by Guy Antibes
He had another mile to walk, maybe half an hour, so he decided to pick up the pace. Light would be his enemy if he had any hope of saving his friends. He finally spotted buildings, dark against darker, on the left side of the road. Jack had made it. Now he had to scout the area. He imagined the stories that he had read and needed to recall what happened in them now that he didn’t have Tanner to guide him. Jack wasn’t an idiot when it came to stealth. He had joined his friends on forays all over Raker Falls, but none were this serious.
A larger structure had a few glimmers behind the opaque paper windows. The inn had a single story. Jack crept up to one that was lit the dimmest and cut a square hole with his blade. Two pokes were all it took in the shape of an ‘x’ so he could bend the edges. It was the kitchen. No bodies were sleeping on the floor.
Jack withdrew and decided to walk around the tiny inn. The stable yard consisted of lean-to stables. There were seven horses tied up. He recognized his, Tanner’s, and Helen’s. Jack sat on a stump that had firewood littered around it, wondering what to do. He decided he wouldn’t solve any problems sitting, so he cut slits in all the windows, even if the insides were too dark for viewing.
The last room had a flickering light. He had given up hope to see his friends, but when he peeked in, he saw Tanner and Helen asleep on the floor. He spotted the foot of Grigar. The rest of the wizard was out of his view, but no one else. Quist and Simara weren’t in the room. Jack used a little wizardry to move the latches of the shutters and cut an opening in the paper with the tip of his sword.
He climbed through the window and tried to arouse the pair. Tanner began to stir. Jack put his hand to the man’s mouth.
“It’s me,” Jack said.
Tanner nodded. “You are alive! Quist was boasting how he killed you.”
“I went to bed armored and whoever rolled me up didn’t even check. My sword went with me. I think I was put to sleep.” He showed them the wizard bolt burn in his cuirass.
“We all were awake when they overcame us. Get me out of these bonds,” Tanner said.
In minutes, all four of them were outside.
“Do you know how many?” Jack asked. “Where is Simara?”
“With her father,” Helen said. “She was Black Finger all along. I don’t think she ever told us the truth. I was certainly fooled. Evidently, black fingers are optional. Quist was definitely with them.”
“There can’t be many inside. Our four horses are tied up, so that makes three wizards since the packhorse is also missing.”
“They have our weapons,” Helen said.
“How are you with a staff or a club?”
Tanner eyed Jack’s sword. “Your sword. I’m better with it than you are.”
“The sword, yes, but I’m more resistant to one of their spells than you are. Grab a club, and if we get into swordplay, I will let you take over.”
“The boy is right,” Grigar said, “and I don’t need a weapon.”
Tanner gave Jack a curt nod. “Let’s go.”
Helen picked out a trimmed branch over two inches in diameter and slapped it against her open palm. They climbed back inside the house. Tanner looked around the room but didn’t find anything. The door was locked from the outside stopping Jack for a moment.
“I can break it down,” Tanner said.
“No need,” Grigar said. “Jack can do it.”
Jack used wizard bolts to damage the wood around the hinges so Tanner could remove the door without a sound.
“I don’t know where the weapons are.”
“We can start in the kitchen,” Jack said. “It is this way.”
“How do you know,” Helen asked.
Jack smiled. “I poked holes in the paper of each room.”
The kitchen didn’t hold any military weapons, but Tanner traded his club for a long poker by the kitchen fire, and Helen took a long butcher’s knife.
“Better and better,” she said quietly, holding onto both of her makeshift weapons.
They began to move through the customer rooms at the inn. The three wizards were sleeping soundly, and Grigar ensured they wouldn’t be waking any time soon. Their weapons were stacked in an empty room, even Fasher’s magic sword. Jack’s wand and a little pouch holding the seeker orb and the golden fingerbowl were sitting on the dresser top. Jack strapped both swords to his waist along with the wand.
“The orb is in that direction,” Jack said pointing toward a wall.
“And that is where the keep is,” the wizard said.
They sorted out their saddles and mounted, traveling up the road. The dark blue light of dawn was lightening the sky when Grigar moved them off the road. This is the alternate path,” Grigar said. “But it barely accommodates horses, and it ends further up the slope from the gatehouse.”
“Can we take this path all the way there?” Tanner asked.
Grigar nodded. “We can and should. I will take any strategic advantage I can.”
They proceeded up the path that Grigar took.
“How did they capture you?” Jack said. “Don’t you have any kind of spell or object of power that protects you?”
Grigar chuckled. “I am not all-powerful, Jack. Neither are you. Luck was with you tonight.”
“I’ll say. So what do you do if someone compels you?”
“I was protected, they weren’t. But there are other means to subdue an inattentive wizard, and I have the lump on my head to prove it. Luck was with us that Tanner was able to revive me. If I had been awake, who knows what would have happened. They hesitated to kill us, but not you. Simara knew of your power, and in my opinion, they fear it.”
Jack nodded. He needed all the luck he could muster to stay alive. Now he had to cross Simara off his list of friends as well as Quist.
“Simara was a turncoat too. She played her part well,” Jack said.
“Too well,” Tanner said.
“I thought I was a better judge of character,” Helen said. “Quist was always an oddity to me. Are the Black Fingers that interested in him?”
“I doubt it. I think their interest lies in the Serpent’s Orb,” Tanner said, “and I presume it is still up ahead?”
Jack pulled out the seeker cube to verify it was straight ahead. “As we get closer, we will be able to find the patriarch.”
“Unless the orb starts heading down the mountain. That will mean the Black Finger Society has defeated Gant,” Tanner said.
“Why did the patriarch come here, of all places?” Jack asked Grigar.
“The resident of the keep has many objects of power. Some the wizard has made, and others have been collected over a lifetime. I have seen the collection. It is impressive, so impressive that it has drawn others to steal it. Aramore Gant and the Black Finger society are not the first, and I sincerely hope not the last.”
They made their way to the same level as the gatehouse that the patriarch had purportedly seized.
“Be quiet,” Grigar said as he led them around the slope.
One hundred paces away, the Black Fingers stood looking up at the gatehouse. Remnants of the gate, now an archway bracketed by crumbling walls, stood in mute defense. Jack could hear Igar Khotes’s voice yelling to the patriarch, but he wasn’t close enough to understand.
The flash of a wizard bolt shot down from a window piercing the chest of one of the Black Finger wizards. The man fell, and Igar and his band ran back from the gatehouse.
Simara advanced toward the gatehouse, holding a polished shield and lifted a blunt rod. A stream of fire bathed the front of the stone gatehouse leaving scorch marks.
“Not quite Takia’s fire,” Grigar said. “You have her beaten, there. She now has her own object of power. I wonder what else she lied about when she was with you?”
“I’m not removing the Black Finger notation from the wizard registry in Dorkansee,” Jack said, “if that is what you mean.”
“We can’t exactly run into that fight,” Tanner said. “Helen and I would be burnt to a crisp.”
>
“A wise observation,” Grigar said. “If what Jack told me is true about the defensive properties of Fasher Tempest’s sword, he is the only one who is protected. I have an object at home that might have helped, but it would have been too heavy to bring even if I thought we’d be running into this. I think we let them burn themselves out.”
Jack smiled. “Our original strategy,” he said.
“And still a good one,” Helen said as she looked at the exchanges of wizardry.
“They are still testing each other,” Grigar said.
The Soffez wizard looked up the mountain. Jack followed his eyes and spotted the keep perched on the edge of a vertical cliff.
“The wizard inside lives precariously,” Jack said.
Grigar nodded. “You can think of the keep and the cliff as one object of power,” the wizard said. “The wizard can’t leave the keep for long, or something disastrous might happen.”
“Amazing. He must be very powerful.”
“She is,” Grigar said. “She is my sister, and what she thought to be a clever and impressive feat, has turned into her prison. All her valuable objects of power are in that keep. If she were to leave it, she thinks, and I concur, that the keep or at least some of it would slide off the mountain.”
“Why doesn’t she remove the objects and then leave?” Jack asked.
“The inn where we were captured is run by a Black Finger wizard. If she were to leave, the Black Finger Society would rob her of everything she owns, and she would be hounded for the rest of her life. As it is, her perch is impregnable. The keep has stored a prodigious amount of power, which she controls. She is safe as long as she stays there.”
“But food and water.”
“Supplied at the keep. She has a menagerie of animals and grows things there. A few brave souls in the village bring up fresh supplies every week. There is a spring at the keep. That was one of the reasons she chose it.”
“And this is the first time anyone has tried to get to her?” Jack asked.
“No. Not at all, but I fear that Gant is more ruthless than the Black Finger Society. All I know is that I came because no one else will go to her aid.”
“No other wizards will help?”
Grigar grimaced. “My sister has made lots of enemies in her life. She was one of the original founders of the Black Fingers Society in Lajia, and some of those objects aren’t really hers. However, the society has changed, much for the worse, since it started.”
Jack looked back up at the keep. “If the Black Fingers want their objects back, they won’t want the keep to topple down the cliff, and everyone is worried that Aramore Gant will take too many risks.”
“You aren’t as dumb as you look,” Grigar said with a smile.
“At least I am alive.”
“Who knows what Khotes would have done to me if he knew I was the brother of Amara Soffez?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
~
M ovement caught Jack’s eye as four Black Finger wizards carrying overlapping shields began to approach the gatehouse.
“This should be interesting,” Grigar said.
Tanner joined them. “Is this a demonstration in siege tactics?” He laughed. “We should sit and watch them charm each other to a pulp.”
A flood of fire started bathing the shields. The tops covered the heads well enough, but Gant brought the stream down and bounced it on the cobbles underneath the shields. The wizard formation crumbled and they ran back to safety. Jack noticed Simara was one of the group. He felt sad about that. How could he trust anyone again? The errand had shown him a pretty bleak side of human nature, and he suspected his education wasn’t finished.
“I hope they wore thick boots,” Tanner said, in obvious good humor. “This must be some kind of mating dance.”
“Why do you say that?” Grigar said.
“If Gant wanted to prevail, he would have scorched their backsides when they turned and ran. What we see here is a negotiation.”
“Interesting,” the wizard said. “When do we take action?”
“When the Black Fingers enter the gatehouse at the patriarch’s request,” Tanner said.
Jack looked around. “Where is Helen?”
“Scouting,” was all Tanner said.
After Tanner called it a negotiation, Jack sat back and enjoyed the different ploys the Black Finger wizards used to penetrate Aramore Gant’s defenses. Not once did anyone look their way or try to get around the gatehouse. Both parties were totally focused on each other.
The shields returned in a different configuration. The wizards slid the shield along the cobbles. Their progress was slow, but when Gant bathed them with fire, the intensity seemed to be lower.
“I think the negotiations will start soon,” Jack said. “Gant is running out of power.”
Grigar rose to his feet and stretched. “Time?”
Tanner nodded. Helen showed up. “Any minute now.”
The four of them watched as the shield wall got close enough to saturate the wooden door to the gatehouse. Flames licked up the stone walls and when they withdrew, the door still burned.
“The patriarch is waving something from the upper window. Could it be a trap?”
“If it is, the dance continues,” Tanner said.
The shield wall moved again toward the gatehouse. Words were exchanged. Although Jack couldn’t hear them, they were too cordial for comfort. The shield wall withdrew but then approached again. When the Black Fingers reached the door, they threw buckets of water on the still-burning wood.
“Time to get warmed up,” Tanner said. He looked at Helen. “Were you successful?”
She nodded but didn’t share what she was successful doing.
Jack could see Simara, Quist, and Igar among the four. The buckets were discarded, and they stepped inside the structure.
Tanner looked back at four more wizards standing down the road from the gatehouse. “We will have to take Igar’s reserve forces out first.” He turned to Grigar. “How will your sister take us attacking the Black Finger wizards?”
Grigar looked up at the keep and then at the men standing in the road. “I actually don’t know. It would depend on what happens at the gatehouse. If they join in attacking the keep, I can’t see how she would mind help at that point.”
“Can’t we just put them to sleep?” Jack asked.
“We can do all kinds of things,” Grigar said, “but putting them to sleep means we have to touch them. I don’t think we can get close enough to do that.”
Jack leaned against a tree and sighed. “Then we fight, subdue them, and tie them up.”
“As long as none of them can communicate directly with Igar,” Grigar said.
Jack raised his eyebrows. “Can you talk to your sister?”
“Of course,” Grigar said. He smiled and slapped his forehead. “All this intrigue has kept me from thinking. Let me sit for a bit. If we are going to fight a war on her property, it might be better that she knows.”
Grigar resumed his seat on a fallen log and closed his eyes. His head moved a bit as he talked to his sister. His eyes popped open.
“We can do what we want, only because Gant has plainly threatened her. If the negotiations are successful in the gatehouse, she fears her defenses might not hold.”
Tanner pursed his lips. “Do you know what the defenses are?”
“I do now. I even know a way in, should we need it.”
“Then let’s come up with a plan.”
Jack saw two of the wizards they had put to sleep back at the inn hurrying to the waiting Black Fingers. “We better do one quickly. It looks like reinforcements have arrived.
“I will stay with Grigar,” Tanner said. “Helen and Jack circle around them past where we left the horses and back to the road behind them. We will squeeze them between us.” He put his two hands together. “We can’t wait for long. Hurry!”
Helen grabbed Jack by the wrist. “Time to go.” She led him back into th
e forest and then down the path that they originally took after they passed their horses.
They stopped just inside the tree line and looked up the road. The two wizards from below had just walked around a corner.
“I’m sorry about Simara,” Jack said to Helen.
“Why are you sorry? I’m more sorry about Quist. Turncoats both.” She spat on the ground. “I’m tired of betrayals, aren’t you?”
Jack tried not to look at Helen too closely. His feelings still stung from the revelation that they had kept the truth from him about their being hired to be his nursemaids. If nothing else, they were earning their money.
“That is the way it is in the world?” Jack said. “I was so insulated from it all in Raker Falls.”
“The scales fall from our eyes at some point in our lives. Don’t feel too hurt. What if you were old enough to have developed romantic feelings for her.”
“Simara?” Jack asked. “Who says I didn’t?” He laughed. “She’s not my type, even if Simara was younger.”
“I can read men well enough to know you weren’t attached. We might have to kill her, onion boy.”
“Onion boy, eh? Well, let’s see how potent my smell has grown.”
Jack drew Fasher’s sword and plunged it in the soft earth of the forest loam before he drew his own sword. He raised them both to show Helen, who laughed.
“Don’t fall over and hurt yourself,” she said.
“I won’t. One for defense,” Jack held out Fasher’s sword, “and one for offense.” Jack held them both out.
Helen nodded. “We have talked enough. Don’t hesitate to kill. We are outnumbered. If you had ever learned to count, you would know that.”
Jack pursed his lips to keep from smiling. He bit back a retort and took the first step toward the enemy above them on the road leading to the gatehouse. They walked slowly. Jack gathered what power he could, reminding himself that he was a wizard’s helper, and since he had Takia’s Cup in the bag at his side, he guessed he could be a Takia’s font, as well.
They crept forward, not wanting to be seen until the last moment. Jack heard voices as they were about to round the curve and expose themselves to the wizard. A bolt of fire shot past them. It looked like Grigar was already in action. Helen put a finger to her lips as they crept forward.
