by Guy Antibes
“How is the queen?” Coosin asked.
“Ready to abdicate in favor of her daughter. She is very distraught and not thinking very clearly after a year and a half under the spell of that woman,” Crater said. “Who rules is not settled yet, but I have been voted in as the interim regent by the queen’s council and have already started unraveling the mess the queen made.”
They followed Crater to his prime minister’s office. “Sit. I’ll have a healer and refreshments brought. You all look like you’ve rolled down a mountain. Except for the lady, whom I haven’t had the privilege of meeting.”
“Lissa Caspur, daughter of the Seer of Viksar and a traveling companion of mine,” Trevor said. He wanted to say they had a chaste relationship but kept his tongue in his head.
“I returned with Seer Escarik to conclude our business,” Trevor said.
The prime minister opened a drawer and pulled out a small bag. He opened it and dropped a charm on the desk. “These are familiar? They arrived in Wistfall a few days ago. They came to you, but the bishop read the message that came with them and thought I needed them immediately.”
“I helped develop them a month ago,” Lissa said. “If the queen wore one, all this would have never happened.”
“A month ago, the queen would have refused to wear it. I suppose that is why the supply went to you, Escarik,” the prime minister said. “I’ll make sure I write to the heads of state to the north and east of Sirland with an endorsement of them.” He looked at Lissa. “You are sure they work?”
Lissa nodded. “We’ve tested them.”
“And a perilous test that must have been.”
“It was,” Trevor said. “King Worto participated in the first field test. It was under a little bit of duress, but that was what changed his mind. He has troops headed for the Maskumite border with Jarkan.”
“Reinforcements?” the prime minister said. “If we don’t have to worry about the Maskumites fighting our neighbors to the northwest, then we can do a better job defending Sirland.”
“The mountains on one side, a large force to the north, the sea to the south, and you to the east. If you can increase your presence on the border, we can bottle Maskum up and put a stop to their aggression,” Trevor said.
“Even as regent, I can’t decide to put Sirland on a war footing, but I will discuss it with the council.” Crater turned to the seer. “You will help me in all this?”
“As you can see, I’m not much of a fighter,” Coosin said, “but I am well-qualified to give you input in all political matters that might affect the followers of Dryden.”
“Who is most of us in Sirland. Consider yourself hired to help me.”
“I don’t get ‘hired,’” the seer said with a smile. “Appointed is the proper term.”
After Lissa helped interrogate the captured magicians, it was time to leave Wistfall. The two surviving magicians had done little to create a network of spies in the country, relying on their female counterpart’s domination of the queen. The three were from a different cabal than Gareeze Plissaki and took their directions from the female magician.
Trevor was fascinated that they weren’t in Gareeze Plissaki’s cabal. Various cabals had carved up the world’s leaders, and the Maskumites threatened the world with their duplicity. In Trevor’s estimation, the enclave at Khartoo was infested with vermin that needed to be eradicated.
The pair of them said goodbye to Coosin and Prime Minister Crater before they left Wistfall. Each of them achieved membership in the highest valor society of Sirland, represented by a handsome golden brooch.
“I don’t need this,” Trevor said when they appeared at the front gate to Henkari’s garrison, still clutching his reward.
Lissa leaned against him. “It will look stunning along with all your other badges of valor when you are holding court in Listenwell.”
Trevor laughed. “That is the farthest thing from my mind.”
She clutched his arm. “Not from my mind. I look forward to when we can spend a calmer time together.”
“I agree,” he put his hand over hers, “but I’m afraid we have a way to go.”
The others wouldn’t be returning to Henkari’s headquarters for days yet. “Shall we make a detour to Collet?” Trevor asked Lissa.
“Why not?” she said.
~
They appeared in the ancient room that Trevor used as his landing spot and climbed the stairs, seeking out the head seer.
“Trevor!” Brother Yvan called out as Trevor and Lissa walked across the large entrance hall to seer headquarters.
Trevor grinned, but he wiped it off when he saw Brother Yvan’s face. “Your ring isn’t working,” the cleric said.
Trevor put his hand in a pocket. “I left it at the border,” he admitted, feeling guilty.
“At least you are here. Trouble in Viksar. Assassins murdered Azar Zutterak.”
“Win?” Trevor asked.
“He is injured, as is his wife, but alive.” Brother Yvan looked at Lissa. “Your father was attacked as well, but he has been abducted. He was able to give us the message, but he expected to be moved. Your activities are stirring up the Maskumites.”
She looked up at Trevor. “We need to go to Jiksara!”
“We will, but can we have a quick meeting with Lister Vale first?”
“Go to his office. I’ll make sure he is there along with Reena.”
When all were assembled in the head seer’s office, Trevor told them of his adventures in Khartoo, Wistfall, and on the border. He went so fast, he didn’t know if he had left anything important out, but Lissa didn’t correct him. Trevor could see the worry etched on her face. He didn’t even know if she was listening.
“We know enough. King Worto has sent a large army south to Jarkan, Mino reports.”
Trevor nodded. “I’ll visit Okora once we have finished in Viksar,” he said. “Any troops will be welcome. It appears that we will have to dismantle Khartoo’s enclave.”
“That is your job, not mine,” the head seer said. “I will communicate with Coosin Escarik. His patience has finally paid off.”
“I know,” Trevor nodded and grabbed Lissa’s hand. “We have to get going.”
They left directly from the head seer’s office and appeared in Seer Caspur’s office in Viksar.
Lissa shook her head. “Sometimes teleporting is too quick. Do you know where my father is?”
“Let’s get my ring,” Trevor said.
They quickly teleported to the border where Trevor had left the ring and returned to the Viksaran seer’s study. Trevor closed his eyes, holding Lissa’s hand. “I’ve got my ring. Now, where is Lissa’s father?”
Trevor had to wait almost an hour, but it was worth it. Brother Yvan had retrieved a map of Jiksara, and Lister Vale, who was the best at locating seers, found the precise spot where Seer Caspur was taken. Trevor hadn’t been anywhere near the place, so they couldn’t teleport any closer than where they presently were. Trevor rolled up the map, and they exited the church and hailed a hired carriage.
It took them past the building where the captors held Caspur. They descended from the carriage at the end of the block and walked past a three-story tenement. The head seer couldn’t give them a better bearing. From here on, the pair had to rely on their abilities.
Trevor took Lissa down an alley to the back of the structure. From the rear, it was plain that three of the tenements were connected. That made the task of locating Lissa’s father worse, but they had to do something. The sun was setting, and Trevor took Lissa back to the Jarkanese border.
He found Volst and Akku in the common room of the inn.
“Trouble in Viksar,” Trevor said and quickly described the situation.
“What about Jilgrath?”
Trevor shook his head. “No one told me anything. I can’t take you with me since Lissa powers my teleportation ability. Let General Henkari know that I am still working on getting more troops. We need to get the Maskum
ites out of the disruption business.”
“I agree!” Akku said, lifting a mug of Jarkanese spiced beer. He was further gone than Volst, that was for sure.
Trevor left them and got into his diving outfit. Lissa had dressed in mostly black. They left the border from the corridor between their rooms and ended up at the back of the tenements as darkness fell. Looking up at the wall, five windows were lit. Trevor and Lissa memorized their location and entered through an unlocked window in one of the tenements.
They walked through a kitchen in the light of Lissa’s magical light and found the back stairs leading up. Only one of the rooms on the floor had a light. Trevor inched his way through the dark hallway and stopped where a feeble light came through the bottom of the door.
He tried the latch. It was unlocked! Trevor quietly opened the door to an empty flat with a single magic light attached to a candlestick illuminating the room. Lissa patted her chest.
“I’m so nervous. What if we open the door to find Father hasn’t survived?”
“We won’t let that happen,” Trevor said, squeezing her shoulder and then giving her a quick hug. They had another light to investigate. As they approached the flat, Trevor heard voices. “You can hear better than I can.”
Lissa put her ear to the door, nodded, and made a few other faces while she listened. “Not them.”
They made their way through the building until they reached one of the back flats on the top floor. There were voices, but Trevor couldn’t hear what they said. Lissa gave it a try, and a look of alarm came over her face. She pointed at the door frantically and made a motion like Trevor breaking through the door, so he did.
Three men stood over a bound and gagged Seer Caspur. One had a knife, tipped with the seer’s blood from a cut on his cheek. The other two didn’t carry weapons. Trevor didn’t wait for a word of warning to stride through the door, and Lissa and Trevor fought with the three magicians.
A sliver of flame shot toward the defenseless Caspur, but Trevor put his hand out and let the fire splash harmlessly on his hand while he slashed away at the men in the small confines of the room.
Lissa struggled with one of the magicians, and they both fell through the window to the ground below. Caspur moaned, but Trevor couldn’t even go to the window with two more magicians attacking. He had to suppress the anguish he felt, not knowing, but expecting Lissa’s fall resulted in critical injury or death.
Trevor was frantically fighting the magicians, but his efforts were hampered by their attacks on Seer Caspur. He finally sliced open the leg of one of the magicians, and brought him down on the floor. Trevor was going to finish him off when the magician with the knife stabbed Trevor in his sword arm.
Trevor grimaced as he fought to hold onto his sword. He twisted his body and let his weight move the sword rather than the muscles of his arm as the blade went deep into the magician’s side. That left one more, and Trevor was losing strength fast. He was barely able to lift his sword from the dead assailant when a wave of power shifted him on the floor. The other magician slammed into the wall of the building. There was no doubt all the tenants would have felt the impact.
“Dryden’s power?” Trevor said, leaning on his sword to remain standing.
The seer nodded. “I might have to perform some penance, but…” He took a deep breath. “See to Lissa.”
Trevor remembered she had fallen through the window. He ran down the stairs, dripping blood along the way until he reached the two bodies lying in the garden. His breath exploded with relief when he found Lissa had landed on the magician, so she was still alive. Trevor didn’t wait a moment to take her hand and use her magic to teleport to the main hall at the seer headquarters.
His wound was sore, but it had sealed with the teleportation, and Lissa blinked her eyes, almost in shock. “I am alive,” she whispered.
Trevor helped her to a sitting position as people clustered around them. “We will be back tomorrow,” Trevor said as they teleported back into the room where Seer Caspur still was.
“Lissa?” Caspur said, looking at her sitting up, leaning against Trevor.
“Father!” She crawled to her father, and both of them wept together, holding each other tightly.
Trevor felt embarrassed by the tender moment and checked the two dead magicians. He looked out the window at the third magician who remained motionless.
The two Caspurs finally unlocked from their embrace.
“These were also the men who killed Azar Zutterak?” Trevor asked Caspur.
The seer nodded. “They were boasting how they had learned the invisibility spell not long ago and walked into the prime’s office undetected and killed him. The power of invisibility wore off when they entered the church to assassinate me. They panicked and took me here. All three were idiots,” Caspur said. “I was able to convince them I knew divine secrets, so they decided to torture me to get them. That was when you came. How did you do it?”
Trevor let Lissa tell the story.
“Let’s get the city to handle this,” Seer Caspur said as Trevor helped him up and then Lissa.
Trevor checked the magician outside. It appeared that he had died breaking Lissa’s fall.
“How rude of me to drop in,” Lissa said with a smile as they helped Caspur to the next intersection, where there was a little traffic, to catch a hired carriage.
Chapter Twenty-One
~
T revor sat in Win’s house close to the premier’s palace. He looked out the window at the horses and carriages. Lissa was upstairs, helping console the mother and daughter who had just lost Azar Zutterak. Trevor still wore the diving outfit from Khartoo.
“You look rather sinister,” Win said with half a smile.
“It helps intimidate the bad guys,” he said.
“And they were very, very bad,” Win said. “Maskumite magicians?”
Trevor nodded. “They weren’t Maskum’s brightest. When they had decided to torture the seer for nonexistent seer secrets, they told him more about the plans of the cabals than Caspur told them.” Trevor explained the cabal system of the Khartoo magician’s enclave. Caspur had told him that the three magicians were in a cabal who had just been taught the invisibility spell and recently assigned to assassinate the premier and the seer of Viksar.
“Azar wore one of those charms,” Win said, “but it didn’t do him any good. He hadn’t gotten round to handing them out to those surrounding him, so the magicians sneaked outside into his office using the spell, killed my father-in-law, and then became invisible to escape. They were smart enough to get out of the church with the seer.”
Trevor pursed his lips. “The charms won’t work if they aren’t used intelligently. I’m sure Azar never thought of himself as a target, so he paid the price for his laxity.”
“Right,” Win said. “I agree with you, unfortunately. I want to annihilate them rather than wear charms waiting for them to attack.”
“Or influence,” Trevor said. “The smart ones influence the monarchs. They have done the most lasting damage. Gareeze Plissaki destroyed Desolation Boxster’s life through his influence on King Worto. I wonder how much Plissaki made parts of Brachian life the mess it is now.”
Win shrugged. “I don’t care about that. I’m willing to wield a sword, though. I talked to Siranda, and she agrees. She wants Maskum to pay.”
The next day, the council met along with representatives of the Order of Gold to choose an interim successor to Azar Zutterak. Viksar declared war on Maskum and would be sending troops through Kyria to Sirland. Ten thousand soldiers were available, and the Order of Gold contributed twenty gold-level magicians to accompany them.
Trevor and Lissa teleported to Collet to coordinate communications with the seer in Kyria. Then they teleported to Wistfall and met with Coosin Escarik and Prime Minister Crater.
“I’m impressed,” Crater said. “I wouldn’t have thought to ask Viksar to be an ally, but then you did the same with King Worto and Brachia.”
“It isn’t hard when the Maskumites do obvious damage to a country,” Trevor said.
Crater said. “What is your plan?”
“Pinch the enemy and force them to surrender or gather in Khartoo for a final battle. Either way, the enclave will be obliterated along with the magicians inside.”
Crater pursed his lips. “That is a harsh measure.”
“We can’t allow the enclave cabals to keep sending invisible magicians to assassinate heads of state and abduct seers. My father knew they wanted to kill him,” Lissa said.
“I will remind you, Crater, that you are the head of state, now that you are regent,” Coosin said. “Maskumite magicians might be returning to Wistfall.
Trevor nodded. “Maskum has performed acts of war against the world, and it is now time to bring the war to them.”
Crater pursed his lips and nodded. “I am afraid that Queen Marta will never be the same after what that Maskumite magician did to her. Where are you off to next?”
“Kyria. Lister Vale has been in contact with their seer. Lissa and I will have to travel overland to their capital. In the meantime, the Viksarans are mustering and moving south, and the Brachians are approaching Argara.”
~
Trevor wished he rode Snowflake, but he had to sacrifice the comfort of riding his own steed for the ability to flit from capital to capital, putting together an international alliance. Lissa didn’t complain as they rode through the hilly country east of the mountain range that separated Kyria from Jarkan.
The ride was punishing since Trevor had to work with tight or uncertain time constraints. The armies were moving, and it was doubtful that Maskum wouldn’t respond. They were two days out of the Kyrian capital when a pack of magicians and swordsmen attacked them.
Ten people stretched across the road, and as Trevor looked back, more attackers filled the road behind them.
“I don’t know who has betrayed us, but we can’t fight all these people. Pull the bags off your horse as soon as we stop. I’m teleporting us out of here,” Trevor said.
Trevor looked past the brigands and took Lissa’s hand just as the attack began to take place. They appeared a few hundred paces farther up the road, and Trevor teleported in line of sight until they reached a town.
