the crew that would have to move the books.”
“That seems like a massive undertaking,” Jolan said.
“With fifty people doing the packing under Rifod’s or Nerila’s watchful eye, and a couple of hundred carrying from the library through the portal to a temporary spot outside the portal room here, we could move the books in about a week. Labor on this end is no problem, and we could have a second team assigned to relocate them into the new facility. Again, either Rifod or Nerila would be in charge to be certain they were placed in a manner the items we want to use would be easy to find.”
“It certainly would be safer for our friends,” Jolan agreed. He’d already lost a couple of his old group, and didn’t want to lose any more. Once everything is out of there, we can set a trap and see what happens.”
“What kind of trap?” Vaen had asked.
“Gene has a batch of special Claymore mines. These are all loaded with the balls coppered, which means they would pass through any shield the wizards have. I think even Cheurt would be at risk, although we have only my guess at that one anomaly. We could place the mines and set them to be triggered by anyone walking out of the portals. So far we have been thinking that this might be a good idea at Ygooro, the Oasis, Tilano, at least the upper portal that Ronoron knew the address for, and for the Seret portal at Tomas’ place, now that the new one is in operation.”
“You think Cheurt will send someone to one of those addresses?” Buris asked.
“If he has learned them, then I’m certain he’ll send a couple wizards to investigate. It won’t be him, at least not at first. If he keeps losing the teams he sends out, he may rethink using the portals.”
“We’d know someone was going there, because Morin’s team would see the various portals turn active. Afterwards we could have a peek and see what we caught.”
“Can’t Cheurt see which portals we have activated? That would mean we might lead him somewhere we don’t want to reveal.”
“If he has his portal open, he could see the open locations that were currently available. Eventually he might start to understand what the list was telling him. That might mean we have to limit our travel to times when no unknown portals are open. If Cheurt knew what can be done, he’d be smart to leave a portal open at all times so we wouldn’t know if we were being watched or not. Ronoron didn’t know how this aspect worked, so I can’t see how Cheurt would either.”
“Is there any more that can be done to protect the portals we want to use?” Vaen asked.
“I want to work with Shyar on something,” Jolan replied. “I have an idea we can modify the no-magic zone spell so it will stay active until commanded off. If we could set up an area in the portal rooms where magic wouldn’t work, then any incoming mages would get a surprise. The shields they had would remain active, but they’d be unable to initiate any other spells. Since we’ll have coppered weapons handy, we should be able to handle any transgressors easily.”
“I’m still worried about Tilano,” Vaen admitted. What if he learned about the true Nexus? The territory is still behind their lines, and it might be hard to defend, even using the local portal to bring in troops.”
Wylan had come up with the only thing they could think of.
“Have Tishe take another look at the glamour she had placed over the lake and perhaps renew it,” he’d suggested.
She is stronger now, so she should be even better at concealment. Wylan would have a team assigned to watch the city at all times, reporting back if anything developed. They would be on a four hour cycle, so failure to report in would be a warning as well. He’d have the tunnel mined and they could remove the mini-portal from the entrance. That would mean a long trek in the future for anyone who wanted to use the Nexus because Buris was convinced once they took it down, they’d never get it functional again. Under a worst case scenario, they could seal a couple hundred yards of the tunnel, which would delay anyone trying to get inside. He didn’t know if there was any way to shut the Nexus down or to destroy it.
There was little more they could think of. Their biggest hope was that Cheurt had not learned any of this information, but that was a bit of a dream. According to Shyar, he’d had a couple of minutes alone with Ronoron before she’d gotten there and killed him. That wasn’t time to perform a copy of his mind, but it would have given him time to have a quick look and decide what he found interesting. Some of their secrets had to be out. The question remained, which ones?
As the tired group made to leave, each with his or her assignment, Vaen signaled Shyar and Jolan to wait a moment. Jolan wondered what else could be o
n the Chancellor’s mind, when she came walking back from the small room behind her desk with the staff Jolan had left in her keeping.
“I know you two have a need to be alone, but I thought this should be taken care of right away. Shyar is the only person we know of that can use it, and we can’t predict when the need might arise.”
Shyar looked at the staff in confusion. “Where did you get that?”
“It was on Earth,” Jolan explained. “My ancestor who traveled there so long ago had it. It’s the Staff of Destruction, and requires at least a level seven. I asked Vaen to hold it until you returned. It’s yours now.”
“But you’ve lost yours,” she said uncertainly.
“That can’t be changed. I’m now a lowly level five, with only a fire ring to boost my ability. I couldn’t use it if I wanted. I think you’ll be pleased by what it offers.”
Almost shyly, Shyar accepted the staff from Vaen. The minute it was fully in her possession, her eyes changed. “Dragons!” she whispered. “With this I might be able to stand up against even Cheurt.”
“You can use it then?” Vaen asked.
“Oh yes,” Shyar responded. “I still don’t understand all it can do, but the little I already know is incredible.”
Chapter 158
Cheurt had chased everyone from his quarters when he returned in the evening after the fight. He needed to be alone and have time to think. So much had happened today that required his careful consideration. His mood swung between frustration and elation. On the whole, he felt that he had gained more than he’d lost today, but he didn’t like losing anything and it irked him.
The first action he took when he was alone was to strip off the special clothing that he’d worn under his wizard’s robes and check himself for damage. He clearly owed his old friend Ryltas for his foresight in providing the special vest that appeared to have protected him against the bullets that had penetrated his shield. Given the strength he’d felt today with the new addition to his collection of magic enhancers, he’d have bet that even copper wouldn’t have penetrated the powerful shield he’d been able to erect. Clearly he’d been wrong.
