Chapter Seven

Are You With Us?

Part One

~*~

 

 

He was cloaked in the dark garb of a mercenary, his face wrapped in a mask that left only his eyes visible, and he held an axe in one hand.

Ice spread through Kazia's chest and settled over her shoulders as she readied her dagger, but as he reached her the mercenary was hit by an apple-sized orb of energy that sent him flying sideways.

She glanced aside to see Kelvaran standing with one hand outstretched.

“Well done,” she said, and ran after the mercenary to where he now lay on the ground.

The man flipped himself back up onto his feet, but Kazia kicked his legs out from under him, sending him sprawling again. Mustering a bit of ethereal energy in her fingers, she used it to drive her dagger through the mercenary's right hand and well into the ground, nailing him down.

He screamed and kicked at her, but she danced back out of his reach.

“Are there more here?” she asked him.

He ignored her and lay gingerly trying his hand against her dagger, but the steel and the bit of magic stood strong.

She leaned down to pull his face covering off and he tried to hook his free arm around her. She twisted sideways and came upright again with one foot on his left wrist and the other on his left knee.

A sickening pop came from the knee under her foot and the man screamed again.

“Are there more here!?” she shouted.

Kelvaran approached, leaned over the mercenary, and tapped his forehead with a tiny spark of energy.

“Truth,” Kelvaran commanded.

Kazia watched the man's face contort as the spell set in.

He was clearly determined to resist, but few had the mental strength to withstand this kind of magic aside from very experienced Alchemists. Fear welled from the man as the spell wormed its way into his mind.

Kazia leaned forward, her boots grinding into both joints under them.

She needed him to speak quickly. The Seamist she had taken that morning was fast wearing away now. Every pain she visited upon him was reflected back to her, and she didn't know how much more of it she could take.

To make matters worse, Kelvaran now regarded her with a disturbed revulsion, tinged with vindication in his assessment of her.

“Are there more here?” she asked quietly, a menace in her voice.

“Not here...” the mercenary wheezed. “The big house...”

~~~*~~~

“Let's go!” Kazia shouted.

Momentarily frozen, Kelvaran watched her run back toward the carriage, pausing to scoop her skirt off the ground as she went. He gave a last glance to the man on the ground, writhing in pain and fear.

Amelys had described this woman to him as a genius with Alchemical Artifacts, but what he had just witnessed – Amelys had said nothing of that sort. His suspicions growing by the minute, he ran after her.

Inside the carriage, Neiphi and Brandra were all frantic, panicked questions, but he ignored them all, and Kazia did the same.

Amelys tried to calm them as the carriage pulled away, turning toward the main house. Kelvaran sent a bit of energy into a console in the back compartment – an Artifact attached down into the wheels to augment the carriage's speed.

Kazia leaned back in her seat, her breath heavy and erratic.

“Kazia,” Amelys said quietly. “Are you with us?”

Kelvaran gave Amelys a quizzical glance, but she shook her head to warn him off.

Kazia opened her eyes.

“I am,” she said, but her tone was somewhat flat and distant.

“Attend your breathing,” Amelys said calmly. “The flock flies-”

“No,” Kazia said sharply, casting a hard gaze to Amelys. “When it's over. If I need it.”

“Attend your breathing, anyway.”

Amelys threw a quick glance at Kelvaran and he stared back at her, his eyes narrowed. He recognized Amelys' words as one of the techniques she used to bring someone out of the hypnosis of deep Contemplation.

Kazia seemed to ignore her as she fished in her skirt pocket, withdrawing a glass vial from which she squeezed three drops of liquid under her tongue. She lay back again, eyes closed and the bottle still open in her hand, her breath becoming more controlled now. She then took another drop from the vial and closed it.

“That's been quite a bit today,” Amelys said, looking at the vial.

“It's turning into that sort of day,” Kazia answered.

“Well, mind your stomach.”

“If it hasn't been carved out by the end of this,” Kazia said dryly.

A sound of disgust erupted from Neiphi.

“Well,” Brandra said, “you'd know if Lady Kazia developed a sense of humor it would be a morbid one.”

No one was laughing, though.

A thunderous sound of boots and clanging metal sounded on the road converging with theirs, the soldiers jogging in formation with the village fire brigade coming behind them.

Kelvaran put his head out of the hatch and shouted to the driver to stop a moment. When the carriage slowed, he called out to the soldiers, and their Commander approached. Kelvaran spoke with him through the window.

“There is a man there at the cottages... detained. Please take him into custody. And would two of your men come with us? More of the brigands are at the Gewalt house. We'll need a guard at the carriage when we arrive there.”

The Commander nodded curtly and barked the order to his men and two of them jumped up onto the carriage's sideboards. When they were situated, one knocked the carriage twice and they were off again.

~~~*~~~

The carriage was stopped some distance from the house, and Kazia and Kelvaran walked the remainder, leaving Amelys, Brandra, and Neiphi in the care of the two soldiers and the driver.

They approached the house cautiously, taking cover behind shrubs and low landscaping walls as they came closer. All seemed peaceful. They could see no one about the grounds. There was no sign of any destruction as there had been at the cottages.

“Do you think they're inside?” Kelvaran asked.

“Likely,” Kazia answered, “unless that mercenary lied.”

“Hard to tell if he answered my spell or your savagery,” he said, the disgust evident in his voice as well as his mood.

Kazia sucked in her breath. She knew he was right.

“These people are important to me,” she said quietly. “They are family.”

“Yes, I know how your family operates,” he said scornfully.

Before Kazia could form a rejoinder, a sound came from behind them.

The soldiers had arrived, creeping slowly toward the house and fanning out to surround the yard. The Commander caught their eyes and signaled in question. Kelvaran returned an indication of no information. The Commander twirled two fingers in the air, then pointed them at the house. The soldiers began to move in slowly.

Kazia left her hiding place and made for the front door as quietly as she could. She tried the doorknob – locked – then turned and motioned for everyone to wait.

She knelt and placed a hand over the lock, mentally searching out the tiny levers and grooves in the mechanism. When she found the path, she summoned just a tiny amount of ethereal energy and used it to push the bolt along the channels until she heard it recede with a click.

She nodded to the Commander, then stepped aside.

The nearest soldier came forward, tentatively opened the door, and then all of the soldiers flooded into the house, their boots thundering on the wood floor of the hallway.

Kazia began to follow them in, but Kelvaran gripped her shoulder, pulling her back.

“Let them handle it,” he said. “We'll keep watch here.”

“And how are you in command now?” she asked hotly.

Before he could answer, two mercenaries came around the corner of the house, stopping cold when they saw Kazia and Kelvaran at the door. They glanced at each other as if they couldn't believe their luck, then barreled ahead, staring straight at Kazia.

Kelvaran ran along the drive to meet them, firing orbs of energy from his hands, but one of the men held a small lead shield bearing an Alchemical insignia which deflected Kelvaran's attack. As he drew nearer the men, Kelvaran produced a long dagger from within his coat.

Kazia had left hers in the mercenary's hand back at the cottage. She moved to look inside the doorway for anything that could be used as a weapon, but at that moment the arms of a giant of a man wrapped around her from behind, one around her arms and another clapping a hand over her mouth, gripping her face tightly enough that the man could easily snap her neck if he had a mind to.

She kicked hard at the door, if all she could do was to make a noise.

Kelvaran turned his head at the sound, then made a sharp turn toward a small service door in the side of the house. Light erupted from his hand, he slammed his palm into the door - and he disappeared.

As Kazia's captor lifted her from the ground and began to descend the front steps to the drive, Kelvaran appeared from nowhere right before them.

At his sudden appearance, Kazia felt the arms holding her loosen just a bit.

One of the mercenaries, still running toward them, drew a pistol from his hip and took aim at Kelvaran.

Kazia felt around behind her and found a knife at her captor's belt. She drew it, and with a flick of her wrist sent it hurtling toward the gunman just as he fired.

As the shot sounded, though, the largest orb Kazia had ever seen produced suddenly engulfed the yard.

It's radiance was so intense that every object in view became but an outline. Kazia's eyes burned, and she squeezed them tightly shut against the light. She felt the man's arms relax around her, then fall away.

She tumbled to the pavement, scraping her palms on the stone, and heard the man fall behind her.

After a few moments, all seemed quiet and she hazarded a peek through her eyelashes.

The light was gone. All three mercenaries lay unconscious on the ground, and Kelvaran stood over the two who had chased him. The pistol lay several feet away, and one of the men had a small knife embedded in his shoulder.

“Well, that was fun,” Amelys said, swaying across the drive on her cane, with an exasperated soldier on her heels.

 

~~~*~~~