The Circle Beneath the Towers
The next day, Scott called everyone together.
"We're moving camp."
Gavin lit up.
"Captain, does that mean we're finally heading for the ruins?"
"More or less."
That was all it took. The camp buzzed as they packed, already talking over the treasure they were certain they would find.
Chris wasn't convinced.
Either we are or we aren't. What is 'more or less' supposed to mean?
He was still turning it over when Jerome called across to him.
"You've got no bags, so there's nothing for you to sort. Quit standing there like a post and come help."
With nothing else to do, Chris did as he was told and helped Jerome and Xavier strike the tent.
"How long have you two been out here?"
"About half a month."
"You really think we'll find treasure?"
"We will."
Jerome said it flat, then took it back.
"We're hoping we will. What about you?"
"Me? I'm not expecting much."
"Then why'd you come?"
"Didn't have another way."
"Another way? What's that supposed to mean?"
"I want to learn magic, and I don't have a way to do it. If I can get even one spellbook out of those ruins, I'll be a happy man."
"Then you and I are after the same thing."
Chris's eyes narrowed.
"A spellbook? You're a traditional mage— no. An orthodox mage. I heard the one who built these ruins was a modern mage."
Jerome bristled.
"Is there a law that says an orthodox mage can't learn modern magic?"
"No. But I heard the two sides don't get along."
Jerome had nothing to say to that.
"You want to learn modern magic, don't you?"
Jerome's face darkened.
"Thought so. Even orthodox mages want modern magic."
Jerome objected, a beat too late.
"No. I only want it for reference."
"Reference. So you can make orthodox magic as fine as modern magic?"
"Well. Something like that."
Chris didn't believe a word of it.
He envies modern magic. That's all this is.
Xavier muttered.
"He wants to live a long time."
"What was that?"
"Modern mages live forever, don't they? The ones with real attainment last a thousand years, from what I've heard. An orthodox mage has a hard time getting past a hundred. Even one at the very top doesn't see a hundred and fifty."
"Their lives are that short?"
"Yeah."
"Now I understand why traditional mages hate modern mages."
They had all learned magic, and yet one man lived a thousand years while another lived a hundred. That was past envy. That was the sort of gap that turned into rage.
"You're no different. You're handing Jerome an expensive mana stone just to learn magic, and it's the years you're buying."
"No. I learn it because I like magic."
"Don't make me laugh. This bastard's lying to my face."
"So you signed on because you want a spellbook too?"
Xavier rapped his crossbow with a knuckle.
"What's a mercenary who shoots bolts going to do with a spellbook? I want a magic tool. One decent piece, and I turn my life around."
"Turn your life around?"
"Sell the tool. Buy a manor."
Everyone had a dream.
Two hours later the camp followed Scott up into the mountains. Chris fell in among the mercenaries and, as they walked, asked what they were hoping for. Magic tools came up most often, then gold coin and other precious metal, then spellbooks, then herbs. One man gave an odd answer. He wanted a spirit beast's egg, so he could raise whatever hatched from it.
Chris tipped his head.
People want that, too?
They put two mountains behind them, and the sun went down. They made a rough camp, slept the night, and crossed four more the next day. Three days of that, and at last they reached the place.
"This is it!"
"The ruins!"
The mercenaries broke into a run. There were so many towers that Chris found himself wondering who would raise this many of them in country so deep—though, regrettably, half had already fallen in.
They charged the towers and started tearing through the insides. Xavier and Jerome were caught up in the same frenzy and threw themselves after the rest, but Chris stayed where he was. Scott hadn't moved.
Scott looked him over, then came across.
"Why are you just standing there?"
To the camp at large, Scott was the man in charge, and in any public setting he didn't waste courtesy on them.
"I'm the cautious sort."
Time passed, and the men who had rushed the towers began to come back out empty-handed, one and then another. They gathered around Scott and let the complaints loose.
"There's nothing in there."
"Are you sure this is even the ruins?"
Scott waited until every last one of them was back, then pointed at the ground.
"Dig there."
A great rock sat where he pointed, too big for even the strongest top-rank mercenary to lift alone. Xavier looked at Chris.
"Sid. Help me shove it."
Scott shut that down.
"Don't shove it. Lift it and carry it clear."
"You want us to pick that thing up? Why?"
Scott crouched and brushed the soil off the ground. Strange lines came up underneath.
"A magic circle!"
Jerome had shouted it, startled.
"Right. A magic circle. It runs under this whole stretch of ground. Shove that rock and you'll wreck it."
"What kind of circle is it?"
"A teleportation circle. It leads to the ruins."
The whole company stirred. Their excitement only sharpened Chris's disappointment. From the way Agent No. 1 had talked and acted, he had thought the ruins themselves were found. What had actually been found was nothing but a circle that led to them.
Xavier shouted, already gone with greed.
"Move it!"
It burned in his eyes. Six of them, Chris included, got their shoulders to the rock and hauled it clear of the ground where the towers stood. He could have shifted it alone. He made a show of strain instead, right down to the sweat beading on his brow.
Scott knew him as the mage Cyril. Everyone else knew him as the mercenary Sid. The strength of a Grand Master was not something he could show.
Scott waited until the men who had dumped the rock came back to him, then scratched lines in the dirt.
"The towers sit like this."
Chris looked from the sketch to the ground around them. The towers had been raised in a ring, enclosing the circle.
"Everything inside this ring has to come out."
Gavin sighed.
"It's enormous, though."
It looked wide to Chris as well. Rocks were lodged all through it, with the rubble of the fallen towers on top of that. Clearing the lot would mean working their bodies hard.
Grumbling started on every side. Clear it, can't clear it—before long, people were arguing.
Scott said it cold.
"How many of us are there? A hundred, not counting me."
Xavier stood with his weight cocked on one hip.
"And?"
"You've cleaned a room before."
"Sure."
"Split the ground inside this circle into a hundred pieces. None of them comes out much bigger than the room you used to live in."
Chris divided the area into a hundred by eye and ran the size. About four times the dormitory room he had once lived in. Clear it the way you cleaned a room, the way Scott said, and it wouldn't take long at all.
He's good at this.
The mercenaries who had been complaining turned the notion over and landed on the same conclusion: this much, they could clear. They rolled their sleeves and got to it.
Watching them work, Chris decided they were not ordinary men. Look closer, and most of them seemed to have reached Spirit Awakening, or a realm past it. Even Gavin, the youngest of them, could feel mana.
That's high-rank mercenary work.
A few looked as if they had climbed all the way to the top rank.
How did he gather men like these?
The admiration nearly slipped out of him.
It took two days to clear every object covering the circle. The mercenaries clapped and whooped. A few kneaded at backs the labor had wrung out.
Chris climbed a tower that was still standing and looked down. Lines ran across the circle in a dense crosshatch, with all manner of patterns cut in between them, and he couldn't help admiring the work. He also couldn't help doubting it would ever function. Too many stretches were broken, gouged, simply gone. The worst of it was the patch where a boulder the size of a house had been sitting.
Can it even be repaired? He didn't think so. Is there anyone among us who actually knows magic circles?
Scott was nowhere near that level, and the other mages were all of a kind. Jerome's kind.
"This isn't going to work."
That was when he felt people. Chris turned the other way and woke his senses sharp. Footsteps, and not a few of them. A hundred, easily.
What now?
He drew back into the tower and hid himself.
A little later a band of uninvited guests stepped onto the circle and came face to face with Chris's group. Scott lunged out in front and stopped the men who had already drawn steel.
"Don't get your guard up. They're with us."
The objections came from every side.
"With us? What are you talking about?"
"What are we supposed to do if you keep calling people in?"
"You don't spring this on us without a word."
"I am not splitting treasure with them."
The newcomers, it seemed, hadn't known the first group was here either.
"Same goes for us."
"Look at these bastards. Bad luck written all over them. Let's have a go."
A commander came out on that side as well and talked his people down. The air had gone vicious, and then it eased. Each side had taken the measure of the other and found nothing soft. A real fight would leave half of them dead, at the least.
Scott felt the mood settle and spoke into it.
"You saw the damage while you were cleaning, didn't you? We can't repair this circle on our own. We need help."
Jerome wasn't having it.
"Those men don't look like they've got that kind of ability."
"More are coming."
"What?"
It wasn't only Scott's camp that reared back. The newcomers did too.
"You're bringing in still more people?"
Scott set about persuading them.
"The Horace Ruins are not ordinary ruins. They're nothing like the dungeons you've been crawling through."
He pointed at the sky and went on.
Chris heard mercenaries swallow.
"How long are you going to drift from battlefield to battlefield with your life on a blade?"
Scott's gaze moved over the mages.
"How long are you going to scrape mana stones together by keeping nobles sweet? Ten years of misery on some estate, just to afford a single spellbook? One score here, and all of that is finished."
For a moment even Chris, who knew exactly what Scott was, felt the hook catch.
I never thought the guileless Scott had this in him.
He was impressed, and his caution rose in equal measure.
I need to be careful.
Scott made it official.
"From here on, we're comrades. Let's put the fallen towers in order."
A few mercenaries grumbled, still sour.
"We already cleaned the whole circle, and now you want the towers cleared too?"
Gavin piled on.
"They're riding for free."
The newcomers' commander answered.
"We'll clear the towers."
The standoff ended. The mixing began.
Chris studied the men who had come in late.
Every one of them can feel mana.
That night Scott gathered them and announced that some three hundred more would be joining. Plenty of people objected. Scott talked them down with that particular gift of his for words.
They had come this far and eaten this much hardship. None of them could turn around empty-handed. They grumbled, and they accepted it.
Three bands of a hundred arrived, each about a day behind the last. They folded into Scott's camp in turn and took their share of the work. The tidying spread past the towers, out into the ground beyond.
After that, the real ones came.
Five mages moved like ghosts. Their hoods were drawn so low that their faces could not properly be seen.
Men who had complained and thrown their weight around every time a new group arrived did not even dare think of protesting to these five.
Chris's spine picked up the danger and sang with it. Talk back, and he had the distinct sense he would be taken apart where he stood.
Scott bent his head, all courtesy.
"You've arrived."
They didn't so much as answer. Each of the five chose a tower and vanished into it. The camp let its breath out, hands to chests, and the murmuring started. Who were they? Who? Guesses chased one another.
Jerome went straight to Scott.
"Who are they?"
Scott cut him off, cold.
"Don't try to find out."
He added it in a voice that crawled.
Chris wanted to know, too. He couldn't walk over and ask. The answer he would get was obvious enough. You already know. Why are you asking?
The ones who run the spy network.
The leadership behind it all had finally shown its face, and from that Chris understood that the ruins truly mattered.
Is Agent No. 1 one of those five?
The hoods were pulled too low for a proper look at their faces. Two of them had similar builds, but the lines of the jaw were subtly off.
Good odds he's among them...
Chris nearly spoke to them through the mask. He held it back.