“That is good,” Liev actually revealed a little relief. Garosh’s plan involved having warlocks who would absorb the power of their elemental wizards to make them ineffective. With their biggest weapons neutralized, Southwall would find defeat in the mountains.
Garosh stood up from the table apparently surprising Lord Liev, who followed slower. Looking down on the battle mage, the giant stated, “Be careful to watch your back, mage. Ensolus is renowned for tearing down men when they least expect it. The people here can be ruthless. Even the girl, who seems so innocent can use you for a minute and put a knife in your back the next.”
Palose started to get up but felt a hand holding each shoulder. In the order that they had arrived, they would leave apparently he thought. “If your plans in the mountains fail, I would be more worried over your own neck, Garosh. The emperor doesn’t seem to tolerate failure for long and I haven’t failed him so far, though I do my best to watch my back as well.”
Stiffening slightly at the warning from the boy in front of him, Garosh looked like he would like to say something defiant to the man, who should feel insignificant before his power, but there were no words. One could be defiant in the face of lies, but when truth was apparent for all there was little room to try and fool someone. The campaign and battles coming would certainly decide the giant’s future.
The hands released his shoulders as the other men passed by and the wolf men followed their master. He wondered how faithful these men would be, if the emperor turned on Garosh. As their footsteps disappeared from his hearing, the tavern became louder. It was like the clouds had parted revealing sunlight.
Standing after a moment, Palose wondered at the meeting. If Garosh was growing desperate enough to pick his brain looking for details about the emperor and his Southwall foes, he had to be worried over his future. When even someone as powerful as Lord Garosh was frightened, the mage knew that he had to continue working towards his own safety.
The walk to the house was hurried, but he made sure to check if anyone was still following him. He had never been completely worried that he might be followed, but the mage had always tried to be careful. Letting others know of his hideaway would remove the qualities he wanted from his rental. Perhaps he could never buy such a place if he had to worry over its secrecy being compromised.
After bundling up, Palose used the spell for a minor gateway and stepped through into snow up to his knees. He reached into the snow feeling for the touchstone that he had planted the last time he was here. Picking up the touchstone to take it with him each day meant he didn’t need to cast a new talisman every time. There was no reason to come back to the middle of nowhere after all.
The sun was shining for once. It seemed every day he had been trudging through the snow under gray skies and often with flurries pelting him as well. When the sound of a rabbit running across the top of the snow on a thin layer of ice caught his attention, Palose barely caught the white end of a tail burrowing beneath a protective layer of bushes to the side. Even seeing the hole where it had gone to ground, Palose doubted that many creatures could have reached the furry little beast to catch it for dinner.
He had come across a travel hut two days before, though the traveler hadn’t stopped to rest. It had looked like the hut had seen use recently, with the snow beaten down and the wood pile partially cleared of snow. The snow on the trail had become lower than that off of the path making it a bit easier to walk as well. After Garosh’s report, the mage had a good idea of who had worked the trail, but more snow had already erased much of the evidence.
With just a few hours a day to make progress through the foothills, Palose could hardly think to waste the time checking the hut. If he somehow caught up to the team the giant had mentioned, he would have to be more careful. If Sebastian was with them, the betrayer could not be seen or his former friend would surely try to capture or kill him. Palose would afford Sebastian the same courtesy and find out who had become more powerful since last they had met.
While the man on foot never closed the distance that day, traces of their passing became older each day as the team hurried off to Windmeer. Walking as fast as he could, Palose pushed himself once more, but he no longer worried over being seen by the fleeing men of Southwall. They were moving to tell of the enemy fortress. It would be in the days following the return to the northern city that he would have to worry once more. They would surely send an army to deal with Garosh as the giant believed. If they could get word to Falcon’s Keep in time, the fortress might have to deal with two armies instead of one, but the mage had a feeling Southwall would be in for a serious loss either way. The darkness spells had never come back in reports of dealing with the Dark One’s armies that Palose had heard. Parties were lost beyond the wall more often than the leaders of Southwall wanted the people to know, however, and many had met their fate due to warlocks like those in the Wizard Hunters using element eating spells.
The delay by Garosh limited his trek this day and the mage never saw more signs of the party that preceded him save the lower snow. They were well ahead of him now with his part time progress. Still each day when he returned to feel the aches of legs and feet, the mage realized that he had worked harder than he knew at the time. They had horses and the need to see the safety of Windmeer propelling them to move east. He just could not compete.
Burying the touchstone, Palose called his spell to return to the four stones in his secret house.
He was surprised as he walked up to the library to see Sylvaine pacing on the flat stone porch near the entry doors. The girl looked upset as she walked back and forth. Ignoring the few apprentices walking in looking at her strange behavior, Sylvaine only looked up when Palose spoke her name.
Surprising her friend, she rushed over to hug her body to his. Her hands gripped his shoulders before pushing back. It was so brief that Palose hadn’t even had a chance to reciprocate the gesture.
“Sylvaine, what’s wrong?” he questioned with a little worry coming through his voice betraying his concern.
The girl’s violet eyes flicked up to his and down again as she chewed her right thumb and crossed her left arm to support the other while she worried the appendage. “You have heard of this army they are assembling to send south of the wall?”
He nodded but had to answer aloud as the girl looked to the stone tiles in front of her unable to look away, “Yes, I was there when Lord Garosh requested the forces be sent to assist him.”
“Eloria is being sent and since I am her apprentice she is taking me with her,” the girl replied quickly taking her thumb away from her teeth. He could see red marks as she had nearly bit through the skin in her concern. After her admission, the girl looked at him again with those violet eyes. He had never seen Sylvaine so out of sorts with worry. “I’m not ready for a battle field!” she expressed fretfully shaking her head. “I’m still studying and haven’t been outside of Ensolus before. I can’t fight somewhere in the enemy’s lands.”
“The Dimple Mountains,” he stated. “Out there you’ll have the advantage even if it is south of North Wall. The fortress is built in the wilderness about halfway between Windmeer and Falcon’s keep. They’ll have to travel through the foothills and the fortress is inside of a mountain. If it snows like it has been there so often during the winter, they’ll have even more difficulty when it comes time to fight.”
He hadn’t realized that a single wrongly spoken phrase had betrayed some of his hidden activities.
“What do you mean ‘like it has been’ snowing?” the girl questioned as her eyes narrowed slightly as if to see through him and lowered her voice as she finished.
Looking around them, Palose felt too exposed. “Pick up your bag. We can’t talk about your mission or mine where anyone can walk in and out of that door,” he said trying to cover up his slip. His face had been red nearly every day after the walks in the mountains and snow. That had been questioned by his friends also and would have been by Atrouseon had he been see
n earlier in the day. Only the occasional late dinner shared any real time between the two men despite Palose’s label of apprentice to the warlock.
Sylvaine looked confused a moment before picking up her bag in her hands. Without thinking, Palose took the bag and slung it over his off shoulder. The girl took his near arm walking beside him like a pair of lovers out for a walk. While they had kissed, the young man had never thought of them or her quite like that, but her tender touch seemed to stir feelings inside of him. They were dangerous feelings for someone trying to keep his ties at arms’ length in case he might need to flee one day.
It was late enough in the day that pedestrian traffic thinned towards the east and the lightly tended shipyard. Five well maintained black ships sat beside their docks and Palose still wondered how they could leave the lake and return. The stone gate near the far wall made him think it had something to do with the touchstones which he had been using in the foothills.
The girl had maintained her silence as they walked so the two of them held quiet while Sylvaine hugged his arm. When they appeared suitably away from prying eyes and ears, he confided, “I’ve been using a touchstone thrown by the altar that the fortress uses for moving troops and supplies so that I can practice my portal magic.”
While practice was one part of his reason, it was far from the only reason. One day his walk would reach Windmeer and he would work to reach other cities from there. He still hadn’t worked out every part of his plan, but should Atrouseon turn on him or some other threat came to pass Palose wanted to be ready to leave Ensolus and be far away.
Sylvaine looked at him as if studying his face to see if he was telling her the truth. Being an astute young woman, her brief frown made him think that she suspected there were other motives which he still hid from her, but it was still a big secret. A slightly tighter grip on his arm preceded her asking, “You have visited there often?”
“Often enough,” he replied being vague.
“Have you seen the mountain fortress?” the question made him worry over his answers.
How guarded he should be with a girl that he considered a good friend and potentially more, was his biggest problem. The wrong confidant had brought down greater men than he when their trust was betrayed. Taking a breath, he finally confessed, “No, I usually just walk through the foothills and nowhere near where I believe it is. If I were spotted there, my practicing would over. They would either capture me thinking I was spying or send me back to Atrouseon for discipline or death.”
“Walking through the foothills explains why you look so red in the face lately. You went today, didn’t you?” she added looking at the windburn still fading from his skin that had been exposed on his walk.
He nodded not bothering to lie. Lying had never been his strength. Just being quiet had been enough of a mask.
“Where do you go to cast that kind of magic? Don’t you need a prepared place to return to each time?”
Now the question had come and Palose had to decide whether to lie or let the girl in on his secret. His extended silence led Sylvaine to add, “I didn’t mean to pry. If you can’t tell me then I guess that I shouldn’t ask more.”
“Can you keep the secret?” the mage asked without looking at the girl beside him.
Looking a little hurt and surprised that he would have to ask, Sylvaine nodded even so as she replied, “Of course. Whatever you tell me, including the training, has never left my mouth. I still haven’t told Eloria that we have been training in battle mage magic and sword skills. It would probably be considered inappropriate for an apprentice wizard to bother learning such things, so I have never told her anything other than I go to study.
“This would be one of those things that I would never tell anyone unless you told me to. If you never want it revealed, I can keep the secret.”
Pulling out a small towel from his pack that hadn’t been used for their training days yet, Palose tied it as a blindfold. The girl stood with a bemused smile while he finished securing the device. “I’ll take a circuitous route, so if anyone does decide to ask you won’t be sure where it is,” he decided.
Shaking her head in amusement, Sylvaine found his arm again to be led by him trusting the mage to keep her safe. “You really want to keep this a secret, don’t you?”
As they walked, Palose let the question lie a moment as he talked of another secret, “You let the truth of Lanquer and Acheri lie unspoken. They remained hidden until the emperor announced his change of body and the addition of two more vessels holding his power.”
The word had been leaked to the rest of Ensolus, at least those in the military. Acheri and Lanquer’s part in the change of power was known to a lesser degree, but Acheri was already being referred to as the emperor’s sister or the princess. Few knew them well enough to know them on the street, so a certain anonymity remained, but he was now allowed to tell the truth.
Sylvaine tensed slightly straightening her back at the mention of the emperor and his vessels. Nodding as she tried to maintain her footing without tripping thanks to the blindfold, the girl replied, “Eloria told me that the emperor had found a way to become younger and stronger again. That Acheri and Lanquer are those vessels, I had not known, so thank you for telling me.” She paused the conversation even as their feet continued to turn this way and that in the human part of town. “Does this mean I need to bow next time I see them?”
“You already used to call Acheri ‘lady’ half the time anyway. Lanquer is considered a lesser vessel and holds a fraction of what she does. Still the emperor’s power was immense and seems to have renewed much of what he has given to the other two. If they demand you to bow, then I think you’d better, but somehow I think they care less about that than you might think.”
When they arrived at his hideout, Palose helped the girl up the outer steps leading to the front door rather than entering through the garage. Even with the twisting route, he had the feeling that Sylvaine could find the place back, but it was his best option for maintaining secrecy other than not bringing her at all.
Still wondering if not bringing the girl to the house was the better decision; Palose untied the blindfold revealing the main room. Without seeing the front of the house, he felt that it would be at least a bit of a challenge to find the place back again.
Sylvaine took in the room at a glance. Table, chairs, stove and the rest were easily dismissed as the taste of a young man as she wrinkled up her nose at the bare wood floors and walls. No paint or stain had been used inside in decades most likely and it looked a bit run down. Palose had never bothered to do anything to update a place he considered temporary at best.
“Not much to see. Is it?” the girl asked turning to look at the mage. He knew her eyes strayed to the window frosted by the cold. “If you ever decide to live here, you might want to paint.”
Pulling out a chair from under the table, Palose sat for the first time in hours. His legs were sore from the miles of walking in the snow and even the bare, wood seat felt good to his weary feet. “I didn’t rent it to have a place to live. Atrouseon’s apartment is far nicer than anything I could ever afford.”
“Speaking of which, how did you afford this? Unless your master is giving you a significant allowance, I can’t see you being able to rent anything,” she stated moving to sit in one of his padded chairs away from the table. “Even furniture is expensive.”
“I found a way,” he stated evenly. There were some secrets that he refused to acknowledge even to his friend.
Again she smiled that knowing smile. “I think Atrouseon is much richer than Eloria. She is an elemental warlock and they are common enough. She’s no leader either, so she just follows or teaches. Your master is a necromancer and researcher. Did he help with Acheri and Lanquer too?”
He nodded. The emperor had awarded Atrouseon and those on the team a fair reward in gold. Atrouseon seemed even more entrenched in the upper echelon of the warlocks now. He was nearly a lord in status and had apparently be
en well regarded before Palose’s rebirth.
Rising from the couch, the dark haired girl brushed back her curls as she wandered to the doorways leading from the room. “You have a bed. Have you used it?”
“No,” he responded briefly. The response brought the girl’s eyes back from the room that was bare save for the bed.
“Were you planning on leaving Atrouseon soon?”
Standing, the mage moved to the stove. It was cold in the house as it often was, since he didn’t live there. There was still half burned wood inside so he tossed a fireball into the mix before closing the metal gate which contained the fire. “I haven’t made any plans one way or another, but all things come to an end sometime. For now, it is simply a safe haven to practice my magic. When I create a return gate, I know that I won’t walk into someone or have it split someone in two because of a crowd where my magic could arbitrarily send it.”
Her polite smile as she answered proved her sarcastic view, “We wouldn’t want that, would we? If the council would come down on you for portaling without your master, I can believe that killing Ensolus’s citizens with errant gates might create a larger fuss.
“All this for a little portal casting practice,” she added with a laugh. “Still I guess that it isn’t a bad idea, especially if you needed a quick escape. Have you tried portaling within the city to here?”
Shaking his head, Palose confided, “I didn’t want to give an extra opportunity to be noticed using my magic.”
He walked over to the cabinets for the kitchen built on the wall near the stove. Opening one of the drawers, Palose grasped a necklace chain. It was relatively inexpensive and simple in design. He had bought it for a possible experiment that he had read about and decided that it was time to test the theory in the book. His first spell enchanted the stone set in the brass setting. It was an easy spell and one that he used on the touchstones he had been using regularly.
Battle Mage: The Dark Mage (Tales of Alus) Page 19
