Chapter 53
It was unlike any mountain he’d ever seen. It jutted abruptly from the grassland in a dull black granite wall and rose nearly straight up from the floor of the plain into the sky. The place radiated power. Alexander could see the magic permeating it and flowing through its ancient foundation.
Erik led them around the base of the artificial mountain to the only road leading up to the entrance. The steeply rising road was only twenty feet wide and had little in the way of a railing. They guided their horses slowly and steadily in single file close to the inside wall. The road wrapped around the enormous base of the mountain once, then again, rising many thousands of feet over the plain below before turning onto a spur that led to a much smaller peak jutting up from the side of the central mountain. The road continued around the smaller peak, wrapping around it again and again, winding steeply toward the top.
They reached the top of the second peak by midafternoon. The view of the plain all around was spectacular. The plateau of the central city in New Ruatha could be seen clearly in the distance. The mountains to the north were visible as well and the southern horizon was tinted green from the Great Forest.
The top of the secondary peak was a square platform, easily a thousand feet across and enclosed on all sides with a four-foot-high stone wall carved out of the black granite of the mountain itself. The road led onto the platform in the middle of the south side. Blackstone Keep loomed over them to the east. The only other exit from the platform appeared to be through an archway on the east side facing the Keep, but there was no bridge.
Alexander stood looking at the archway, which led to an abutment of stone that stretched out just ten feet over a chasm that fell two thousand feet to the road below. The abutment ended abruptly in cleanly cut stone as though it was meant to end there. The chasm was easily five hundred feet across. He could see another arched opening leading into an open area of the Keep beyond, but without wings he had no hope of getting there.
Yet he could also vaguely see a bridge even though it wasn’t really there. An aura of magic ran across the empty sky like a ribbon of color almost too faint to see, even with his magical vision. The more he looked, the more certain he became, although the span had no substance. It was not in this world but some other—a place that occupied the same space yet did not exist here at all.
Anatoly stood on the edge of the abutment looking down.
“Quite a defense.”
Lucky agreed. “The old stories tell of the vanishing bridge of Blackstone Keep. The Keep Master is supposed to command the bridge into and out of this world. In one state it’s as solid as stone and in the other it doesn’t even exist. The secret of such a powerful constructed spell has been lost since the fall of the Reishi.”
Erik ran up. “I’ve secured the platform and posted sentries. The enemy is approaching in greater numbers. Looks like more than a hundred. At their present pace they’ll be here by dark.” He gave the report in crisp statements of fact without any emotion or judgment. “Might be a tough fight if we get cornered up here.”
“We won’t. Cedric wouldn’t have sent me here without a way in.” Alexander looked around at the stonework of the arch and abutment. It was the same dull black granite that the rest of the keep was made of. It looked just like the stone in his ring. “I just have to find it,” he said absently.
Alexander searched meticulously. He ran his hand over every square inch of the arch that he could reach. He looked at the stonework in the vicinity with methodical care. He expected to find some mechanism to operate the bridge but found none. As the afternoon wore on, he began to feel doubts. Reports of the enemy progress came to him every hour, each one chipping away at his certainty. He was sure that Mage Cedric’s ring was the key. The note had said as much, but it hadn’t given any detail or instruction that could help him and time was running out. Once the enemy reached the road, the only choices left to him were to find a way across the bridge or to stand and fight.
When the report came that the enemy had reached the road, he started to worry that he’d doomed himself and his friends. He’d looked for a physical mechanism for hours but found nothing. When all avenues of inquiry failed, he decided that the only path left to him was magic. Perhaps that was the key. The ring and the Keep were the products of magic; maybe magic was necessary to unlock them. As he thought about it, he felt more certain that his theory was right but he had no idea how to make it work.
“Lucky, is it possible that this ring is activated by magic?” he asked.
Lucky nodded slowly at the question. “Yes, it’s even probable. Mage Cedric would have wanted to make sure that only a wizard could access the Keep.”
“So how do I use my magic to make it work?”
“That I cannot tell you,” Lucky said. “Some items have activation spells while others simply require a connection to the firmament and a wizard’s will directed into the item.”
Alexander frowned. “I doubt it requires a spell. If it did, Cedric would have left it for me with the ring.” He took a deep breath and released it slowly, then sat down cross-legged on the abutment of the bridge, facing the Keep.
He started with the breathing exercises he’d learned in Glen Morillian, slowly relaxing his body and clearing his mind. He tried to focus on nothing, as he had in the past when he’d experienced clairvoyance, but he was too distracted by the urgent need of the current situation. He needed to gain control over his own thoughts and direct his mind and feelings if he was going to have any chance of making a connection with the firmament, let alone activate the power of the ring. He just couldn’t seem to drive the thoughts of the advancing enemy from his mind. The more he tried the more insistent the thoughts became. He opened his eyes and brought his attention back to the moment, trying to clear his head before starting the process again.
Again he was plagued with worry about the enemy and his desperate need for urgency. The more he struggled to focus his mind away from those thoughts, the more difficult it became to push them out of his consciousness. Finally, he stood up with a feeling of hopelessness and anxiety.
He looked around to see his worried friends all watching him. The burden settled on him once again. Lives were in his hands. Their futures depended on him.
Erik approached the edge of the abutment carefully and looked down. “The enemy has reached the spur. They’ll be here in half an hour.”
Again his report was without emotion but Alexander could see the concern on his face. There were more than a hundred men and he could just make out the oversized frame of the giant with them. That probably meant Rangle was with them as well and might even mean Jataan P’Tal was there, too.
Alexander knew that even with over fifty Rangers and the high ground they would not survive this fight. He felt the first hint of panic start to push against his mind from the darkness of his imagination. The future of the world rested squarely on his shoulders. If he failed here, nothing else would matter. His panic threatened to step out of the darkness and make itself known, but he pushed it away with an effort of will.
Isabel took his hand and gently turned him away from the chasm below. She looked him straight in the eye with her clear, intelligent green eyes and he found something he’d momentarily lost.
He found faith.
“Alexander, I believe in you. You can do this.” She held him with her gaze until the shadow of doubt faded from his golden-brown eyes. For a moment, there was nothing else except the two of them. In that moment, he felt peace and clarity. He nodded with a smile of gratitude, turned back to face the Keep and sat down.
This time he didn’t fight against the thought of the coming enemy. Instead he started with that thought and faced it fully before releasing it from his awareness. Once he’d accepted the truth of it without fear or worry, it faded away. He cleared the field of his mind with gentle firmness, looking at each thought that came to him with complete acceptance and awareness before dismissing it with the knowledge that he had seen it and
it required no further attention. Soon he was in the state of empty-mindedness where thoughts did not intrude. He was an observer in his own mind.
Then he was drifting on the firmament. His awareness expanded beyond his body and filled the whole of the world. All things became a part of his awareness and yet no one thing was clear enough to see with certainty. The past was a shadow of the present moment, no longer possessing substance and yet fixed and permanent. The future was a potential, a collection of probabilities and possibilities that may yet come to pass. The moment of now was an impossibly vast number of thoughts, feelings, and happenings, all jumbled together in his mind. He had no location, no identity, and no point of focus. He was everywhere at once and yet nowhere. He focused on his awareness and drew it closer to his physical body without returning to it.
After a moment of struggle, the whole of the world rushed past as his focus narrowed and shrank to the place just above and behind the arch he was sitting under. He could see the Rangers posted all around. Erik was making ready for battle. Anatoly was walking with him, inspecting their preparations. Isabel and Abigail sat behind him on their packs, looking both anxious and slightly worried.
He heard a shout from the forward scout that the enemy was near. With focused will he moved his point of awareness around in front of his body and directed his attention toward the ring. He could see the aura of its magic only faintly, like it was dormant and waiting. With the equivalent of a mental shrug, he thrust his awareness into it. In the distance he heard the first sounds of battle across the large square platform.
He found a place of stillness within the ring. At first, it was very dark but even through the darkness he could discern form and purpose all around him. Slowly, he began to see. It was like watching the lights of a city wink into existence from a hilltop as the light of day fades. He watched the ring slowly come alive and found to his surprise that his mind did not inhabit the ring but the Keep itself. In this place they were one and the same. He sent his awareness out through the enormous Keep. For just a moment he was almost lost in his own curiosity. There were so many rooms and so many things of interest. He wanted to examine them all, but in the faraway distance he could hear the sounds of battle growing closer.
He redoubled his effort and directed his focus with ruthless precision to the bridge. Once his mind was there, it was such a simple thing—without effort he willed the bridge to become real. It came into existence with a slight shimmer and then solidified as though it had been built of immovable stone and had stood in this place for all these years.
When he opened his eyes and snapped back into his body, he felt a faint and unbroken connection to the Keep like it had become an extension of his body, a part of his mind. His awareness of the place was complete even though he didn’t understand much of what he could now see. He sat looking at the solid bridge with a feeling of satisfaction for just a moment until an arrow passed over his shoulder and bounced on the bridge once before sailing out into the open sky. He spun to his feet and saw a pitched battle taking place before him. The enemy was advancing with the giant in the middle of the fray. When Alexander saw Rangle step up on a rock wall and start casting a spell, he called out.
“Retreat! Across the bridge! Quickly!”
No one had seen the bridge come into existence because they’d been too busy fighting for their lives.
Alexander snatched up his bow and sent an arrow at Rangle. He missed but came close enough to disrupt the spell and convince the fire wizard to take cover.
What followed was a fighting retreat. The bridge was twenty feet wide and five hundred feet long without any railing or even a curb. The first squad of Rangers peeled away from the formation on Erik’s command and raced past Alexander in single file. Abigail and Lucky trailed behind them. Anatoly came next with Jack and Isabel close behind him. He slowed his approach just enough to pull Alexander up onto his horse, then raced across the thin ribbon of black stone.
Alexander felt like he was charging across the sky itself. An arrow glanced off his back and tore his shirt. Once again he silently thanked Kelvin for the gift that had saved his life every day he had worn it.
They reached the other side, and Alexander dismounted quickly to turn with his bow and give cover to the rest of the retreating Rangers. Some of the enemy soldiers were armed with crossbows but hadn’t had time to reload after their initial attack.
The bridge ended in another archway made of the same black stone as the rest of the Keep. On either side, the arch flowed into a four-foot-high, one-foot-thick stone wall that ran across the west end of a grassy paddock cut into the side of the mountain. The paddock was easily two hundred feet across and three hundred feet from the bridge to the stone wall at the back. The grassy field ended abruptly with sheer stone walls rising high above on three sides.
Alexander looked up and saw a number of bridges spanning across at different levels and noticed several arched hallways leading from the paddock at ground level. The long-ruined remnants of stable fences and a few buildings where horses had been housed long ago were scattered around the empty field. The simple wooden structures were now little more than mounds of rotted wood overgrown with grass and weeds.
He took a position just to the right of the arch behind the cover of the low wall. Isabel and Abigail lined up next to him with bows at the ready. Chase ordered the Rangers who’d already made it across to take positions along the wall as well.
The bridge looked so small and insubstantial. The remaining Rangers of Erik’s company retreated in haste with a force easily numbering fifty men pursuing like wolves chasing a wounded deer; they had the smell of blood and they wanted their kill. Alexander knew their recklessness would be their end. For a fleeting moment he almost felt sorry for the men who were about to die by his command but the feeling was quickly replaced with a righteous anger.
Abigail loosed an arrow at the pursuing enemy. It arched gracefully over the heads of Erik and his men and killed the first enemy soldier charging across the bridge. He tumbled off the back of his horse and crashed onto the bridge just in front of the horse behind him, causing that horse to stumble as its rider pulled his reins hard to the right. The horse tried to regain its footing but veered off too sharply and wasn’t able to stop before its front feet slipped over the edge of the bridge and it pitched forward into the sky.
The rest of the enemy slowed to avoid becoming entangled with the dead man, which gave Erik and his men greater distance from them. Alexander surveyed the scene. The soldiers from Headwater were charging across with abandon, but on the other side he could see the giant, Rangle, and Truss with a handful of other men still standing safely on the bridge abutment just under the far arch. Alexander frowned. He was hoping to get them, too.
He waited. Abigail killed another with a clean shot. The enemy tried to raise their shields when they saw the first volley from the Rangers come their way but it was no use. Erik crossed under the arch and into the paddock. He was the last of the Rangers. All that remained on the bridge were enemy. It looked like forty men or more. After all this time, it almost seemed too easy to Alexander. He watched a dozen arrows reach the apex of their path toward the enemy and then raised his hand to Chase.
“Cease fire.”
Chase looked a bit confused but obeyed the command and ordered his men to hold.
Alexander reached into the ring with his mind. Now that he’d established a connection, it was as if the ring, or more accurately, the Keep, was an extension of his own body. He could feel the span of the bridge with his mind. It was as easy as scratching an itch on his face. He willed the bridge into its place outside of this world. There was a moment of hesitation, like the Keep was asking if he was sure, then with a flicker, it faded from existence, leaving the enemy two thousand feet up in the empty sky. Alexander felt a twinge of guilt for the horses as they plunged to their deaths.
The enemy tumbled through the air, screaming until they were too far away to be heard anymore. Alex
ander looked across at Rangle and watched the Wizard send a bubble of liquid fire streaking across the chasm. It was too late to retreat. Abigail tried to burst it with an arrow but missed. The bubble came right for the top of the stone arch. When it hit, the angry orange-red liquid fire within would burst forth, showering everyone with droplets of death and pain.
Even as it came toward them, Alexander felt the awareness of the Keep linked to his own mind and he knew that they were safe. Men scattered away from the arch but Alexander stood and watched. The bubble of fire burst twenty feet from the side of the Keep as though it had hit a wall of glass. It sprayed out over the chasm but not a drop crossed the plane of that invisible magic shield. It was a magical Keep after all. Alexander was coming to understand the truth of that statement.
Alexander waved to Rangle before turning back to his friends. “Looks like we made it.” He leaned his bow against the wall and walked out into the midst of the Rangers and stepped up on a pile of rocks that had once served as a fence corner.
“We’re safe from the enemy out there,” he pointed toward Rangle and the giant far across the chasm. “But we don’t know what lies within the Keep. This is a place of profound magic. We must be cautious until we know what to expect and what is safe.”
All of the Rangers nodded their agreement. Blackstone Keep was a place of legend. Not a single wizard in two thousand years who entered the Keep had returned. Alexander was almost certain that he could control the magical protections of the ancient structure, but he didn’t want to take any chances.
“Erik, secure the paddock. Do not enter the Keep. Set two men at every entrance to the Keep and another two men to watch the bridge arch. Make camp and tend to the horses.” Erik saluted, fist to heart, and started giving his Rangers their orders.
There were forty-seven rangers left from Erik’s company of one hundred. They had paid a heavy price for the mission that Alexander had assigned them. Many of the Rangers had lost close friends in the past two weeks. They were sad and angry at the same time. Dinner that evening was quiet and somber.
The giant and Rangle were camped on the far side of the bridge with only a few men left. Alexander wanted to finish them off but knew it wasn’t worth the risk. He had more important business within the Keep, and his enemy was powerless to harm him here.
He spoke to the Rangers after dinner, expressing his gratitude for their loyalty, admiration for their valor, and sorrow for their losses. After a brief and heartfelt speech, he made a point of going to each squad of Rangers to sit with them for a time and listen to the stories they told of their fallen. The personal details of the people who died by his order brought a lump to his throat and heaviness to his heart. Each one of the fallen Rangers was a person with hopes and dreams for the future, with families and loved ones.
Isabel stayed beside him, listening wordlessly to the stories of friends she knew and had lost. He could see the glistening sorrow in her green eyes. She didn’t try to hide it. She loved many of these people, grew up training to become a Ranger with some and had lifelong friendships with others.
Alexander did his best to simply listen to those who remained. He did it more for himself than for the Rangers. They didn’t know it. They thought he was trying to comfort them, and he was. But he was also burning the memory of each person who died by his word into his heart and mind. They were gone because he asked them to risk their lives. He knew with terrible clarity that these would not be the last to fall by his command and he wanted to make sure that he understood the full consequence of what he was going to ask of others. He never wanted to forget. He didn’t ever want it to become easy to send good people to their deaths.
Each and every life was precious and priceless beyond measure. Each death was a tragedy that would eat a giant hole right out of the center of many other people’s lives. He knew his purpose was just and worthy of such sacrifice. He knew that these Rangers had volunteered for this risk with open eyes. And he knew that he never, ever wanted it to become easy to send men into harm’s way. Hearing their stories seared the pain of their loss into him with exactly the ruthless severity that he wanted.
His soul was marked by it, just as it should be.
He slept soundly that night and woke after full light the next morning feeling an air of expectancy. The enemy still occupied the bridge platform across the chasm but they were powerless to reach the paddock. Abigail took a shot across the chasm just to see if her new bow could reach that far. It was close but fell just short. She wrinkled her nose with a frown.
“I want that wizard. He’s been nothing but a nuisance since Southport.” She looked up at the walls rising on each side of the paddock and picked out a few places where passages opened to platforms jutting out of the sheer rock face. “I bet I could reach if I had a little more altitude.” She pointed to a platform two hundred feet up that wrapped around the corner of the wall, looking down to the paddock on one side and the chasm on the other. “I could get him from there.”
“I bet you could,” Alexander said, looking up to the place she was pointing at. “Maybe we’ll see if we can find our way up there later, but I have something else I need to do first.”
After breakfast, Alexander told Erik to maintain a secure perimeter and to stay out of the Keep.
There were three tunnels leading from the paddock, one in each of the three walls enclosing the broad grassy field. The place was amazing. The Keep itself looked to have been carved from the mountain of black stone by a master sculptor who simply removed the excess material to create spires, towers, bridges, rooms, halls, and chambers. It was the most impressive building that Alexander had ever seen.
He went to one of the walls of the paddock. It was made of black granite with faint grey speckling that he had to look closely to see. It looked like the giant block of stone that should have filled the space the paddock occupied had been cut away and discarded, although Alexander couldn’t imagine where they had put it because it would have been enormous, at least two hundred feet wide by three hundred feet long by another five hundred feet high. He realized that the builders had cut this section of the mountain away to bring the place where he stood down to the same level as the bridge platform across the chasm.
He put his hand on the cold stone of the wall and closed his eyes as he focused on the ring, and the Keep came alive in his mind. He could see a three-dimensional map of the entire place, in all of its impossibly intricate detail, floating within his consciousness. There was so much to see, so many rooms and halls to explore, and so many secrets to discover. Some areas of the Keep looked like they were off-limits or dangerous. He couldn’t quite describe how he knew they were dangerous but he knew with certainty that those areas should only be explored with caution.
The place was vast. There were hundreds of towers and buildings on the top of the mountain and thousands of rooms, chambers, galleries, halls, corridors, staircases, quarters, laboratories, and libraries cut into the interior. Whole wings looked to be devoted to the study of magic in all of its varied manifestations. Other sections looked like barracks and still others were quarters and living areas. There were halls organized like marketplaces, and other areas opened to the sky and provided places for fresh food to be grown, while still others looked like training grounds for soldiers. The place was bigger than most cities. There were countless levels, from towers that rose thousands of feet above the level of the paddock to passages that delved down into the bowels of the mountain and even beneath the level of the ground far below. Alexander could hardly grasp the complexity or the immensity of the place. He knew that a person could easily get lost within and never find their way out if they weren’t careful.
He could see that sections of the Keep could be magically shielded and that some corridors could be sealed to prevent access. The place had been built with the purpose of war and security, first and foremost. The more he explored the image in his mind’s eye, the more aware he became of the undercurrent of deadly magic that p
ervaded the fortress. The Keep itself could kill unwelcome guests. Some areas were open and accessible, while others were severely limited to those with expressly granted access.
Alexander searched for the one place he needed most and found it easily. When he focused on the small, dome-shaped chamber with a little building in the center of it, he found that it lay in a room off the central stairway that wound up through the central tower: The wizard’s tower. He could see the way there. It would be a long walk.
Thinblade (Sovereign of the Seven Isles: Book One) Page 55
