Chapter Thirty-Five

“Two guards,” Daria said, sniffing the air ahead of them. “Several more running away towards the Arena as fast as their legs can carry them.”

Elaine nodded. Magic – raw magic – was pulsing out over the city, in a manner that triggered snapshot images of the books crammed into her mind. Spells not seen since the Second Necromantic War were being unleashed into the world, summoning creatures that were best left forgotten. Anyone with any sensitivity to magic would know that the situation had become a great deal worse ... but what could they do about it? The Emperor held all the cards.

“Then we’d better go,” she said. She hefted her wand, mentally gathering herself. No matter how many times she’d had to fight, she knew she wasn’t a natural fighter. “Let’s move.”

She’d never actually seen the tunnel entrance, even when leaving the city on the Iron Dragons. Unlike the other tunnels, it was protected by a charmed fence, a handful of hex signs warning of danger and repelling children or mundanes from even going close to the tunnel entrance. The entrance itself was just a gaping gash in the sheer rock, with two pairs of rails running out of the city and into the darkness. Two guards stood beside the fence, peering towards the Arena with nervous eyes. Flickering lights, dancing high overhead, cast an eerie light over the scene.

“You,” the lead guard called. “You can’t come here!”

Daria growled, deep in her throat, as the second guard made to object. The first guard elbowed him, hard. Elaine couldn’t help a flicker of amusement, followed by bitter guilt and even shame. The first guard was merely doing his duty, following orders. He hadn’t allowed his friend to even catcall at two young women. It was almost a shame, she knew, that they would both be in deep trouble at the end of the day.

A dull roar echoed over the city. She turned and saw a giant shape in the air, hanging above the Arena. The sight was terrifying. No one had seen anything like it for hundreds of years, since the last dragon had been killed. There had always been stories about dragons hiding in unsettled parts of the world, but no one had ever given the stories any credence. And Elaine knew that dragons were summoned from another world ...

She turned back to the guards and cast a compulsion spell of her own invention. They wore protective amulets, but the spell she’d invented bypassed most protections on its way to the brain. She readied herself to launch something nastier if necessary, but the two guards fell into a trance immediately. Beside her, Daria sniffed at them suspiciously, then paced down to the fence. Elaine watched her friend go, then turned back to the guards and cleared her throat.

“Here are your orders,” she said, as green lightning flashed out in the distance. “You will not prevent us from walking through the tunnel. You will remain here, on guard; when your superiors arrive, you will tell them that no one passed through the tunnel.”

She waved her wand, fine-tuning the spell, then hurried down to join Daria and Johan. Johan was staring at her, his expression unreadable, but she could feel his concern through the bond they shared. He’d been hit with enough compulsion spells to be completely repulsed by the idea of using them, even on a pair of guards. Elaine agreed, particularly after what Deferens had planned to do to her, but there were no other options. Unless, of course, she wanted to kill the guards and hide the bodies.

I’m sorry, she thought, looking back at the two men. But I don’t see any other way out of here.

She crossed the fence, ignoring the subtle prodding from the hex signs, and peered into the darkness. Up close, the tunnel was narrower than she’d realised – or, maybe, it was the awareness, no matter how flawed, that an Iron Dragon could come looming out of the darkness at any second. She listened and heard nothing, beyond a steady drip-drip-drip of water, somewhere in the shadows. But the sounds from the Arena were so loud that it was hard to be sure it was quiet inside the tunnel.

“There’s a strong stench of oil and smoke, but little else,” Daria observed. “We need to move.”

Elaine cast a night-vision spell over her eyes as Daria led the way into the tunnel. The interior was eerie; rough-hewn walls, glittering rails and walkways intended to allow the staff to walk along the tunnel, without running the risk of being hit by a train. A handful of spells could be sensed crawling along the ceiling, filtering the air; despite herself, Elaine was almost disappointed. There might be no magic in the Iron Dragons, but the operators still used magic in some places.

“It’s to keep the poisonous gases away from the crew,” Johan said, when she asked. “Some of the smoke is actually poisonous and, in this tunnel, it builds up rapidly.”

“I can smell it,” Daria said. “It’s horrid.”

“It’s progress,” Johan said, as Elaine hastily cast a filtering spell of her own. “And aren’t there times when magic leaves behind dangerous residue as well?”

“Yeah,” Elaine said, remembering the Blight. “But not for many – many – years.”

But was that true? The magic she’d been taught – the magic refined over a thousand years ago – left behind little residue, but Deferens had unleashed spells from a bygone age. He was running the risk of contaminating the entire Golden City, purely for power – and the greater glory of the Witch-King. The more Elaine thought about it, the more she was sure that Deferens had been overcome by the Witch-King years ago. Even a power-mad sorcerer would have thought twice about unleashing dragons, if he’d even known how.

But the Witch-King would know, Elaine thought, coldly. The spells were commonplace, back in his day.

The darkness seemed to grow stronger as they walked deeper into the tunnel. It grew cold, colder than it had been in the city, even when it was snowing. Elaine cast charms to warm them, but there was something in the shadows that seemed to interfere with her magic. No matter how many charms she cast, the temperature kept dropping sharply. Maybe it was one of the protective wards scattered around the city, she told herself, or maybe it was just her nerves making it harder to cast the spells. It was impossible to tell.

“There’s a body here,” Daria said, sharply. “One man, lying on his side.”

Elaine followed her gaze. A man was lying on the ground, a knife protruding from his chest. Elaine was no expert, but it looked as though he’d died very recently, too early for the body to decay. Or maybe someone had cast a preservation charm on the knife. She looked closer and saw a handful of runes carved into the blade, ensuring the body would never decay as long as the blade remained there. The man could have been killed at any time after the last tunnel inspection. Hell, maybe he had been killed during the inspection. He wore the uniform of an Iron Dragon worker, after all.

“Take the blade,” Daria advised. “It might be useful.”

“Better not,” Elaine said, slowly. She reached out a hand and sensed coiling magic under the hilt. Picking the blade up with her bare hand could be very dangerous. “I think ...”

Elaine’s night vision spells failed, completely. One moment, she could see; the next, everything was pitch black. She froze, sensing Johan’s shock and panic through the link; beside her, Daria growled and snapped back into wolf form. Elaine had barely a moment to sense something moving towards them at astonishing speed before Daria growled and threw herself at the newcomer. The sound of her growl was so terrifying that Elaine would have fled, if her legs hadn’t turned to jelly. A terrible struggle began, all the worse for being unseen.

She hastily cast a set of spells, only to have them fail, one after the other. A flare of light, so bright that it would have blinded her if she’d been looking right at it, appeared behind her, where Johan was standing. The fight was so vicious it was hard to see the two combatants properly; she’d wondered if the newcomer was another werewolf, but he didn’t seem inclined to drop into wolf form. Instead, he backhanded Daria on the snout, hard enough to draw blood, then looked up and glowered at Elaine. She couldn’t miss blood dripping from his fangs.

A vampire, she thought, badly shocked. Vampires were rare, not least because they were hated and feared more than werewolves or dark wizards. Even a rumour that someone was a vampire was enough to get him tied down and exposed to sunlight, just to make certain he wasn’t a real vampire. Where the hell did Deferens get a vampire?

The vampire hissed, then threw himself forward. Elaine remembered, as Johan yanked her back, that vampires did funny things to magic. Their nature sucked in magic, to the point where most spells simply failed around them, unless they were designed to specifically exclude supernatural vermin. She hadn’t thought to protect her wards against a vampire, if only because no one in their right mind would consider using a vampire as a guard. But Deferens was clearly not in his right mind.

Sunlight, she thought, as she cast the protective ward. Blue sparks flashed and the vampire stumbled backwards, then bared its teeth at her. We need sunlight.

“Close your eyes,” she ordered, and cast the spell. Warm light flared in the tunnel, throwing everything into sharp relief. “I think this should work ...”

The vampire sparkled, then exploded into dust. Elaine eyed the dust for a long moment, then cancelled her spell and recast the night vision spells. Daria was just snapping back into human form and stalking over to pick up her robe. Elaine smiled at her cross face – a vampire had no scent, so Daria hadn’t realised what she was sensing until it was too late – and then led the way further down the tunnel.

“That was a bloodsucking vampire,” Johan said. “Where did it come from?”

Elaine shrugged. Vampires drank blood, true, but the only way someone could become a vampire was if they were completely drained of blood in the first feeding. The victim, if the body wasn’t cremated, would rise again after three nights, lusting for blood. They tended to go for their families first, perhaps sensing what they’d lost, but after that they just drained whoever they found until they were hunted down. And that wasn’t always easy. There was a whole subculture of vampire worshippers in the world, largely composed of people who had never met one. A couple of vampires had managed to take advantage of their foolishness in the past.

“Anywhere,” she said. Deferens was certainly ruthless enough to capture a vampire and use it to breed more vampires, but controlling the bloodsuckers would be a challenge in and of itself. They were resistant to compulsion spells, even when the bloodlust wasn’t threatening to send them over the edge and into a rampage. “But right now it doesn’t matter.”

The tunnel seemed to widen as they reached the halfway point. They paused, then kept walking through a network of caves that seemed to have been converted into a storage point. Elaine wondered, as she saw the boxes stored within the shadows, if the Inquisition knew it existed. She’d certainly thought of the tunnels as nothing more than tunnels, simple holes dug into the mountainside. But there were smaller tunnels, side-tunnels and entire chambers hidden under layer upon layer of rocky protection. Who knew just what could be hidden in the darkness?

Maybe the vampire belonged to the Levellers instead, she thought. Hawke hadn’t warned them about it, but he couldn’t be the only Leveller mastermind. Or maybe Deferens just got lucky.

They kept walking until they finally reached the end of the tunnel and saw sunlight ahead of them. Elaine covered her eyes, blinking rapidly, as they stepped out into the light, then looked down at herself. Her borrowed dress – the innkeeper’s daughter was about the same size as her – was covered in soot, while neither Daria nor Johan looked much better. She couldn’t resist a giggle, which faded away as a line of armed soldiers appeared in front of them, their faces cold and hard. They wore the same uniform as the other soldiers Deferens had brought to the city.

Shit, she thought, badly shocked. She’d made the greatest mistake of all, according to the books; she’d assumed her enemy was stupid. No, she’d been stupid. She hadn’t even bothered to think about it. Why didn’t we think there might be guards at the far end?

“Do not attempt to draw your wands,” the leader said. He was a magician, she could tell, although quite a low-power one. Maybe not much more powerful than herself. “How did you get out of the city?”

“We walked,” Daria said.

The magician glowered at her, then nodded to his men. “Bind them and take them to the camp,” he ordered. “I want them held until the Emperor has a chance to see them.”

Elaine swore, mentally, then sent a single order down the link to Johan. Johan stepped forward, clenching his fists. The soldiers saw and laughed, then exchanged comments in their own language. Elaine couldn’t understand their words, but nothing they said sounded pleasant. Johan gathered himself, then unleashed his power. The world seemed to shiver on its axis for a long moment ... and then the soldiers froze solid

Daria looked up, alarmed. “What did you do?”

“Concentrated on freezing them,” Johan said. He sounded as though he was trying to be nonchalant, but Elaine could sense cold hatred and fear emanating along the link. “They wanted to rape you.”

Elaine gave him a sharp look. “You could understand them?”

“My father thought we should learn at least a few words from each of the major tongues,” Johan admitted. “That was before he largely gave up on educating me. That one” – he nodded to one of the frozen men – “thought they should take you halfway to camp, then have some fun with you.”

“Bastards,” Daria said.

“Idiots,” Elaine agreed. They were carrying wands, after all, and Daria was obviously a werewolf. “Come on.”

She turned and started to walk along the Iron Dragon lines, casting a handful of invisibility spells over themselves as they walked. They wouldn’t fool an Inquisitor, she was grimly aware, but anyone else who saw them would feel compelled to look elsewhere. She hoped it would suffice as they walked through a long stretch of fields, glancing towards the handful of buildings and homes in the distance. There was no point in seeking help from there, she suspected, not when Deferens had had ample time to billet his soldiers in the homes. For all she knew, he was massing the rest of his forces there.

Magic flickered and flared over the mountains, each spark making her want to look back. The wind blew hot and cold, sometimes throwing snow into her face, sometimes warm enough to make her think of summer, of the days when the Golden City had always been temperate. She couldn’t help a pang of grief for everything they’d lost over the last six months as she paused long enough to look back at the mountains, where the Watchtower had once brooded over the landscape. Once, the Empire had seemed as solid and unchanging as the mountains themselves. Now ...

Civil war, she thought. It had been almost inevitable, once the Grand Sorceress had been replaced by an Emperor. Now, with dragons blackening the sky once again, the Empire was likely to shatter completely. We’re looking at total civil war.

Something twitched in her pocket. She reached into her pocket and felt around, then pulled the life-charm out into the light. It was a simple spell; Cass had given her a snippet of golden hair, which she’d used as the core of a charm. As long as Cass was alive, the charm would show it, even though it wouldn’t show anything else. It was such a simple spell that fooling it was almost impossible. But now she was dead.

Elaine shook her head, feeling tears prickling at the corner of her eyes. Cass was dead ... and that, she suspected, meant that Deferens was still alive. How many people had died when the dragons had been unleashed? Hundreds? Thousands? The memories she had from the wars told her that dragons had ripped apart entire cities ... how did one fight a dragon? A single magician could never hope to survive.

Johan looked over at her, concerned. “What is that?”

“Cass is dead,” Elaine said, bitterly. The envelopes Cass had given her were burning holes in her pocket. “And if she’s dead, Deferens is still alive.”

“Then we will avenge her,” Daria said, firmly. “But for the moment, Elaine, we need to keep walking.”

Elaine gritted her teeth. It was a long way to Knawel Haldane, longer than she’d realised when she’d devised the plan. Neither Hawke nor Cass had thought anything of it, at the time, but a life spent shelving books hadn’t prepared her for a ten mile walk. But there was no way they could hitch a lift, even if they happened to trust whoever they met. All they could do was keep walking.

She took one last look at the charm, then returned it to her pocket. It could be buried later, with the proper prayers said to the gods. And then ...

Bracing herself, she turned and looked back towards the city. Smoke was rising, as if a volcano had suddenly come to life, readying itself to devastate the land around it.

Somehow, she couldn’t escape feeling that the image was all too accurate.