by Des Pensable
It was on the way back that Miranda realized that something was wrong. She hurried back and ran over to Aquitain as soon as she saw him. He saw the serious look on her face and her hand signal for a mind link.
He linked and immediately felt a great sadness. ‘What’s wrong? Has something happened to Tigerlilly?’
‘No she’s fine. Slivver’s gone and the problem is I don’t know when he left.’ she replied.
‘It may have been in the nymph camp. I seem to recall he was with me on the flight there but I can’t remember him after that.’
‘Maybe that’s how they tracked us to here so quickly.’ replied Aquitain. ‘I’m sorry but we can’t go back there to find him.’
‘I know, I know. Poor Slivver.’ replied Miranda and she whispered a prayer for him as a tear slid down her cheek.
‘I’m sorry I can’t stay here. Let’s go and find Bellen. I don’t want to lose another friend.’
***
After they visited Prendergrass and borrowed his dispel magic wand, they left Tigerlilly with Lord Darkmantle and the three of them teleported into the palace and made their way to the Trixies area. Aquitain was pleased to see that the entrance was closed and guarded by Trixies with weapons. Miranda changed her glamour to her Dragonfly appearance as it would be confusing for them to see her in her real body and a few minutes later they were met by a delegation of several Trixies worried about Bellen.
‘It’s so lovely to see you again, your Highness.’ said one.
‘Thank you for coming, your Highness.’ said another.
Miranda was pleased with her welcome but Aquitain wasn’t quite as sure. He detected from their carefully selected words that there was still some dissent about her being their Queen but decided to say nothing as there were too many things to do in a potentially short amount of time.
He mentally directed questions for her to ask them about Bellen’s disappearance but all the answers revealed little more than they already knew. He hadn’t told anyone he was going and no one had seen him leave. The only useful information was that they knew where he went to charge his magic wand.
So Miranda asked one of the Trixies to take them to the Room of Faces where she retrieved her magic items. She looked like a magnificent warrior Queen in her golden armour, dazzling cloak and with her powerful staff but Aquitain was worried. She had little fighting experience, in fact she didn’t like fighting other than as a Jeti and was accompanying him out of loyalty, duty and love.
He was worried because neither he nor Yllandril had much fighting experience either, in what was likely to be a magic battle. At least both he and Yllandril were immune to most direct magic attacks but not necessarily to indirect uses of magic. He recalled all the lessons and advice that his Granddad and other tutors had given him. There were dozens of classic magic attacks and defences and he had to assume that this sentient book probably knew them all. It had also had ample time to prepare a nasty reception for unwanted visitors into its domain
If Bellen were there, it would have interrogated him to find out more about Aquitain’s abilities and tactics. It would also use him either offensively to attack them in some way, or defensively as a hostage.
The book would probably concentrate on Miranda as being its main threat rather than him as it would believe that Aquitain’s spirit was still in her body. This left him free to engage it but it would endanger Miranda.
Aquitain would have loved to have more time to plan and execute this attack but with the potential problem with Adonis looming, time was limited. It was now or never. He mind linked them all together and could feel the tension and apprehension emanating from Miranda. Yllandril in her stone body had no emotions but he was sure she was just as concerned.
‘Are you sure that you want to do this?’ said Aquitain through the mindlink to both Miranda and Yllandril.
‘Yes. We are going whether you like it or not. Someone’s has to stop you upsetting the Powers.’ said Miranda jokingly.
‘I now understand why you had such a protected life when you were younger.’ said Yllandril.
‘Someone wanted you to see a little of life before you went on your rampage upsetting the Gods and other Powers.’
‘I don’t do it by design, you know.’ said Aquitain defensively.
‘I just do what seems to be the right thing at the time. Forget the Powers. If I’m an Agent of Chaos then it didn’t happen by chance, K’wala did it. Adonis might make threats but he knows who else is in the game and he probably hasn’t acted because he’s not quite sure what they will do if he does. We don’t really know who all our friends and enemies are yet, so let’s not worry until we do.’
‘Okay! Let’s do this and see what happens.’ said Miranda and she asked one of the Trixies to lead them to the gateway that Bellen went through to get his magic wand charged.
After several minutes walking and passing through a couple of secret doors they were escorted to the gateway, which according to their Trixie guide was always open.
‘That’s unusual.’ said Aquitain. ‘Permanent gates are usually guarded by somebody or something.’
‘I wish I still had that little cube that my mother gave me. I could cast a spell which gave details about a gate like where it went and who travelled through it and so on.’ said Miranda.
‘Hold on. I may be able to do that. Llanlorian made me a gatekeeper and implanted some powers in my memory although I’ve never used any of them yet.’ said Aquitain.
After a couple of minutes delay he spoke a word of command and the gate stated that it went directly to Astaria and had been permanently open for about a hundred Moonmist years. The main traffic through had been the Trixies and a few Elendari. The last one into Astaria had been a Trixie.
‘You won’t believe what we’ve found.’ said Aquitain.
‘It’s a back door into Astaria. It’s been open since before Llanlorian took over and she’s never been through it, so I’d guess she didn’t know about it. I remember now that I wasn’t to use any gates other than those linking pathways one and two. In fact I only ever passed through the two gates on pathway one and there are supposed to be eight pathways and presumably fourteen other gates going somewhere!’
‘By the Lady.’ said Miranda.
‘Argenta also had only two operating pathways. Maybe we had another six hidden ones as well. In fact we probably did. I remember once mother said she thought that there were other pathways but didn’t seem to know how to get to them. We only used one pathway between Mudrun and Moonmist until the Moonmist end was blocked by the Queen’s people.’
‘Mother closed the gates and turned pathway two into an adventure garden for me to play in until I was old enough to go out into the real world. I had such a wonderful time there and lots of animal friends. Maybe they survived Darkmantle’s attack. Maybe there’s a secret backdoor into Argenta as well.’
‘If that were the case then why wouldn’t the Queen have sent troops through to capture it back again off your mother?’ said Aquitain.
‘I don’t know?’ said Miranda. ‘If it went into one of pathways three to eight and those pathways are blocked from traveling to pathways one and two and the town, then neither mother or the queen could get access to each other.’
‘I suppose that’s possible.’ said Aquitain. ‘Let’s see what they’ve done on Astaria first as it’s possible they’ve done a similar thing on both gate worlds.’ replied Aquitain.
‘I agree. ... Oh, this is exciting, Tain. Maybe this will show us how to recapture both Astaria and Argenta.’
‘Or it could be a trap set by the Mentarin.’ said Yllandril. ‘Remember a pathway has two gates. If one is here at the Queen’s palace where does the other one go to?’
‘Mentar!’ said both Aquitain and Miranda together.
‘I suppose you’re right but we’ll soon see.’ said Yllandril.
‘This could be the main road between this palace and the Mentarin Lord’s palace. I’ll bet the Elendari travel
ling through here were possessed by Mentarin sprits. It would also give the Queen and Gemelica quick access to the Mentarin Lord. I’ll bet that when they teleported away at the ball it was mainly to keep this place a secret.’
‘Perhaps it’s the Mentarin that have taken Bellen and the story about the sentient book was a fake. If that’s true then I’d have to agree with Yllandril.’ said Miranda. ‘This is likely to be a trap.’
‘That’s all conjecture.’ said Aquitain.
‘There’s only one-way to determine what’s true and what’s not, and that’s by going there. Remember this is my world now and I’ll not be put off going there.’
‘You’re right, my love.’ said Miranda.
‘Trap or no trap we need to go there to get some answers, so let’s just go.’ and she walked into the gate with Yllandril on her right shoulder and Aquitain dangling off his golden necklace around her neck.
Chapter 22 The Trouble with Helix
Helix the Traveller bug arrived in Mudrun as a stowaway in a traveller’s baggage. It had taken him considerably more effort to get here than he ever would have imagined. Officially, the place didn’t exist. He had to mind read several high level sources in Panmagica before someone had even heard of the place and it took a large bribe to get the information as to where the gate was located. In fact, it wasn’t in Panmagica, but on another seldom visited, harsh volcanically active world.
When he finally found it, he discovered that there was extremely tight security around it, which took him a few days and another large bribe to get past. The curious thing was that nobody knew why the security was so tight, or why the place was generally off limits to everyone. The only clue was that the Unity of Wisdom had placed an absolute embargo on any information about the place and it was generally forbidden to speak of it. This made it even more interesting to Helix as he loved delving into religious groups’ secrets.
He was currently an Investigator and trouble-shooter for the Multipodean Society. This was an association of mind wizard intellectuals from many worlds. Membership was by invitation only and he owed Sol Theolaur a great debt of gratitude, as it was Sol who had proposed him for membership and fought to get him elected. He was the first and only Traveller bug to be honoured in this way.
The Society had originally been set up as a forum to discuss the nature of magic and had carried out research into magical phenomena discovered on many worlds. In recent times they had been investigating the sudden disappearance of mind wizards on many worlds. This had led them to the surprising discovery that the religious groups in most worlds investigated had all around the same time placed a prohibition on working with mind wizards. The consensus was that this was an edict from the gods but there was no idea why.
On some worlds, the religious groups had gone even further, vilifying mind wizards and even imprisoning them as heretics. The unresolved question was whether the mind wizards were disappearing by voluntarily going into hiding or whether something more sinister was happening.
In Sol Theolaur’s case he had voluntarily taken his family into hiding after being threatened by the Unity of Wisdom for somehow breaching the Mentarin Treaty.
Now this was interesting, as the Mentarin Society was a secretive group of mind wizards that had been around a long time. They were known to be involved in magic research funded by the sale of magic items but had never been implicated in any religious or political intrigues. Had something changed? Had the Mentarin discovered some secret about the nature of magic that somehow upset the Gods who had retaliated by having their followers placing a ban on cooperation with mind wizards in general?
If that were the case then why was the Unity of Wisdom still trading with the Mentarin who were known to be mindwizards. It didn’t make sense.
He returned to the present situation. He was on Mudrun and his first job was to find Arch wizard Featherdown but he would have to wait until after dark as running around in daylight caused problems. Namely every predator around saw him as a tasty snack. These were just the normal hazards of being a small cockroach-like insect in a large creature’s world. He wasn’t worried about being eaten, as he was much too tough to digest. It just attracted unwanted attention when he had to blast his way out of something that had eaten him.
Luckily the luggage in which he had hidden had been taken to the local inn. This gave him an opportunity to sample the local food. The warm Mudrun climate perfectly suited him so he went for a stroll down the inside of the walls to the pantry in the inn’s kitchen and sampled several of the foodstuffs, then moved into the bar area close to the kegs where he could sup some of the local brew spilt on the floor.
‘Very good flavour.’ he thought. ‘Just enough bitters!’ It definitely compared well with some of his favourites on other worlds.
Eventually it became dark and he left a little inebriated to visit the wizard’s tower. The problem was of course that Featherdown had surrounded his tower with an invisible barrier to keep out pests, which included cockroaches. The ward considered him a roach and wouldn’t allow him to enter making him quite annoyed. He couldn’t even get close enough to find out whether the wizard was home or not.
Being a little under the weather his normal excellent guard was down and he didn’t notice a Newman dressed in black leather armour, as he soundlessly walked up to the tower. Unfortunately, Chantalot did notice him and having a dislike for cockroaches as they were in plague proportions around the town decided to squash him. To his complete surprise Helix didn’t squash but telekinetically picked Chantalot up swirled him around in the air and threw him into one of the nearby hedges, with the mindspeak message
‘Stop picking on bugs or next time you’ll get worse!’
Feeling a little more sociable after getting rid of a bit of his frustration he decided to go back to the inn and listen in on the conversations. Maybe one of the people there might know where the wizard was. He had learnt by experience never to talk directly to Newmans that weren’t introduced to him as it almost always had bad consequences. Somehow, deep within their psyche was an acute dislike for roaches. They couldn’t help themselves, they had to stamp on him and he reacted defensively by throwing them somewhere.
Once he had to leave a country in a hurry as he had thrown a crown prince through a two story high window causing the unfortunate fellow to break several bones in his body on landing. That would normally have caused a war had the ruler known whom to fight. In the end nobody believed the prince’s story and he had his allowance cut for wasting too much of it on drink. The irony was that it was Helix that was drunk at the time, not the prince.
On returning to the inn, Helix periodically moved between tables sitting upside down under them and eavesdropping on the conversations. All of them seemed to be anxious about a confrontation between two druid factions and other strange phenomena that were happening around Mudrun. Occasionally he would throw in a few words using mindspeak to one or other of the persons present at the table to liven up the conversation, or for a bit of amusement.
Midway through the evening the barkeeper announced that they had some entertainment in the form of Chantalot Rhythmsgrande, a flamboyant bard from off world that was currently the Head of the Town Guard. The bard sang a few ballads from various places and seeing that the crowd was restless and needed livening up a little told them to charge their mugs and sing along to the bear song.
This got a great cheer, as it had been popular over the last few weeks. To heighten the anticipation in true bard style he then fiddled with the strings on his lute tuning them one by one and then asking someone nearby if each sounded okay. After a few cat calls he suddenly broke out in a beautiful baritone voice singing each verse with the crowd joining in on the chorus with great gusto.
There once was Newman that became a bear,
He fights injustice, with courage and dare.
chorus.
That’s Aquitain the Bear,
Aquitain the Bear,
You’ll see him here, you
’ll see him there,
That’s Aquitain the Bear.
verses
Children love him cause he’s kind and hairy,
Friends all love him cause he’s big and scary.
His golden collar holds gems of power,
That makes his enemies quake and cower.
Alpha’s the name of his crystal friend,
All evil they’ll fight and tear and rend.
So if you have a righteous cause,
He’ll help you with his mighty claws.
If muscle and claws prove not enough,
He’ll use some cool mind wizard stuff.
He’s a bane of evil that fights for good,
Just like a hero really should.
They then went on for another twenty verses and then members of the crowd joined in with several rude verses as well. Helix sat under the table memorizing the whole song chuckling to himself.
‘This is really going to embarrass Rob when I finally catch him.’ he thought to himself as he remembered some of the good times they had spent together when he was Rob’s tutor and Rob was very young.
Eventually the inn’s patrons got tired or drunk and headed off for some rest. When there was nobody left to listen or talk to, Chantalot grabbed his lute and staggered off to his room on the second story, the bar keeper had already closed the bar and went to the kitchen for a snack. Helix flew across the room and landed on the back of the bard for a free ride up to his room. His intention was to read the mind of the bard after he went to sleep to find out where he had learnt the song and if he knew where Aquitain might be found.
After the bard entered the room Helix flew off his back onto the wall and hid behind a curtain. The bard threw off his jacket and fell onto his bunk to sleep without worrying to turn off the lantern. Moments later there was a knock on the door.
