The four soldiers enclosed around the Spire’s entrance, two to either side of Lukon. Still he smiled through his helmet. He looked to each member of the party and named them down the line. Among them only Rook had a clan, so he invented epithets where they were needed:
“Eris Kallos. Rook Korakos. Aletheia Nekros. And this must be Pyraz Skylos, who has traded one set of teeth for another. You have been busy this last year.”
“You have done your research,” Eris said. In her hand was clutched the arcane focus. She stood poised, a stance like a boxer. “Did it take you these twelve months?”
“No doubt he spent the better part of that time convalescing,” Rook said, “after being beaten by me and Astera.”
“I have no pride,” Lukon said. “Yet two and a dog against one was no fair fight.”
“So you come with five against four?” Pyraz said.
He made a gesture toward his infantry. Their expressions were hidden beneath helmets. Each had a shield. Each wielded a sword. “Five against four seemed sufficient to stack the odds in my favor. Now. Lay down your arms. You did find Eris for me, and revive Aletheia; I am gracious enough to consider allowing you both to live if you comply with my directives.”
Pyraz conjured a mace and shield into his hands. He stepped forward. “I have slain hundreds,” he said. “You and your men are a single tally more.”
“Then allow me to demonstrate,” Lukon said. He raised his hands to the rightmost soldier. A billow of smoke, followed by a torrent of red fire, poured from his gauntlet. The magic was hot and bright and Rook was forced back an inch, yet when it cleared the target, the soldier with the shield, was unharmed. He gasped for air—yet was not burned. “Your magic will have no effect on me or my men. They are Cult Custodians and are immune to mana, while my armor will stop any spells you conjure.”
Rook knew of Cult Custodians, the guards of the Magisters and Archons. They were said to be soulless automatons, men who weren’t really men—yet the figures staring him down now seemed very much alive.
“It is I you want,” Eris spoke out. “And you want me captive.” She gave a long glance to the nearest Custodian, who was within striking distance. “Thus you will not use swords.”
Lukon shook his head. “You are a clever girl, Eris. Yet I knew this from our last encounter. And this time, your Essence is not subdued.”
She hesitated. A moment of tense silence. His eyes blinked red and Eris saw as he cast a spell; she raised her gauntlet to deflect the magic, but it wasn’t enough. There was a flash of green from her breast, blinding, and not a second later all her body erupted in rashes. Only the flesh on her right arm was spared. She fell to her knees screaming.
The silhouette of emerald fire crackled off her skin.
“No!” Rook shouted. He went to grab her, but a sword was leveled at his neck.
“That should be sufficient to render you ‘captive’ without fear of permanent damage,” Lukon said. A moment—
Pyraz struck Lukon. He landed a hit with his mace on the Seeker’s pauldron, but the armor was too heavy; the weapon did nothing. Lukon disengaged as his two nearest soldiers faced the Hypaspist instead.
Rook seized the opportunity. He knocked aside the sword at his neck and joined battle—yet there were two Custodians near him, both in heavy armor. Both with shields. One came for him from the right. He parried the thrust and dodged while the other tried to bash him with his shield. Rook was knocked off balance but the only follow-through from the second Custodian was a thrust to his arm, where beneath his jacket he was protected by his reforged suit of Elven armor.
“Do not kill them!” Lukon shouted. “Even the boy!”
Rook was knocked to the ground by another hit from a shield. With his off-hand free from his sword’s grip he managed to wrap his fingers around the ankle of one of the men over him and tug him to the ground, but not before the other kicked him in the torso, battering him, bruising him badly. Then the man stepped on him to pin him down. Rook slashed at his shoulders from below but the mail protected him, and he felt nearly defeated until Aletheia charged forward with her sword point-first.
She skewered the soldier atop Rook. The blade was stopped by the mail two inches deep, but that was deep enough to cause him to shout in pain. He hit her across the head with his shield and she fell to the ground.
By then Rook was back on his feet. He parried a blow from the soldier he toppled, who was stuck in the snow and unable to right himself, and he jumped atop the man and straddled him and pinned him down. Rook was very strong and while these soldiers were disciplined they were clearly not chosen for their physique. He grabbed the bottom of the Custodian’s helmet and pried it off, fingers fighting his wrists all the way, and once it was he brought his blade down onto the soldier’s neck.
A blast of energy knocked Rook off at the last second. His sword was sent flying into the snow. Lost, buried. He was dazed.
Meanwhile Pyraz dueled two soldiers at once like an expert. They landed hits on him, yet he knew how to fight in armor: he ignored every blow, confident in his protection. He was focused on where their armor was lightest, battering through their mail with his heavy mace, breaking bone and tearing skin without damaging what was on the surface.
But it was winter and beneath their mail each had a gambeson and ample padding to dull the mace’s force. So he let the mace disappear, replaced in his grip with a xiphos sword, and he retreated from the fight. He moved more quickly through the snow than the others, the mana etchings in his plate helping to keep his load light, and once some feet away he let loose a barrage of magic missiles at the two soldiers. The spells did as promised to the men—nothing at all, dissipated against their bodies like nothing had hit them—yet still each tore holes in their mail.
He jumped back into battle. There was a spot of exposed skin in one of the soldiers now and he thrust his conjured blade through it and the man coughed blood through his visor. Pyraz pulled himself away. He received a blow to the head from the second soldier but tackled him and began melting his mail. At first there was nothing—but as the steel heated up it bubbled, turning to liquid against his skin, and no matter how immune to magic he was, that still did terrible damage.
The soldier screamed.
Pyraz turned his attention to Lukon.
Eris was limp on the snow. Aletheia scrambled away from the Custodian who knocked her down and now she squared off against him, staring him down.
There was a long pause. And then…
He rushed at her, confident in his shield. Sure enough she couldn’t get past its defenses, lashing out helplessly against it, her blade deflected against its rounded edges, and he hit her with it; then he dropped his sword and his shield both and grabbed her, wrestling with her, and she was much too weak to fight back against a grown man. She screamed and let out waves of energy, blasts of frost, gusts of flame from her hands and from her mouth, but they did nothing against this mana immune Custodian.
By then Rook was back up to his feet. He met the soldier whose helmet he had ripped off. He couldn’t find his sword, so he drew his dagger and went for the man’s neck—
When the Custodian with Aletheia in his arms shouted, “Desist!”
He held a knife to her throat. She struggled against him, but it was hopeless.
Rook stopped in his tracks. He dropped his dagger. All their section of the battlefield fell silent.
Near Pyraz came screams of pain.
“So it’s true,” Lukon said as he approached, “you really are a Hypaspist?”
The sword and shield vanished. Pyraz instead conjured a two-handed warhammer. He ran his finger across it and gray fire emanated from the heavy head.
“You know too many old tricks,” Lukon continued. He gestured with his hands as if he were closing a window; a moment later the hammer melted in Pyraz’s hands, turning to red sludge that poured through his fingers and onto the ground.
Pyraz hesitated. “Counterspells. Coward! Do the Seekers know no honor?”
Lukon gestured again. This time the blue etchings up and down Pyraz’s armor went out. Their lights extinguished. Pyraz went stiff. He took one step and fell to his knees.
“No honor at all,” Lukon said. He knelt down beside Pyraz. He put a finger beneath the faceless mask’s chin. “Why do you think we no longer use powered armor, when mana is everywhere? To see you wear it now—it’s positively quaint.”
He pulled Pyraz’s helmet off. He whispered something, something Rook couldn’t hear. More gestures were made in the air and with them came spiraling shapes of blue and red. Then he pushed forward, like pressing the brick to activate the secret door of a vault, a final gesture to lock the spell into place.
Pyraz fell face-first into the snow.
Lukon stood. He cast a spell of frost over the soldier whose mail had melted against his torso. He was hideously burned.
“The trouble with Custodians is that they can’t be healed. Oh well.”
He picked up the fallen man’s sword and ran it through his now-exposed heart. The other man Pyraz had injured was still gurgling in pain; it would be hours before he died of exsanguination, but Lukon ignored him. Instead he proceeded to Aletheia.
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“Antigone has missed you greatly.”
“No!” Aletheia said.
“Yes. She was heartbroken when she heard about your death. I wonder what she’ll give to me when I return you alive?”
“No! Let me go!”
“I will. In time. For now…sleep.”
The same spell was cast again. Floating gestures around a central spire. A final motion. And then…
Aletheia’s resistance slowed. He eyes closed. Her yelling quieted. She passed out. The Custodian let her go.
“Bind them with auritium shackles,” Lukon commanded. The men obeyed at once.
Then last to Rook. In battle one rarely had the time to think, to focus in on the horrors that were befalling him, which was just as well—for if he could, he would never stand and fight. Yet in that moment Rook felt nothing but regret. He knew they should have stayed farther away from Erimos and the tower. They should have hid. They should have done—anything at all, for this day was long in the making. And now it was all over.
He stumbled backward toward Eris. She sat upright, but still groaned in pain. All her skin was scaled with bubbling green burns. Rook wrapped an arm around her, lifting her up, but there was nowhere to go—nothing to do.
“How cute,” Lukon said.
“What did you do to her?” Rook said.
“Mana Burn. A terrible fate. One I was hoping to avoid. Yet your friend is perennially foolish, and she felt the need to call my bluff.”
They were back at the Spire’s entrance. Rook spotted his sword in the snow. He let Eris down and picked it up.
Lukon sighed. “Must you?”
“You need her alive,” Rook said.
“Yes.”
“And Aletheia? She returns to Chionos?”
He shrugged.
“What for me? And Pyraz?”
“The Hypaspist will be taken to Pyrthos with your friend. You will be returned to the Archon to face His judgement.”
“That’s good as execution for all of us,” Rook said.
“Criminals often loathe the law. Yet it always catches them in the end.”
That was the Life of the adventurer. Death caught up with them, as it did anyone else. Somehow that fatalistic thought did nothing to alleviate his fury.
“How did you know about Aletheia? About Pyraz?”
“Just the same way I knew you had a forgestone.”
Rook stared at him. How could he—but there was no way, they hadn’t told anyone, shown anyone the stone. They might have been seen, but…
Frost shot into his heart when the thought occurred to him.
“Jason?” he said.
“Yes, I think that was his name,” Lukon said. “He was eager indeed to tell tales of vampires, Darom, lust, and a dog who acted curiously like a man.”
“What did you do to him?”
“Nothing, for unlike you, he was cooperative.”
Lukon brought his arm forward. Rook hadn’t noticed; the Seeker distracted him with conversation while all the while he made gestures of magic behind his back. He cast a spell. Rook stepped forward, ready to fight—he saw no other choice—but darkness fell over his vision.
The world around him lost all color. His body was obliterated. His consciousness was destroyed. Succumbing to Sleep was precisely what he imagined it was like to die. One minute alertness, fear, anxiety; the next, silence.
----------------------------------------
When he awoke it was freezing. A bitter wind came down on him from all directions like he was in the center of a vortex. Snow fell. He shivered.
His hands were bound by bitingly cold steel behind his back.
He sat upright.
There were two Cult Custodians with their swords at the ready. Eris, Aletheia, and Pyraz all nearby. Each bound. All stirring.
Lukon stood at a blue portal some feet away. Their packs were arrayed at his feet. He glanced through the portal—and he spoke to himself. Pacing back and forth. He held something in his hand.
“You degenerate!” he said. “You’ve done it wrong again! Snaiga first; I want the girl returned safely. Do it before we freeze.”
Another gust of wind. All their hair billowed with it. Rook’s heart jumped as he looked to the left. There he saw the rusting ruins of a man-sized mausoleum. There were obelisks of steel everywhere. The very ground beneath them seemed to move…
They were at the Spire’s top.
“They’re waking up,” one of the Custodians said. “Should we strip them?”
“They will be stripped beyond,” Lukon said. “You will find them quite impotent for the time being.”
Several minutes. More chattering of teeth. More vicious winds.
The portal turned from blue to red.
“There,” Lukon said. “It’s holding. For now.” He gestured one of the soldiers toward Aletheia. He grabbed her, pulling her upright.
“No!” she screamed, still groggy. She hesitated as if to cast a spell, but nothing happened.
“You are bound in auritium,” Lukon said, “you cannot use magic.”
“I’ll kill you if you make me go back!”
Lukon grabbed the quiver off from her shoulders and tossed it over the Spire’s edge. Then he slapped her. “You’ll be a good girl from now on and with luck you may not be spayed like your friends.”
Aletheia choked a tear in pain. She fell to her knees, sobbing, crying out Rook’s name, begging for help. Rook tried to stand, but as he did the edge of a shield hit him in the head. He fell limp to the ground again.
Lukon picked her up. One second. Then two. And then…
He tossed her through the portal.
“Close it,” he commanded to no one in particular. A moment later the portal returned to its blue hue. “I forgot to thank her for returning my sword. Oh well. Pyrthos next.” He beckoned for Eris to stand. “Must I beat you too?”
She glared at him. “All this,” she said through a tight jaw, “for entry into a secret vault? That is the crime for which you hunt me across the Earth?”
The Seeker had no idea what she meant at first. It took several seconds before he approached with a grin. “That’s what you think this is about?”
Eris said nothing. Clearly she did.
“You,” he continued, “are wanted for impersonating a Magister and for wielding a staff without authorization from the Gray Council. No one cares for your antics as a child.”
“What?” she said.
“Yes. And we will find your staff, wherever it is hidden, when we extract your soul.”
She stared at him in dumb silence. “You would make me a Servitor,” she whispered.
Lukon still smiled. “You will be an example forevermore to the pupils of the Tower.”
The blue portal turned golden. He grabbed Eris by the shoulder and she screamed in pain when he touched the burns all across her body. She couldn’t fight back. He dragged her toward the portal.
“No!” Rook shouted again, to another hit to the head. Now his mind ached like it was on a burner, like the fluid around his skull was boiling. His vision blurred.
Eris gave him one last look. It was a look without pride. Without ego. Without any hint of Eris. All Rook saw in her eyes then was desperation and fear. The call for assistance that he could not offer. And then…
She was pushed through the portal.
“The renegade is through. We are sending the Hypaspist next,” Lukon said. Thus one of the Custodians grabbed Pyraz and lifted him to his feet. He complied, but did not move when entreated.
“What will you do to me?” he said.
“That is for the torturers to know,” Lukon said. “I suspect your Essence will be extracted into a soulcharm where it may be safely analyzed. Your body will be incinerated.”
Pyraz smiled. “There are worse fates.”
“Then the men of the Old Kingdom knew reason after all. Now. Go.”
But Pyraz did not go. Instead he closed his eyes. At first Rook thought him to be casting a spell, but of course there was no spell. He only focused. Standing there. A Custodian grabbed him, tugged him forward, but he stayed put. That was when Rook noticed the lines of mana across his armor.
They were blue again. Glowing blue with aethereal luminescence.
His wrists shook. The Custodian hit him with his shield—
The shackles around his wrists shattered.
Pyraz moved like a viper. He grabbed the shield attached to the Custodian’s arm and with all his strength flung him toward the Spire’s edge. Pyraz was very strong, for the soldier flew halfway there, toppling onto his side, dropping his shield, dazed—
And he slid across the frosty Spire top. Unable to stop himself. Right off the edge.
Lukon swore. He made a gesture as if preparing to tap the mana from Pyraz’s armor once again, but Rook jumped to his feet and charged at him, knocking him to the ground. His helmet was off as he managed the portal and so Rook headbutted him, stunning him for a brief second, while he tried to pin him with his legs—but he still wore plate armor. It was a losing battle.
Behind them, Pyraz grappled with the last Custodian. He used Disintegrate on his helmet. The steel flaked away in the freezing breeze. Then, in the same hand, Pyraz conjured a dagger. He thrust it into the Custodian’s throat.
Rook still needed to keep Lukon occupied. He turned himself around and tried to pin him by the neck, pushing him into the ground by the chain of his manacles, asphyxiating him, but the Seeker couldn’t be restrained so easily. He grabbed Rook’s arm and froze it and he fell to his side.
Lukon drew his sword and rose. He hit Rook over the head with its pommel, and just as he turned to face the other fight, Pyraz was upon him.
Pyraz wrenched the sword from Lukon’s hand easily and kicked him in the gut. His cuirass caved in. The Seeker tried to cast another mana burn, but now he was pressed for time, unable to think clearly. A flash of red boils broke out on one of Pyraz’s cheeks but spread no further.
Pyraz grabbed both his wrists and brought their heads close together. Even the Seeker’s enchanted plate crumpled beneath the pressure of Pyraz’s grasp.
“There is a reason the Hypaspists wore powered armors,” Pyraz said.
He shifted his grip up toward Lukon’s neck. Tightening his hands around the Seeker’s windpipe—
But when Rook blinked, Lukon was gone. Pyraz turned and only then he saw, over his shoulder, that the Seeker had used another teleportation spell, short-range, to escape the Hypaspist’s grasp.
“You delay the inevitable!” he shouted. “You do nothing but bring harm to your companions!”
Rook raised and tried to charge him again, but now outnumbered the Seeker’s morale broke. He saw Rook and jumped at once into the portal.
It turned back to blue before their eyes. Through it Rook saw the portal chamber, the lower level of the Spire. No one was on the other side.
And they were alone atop the Spire.
“Damn it!” he yelled. He collapsed to his knees. Tears swelled in his eyes. “How do we—we can change the portal—to make it send us—how?”
Pyraz came around behind Rook’s back. He clutched the shackles in his hands and wrenched them off.
“He used a communication crystal. He spoke to a magician with control of receiver portals elsewhere along the Oldwalls.”
“There must be something we can do…there’s…why didn’t you break free sooner? We could’ve stopped them—could’ve taken them by surprise!”
“My armor was inactive. It took all my concentration to conceal its power while shackled with—those bindings.”
“You were too slow!”
“I could go no faster.”
“Why didn’t they take me first…why not me?”
“They didn’t want you. They wanted the girls. Lukon knew something could go wrong; that’s why he sent them first.” Pyraz frowned. “But he underestimated me.”
Rook stared into the portal. He felt his entire world collapsed around him. It was another moment just like Astera and Jason returning to Arqa village without Aletheia. He felt useless and hopeless. Every force in the world was against him.
“Jason betrayed us,” he said. “He told the Seekers about you. About Aletheia. About the forgestone. It was Jason.”
He buried his face in his palm.
Pyraz let the wind blow his hair. “How far is it to Chionos?”
“A hundred miles. Two hundred. To pass through the mountains…I don’t know.”
“We can retrieve Aletheia from Antigone.”
“But it’s winter. You can’t travel in Chionos in winter. In summer it’s a tundra. In winter…and the Seekers will be behind us every step of the way. From this portal—they’ll come straight back!”
Pyraz looked around the premises. He grabbed their things. Lukon must have wanted their packs for himself, because all were still arrayed before the portal, and within most of their things: Eris’ magical items, including her new arcane focus, Aletheia’s bow, the compass and the locket. Rook put Eris’ jade ward and Spellward gauntlet on, though the latter hardly fit him. Pyraz put on Lukon’s sword. Then he led Rook back down to the chamber below, where it was so much warmer that he nearly collapsed in exhaustion at once.
“The keystone,” Pyraz said. “I remember.” He searched for a moment near the portal, and then he found it—the keystone. The keystone slotted into the pedestal at this chamber’s center. Eris had put it there three years ago. That was what turned this Spire back on.
Pyraz pulled the stone free. A small cube attached to a necklace. The moment he did all the mana circuitry along the walls went dark. The portal disappeared. The Spire shut off.
He disintegrated it in his grasp.
“There,” he said. “They may be able to turn it back on, but it will take time.”
The shock was fading. The gravity of the situation setting in. Rook realized slowly that there was still hope. He climbed back to his feet.
Pyraz continued, “The Magisters have no phylactery for me. That makes us harder to track.”
“And we know where Aletheia is,” Rook said. “Snaiga. Antigone’s tower. Lukon said it. But…” He thought back to what the Seeker told them. “What does it mean? To become a Servitor?”
“…I don’t know,” Pyraz said. “Perhaps some ritual humiliation. A way to dismember a magician. He said they would make an example of her.”
Now Rook’s skin burned. He grabbed at his sword, but it was missing—left out in the snow somewhere. “Then we have no time to waste.”