Chapter 8

When I first entered their tunnels, it was in the outer city, outside the walls of Vale. While I slept through the fever, they’d somehow moved me inside the city walls.

This morning, Dirk and I hiked through the dark for hours, winding through a new series of twisting tunnels, alley ways, and secret passages leading deeper into the city.

The route was circuitous, and now we stood at the window of his small tailor’s shop.

The store sat on a rise near the southernmost city walls, giving us a good vantage looking to the north from which we could see most of the city of Vale.

So, this was the center of steam-powered culture —home of the Motorized. I shivered without meaning to do so. After all these years of hearing about this place, I recalled my old master telling me the legend of Weer. A mage of our order. Somehow, Weer managed to create the first hybrid steam-powered tool utilizing a crude steam engine and a series of obscure spells, unknown to this day by all outside of Vale. Curse the day.

This city was where it all started — and even though Weer trained as a mage himself, it spelled the beginning of the end for my order.

Tears sprang to my eyes involuntarily, as I thought of many friends and mages now gone, but I quickly wiped them away. Dirk noticed but said nothing.

I watched as a cart piled full of hay bales steamed down a nearby street, its engine pumping vigorously as the driver steered it around a corner. Seemed an innocent enough invention.

After he created the first hybrid tool, apparently Weer fashioned more steam-powered tools, and eventually weapons, selling them all across the known world. This made him ridiculously wealthy, and helped him to amass influence and power. It also set him at odds with mages of The Way because their help was needed far less, they suspected he’d done something that twisted the spells of The Way, and also Weer’s own men started to persecute mages directly.

I was still a child when wars first broke out between mages of The Way and the generals of the steam-powered armies of Vale and its allies. Wars raged on for decades while I grew up, then trained in the magical arts. Most of the armies had been disbanded by now, with no more magi opposition left to fight.

To my right, out East toward the plains, I saw the inside of the imposing city walls, where the entrance to the city itself stood. The ragtag village outside the city walls wasn’t even visible from here.

To my left, looking westward up into the foothills, houses, shops, taverns, and inns blanketed the valley. Unlike the crude outer city, these buildings had been constructed of stone and brick, decorated with colored clays, paints, elaborate tapestries, and well-drawn signs. Cobbled stone streets ran throughout the inner city, important for the steam-powered wagons, carts, and cycles that even now I could hear sputtering throughout the city.

At the highest, westernmost point in the city, a hulking keep stood, sprawling across the top of the valley, spouting steady bursts of black steam into the sky. It stood over the city like a bulky sentry, impossible to miss.

“What is that castle?” I asked, pointing up to the keep.

“The home of Lord Uof, the man who runs this city,” Dirk said, with a deep, shuddering breath. “They call it The Keep of Uof. Around ten years ago, Uof proclaimed himself the son and heir of Weer, taking over leadership of the city. He showed up often for a while, then he disappeared. Uof hasn’t been seen in public in years.”

Son of Weer.

Now, as I stood in Weer’s city, I remembered the story about the first hybrid tool. It was a repeating shovel for the miners in these very mountains. For years I’d pondered how I would create a hybrid tool like this with the spells I knew. Mages everywhere had tried to replicate that first spell, and failed. Clearly, Weer had been a mage of some learning and study to create such a complicated tool that mages for a generation had been stumped. Did Weer realize that his inventions would signal the end of The Way of the Mark?

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

I moved my eyes away from Uof’s Keep and around the city. I saw other buildings I recognized: an alchemist’s shops, a blacksmith’s barn, and two large open-air markets.

“I followed my son into the inner city after he was arrested,” Dirk said, pointing. “They took him to one of the prisons, there.”

Dirk pointed to a tall, block-like building on the north side of the city, sitting along the northern wall. Looking around the inner city, I saw several other similar buildings. Four blocky structures formed a diamond shape in the city’s layout — one large stood near the entrance to the city on the inner wall itself to the East. Another structure stood on the southern reaches of the wall near Dirk’s shop, and the final building had been erected high up to the West, just below Uof’s Keep.

“Is he still in there?” I asked, studying the city.

“There’s no way to know for sure, but we never saw him moved,” Dirk said with a hard swallow. “We’ve watched it day and night, in shifts, and we’ve seen nothing in the eight days since.”

I thought about the problem. Getting into the city hadn’t proven difficult with Dirk’s help, but I couldn’t walk around inside Vale without attracting the wrong kind of attention. The Motorized knew I was here, but I had an edge: they thought I was still in the outer city, outside the city walls. For now.

Also, finding Bend, the young mage, was my sole priority now. I owed Dirk a favor, but also because his son was a genuine follower of The Way of the Mark — and perhaps like me—one of the last alive.

I needed to get to that prison as soon as possible. Before they moved him, or worse.

“We need to find out if your son is still in the prison,” I said, thinking through logistics. “Surprise may still be on our side, as they may not expect me to be in the city yet.”

“You’re right, the sooner we can find out, the better. But how?” Dirk replied.

“We could try to talk to the guards, but from what I’ve seen so far, they’re not likely to be cooperative.”

“We’ve had no luck getting any information out of anyone working in the prison so far,” Dirk said in response.

“Failing that then, we need to get into that prison. And soon.”

“Mage, get in there?” Dirk said, an incredulous look on his face. “Impossible. Also, you’re still badly hurt!”

I nodded, recalling Lissa’s comment that I needed rest.

Looking at the blocky prison building, which was itself surrounded by a stone wall, there was no easy approach. I could try to send some kind of spy beacon into the building, but it was sure to be spotted before we could get too far.

“Maybe I can enter the prison without being seen, at least not right away,” I responded, starting to formulate a plan, and calculate what kind of matter and spells I would need to perform to pull it off.

I opened my pack, going through my remaining stores.

I drew my small leather notebook into my hands and opened it. Sprawling script covered every page, and I flipped the pages until I found the ritualistic spell I wanted.

Dirk’s looked at the page, perplexed at the flowing script he saw.

“The rituals for every spell I’ve learned or created,” I said. He nodded, his eyes wide as he studied pages of dense handwriting.

I reread the spell I wanted and counted up my stores of rare matter. I had a couple of tiny pieces of gold left, the single diamond, a half-a-dozen pieces of quartz, a chunk of ivory, two chunks of topaz, a gold bracelet, and several pieces of steel and iron I’d taken from the thugs outside the city. This wasn’t much to work with, considering all that I might have to do just to get into the prison — I needed to get creative.

I looked over at Dirk, meeting his eyes. “I’m going to need some supplies, any other stores of matter you might have,” I said.

Matter of almost any kind was useful to a mage, but the rarer the matter, the stronger it would be for spell use. This was one of the key tenets of The Way. Gold and rare gemstones were the most practical and powerful of all matter for the spells of the Way — though, of course, they were also the hardest to find.

“Rocks, gemstones, or rare matter of any kind. Can you help?” I asked.

“My son had a small collection that he used,” he said. “Of course we kept them just in case he returned. I’ll send someone to retrieve them.”

“I will leave for the prison tomorrow morning before sunrise,” I said. “That is likely to be the best time to surprise whoever is manning the prison. Is there anything else you need my help with before I leave?”

Dirk looked down at his hands.

“What is it?” I asked.

“We have the same problem everyone everywhere has,” he said, looking up at me, meeting my eyes. “Our people are suffering, Mage.”

“Water?”

“We dug wells underground to supply the outer city resistance and those of the Way, but most of our wells have gone dry in recent months,” he said. “We have one deep well left that still draws water on most days and we share that water with those that are poorest in the city. But no one has enough. Uof keeps the water to himself.”

“I understand,” I replied. “Get me some large rocks and as many jugs and basins as you can find. Tonight, I will do what I can to replenish your water stores before I leave. That will have to do until I get back.”

We both left the next thought unspoken: If I lived through the attempt.

I coughed, the pain in my side throbbing lightly. “Get me Bend’s matter as soon as you can and anything else you can find.”