Stepping back, Elaine paused to give Heinrich a look of mock disappointment, turned back to the officer and smiled, before lunging. She buried both her blades into his stomach and released them so they stood proud.
Looking down in horror, the officer dropped his own weapon and grabbed the hilts of her blades as if to pull them out. Gasping for breath, he fell to his knees, looking up at Elaine in a mute plea for help. Still smiling, she grasped the swords, twisting them slightly as he moaned in pain. Then, with a great heave, she ripped them free before planting a boot on his chest and kicking him to the ground.
He lay there, squirming slightly while blood flooded out to stain the deep-green-patterned rug he had fallen onto. Elaine stooped to pick up a corner of the rug and cleaned her blades one at a time.
“You just going to leave him like that?” Heinrich asked.
Elaine shrugged. “No more than he deserves. No less either. The pain will give him something to think about while he dies.”
“It’s bad tradecraft,” Heinrich said, shaking his head slightly.
Sighing, Elaine looked down at the pitiful figure of the officer, who was coughing up blood, crimson trails running down his face. She looked back at Heinrich and nodded, stalked over to the man and ended his life with a blade between the ribs.
“So, job done,” Lucius said, looking at the carnage around them. “We release the prisoners now?”
Elaine was looking about herself as well.
“No,” she said slowly. “We carry on.”
“Carry on?”
“No one has been this deep into the Citadel before. I want to see what else they have here.” She saw Lucius frown, as if about to debate her instructions. “We have only presumed the higher ranking officials and officers are on the higher levels of the keep. While we have this chance, we should push on.”
Lucius thought he saw a look of concern on Heinrich’s face, but it was gone quickly, replaced by a quick nod.
“We push on, then,” Heinrich said, “as the guildmistress commands.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
DEEP BENEATH THE Citadel, beyond the dungeons, they found a vast warehouse.
Lucius whistled softly to himself. The ceiling was not high but, after the low stone arches they had become used to, the double-height chamber seemed to soar above them. Square-carved pillars supported it at regular intervals and, while there were plenty of larger warehouses in Turnitia, Vos had not been idle in using it.
Stretched out over perhaps three acres, mountains of sacks and piles of crates were collected neatly, all ordered by contents, age and usefulness. A cursory investigation of the closest sacks revealed several tons of grain. Clay pots held lantern oil.
“There’s enough food and supplies here to last years,” Lucius said in some wonder.
“I bet they have a well sunk somewhere inside the Citadel, probably within the keep itself,” Elaine said. “They could withstand a siege indefinitely.”
“You think they are expecting trouble, perhaps from Pontaine?” Lucius asked.
Heinrich shook his head. “I would expect every major Vos stronghold to have something like this. My people like to be prepared for any eventuality. Given current relations with Pontaine, and the people of this city for that matter, it is a wise precaution.”
Lucius looked about him, at all the crates, bottles, sacks and pots, thinking.
“We should destroy it,” he said after a moment.
“No,” Elaine said flatly.
“It’s a legitimate target, if we are waging war!”
“I don’t disagree,” she said. “But how would you go about it, exactly? Burn it all?”
He was about to agree, then saw the immediate flaw. Billowing smoke underground, especially while they might be stalled by Vos reinforcements on the way out, would be a potentially lethal hindrance, not a victory. Then there were the still trapped prisoners to consider. Another thought occurred to him.
Reaching a hand out to a sack of grain, he closed his eyes briefly, summoning the threads of magic. He felt them begin to work, sucking in moisture from the surrounding air, and concentrating it on the contents of the sack.
As Elaine and Heinrich watched, the sack became sodden before their eyes, the material stained dark as trickles of water began to run down its side.
Lucius looked back at them expectantly, but was greeted by Elaine’s sour look.
“That is very good, Lucius,” she said with some measure of sarcasm. “Tell me, how long would it take you to do that to all the grain here?”
He looked ruefully at the pile of sacks before him, conscious that it was just one of dozens stacked around him. She had a point.
“We could bury it,” he said, eyeing up one of the square columns. Heinrich grabbed his arm.
“Not while we are still down here,” he said forcefully. “You can work whatever magic you see fit, after we have left.”
Lucius was surprised by his venom.
“Of course,” he said, pulling his arm away.
Elaine had wandered off from the two of them, and her voice floated back from behind a row of crates.
“Come and have a look at this.”
Glaring at each other, Lucius and Heinrich joined her, and immediately caught sight of what had attracted her attention.
A small oaken door was set into the wall, which Elaine had opened. Inside was another spiral staircase, descending further, and Lucius guessed it must lead to another level. However, he noted that while the rest of the corridors and chambers had shown signs of age, the staircase was new – or else supremely well-preserved. More than that, its walls were completely smooth.
“Either of you heard about a level beneath the dungeons?” Elaine asked, and frowned when she saw them both shaking their heads.
Lucius took a pace forward, and cocked his head as he peered down the stairs into the dark. Something tickled the back of his mind, and he held the mental image of the threads of magic in his mind’s eye for a moment, watching them jitter ever so slightly, as if they were troubled by the presence of something that drew upon their energies.
“I don’t like this,” he muttered.
“What’s to like?” Elaine said impatiently. “We’ve come this far, and if Vos has installed a new level in the Citadel, we need to know about it.”
Elaine started for the staircase, but Lucius put a hand on her shoulder. She whipped around, but he held up a hand to stall her.
“I’ll go first,” he said, then saw her start to protest. “There’s magic here, Elaine, I can feel it. I need to go first.”
Still, she did not look happy, but after a moment’s hesitation, she waved him on.
The stairs wound on, diving much further than those that had brought them to the dungeons. Lucius strained to see into the darkness, and was eventually forced to conjure a small ball of blue fire in his hand just to light the way. The feeling of being in the presence of powerful magics grew as he followed the smooth walls ever downwards.
A light, growing steadily brighter, began to illuminate the stairs beneath him, and Lucius snuffed out his fire. As one, all three slowed, moving stealthily as they cleared the last of the stairs and cautiously examined the corridor at the bottom.
It stretched off into the distance for hundreds of yards. Like the staircase, its walls were utterly smooth, as were the ceiling and floor. There were no flagstones laid here, just the smoothed surface of plain rock; Lucius suspected the whole level had been constructed by magic rather than human labour.
Lucius soon realised that the light, which now allowed him to see for hundreds of yards down the corridor, was emanating from the walls themselves. He recalled seeing something similar in Adrianna’s lair and took a breath, marshalling his own magic.
“We should turn back,” he whispered.
“Are you mad?” Elaine asked. “There are no guards here, we have the freedom to roam where we wish – and if Vos is planning something down here, we need to know about it.”
“I don’t wholly disagree, but you said it yourself. If this place is so important, why are there no guards?”
Behind them both, Heinrich sighed. “He may have a point, Elaine. If there are no guards, then whatever is here is either worthless, which I think none of us believes, or else does not require protection.”
“Which makes it all the more important for us to discover it,” Elaine said stubbornly.
“The magic here is very powerful,” Lucius said. “The three of us alone may not be enough.”
“You know my feelings for the man, Elaine, but when it comes to magic, I think we should trust him,” Heinrich said.
She would not be swayed. “We’ve handled worse in the past, and what Lucius cannot handle with his own magic, you and I can finish off with our blades. If this is important to Vos, then it is important to us as well.”
So saying, Elaine brushed past Lucius and started padding down the corridor, though the bright light from the walls deprived her of any shadows within which to hide. Lucius looked over to Heinrich, and saw him staring after Elaine, a troubled look on his face.
“Come on,” Lucius said. “We have to follow her.”
Heinrich nodded. “Aye, she’ll go by herself just to spite us.”
The corridor stretched for an age, and Lucius started to wonder if there was not some deeper enchantment preying upon them, for the passage extended into the distance with no end in sight. They stopped every few seconds, listening for any tell-tale of an ambush: the scrape of a sword drawn from its scabbard, the gentle clink of mail, a stifled breath, anything that would betray an imminent attack.
There was nothing. They were completely alone.
Still Lucius was not at ease. If anything, his nervousness grew, as he saw the threads of magic were still disturbed.
A grinding noise of metal on stone seemed thunderous in the silent confines of the corridor, and they turned to see a heavy portcullis of dark blackened metal slam down from the ceiling behind them. Lucius felt a rising panic, as none of them had spotted any change or mark in the corridor when they crept past. Another portcullis dropped in front, leaving them trapped in an area just a few yards long.
The corridor before them shimmered, as if in a deep haze of heat, and through the distortion, Lucius saw a chamber appear, just beyond the portcullis barrier. Where there had been an endless corridor, there was now a widened area of the same smooth stone, with perhaps half a dozen soldiers led by a tall, fair-headed woman wreathed in green silks.
She pointed a long, aristocratic finger without speaking, and two soldiers ran forward with spears, jabbing at the assassins through the bars of the portcullis. Another two readied heavy crossbows while the rest hefted wicked looking halberds.
Parrying the first spear thrust at her, Elaine side-stepped the blow, then jumped back. Heinrich took the simpler course of shearing the head off the spear nearest him with a powerful overhead hack, then he too paced backwards, eyeing the crossbowmen.
Seeing that they stood trapped, waiting to be spitted with bolts by soldiers who had all the time in the world to aim, Lucius sheathed his sword and dagger, then clenched his fists in front of his chest as he tugged on the invisible threads, drawing power for a new spell. He punched forward with both fists, releasing the energy and roaring in anger, letting his emotion drive the spell as much as his skill.
The pulse of energy slammed into the portcullis with a terrifying crash that caused the soldiers closest to it to yelp and spring back. The metal had yielded a few inches, with the centre of the portcullis buckled and twisted, bars broken and snapped apart. Seeing the barrier resist his spell, Lucius gathered more energy, building it up into a powerful attack that would flatten everything before him.
Sensing the danger, the tall woman reached forward with a casual gesture, and the portcullis erupted into crackling lightning, bright sparks playing up and down its surface. The portcullis surged with energy briefly, then the lightning leapt across to Lucius.
His body jerked in pain as the lightning swept through him and the spell he was forming slipped from his mind to dissipate harmlessly back into the threads. Draining its own power, the lightning relaxed its grip on his body, and Lucius sank to his knees as he tried to catch his breath.
“Cover me,” he managed to say to Heinrich and Elaine. They exchanged looks, then leapt forward, using their bodies to shield Lucius.
Elaine had already drawn a throwing knife, and she heaved it at the nearest soldier, but the blade was hastily aimed and clattered off the portcullis. Trying the same thing, Heinrich was more accurate, and sent his spinning knife through the gap in the portcullis that Lucius created. It buried itself in the forearm of one of the crossbowmen, causing him to cry out as he dropped his weapon. His comrade raised his crossbow and aimed straight at Heinrich.
“Lucius, whatever you are doing, do it fast!” Heinrich said, as he jumped onto the balls of his feet, readying for a desperate leap to one side when the bolt was loosed. A strained voice came from behind him.
“Move... now.”
Heinrich and Elaine leapt behind the Shadowmage. Lucius had pulled himself to his feet and was holding his palms out as if carrying a great ball. In his mind, he saw the immense energy he had been preparing as a tumultuous, writhing sphere of multi-coloured winds that whipped around at terrible speeds.
With another cry, he threw the energy ball forward, seeing it speed from his hand to the portcullis, though it was invisible to Elaine, Heinrich and the soldiers.
It blasted into the portcullis and detonated. The portcullis collapsed, unable to withstand the assault. Great masses of stone were torn free as it was ripped from its mechanism, and shards of metal and rock were catapulted towards the soldiers with lethal force.
Men shrieked in pain as they were impaled on metal bars or struck by stone. Amidst all the carnage, the tall woman casually, almost contemptuously, raised her hand, palm outwards. The force of the blast, along with its killing shrapnel, seemed to flow around her and the two soldiers standing impassively behind her. They showed no fear as the spell abated and the woman gestured them to move forward over the bodies of their dead and dying allies, halberds raised as they approached Lucius.
Another gesture from the woman froze the air about her into long, thin, needle-sharp ice. The foot-long darts hung in the air for a moment, then arrowed towards Lucius. Lucius raised an invisible shield, deflecting the bolts into the wall where they shattered into fragments of crystal.
Though panting from the exertion, he was now smiling. The tall woman was accomplished enough and, unusually for a Vos-trained wizard, very fast at building spells. Her magic was similar in its discipline to Adrianna’s, but he had faced the Shadowmage before, and this woman did not have anything like Adrianna’s power or raw talent. His elation at this discovery nearly cost him his life, and Lucius only ducked at the last instant as a halberd hissed through the air above him.
“We’ll take this scum,” Elaine said. Both she and Heinrich had seen the danger to Lucius, and moved up alongside to protect him. “You take down that witch.”
Metal smashed against metal as Elaine raised her sword to parry another halberd swing, and was pushed back by the blow. While the halberd was relatively unwieldy in close combat and easily caught on a blade, the sheer weight behind its attack was enough to send a swordsman flying. Elaine cursed and recovered her balance, ready to face the soldier as he marched upon her.
The Vos wizard smiled at Lucius and beckoned him on. Resolved to tear her arrogance apart, he formed a bolt of black energy that hissed as it fed on the life of everyone present in the corridor. Launching the bolt at the woman, he saw her smile slip as it knifed into her chest. The woman’s skin turned ashen, and she looked visibly shaken as she started chanting, preparing another spell.
Heinrich had already dealt with the soldier he faced, moving inside the halberd’s reach and driving a sword up through the man’s jaw, and the soldier now lay twitching on the floor.
Heinrich advanced on the remaining soldier, who sensed his approach and turned side on to see both assassins. That was all the advantage Elaine needed. Kicking the halberd’s shaft to one side, she slashed with one blade, sliding it off his helmet and drawing a deep cut down his cheek. With the other, she stabbed, the blade piercing the mail on the soldier’s thigh.
He fell to one knee, bleeding from leg and face, supporting his weight with his halberd. The assassins gave him no time to recover, and savagely hacked and stabbed until he lay still.
Her spell complete, the woman stretched forth her hand and channelled more lightning into Lucius. Lucius had already constructed another invisible barrier and the lightning smashed into it, ripping the strands of energy that bound his defence together, sparks flying to either side as the magics fought one another.
Lucius directed more energy into the shield, repairing it as quickly as she flayed more layers from its surface. He stared grimly at the tall woman, matching and countering her spell as she stepped up its magnitude.
Slowly, tiny flaws started to appear in his shield, and Lucius frowned in concentration as he poured more energy from the threads into the barrier, but still the strength of the wizard’s spell increased. When she cried out in pain, Lucius began to wonder if the wizard had not unleashed some terrible spell she could no longer control.
Standing rigid now, the woman was immobile, hand still directed toward him, still funnelling lightning into the shield, though now it was blinding in its intensity. She looked like a puppet, directed by the will of another, and this impression was reinforced as Lucius watched his shield begin to dissolve. He desperately shored up his defences.
From the corner of his eye, he saw the heat haze appear again, this time in the far corners of the chamber on either side of the wizard. An arch appeared in each, with corridors receding away into the distance. Lucius did not know if this was the true layout of this part of the keep, or just another illusion.
The Shadowmage Trilogy (Twilight of Kerberos: The Shadowmage Books) Page 47
