“My lord,” said Alan. “We will not fail you.”
I felt a thump as the copter landed, the roar of the rotors dwindling to a steady whine.
“I know you shall not, Captain,” said Arvalaeon, rising to his feet. “Nor shall you, Miss Moran.”
I made a rude gesture. The soldiers around me shifted. One did not do such things to Elven nobles. Arvalaeon paid me no heed, which was somehow worse than if he had lost his temper. He opened the helicopter door, and I saw that we had landed on a two-lane rural road outside of La Crosse.
I saw the hills and bluffs of the city to the west.
Castomyr’s mansion was there.
“Remember what you have learned,” said Arvalaeon.
With great effort, I stopped myself from saying or doing anything in response, and Arvalaeon slammed the door shut. Alan shouted to the pilot, and we took off again, the helicopter climbing to join the others.
“Miss Moran,” shouted Alan. “You should watch our approach.”
That wasn’t a bad idea, so I left the passenger cabin and stood in the door leading to the cockpit. I saw the city of La Crosse spread out on the eastern bank of the Mississippi as we approached, and after a few minutes, I saw the mansion of Baron Castomyr. His mansion looked a great deal like Morvilind’s, with the same kind of Elven architecture, a weird mix of ancient Roman and Imperial Chinese. Acres of manicured gardens surrounded the house, covering the entire hillside. The last time I had been here, the gardens had been sheathed in the ice of a Wisconsin winter, but now they were in full bloom, the bushes and grass a vivid green, the flowers a stark explosion of color. It seemed strangely beautiful, but maybe it was because I hadn’t seen anything like it in a century and a half.
Then I realized that something was off. Looking at the mansion gave me an odd sort of a headache, a peculiar kind of vertigo. It was like I was under the effect of a spell.
Or I was entering the area of effect of a mighty spell.
I started to cast a spell and then stopped myself. I didn’t want to reveal my magical abilities in front of Arvalaeon’s soldiers. Then I realized that was stupid, because they had already seen me use magic to beat up their captain, so I cast the spell to sense the presence of magical forces.
I almost wished that I hadn’t.
There was dark magic swirling around Castomyr’s mansion.
A lot of dark magic.
It was almost like looking into a whirlpool. Whatever spell Castomyr was using was drawing a tremendous amount of magical power, all of it dark. I sensed another field of powerful energy, something cold and insidious and corrupting. Some kind of necromancy, I thought, likely the effect of his Thanatar Stone. That alone was powerful, but even that felt like nothing compared to the summoning spell that Castomyr was casting. For an instant, the whirlpool felt like a massive keyhole, as if there was a huge eye staring at me from the other side…
“Whoa,” I muttered. I ended the spell and the strange sensations faded away.
Alan looked at me, grunted, and turned to one of his soldiers. “Radio her.”
I started to raise my hand to work a spell, just in case that was a euphemism for something unpleasant, but the soldier handed me a radio headset. I stared at him, and he flinched back. Well, a radio might be useful. I put on the headset and swung the mike so it pointed at my mouth.
“Arvalaeon?” I said. “You hear me?”
“I do,” said Arvalaeon. His voice still sounded cold and dry over the headset’s speakers.
“You sense all of that?” I said.
“Yes,” said Arvalaeon. “Castomyr’s spell is well underway.”
“I think it’s centered in the banquet hall,” I said. I had been there once before to steal something from Lord Morvilind and had wound up hiding on the roof for three days while trying not to freeze to death.
“It is,” said Arvalaeon. “He will have needed to prepare a ritual circle for the summoning, and the banquet hall is the only place in his mansion large enough to accommodate it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m not a military genius or anything, but you’ve got missiles on these helicopters, right?”
“We have a full complement of armaments,” said Alan.
“So why don’t you just blow up the damned building?” I said.
Alan pointed at the canopy. “That’s why.”
I saw dark specks rising into the sky from the mansion, and I swore.
Castomyr had summoned cytospawn. A half-dozen of the creatures were flying towards the helicopters, tentacles trailing behind them. There were also a dozen smaller shapes, black-feathered wings flapping, and those creatures looked like a cross between an anthrophage and a black bird. I didn’t know what they were actually called, but they looked like the harpies of ancient legend.
“Brace yourselves!” shouted Alan. “We are going in hot! Gunners fire at will!”
I grabbed a strap hanging from the ceiling, and the helicopters swooped to attack. The machine guns bolted to either side of our helicopter started blazing. I hadn’t been sure if bullets would affect cytospawn or harpies, but it turned out they worked just fine. Our helicopter’s guns shredded two cytospawn in short order, and then the pilot swept us to the side, bringing the guns raking across a flight of harpies. In the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of fire as one of the other helicopters released a pair of missiles, and they swooped forward and ripped apart three cytospawn in a raging fireball.
Another flash of fire caught my eye. There were dark figures on the roof of the massive banquet hall, and I saw a dozen anthrophages standing there. Unlike many other creatures of the Shadowlands, anthrophages were comfortable using guns and other conventional weapons, and one of the anthrophages was holding a slender black tube against its shoulder with a flare of white smoke billowing out the back…
A rocket launcher.
“Rocket!” I shouted, pointed at the rooftop.
“Evade!” yelled Alan. “Evade! Evade! Evade!”
The pilot wrenched the helicopter in a tight turn that made my inner ear scream with outrage, but it was too late. The rocket slammed somewhere into the rear of the helicopter’s fuselage, and the craft shuddered. A howling scream started as the rear rotor began to fail and the copter began a jerking, weaving descent towards the ground.
“Engine failure imminent!” said the pilot. “I can put her down, but it’s going to be a hell of a rough landing.”
“Brace for impact!” said Alan.
I pushed back into the passenger cabin, which was starting to fill with smoke. If the helicopter was going to crash into something, I wanted to strap in. The helicopter shuddered again, and the side door fell open and tumbled away to the ground.
I lost my balance and fell out of the helicopter, sixty feet above the ground.
I should have been afraid. I wasn’t. I had fallen to my death a few thousand times in the Eternity Crucible. Of course, if I died here, that was it. Arvalaeon’s magic wouldn’t bring me back to try again.
It was kind of a relief.
I had died in agony tens of thousands of times already. I would only have to do it one more time.
But whatever was going to kill me, this wasn’t it.
I had enough time to cast the levitation spell, and it slowed my descent enough that the impact didn’t kill me. My legs collapsed beneath me as I hit the ground, and I tucked my shoulder and rolled about twenty feet across the well-trimmed grass until my momentum ran out. That hurt, but it hurt way less than falling to my death would have felt.
Believe me, I knew that firsthand.
I sprang back to my feet as a half-dozen anthrophages rushed towards me, gray and gaunt and terrifying. They carried a motley assortment of AK-47s and M-99s and handguns, and they leveled their weapons at me and started shooting, but I had already cast my spell. White mist swirled and hardened into a five-foot tall wall of ice in front of me, and the bullets struck it to no effect. I cast the Cloak spell and walked around the ice wall to see
the anthrophages looking around, trying to figure out where I had gone.
I dropped the Cloak, called a sphere of fire, and sent it zipping forward.
All six anthrophages dropped dead to the ground.
I helped myself to an AK-47 and a few extra magazines of ammunition and turned around just as Captain Alan’s helicopter landed.
Well, it sort of landed.
The pilot must have been a genius because he just barely kept it from plowing into the side of the mansion. The chopper came down on its left strut, slewed to the side, and its rotors snapped off as they raked against the marble façade of Castomyr’s mansion. Despite that, the helicopter came to a wobbly halt not far from the double doors that led into the atrium and the banquet hall proper.
A mob of anthrophages rushed out the doors, all of them armed, and one of them leveled another rocket launcher at the crashed helicopter. I suspected that the soldiers had survived the crash unharmed, but if that rocket hit the helicopter, Captain Alan and his men would burn alive.
I almost let the anthrophage fire the rocket. Those soldiers had beaten me and humiliated me and terrorized me, and I wanted to see them suffer. Let them scream as the fire took them. Let them die in agony as the anthrophages ripped them apart.
But I couldn’t do it.
It wasn’t that I felt merciful because I didn’t. It was because I had been burned to death many, many times, and I knew how much it hurt, and I couldn’t bring myself to deliberately inflict that even on people I hated.
Besides, it was Arvalaeon’s fault. The soldiers had just been his tools.
I drew together my power and cast a fire sphere, packing as much magical force into it as possible. The sphere soared from my hand and landed amid the anthrophages, right at the clawed feet of the one holding the rocket launcher, and it blew up in a bloom of fire that sent a half-dozen anthrophages tumbling, their limbs wreathed in flame.
I didn’t want to burn people to death, but I had no problem doing it to anthrophages.
The spell must have touched off the rocket’s warhead because about a second later there was a much bigger explosion, and it ripped off the double doors of the atrium and killed a lot more anthrophages. Nevertheless, there were still dozens of the creatures left, and most of them turned towards me.
I cast the Cloaking spell and ran, snapped the AK-47 up, and started shooting. I couldn’t cast spells while Cloaked, but I could shoot, and it turns out that shooting at enemies who can’t see you to shoot back is marvelous. I took down five anthrophages in rapid succession, putting rounds through their chests and heads. I kept moving, and the anthrophages couldn’t find me to return fire.
That gave Captain Alan and his goons the time they needed to come roaring out of the wrecked helicopter.
Several of them threw grenades first, and the resultant blast killed a dozen anthrophages. Then the soldiers opened fire in controlled, precise bursts of automatic fire, and they mowed down the rest of the anthrophages. The fight was over in about fifteen seconds.
I dropped my Cloaking spell and looked around, breathing hard. I had emptied the AK-47, so I dumped the magazine and loaded another one into the weapon.
“Report,” came Arvalaeon’s voice in my ear.
“We have landed,” said Alan, which seemed optimistic. “Currently proceeding towards the entryway.” Further down the side of the building the other three helicopters landed, much more gracefully, and began to disgorge soldiers. I looked back at the ruined entrance and into the atrium. There was nothing else moving in the atrium, and I wondered if we had killed all of Castomyr’s summoned creatures.
Then I saw currents of mist flowing across the floor and heard the familiar rattle of insect legs against a hard surface. Wraithwolves were coming, and more of those damned giant beetles that liked to spit acid. I knew bullets wouldn't work on the wraithwolves, and I didn't know if they would work on the beetles.
“Arvalaeon!” I said. “Big pack of wraithwolves, like thirty or forty of them, and acid-spitting beetles.”
Alan let out a vicious curse. “Bomber beetles. Damn it.” So that was what they were called. It sounded cute. The beetles were most definitely not cute.
“Captain, engage Castomyr’s creatures,” said Arvalaeon. The soldiers began drawing swords. “Miss Moran, find Castomyr and kill him with all haste. The sooner we end this battle, the more lives that we can save.”
“Fine,” I said.
I cast the Cloaking spell and hurried towards the wall. My first thought was to go through the ruined doors, but given the sheer number of guns and rocket launchers pointed towards the atrium, I realized that would be a bad idea. Alan was going to use the doors as a bottleneck, which made sound tactical sense. Instead, I looked towards the roof. I was already familiar with the interior of the place, and I doubted that Castomyr had changed it in the century and a half since I had last been here.
No, not a century and a half. About a year, even if I could no longer perceive the distance.
I ran around the corner of the massive building just as Alan and his men opened fire, the roar of gunfire and the boom of explosions filling my ears. Once I was around the corner, I dropped my Cloaking spell and cast the levitation spell, floating from the ground to the top of the roof. I grasped the edge of the gutter and heaved myself up, and then sprinted towards the far side of the building. The anthrophages that had been on the rooftop had abandoned it, apparently rushing to join the battle below, and for a moment there was no one in sight.
I reached the other side of the roof overlooking the gardens and the valley below, and I jumped. I cast the levitation spell, cradling my fall, and landed in the gardens. I jogged along the base of the wall and found the window I wanted.
Specifically, the window to the women’s restroom connected to the banquet hall. A long time ago, I had used this window to sneak out of the banquet hall, and this seemed like the best way to get into the building unnoticed. I slipped open the window and climbed inside. The restroom had not changed, and I closed the window and left the AK-47 on the counter between the sinks.
It couldn’t help me now.
I turned towards the bathroom door. From time to time I saw flashes of purple light leak through the cracks. I cast the spell to sense magical forces again, and I was almost knocked off my feet by the overwhelming sensation of dark magic on the other side of that door. It was a vortex of colossal power, and it did indeed feel like a massive, malevolent eye staring at me.
Maybe it was the eye of the Great Dark One.
Right. Well, Castomyr couldn’t summon it or accidentally blow up North America with a bullet between his eyes. I drew the pistol from its holster, checked it one last time, and nodded to myself.
Then I knelt next to the door and eased it open a crack, just enough to see through it.
The banquet hall was a vast open space, kind of like a high school gymnasium, but larger and less cheap-looking. The floors were polished, gleaming hardwood, which reflected the twisting purple light of Castomyr’s dark magic. Last time I had been here, the floor had been filled with chairs and tables for a banquet. That had all been cleared away.
It left room for a glowing circle of purple fire a hundred and fifty yards across. A double circle of purple light had been inscribed on the floor, and within the double circle burned hundreds of Elven hieroglyphs. I recognized some of them as symbols of binding and summoning and conjuration, but most of them were way over my head.
Within the circle was…
It was hard to describe. One moment it looked like a vortex of shadows. The next it looked like a tear in the air, almost like a rift way, but infinitely deeper. I had been told that the Dark Ones came from the Void beyond the Shadowlands, and while I had never been there and had no desire to visit, I suspected that I was looking into that Void. Just the sight of it made my skin crawl as if I was looking at a dead thing covered in maggots. The vortex flickered, seeming to become larger, and a pulse of ghostly purple fire washed thro
ugh the chamber.
It passed through the milling anthrophages without harming them. There were twenty or thirty of the creatures in the room. Likely Castomyr had held them back to act as his personal bodyguards. But where was the Baron? I saw an anthrophage elder standing near the circle, bloated and massive, and a second one further down the circumference. Both elders were casting spells into the rift, likely aiding Castomyr’s efforts.
Further down the circle, I spotted Castomyr standing behind a podium, gesturing and reading from a book as he cast a spell.
The Baron of La Crosse was nearly seven feet tall, tall even for an Elf, and his muscled build filled the long black-trimmed blue coat he wore. He had thick, ash-blond hair, and his eyes were a peculiar shade of green that made his angular face and pointed ears seem even more alien. Purple light snarled and twisted around his fingers as he gestured, and his face was tight with both ecstasy and something like madness as he cast the spell. Apparently, he was mad enough and bold enough to think that he could summon a Great Dark One and bind it to his will, and the effort of that took his whole concentration.
Just as well. It would make it easier to shoot him.
Next to the podium stood a plinth of polished black stone, and above it floated a dark object the size of a soccer ball. I supposed it was an icosahedron, which meant that it was the Thanatar Stone that had kept Arvalaeon or any other Elf from killing Castomyr.
Another pulse of purple fire washed from the vortex, bathing the banquet hall in its harsh light.
I wasn’t going to do anything fancy. I was going to Cloak, walk up behind Castomyr, and shoot him in the back of the head. By the time the anthrophages realized that he was dead, I wanted to be out of the mansion. Let Alan and his thugs deal with the remainder of the creatures.
I took a deep breath, focused my will, and cast the Cloaking spell. Once it was in place, I slipped through the door and eased it shut behind me. None of the anthrophages noticed the door closing of its own accord, and I took the pistol in a two-handed grip and walked towards Castomyr and his podium.
A strange feeling of…not déjà vu, but something like it, swept through me. I remembered having been here before, either a century and a half ago or a year past. I had cast the Cloak spell then, and the effort had been immense. Holding the Cloak spell in place had been so much of an effort that I hadn’t been able to move while maintaining the spell. Holding the Cloak spell now was still an effort, certainly, but I had no trouble walking around and doing other things while Cloaked.
Cloak Games: Truth Chain Page 16
