The Conjuring Man, page 34
Master Dagon cleared his throat. “We appear to have arrived undetected,” he said. “Unless they’re just moving their forces into place to catch us.”
Adam looked at Graeme. “What’s it like outside?”
Graeme looked annoyed. He’d answered that question before, when Betty had told him he was moving from a passive observer to an active player in the rebellion. “Between dusk and dawn, no one is allowed on the streets. If you are caught outside, you get taken away, and no one knows what happens next. I’ve heard nothing, not even vague rumours. During sunlit hours, you’re still supposed to stay indoors unless you’re needed outside and, if you do go outside, expect to be asked a few pointed questions if they do catch you. There aren’t many places to go, either. All the pubs are closed.”
Master Dagon snorted. “There are other places.”
“Not for my customers,” Graeme said. “They have nowhere else to go.”
Adam nodded. Pubs were a city’s social hub, at least for the middle and lower classes. They didn’t have special clubs, or libraries, or hunting grounds ... the only places that came close, in Beneficence, were the baths and even they were governed by strict rules, while pubs tended to be a lot more free and easy. The king was risking an uprising by shutting them down, although – he had to admit – shutting the pubs down made it harder for prospective rebels to get together and grumble, before planning how to turn their grumbling into real action. Not that it mattered, he told himself. They weren’t counting on a street uprising, nor on a rebel army to spring up from nowhere and come to their aid.
He glanced at Master Dagon. “Can you work from here?”
“I should be able to set up the portal,” Master Dagon said. “If Jasper and the Gorgon help me, I can get it into place quickly.”
“Get on with it,” Adam ordered. He’d grown up in a city. He knew just how observant people could be, particularly when it involved children, young girls and other people it was socially acceptable to report to their parents. The windows were firmly closed, but if someone heard something as they passed by ... “We don’t have much time.”
He looked at Graeme. “Did you see the airship?”
“It was hanging over the castle last night,” Graeme told him. “I haven’t looked this morning.”
“We could try to get back onboard,” Taffy said. “We do have the tools in the university.”
“Bring them through when the time comes,” Adam said. The portal was closed now. It wouldn’t be reopened until the operation started, at which point it would be too late for the enemy to stop them. Or so he hoped. He’d thought the airship was practically invulnerable until Arnold had taught him otherwise. “And then we’ll see what we can do.”
He paced the room, watching as the magicians set up the portal. Lady Emily had, if the stories were true, opened a portal into the Tower of Alexis, but no one was quite sure how she’d done it. Master Dagon’s concept might work – it would certainly save them having to punch through the castle walls and tear down the wards from the inside – yet it would be risky. Adam knew enough to understand it might not work, or ...he swallowed hard. If it failed ...
Graeme caught his eye. “We have to hurry,” Graeme said. “I don’t know when the guards will show up.”
“We can deal with them,” Dalia said. “Or they could leave with slices gapped out of their memories.”
Adam shrugged. Arnold had figured out a way to spoof the spell detectors. He couldn’t have done that unless he knew how they worked, which meant he could have set up detectors of his own. And that meant the charmed guardsmen would set off alarms the moment they returned to the barracks. He scowled as he resumed pacing, his imagination suggesting all manner of horrible things Arnold could be doing to Lilith. The bastard was too cunning for anyone’s peace of mind. Adam would almost have dealt with a nastier and more competent version of Jasper. At least he wouldn’t understand the value of combining magical and mundane technology into one.
Master Dagon gave him a sharp look. “You won’t speed things up by pacing, I’m afraid.”
Adam glared at him. “She’s your daughter!”
“Yes, and pacing won’t help,” Master Dagon said. “Wait. We’ll get there.”
It was nearly an hour, despite his words, before he pronounced himself ready. Adam spent the time wishing desperately for something to do and yet knowing, all too well, that if something happened ahead of time it would probably spell doom for the mission. And then ... he didn’t want to think about it. The tools on his belt were bad enough, but the magiwriter in his back could not be allowed to fall into enemy hands. It might portend the end of the world.
“This is it,” Master Dagon said. He placed a vial of blood in the device and stood back. “Once we start the spell, we’re committed.”
“We already are,” Dalia said. “Councillor?”
It took Adam a moment to realise she was taking to him. “Master Dagon,” he said. “Open the portal.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Get ready,” Master Dagon warned. “The portal won’t stay open for long.”
The device shivered, magic sparks hastily spinning into a second vortex. Adam sucked in his breath. Last time, it had looked like a whirlpool; this time, it looked more like a choppy sea ready and waiting to swallow up unwary sailors. Every instinct he had, born of life growing up in a city dependent on the fishing trade, told him to run. And yet, he had to wait for the portal to stabilise. It felt like hours before the black dot swelled into a circle, allowing them into the castle. The castle’s wards were fighting to keep them out.
“Now,” Adam snapped. He jumped forward, ignoring Taffy’s cry of alarm. The world shifted around him and then cleared, revealing a simple stone corridor lined with torches and paintings of long-dead aristocrats. Adam was perversely disappointed. He hadn’t really expected to open a portal straight into the king’s throne room or bedchamber, but he’d expected something a little more remarkable than stone and paintings. “Come on, quickly!”
He looked up and down the corridor as the rest of the team followed him. Queen Violet had gone through the layout of the castle with them – she’d lived there most of her life – but she’d cautioned him that there were sections she’d been forbidden to enter, on pain of a stern lecture from her governess. Adam had no idea why she hadn’t tried to explore them anyway – he’d spent weeks exploring the city, then the university – but it didn’t matter. He wasn't sure where the portal had opened, save for the loose certainty they were close to Lilith. Even that was misleading. Master Dagon had pointed out, crossly, that she could be above or below them as easily as right down the corridor.
We need to get oriented, he thought. Queen Violet had told him the castle’s layout was disturbingly erratic, just to confuse opponents. And then we need to find her.
A pair of guards rounded the corner, halberds in hand, and stopped – dead – when they saw the portal. Adam was almost as surprised. The halberds looked impressive, he supposed, but they weren’t much use against guns or magic or even swords. Did the king not trust his guards? Or ... Master Dagon stepped past, hand raised. Adam had no time to blink before an invisible force picked up both guards and slammed them hard against the far stone wall. They slumped to the ground and lay still, blood leaking from their tunics. Adam swallowed, hard. Master Dagon had killed so quickly ...
“Good work,” Dalia said. She darted forward, leading the rest of the team down the corridor. “We need to move.”
Master Dagon caught Adam’s hand and pressed something into it. “Take this,” he said. “I trust you to return it afterwards.”
Adam looked down. A compass? It made no sense. The needle wasn’t even stable. It took him a second to realise it was pointing to Lilith, that Master Dagon had used a little of his blood to steer Adam to their target. Giving him the compass, and the sample within, was a sign of trust or desperate necessity ... Adam glanced up, finding himself unable to speak. Master Dagon was already hurrying away ...
He’s a better man than I thought, Adam conceded. He wasn’t blind to the dangers of what Master Dagon had done – and the old man would know, all too well, just how much harm the sample could do if it fell into the wrong hands. Giving it to me is one hell of a risk.
He shook his head and kept moving, keeping one eye on the compass. It felt warm against his bare skin, the needle drawing him onwards. He tried to match what he was seeing against the map Queen Violet had outlined, but drew a blank. The castle didn’t have any signposts or anything else that might be useful when it came to finding one’s way around. Clever of the defenders, he had to admit. Taffy stepped up behind him, covering his back, as they hurried onwards. The needle barely twitched.
Trumpets blared, the sound shaking him to his shoes. The castle seemed to vibrate. He was sure he saw the walls shake, an instant before a handful of paintings fell from the walls and crashed to the floor. An earthquake? Or ... or what? Dalia had talked about finding the castle’s armoury and throwing a lighted torch inside, in hopes of triggering an explosion and blowing the walls to hell, but they hadn’t had time to look. No, the wards had to be trying to shut down the portal and localise the team. Adam hoped – prayed – they couldn’t do anything more.
The king isn’t a magician, if Violet is correct, he thought. But Arnold sure as hell is.
“Guards,” someone called. “They’re coming!”
Adam looked up, levelling his pistol. A set of men marched towards them, wearing silver armour and carrying more effective weapons. Jasper snapped his hand at them, hurling a set of fireballs that splattered uselessly against their armour. Charmed armour, Adam realised, as he pulled the trigger. His target staggered but kept coming. The armour was either charmed to the point it could deflect a bullet or simply tough enough to absorb most of the blow. It might have hurt, but it didn’t look as though it had done any real damage. Adam saw the Gorgon hurl spell after spell, each one glinting off uselessly ...
“Hold,” Master Dagon ordered, quietly. Adam was surprised the Gorgon obeyed at once. He would have been a little more doubtful of orders from Master Dagon, although he did have to admit Lilith’s father knew his stuff. “Let me deal with them.”
“Throw down your arms and live,” the armoured leader barked. “Or fight and die!”
Master Dagon snorted, then cast a spell. Adam felt a wave of heat press against him, as if he’d suddenly stepped from an ice house into a blast furnace. The men ahead of them wavered, then caught fire. Adam shuddered, his entire body seeming to retch, as the stench of burning flesh billowed towards them. He choked and swallowed, trying desperately not to be sick. Behind him, he heard someone throwing up loudly. He didn’t dare look round to see who had emptied their stomach onto the stone floor.
Dalia giggled, high-pitched and nervous. “What did you do?”
“Most charmed armour can be overloaded by hitting it with multiple charms and hexes in quick succession, but that takes time, enough time to give them a chance to kill us before we take down the armour,” Master Dagon said, sounding more like a well-bred schoolmaster than a powerful magician. “I simply superheated the air around them instead, ensuring their armour melted and their undergarments caught fire. It was hot enough even to set fire to their skin!”
Adam swallowed, hard, as they inched forward. Bodies were lying on the ground, smoking. He hoped it had been a quick death and knew it hadn’t been anything of the sort. He’d seen men burnt from potions accidents ... his stomach clenched, again, as the stench assaulted it. He wondered if he’d ever get it out of his nostrils and feared he wouldn’t, no matter how often he washed himself. His clothes were beyond repair.
“They’ll be taking the king to his inner chamber,” Dalia said, quickly. She looked pale too, but she held herself with admirable composure. “We have to stop him.”
“We have to find my daughter,” Master Dagon said, before Adam could say the same thing. “And quickly.”
Adam glanced at the compass. “If half of us go for the king, the rest of us can look for Lilith,” he said. “She’s not that far away.”
Dalia nodded and led her troops onwards, further into the castle. Adam hoped she knew where she was going. It was too late to get a blood sample from Queen Violet, and there was no reason to assume it would work, not when kings and princes tended to have protections to ensure their blood couldn’t be turned against them. It didn’t matter, he told himself, as Jasper nodded to him and hurried after Dalia. The Gorgon and the rest of them could find Lilith and then do as they saw fit, even if it meant escaping the castle and running for their lives.
“Interesting,” Master Dagon said. “Their wards are shifting. It’s very odd.”
Adam frowned at the older man’s back. “Are they trying to stop us?”
“No,” Master Dagon said. “I’m not sure what they’re trying to do.”
Adam gritted his teeth. Right now, unless something had gone spectacularly wrong, the rest of the troops were being mobilised and pushed through the portal into Lokane. Half of them would follow through into the castle itself, the others would get onto the streets and lay siege to the city’s defenders. Were the wards trying to keep the second wave from getting into the castle? Or what? Arnold had been dismissive of the king when he’d been gloating to Adam weeks ago. The king’s survival might not be one of his priorities. It might even be more convenient to have the king suggest a little accident, just to cover his tracks.
He looked at the compass. “This way.”
The air seemed to grow colder as they inched forward. The walls felt oddly slanted, as if he were on a sailing ship rather than deep inside a castle. The effects were oddly disconcerting, making it harder to think straight as the needle kept pointing to Lilith. Where was she? It didn’t look like a dungeon, although Adam had never been in one to compare. Most criminals back home were either marched into the stocks, enslaved, sent into exile or hanged. It was rare for anyone to be kept prisoner for long ...
Don’t think about it, he told himself. Just keep moving.
Master Dagon paused, then raised a hand and cast a spell. A flash of balefire lit up the corridor, illuminating three figures standing right in front of them. Adam ducked as the figures dropped their invisibility spells and started casting charms of their own, one shielding the other two as they hurled fireballs at the intruders. They might not be full sorcerers, Adam noted mentally, but they worked well together. The single bullet he fired at them struck their defences and stopped dead, before falling to the floor. The fireball shooters kept going, hammering Master Dagon’s wards. Adam remembered Lilith telling him fireballs were boring yet practical and now he understood why. It was such a simple spell it could be cast over and over again.
The Gorgon inched closer to him. “Look the other way.”
Adam realised what was about to happen and hastily glanced back the way they’d came, just as ... something ... pulsed through the air. It felt like a gust of stormy wind, yet terrifyingly unnatural ... he looked back and saw three statues, frozen in casting poses. The sorcerers were dead or trapped in stone or ... he knew magic, he’d seen magic, but this felt different. He knew, now, why so many people were utterly terrified of Gorgons ...
Master Dagon cleared his throat. “Move!”
Adam flushed and snapped into motion. Master Dagon was casting spells, shooting balls of light in all directions. Adam hoped he was doing something useful as they turned the corner and came face to face with a pair of guards. Adam snapped off a shot, hitting one in the chest; Taffy shot the other a moment later, putting her bullet through his throat. Adam’s victim gurgled and fell to the ground. Adam hoped, numbly, he’d survive long enough for medical attention, even though it was unlikely. The king wasn’t going to waste a healer’s services on a simple guard.
“There’s a magician coming,” Master Dagon said. “A strong one, I think.”
“Arnold?” Adam shivered. He’d encountered the rogue sorcerer twice and survived, but he was honest enough with himself to admit there’d been a great deal of luck involved. “Or someone else?”
“I don’t know,” Master Dagon said. “I’ll meet him here. The Gorgon can stay behind me, just in case. You two” – he pointed to a door at the far end of the corridor – “go find her.”
Adam nodded, keeping an eye on the compass as he hurried down the corridor. The door wasn’t locked, but he pressed a magic-detecting tile against the wood and cursed under his breath as it vibrated urgently. The compass insisted Lilith was inside ... he hoped it meant she was really inside, not on the other side of a far wall, as he pulled another tile from his belt and slapped it against the door. The tile glowed and exploded, dispelling the charm and knocking the door off its hinges. Adam motioned for Taffy to stay back and inched through the door. It looked more like a nice sitting room, if rather lacking in furniture, than a prison cell.
His heart caught in his throat. Lilith was sitting in front of him, wearing a simple yellow shift that fell to her knees. Her hair fell around her face, cascading around her neckline and spilling down to her breasts. The memory of what they’d done together distracted him, for a second, as Lilith’s hand moved into a casting pose. If her face hadn’t twisted, he’d have had no warning at all.
Magic darted from her hand. Adam jumped aside as the charm shot past. His mind skipped a beat. Lilith was attacking him? She hadn’t done that, not really, since ... he heard Taffy swear behind him as Lilith rose to her feet, her body moving so oddly that, for a moment, Adam thought she was being manipulated like a puppet. Her hair spilled out around her as she raised her hand again, her movements slow and jerky and so very unlike her. And her face ...
Adam’s blood ran cold as her hair fell back, revealing the collar. Horror ran through him. He’d seen the orcs, but this ... he nearly froze, helplessly, as he realised someone had used spell circuits to make the collar. They’d used his techniques! Rage burned through his mind, followed by fear. Lilith was fighting from the inside, trying desperately to regain control of her body – she had to be, or he’d have been cursed by now – and yet she was doomed. Her eyes were dim and tired and ... he ducked a curse that really should have hit him, that would have hit him if her hand hadn’t jerked at the very last moment. His grip tightened on his pistol, before he put it aside. What could he do with it? Shoot her?
