by John Corwin
Kanaan turned to the golem making the bed. "We require fresh robes. Fetch some in our sizes, please."
The golem straightened and paused then turned toward us, the face carved into the wooden head expressionless. After a moment, it walked from the room and closed the door behind it.
"They must have added more servant golems," Ambria said in a hushed voice. "I don't remember seeing these two."
"Judging from the number of empty rooms, I suspect Victus only allows his top people to live here." Kanaan examined the large robes in the closet. "This is Garkin's room."
"Odds are Zarin lives in the mansion too," I said. "I'll bet their army lives in those chambers in the Burrows."
Kanaan nodded. "Agreed."
"If only his top people live here, where is the golem supposed to find extra cloaks?" Ambria said.
I pointed down. "The main laundry is downstairs."
She frowned. "Oh, yeah. I guess they all have to wash their clothes here."
Kanaan went to the window overlooking the front of the estate. "Let us hope Garkin is out for the day."
Ambria shuddered. "I think he's even more dangerous than Victus."
"Dangerous, yes, but more focused in his ambitions." Kanaan turned back to us. "Garkin is strong because Victus is strong. He uses this leverage to root out those he thinks are weak. Without Victus, Garkin would return to his place at the fringes."
"There's more to life than brute magical strength," Ambria said. "Intelligence, for one thing."
"That is of little concern to Garkin." The magitsu master inspected the furniture. He picked up a book on the nightstand and looked at the worn leather cover. The book spine read The Art of Strength –Moon Zin.
Ambria stood next to him. "What's that?"
"A treatise on the way of the rock." Kanaan opened the yellowed parchment pages. Worn sheets filled with notes were tucked inside. He read from a page. "Equally important to strength are intelligence and agility. One does not approach a situation with only force as his tool. This is the path of the fool. Intelligence allows one to gain insight into the cause of the situation. Agility allows one to avoid conflict."
"Sounds wise to me," I said.
Kanaan read the sheet of parchment tucked between the pages. "Insight does not matter. Avoidance is weakness. Face the foe. Drive them to their knees. Negotiation is the path of the fool."
I grimaced. "I guess Garkin doesn't agree with the author."
"Moon Zin is one of the original masters. Unfortunately, Garkin follows the teachings of one of Moon's early followers, Yawata." Kanaan closed the book and put it on the table. "Garkin must believe Victus is the way to purge weakness from the Overworld."
Ambria punched a fist into her palm. "So let's purge them first."
The door creaked open. Ambria and I jumped. Kanaan calmly watched the golem burdened with three sets of gray robes enter, and took them from outstretched wooden arms. "Thank you. You may resume your duties."
The golem went back to straightening the sheets while we threw on the robes. Mine were a bit loose, and Ambria's two sizes too large, but they looked close enough to me. Judging from the diversity in age of the battle mages outside, Ambria and I would fit right in, and the disguises Kanaan provided would prevent anyone from realizing our true identities.
"What now?" Ambria asked.
"We scout the rest of the hallway." Kanaan opened the door. "If Victus sleeps here, he might be in his room."
My stomach tightened at the prospect of encountering the man I hated most in this world. "I'm ready."
Ambria squeezed my hand. "You look worried."
"We're in the enemy camp." I tried to smile and failed. "Of course I'm worried."
Kanaan slipped into the hallway and we hurried after. The next few rooms were empty, but the first one on the other side of the grand stairway yielded personal effects. Richly embroidered clothes hung in the wardrobe. A platinum watch encrusted with small diamonds sat on the nightstand.
Kanaan examined the holographic image of a pale, thin woman scowling at us. "Zarin stays here."
"What an awful portrait," Ambria said.
"Aerianas, his sister and lover." Kanaan looked inside the drawers.
Ambria grimaced. "How disgusting!"
"It is the way of Daemos." Kanaan closed the drawers. "Zarin must work night and day to complete the new foundry. With the omniarch nearby, I do not think he would stay otherwise."
"It's literally only a few hundred yards to the omniarch," I said. "Why wouldn't Zarin just portal home?"
"Perhaps he feels more secure here." Kanaan opened the door a crack. Peered into the hallway and stepped out. The other bedrooms held nothing of interest, but the master bedroom at the end of the corridor more than made up for it.
The bed and most of the furniture was gone, replaced by bookshelves and tables. Sheets of parchment clung to the walls, many inscribed with bizarre diagrams or horrendous, inhuman faces. Portraits covered another wall, each face labeled. I went to the nearest one and examined one of a middle-aged woman, her likeness drawn by a skilled hand.
"Eleanor Barnes, cleric for the Ministry of Magical Permits." I looked at the neighboring portrait of an older man. "Jacob Hunt. CEO of International Foods."
"Good heavens." Ambria traced a finger down the drawings. "These must be the people Victus has cloned with infernus."
"Some, but not all." Kanaan pointed to checked boxes beneath several portraits that were left unchecked beneath others. "Our efforts must have halted the conversions."
"This is monstrous." Ambria looked up and down the long span of wall. "There are hundreds of portraits here."
I turned toward the next wall and stumbled over a rolled bundle of leather. At first it looked like the bottom of a fur rug, but the crudely-stitched shapes in the hide sent me shrinking back in horror. The outlines of faces, torsos, arms, and legs twisted my stomach. "What is that awful thing?"
Kanaan untied the leather bindings and kicked it open. The leather unrolled to form a ten-by-ten square. The inside was smooth and pink except for the crimson diagram spanning the center. The pattern made my vision swim, much like the one on the floor of the last foundry.
"Is it a blueprint for the foundry diagram?" Ambria asked.
Kanaan pursed his lips and examined strange symbols on the upper right corner. After a moment, he shook his head. "How is it possible?" Something like surprise flashed in his eyes.
His confusion filled me with dread. "What do you mean?"
Ambria backed away a step. "What is this thing, Kanaan?"
The magitsu master rolled it back up and bound it. "A demon gateway on human leather." He murmured a chant and tapped his wand on the bindings. A soft blue nimbus surrounded the bundle.
"Like a summoning pattern?" I asked.
Kanaan holstered his wands. "The reverse."
Ambria opened her mouth to reply when Victus burst through the door.
Chapter 24
Victus was so absorbed in his thoughts, he didn't even glance to the side or he would've instantly seen us. He strode to a table in the middle of the room and dug through a pile of scrolls, his back to us. Kanaan whipped out his wands and stalked across the room, silent as a panther. My hand clenched painfully tight around something. I looked down and saw my own wand in hand.
I'm going to kill him. I'm going to make him pay for what he did to Delectra and Cora!
Before I could move another muscle, Kanaan jammed his wands into Victus's ears. Brilliant blue light lit the inside of my father's skull. A scream died in his throat and he slumped to the floor, eyes bulging grotesquely, smoke rising from his nostrils.
I could hardly believe my eyes. So much destruction. So much death. So much pain. And the man who'd caused it all lay dead just feet away. Why hadn't Kanaan let me kill him? Why wasn't I the one to stand over his corpse?
My wand clattered to the floor. My knees turned to mush. Ambria grabbed my arm to keep me from falling.
"I wanted to kill him." My voice felt rough as gravel. "I wanted him to know I ended his life."
"It doesn't matter, Conrad." Ambria leaned over and picked up my wand, put it in my holster. "He's dead."
"Why did you kill him, Kanaan?" My vision swam. Anger and regret consumed me. "He was mine!"
Kanaan's eyes narrowed. "This is not Victus."
"What?" Ambria staggered back a step, nearly letting me fall.
I sucked in a breath, suddenly aware I'd stopped breathing for the span of several seconds. "It isn't?"
Kanaan turned Victus's head to reveal a small but noticeable mole on the left cheek. He also pointed to the scar over the eye. "Victus does not have a mole, and the scar is an inch too long."
My forehead tightened. "Are you certain?"
Kanaan tore open Victus's oxford to bare his chest. A narrow beam from his wand carved a line down the flesh. Ambria gasped and shuddered. I was still too shocked to react normally and stared in morbid fascination as Kanaan cut open the chest cavity and removed a small glass sphere dripping with blood. He wiped it on a piece of parchment and let it rest in his palm. Gray smoke within hung still around a dimming constellation of aether. The smoke turned black as soot and faded to nothing.
He frowned. "I am sorry, Conrad, but this is an infernus."
White-hot shock seared my nerves. That bastard is still alive. I couldn't even fathom why, but the thought gave me relief. I can still kill him.
Kanaan seemed to sense my mixed feelings. "Your desire for vengeance overshadows the need to stop your father by any means."
Conflicting emotions held my tongue. I'd admitted my feelings only seconds earlier. As ashamed as I felt to acknowledge them, I nodded. "I want him to know I killed him. I want him to know I did it for Delectra and Cora."
Kanaan raised an eyebrow. "But Cora lives."
I slashed a hand through the air. "She's not the same! After I resurrected her, she barely remembers me. She won't even let me come back into the Glimmer!" My voice grew rougher with every word, my heart heavier. "I want to watch the light drain from that bastard's eyes while I carve out his heart just like he did mine!" Tears blurred my vision, but I didn't care.
"Conrad." Ambria took my hand but I pulled away.
"I want to kill him, Kanaan." I jabbed a thumb to my chest. "You have to let me do it."
"Even at the cost of him escaping or killing you?" Kanaan holstered his wands and watched me. "What if you fail and he lives to destroy even more?"
I knew I was behaving like a child. I couldn't possibly win a fight against Victus, no matter how much I wanted to, but the thought of what he'd taken from me filled me with pure, sweet rage. Electricity stung my palms and traveled up my spine.
I felt that distant flow of pure, sweet energy, just as Moses felt during his final battle.
I hung in a void. A stream of crackling energy hummed just out of reach, azure blue mingling with the purest of white. It stretched endlessly before me. But it remained beyond my fingertips no matter how hard I strained to touch it.
"Oh, my god." Ambria's voice echoed from somewhere outside the void. "What's happening?"
I snapped back into reality.
Scrolls on the table hovered in the air. The heavy oak table rattled as if shaken by an earthquake and leapt off the floor. A deep hum vibrated me to my core.
The tingling sensation vanished. The table thudded down. Parchments, potions, and all manner of objects crashed to the floor.
Kanaan stared at me, his mouth slightly ajar in what could only be described as surprise. Shouts echoed from the hallway outside. Footsteps thudded on distant stairs. Kanaan grabbed the leather bundle off the floor and raced toward a window.
Ambria grabbed my arm and yanked me along, shaking me from my stupor. Kanaan tossed the bundle out of the window then charmed our hands with the climbing spell. Ambria went out first and I followed close behind, breathless with fear.
"Oh no." Ambria hung from the wall by her feet and one hand, the other pointing to our portal. Gray robed individuals rushed from the opposite end of the mansion toward our escape route. Since we were at the far west end of the building, there was no way we'd beat them there. The air shimmered as Kanaan cast a spell to conceal us from the incoming mages. We skittered down the wall like insects and reached the ground well after the horde reached the portal.
"What now?" I asked.
Kanaan traced his wand over the leather bundle. The awful stitches melted away to look like a regular rug which he tucked under an arm. "We blend in and leave through the Burrows."
A group of young mages nearly collided with us at the western corner of the mansion, their group heading toward the back.
"What the bloody hell?" A young man with spiked hair and a gold bone piercing the septum of his nose shoved Kanaan. "Watch where you're going."
Kanaan bowed slightly. "Apologies."
"What's going on back there?" A woman threw back the hood of her robes to reveal a face glittering with dermal implants. "It felt like an earthquake."
"Look, a crack in the foundation!" Another woman put a finger in a long fissure at the base of the house.
"We saw nothing," Kanaan said, and squeezed through the group.
I grabbed Ambria's hand and pulled her behind me. The rest of the punks passed by without incident. We walked slowly, trying to look unconcerned even as dozens of others ran toward the mansion, wands drawn. Every yard seemed to stretch into a dozen. My heart raced with fear that someone would see past our stolen gray robes and discover impostors.
The corridor beyond the mansion cave was nearly empty except for a tight group of mages guarding the entrance to the omniarch room. Several bore the crimson stains of the blooded.
"We cannot get to the omniarch," Kanaan said in a low voice.
Two burly men opened a gap and Garkin himself stalked from the omniarch room, his huge staff striking the ground with every stride. He'd covered nearly half the distance between us before I realized Kanaan was urging us toward the gauntlet room a few feet away. We stepped inside our old training grounds. Burnt and crushed humanoid dummies lay inside dozens of target ranges. The place bore little resemblance to the gauntlets Kanaan used to train us.
A few mages remained, casting destructive spells, cheering when they destroyed a target.
Kanaan stared at the mages. "These people pervert the mystic arts."
Garkin turned into the Stoneshire cavern and we stepped back into the corridor. A scarred face met my gaze. Victus, a red cloak fluttering from his back, emerged from the direction of the Burrows. Zarin, the Daemos, walked at his side, seemingly unconcerned with the loud alarms wailing.
A young mage rushed out of the mansion cave and fell at Victus's feet. "My lord, your infernus was foully murdered."
Victus's eyes flared. "Murdered, how?"
"His skull is a burnt-out husk, and his soul sphere was ripped from his chest."
"And it happened right under your noses?" Victus bared his teeth at the messenger. "Zarin, I'll require another."
"Can it not wait until the daemonculus is complete?" Zarin brushed something off his Victorian-era suit and sighed. "It would considerably decrease the time required."
Victus scowled. "Very well. Construction has been delayed enough already." He grabbed the messenger's hair and jerked back his head. "Where did it happen?"
"Inside the mansion, sir." The man's voice trembled with fear. "The entire cavern shook and brilliant lights flared inside your upstairs study."
"We felt it too." Zarin looked toward the mansion. "Are you certain it wasn't an earthquake?"
"Positive, master." The man paled even more. "There is a portal behind the mansion that leads to the Queens Gate waystation."
"Kanaan," Victus growled. He shoved the messenger's head away and walked toward the mansion. "Search the waystation, the mansion, even the damned Burrows!" Victus shouted. "I want Kanaan's head!"
"Come," Kanaan whispered. "Walk slowly, but deliberatel
y."
We turned left toward the entrance to the Burrows. I couldn't tear my eyes from Victus. Hatred boiled my blood. The evil smirk when he killed Delectra flashed in my mind. I'd given him a scar, but it wasn't enough. I wanted to see him burn. Hear him scream.
"Conrad," Ambria hissed. She gripped my wrist and pulled me after her into the corridor.
"You!"
Ambria froze and turned slowly to face the source of that call—Victus. "Y-yes, master?"
His gloating face filled my vision. The indifference as he watched me with my dying mother. It took everything I had not to draw my wand and silence him forever. If I had been alone, I would have gladly died if it meant I could cut him to pieces in front of his minions.
"Are you searching the Burrows?" Victus continued.
Ambria bowed deeply. "Yes, master."
"Ensure all exits are blocked." He grabbed one of Garkin's blooded mages. "Go with her and make sure she gets it right."
The mage bowed. "As you say, my lord."
Red filled my vision. This might be my last chance to kill him. But Ambria would die with me. I looked at her frightened face and the rage cooled. I wouldn't let Victus steal another loved one from this life. I'd finish him on my own.
Victus didn't so much as glance at me a single time during his exchange with Ambria. Apparently, he didn't recognize me with blond hair and fat cheeks. My father turned and led his retinue into the mansion cave.
"Let's go." The blooded mage shoved Ambria toward the western corridor. A gaping hole at the far end led into the Burrows.
Kanaan walked slowly ahead of us by about twenty paces. The mage stalked past Ambria. "Hurry up, you idiots. We need to reach the other end and seal it before the killer escapes." He slapped Kanaan on the back of his head. "You hear me?"
"Yes, sir." Kanaan broke into a jog to keep up.
Ambria and I followed suit. When we stepped into the old dungeons, the blooded led us down a tunnel and into a large room. Rubble lay at the edges and in the center, the beginnings of a complex demon summoning pattern.
