Madness and Magic- The Seers' War

by Greg Curtis

  Dariya nodded. That too she understood. He had after all already been witnessed falling to his death once and then declared dead. Twice would be too much to stand. Especially if he wasn't dead – again.

  Still this sounded certain. Which meant that one woman in the Mission would be upset above all others.

  “How's Nyri?”

  “Beside herself with anger. Vowing vengeance against the soldiers who did this and their High Priestess. Swearing that she should have stopped them. Even though they arrived with legitimate orders, obtained by treachery or otherwise, that gave them the right to take control of the Mission. And even though she had no thought what the truth was.”

  “She is out even now, searching for his remains.”

  And weeping, Dariya would guess, even if she tried to hide her grief behind her anger. Nyri liked the wizard. No matter how she had tried to pretend otherwise. But there was nothing she could do for the Protector. Nothing she could say.

  “Sia Oran will be held to account?” she asked, hoping the answer would be yes. Baen Walkerton’s death should not go unpunished.

  “She will be so held and tried. But not just for Mr Walkerton’s death. There are so many others who have died because of her. And on both sides of the border. She killed for no other reason than her hatred of humans. Everything she did was to further her goal of killing everyone of human descent in the name of her Goddess.”

  “Which made her a perfect tool for my uncle to use.” Because in the end he had only one goal too; to claim the throne of Grenland. In the end the two of them were a perfect match. Estor and her mother Metea could at least be forgiven for some of what they'd done. They had both been pushed into their crimes, each by their need to save the other. The daughter to save her mother from the terrible fate she foresaw for herself and had spent a lifetime trying to avoid. The mother trying to save her daughter from the Duke. Estor apparently hadn't realised that at some point she had become a hostage against her mother as well as the crafter of the potions the Duke needed.

  Those two were at least victims to some extent. And fools! Estor even believed that her uncle cared for her! They actually had a child somewhere out there, so she understood. The foolish woman probably believed that mattered to her uncle.

  But the High Priestess and the Duke weren't any sort of victims. They cared only for themselves and thought of nothing but what they wanted.

  And her uncle was still out there, somewhere. No doubt plotting his next crime. The only good thing about him was that he was over seventy. He would die sooner or later, and the world would be a better place for his absence.

  “There is more news.” J'bel raised his head and looked at her worriedly. “King Richmond has issued another decree. You are to be apprehended and executed on sight as a traitor to the realm.”

  “What?!” Now she was a traitor?! That didn't seem right. It didn't seem fair either. And she was supposed to be dead, anyway! But logic soon told her there could only be one reason for it. Her uncle had either lost whatever evidence he had for her mother's claim to the throne – and hence her own – and the King had found out. Maybe he'd found out that this talk of a circlet was a lie. Or her uncle might have released the evidence. Either way the King was making sure she wasn't around to make trouble. Either as a loose thread that needed to be pulled or a genuine threat to his rule. More to the point, the King had obviously worked out she was alive. Funeral or no funeral. How?

  But the how didn't matter she quickly realised. This was going to end in blood. Rivers of it. And the first to have theirs spilled would be the members of her Order who he would now know had protected her. Large numbers of Inquisitors would descend on the outpost, killing everyone there while they looked for her.

  “J'bel, can someone get an urgent message to the outpost. The Master needs to know of this as soon as possible.”

  “I will arrange that.”

  “Thank you. I'm also going to need the services of a capable wizard. Someone who can operate the wizard's printing press. Maybe alter it a little.”

  And wasn't that ironic, she thought – in a somewhat sad way. She had come to this city first thinking that she could use the services of the wizard in finding the circlet. Now there was no circlet, no wizard either, and she still needed his services to find the documents that the lie about the circlet had been based on. The Lady was surely toying with her!

  “I can arrange that too,” he told her.

  Five minutes later he was as good as his word and escorted her up to the roof. Their new silver roadway in the treetops was the quickest way to get to the book store. It was also more likely to get them in as she wasn't at all sure that the front door would open for her any longer now that the wizard was presumably dead.

  Still, it felt very strange to step out onto the translucent silver road. She might not like the giant eagles in their nests scattered around the roof, but the silver road was worse! She could see right through it. All the way down to the ground!

  “Shite, damn and dung!” She swore as she finally stood fully on the road. Although it felt solid under her feet, all she could think as she forced herself to walk along it was that at any stage she could end up falling through it and smashing into the ground below. It was a damned long way down! And there were no bloody hand rails! She was sure it should have some.

  It took all of her will power just to keep walking. To look straight ahead and never down. And to keep her legs moving, one after the other. She was sweating too, but not because of the heat of the day or the exertion of the walk.

  “So, you want to tell me your plan?” J'bel asked.

  He was probably trying to keep her attention off the walk she realised. It had to be obvious how scared she was. For some reason it didn't seem to bother him that the ground was so far below them, and they were being held off it by a paper thin ribbon of light that someone had called a road. But then he flew on the backs of giant eagles. And he was a wizard. He could probably fly like Baen had. This was probably nothing to him.

  “If Reagan decided that the throne should go to my mother over Andris and Barnly, he must have issued a Royal Decree. And while my uncle never intended to use it, he must have a copy of it even if all the others were destroyed. Richmond will probably have another copy he’s had locked away, just in case Barnly ever did somehow gain the throne so that he could play the same game.”

  “The wizard's printing machine can find and copy any document. All we have to do is find that Decree. We can then print hundreds of copies and deliver them to all the noble houses. Once we do that, Richmond's claim to the throne is over. Killing me will not make his claim legitimate. At best he could claim the title of Regent – but only if he can somehow take possession of me and pass a test to prove he has no Fae blood – and more importantly, no Fae magic. And he cannot marry me. I think the Queen might object!”

  “So you will be Queen?”

  “By the Lady no! I will never claim the throne. And if I did I could not be Queen until I wed, at which point my husband would become King. Grenland can only ever be ruled by a man. That's the law.”

  “I can however do the one thing that neither my uncle nor my cousin could ever even imagine – abdicate. If I did, I could end the monarchy and pass the rule of law to the Court to establish a new system of government.”

  It was not the best of plans, she knew. It would undoubtedly bring turmoil to the realm. There would be disputes among the Court as to how to rule Grenland. But this war over the throne between her cousin and her uncle would finally end. Her uncle's attempts to use the Fae to claim the throne would end too. She would finally be free to return to her old life. And the Order would no longer be under threat.

  It was a bad plan. But it was still the best one she had. Besides, the Featherstones had not been good shepherds of the Realm. Not since Raegan. Andris had been an irrational king who'd made poor decisions. His son Richmond was worse even without the problems Barnly had brought him. And Barnly would have been a
nightmare. It was time for new blood.

  Dariya concentrated on that as she walked on the transparent road mere inches above the treetops. On the thought of ending her family's claim to the throne. But she also kept a weather eye out for trouble. As Baen had told her long ago, seers were limited in what they could do. Bound by the same limits of their memories as everyone else. If they wanted to strike at someone, they had to know where and when she would be. The question was, did Barnly have some future memory of her walking across this magical silver road among the treetops at this moment? Because it would be the perfect place to strike if he did. All he would need was an assassin with a rifle. Somehow, she couldn't imagine this transparent magical road stopping a bullet.

  Thankfully it appeared that he had had no idea that she would be here at this precise moment. Or at least the walk was free from attack. But she realised that for the next part of her plan to work she was going to have to strike without anyone ever finding out what she had done or when.

  In time, when her heart was still racing but the sweat had finally stopped beading on her forehead, she saw the book store ahead, and she knew an incredible feeling of relief. Enough that despite the shaking in her legs she really wanted to run. But she restrained herself and eventually stepped off the silver road and onto something solid. Once there she collapsed into a seat, overwhelmed by what she'd just done, and had to take a few deep breaths.

  “Alright?”

  “I'll be fine, thank you,” she answered J'bel. But what she didn't tell him was that she wasn't going to go back with him over that damned silver road. She'd rather be trapped in the book store for the rest of her life!.

  A couple of minutes rest and some deep breathing let her regain a little of her strength. Enough to walk over to the stairway housing and then slowly make her way down to the basement where she found herself having to rest again. How could the wizard's house have so many damned stairs?!

  But resting gave her a chance to look around his workshop, and to notice one thing. His staff was missing. It wasn't standing on its usual plinth in the middle of the room – or actually floating six inches above it. But what did that mean, she wondered? That he'd died with his staff in hand? Or that he had fought and survived? She wished she had an answer. Because no matter what she'd been told it was almost impossible to believe he'd died. A second time. Not when she'd seen him fight.

  Damn, she thought! That wizard had more lives than a herd of cats!

  “I’ve worked out how to use the machine,” J'bel called from the next room where the magical press was located. “Now do you have some idea where to look for these documents?”

  Dariya got up on kitten weak legs and followed the sound of his voice back to the room. “It's tricky. I have no idea where the King keeps his secrets, but I know my uncle kept his in an underground vault in the castle.” But of course there was a problem with that, she swiftly realised. The castle had been bombarded into rubble.

  “Alright.” J'bel shrugged. “Let's start looking. Where first?”

  “Castle Alldrake,” she replied.

  “As you wish.” He started playing with a lever and immediately a view of the world appeared in the air in front of them. Then he started twisting some of the dials to bring the view in closer to the ground, and then followed the roads all the way to Castle Alldrake. Five minutes later they were staring at an image of the broken walls and piles of rubble where the main building had been.

  The cannons really had done an impressive job, she thought as she had him guide the view toward the main building. And all in less than a day! She would have thought it would have taken at least a week to do so much damage. But it didn't matter she thought as she guided him toward the centre of the rubble where the main door to the keep had been, and then down into the depths of the stone.

  It was difficult finding her way down through the castle to the underground chambers when everything was full of stone and dirt. But somehow she managed it, finding pieces of wall left standing here and there, and using them as a guide. It was almost like swimming through rock.

  Deeper down, the damage wasn't so bad. The hallways were still full of rubble, but the walls were intact. More or less. And somehow, despite the fact that it was surely pitch black down there, she could see clearly.

  Little by little she managed to find her way through the blocked hallways until finally they reached the door to her uncle’s private laboratory. She'd never known why he'd needed one. Only that when she'd been a child he'd spent hours every day down there. Now she guessed, it had actually been where he and Estor had concocted their potions and made their plans. There things got a little easier. While the door hadn't survived, the heavy wooden benches inside the room had taken much of the falling masonry. Enough that here and there she could actually see pieces of the stone floor peeking through the rubble underneath them.

  She also had a clear view of the vault that could be found at the back of the chamber. She shouldn't be able to see it – the vault was hidden behind a massive portrait of her uncle. But that it seemed, was now part of the rubble. She'd asked her uncle once what he kept in the vault, thinking it would be treasure of some sort and wanting to see it. He'd told her it was his life's blood and sent her away. Dariya had a fair idea now, what that actually meant. She hoped. It was a great black, brooding mass of iron with a door large enough for a mammoth to walk through. Luckily they didn't have to break it down and open it. J'bel just twisted the levers and the image passed straight through the massive door, into a chamber filled with steel shelves and documents.

  This had to be the easiest robbery in history she thought! Not that they could take anything save a copy of a document.

  Inside the huge vault, and she suddenly had to wonder how they were seeing inside when everything down there had to be pitch black – more magic she assumed – they discovered an unexpected problem. The vault was simply too large. It was actually several rooms, connected together and lined with shelves. And every shelf was stacked high with books and papers. There was far too much on the shelves to easily sort through. Somehow, she'd imagined that the documents would be lying on a shelf all by themselves, for her to peruse. But it seemed her uncle had stored away a treasure trove of documents. Mostly for the purposes of black mail she suspected. And they had to go through them, one by one.

  It took many hours, as J'bel played with the toggles to bring each title or front page into view. But slowly they began checking off the documents on the shelves. She didn’t know how the magic of the press worked, but just as the image had been able to pass through rocks and walls so that they could see what was on the other side, so too it could travel through a stack of documents page by page. So, with careful manipulation of the toggles, J’bel was able to peruse one document and read the title and then travel through it to the one under it to read what it said.

  The mechanics of the search were easy enough. The real question was whether the document would be there. Or whether he would have taken it with him when he'd fled the castle. But she imagine he would have left it behind. After all this was one document he could never actually use since it would destroy his claim to the throne as well as Richmond's. So it was no actual use to him. And if it was here, locked away in a secret vault underneath a ruined castle he would always know it was safe, ready to be claimed if he needed it.

  Hours later Dariya finally spotted one with the royal seal. Pointing excitedly at what she had seen, she got J’bel to focus the image on the document. And then she smiled.

  In fact Dariya's heart skipped a beat when she saw the Royal Seal and the King’s signature. It skipped a few more when she started reading and discovered that everything the wizard had worked out was true.

  “That's it! Print that!” she cried out excitedly. And then she forgot the aching tiredness in her legs and almost ran to grab one of the sections of tree stumps lying around and dropped it in the hopper. Moments later she watched excitedly as the document began printing out while the log s
lowly got eaten up by the press.

  Then she started reading and felt her heart almost exploding in her chest. It was everything she'd hoped for and one thing more – a charge. The King hadn't just named Barnly and Richmond as bastards. He'd named who their father was too! Teris Dan Li, the tutor he'd hired to instruct his wife in all matters of art and poetry.

  She found herself laughing almost uncontrollably as she read that. She couldn't help herself. It was hilarious! Her uncle's father had been a bard! Richmond's grandfather! Dariya almost fell over when she saw that and then had to sit down. You just could not get a greater fall from one's station than that! By the Lady, no wonder he'd kept this locked away! Because from everything she could see, the Duke wasn't just not the son of the King; he wasn't even of noble birth! He had no right to the title he was trying to claimed. And Andris was the same. They shared the same father! Raegan had seen their eyes!

  “Is that what you wanted?” J'bel asked.

  “Praise the Lady, it's everything I could have hoped for and so much more!” She started dancing around the room, overcome with happiness. And then because she was almost giddy with joy, she grabbed him and kissed him. He didn't complain she noticed. So she kissed him again while he tried to look as if he was in control of things. “Can you make three hundred copies please!”