14

Hyam, Joelle, and Meda were walking down the citadel’s main corridor when a light shone around the door frame leading to the dining hall, brilliant enough to stop them in their tracks. It faded swiftly, and a cheer erupted. Hyam could hear Connell say something but could not make out the words. There was a second cheer, this one punctuated by laughter. Then the doors opened and the acolytes came tumbling out, a delighted, chattering mob. And Shona was at their center. She halted in front of Hyam and smiled shyly. Proud and embarrassed at the same time.

Connell came up alongside her and announced, “This one came close to burning us out of house and home.”

“You told me to claim the fire,” Shona replied.

“And so you did!” Connell beamed like a proud parent. “With a whirlwind’s force!”

Joelle asked, “You have magical abilities?”

“Since two hours ago! She has the makings of a master mage, this one.” Connell went on to Shona, “Mind, you need to practice that shielding every day.”

“I will,” Shona said. “Every hour.”

Joelle said, “I want to hear everything. But first we have news of our own.”

“All that must wait,” Connell replied. “The banker and our desert trader should be outside. That Ashanta representative is never late.”

But neither banker nor merchant awaited them. Instead, a man Connell identified as Lord Suthon’s clerk paced nervously beyond the citadel gates. The clerk was middle-aged and balding and carried all his excess weight about his middle. Even before Connell completed his introductions, the clerk was already urging them westward along the city’s main avenue.

“Lord Suthon was in a rare state, I tell you. Rare indeed. Sent me off to fetch you with a shout, wouldn’t even let me finish my morning coffee.” The clerk’s ink-stained robe bore dark patches of nervous sweat. “That’s unlike Suthon, I tell you. He’s a man who insists on order and decorum.”

As Joelle moved to his side, Hyam sensed a new presence among them. She murmured, “Bryna is here. She says something terrible has occurred. What exactly, they are not sure.”

Hyam had no chance to ask anything further, because on his other side Connell was asking the clerk, “What did Suthon say was the matter?”

“Don’t have the slightest idea. When I asked what I should tell you, he shouted at me a second time. Make haste, was all he said. Which is precisely what I did.”

Hyam asked, “Why doesn’t Suthon live in the palace?”

“He wanted to,” the clerk replied. When Connell snorted softly, the clerk insisted, “It’s true, I tell you. His lordship had every intention of moving in. But a bevy of Emporis merchants met him on the road and begged him to reconsider. None of them would set foot in the palace, nor enter the main keep, nor cross before the palace gates on a moonless night.”

“All that’s true enough,” Connell said.

“The merchants urged Lord Suthon to lay claim to a manor vacated by an ally to the crimson mage,” the clerk went on. “It stands two doors down from the Ashanta banker.”

“The absent merchant supplied victuals to both the palace and the mage’s army,” Connell explained. “The day of your victory, a group of rather irate citizens went looking for him. But he’d vanished, him and all his clan. Bayard has offered a sizeable reward. He hasn’t been seen since.”

Three hundred paces from the palace, they left the markets behind. The avenue broadened and became partially shaded by trees planted in raised stone tubs. A great crowd of people moved with them, though they were careful to keep a distance from Hyam’s group. The homes grew larger the closer they came to the city’s western wall. Finally the avenue ended at a stone plaza fronting grand residences. Here the crowd was at its thickest. The murmuring wash of voices stilled at their approach.

“Make way!” the clerk cried, but it was hardly necessary, for already the throng pressed back, forming a path through which they passed.

Their destination was a manor on the plaza’s opposite side. Two guard towers rose from the wall’s corners. The Ashanta symbol for treaty was stamped into the filigreed metal archway above the main gate. Or rather, what was left of the gate, for it had been mostly destroyed. As had the right-hand guard tower. And the manor’s front door.

Connell indicated the foppish gentleman rushing down the front walk. “Suthon, the earl’s representative.”

Suthon greeted them nervously, “Thank heavens you’ve come.”

A voice called from among the mob rimming the plaza, “Has the fiend returned?”

Suthon jerked as though the citizen had read his own thoughts. Connell, however, was made of sterner stuff. He turned and addressed the crowd. “The crimson mage was destroyed. His power has been vanquished. Many of you were witnesses to the battle and the triumph.”

Another from the crowd called, “What happened here?”

“I do not know. Yet.”

“We want answers!”

Hyam could sense the crowd’s fear. Tension seethed across the open plaza, dense as fog. He stepped up beside Connell. “Should I speak to them?”

“It might actually save the day,” Connell muttered.

Hyam raised his voice. “You know who I am. The crimson mage and Prince Ravi ruled this city with terror and dark forces. But no more! I am here, along with the Lady Joelle, the wizard Connell, and both the earl’s representative and the earl’s niece. We aim to keep you and the city safe.”

A woman’s voice shrilled, “What happened in there?”

“I have no idea. But if you will be patient, we will make a thorough investigation. Then I will come back out and together we will tell you everything we have found.”

“Everything?”

“You have my word.”

He stood and felt the tension dissolve into a muttering worry. He had no trouble with that. He was worried himself. Hyam turned to the others and said, “Let’s go.”

There was no front door to the Ashanta banker’s residence. In fact, there was nothing upon which a door might have been placed. The frame was gone. The surrounding stones were seared a greyish black, their surface turned molten-smooth. Beyond the absent portal, a layer of ash covered what remained of the floor. This cone-shaped destruction extended back from where they stood.

Hyam climbed the front stairs with Meda at his side. Joelle and Connell followed. The others remained out front, where the mob could see them and hopefully hold to patience.

From his position at the entryway, Hyam looked straight through what had been the manor’s rear wall. He said to his wife, “Ask Bryna if she detects the presence of a mage inside.”

A moment’s pause, then Joelle replied, “She senses nothing save the energy of what has already passed.”

“All right. Let’s go.”

Joelle unsheathed the Milantian blade as they moved forward. Their footsteps were muffled by the ash that covered every surface. The conical hole at the rear of the house was the same precise shape as in front, only ten times larger. A moon-shaped segment of the flooring was gone. Remnants of two windows dangled overhead. There was no movement. No life.

Hyam skirted the missing segment of the kitchen floor and crossed the rear garden, back to the city’s western wall. A clutch of guards stared down from the wall’s parapet. Hyam traced one hand over the ancient stones, which remained untouched by whatever had demolished the banker’s residence. He called up, “Did any of you see what happened here?”

A trooper leaned over the parapet and pointed to the nearest tower, five or six hundred paces to his right. “We were up top there, your lordship. The first sign any of us had was smoke rising from the ruins.”

“What of anyone leaving afterward?”

The guard slipped back out of sight as Connell stepped up beside him. Hyam asked, “What do you know of this wall?”

“Legends claim the Ancients sealed these stones with a force powerful enough to defy time,” Connell replied.

The guard returned and called down, “No one saw anything, your lordship.”

Hyam waved his thanks and turned back to the ruined manor. He asked Connell, “Was there family?”

“A wife and two young daughters.” Connell fell into step beside Hyam. “Lovely girls. I thought one showed the makings of a mage.”

A shout rose from inside the manor. They hurried along the track their footsteps had made in the ash and clambered up inside the house to discover Shona and Alembord standing beside Joelle.

Shona declared, “Someone is here.”

Even as Shona had stood by the demolished manor’s front gate, she continued to tremble slightly. Despite the moment’s exquisite nature, Shona could sense the crowd’s tension. They massed across the plaza from where she stood, an unmoving wall of flesh and fear. But just then her mind resonated with Fareed’s words welcoming her to the ranks of acolytes. She was a mage.

She walked a half-step from Alembord and faced the ruined villa. It was easiest to locate the shield in the fingers of her right hand. Soon as she closed her eyes, she felt the power. She drew it up and around her, creating the same shield as before. She opened her eyes and pretended to study the gaping ruin where the front door had previously stood. Her shield remained in place for a time, then drifted silently away. She drew the shield back into place. Again. Over and over, reveling in the coursing power. Amazing herself in the process.

Gradually the initial thrill died down to where she could study the internal effects. She felt the subtle power course across her, delicate as a breath of wind. With each new creation of the shield, her senses grew sharper. The impact did not last long, a few seconds only. But for those brief instances, she felt as though she could see around corners and through walls.

She was tempted to turn her attention to the people on the other side of the plaza. But their anxiety was already an unpleasant stain upon this amazing day, far more potent than the manor’s destruction. Whatever had caused this ruination was long gone. How she could possibly be so certain of this, she had no idea. But she stared at the manor’s stone façade as she drew the force around herself once more. In the tiny fraction of time that it was available to her, little longer than a single breath, she tried to push her awareness outward. Extend her senses in a definite direction.

She tasted the ash, and overlaid upon this was an acrid stench she had never known before, yet instantly knew it represented death.

Immediately she retreated back into herself and felt the shield gradually dissipate. She took a long breath and drew the power back up and around herself. And then redirected her senses, out in a different direction.

Shona drew back, so terrified she did not realize she had screamed until Alembord rushed over. “What’s the matter!”

But Shona was already racing for the manor’s front steps.

The manor’s lower level was mostly intact, save for one sliver of missing ceiling at the back, through which the sun now shone. The stairs emptied into a long antechamber with a vaulted ceiling that ran the entire length of the house. A number of doors opened off, most of them locked and barred.

Hyam asked, “Where did the sound come from?”

“It wasn’t a sound, exactly.” Shona pointed at a door with a high peaked top. “There.”

Connell tested the door and found it locked. He settled his forehead on a band of iron that fortified the stout oak, placed his hands upon the lock plate, took a deep breath, and pushed. The lock rattled and complained, but the door opened. He leaned on the stone frame and breathed hard. “I detest dealing with iron.”

Joelle stepped inside the dark chamber and with a gesture lit the chamber’s many candles. The illumination revealed the banker’s wealth. Silk carpets and brightly colored tapestries masked the windowless stone. Ledgers bound in leather and stamped in gold ran down two walls, held in glass-fronted shelves with gilded columns. The desk was oiled mahogany, held aloft by carved pillars covered in gold leaf. The chairs were covered in soft hide, the inkstand gold.

“There is no one here,” Connell said.

Shona pointed at the tapestry rising between two of the ledger cabinets. “Behind that.”

The tapestry showed an island rising from a sunlit sea, the waters a stunning mixture of russet and gold and blue. It hung on rings, suspended upon a long brass rod. Connell swept it aside, revealing only stone. Frowning, he ran his hand over the wall.

Joelle stepped up beside him. “Bryna senses very old magic at work, spells from the Ashanta’s earliest contact with mankind . . .”

Meda asked, “Can she detect anyone?”

Joelle held up her hand, silencing them all. She continued to draw her fingers slowly over the stones, as though her motions were guided by an unseen hand. Then Hyam heard her speak the Ashanta word “Open.”

The wall became framed in fire and slid soundlessly back.

A man’s voice called fearfully from within the hidden chamber, “Are you friends?”