The Passage Opens
He had never imagined that a key to the ruins would be sitting inside a magic safe. Not even in his dreams.
A gold key lay in his hand.
Hope surged through Chris, and he murmured to himself. Just as Motaro opened a way to live back in the ruins, this gold key will open one now.
The lightning had burst so violently that it scrambled their sight, and none of them properly saw the gold key leap from the safe. Only after it was already closed in Chris's fist did they lay eyes on it.
"A key!" Julien cried.
Chris locked both hands around it. "Come any closer and I'll snap it."
Julien, on the point of launching himself off the deck, jerked to a halt. Chris eased backward, opening the distance a little at a time.
"Don't you move either!" Shay shouted, desperate.
Chris retreated no more than thirty paces or so.
"Mage Shay. You haven't as little time left as Julien, but there isn't much of it, is there?"
Shay nodded. "Give it to me."
Chris didn't answer him. He looked to Daryl instead. "Whoever opens the ruins with this key and steps inside ought to secure at least two Motaro. If two weren't guaranteed, Brian and Donna would never have gone in together, hand in hand and all smiles."
Daryl nodded.
"Daryl—if you take two of them—"
Chris set the key against his forehead.
"—you'll be an Ultimate Mage."
"Don't let that smooth tongue of his lead you," Perez said.
The warning did nothing. The pursuers wavered hard, and a mutinous unease prowled the deck.
"Tower Master Hal," Chris said. "Your lifespan is running out as well, isn't it?"
Tower Master Hal gave no answer. He only stared at the gold key in Chris's hand, eyes burning with hunger.
Perez warned them again. "Don't forget he already had you with that tongue of his in the ruins. Fall for it once, and a man can excuse it. Fall for it twice, and he can't. You'll be called fools."
Chris snorted. "I had you? Had you how? Mage Daryl, tell them. Did I break my word? The Motaro I gave you made you a seven-ring mage."
"Daryl's the only one who came out ahead," Shay said. "The rest of us walked away with nothing."
Chris held the key out where they could all see it. "There was only one Motaro then. Now there's a key. Two for the first to enter. One more, if you follow straight in after them. Three, at the very least, guaranteed."
"Don't fall for the smooth talk," Perez warned yet again.
"Richard bound a ring by his own power and became a seven-ring mage. Daryl did it on the Motaro I handed her. And you look precisely as you did before. How is it, watching your colleagues pull ahead? Is the jealousy boiling in your gut?"
Chris pressed a finger against the dank, ugly feeling festering in the man.
"I can't imagine it feels pleasant, being left behind all alone."
Perez flinched. "Give me the key."
Even Perez, unyielding from the first moment to the last, had softened.
Chris turned his eyes to Stan. "All those years you lurked in the shadow of Mick Magic Tower, scheming after the key, and you never laid hands on a single Motaro. How does it feel, pouring all that time down a hole?"
Stan's temper flared. "Shut up!"
"Shall I give it to you?"
Stan bit his lip.
"Shall I give you the key?"
Stan said nothing.
"Enough of the fanfare," Hal said. "Say what you want."
Chris let out a long breath. "In a spot like this, what do you imagine I want?"
"Give the key to me," Julien said, "and I'll guarantee your safety."
"Do that and you're a dead man," Shay warned.
"Give it to me," Daryl said.
"And why should I?"
"I'm a seven-ring mage. I'm the strongest one here. I'm the only one who can protect you."
"You mean to take all of us on by yourself?" Stan said. "Don't be absurd."
"Who said I'd be alone? Our tower has two more Ring-Binding mages besides me."
Daryl looked at Perez and went on. "The two of us go in first."
Perez nodded at once. "Let's."
Tower Master Hal's voice turned pleading. "Please, let me join you."
"Only two can claim the benefit of entering first. Anyone who comes after is dropped somewhere else. Even so, they'll stand ahead of those who arrive later, so take William and follow right behind us."
"No!" Julien said.
"As many as three can claim the benefit of entering second," Daryl said. "I'll give you the open seat."
Shay laughed at her. "You and Perez will already be inside. How do you mean to guarantee anything after that? You expect us to stand here and watch while Hal, William, and Julien walk in second?"
The greatest power on that deck belonged to Mick Magic Tower, which had fielded three Ring-Binding mages. But if Daryl and Perez entered the ruins ahead of the rest, Mick would be pressed back by an alliance of Hermann Magic Tower and Rafunian Magic Tower.
Hal and William shifted around behind Daryl and Perez. Hal sent her a thread of Thought Language.
Daryl shook her head. Wipe them out here, and Mick Magic Tower would be isolated in the kingdom.
"Let's negotiate a little longer," she said.
While they talked, Chris was quietly widening the gap, a little at a time. They tracked him even as they spoke. A distance like that could be closed in a breath, so they simply didn't treat it as a problem.
Then the gap stretched to something like two hundred paces, and Perez called a halt.
"Move any farther and I don't care about the key. I'll attack, and I'll kill you."
Chris stopped. He bit his lip and turned it over. Hand them the key, and will they let me live? The more he thought, the less he believed it. The instant the key changed hands, they would shed every courtesy and kill him.
He tightened his grip. Throw it. A grand master's strength, magic stacked on top of it, and hurl the thing far. All of them would go flying after the key. And in that space—can I run?
He looked around. Open sea, horizon to horizon. Can anyone escape from a place like this? Difficult. His flight magic wasn't even particularly good. What do I do? What now?
In the ruins he had held both Motaro and a key. He could throw his enemies off with the Motaro and slip out through the key. Now there was only the one. Worse than then. Wait. Is it actually worse?
The key in his hand was not a Silver Key, made to open a way out. It was a Gold Key, made to open a way in. A Gold Key is worth far more than a Silver Key. The instant he set the two side by side, a way out spread open in front of him. He sent his will into the key.
The key flung out a fierce light, and a passage tore open.
Who would take the key. Which two would be first through. How to choose the ones who entered second. The pursuers were still worrying at questions of that sort when the light startled them, and they looked.
Julien screamed, voice cracking with rage. "That bastard opened the passage!"
Daryl didn't waste breath on a shout. She answered with her body. Every scrap of mana she could call, she poured into flight and hurled herself at the passage, and the other mages launched after her, none of them willing to be last.
They meant to move the most valuable treasure in the world. A very long way—and across a border, at that.
How?
The first thought was to commission a trading house of high repute. It was discarded almost at once. There were two problems.
Security, first. They could hide what the treasure was. They could not hide the fact that a treasure was being moved. However stout the guard, word would leak from somewhere.
Force, second. Even a trading house counted among the three strongest in the nation possessed no strength that could stop a magic tower's mages.
With that first choice dead, the next rose quickly: mobilize the kingdom's knight order. It died just as fast. Knights visiting a foreign country would draw eyes whether they wished it or not. Ask a nation that had kept a careful distance until now why it was suddenly dispatching its knights, and there would be no answer worth giving.
They might also set the treasure in the hands of some utterly ordinary person, someone no one would look at twice, and send that person on. The notion was examined in earnest for a while, and then it too was set aside. Too many variables. This world was no gentle place for an ordinary man to travel. He might be beaten to death by back-alley thugs before he ever reached the end of the road.
There was also the option of commissioning a magic tower. Through a tower's magic circles the thing could be moved swiftly and in comfort, but the idea never even reached the table. The moment the tower confirmed the cargo, it would take the cargo. Safer to leave a fish with a cat.
After a long argument, they settled on choosing a single knight and sending the treasure by his own hand. That knight could not be a master. A master's travels drew far too much notice.
A knight of real skill, whose skill had not yet become rumor, so the world paid him no mind. A knight of trustworthy character, high-minded and clean. After the most careful review they chose him—and then the man who was to receive the treasure sent word.
He would come and collect it himself. There was no need to transport anything. Only then did the treasure's owner grasp that the other party might simply come and take it in person. Fixation on moving the thing safely had narrowed every eye in the room.
They arranged a few tricks so the visitor could arrive unharmed. The knight they had already chosen was sent abroad to hire a trading house. The offer was a fortune beyond counting, in exchange for moving one sealed safe, and the Senpo Trading Company, squeezed hard by money trouble, agonized and at last agreed. Every tumult Chris had been dragged into began exactly there.
While the Senpo Trading Company was suffering for it, a company gathered in the innermost heart of Grant Kingdom: King Alfred Grant, Knight Commander Yan, Vice-Commander Michael, Princess Bianca, and the court mage Nuba. One foreigner stood among them. Master Carlos, dispatched by the Empire.
King Alfred held a clear glass bottle, and Motaro gleamed inside it. The treasure they had meant to move was Motaro itself.
What the Senpo Trading Company was hauling now was worth a fair sum, but set beside Motaro it was a trifle. Not a thing mages would come running to seize.
"A promise must be kept." The king's voice was hard.
Carlos smiled. "I'll place it in your hands at once. Don't trouble yourself."
Yan surged forward on the words. "Truly?"
"Yes."
Yan forced the excitement back down. "It's true that Motaro is a precious thing. Whether it's precious enough to buy the secret of becoming a Grand Master, I'm less sure. However I turn it over, the Empire seems to be the one taking the loss. Why propose a trade like this?"
Carlos answered with a question of his own.
"You mean…?"
"If we're to fight the towers, the number of Grand Masters has to grow. Our Empire wants that number higher, even if only by one."
"And if there are more Grand Masters," Michael said, "can we actually win?"
"We don't need to overwhelm them. We don't even need to win. Comparable skill would be enough… no. Even if we're the ones being pushed, so long as we can hold out for a while, that will do. Then, at the least, we can negotiate. We can step out from under orders given by force."
He bit his lip, then went on. "That is what I hope for."
The king nodded. "If we have the power to land a blow even while we're weak, the towers won't be able to act as they please."
Carlos drew himself up, voice tight with conviction. "Exactly."
"Knowing the road to Grand Master won't turn every one of us into a Grand Master, will it?" Yan said.
The royal houses of every nation already possessed training methods that could raise a knight as far as master. Even so, not every knight became one. Masters were a mere handful.
Would the Grand Master method not be the same?
That was what worried Yan.