For the Empire
A tremor rose under his feet as he crossed the wasteland. Chris sprang back. It might be the colossal insect he had faced in the Horace ruins, coming up through the ground. He watched, every muscle tight—and a creature shaped like a mole thrust its head out of the earth.
The tension broke. A short laugh escaped him.
"You shook the ground? Not bad, for something so small."
The mole-like thing studied him with eyes of solid black.
"Some kind of mole variant?"
For a moment he half expected an answer. The creature's lips never parted. Chris rapped his own skull for entertaining the thought.
"Moles don't talk."
After ogres and trolls, he had actually wondered. He found himself ridiculous.
"Still. Good to meet you."
Set the trolls aside, and it was the first animal he had found in the Sitta Ruins.
"Want some water?"
He condensed moisture into a droplet and floated it to the creature's lips. The mole-like thing opened its mouth and drank.
"Look at you eat."
He kept forming droplets and feeding them over. When the thirtieth drew near, the creature turned its head away.
The water must have pleased it. The mole hauled itself out of the ground and came to him, and Chris gathered it up against his chest.
"Want to come with me?"
It seemed to nod.
"You understand me?"
The mole yawned. Maybe it understood. Maybe it didn't.
"Ogres and trolls become mages in a place like this. A clever mole isn't so strange."
Lightning had reduced his shirt to a rag. He stripped it off, fashioned it into a pouch, tucked the mole inside, and hung the pouch from his belt, fixed in place.
With the mole for a companion, he wandered the ruins. No other living thing appeared, and the wasteland would not end.
Four months of it bored him at last, and he slipped into a ruined village. A promise was a promise, so he searched the place from one end to the other. No Motaro turned up.
He claimed the least-collapsed house for a shelter, lay back with an arm beneath his head, and looked at the sky. The stars seemed faint. Perhaps it was only his mood. He stroked the mole sitting on his chest.
"Were you living alone? You must have been lonely."
He split a meal-substitute tablet with the mole and let sleep take him.
In the gray before dawn, something brushed past his body. Chris's eyes snapped open and he surged to his feet—and the mole asleep on his chest tumbled off. It rolled across the floor. He had no time to see to it.
Mental Force sweeps the body.
Daryl's doing?
If it was, so much the better. If some other mage had sent it, running was the wiser course. He snatched up the mole, stuffed it into the pouch at his belt, and sent his own Willpower toward the place he judged to be the source.
Some fifteen presences caught on the sweep. Five of them burned far brighter than the rest.
Five
Rotten luck. He had walked into the trackers. Meet them head-on, and he was finished. Even so, he had something to fall back on, and he did not panic.
He drew out the Silver Key Daryl had given him and murmured.
"Daryl, I've done what I could."
By any fair measure, he had kept his word.
He sent Thought Language into the Silver Key, set it against the empty air, and turned.
"...!"
A passage ought to have opened. Nothing changed.
Panic scrambled him for a heartbeat. Then he remembered he had no time for it, and he flung himself the other way—away from the trackers.
Willpower was a double-edged sword. Just as theirs had told him they were there, the Willpower he had sent back had told them he was here.
They'll be coming hard.
His legs worked like a racehorse's and shot him forward. Wind raised by magic shoved at his back and piled the speed higher. He worked the Silver Key as he ran. Tried to, at least. It would not take. At last he even poured mana into it. Still no response.
Damn it. Broken at the one moment that matters.
The frustration was too much to bear. He hurled the key away.
Ssht. Ssht. Ssht. Willpower grazed him again and again. The Ring Binding mages were sending it out to fix the line of his flight.
Flight magic is forbidden in the ruins. Their spells outclass mine, but if it's only running, I'm faster. I can get away.
He forced the anxiety down. He ran with an eye on his back—and a red line came surging in from ahead. Chris leapt, cleared it, and only then looked down. The red line was aura.
He had seen a Master's sword spew aura more than once, so aura itself was nothing new. Aura tearing free of the blade and flying on its own—that he had never faced.
Could it be?
Still aloft, he watched the knights closing. Three of them, fully armored, advanced at a quick march in a triangular formation. The distance collapsed.
"Grand Masters?"
No answer.
What were their names again?
They were famous across the whole continent. The names came back soon enough. Milcent, Fielder, and Dwight.
He picked one.
"Milcent?"
Still no answer, but a finger twitched. Milcent, then.
"Who fired the aura?"
They seemed determined to play mute. Silence, again. Chris settled to the ground and offered a genteel rebuke.
"Attacking without a word is discourteous."
They halted some twenty paces off. The lead knight touched a point near his ear, and the helm slid down with a metallic clatter, baring a man past the middle of his years, gray at the temples. Chris put up a thumb.
"Sir Milcent. That's a fine helm."
Dreadful mages were hunting him from behind. He put on the most amiable face he could manage and spoke gently.
"I don't want to fight."
Milcent said,
"Did you get the Motaro?"
Chris tossed his spatial pouch at once. The knight caught it and reached inside. A dozen or so pills, and nothing else. Milcent frowned.
"There's nothing here."
Chris nodded.
"Now that you know there's nothing, let me go."
"What's in the pouch on your belt?"
Chris threw that one too, mole and all. The knight caught it and flinched. The mole had spilled out.
"A mole?"
It huddled at the knight's feet.
"I'm raising it as a pet. I'm in a bit of a hurry—may I go?"
Chris smiled and beckoned.
"Come here, mole. Let's go home with Daddy."
The Ring Binding mages were closing at a terrifying speed. A little more delay, and escape would be gone.
Chris's heart hammered. The knight was in no hurry at all.
"Awfully obedient, for a mage."
"I don't want to fight a Grand Master. The two behind you—Grand Masters as well?"
He tried the names.
"Fielder. Dwight."
Their reactions said he had it right.
Rotten luck today.
He held out empty hands.
"As you can see, I'm stripped clean. Catch me and you won't gain a thing."
He turned side-on, meaning to slip past.
"Let's not waste our strength."
The knight turned his sword and barred the way.
"You dodged my aura bolt. That makes you a mage of the Ring Binding realm—and yet you've been groveling the whole time. Suspicious."
Chris swore.
"Fuck."
The knight's eyebrows writhed like worms.
"There it is. That filthy temper mages are known for, at last."
"It wasn't meant for you."
"Then for whom—"
He broke off mid-question. He had felt the mages coming.
So the curse was for them.
Chris turned, offering the knight his back. At the sight, Milcent's eyebrows twitched again. To turn your back on a knight was to dismiss him outright.
"Large liver on you."
"It used to be small. It grew with age."
"Fatty liver?"
"No. If your liver doesn't get bigger, you're too scared to stay alive. So I stretched my nerve on purpose."
"Scared of what?"
Chris pointed ahead.
"With bastards like that running wild to catch me and kill me, how could I not be? I can't even sleep at night."
Shhk. Shhk. Shhk. The Ring Binding mages, who had been closing like arrows, came to a halt one by one. Stan moved to attack at once. Perez stopped him.
"Hand over the Motaro, and I will let you live."
Chris pointed at the knight holding the spatial pouch.
"Those three are Grand Masters."
Then he stripped off his pants and spread both arms wide. The shirt was already gone, sacrificed to the mole's pouch, so Chris stood in nothing but his underwear—proof, offered to every eye present, that he had nothing left to hide.
Perez glared at the knight.
"Bring it."
No sense starting a feud with Ring Binding mages over a single spatial pouch. The knight tossed it over without protest.
Before Perez could catch it, Julien shot forward, snatched the pouch, and bolted.
"Stop right there!"
Perez roared and gave chase. Then Julien, mid-flight, stopped dead and yanked his hand back out of the pouch. Meal tablets spilled from his fingers.
"Shit."
Julien cursed and flung the pouch away. Perez caught it, looked inside, and swore in his turn.
"Goddamn it."
Stan spoke.
"Did he make off with the Motaro?"
The knight answered.
"It's exactly as I received it."
Shay glared at Chris.
"Daryl?"
"We parted on the way."
"Find it?"
Subject and object both dropped. Chris understood anyway, and answered.
"Yes."
Given the circumstances, the question could only be about the Motaro.
"How many?"
"One."
"And that...?"
"Daryl took it, of course."
While they spoke, the Seed Cultivation mages who had lagged behind arrived. Ten of them.
"Three fewer, I see?"
"We left a few outside the passage, so the riffraff couldn't get in."
At nearly the same moment, the Grand Masters' companions arrived as well. As if on cue, they numbered exactly ten. From the way they moved, they were Masters. Chris weighed the two sides.
The mages had five at Ring Binding and ten at Seed Cultivation. The knights had three Grand Masters and ten Masters.
The knights are the weaker side.
If I throw in with them, does it come out roughly even?
Even so, the mages looked the stronger—not so much, though, that the other side would be rolled under. With luck, the knights might even win.
How do I set the two of them at each other's throats?
The lead knight seemed to have judged his own side the lesser. He meant to pull out.
"Well..."
The instant the knight's lips parted, Chris knew what was coming.
We'll be taking our leave. That would be it.
He could not let Milcent finish. He lunged at Stan and shouted.
Stan caught the sense of that out-of-nowhere cry at once. The men at the bastard's back were Grand Masters—only three of them on the entire continent. Two served the Empire. The third belonged to the Ril Duchy, which kept good terms with the Empire. And they had met here, in the ruins. Stan did not believe that could be chance.
The bastard is an imperial spy.
Seen that way, every question answered itself. No information on him anywhere, as if he had dropped out of an empty sky—that made sense. Ring Binding, and yet no magic tower to his name—that made sense too. The Empire had the strength to raise a mage of that caliber.
"The Empire dares rebel against the magic towers!"
Stan roared it, and hurled lightning at Chris.