Into Vushaar

by Robert M Kerns

  The woman gave Gavin what looked to be a rather cautious smile. “I like that idea. What do I need to do?”

  “Follow me over here.”

  Gavin turned and led the woman across the basement to the ring set into the floor. It seemed to sparkle just a bit, regardless of whether it was within direct light, and it was a smaller twin to the ring in the floor of the arena back in Tel Mivar. Gavin entered the ring, and the ambient power seemed to vanish. The woman followed him into the ring and frowned.

  “What is it?” Gavin asked.

  “I’m not sure. I can’t describe it, really, but my shoulder where the mark is feels…weird.”

  “Ah. The inside of this ring makes me feel weird, too. It’s much more peaceful for me in here.”

  “It is? Why?”

  “The ring acts as an anchor for an anti-magic field. Any magical effects occurring inside the ring cannot affect anything outside, and likewise, any magical effects that occur outside the ring cannot pass across the ring to affect anything inside.”

  “Oh…that’s kind of impressive.”

  “I know, right? I never dreamed the kind of things I can do now were possible.” Gavin squared his shoulders and schooled his face into what he once would’ve called a poker face. “Are you ready?”

  “Will it hurt?”

  Gavin lifted his hands as he shrugged. “I honestly have no idea. I’ve never done this before, and I’ve not found any records that anyone else has ever tried this either. We’re charting new waters, here.”

  “Well, we might as well find out. There’s no reason to wait.”

  Gavin smiled. “Atta-girl.”

  The woman frowned as she cocked her head to one side, expressing confusion. Before she could say anything, though, Gavin continued.

  “This will probably seem a bit icky, but I’m going to prick my thumb and swab the mark on your shoulder with a drop of my blood. I have no diseases that I know of, and this is crucial to the attempt.

  The woman nodded.

  Gavin withdrew a needle from inside his robe and pricked his left thumb just enough for blood to well up, and he squeezed his thumb with his left index finger and thumb to help the process along once he’d put away the needle. Once Gavin had a respectable amount of blood that was trying to run down his thumb to his palm, Gavin shifted his right hand to swab his blood across the slave mark adorning the woman’s left shoulder. The moment his blood touched the mark, the woman let out a little gasp, and Gavin felt a crackling sensation through his skathos. Not waiting another moment, Gavin focused his mind on his intent, pressed his left palm into the woman’s shoulder, and invoked a composite effect, “Idluhn-Uhnrys.”

  Gavin felt his invocation take hold as an extension of his power slammed into the slave mark and its tendrils suffused throughout the woman. The Word of Evocation that began his composite effect drenched the slave mark’s embedded effect with his own power, and the Word of Transmutation altered his power pouring into the woman in such a way Gavin hoped the protection against wizards being branded would take hold and forcibly eject the mark and its tendrils from the woman. Not knowing how the previous failures had been attempted, he just didn’t know if doing so would the kill the woman in the process.

  Gavin used his skathos to watch his composite effect hammer through the slave mark’s power and spread out across the woman’s entire being very much resembling a mesh or net or spiderweb, and he couldn’t hold back his triumphant grin when that composite effect began mimicking the roiling, seething power he lived with every day…just to a much smaller degree.

  The protections for wizards Marcus had built into the slave brands flared, like an eruption of flame, and Gavin heard the woman scream as he felt heat begin radiating from her like smith’s forge. What Gavin was not prepared for was his composite effect and the protection for wizards flowing together and begin feeding off of each other almost like catalysts in a runaway reaction. That seething cataract of power swirled and intensified, saturating the woman’s entire being in moments. Through his skathos, Gavin could actually sense the tendrils of the slave mark separating from the woman, and all at once, the binding that the slave mark represented shattered. The power released as an eldritch inferno erupting from the woman’s mouth as she screamed.

  After an agonizing eternity that was a few heartbeats at most, all trace of both the slave mark and Gavin’s composite effect was gone from the woman’s body, and she collapsed to her knees, gasping for breath and drenched in sweat.

  But she was alive and whole.

  Two men sat on a wide stoop not too far from the house Gavin was using for his laboratory and school. One looked to be an old man with wild, unkempt snow-white hair and a beard to match; he wore a gray robe that was tattered and frayed around its hem, and he held a block of wood in his right hand that he was shaping into a bird with the knife in his left. His associate looked to be a young man with sandy blond hair and a Van Dyke beard; he wore plain, traveling clothes made of resilient canvas and leather to survive the rigors of the road.

  “Huh…I wouldn’t have done it that way,” the old man said as he paid extra attention to shaping the wooden bird’s left eye. “Bit of a battering-ram approach, that was.”

  “Yes, well,” the young man said, “when you’re strong enough to drive a nail with one strike of the hammer, why bother with the finesse required to use a screw? Besides, he did it, didn’t he?”

  “Heh…he did indeed.”

  “We should be going. Staying here too long could give others…ideas.”

  The old man sighed and pushed himself to his feet. “I suppose you’re right.”

  The young man vanished in the blink of an eye as the old man tossed the knife over his shoulder, where it disappeared into nothingness. He tossed the bird carving into the air, watching the final unneeded chips of wood break off and rain down to the street. The wren chirped as it flapped its wings and flew away. By the time the world’s newest bird flew over Gavin’s house, the old man had faded away as if he’d never been.

  Chapter 38

  It was mid-morning, and sun shone down on the city from a cloudless sky. In the basement laboratory, Gavin leaned back against the wall, looking at the woman standing before him. She was the slave Declan had hired all those weeks before, and she wrung her hands at her waist, her expression a mixture of anxiety and hope.

  “Neela said you removed the slave mark from her. Is that true?”

  Gavin nodded. “How long have you been a slave?”

  “A little over a year and a half, but it seems so much longer. You have no idea how people act when they consider you property.”

  “Oh, I might have a better idea than you think, but I’ll never know the day-to-day experiences you’ve survived. I’m sure they were fairly horrific at times.”

  The woman held her silence, but her expression spoke volumes.

  “Are you ready to be a slave no more?”

  “I would give anything not to be a slave anymore…even my life.”

  Gavin sighed. “Well, I won’t lie to you. There is that chance. I’m not going to follow the exact same procedure I did with Neela. We won’t be inside the anti-magic ring when I do this, and I’ve decided I’m going to pour enough power into this that every slave everywhere will have their mark removed. And if I’m right, this will have the side effect of death for anyone who’s ever used a slave brand.”

  The woman’s anxiety left her expression, replaced by a cold satisfaction. “I hope you’re right. Let’s do this.”

  “I have to prick my thumb and swab my blood on your slave mark. Does that bother you?”

  “I’ve washed off worse than your blood…many times.”

  Gavin didn’t really have a reply for that, so he withdrew a needle from his robe and held his hand poised to prick his thumb. A thought working its way through his consciousness stopped him.

  “Hmmm…I may need a better conduit than one drop of blood, given the scope of what I hope to achieve. Thi
s is probably going to be a bit icky.” Gavin turned and stabbed the needle into the wooden support of the staircase’s handrail. Then, he turned back to the woman, lifted his right hand, and invoked a Word of Conjuration, “Nythraex.”

  A gray mist formed in the air above Gavin’s right hand and formed a knife that looked beyond razor-sharp. Gavin wrapped his fingers around the knife’s hilt and drew the conjured blade across the palm of his left hand, leaving a red line in its wake. Gavin tossed the bloody knife into the air, where it vanished into nothingness, and he pressed his left palm against the woman’s slave mark. Once again, he experienced that crackling sensation as the power within his blood started reacting to the magic of slave mark.

  Gavin took a deep breath and cleared his mind of everything but his desired effect. Then, he once more invoked the composite effect he’d used just the day before, “Idluhn-Uhnrys.”

  Gavin felt his power slam into the woman’s slave mark and begin unraveling its effects across her entire being…but this time, he also felt his power traverse the tendrils linking her slave mark to all the others. It was then that Gavin felt his strength start draining like bathwater from a tub once the drain’s stopper is removed.

  It was court day once again. Kiri sat on the throne beside her father that had once belonged to her mother, and she forced her expression to remain neutral as a representative from the Jewelers’ Guild droned on about how his guild needed a subsidy from the Royal Treasury. After all, no one was spending much money on jewelry…what with the siege and all. Kiri was counting the moments until the man would be quiet, so her father could tell him what a fool he was; well, her father would probably phrase it better than that. Maybe she’d spent too much time around Gavin; he was much more abrupt with people at times.

  Kiri’s carefully crafted non-expression vanished when she felt a spike of heat in her left shoulder, focused in her slave mark. She never noticed the jeweler fall silent himself, his face betraying an uncertain expression of his own. The spike of heat in her shoulder flared out to invade her entire being, and every muscle she possessed contracted, forcing her to launch to her feet with her back arched and head back and mouth open. Eldritch flames erupted from her mouth as sweat inundated every surface of her body.

  By now, the jeweler mimicked her pose, back arched with his head back. An eldritch bonfire erupting from his open mouth, the flames almost licked the throne room’s ceiling while he screamed in the ghastliest agony anyone present had ever heard. By now, quite a few other members of the crowd had joined the jeweler in his pose, their screaming a macabre accompaniment to the whole affair.

  As suddenly as the screaming began, it ended, and everyone collapsed to the floor. Kiri gasped for breath, her court clothes soaked with sweat and clinging to her body…her left shoulder devoid of any slave mark. The jeweler and the others dispersed throughout the crowd breathed no more, the Glyph of Kirloth burned into their foreheads.

  All across the city and in the siege camp beyond, every former slave lay on the ground gasping for breath, their shoulders marked no more. It would be several days before word reached the capital that no slave marks existed anywhere in Vushaar.

  All across the Kingdom of Tel, those with slave marks found themselves gasping in the wake of excruciating pain and free once again. Along with them, almost one in a hundred lay dead wherever they had stood, the Glyph of Kirloth burned into their foreheads as if they themselves had tried to brand Gavin…the entire Royal Family of Tel—Leuwyn, his two sons, and his wife—and several members of the Royal Guard among them.

  The woman pushed herself up to her hands and knees when she’d finally regained enough strength to do so. She was free. Her shoulder bore no mark, and it was all because of…him. She let out a little cry as she hurriedly moved to Gavin’s side. He lay unconscious on the floor of the laboratory. He still breathed, but it was incredibly faint.

  She jerked her head up as the door slammed against the wall, the footfalls a thunderous cascade as Gavin’s apprentices—even those he called ‘apprentice’ no longer—rushed down the stairs.

  “I didn’t…I didn’t do anything! I didn’t hurt him!” She said, her voice laden with anxiety and fear.

  Lillian knelt and pulled the woman to her feet as Mariana, Braden, and Xythe knelt around Gavin’s insensate form. Lillian drew her away from Gavin and held her in a tight embrace.

  “We know you didn’t harm him,” Lillian said, her voice soft and soothing. “You’re safe.”

  More footfalls sounded on the stairs, and everyone looked up. Declan stopped on the landing in the middle of the stairs, his breathing ragged.

  “What happened?” Declan asked between gasps. “A session of court was just interrupted by several nobles in the crowd dying like they’d tried to brand Gavin.”

  “We don’t know,” Mariana said. “We felt an incredible surge of power and came here to find Gavin like this.”

  “He removed my slave mark,” the woman said, her voice barely loud enough to carry up to Declan. “He said he was going to try to remove them all.”

  “By the gods…” Braden whispered, his rumbling voice drenched with awe.

  “Let’s take him to his room in the palace,” Lillian said. “Declan, find Elayna and bring her to Gavin’s room in the palace. She’s probably in the Elven Embassy.”

  “Wynn,” Braden said as he moved to Gavin’s head, “you get his feet, and I’ll get his shoulders.”

  “Never mind that,” Xythe said, pushing everyone between her and Gavin aside. “I’ll carry him myself. Hold the doors for me.”

  “Doors?” Lillian said, her voice incredulous. She took a deep breath and invoked a Word of Transmutation, “Paedryx.”

  A sapphire arch almost as wide as the laboratory table rose up out of the basement’s floor. Once it was half-again as tall as Xythe, it stopped rising and flashed, becoming a doorway to the palace courtyard. Xythe—holding Gavin in her arms—led the Apprentices through the gateway with Lillian bringing up the rear, as the gateway would close when she passed through it.

  A number of Cavaliers moved their hands to their swords when the gateway first appeared in the palace courtyard. Even so many days after the assault on the palace, everyone entrusted with the safety of the palace complex still had a bit of hyper-vigilance about them. None of them recognized Gavin cradled in Xythe’s arms, and the Dracon stopped when she processed how many soldiers were ready to draw steel. Lillian, Mariana, Wynn, and Braden fanned out around Xythe, eyeing the Cavaliers, and their expressions were not friendly at all. Jasper was almost invisible behind Xythe.

  “The first one to draw steel dies,” Mariana said as she lifted her right hand and manifested an orb of power. “I suggest everyone remove their hands from their sword hilts to lessen the temptation.”

  Soon, Lillian, Wynn, and Braden held their own orbs of power, and all four scanned the assembled Cavaliers for any hint of movement. After several moments of no motion whatsoever from the Cavaliers, Lillian turned and led the group into the palace; she’d only seen Gavin leave his room once, and she hoped she remembered the way.

  Lillian took only two wrong turns before they encountered one of the palace’s servants. The servant was kind enough to lead them to the room that had been set aside for Gavin on the fourth floor of the residential wing. They had just arrived in Gavin’s room, Xythe gently laying him on the bed and Mariana and Wynn removing his shoes when footfalls that sounded like a charging brigade of soldiers echoed down the halls. Braden stepped to the door and glanced outside. He stepped back from the door and almost whispered, “Oh, damn…”

  “What is it, Braden?” Lillian asked.

  Braden didn’t have a chance to answer before Kiri came into the room, the squad of Cavaliers that served as her personal protection detail taking up positions in the hall outside.

  At the sight of Gavin laying on the bed, by all indications dead, she froze mid-step with her hand half-way to covering her mouth in shock.

  “Is�
��is he dead?” Kiri asked.

  Lillian rushed to her friend’s side, taking in her left shoulder now free of a slave mark, and pulled Kiri into an embrace. “No, Kiri, not yet. I’ve sent Declan to find Elayna.”

  Kiri’s eyes filled with moisture, and outwardly, she didn’t respond to Lillian’s embrace. Everyone who cared to look could see her self-control warring with her emotions as she stared at Gavin laying on the bed.

  Chapter 39

  No one was really aware of how much time passed after Kiri’s arrival when a commotion in the hall outside drew the attention of everyone in Gavin’s room. Kiri turned toward the door, and Lillian motioned for everyone else to stay with Gavin as she followed her friend outside.

  Outside, two Cavaliers stood in the middle of the hall, blocking Declan’s path with Elayna behind him. The bard didn’t possess any visible weapons, but there was no denying the sheer malice and threat he radiated.

  “Step aside if you want to live,” Declan said.

  “There’s four of us and one of you,” one of the two Cavaliers said. “Besides, what are you going to do, sing us to death?”

  “If he doesn’t kill you,” Kiri said, drawing blades hidden within her court attire, “I will. Last warning…stand aside and let them pass.”

  The shocked expressions of the two Cavaliers closest to Kiri betrayed their lack of knowledge that she carried blades, and their fellows joined them in that shocked state of affairs when they glanced behind them and saw the Crown Princess holding those blades with more than passing familiarity. The two Cavaliers blocking Declan and Elayna stepped aside, angling themselves to put their backs to either wall.

  Elayna pushed past Declan and strode to enter Gavin’s room. Kiri turned to follow her, returning her blades to their hiding places as Declan moved to her side.