The goddamn cat left him at the outskirts of Cerria. Will was grateful to end the torturous ride, but now he faced a less painful, but much longer walk through the city. He watched the cat walk away, aloof as always, never looking back—and still with a pink bow tied between his ears. He smirked as the demigod left. “Even the darkest day has something to chuckle about,” he told himself.
He summoned the crutches from within the limnthal and set off down the road. The sun was about to set, which meant he was getting close to the twenty-four-hour mark for when his friends had been injured. His goal was to have the potions to give to them before hitting forty-eight hours.
Will had no good way to judge what his true time limit might be, but sooner was safer. He also worried about the time the potions would take to produce. Last time he’d had only a quarter as much troll urine, and he’d managed to make seven potions. This time he could potentially make several times that many, but he would need to restrict the size of the batch he worked with, otherwise it would take far too long.
The first stage of the process involved boiling down the urine to fully sterilize it, but boiling a hundred gallons of urine took a lot longer than boiling twenty or thirty gallons, and that was without considering the fact that he would have to work in smaller portions because he didn’t have vessels large enough for such amounts.
He thought about it as he walked and decided he would scale his production to half of what he had done the year before and try to produce four potions. “One for Janice, one for Tiny, and one for this gimp leg,” he muttered. That would leave only one to spare for an emergency, but he could make three more similar sized batches later.
It had taken him three days to make the regeneration potions last year, but that had been partly because he’d had other things to do as well. If he kept the batch small and stayed throughout the process, starting the second and third stages as soon as they were ready, he thought he could finish in about twelve hours.
Will was halfway through the city when the sun sank fully below the horizon and the street lighters began to light the lamps. Other than those vital workers, he saw no one else outside, which was unusual. Like most places, Cerria’s activity died when the sun was gone, but there was usually some traffic. The odd carriage, a few late-night workers, and the inevitable foot traffic back and forth to the public houses.
Tonight, there was none of that. The city seemed deserted.
Nervous, Will checked his prepared spells and adjusted them accordingly, one illumination spell, one wind-wall, and a chameleon spell. The light between streetlamps dwindled as the sky lost the glow of dusk, but that wasn’t a problem for him. He might have considered using the chameleon spell and sneaking the rest of the way back to Wurthaven, but his leg made that impractical. He had to move slowly and smoothly for that sort of thing, and there was nothing smooth about his hobbling gait presently.
Plus, he didn’t want to waste the time.
Fatigue sat heavy on his shoulders. “I guess being passed out drunk for four or five hours in a troll village isn’t a substitute for sleep,” he muttered sarcastically to himself. “I’ll have to be extra careful at the Alchemy building, or I’ll make a stupid mistake and ruin the whole thing.”
He turned a corner and found himself twenty feet away from a group of men, City Watch by the look of them. “Hold!” one of them shouted.
Damn it, he thought, but he stopped. There were six men in the patrol, an uncommonly large size. Normally the watch patrolled in twos. Then he noticed one of the men was a sorcerer.
The sorcerer stepped forward. “You’ll have to come with us.”
“Why?” demanded Will. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Defying the curfew,” said the officer.
“What curfew?”
“The decree was announced at midday and read out for everyone to hear,” said the sorcerer.
Will sighed. “I got back at sundown. How was I to know? Just let me be on my way and I’ll be off the street as soon as I get home.”
“You can talk to the magistrate about that—in the morning,” said the sorcerer, a malicious grin on his lips. Will knew his type, men who exulted in having the opportunity to exercise power over others.
Then again, maybe he was just biased, but either way, he couldn’t afford to spend the night in jail. He wished he had prepared a sleep spell, but he had been more worried about vampires than watchmen. He was tempted to try the ‘do you know who I am?’ trick, but as bedraggled as he was there was virtually no chance anyone would believe he was the king’s son-in-law.
He smiled. “I’ll be happy to cooperate—” but he wasn’t. Before the sentence was finished, he released the wind-wall spell, though he did so without putting much power into it. He wasn’t trying to murder anyone.
The air whipped up, and chaos ensued as the men were knocked off their feet. Before they could recover, Will caught three of them with a source-link. The two regular watchmen he had caught were paralyzed, and then he focused on the sorcerer. It was a brief struggle, lasting no more than a couple of seconds, and then the man was disconnected from his source and paralyzed.
The other watchmen had regained their feet, and two were already swinging at him with their truncheons. Will blocked each swing in turn with a point-defense shield, leaving the men with strange looks on their faces as they tried to figure out why their blows weren’t connecting.
Things were looking rather desperate, though. The sorcerer’s fire elemental had manifested and was now swelling up to full size. He still had three men to deal with, and if he was going to release the source-links on the three he had already stopped, he would have to either drain them or inject turyn to make them nauseous. He didn’t want to leave them helpless at night in a city filled with vampires, though, since he already had a good idea why the curfew had been created.
On the other hand, he had a bad leg and he wouldn’t be able to run away, nor could he keep blocking the watchmen’s attacks forever. Without having a sleep spell ready, he didn’t have a safe way to stop them without hurting them. He backed up until he felt the nearest building brush against his shoulders. He was cornered.
“Give it up,” said one of the men.
“Listen, I’m not coming with you and I’m running out of safe ways to end this without hurting you,” responded Will, trying to put as much sincerity as possible into his voice. Looking over the man’s shoulder, he saw the elemental was on the verge of throwing a massive fireball in his direction. That will probably set the building on fire and might kill these men, he realized.
The sorcerer was still conscious, and Will locked eyes with the man. “Call your elemental off or you won’t see the sunrise.” Since the man was unable to touch his source, Will wasn’t entirely sure if he could still communicate with the elemental, so he released the man’s throat muscles and vocal cords. “Tell the men to back off too,” ordered Will.
“Let him go,” said the sorcerer, his voice weak. Without conscious control of his breathing, it was difficult for the man to control the volume of his voice. Will corrected the problem quickly when he understood. The sorcerer repeated his order, and the watchmen stepped back. “You won’t get far,” he warned. “The Driven are out in force tonight. They’ll find you.”
“Good,” Will agreed. “They’re keeping the vampires in check, I hope.”
The sorcerer stared at him thoughtfully. “How do you know about that?”
“I’m the king’s son-in-law, William Cartwright. I know a lot more than most.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
Will winked at the man. “I do. Do you see an elemental with me?” The man said nothing, so Will continued, “And yet you’re lying on the ground, helpless. Have you heard of any other wizards who could manage that?”
“He’s lying!” sputtered one of the other men. “He’s dressed like a beggar.”
“The clothes I wear are none of your concern, patroller,” said Will, affecting a condescending tone. He quietly began constructing a sleep spell to replace the wind-wall he had used, but he didn’t intend to use it. He addressed the sorcerer, “I’ll need you and your squad to escort me the rest of the way. As you can see, my leg was injured, and it has put my mission in jeopardy.”
“Mission?”
Will had him. Taking a chance, he released the source-links, allowing the men to regain control of their bodies. “I’ve told you who I am, which has already violated the secrecy of my task. I can’t say any more.”
Getting to his feet, the sorcerer in charge stared at him suspiciously. “You expect me to believe anything that comes out of your mouth?”
“The way I see it, you’ve got two choices,” began Will, “either you escort me to my destination, or you try to stop me. If you try to stop me, I won’t pull my punches the second time around. Your men might manage to apprehend me, but you, sir, probably won’t be there to congratulate them. Finally, even if things go perfectly and you drag me in to the magistrate, I promise you’ll wind up tied to a flogging post for interfering with me.”
“Assuming you live to see the magistrate,” suggested the sorcerer, but his voice was more speculative than hostile.
“In that case the king will see you all hanged,” said Will confidently, lacing his words with an air of indomitable superiority. He kept his gaze fixed firmly on the sorcerer, giving the impression the others didn’t matter at all.
A tense silence ensued, then unexpectedly the sorcerer lowered his eyes. “As you wish, milord. We are yours to command.”
Will let out his breath slowly, trying to hide his relief and surprise. I didn’t really think that was going to work. Keeping his chin elevated, he asked, “What’s your name and rank?”
The sorcerer stiffened, coming to attention. “Lieutenant Dan Ramfeld, milord.
“I assume you’re not part of the City Watch.”
“Detached duty, from the King’s Special Service.”
Will narrowed his eyes. The Driven all had more than one elemental.
“I’m still in training, milord. His Majesty has every able man out on the streets tonight.”
He hadn’t seen anyone else on the street, but he could make some guesses in that regard. “Only the regular watch patrols are visible then,” he observed out loud. The Driven would be hidden.
“Yes, milord.”
“Sir is good enough for me, Lieutenant,” Will informed him. “My last official rank was ‘corporal’ and these days I’m just a royal-in-law. I don’t hold any titles.”
“Very good, sir. Where are we heading?”
“Just get me to the gates of Wurthaven. You can return here after that.” Lifting one crutch, he pointed in the direction he was going, then began to move. The men fell in around him. As they walked, he asked, “Tell me about last night. Something bad must have happened for His Majesty to have put a curfew in place.” Of course, he had been in the middle of his own struggle to survive, but he didn’t know what might have happened elsewhere in the city.
“Felt like the whole damn city went mad,” said one of the watch patrollers. A second later the man added a belated, “Sir.”
“I’ll tell it, Sims,” said the lieutenant. “Three homes were burned, and Father Latimer was found brutally murdered.”
Father Latimer was the high priest for the Church of the Holy Mother, the man who had performed Will’s own wedding ceremony. He could hardly believe his ears. “Was he?”
“All I know is hearsay,” admitted the officer. “But his body was cremated, on the spot, if that’s any clue for you.”
“And the homes?”
“They wasn’t random,” said Dan. “One was the high priest’s house, but the other two belonged to high ranking nobles. Lord Tintabel’s home was ransacked and his family murdered before the house was set afire. And Lord Nerrow’s place was—”
“Excuse me, did you say Lord Nerrow?” Will’s heart had frozen in his chest.
“Yes sir, the baron, Mark Nerrow. His home was vandalized and set on fire. Apparently, he put up a fight first, though. It wasn’t the first attempt, so he was ready for them. Still, it didn’t keep them from burning the place down around his ears.”
Will felt as if he was walking through a tunnel, for the officer’s words sounded as though they were echoing from miles away. “Did his family…?”
“Oh, they was all fine, sir. Do you know them? I should have said that first. Apparently, he held them off for a while, then they retreated inside. He had some sort of fortified basement ready. The fiends couldn’t get to him. After the fire burned out, they all emerged safe and sound this morning.”
The heavy lump in his chest eased slightly. “Where are they now?”
“I dunno, sir. Wherever rich people go when their houses burn down, I suppose. They might be at the palace.”
That made sense to Will, though he wished he could have offered his own home to them. But he’d been too busy nearly being murdered himself, and then he’d spent the day traveling through Hell and drinking with trolls. My life is beyond weird, he thought. “Any idea why those people in particular were targeted?”
“Nothing official,” said the lieutenant. “But my personal theory is that the Prophet is trying to destroy our morale.”
“The Prophet? He’s in no position to start a war. He lost most of his army recently. It will take years before he can afford to antagonize Terabinia,” argued Will. If anything, Lognion was preparing to attack Darrow soon.
“Maybe the Shimerans then?” suggested the officer. “Demons and vampires are about the same thing, aren’t they?”
Clearly, he wasn’t one of Wurthaven’s brightest graduates, thought Will, then he shook his head. “No, they’re entirely different.”
“Well, anyway, whoever it is that started all this, it seems to me they want to demoralize the people. That’s why they’ve gone after popular figures, well, except for Lord Tintabel. He wasn’t known for much aside from his paintings, but the priest and Lady Nerrow were obvious targets.”
That caught his attention. “Lady Nerrow? Is the baroness popular?”
“Not the baroness, sir, her daughter Laina. She’s probably the most popular person in all of Cerria right now. If something happened to her, I don’t know what people would do.”
That was news to him. “I don’t understand.”
“Have you been living under a rock, sir? Lady Nerrow championed the Mother’s Widows and Orphans charity after the Prophet attacked, and she was only a girl then. She’s just barely reached her majority but she’s already famous. She’s out at every event in the city, shaming the rich into paying up to provide for the poor and disadvantaged. If it weren’t for her, a lot of people would have starved, and I don’t just mean those in the city. Hell, she was in Branscombe not long after the Darrowans attacked, bringing supplies and aid for the citizens of Barrowden and Branscombe.”
Will was flabbergasted, but there was no mistaking the tone of reverence in Dan Ramfeld’s voice. The man truly believed that Laina Nerrow was some sort of merciful lady sent to rescue the people from misery and squalor. Will remembered Laina’s visit to Branscombe, and as far as he knew her part of the trip had merely been as company for her father. How could he have been so completely unaware?
I was a little focused on not dying in the war, thought Will. Still, he hadn’t seen anything but a spoiled nobleman’s brat. Was it really possible that his half-sister was more than that? It was hard for him to credit, but it did explain why Laina had been a target for the vampires. She was sixteen when the Prophet’s army invaded Barrowden. How could she possibly have become a public figure and a driving force behind a widow’s charity?
Then again, maybe she had been Selene’s best friend for more reasons than the fact that they grew up together. Maybe his wife had known a different Laina than the spoiled asshole that Will had always interacted with. As far as he knew, Selene had always been big on helping people—was that trait what had connected the two women?
“Well fuck me sideways,” muttered Will. “It turns out I’m the judgmental asshole.”
“Beg your pardon, sir?” asked the lieutenant.
It was pure chance that Will happened to look over at the man at just that moment. Otherwise things might have gone very differently. They were walking along a dark portion of road, with barely enough light to see where to put their feet. Naturally, that wasn’t a problem for Will, but the lighting made it impossible for the men to see what was racing toward them from a side alley.
The vampire was mere feet from where the sorcerer stood to Will’s right, and it was moving at full speed, rushing toward the man like an evil wind. Will didn’t even have time to blink. His point-defense shield stopped the fiend in its tracks with the crack of bones breaking. His shield vanished, and a force-lance removed the creature’s head.
The thing wasn’t alone, however. Two of the watch patrollers went down at the same time, as they were hit from different sides. The vampires weren’t trying to feed, though; they knocked the men from their feet and turned to do the same to the others, clearly intending to disable their entire group before killing them.
Ethelgren’s Illumination put an end to that plan as searing white spheres spiraled out from Will’s upraised hand. Screams and hisses echoed through the dark as the monsters closest to them burned and died. Will’s eyes were closed, so he couldn’t be sure, but it sounded as though some of those farther away escaped complete annihilation, for their howls and footsteps moved away even as the spell moved farther out. As the light dimmed, he opened his eyes and went to help the men who had been knocked down.
“Were either of you hurt?” he asked, trying to see without bending down. His leg would make crouching and standing again nearly impossible.
One of the two patrollers had suffered nothing more than a bruise, but the other had a shallow cut along his arm. Before Will could offer, the man pulled out a glass vial and swallowed the contents. The shape of the vial was familiar to him. Did the king buy blood-cleanse potions from Wurthaven? If so, Will had probably been the one who made them.
Will began replacing the illumination spell immediately, having learned his lesson at the warehouse the night before. The patrollers and the sorcerer gathered around him. “You were damn quick with that spell,” said the lieutenant gratefully. “He might have ripped my head off before I even saw him coming.”
“I just stopped him for a second,” said Will modestly. “It was your force-lance that took his head off.”
“Force-lance? I haven’t heard of that spell before,” said the officer.
Will stared at him for a moment, reviewing the fight in his mind. Did I cast the force-lance? He hadn’t had one ready. If he had done it, it meant he had finally reflex cast the spell for the first time. Looking down the alley, he picked a target and tried to will a force-lance into being. Nothing happened. He held out his hand and constructed the spell in the normal way. He’d been practicing the spell regularly for over a year, so it came together in just under a second. It felt faster than it had been a few days before, but it wasn’t instant.
He couldn’t be sure. It had been just as confusing when he had started reflex casting the point-defense shield. First it had been unconscious and then later it started responding to more deliberate attempts as well. Either way, it was a good sign.
“Sir?”
He shook his head. “It’s a combat spell. I’m sure they’ll teach it to you when you start your battle training.”
“I wish I knew it right now,” said the sorcerer enviously. “Or that light spell you used, that would be even better.”
You should learn the point-defense spell first, thought Will, hearing his grandfather’s voice in the back of his mind. The memory made him smile. The ring had been right. The point-defense shield had saved his life a dozen times over by then. Even so, he didn’t feel right putting the man off. Not when any bit of knowledge might be the bit that saved his life.
When they reached the gates of Wurthaven, Will asked the lieutenant to wait for him. Then he went to the guardhouse. The guard recognized him and greeted him with a quick nod, which Will returned. Then he summoned a journal and a charcoal stylus he used for sketching. The spell was simple, and ink would take too long. He quickly wrote out the diagram for the force-lance, then ripped the page out of the journal. Dismissing the book, he hobbled back over to the patrollers. “Here,” he said, holding out the page. “The spell I used. I’d teach you the light spell too, but it’s too complicated for the time we have.”
“Thank you, sir!” said the officer, sincere gratitude in his eyes. “Are you sure you don’t want to come with us? Even with that bad leg of yours, I think we might feel safer if you did.”
Will smiled. “I wish I could, but I have too many other things to attend to.” He left them there, heading directly for the Alchemy building. The campus had always felt like safe ground to him—usually it was the city outside the walls that threatened him—but he couldn’t relax as he worked his way down dark lanes and across well-trimmed lawns.
He knew quite well that the walls were no obstacle to vampires, and the campus was nearly deserted at night. Will swiveled his head constantly, trying to watch every direction as he painfully made his way to his destination.