To Saul’s surprise, Gladesword replaced his current weapon. He’d been carrying the short sword that was the standard issue sidearm of Xornian infantrymen. He had gotten very good at using it when fighting at Harkin’s Holdfast and training with the men there. But now the sword vanished from his hand and appeared in his inventory instead.

In its place was a long, slim, graceful sword of the most perfect sharpness and balance Saul had ever held.

And he had held some good blades in his time. He had held amazing blades, true masterworks. Yet this sword put them all to shame.

The blade was the light, frothy green of new summer grass and leaf thin. But the metal was solid and inflexible despite its thinness. To Saul’s eyes, there was just a hint of transparency to it, as if under the reality of the blade there was a different reality, a kind of underlying magic that he could quite see.

He regarded it with a smile.

The handle was wrapped in good leather, and the crossguard was solid iron, with a gemstone inlaid into the center. He held it out and the light from the sky above, dulled by the power of the curse though it was, shone through onto the stone and made Saul smile as he felt the magic power of it.

The Gladesword—a summoned weapon.

He had two more spell castings left before his cooldown period kicked in. He had the Xornian shortsword in his inventory if he needed it, but he had the feeling that this Gladesword would not need to be summoned again, unless he deliberately deactivated it.

Like the summoned stone trolls, he felt that this weapon was persistent now, and that this persistence was a direct reward for his own success in leveling up.

What’s next? he wondered as he slid through the trees, silent as a shadow as he scouted around the flank of the enemy.

Going by the screams and the clash of weapons, Brand and Zorea were doing a fine job of keeping the enemy occupied. From the direction of raptors came a deep roar, followed by the panicked shouts of the soldiers.

These warriors, though strong, had not expected to meet quite so much resistance.

Gives me the time to find the leader, he thought. I wish I had Zorea’s ability to see the source of magic.

But he had plenty of other capabilities as his command, and he did have at least a faint sense of the location of a spell. Although, at the moment, his own magic sense was confused by the magic all around him, the strange, barbed trails of the curse moving through the trees, the blasts of Brand and Zorea’s magic from the direction of the pool, and something else…

He was looking for something else though. There was someone here controlling things, casting spells that allowed them to see further into the world than their soldiers.

There were tendrils of this magic writhing through the group of attackers, and also feeling through the air, plucking at the sense of magic like the fingers of a man fumbling in the dark for the handle of a door.

Saul felt something strange in that fumbling. There was something inhuman about it, something… something very, very old.

“You’d like to know where I am, wouldn’t you?” he said under his breath. “But I’m going to find you first.”

Into Saul’s mind came a sudden flash, an image that intruded itself into his imagination. It was a nightmare face of a woman with the huge, grabbing mouthparts of a spider, and black eyes gleaming like polished obsidian with an inhuman intelligence.

Saul flinched involuntarily, the thought of spiders chasing through his mind after the vision. But it was gone, and he was back, so he did not stop to question the disturbing thought.

This leader was a coward, whoever he was. He used others to fight his battles for him, and he used subterfuge and curses to control the environment. He would not be leading from the front, not this one. He would be hiding behind his men.

If he’s even here, Sul thought. It was possible that whoever was responsible for this attack was not even in the field.

Saul did know what the full capabilities of the Old World magic were.

Could a mage exert this much control from a distance?

Saul kept moving. In his situation, that was the single most important principle. He was a scout and a strike force all in one, and he must find the heart of the enemy and cut it out if at all possible.

He snuck toward the back of the force, where he saw the swordsmen moving up to relieve the archers.

Saul was well behind them, when he came upon his first scout. As he had thought, the soldiers were well-organized and careful. They had sent out a group of scouts in forest camouflage to screen the flanks and rear.

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The scout had seen Saul first, and the man was fast.

The scout carried a strange weapon, kind of a short whip made from thin, flexible chain and with a barbed tip that glowed an unhealthy yellow color as the man attacked.

But Saul was faster.

Saul’s Gladesword flashed in the clearing as he took out the scout’s right arm, the green summoned blade slipping through muscle, tendon and bone with no more resistance than a hot knife through butter.

There was a hiss of blood onto the hot blade. Bubbles of black blood trickled down the Gladesword.

So, the blade gave off heat? That was new.

The man who had been carrying his whip glanced down at his arm in horror.

The Gladesword had actually cauterized the wound as it had cut through the arm, and so there was no spurting blood as Saul might have expected from such an injury. He was about to finish the man off when he felt something strange.

He felt it with his magical senses and heard it with his ears at the same time, a snapping noise, like elastic breaking. It was a tendril of the curse breaking.

Then he saw it, clear as if there had really been a cable around the scout’s neck. The terndil snapped back and vanished, and the light around the man seemed just a little brighter. His eyes widened and he looked around, then looked at Saul.

“Where am I?” he said in a hollow voice. “What the hell happened?”

“You’re in danger,” Saul said brisky, “and you’ve been wounded, but you’re safe now. Go over there and lie down in the undergrowth. You’ll be all right. Here, take this.”

He tossed the man a potion for pain. This was part experiment, because the bottle had an ally sigil on the bottle, but he was not sure if that only meant Brand and Zorea, or if he could give it to this fellow too.

Would the System Sigils recognize the injured scout as an ally?

“Drink it,” Saul said. “It will help with the pain.”

The man knocked back the purple liquid into his mouth and swallowed hard.

The scout’s face cleared, and he looked at Saul with gratitude. It did work!

Then he hurried away to the side of the clearing, looking for a space in the undergrowth to lie down and hide himself in.

“Good,” Saul said. “So, that proves it beyond any doubt. There are people who are being controlled by the curse. They have a spell on them that’s making them behave like this, and they don’t actually have any idea what they are down. There is no need for them to continue on this track if we can break the source of the curse.”

He moved around, still looking hard for the command post of this group of attackers.

At the back of the attacking force he spotted a small group of men huddled around a taller figure. There was a scout in the undergrowth near Saul, but Saul didn’t kill him.

Instead, he snuck up behind him and whacked him round the back of the head with the pommel of his sword. The man toppled forward unconscious.

The curse did not snap free from him, but at least he was no longer a threat.

Saul passed him, inching closer, and then he saw the true nature of the threat.

This was another face he recognized; none other than the other courtier who had also been attending the queen!

When he’d been in the audience chamber, Saul had paid less attention to this man. He was taller than the other, a big, jovial fellow with a round belly. He had a gray beard and big hands, and his eyes had sparkled with merriment as he’d looked out over the audience chamber.

Now, his face had an altogether grimmer expression. He looked like he was working very hard to keep everything going, controlling the people in front of him, as well as keeping the curse moving through the region, and something else…

What was he doing?

Saul could not quite understand what it was, but he suspected it was something along the lines of a protection spell, something that would stop him from being detected.

He used the image of Reznak Deskai to try to put us off the scent, Saul thought. Poor Reznak probably has nothing to do with any of this. A clever ruse, but not clever enough.

Saul remembered the man’s name. Graxel, an ambassador, but the Queen had not said where he was an ambassador from?

What country was sending such powerful mages into Xornian territory under the disguise of diplomatic missions?

Politics, Saul thought with disgust. Well, I’ll give this fellow some political diplomacy he won’t recover from.

Now that he had located the mage, he realized he could not simply dive in. The man was doing more than driving the forces around him with some kind of control magic.

Rather, he was using the curse as an active spell. The curse was Old World magic, and it could not be broken without Zorea’s input, and her marvelous Soulstone sword.

Saul shook his head. He had to bring this to a close, and quickly.

The folk who were under Mage Graxel’s control were not to blame for this, and he had to stop the killing as soon as he could.

Windspeed

The spell kicked in with the usual exultant flow of power, and Saul grinned as he felt the time-slowing properties of the magic take effect. He moved through the press of advancing soldiers, leisurely, as all around him the soldiers pressed forward in super slow motion toward where Zorea and Brand were fighting.

Saul reached to the front and looked around. He took the opportunity to look at the faces of the men.

They were Xornian. They had the usual black hair, dark eyes, and broad cheekbones, and they were generally older than one would expect from professional soldiers. They were not brawny or well-trained, either.

Despite how well they were working together, they were not soldiers. Rather, they seemed like farmers and herdsmen, the kind of people who would not usually know much about a sword beyond which end to hold it by.

When he found Brand and Zorea, he was heartened to see they had come to the same conclusion. They were doing everything they could to put the soldiers out of action in non-lethal ways.

Saul’s spell wore off, and to Zorea’s eyes he was deemed to have simply appeared in front of her by magic.

“Grek’s teeth!” she swore, frightened by his sudden appearance. “I wish you wouldn’t do that!”

“Sorry,” he said with a grin, “but I need to get up here quickly.”

Brand shouldered a soldier out of the way and whacked another in the solar plexus with his boot, dropping him to the floor.

“I see you’ve worked out that these are innocents who should not be killed if you can avoid it,” Saul said.

“Yes,” Brand grunted as he hit another soldier square on the chin, knocking him unconscious instantly. “But perhaps we could wait until we’re not in the middle of a fight before discussing the finer points of the situation?”

“Of course,” Saul said. “I’ve found the source. Zorea, you’ll need to come with me. Brand, can you hold the fort?”

“I can’t guarantee I won’t kill a few of them,” Brand said, “but I’ll do my best, and I’ll try not to get myself killed while I’m at it!”