The Baldari (Book 3)

by Bob Blink

  “What?” Daria asked. “You wish to wait until she is awake and uncontrollable? We can’t bring her, and I’ll be damned if I’ll allow her to become another threat when we can neutralize her here and now. We can’t risk the kingdoms on being fair.”

  It was brutal, but sound reasoning. Rigo nodded toward the hallway. “We need to hurry.”

  Daria took off at a run. “Kaler and I will get Ash’urn” she shouted as she hurried off.

  When they reached the far end of the long hallway, the Duneriders were waiting patiently for Kaler, who stood with one leg in the opening. Daria jumped through, and headed to where they had left Ash’urn. A few moments later Nycoh and Rigo arrived. As they started out of the opening, Kaler grinned and ran off to support Daria. Nycoh stepped through first, followed by Rigo and his load. As soon as Rigo was clear, one of the Duneriders did something that caused the side of the structure to regain its former solid appearance. Nycoh had been right. They could easily have been trapped inside.

  The Duneriders headed off in their own direction. Rigo adjusted his load and headed around the back corner where he could see Kaler and Daria firing arrows at the Baldari who had been waiting outside. At first Rigo couldn’t figure out what they were doing. Kneeling next to Ash’urn, they were in the open as the Baldari archers shot arrows back at them. Somehow, none of the arrows were impacting, but instead appeared to be turning around and flying back at the archers who had fired them.

  “Our magic is back,” Nycoh said happily. “Whatever that device did has been reversed.” As she spoke she raised her staff and created a broad stun field that blasted the group of Baldari who were confronting Daria and Kaler. That quickly ended the confrontation.

  Rigo noticed the arch that Daria had created just in front of where she and Kaler had been kneeling. He was looking at the back side of the portal. Portals were a one sided construction. Enter the front and it would take you where it had been opened to go. Walk through the backside and it was as if it didn’t exist. Where Daria and Kaler had been kneeling, the arrows they shot would pass through the inoperative back of the Bypass and travel unaffected toward the attacking Baldari. Any arrows shot at them would pass through the front, into the Bypass, and be sent harmlessly away. It looked that more was involved here, however.

  “Where is the exit?” Rigo asked, amused.

  “Right out in front, aimed back at the Baldari,” Daria said. “Their own arrows were being sent right back at them.”

  Rigo smiled. Only Daria would come up with such an application. Most individuals using a bow, probably wouldn’t have any magical ability. A wizard wouldn’t think of such a thing, because once a Bypass was created, he would be unable to unleash any other magic due to being limited to a single active spell at a time. Daria could only create a single spell, the Doorway she had made. She had never shown an interest in learning anymore. It was a clever use of that skill, and had probably saved their lives.

  “How did you know your magic would work?” Rigo asked. He and Nycoh could sense such things, but Daria wouldn’t have been able to.

  “You said our magic might be back,” Daria said. “I just tried to see if it would work. Fortunately, you were right.”

  Daria looked at Rigo oddly. “Rigo,” she said. “Have you seen your hair?”

  “What about my hair?” he asked perplexed.

  “It’s purple,” she said. “Like the Brryn. Like this guy you brought out of the building with you. Nycoh’s too.”

  “She’s right,” Nycoh said, coming up behind him. “Something happened to us in there.”

  Rigo stared at the lavender mane that flowed down Nycoh’s back. For a moment he was speechless. “I don’t understand,” he finally stammered.

  “I don’t either, but we both must have more Brryn blood than anyone realized. I doubt this can be kept secret. Then she sent a signal to S’erom indicating magic was working again and that the rest of the team should join them. She snapped one of the locator bracelets so the team could make a Bypass right to their location. The others wouldn’t need to float down into the valley as the five of them had.

  As she waited for Jeen and the others to appear, she looked again at the body of Ash’urn. How would they cope without his wisdom and humor?

  Chapter 67

  Jeen was the first to step out of the Bypass, followed immediately after by Tara. Both were alert to any danger, and quickly scanned the area as they stepped aside to allow others to follow after them. Rigo was watching and saw the moment Jeen spotted the prone form of Ash’urn.

  “Noooo!” she cried. She had known Ash’urn nearly as long as the others, and while she hadn’t worked with him as closely, had a special bond with the elder scholar as well.

  “Rigo, what happened.” Then she noticed his hair. “Great Risos. Your hair.”

  Rigo was momentarily at a loss for words, Jeen’s reaction bringing back his own shock at seeing his longtime friend and traveling companion slain.

  “The Baldari ambushed us,” Daria said. “They shot Ash’urn before we knew they were there. Without magic, there was nothing we could do. He died a few minutes later.”

  Rigo was grateful that Daria had explained it. He didn’t think he would have been able, and he wondered if he would have given away a hint there was more to tell. Daria and Kaler hadn’t heard Ash’urn’s request, and didn’t know that the scholar had been dying already.

  Jeen hurried over and knelt beside the fallen scholar, adding her own tears to those already shed.

  Tara glanced at Ash’urn’s body and frowned, but she was more focused on her own worries. “Did you find Burke?” she asked.

  Nycoh pointed toward the second structure. “The captured wizards and Casters appear to be in there. If Burke is here, that’s where you are likely to find him. Be careful. We don’t know if the Brryn is still controlling them. Get them banded if you can, then take them to the oasis.”

  Nycoh had already repaired her own arm, and had discarded the bandage that had held it from moving. She looked whole again, although with a haunted look in her eyes.

  Tara signaled a group of wizards and moved off to see what she could find.

  “What do we do?” Debi asked.

  “Round up the Baldari. Stun them if you can. Bring all of them, both the warriors and the women. Take them to the Baldari compound. Once under the barrier they will be protected.”

  “What about the Duneriders?”

  “Have Tara take them to the oasis. They are comfortable in the Ruins, and I have a feeling we might need their help,” Rigo said.

  Debi looked at him oddly with his answer, but nodded and hurried off.”

  Jeen was still standing beside Ash’urn, looking forlorn and uncertain. “There was no one like him,” she said sadly when Rigo walked over and put an arm around her.

  “He saved the mission,” Rigo said. “Just before he passed he gave me something that made it possible for the rest of us to survive. I’ll tell you about it later, when we get back to the Outpost.”

  Jeen nodded.

  “Rigo, come here,” Nycoh called. She had gone over to investigate the structure and see if there was a way in now that they had their powers back.

  “There’s no way in,” she said. “None of my magic works. I even tried to get one of the Duneriders to open an entry, but he simply shook his head. I guess even they can’t unless instructed by the Brryn. It’s hard to be sure with them. Only Ash’urn ever had much luck getting them to do his bidding.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” Rigo said. “I think we might learn a lot if we could look around in there. Who knows how much time we have before the others return?” Rigo was concerned the escaped Brryn might return. She was obviously the most powerful of the Brryn at the moment. The others had still been recovering.

  “Arrgh!” Jeen screamed behind them.

  Rigo and Nycoh turned as one. Jeen was sitting back on her butt, close to where the unconscious Brryn had been left on the ground. Except no
w he wasn’t entirely unconscious. He appeared groggy, but was clearly waking up.

  “What happened?” Rigo asked, his eyes moving between Jeen and the now waking Brryn.

  “I tried to Link with him,” Jeen said. “I thought I might be able to learn something useful while he was still unconscious. Who knows what he would be like once awake? I don’t know if that woke him, or whether he was recovering and pretending to still be out. I have never sensed such evil. And Power! Be careful, Rigo. He isn’t being constrained by those bands at all. He is weak, but I could tell he knows magic that we can’t counter.”

  Aware that his ruse had been discovered, and while not entirely ready for the attack he’d been planning, the Brryn named Syth opened his eyes and with a smirk filled with contempt, held out his hands and the bands that were supposed to contain his magic simply fell away. His eyes found Rigo’s and Rigo knew he was in serious trouble. There was no doubt from the look that this one had murder on his mind.

  Rigo reached for his shields, doubting correctly that they would work, and hoped to withstand whatever would be thrown at him. As the Brryn raised his hand to attack, a large heavy crossbow bolt wrapped in Caster’s foil and covered with glyphs suddenly appeared in the Brryn’s chest. It pushed most of the way through before stopping, deeply embedded. A look of sheer surprise momentarily filled the face of the prone sorcerer, and then the light faded from his eyes.

  The bolt would have penetrated most armor, but had been slowed by the magic the Brryn was calling into place. If he had been more alert, and had concentrated primarily on his defense before jumping to the attack, he would have been protected from the arrow. The protective barrier which would have shielded him from any of their arrows, enhanced with glyphs or not, and any magic they commanded, wasn’t yet in place. He hadn’t noticed Kaler, who had looked up at Jeen’s cry, and who had immediately charged his weapon with one of the special arrows Lyes had provided. A simple miscalculation by an arrogant, overconfident, and not yet fully awake Brryn had made the difference. It could easily have gone another way.

  He’s dead,” Daria confirmed, her knife out and at the man’s throat as she searched for a pulse.

  “I’m sorry, Rigo,” Kaler said. “I know you hoped to question him.”

  “You did the right thing,” Rigo said. “Another moment and I think it would be me lying there.”

  When Daria stepped clear, Rigo called upon his Brightfire and burned the body to ash. He wanted to be certain. Now he knew the man wouldn’t be a problem.

  He looked back at the special chamber where the Brryn had been. “I guess we need to see if Ash’urn’s experiments with the rods was going to be of any help,” Rigo said. “He was confident the magic was strong enough to overcome nearly anything. He made it very clear before we started how he wanted this to be done.”

  Rigo walked over to Jeen. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “My head feels odd, but I think so. It was a stupid thing to try, but seeing Ash’urn, I had to try and learn something. Because of them, Ash’urn’s dead.”

  “Perhaps you and one of the guardsmen can take him back to the Outpost. We still have some cleanup to finish here. You look a little shaky. Tell Daim what has happened. Nycoh and I will be back as soon as we finish here.”

  Jeen nodded sadly, and signaled one of the stronger of the guardsmen to pick up Ash’urn. Then she made a Bypass, and the three of them disappeared through it.

  They waited until the others had completed relocating the Baldari, the Duneriders, and the nearly comatose wizards and Casters who had been taken by the Brryn. At the moment, none were being commanded to act, which suggested to Rigo that the Brryn might be having their own problems for the moment. All of the previously captive wizards and Casters were carefully banded against a sudden resumption of control by the Brryn. Rigo was impatient, as he was fearful the woman might return and be impossible to control. He hoped to finish the rest of the task at hand before that happened.

  “You don’t know where she is?” Rigo asked Mitty, who had come down from above.

  “I’ve completely lost contact with her. It’s like she had disappeared from existence. She must have gone very far.”

  “Is there any chance she has the power to mask your sight?’ Rigo wondered aloud.

  “I guess we really don’t know what she can do. If she’s that powerful though, why hasn’t she come back to deal with this situation? You made it sound like she fled as you approached.”

  Rigo didn’t know what to say. He could only hope she wouldn’t return until they were finished here.

  The two magical rods that had nearly killed Ash’urn when brought too close together had been carefully kept isolated. It had been learned that their interaction could be masked by wrapping each in a protective shield. That somehow prevented them from triggering one another. Even so, they had been stored at different locations. Now, Rigo carefully placed the first in a position alongside the structure where the Brryn had been found. Once it was secure, he walked to the opposite side of the building, and located where the second rod would be placed. The building was a lot longer than it was wide, and fortunately the outside was far narrower than the inside. The separation chosen was less than the distance at which they had interacted in Ash’urn’s old workroom, so they expected this would work. Suline was on hand, and with the assistance of her Ghost Doorway where they could see what they were doing, the second rod was dropped into place.

  Rigo was a goodly distance away from the structure and the two rods when he triggered the release of the protective barriers around them. At first it seemed as if nothing was going to happen. Then, suddenly, with a bright flash of orange light, the two rods became glowing cylinders of uncontrolled power. Lightning bolts of immense power shot out from each and struck the sides of the structure. It was almost as if the structure was acting as a kind of catalyst, and amplifying the power of the devices. They floated in the air on opposite sides and pounded the structure with blast after blast of powerful magic.

  The energy being produced was unable to penetrate the still collapsing shields around the structure. Instead of penetrating directly through, it spread along the outside surface, completely encasing the structure in the blinding energy. For a time, it looked as if the structure could withstand the magical energy being directed into it, but after a while, a change began to show. The structure started to waiver, the sharp outline that defined its surface seeming to soften and retract. It was almost as if the material were melting.

  The change acted to intensify the rods. It was as if they could sense they were making progress. The bolts of orange lightning became even more frequent and thicker. With each pulse, the structure became less rigid. Another minute of the fierce pounding was required during which time the rods glowed like small suns. Rigo and the others backed away, seeking cover behind the building where Burke and the others had been held. It was none too soon. Shortly after they had sought cover a violent explosion shook the area. When they were able to look, the structure had been flattened and partially consumed by the runaway magic. The rods themselves seemed to have disappeared in the explosion. They waited to be certain it was over, but very quickly the orange flame flickered and disappeared. If the Brryn had stored anything of importance in the structure, they were going to be mighty disappointed. There was nothing of the structure left to recover. To Rigo’s surprise, one of the rods was still intact, although it looked a bit worn and scarred. Wrapping it in a protective shield, Rigo recovered it. Who knew when they might need it again, although with the second one missing, he didn’t have any idea how they would be able to trigger it next time.

  Everyone had been evacuated from the valley before they had triggered the ancient rods. Rigo made a Bypass back up to the top of the peaks where they had begun the descent into the valley. There Rigo, Nycoh, and several other wizards unleashed beam after beam of Greenfire into the side of the cliffs surrounding the valley. Massive sheets of rock broke free and plummeted to the va
lley floor far below, demolishing everything that remained of the encampment. By the time they finished, rock well over five hundred paces thick covered the floor of the tiny valley. Anyone who wanted to check on the remains of the structure would have to work very hard to do so.

  Chapter 68

  “What exactly happened out there?” Daim asked when Rigo and Nycoh reported back to the Outpost, his eyes taking in the lavender hair of his two most powerful wizards. Jeen had brought back Ash’urn’s body some time earlier, so he knew of their loss. Jeen hadn’t been able to inform him of the details.

  Rigo explained what had happened, starting with their descent, the ambush that had ended in Ash’urn’s death, and how the Duneriders had provided them a way in. He told him about the power device and the objects the Duneriders had been preparing. Rigo also explained how both he and Nycoh had felt an odd chill when he powered it down, and his belief that had something to do with the sudden change in their appearance.

  “The Brryn captured some of the remaining Duneriders,” Daim said, thinking out loud.

  “I’d be surprised if the Duneriders weren’t created by the Brryn,” Rigo suggested. “The Hoplani and the Duneriders have a common heritage, and it is not natural. Finding them this far from the Ruins suggests a strong link between the two groups.”

  “Do you believe the Duneriders are loyal to the Brryn? Do we need to keep an eye on them?”

  Rigo shook his head. “I don’t think loyalty applies here. The Duneriders are a tool. They were created to serve a function. They aren’t dangerous directly, but are probably powerless to resist any directions coming from the Brryn. Like the captives, the Duneriders don’t seem to be under any kind of control at the moment.”

  “That’s an interesting development,” Daim said. “I would have expected them all to be actively resisting our efforts. What did you do with the Duneriders?”