This entrance area was on the ground floor of the Rune Tower not far from the library. Signs were posted to direct visitors and Mages were stationed nearby to give assistance, but they recognized Sir Edge and his friends right away and didn’t bother approaching.
Fist ran into the hall. “Good! You’re here. I have something to . . . Lenny!” exclaimed the ogre in surprise. He did a decent job with his intonation and facial expression, but it was obvious through the bond that he was faking it. “What a coincidence! I was going to recommend that we come and see you.”
“Don’t bother, Fist,” said Deathclaw with a derisive hiss. “The dwarf already told us of your flapping lips.”
“Lenny,” said Fist with deep disappointment.
“Sorry, Son,” said Lenny abashedly. “These dag-gum crab-snatchers drug it outta me.”
“It was the first thing he blurted,” said the raptoid.
Lenny frowned. “Not the first thing!”
“I’m sorry, Edge,” said Fist. “He came at me with questions and superlatives and I wasn’t on my guard at the time.”
“He came at you with ‘superlatives?’” said Deathclaw in confusion and Edge sent him the meaning of the word through the bond.
“I didn’t say he was ‘super’ anythin’!” said Lenny. “Just told him how proud I was of how his daughter was doin’.”
“It’s okay, Fist,” said Edge, raising a mollifying hand. “I am perfectly happy to have Lenny along with us. Now what was it you wanted to say when you came in here?”
The ogre’s anxiety didn’t lessen all that much. “Well, I know that you want to leave right away, and I have everything packed for the journey.” He glanced at the mages that were posted nearby and kept this next part mental. But we need to talk to Head Wizard Valtrek before we leave. He has things he wants to talk to you about.
Edge sighed. His relationship with Valtrek was complicated to say the least. He respected the man, and thought he had good intentions for the most part, but he wasn’t fond of his tactics.
Valtrek had been the spymaster for the school for many years and the habits he had developed while in that position had carried over. He kept far too many secrets close to his vest and Edge wasn’t so certain that he liked the man being in charge. Valtrek was the first head wizard in a very long time who hadn’t been named by the Bowl of Souls. There had to be a reason for that.
“It’s fine, Fist.” I needed to talk to either him or Locksher before I left anyway, Edge said. “Where does he want me to meet him?”
Fist gestured towards the exit. He wanted to keep your meeting secret, so he’s waiting at your house.
“Right,” said Edge. “Let’s go then.”
The party left the chamber and exited down a short corridor before arriving at the main hallway. They left the tower and cut across the grass in the darkness, not exactly slinking through the night, but they took the most inconspicuous route possible.
When they arrived at the guest houses, Edge saw that his house was lit from inside. He walked up to the door and thought to Fist, Did you have to leave him in my house alone? Not that he had anything to hide in there, but he didn’t like the idea of the old spymaster looking through his things.
“I didn’t!” Fist said. “Not exactly.”
Edge opened the door to see Wizard Valtrek sitting at his small dinner table, a steaming cup of tea in his hands. He wore fine white robes trimmed with blue and black and a multicolored sash that indicated his office. His hair was shoulder length and white and his beard, which had been black when Edge first met him, had some streaks of gray in it.
Valtrek wasn’t who drew Edge’s eyes though. Sitting next to the head wizard, fiercely examining Seer Rahan’s letter, was Edge’s mother.
She looked resplendent in a red and black robe that was embroidered with golden thread. Her dark hair, tinged with gray, was tied back and her fine featured face was only mildly wrinkled. To the casual observer she appeared to be in her late 40s. No one that looked at her could tell she was nearly 200 years old. Habitual use of elf-grown food had kept her young.
In her youth, she had been known as Wizardess Sherl, one of the greatest dark wizard hunters the Mage School had ever seen. After a century of such work she had gone into hiding intending to live a quiet life. Edge had been her only child and had grown up knowing his mother as Darlan, a fierce leader in the local community. But just before the battle at the Black Lake she had finally gone before the Bowl of Souls and had been renamed Mistress Dianne. Now she was the Mage School Representative to the Academy Council. She was supposed to be in Reneul.
Edge sent an irritated thought through the bond. Fist!
I couldn’t help it, sent Fist with a grimace. Jhonate sent in her resignation to the Academy and when Dianne found out that Jhonate had been named and then left the school, she came through the portal and found me and mandated that I tell her what I knew.
You didn’t have to show her the letter! Edge didn’t let his consternation reach his face. He calmly stepped inside and said aloud, “Mother.”
She looked up from the letter and her eyes were red-rimmed. “Her name was Arriana?”
Edge bit his lip. She had known about Jhonate’s miscarriage and the curse that had caused it, but they hadn’t told her everything. “We kept that part to ourselves.”
She put the letter down on the table. “Why didn’t Jhonate come to me when she got this?”
“Probably because she knew you would demand to go with her,” Edge said.
“Of course I would have.” Mistress Dianne pointed at the page. “It doesn’t say that she has to travel alone. Only that she would meet with him alone.”
Edge nodded. “I agree with you. I’ve been giving it some thought and I think that she may have decided that this meant that anyone who went with her on the journey could be killed.”
She grunted. “That’s reading a lot between the lines.”
“It is also possible,” said Valtrek, speaking up for the first time. “That the thief who posed himself to her as someone also seeking the seer convinced her that she could not bring anyone.”
“Jhonate is a very bright woman,” Dianne said. “How could a strange man have convinced her of something like that?”
“We should remember that her name is Sar Zahara now,” Valtrek chastised gently as he placed his teacup down on the table.
Dianne frowned. “She’s my daughter-in-law. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”
“Really?” said the wizard with an eyebrow raised. He glanced at Edge. “I rather thought that she was precisely the kind of person who would mind.”
“She would,” said Deathclaw from just outside the door.
Edge realized that he was still standing in the doorway and stepped aside so that his friends could join them. “Actually, Mother, he’s right. You know how proper she is about names.”
“Oh,” said Dianne, nodding to herself. “True. I never could get her to call me anything else but Dianne.”
“To answer your earlier question,” said Valtrek. “I imagine that our robber knew how to manipulate her into believing him because he had snuck into the house and read this letter before he spoke to her.”
Anger surged within Edge at the thought. “How do you know this?”
Valtrek gestured towards Rufus. The ape-like rogue horse had shrunk down to the size of a dog and was sitting on the floor next to Lenny. “Rufus smelled traces of the man’s scent in your home. Would Sar Zahara have let a strange man into her home?”
Edge gave it some thought. Jhonate wouldn’t have feared to let anyone in, but it was her habit to step outside to talk to people. Only close friends were invited inside. “I don’t think she would.”
“Also, Rufus smelled a trace of the man’s scent on the letter,” said Fist.
Rufus came up to the table and stood on his cat-like rear legs so that he could point at the letter. “Stinks,” he said in a small voice.
“She wouldn’t have
let him read something as private as this,” Dianne said.
“Alright,” said Edge. “We know that the man who stole the Dark Prophet’s last remaining ritual dagger convinced Jhonate to go with him. Why would he do that? What could he want from her?”
Valtrek leaned forward and steepled his fingers. “You read the letter. Only someone who is named by the Bowl and carries a holy artifact can get to Seer Rahan. Sar Zahara now fits both of those qualifications.”
“Then he is using her to get to the seer?” said Deathclaw. “Is this just to set up an assassination?”
“It makes sense,” said Edge. “If the thief came here to steal the dagger he has to be working for the Dark Prophet. We know that the Dark Prophet fears seers. Anyone who might see his plans in advance is a threat.”
“Perhaps,” Deathclaw said skeptically, his arms folded. “But I think it is more personal than that.”
“In what way?” said Edge.
“A chance to get at you,” said Fist, knowing exactly where the raptoid’s thoughts were taking him. “This could be part of an elaborate trap.”
A chill went up Edge’s spine at the thought that Jhonate’s predicament could be his fault. The Dark Prophet had a particular animosity towards him because of his bond with Artemus.
Back when Artemus had been alive, there had been a prophecy stating that he would be crucial to the Dark Prophet’s destruction. When the Priestess of War killed Artemus, the Dark Prophet had assumed the prophecy void. But ever since he had learned that the old wizard was bound to Edge, he had been sending a series of assassins after him.
“I dunno,” said Lenny. “That dark bastard’s a tricky egg-licker, but don’t you think this is a bit too elaborate? Why go through all that when he could just kill you from a distance with an arrow? Or have some assassin stab you in a crowd?”
“He’s tried those things,” said Deathclaw.
“Yeah. And it’s almost worked before,” Lenny pointed out.
Edge’s mother bared her teeth. “I don’t like the sound of any of it.”
“It doesn’t matter what his motivations are,” Edge decided. “We’ll consider all of the options and prepare for them as best as we can, but what it comes down to is that we are going to track them down, retrieve the dagger, and escort Jhonate safely to the seer.”
“I agree,” said Deathclaw. He looked to Fist. “Did you discover where this Alsarobeth is?”
“This is the main reason I wanted to meet with you,” said Valtrek and he reached in his robes to withdraw a leather tube. “I discovered this in one of the ancient vaults. It tells of Alsarobeth and its location. Take care not to touch it.”
He placed it on the table and raised his hand over it. Gentle threads of air and earth magic pulled a yellowed scroll out of the tube and unrolled it, then held it open. The top half of the scroll was covered in tight script that was written in faded ink and hard to read. The bottom half was a map of the northern half of the Known Lands.
Valtrek waved his hand over the scroll and a duplicate of the map appeared in the air above the table. He pointed to the top, where an altar-like symbol was drawn. “Here lies Alsarobeth, in the mountain peaks at the very edge of the Known Lands.”
“Right next to the barrier?” said Lenny.
“It touches the barrier,” Valtrek replied.
Lenny whistled. “I been to the barrier a couple times. In my younger days. When I was full of piss and vinegar.”
“I don’t think that’s changed,” said Edge.
Lenny grinned. “Maybe not. At least the piss part. I think Bettie might’ve wrung all the vinegar out of me. Anyways, it ain’t a place you want to stay long. It makes yer limbs cold and yer teeth feel funny. I tried to walk into it just to see what would happen. Bounced right off of the dag-blamed thing.”
The barrier that surrounded the Known Lands was impenetrable. It was said that the barrier was there to protect the Known Lands. What it protected them from was widely speculated. The Known Lands were so vast and the barrier was so far away that Sir Edge had given it little thought.
“Do you think that this holy site has something to do with the barrier itself?” Edge asked.
Each of the different holy sites in the world had a different purpose, some of which were guessed at by scholars, but most of them were kept hidden. The Bowl of Souls was the lone site that had a stated purpose. The Jharro Grove was the only other holy site that Edge had visited and even the elves that guarded it weren’t sure of its purpose, only that its power held back a vast evil.
“I don’t know,” Valtrek said. “But it must be a very important one because it is protected by two different sets of guardians.”
Lenny whistled again. “Don’t want to mess with them things.”
“Do you know the nature of these guardians?” asked Fist.
While the Bowl of Souls had the entire Mage School guarding it and the Jharro Grove had the ancient elves and the Roo-Tan people, the other holy sites had guardians of a wilder and more unpredictable nature. Edge’s mentor Sir Hilt had once told him of a bizarre and endlessly regenerating series of guardians that he had faced near a holy site.
“The text speaks of one kind of merciless guardian that bites, stings, and kills with unending thirst,” said Valtrek. “And another type with fierce mental cries and unending hunger.”
“Like I said,” said Lenny. “That’s probly why Jhonate-er, Sar Zenara has to go up there alone.”
“It’s Sar Zahara,” said Fist.
“Right,” said Lenny.
Deathclaw had stepped closer to the image of the map and Edge could feel a reluctant fear coming through the bond. “We will have to cross the Whitebridge Desert.”
“Yes, the mountain where Alsarobeth lies is on the far side of the Whitebridge,” said Valtrek.
Deathclaw hissed. “It will be dangerous.”
“It’s a good thing we have you with us, then,” said Fist. The ogre could sense that same fear coming through the bond and was trying to encourage him. “You can show us your old home.”
“You will not like it,” said Deathclaw, though his interest had risen enough to overcome the fear. “But very well. We will test our tribe against the desert packs.”
“Or,” said Lenny, who didn’t like the thought of battling a pack of vicious desert raptoids. “We’ll do our best to avoid the blasted things.”
Deathclaw’s shoulders slumped slightly. “That would be wise.”
“Thank you for the information, Head Wizard Valtrek,” Edge said. He gazed at the map, absorbing every detail. “This is most helpful.”
“It is in the best interest of all of us that you retrieve that dagger,” said Valtrek, a bitter tinge to his voice. “Had I known it was there, I would have asked John to destroy it years ago.” He watched until Edge stepped back from the map. “Have you seen what you need to see?”
“I have it committed to memory,” Edge said.
One benefit of the bond was that he could delve into past memories and share them with his bonded. He had discovered that this process brought his original thoughts and sights back in clear focus. He never truly forgot anything anymore.
Valtrek gestured and the scroll rolled back up and slid into the leather tube. “Now, I understand that you have something for me? Something to do with this dark wizard known as the Maw?”
“Yes. He will need to be dealt with,” Edge said. He pulled out a pouch and emptied it on the table in front of the wizard. Ten tiny darts clattered onto the table. “We retrieved these from the bodies of the raiders we killed. These darts are how he controls his horde. When we first pulled them from the bodies there was a small amount of black spirit magic attached to them but it has since faded.”
Valtrek bent to peer at the darts with interest. “They are organic in nature. Not carved, but grown.” He glanced at Dianne “Have you seen anything like this before in your huntress days?”
Mistress Dianne picked a dart up to look at it closer. She
raised her other hand over it and sent energies into it. “No . . . there are tiny pathways in the bone specifically grown to house spirit magic energy.” She placed it back on the table and wiped her hand on her robe as if a residue had been left behind. “Whatever these spines are, they came from an animal. If this dark wizard needs a separate dart for each creature he commands, he’ll need a ready supply.”
“Good point,” said Valtrek. “I shall see if I can’t find an expert to help me identify the beast.”
“Ain’t Locksher around?” Lenny asked. “He’s usually all over this kinda stuff.”
“He is in the mountains not far from here doing some kind of research,” Valtrek said. “I have ways to contact him. Hopefully I can pique his interest enough to get him to return.”
“Good luck with that,” said Edge. “As for us, we need to get going.” He glanced at Dianne. “Well, Mother? Are you determined to come with us?”
She gave him a conflicted look and sighed. “When I heard what happened, I was determined to come along, but . . . You have a strong party already and I really am needed here. Especially with a dark wizard in the mountains. The Academy Council will need my help to deal with it.”
Both of Edge’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”
“Yes, dear,” she said. “Just promise me that you will bring my only daughter home.”
“You know I won’t come back without her,” he said.
Dianne stood and came around the table to embrace him. “Of course I know. But a mother is supposed to say these kinds of things. I love you.”
“I love you too, Mother,” he said and then he turned and left.
The party stopped by the small stable next to Edge’s house and geared up with everything Fist had prepared. The ogre tied it all onto a special saddle that Bettie had made for Rufus. It was oddly shaped to fit his body and was runed and designed to grow and contract when Rufus did, but it was a real pain to tie together, so Fist rarely bothered with it unless there was a long journey ahead.
Sir Edge Page 12
