A War Dawning Ch. 07

"Two of the mages are farther off, maybe a rear guard, maybe just bored." Bryana said.

He quizzed, "Anyone you know?" Mages tapped their energies in somewhat unique ways, so the silhouettes could be recognized.

"I don't think so. I hope not." There was no real regret. She knew what had to be done, and their losses were simply the consequence of the choices they made and their fate would perhaps save many other lives. "Elan and I will circle around and engage the two, which will cover your approach from the front."

"If you need help?"

"We won't. There's only one of us with a real hope of doing what needs to be done when you get in there anyway, so go. We'll be fine. I did what needed to be done long before you." There was no bite to her first words, but the last words were bitter. "No mercy."

"The last thing on my mind today, Bryana."

"Good. Good luck, my love. See you soon."

They already started off when he called to Elan. "Happy hunting."

"It's what I do, Deres. Be careful yourself."

"I always make every effort."

***

Bryana made her way through the trees in a wide arc, keeping her enemies from detecting her while Elan had been speaking quietly to her, "You choose your point, I will be there." Then she weaved a path through the trees and then she was gone much like the beautiful wraith she appeared to be. Bryana didn't wonder about her. She knew her job and how to do it best, so Bryana focused on the best use of her own gifts. She could use their perception against them to choose where she would meet them.

She slowed, choosing every step carefully, in part because she had to concentrate. It was far easier to use magic as a club than a fine blade. She had to follow the tendrils of energy that bound everything just so, so that she could tweak the mages to want to go where she wanted them to go. Those without the gifts were harder to detect, which put her on edge.

Putting dimples in that energy like breadcrumbs, or a sound you barely hear, so you strain to find it eventually had the effect she wanted. The mages moved farther from Deres and where he needed to be and towards an area where the growth thickened. She hoped it would provide her with cover enough and was certain that Elan would find comfort there. Heavy wind in the past days had blown a lot of dead wood onto the ground that looked like talons and fingers reaching up from the ground. Good place for graves one way or another.

She saw the magic of them before she saw them; one older and more experienced, one younger, probably a mage and apprentice. She had hoped that they might separate, which would make fighting them easier, but that didn't happen. She could sense the untaught now, so she knew they were close. Deres needed a distraction, so she needed a fight and a loud one. To that end, she waited for them surrounded by the trees as though they were her sentries.

Coming out from the cloak of the snow were two men, both roughly the same height with snow adding white to his dark brown hair. His face still looked young, but, closer now, she sensed that he was using a small bit of his power to slow his aging. She couldn't fault him a touch of vanity or fear of mortality at least.

The other was young without magic, not much older than Bryana herself had been when she opened her first tome under cover of night. No mercy, she reminded herself bitterly. "You are Byyana Lia, head of the Erette guild," the master mage said. What brings you here?" The tone was that of a question, but it was a demanding one.

She pointed casually, "I'm curious about your discovery over that way."

"It's an ancient artifact and no threat to you."

"Not directly, I suppose that's true...until your employer decides he has an issue with me...or the rest of the world, including you."

"That remains to be seen and, whatever happens, we will deal with it."

"Do you know what it does?"

"It gives power to the one who rightly found it. What he does with it is not my concern, or yours. A contract is a contract." He harnessed his power. "Speaking of, are you out all this way on behalf of the queen?"

"Me?" She sounded girlish and innocent. "The queen would never hire the likes of me. Others near the queen have fewer issues. You know how it is."

"I do." He took a step forward. "How is she by the way?"

"Still well so far as I know."

"You seek a cure for the poison then?"

She looked on as two soldiers came to eastern and western points of where she stood. "I do."

"Leave and I will be certain that you're provided with it. It's my solemn vow, mage to mage, you will have it. Her death's only purpose was to destabilize Erette and buy time, should it be needed. It isn't needed, so if the poison is what you were hired to find, I'll provide you with it. The queen lives...or she at least doesn't die of poisoning, your contract is fulfilled, you can be gone from here, and we can avoid a confrontation that will end badly for you."

Bryana measured his words and his body. He was ready to fight, but didn't want to. His words suggested that he didn't have the cure himself, but maybe he just had another piece, or that there was some other impediment so that ending them would make curing her impossible. The pondering was short-lived, however. What was at stake was beyond Evaline. What's more, her queen would be the first to make that sacrifice for her people. My queen. Never had a home long enough to feel so tied to anywhere, but, now? "This is beyond that now. Give man power enough to destroy himself and he will. That we stand here now near a ruin of a world long dead is proof of that."

"Help me and help yourselves, unless you just want to follow obediently behind while he puts the world under his boot."

"He is less of a threat than he thinks he is," the younger mage said before a biting glance from his elder silenced him.

It didn't matter to Bryana. "Dealing with it now is better than trying to deal with it tomorrow when everything could be different."

"Perhaps," the elder agreed, "but a contract is a contract. At least it is to me."

"I'm sorry to hear that." She truly was, even though she smiled. "I warn you though, I am more powerful than any mage in the world." She met each pair of eyes. "I need but point to the person that needs to die and they will simply die."

"We know how mage fire works, Lia," the younger said with a sneer as wisps of orange coalescing from the air around him and wrapped around his hands, ready to be unleashed.

"Magic takes many forms, boy." She raised her hands, showing that she had no power of her own at the ready. "See? No power. No magic as you know it. I point. Things die." She liked how their eyes darted to one another in wonder and fear. As much as that lust was tempered now, she liked the power she had.

"Is what she's saying true?" The soldier to Bryana's right shifted his weight nervously, his sword in a white-knuckle grip in his hand looking to the elder mage.

"It's not. I would see. She's doing nothing."

It amused her. "Hah. I thought as you did many moons ago. I thought I knew so much about magic. I thought I understood all that could truly be understood about magic. I was so wrong. My most recent Master showed me more in a month than I think I learned in my entire life. But now, I point and things die."

"Who shall it be?" She extended her arm, open palm as she moved it slowly, right to left, gauging their eyes and the threat that they might pose. Neral had taught her that. You could see who would panic. You could see who would fight. You could see who would run. You would see who would come at her first. When her arm drew a line to the soldier on her left before she pointed her finger to him. "This one should die."

The soldier jumped, fearing that he was simply going to vanish. Eyes went to him for the mere heartbeats it took to see that he was in fact still alive, and when they turned back to Bryana they saw that in those heartbeats it was she that had vanished as though she had never been. The elder mage raged at himself for his moment of carelessness. "Dammit..." He had no more than sent out his own magic in search of her than the air whistled and the soldier who had been on Bryana's left and frantically looking for some sign of her stared ahead at nothing with the bloodied tip of an arrow in the center of his forehead. He didn't even have time to register shock.

He fell backward with the dull thud of timber as the younger mage sent his magic forth to where Bryana knew nothing would be. It crackled through the air, a bold thread of orange cutting smaller limbs to the ground and setting greater ones afire, sending birds to the air squealing in dismay. The elder mage sensed the woman an instant before he knew exactly where she was. He wheeled around, his power at the ready. "Behind!"

The word reached the other swordsman's ears just as he realized where she was, as she was using her understanding of the healing magics to tear her hand through his body, peeling skin, muscle, and bone free as her other arm was around his neck.

"You know where you need to go!," she called to the heavens. "Go!" His body continued to convulse as mage fire from the younger consumed what was left to get to Bryana and, as a secondary effect, no doubt, to do him a favor by completing his trip to the void and ending his pain. His body now ash, the remnants carried by the wind just before the fire struck her defenses. The fire licked at the barrier around her, close to her body. She could feel its heat and its hunger.

The others didn't matter. They were gone now and he was confident those that remained could handle whatever came. If they needed help, he would be there shortly...as soon as the bitch was dead. The elder mage joined with his apprentice, letting his rage fuel his magic, his eyes alive with it.

Those eyes looked on with satisfaction as their combined powers consumed her.

***

Deres waited elsewhere.

He was on one knee, head down, floating in that elsewhere, just beyond the world in a variant of the spell that had allowed the trio to travel as they pleased. He could see it around him. He could see every tree, animal, every bit of grass, and even the snow had the appearance of rolling steam on the ground as everything took on an aura of blue or gray. They could walk past him or through him and not know he was there. He stayed beyond what he believed was the mage's range and waited for the disturbance in the distance that would tell him that magic was in play.

In this place he also saw enough to know that the fourth mage was below him...far below him down in the place where this entrance led. If he moved quickly enough he could eliminate resistance and be on his way. He might have simply been able to travel where he needed to be, but he didn't want anyone behind him if he could help it, so he waited for the sign.

And, when he felt the flutter in the distance that was the way Bryana accessed magic, he moved.

Moving through the ether, time and distance measured themselves differently and Deres bounded across the earth, chewing through distance as though it were nearly meaningless. He saw the outlines of blue and white that marked the forms of the humans and animals near the entrance. The mage flared more brightly than they did and Deres closed on him first. The man sensed something near him at the last possible moment, but was far too late to do anything more than express shock.

The first the mortals saw of Deres was the scenery around him rippling in the way a rock tossed in a pond ripples a reflection. Suddenly he was just there and they stood dumbstruck as they watched a long, thin blade bury itself in the mage's soft neck twice without a hint of resistance and pull free in a heartbeat with a soft, squishy pop each time. Deres stayed with him just long enough to know that it was too late for him and turned his power on the guards.

Just as he did, he felt a well-thrown blade drive through his cloaks and into his side. He grimaced, concentration momentarily broken at the biting pain and, just as he was beginning to regroup they were on him. Deres, powerfully built as he was, resisted and hissed through the pain as the soldier who threw the blade tried to use it as a lever to drive him down.

The rush of pain fed rage, and that rage fueled his power. With a howl from him, a force they could not see or fight tossed them aside, sending one into a tree before they met the ground and another of them tumbling many feet away, sending the horses away nervously. Before they could rise, Deres lifted both several feet into the air and used that force to rend them asunder. Their cries of pain died in their throats and they fell to the ground as Deres fell to his knees.

He looked down at his left side, cloaks now sticky from the blood and was somewhat awed by the sight of the blade sticking from them. Neral would scold me for sloppy. It was at that moment, when his body was beginning to calm from the effort that he felt a tingling bitterness from the wound worm its way inside him.

The poison.

He focused his magic to look down inside the wound itself. Seeing the glowing yellow of the poison ooze through him and the telltales of damaged flesh along with the solid of the blade, he determined that he could remove it without causing much more damage. Gripping the blade firmly, he pulled it free in a straight line with a whimper that ended in a snarl. The blade fell in the snow as Deres opened his cloaks and ripped the tear in his shirt wider to expose the flesh.

Harnessing his power, he willed it to rebuild the damaged flesh into what it existed to be, starting at the deepest portion of the wound and working upward. The pain dulled as he healed himself which sped the process by allowing him to focus. One problem solved, he needed to see to the other. If he concentrated he could feel the poison attacking him.

Finding a proper talisman in the gold band given to him by Neral the night they had slipped away in the dark to bond before a priestess, he began to weave again the spell that he and Cass had built to keep the poison from further invading the queen's body. Each utterance and willful change in the vibration of life around him coalesced within the ring forming a powerful, lasting magic. Once created, it spread from the ring in a manner not unlike the poison itself.

This time though, things were different. The poison was different. It was more aggressive and powerful than the first incarnation. The alchemy of it had been changed. Where the queen was protected indefinitely, Deres only brought himself time.

He would have to make it time enough.

Composing himself and collecting power close , he rose from the ground, feeling renewed for the moment and headed through the door built by the old world.

***

As long as they were trying to kill her, Deres and Elan had time, though she knew she didn't have much herself. Keeping the shield close to her body lessened the magic needed to maintain it, but it would only last as long as her strength did. The consuming heat made her skin prickly and threatened to cook her alive. If her concentration faltered for even a moment it would be over. To maintain herself and play her only card would be a supreme test of will and her command of her magic. The old Bryana would have thrived on the challenge alone, but the woman she was now knew that there was too much at stake for her to fail. But she had to act while she still had some reserves left to call upon.

Streaming the fire into her was a test of their own will, twisting the universe and then becoming a conduit for that energy was its own exercise, though less of one than having to defend against the onslaught. She knew the spell, as it was almost as old as mages themselves and one of the first offensive moves ever learned. Shields were different and far more complex, as they were a magic that had to run counter to other magic to reflect and absorb it. While the fire was a skill, shields were more of an evolving art.

Deres, having been raised in a near-mythical land of mages and mortals before returning to the world she knew had taught her much about shields over the years. It was now time to see how well she had truly learned. She reached out with her mind, fortunately not having to travel far to find the force trying to kill her and then followed that gingerly to the mages that controlled it. Looking deeply into the conduits they had become, she examined the spell and found the twists and whispers that acted as a safety valve for them. Weaving her own spell over them, she opened those valves even as she hoped she had enough power withstand what needed doing.

She pulled the fire to herself. She pulled it through the mages to strike her as she struggled not to be consumed by the flood. One mistake and there would be death for her, but her queen needed, Deres needed, Elan needed, Neral needed, and thousands upon thousands that may not even know they needed needed. So she stood fast against the flood even though she felt as though she were boiling already. In her eyes there was nothing but the sight of the mage flame. The crackling white noise of it was all there was to hear. Her mind screamed and she pulled. Her body shook and she pulled. She would pull from them until the fire destroyed her.

The world fell to black for an instant and then she felt cold, colder than she had ever remembered being. Is this the depths? The Works told of them being devoid of light, warmth, and anything that might give a human heart comfort, and if she were there now, she understood. A few years of doing the right thing more often than not would not have tipped the scales in her favor over all the sins that had come before.

Then she took a breath. The cold air burned her nose and her lungs as it filled her almost as much as the heat would have, but it felt so good there were no words. She had never felt so good being cold as the air pulled the heat from her and threatened to freeze the sweat to her skin. Bryana dared open her eyes and was greeted with the lattice of the trees, gray of the sky, and the fat snowflakes kissing her skin. She wallowed in the feeling even as her leaden limbs had no interest in responding to her just then. Her nose then detected the acrid stench of burning cloth and flesh, which made her laugh a giddy laugh. "Alive. By the goddess, I'm alive." Her own cloaks were smoldering from the heat.

She lay there in the snow, just looking up. She didn't need to look over to know what condition her attackers were in. They were in the depths and she was not. Maybe after a long, full life she would be. Maybe tomorrow, but not yet today."

I'm needed. With her muscles still resisting her commands, she rolled herself to her belly with some effort, planting her face in the snow, relishing the feel of how it chilled her and reminded her that she lived. Forcing her arms parallel to her head, she clawed her fingers into the snow and into the numbing wet. With a hiss, she pushed herself up and forced herself forward.

***

The desent was a long one for Deres. A series of stairs, tunnels, and ladders took him far underground. The elevators were long since dead and he doubted he would have trusted them anyway even if they appeared viable after so long. He could guess at what powered the place, but he would leave that to others. He knew a host of technomages in Adar that would happily trade a limb for a chance to pick it apart. There were broken pipes, dead fixtures, and stairs and ladders that had been braced or replaced by wood, no doubt from the Draleth who discovered this place, but the place may well have stood as it did now for another thousand years.

Air was being circulated. Even so, Deres' skin felt cool and clammy, no doubt thanks to the toxin trying to rampage through his body. He surmised that without the magic he would be dead already. He had to be as close to ready as he could be for whatever he might face, so he pulled more magic to him and through him, borrowing from that force to keep himself nimble and fit, at least for a time. After one final long ladder that Deres took sliding, feet on the outside and grip loose to control his drop his goal was before him.