A Clash of Magics

by Guy Antibes

  From then on, it was much the same. The Brachians were merciless when joined by Volst and Win. There were ten bodies on the main floor, and no one had yet searched the basement or the second floor.

  “Clear the basement,” Trevor asked Volst. “I’ll take Lissa with me upstairs.”

  The couple went up wide stairs. No one seemed to be on the second level, but one of the doors was locked. Trevor kicked the door, but it didn’t budge.

  “No magic here?” Trevor said.

  Lissa reached out and touched the doorframe with the tip of her finger, and then she touched the door. An explosion blew Lissa back against the wall. A female magician stood, sneering at them. Trevor knew he had suffered some minor injuries from standing too close to the blast, but Lissa lifted her hand and shot a needle-thin lightning bolt at the magician’s neck. The woman’s eyes grew large as she clutched her throat and fell backward on the door.

  “I can’t breathe,” Lissa whispered. “The pain!”

  Trevor knew what to do and grabbed her hand, teleporting them to the seer headquarters in Collet in Ginster. They landed on the floor of the ancient room, but Trevor could feel that his bones were now intact. Lissa’s eyes were closed, but she was breathing evenly. Trevor was weak, but he staggered out of the ancient room and found a cleric nearby.

  Within a few moments, Brother Yvan and Reena were assisting them while recovering from an explosion that might have been deadly for both Trevor and Lissa.

  “Stay down,” Brother Yvan said, gently pushing Trevor down to the floor next to Lissa. “The transfer might have healed your wounds, but they were serious enough to have taken away all your energy.”

  “Will Lissa survive?” Trevor said, turning his head toward the woman.

  “Yes, I will,” she said in a much stronger voice, “but I’m not worth much at the moment.”

  “I’ve got to get back!” Trevor said.

  “Not with Lissa,” Brother Yvan said. He stood and helped Trevor up. “Reena will help Lissa, and I will be your magical power.”

  “But are you strong enough?”

  “He is now,” Reena said with a grin. “I’ve been tutoring him.”

  Brother Yvan nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

  Trevor nodded and reached out. Brother Yvan grabbed Trevor’s wrist, and suddenly they stood on the main floor of the manor. Win had his back to them.

  “Is everything under control?” Trevor said. Win jumped and turned around.

  “It is,” Volst said, walking up to them. “I am guessing that Lissa stayed behind wherever you went. Seeing that Brother Yvan is with you, Ginster was your destination?”

  “I trust the medical help,” Trevor said. “Lissa was badly injured in the explosion and, despite her condition, took care of the magician in the room upstairs with a silver Viksaran lightning bolt.”

  “Good girl,” Volst said. “Let’s go upstairs, and you can tell me what to make of the woman’s rooms.”

  Trevor had to take the stairs more slowly than he would have liked, but he could feel his body gradually recovering. The middle-aged woman appeared to have died where she had fallen. The room was more library than living quarters. Trevor walked through the stacks.

  Something drew him to a set of bookshelves. “There must be something behind here,” Trevor said to Brother Yvan. “Can you find a few other soldiers to help me move this bookcase aside?”

  “I don’t feel anything,” Brother Yvan said, “but I do not doubt that you do.”

  Trevor tried but couldn’t do much with the bookshelf on his own.

  “It would be easier to remove the books,” Volst said as he appeared with three soldiers.

  Trevor shook his head. “It’s all that teleporting that has made me weak.”

  “Right,” Volst said with half a smile. He rummaged through the dead woman’s pockets and found a key ring with three keys. “Won’t these be helpful?”

  “They might,” Trevor said.

  The bookcase was easy to remove once the books were piled elsewhere. Inset in the wall was another door less than six-feet high. Trevor had to use all three keys, but the last one produced a satisfying grinding sound as it moved the lock’s movement.

  “I’ll open the door in case there is a ward.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” one of the soldiers said, reaching past Trevor to push the door open. A stream of arrows flew from the opening and bounced against Trevor’s chest, but some of the arrows struck down the soldier behind him.

  Volst looked at Trevor and Brother Yvan and nodded. “Necessary. I’ll stay out here while you rummage around inside.”

  Brother Yvan let Trevor enter, but he stayed in the middle of the doorway, magically lighting up the tiny room. Trevor had to push aside the plight of the unfortunate soldier as he examined the books lining the shelves. He wished Lissa was with him to evaluate the titles, but he hoped Brother Yvan might provide a little guidance.

  “There,” Brother Yvan said, pointing to a shelf of old books, portfolios, and scrolls. “That is the old language.”

  Trevor looked at the shelf and nodded as he continued to scan the room, looking for more manuscripts in the ancient tongue. He thought he found another, but it only had some script on the spine. The book was four hundred years old, and by then, the script was mostly lost to the world.

  “Can you see anything that might indicate an invisibility spell?” Trevor asked. “It might be better if we could come up with a counterspell instead of charms.”

  “Both would be better,” Brother Yvan said. He chanced another step into the middle of the room and examined more titles, but he found that most of the books were histories of the Eagle cabal and its financial records. “You might want to glance at the latest of these for evidence.”

  Trevor took the last five years and had a soldier locate a few boxes to remove the volumes from the room. He wished he could spend the next few days going through the information, but the war wouldn’t wait. The rest of the soldiers looked for enemy orders or other communications throughout the manor. Still, there wasn’t anything other than a message saying that Jarkanese forces were roaming in the hills and to be on guard. Trevor considered it good news that no one had identified them as Brachian. The enclave information was incomplete, at the least.

  ~

  Trevor and his small group finally caught up to the rest of the troops, including Glynna Bostik and Gorian Custik.

  “Did you catch any of the magicians?” Trevor asked Potur Lott.

  “Eight on horseback. They all fought to the death,” Lott said. “We lost two Brachians, but your two elderly people saved three others.”

  “I wouldn’t call them elderly,” Brother Yvan said. “A little gray hair can conceal a younger person.”

  Custik walked up. “Did I hear someone say elderly? Were they referring to me?” The former owner of the Blue Tower looked around. “Eldest, I agree with that,” Custik admitted.

  “Did you search the bodies?” Trevor asked.

  Gorian nodded. “Nothing of note except for the charms in this bag. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Certainly, nothing that would allow a magician to come in and out of invisibility.”

  Trevor would have liked Lissa to examine the charms, but that would have to wait until the column settled down for the night, and he could take Brother Yvan back to Collet.

  The scouts were back out seeking the enemy. Trevor made sure everyone had prepared for unexpected attacks, and that included magical wards. He could feel the tension level increase after the mansion. Although their attack was easily victorious, everyone knew they might have been lucky, catching the manor of magicians unawares.

  Night fell. Tomorrow they would head west and then go south before they turned east to position themselves for the final push into Khartoo. Trevor gathered his friends into his tent. The Maskumite magicians’ charms lay on a simple plank camp table.

  “I want you to help me with these. I don’t have any ability to eval
uate them, but maybe it will be enough to find out what is useful and what isn’t.” Trevor said. “Volst, Win, and I will go through the Eagle cabal ledgers. We don’t have much time, but if we can find anything to give us an edge once we are in the enclave, I’ll consider using it.”

  Trevor might not have been able to make much sense of a book of spells, but he certainly knew how to read reports. What he thought was boring and a waste of time suddenly became the most fascinating thing in his world. Volst had just spent months helping his father run Jilgrath, and Win could verify the sums that the other two pointed out.

  “Look here,” Volst said. “No wonder these were stored away from the enclave. That must have been an Eagle cabal manor. According to these, the Eagles have been bilking the enclave for hundreds of thousands. It even shows where they have been hiding the money.”

  “Make a list of the subtotals, Win,” Trevor said. He looked in more records and found the same methods used to divert money from the enclave into the Eagle cabal’s coffers. “I only found out one cabal name, and it wasn’t an animal but someone’s first or last name.”

  “We will have an abundance of cabal members to interrogate, perhaps as early as tomorrow,” Volst said.

  “I’ll need to sneak into the enclave and leave one of the ledgers in another cabal. If we hand one to a magician, who knows what they will do with something given to them by an enemy,” Trevor said.

  “Didn’t you already try that once?” Volst asked.

  “I tend to learn from my mistakes.”

  “Tending to learn isn’t very promising. I’m sure you are more diligent than that.” Volst yawned. “I think we’ve learned enough. Win needs to do a bit more summarization, but I’m ready to retreat into my tent.”

  There wasn’t much point in going any farther for the night. Trevor found Brother Yvan. “I was thinking of retrieving Lissa.”

  The cleric frowned. “I suggest you let me take her place until the enclave is destroyed,” he said. “If you need your sword or cuirass charged with magic, Gorian can do the job better than she.”

  “And what about you?” Trevor asked. “Isn’t Lissa a stronger magician than you?”

  Brother Yvan didn’t look offended. “I have other talents,” the cleric said.

  Trevor shrugged, knowing that Brother Yvan had a lot more experience than Lissa, and in a battle, experience could turn the fortunes of a side at least as much as a single act of courage. “If we need Lissa, we can get her here quickly enough, I suppose.”

  Brother Yvan smiled knowingly. “I suppose you can. Make sure you have enough power in your armor and sword, so you don’t need me if we are separated.” He went to his tiny shelter.

  The camp was almost silent as Trevor called out to Custik in the tent he shared with Glynna.

  “Come in, come in,” Glynna said. “I wouldn’t mind talking to Dryden’s messenger.”

  “And I’d be happy to listen in,” Custik said.

  Custik and Glynna sat together on one of the two cots and pointed to the other. Trevor took the offered seat. “I need to have my sword and cuirass checked for magic,” Trevor said. He took off his tunic and then the armor and handed it over to Custik, who laid on the cot next to Glynna.

  “Why don’t you add a bit of your power,” Custik said to Glynna.

  “I’ve never touched this directly before,” Glynna said. She closed her eyes and put her hand on the stiff leather. She almost swooned, but Custik was right there to prop her up.

  The magician let her be for a few moments. Trevor could tell she was getting a vision from the armor. She had the unique talent of glimpsing into the past of objects that she held. It was unusual enough to be a gold-level talent, but Glynna always claimed she was a silver magician.

  Her eyes opened, accompanied by a shiver. “You took the sword and armor into the enclave so I can see what happened while you were there. Gareeze Plissaki is alive. You stabbed him, but the wound wasn’t fatal. He isn’t a member of the Eagle cabal. Will that disappoint you?”

  Trevor shook his head. “No. What cabal is he?”

  “Kibble’s White Sharks. It is a spying cabal, but I’m not sure I can get anything else. I had a flood of information, and much of it doesn’t make much sense without context that I couldn’t figure out. That is all. You know how my talent works. A glimpse here, a feeling there. I’m pretty sure I’m not misreading anything.”

  “Did you learn anything about the cuirass?”

  Glynna frowned. “My magic seems to be a surface thing,” she said, “like sunlight on your skin. If you go much deeper, it is old magic, and I’m as immune to that as you are to mine.”

  “Then let’s paint some on so Trevor can get to safety if he’s smart enough.”

  Glynna flashed a smile at Trevor. “You’ll get a pleasant mix of magic between Gorian and I,” she said.

  Lines in the carving glowed as the pair infused the surface with power.

  “That’s enough,” Custik said. “Now the sword.”

  In a few moments, the magician declared Trevor had enough power for a trip anywhere in the world where he had been before.

  “I won’t know you put in enough power until I try, but if I fail, it might be my last attempt,” Trevor said.

  Glynna laughed. “No need to be so dramatic, Duke Trevor,” she said playfully. “What is in store tomorrow?”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ~

  T revor looked across the chasm at the ramparts of the enclave. The sun bathed the walls in the orange light of the day’s end. He had imagined a straight wall with towers behind, but everything was a jumble. Walls of different heights and widths made out of varying stone matched the crazy skyline of the enclave. There were wide towers with flat tops, skinny towers with conical tops, and more that didn’t lend well to the description. If the cabals were so independent, he couldn’t think of a more apt representation of chaos loosely bound.

  He guessed cabals had been free to build their own headquarters. From what he had seen in the few hours he had spent inside, most of that cacophony of styles were interconnected by stairs, pavilions, and corridors mostly protected from the elements.

  “That is a heavily warded field,” Custik said. “Almost as sophisticated as what I used to protect the Blue Tower. That might not seem to be a barrier to you, but it will be to the rest of us, or will until I think of a way in.”

  “I’ll leave you to it. I’m going to get the forces positioned around the west side. The magicians at the manor had to have had a way out,” Trevor said. He was tempted to cross the field at night, but then what would he do? Trevor was so lost that last time he visited the enclave. He only knew what direction he had faced due to the window overlooking the ocean.

  It was too soon, anyway. The other armies were a few days away from reaching their assigned destinations. Win volunteered to climb a tree, but his ascent only proved that they didn’t have a view of the bay. Then Trevor knew what to do. He would teleport onto the long wharf that ran along the bay shore with Brother Yvan and do a little reconnoitering inside Khartoo.

  “You don’t mind?” Trevor asked Brother Yvan after he revealed his plan to the cleric. Potur Lott and the Brachian commander had joined them by a fire. Brother Yvan wasn’t the happiest to have been aroused from sleep.

  “I’m here to do more than follow you, although I think Lissa might be better at such a thing. You can hardly tell a constable that you are out for a stroll with your sweetheart.”

  “My uncle, then,” Trevor said.

  “Am I that old?” Brother Yvan asked.

  “Barely,” Trevor said. “I remember a suitable spot near Potur Lott’s sweet shop owner.”

  Potur frowned. “I wouldn’t trust him. Someone told the enclave that you were going to try to scout the place.”

  “Can’t you buy a map of the enclave?” Brother Yvan asked.

  Potur laughed. “I doubt you’d get one that was very accurate or very detailed if it was. Everyone e
lse in Khartoo expects the enclave to blow up with one big, massive magical war between the cabals.”

  “It may come to that if we are lucky,” Trevor said, thinking of Custik installing wards of his own in the buildings. That strategy was too sloppy, at least for now.

  Trevor put on his diving outfit, and Brother Yvan borrowed a black cloak from the Brachian commander. He nodded to Potur and the Brachian before grabbing Brother Yvan’s wrist and teleporting to the Khartoo wharf.

  “Hey!” a man said as he caught himself from falling. Trevor and Brother Yvan had appeared amidst a loosely organized group of young men dressed much the same as Trevor.

  “I’m so sorry,” Brother Yvan said drunkenly.

  Trevor picked up the theme, and they turned to walk the other way, pretending to hold each other up. Trevor felt someone shove him in the back. “I’ll make sure you are sorry,” one of the young men said. Trevor turned around just in time to duck from an attempted punch. Trevor stomped on the man’s foot and heard a satisfying yelp.

  “I’m more than sorry for stepping on your foot. We will be happy to leave you to your stroll.”

  The others urged their companion along in the deepening twilight. Trevor was going to follow, but Brother Yvan held onto Trevor to keep him still.

  Once the group walked out of earshot, Brother Yvan barked out a soft laugh. “I always wondered what happened when you teleported where there were other people.”

  Trevor nodded in the light of a magic lamp. “I suspected there are magical mechanisms that keep you from sharing the same space as a person or a table or a chair.”

  “Dryden certainly knows more about it than we do,” Brother Yvan said.

  “I’m sure he does,” Trevor said. They turned back to follow the group of rowdy young men as they walked toward the enclave and the large cluster of lights that illuminated a night market. “It’s easier to go by boat, but we won’t be going inside tonight.”