Disciple of War (Art of the Adept Book 4)

by Michael G. Manning

  “I don’t think that’s possible,” he argued. “Look how much is there!”

  “You would be surprised. Do you have any plans tomorrow?”

  “No classes,” said Will with a shrug. “Why?”

  “I’d like to check on my country house. I haven’t been there in a few years.”

  “Country house?”

  “Rimberlin House,” she answered with a smile. “It’s part of my estate, but it isn’t much on its own, other than a quiet place to retreat to. Before you came along, that’s where I preferred to stay once I was old enough to live independently.”

  Will still had trouble comprehending the fact that the wealthy felt the need to have so many homes, but he kept the thought to himself. “Would you prefer to be there now?”

  Selene shook her head. “It’s half a day’s journey from the city. You need to be here for classes.”

  “Oh,” he said, feeling silly. “That’s true. Sure, it would be nice to get outside of the city for a day or two.”

  Chapter 8

  Will eyed Selene from the corner of one eye as they sat side by side in the carriage they had rented. They owned a carriage already, of course, but for longer trips they preferred to rent something anonymous. Being a princess, Selene required a significant security detail if she traveled publicly, so on most occasions she preferred to make her excursions unannounced and unpredictable.

  “You keep glancing at me with that funny look,” Selene remarked.

  “Mmhmm,” said Will.

  “Mind telling me why?”

  He made a show of staring at her torso, then running his eyes from her hips to her bust. “Why would you wear that thing? You don’t need it.”

  She snorted. “The corset?”

  Will nodded.

  “I always wear it if I leave the house. It wouldn’t do for the public to see me otherwise.”

  “You’re in an enclosed carriage, on your way to a private residence. I don’t think there’s going to be much exposure to the public.”

  She shrugged. “Being royalty entails a certain degree of discomfort. It’s something I’ve learned to accept.”

  “Corsets aren’t even in fashion anymore, and it must be uncomfortable as hell,” Will observed.

  “It isn’t as bad as you might think, especially since I don’t cinch it very tight. As you said, I don’t really need it for my figure. The only real annoyance is if I want to bend over. I can bend at the hips, but it won’t let my torso follow suit.”

  He shook his head, then changed the subject. “So, what is Rimberlin like?”

  “Heaven on earth,” said Selene happily. “It’s quiet, and there’s a rocky hill on the east side of the property. A fresh spring runs from there and feeds a tiny stream that winds through the gardens. Fruit trees grow at various places on the grounds, but they aren’t kept like an orchard; they’re placed and maintained for beauty. The residents of the nearby village are invited to take most of the fruit as it comes in at different points each year.”

  “You just give it away?”

  Selene nodded. “Not all of it, but most. Rimberlin isn’t meant to produce income like some of the other lands for which I hold title. It’s purely mine, and I prefer it to be peaceful, away from industry and the pursuit of money.”

  “It sounds wonderful,” said Will, trying to imagine it. A sudden bump tossed him up a few inches in his seat. “The road seems rough.” Leaning to one side, he pulled back the side window and looked out. The single-lane road wasn’t paved, and Will could see a sharp stone cliff rising on the left-hand side.

  Selene looked over. “We’re getting close. That cliff was created when they made this road. Earth elementals were used to cut a level path straight through the foothills. The land smooths out in a mile or so.”

  Will stared at the sharp granite, enjoying the stark view as well as the crisp air. A sharp cracking sound caught his ears, and he glanced up to see the stone begin to move as if in slow motion. For a timeless moment, the world seemed to freeze, and then his brain registered what he was seeing. The cliff face had fractured and sloughed away. The lazy movement he saw represented thousands of tons of granite falling toward the roadway.

  The driver shouted at the same time as Will turned to Selene and said, “The cliff face is collapsing on top of us.”

  Her face registered shock and surprise and for a split second the two of them just stared at each other.

  “I can’t use a force-dome in here,” said Will.

  “We have to get out.” As she said the words, however, the carriage sped up, though whether that was the driver’s doing or because the horses had panicked, they couldn’t be sure.

  Selene had the carriage door open by the time Will was standing, and they jumped together. Fortunately, the ground was smooth and grassy on the verge of the road where they landed, otherwise they might have had worse than the minor scrapes and bruises that they acquired in the fall. Will saw Selene holding out her hand oddly and realized she was trying to cast a spell, but the heart-stone enchantment was still in effect.

  Luckily, he had a force-dome already prepared, and with a thought and a rush of turyn he felt the protective field snap into place around them just seconds before an avalanche of broken stone and soil blocked out the sun. The experience was surreal, and while the force-dome blocked out much of the sound, the ground beneath their feet seemed to roar at them in deep, vibrating tones almost beneath the threshold of human hearing. Will could feel the pounding granite in his legs and chest, and the world shook violently around them.

  A minute later and everything seemed to have come to rest, leaving them in a shockingly silent darkness marked only by the sound of their breathing. Will felt Selene’s hand seek out his, and then she pulled him closer. He wasn’t sure who was reassuring who at that point, nor did he care.

  “How long can you keep the force-dome up?” asked Selene.

  A year ago and he would have said fifteen minutes, but he had grown. Since the disaster at the dam, he had become much better at absorbing and controlling turyn, plus the force-dome was proximal to his body, reducing the amount of energy it required. “An hour or more,” he said confidently.

  “Seriously?”

  He nodded before realizing the gesture was wasted in the dark. “Yes. The real problem is that I can’t do anything while keeping the dome up.”

  “I hate to say it, but the earth elemental would have been awfully handy,” Selene observed softly.

  Will listened with one ear while simultaneously wondering how long their air would last. The water-breathing spell he knew wouldn’t help. It stored air within the caster, but that air would come from the space around them, displacing the problem rather than solving it. If he had known and used it on each of them before they were buried, it might have allowed them to last much longer, but now that they were trapped underground it was mostly useless. Ignoring his dark thoughts, he replied to Selene, “Do you regret it?”

  “No.”

  He squeezed her in the dark. “Unfortunately, our principles may get us killed. I can’t think of a single spell I know that would help us, even if I could use it without dropping the force-dome.”

  She clucked her disapproval. “All that practicing and you’re still unprepared.” Her voice didn’t sound too worried, though. “You spent too much time on battle magics.”

  Will protested, “I practice a lot of spells that aren’t battle magics.” A sudden idea came to him. He had previously run afoul of King Lognion’s secret enforcers, The Driven, and they had used some sort of magic to move through the ground as though it was insubstantial. “What about the spell that the Driven use to hide underground? Do you know it?”

  “From what I know it isn’t a spell. Most of the Driven acquire both an air and earth elemental. They combine the abilities of the two types to achieve the effect. It could probably be done with a spell, though. Shame no one’s created one that could to do that.”

  “If only there
was a genius spell designer here.”

  “If you’re referring to me, I have news for you; I’m not a genius in any sense of the word.”

  Will scowled at her, though she couldn’t see it. “I take offense at that. I happen to know for a fact that my wife is immensely talented. Selene’s Solution is probably the most elegant, not to mention cleverest, spell that I’ve ever studied.”

  “Just because you haven’t learned that many spells yet, don’t assume that mine is the best there is.” He started to argue, but Selene put her hand over his lips. “I appreciate the compliment, but you’ve done some spell design. There’s no way either of us can create something in the quarter of an hour we have before we run out of breathable air.”

  He felt anxious, but it was impossible to be scared with Selene next to him. If I have to die, I’d rather die together, he thought with a feeling of resignation. Bending his head forward, he banged his nose into her forehead before he managed to find her lips. The kiss he delivered, and she returned, was one full of passion. “There’s only one thing left for us then,” he announced.

  “What?”

  He answered with his hands, but after a few seconds Selene started pushing them away.

  “Are you crazy?” she asked.

  “If we’re going to die anyway…” Will let the statement taper off, then added, “the real question is whether we can get you out of that corset quickly enough, otherwise things might be awkward.”

  Selene laughed. “First, just because I can’t design a spell quickly enough, doesn’t mean I don’t know one. Second, if you use your imagination, I think we could manage without wasting time removing the corset. So, which do you prefer, husband? One last hurrah, or should we use our remaining time trying to escape?”

  “Well, when you put it that way, I feel like a bit of an idiot,” said Will wryly. “But…”

  Selene leaned in and kissed his neck startling him into silence. “I take offense to that.” She paused, then nipped his ear. “Insult my husband again and I’ll bite you for real. William Cartwright is not your usual idiot.”

  “So, I’m an unusual one, then?”

  “I prefer to think of you as special—my special man.” They both laughed at that, then she continued, “I happen to know an earth moving spell. I think it will work, but I’ll have to go down first to get under the dome, then work my way upward.”

  “You used to have an earth elemental and you learned an earth-moving spell?”

  “I was an overachiever,” she replied. “It’s called the Gravedigger’s Glory.”

  “Is the name supposed to reassure me?”

  “No. I found it in an old historical spell journal at Wurthaven. It was originally used for grave-digging by wizards back before there was sorcery and earth elementals. Not that we use elementals for grave-digging these days, but you understand what I mean.”

  He did. If the spell predated sorcery, then it might well have been used for such a purpose. In the present day, no wizard would spend their life using magic to dig a grave, and though an elemental could easily do so, almost no one outside the nobility had one, and no nobleman would be asked to dig a grave.

  “The spell will transfer the dirt into the space we have here, so after I get started we will have to stay close together since it will eventually fill up the dome and the area behind me,” she explained. “Basically, we’ll be moving our pocket of air through the soil and debris until we find the surface.”

  “I understand,” he responded. By then, he had adjusted his eyes to see by heart-light, the light produced by the warmth of their bodies. He saw Selene lift her hand and stare at it for a moment, but nothing happened.

  “I can’t use magic,” she said tonelessly.

  “Forgot about that. You may now use magic,” he commanded, overriding his previous instruction from months before.

  She performed the spell flawlessly after that, and soil began rising around their feet as a hole was excavated in the ground on one side of where they stood within the force-dome. The hole was roughly two feet across and extended downward five feet before Selene began directing the soil excavation in a sideways direction. Will crowded close beside her as they gradually ran out of room inside the dome.

  By her third casting, the dome was full, while Selene and Will now stood in a steep vertical tunnel that went straight up. They had debated angling, it but the loose material above them wouldn’t hold together for such a tunnel. By bringing the material straight down they accelerated their ascent and reduced the risk of a collapse. Will had long since released the force-dome, which was a good thing, as he had to use his point-defense shield several times to deflect large stones and pieces of granite that came free and threatened to crack their skulls.

  They had gone upward roughly ten feet when Selene swayed and sagged against him. “Are you all right?” he asked worriedly.

  “I can’t,” she panted. “I’m so tired.”

  For a second, he thought it must be lack of air, but then he noted that he still felt fine, if a bit stifled. Her turyn, he realized. The source-cage is still forcing her to keep her source compressed, and she probably can’t absorb enough turyn to keep up this kind of heavy spellwork. With a thought, he attached a source-link to her and began funneling turyn slowly into her.

  “That’s better, but I’m starting to feel nauseous,” she told him.

  Will paused, then made a conscious effort to attune his turyn to hers before passing it along to her. He had never tried to copy someone else’s turyn frequency before injecting it with a source-link, but it made sense to him on an intuitive level. He probably couldn’t have done it years before, but the process was similar to matching the turyn of a ward. “Your ability to absorb turyn is still limited,” he explained. “Even though you’ve mostly adjusted to the second compression, you’re probably only barely able to absorb enough turyn from the environment to make up the difference you need to function normally.”

  “I think I can continue now,” she responded, starting the grave-digging spell once more. Soil and gravel began flowing downward in a controlled manner, following one side of the vertical shaft, though Will still had to remain alert for the occasional large stone that came tumbling toward them. Seven or eight more feet and light appeared above them. Selene smiled at him in the new light. “We made it.”

  She kissed him quickly, and Will tasted the grit on her lips before she broke away and began climbing upward. There was still a short distance of open shaft above them before they would be in the open air, but the tunnel was small enough that they could climb even without good handholds.

  She emerged into the sun just ahead of him and clambered over the edge, but before Will could get out, he heard a distinctive snapping sound followed several heavy thunks. Selene cried out and fell sideways. He knew the sound all too well. Crossbows.

  Every thought vanished from his mind as he raced up the remaining distance and emerged onto a wide slope of soil, gravel, and small rocks interspersed with larger granite boulders. Six men stood at various points in the distance, crossbows in hand. Three were reloading, and Will could see Selene lying where she had collapsed, their quarrels sticking out from her chest.

  His point-defense shield activated three times as he reacted to the remaining three assassins firing their weapons. Two of the six men were within twenty yards, and he saw their heads explode as two force-lances struck them. He was beyond furious.

  The other four were too far, being at least fifty yards away in different directions. They were combing the area looking for survivors, a quiet voice noted in the back of his mind. Lifting one hand, he began forming a light-darts spell. The men were too far apart for him to get more than one of them at a time. Though the spell could create multiple projectiles, the targets had to be close together for the caster to aim them simultaneously.

  Two seconds passed, and he put the first light-dart through a crossbowman’s heart and started constructing the next spell. That’s three of them,
he observed. The other three were desperately trying to reload, not that it would save them. He hit the fourth one as he finished the second light-darts spell and then took a second to use another of his prepared spells, an iron-body transformation, feeling the characteristic stiffness sweep over his skin. There might be other bowmen he couldn’t see. And I’ll be damned if I don’t live long enough to kill each and every one of them!

  The last two men finished loading and fired on him, but when he deflected their bolts they came to the realization that continuing to attack would only lead to their deaths. They dropped their weapons and began running.

  Will had always believed in mercy when possible, but that principle had disappeared when he saw Selene’s still body on the ground. He carefully constructed two more light-darts spells, one after the other, then fired them at the backs of the steadily retreating men. The last one continued to run after he burned a hole through the man’s lower back, so he prepared a third spell, this one with five bolts. When they tore through the crossbowman, he fell and didn’t move again.

  For a moment, everything was silent, and Will was left alone with the awful reality of his broken world. He dropped to his knees beside Selene’s body and felt his rage boil and swirl, becoming an awful mixture of sorrow and pain. His eyes locked onto Selene’s face, and the world began to swell and contract around him as a low moan slowly rose in his throat.

  Will’s vision became so distorted that he almost imagined she was breathing. Was she? Reaching out, he put his hand against her chest, exploring where the bolts had struck. There should be blood, a lot of blood, but he found none, only the cold, hard resilience of the corset resisting his fingers. The corset!

  Pulling and tearing at the fabric of her dress, he exposed the corset, then he used his knife to cut through the outer layer that covered it. He had assumed it would have bone or wooden ribs, but his blade revealed thin metal bands held together with fine metal rings. It isn’t a regular corset. It’s armor, like my brigandine. His eyes welled with tears as he did what he should have done from the start, put his first two fingers against her throat, feeling for a pulse.