In Pursuit Of Wisdom (Book 1) (13 page)

“A mage.  That explains some things,” Strongiron said.  “But you still have not answered my questions.”

This time Xaro narrowed his eyes, and the effect with True Mages was always pronounced.  “If you mean to insinuate that I cheated, you should know I’ve not used a wink of magic to help my cause in the pits.”  He stepped back and relaxed, restoring his eyes to their illusionary, everyday-sort-of-brown color.  “That doesn’t matter.  I could care less whether you believe that at this moment.  What I care about is whether you will join me.  For I intend to bring peace to a Dark World consumed with warring factions, poverty, and centuries of injustice.  Surely you recognize the darkness that hangs over Tenebrae?  Even you, as skilled as you are, must admit that a True Warrior-Mage who has also studied at the ancient Clerist Tower in Dariez can help lead the world from this dark precipice it’s on?  But I cannot do it alone.  Come with me, and I will put you in charge of my entire army.”

“What army?”  Strongiron’s shoulders began to tense.

“The one that I am about to build for my Master.”

“And who is your Master?”  Strongiron leaned forward and put his hand on his sword-hilt, reflexively.

The moment of truth:  Join, fight, or leave.  What will it be, Strongiron? 
“I serve an ancient God—a True God.  My Master is Kuth-Cergor, and he has returned to our world.”

Strongiron leaned back in his chair, taking a deep breath.  “I see.  Thank you, Xaro, for your offer, but I must decline.  I am, and always will be, a King’s Man.”

I could kill you with one spell right now, fool! 
Thinking better of it, he simply smiled sadly. 
There may be time yet for you to see the folly of this decision.  Better to let him see the power of Kuth-Cergor to report back to his precious King.
  “Very well.  Perhaps the world is big enough for us both.  But it is
not
big enough for my Master to share with anyone else.  And my Master’s designs are not regional, Strongiron.  I would have you leave here peaceably now, for our next meeting may be less amicable.  You may reconsider at a later date, and find my need of a general greatly reduced.  Are you sure you will not come with me now?”

“I’m a King’s Man, Xaro.  And whatever fairy tales you’ve filled your head with, rest assured that if those white eyes of yours gaze northward on Elvidor, we will indeed meet again.  I leave you now to your designs.”  Strongiron got up to leave, but he walked backward toward the door, never taking his eyes off Xaro nor his hand from the hilt of his sword.

He is wise to fear me.  
“Give my regards to your King and Queen, my brother.  They would be wise to listen to you.”

Still facing Xaro, Strongiron said, “We may share a
Mark, but we are not brothers,” and he departed the room backwards in silence, never turning his back on him.

Left to his own thoughts, Xaro thought about yelling something back at Strongiron, but pressed his lips together instead. 
Hmmm.  Very well, Strongiron Tuitio—so be it. 
Xaro quickly moved to plan B, as time was of the essence now.  He then left Lord Kensington’s sitting room as well, heading toward Tar-Tan’s barracks.

~Trevor~

Trevor knew it would not take long for the Elves’ suspicion to be aroused.  He also knew the bodies in the bath would soon be discovered, and he had no chance of leaving with his life intact if it came down to a direct confrontation.  Still dressed as a handmaiden, he ditched the bucket once he left the main hall.  He passed one other Elf, Cherokum actually, who simply smiled and nodded pleasantly at him, unable to see the face within the deep folds of the plush, white robe.

As he walked out the door, he passed underneath the two towers and stared at the winding rows of trees on either side of the stone path leading back down the hillside.  He considered how strange it would be for one of the princess’s handmaidens to be walking alone toward the riverbed.  That was quite a ways to go for water when it was readily available inside the fortress.  He would be stopped, questioned, discovered, and if he was lucky—executed on the spot with an arrow through the head.  More likely: a long, drawn out imprisonment and series of torturous calamities that he wasn’t inclined to ponder at the moment.

No.  It’s up the trees or nothing. 
Trevor was an exceptional tree climber.  It did not take him long to see the clever, hidden handholds and footholds that the Elves used to scamper up to their positions.  Still dressed as a handmaiden, he hoped to gain a few seconds.  There would be no way he could climb up undetected.

“Well, to what do we owe this visit?  Is that you, Gwen?  Or Diana?  Is everything all right with Lady Elyn?”  A slender Elf called down to Trevor from a raised platform built among the branches of the tree that he was climbing, a mere few feet above him.  He didn’t look up, but kept climbing quickly to reach the platform.

“I never knew you could climb so well.  That was fast.  What’s going on, Gw—” the Elf’s voice was cut short by a fast-acting poison dart Trevor blew into his neck.  These were meant to kill.  He stepped quickly toward the Elf and caught his fall, laying him down gently.  Spinning around quickly to see what other threats there were, he saw that there were clever bridges connecting the trees that lined the stone path.  He had suspected this given that Cherokum had mentioned that these trees also served as guard towers over the path.  The Elf undoubtedly meant to intimidate and discourage the stranger just in case he meant ill-will toward the Elves; in fact, he had given Trevor the best means of escape.  Not that it mattered; he would have guessed the path was guarded, and the trees were the only place from which to do so.  He set about executing his plan to move from guard station to guard station, correctly figuring they were connected in the event Elves needed to quickly move from tree to tree in defense of the path leading to Thalanthalas.

He ditched his white robe and now blended in perfectly within the foliage.  Creeping silently among the boughs along the intertwined branches and dark brown ropes that made up the “bridges” from one tree to the next, he spotted the next guard platform.  Carefully taking aim at the unsuspecting Elf, he blew another highly toxic dart at his neck.  Hit.  It was then that the flaw in his plan became apparent.

The Elf fell over, and Trevor was not in a position to catch this one.  So he fell…right out of the tree.

“Tonthor?  TONTHOR?”  Trevor heard an Elf clear on the other side of the path from one of the stations call out loudly, as the Elf had fallen twenty or thirty feet through branches and bramble, cracking his head open on the stone below.

Trevor felt the trees closing in on him.  Dead Elves, injured princess, stolen amulet.  He saw a torch flare up on the other side of the path.  Soon another one ahead of him answered. 
Upward or death.

He climbed higher into the trees, above the “path” that loosely connected each tree to the next.  They would search every limb before long, so the idea of waiting this one out like he did for his Test of Technique with the foolish knights was out of the question.  But he had to get off this arbor road.

There was no use but to climb out onto trees that grew well off the path leading down to the riverbed, surrounded by those poisonous bushes.  One slip was all it would take.  Trevor’s hearing was acute—some would say unnatural.  But he did not need enhanced hearing to pick up on the commotion thirty yards away in the nearby trees that mirrored the stone path down the hillside.  Several Elves had now gathered on the stone path where his victim had fallen.

“Tonthor was poisoned!  I found this in his neck.  We have an intruder in the castle!  It must be that stranger Cherokum brought.  Curse that blasted Elf’s soft heart.   Our walls have been violated!”

“Search the path.  He must be on it.”

“Do not kill him when you find him.  We must find out what he was doing here first.”

“And then he must suffer.  It is said Elves are gracious, but let it also be known that Elves are brutally just.  His death must not be as quick as Tonthor’s.”

And on they went.  Quietly, Trevor moved with all the stealth of a man to whom silence meant life itself.  When a branch moved, it made less noise than it would have in a gentle breeze.  The noonday sun passed and evening fell, then night.  As the hours inched along, so, too, did Trevor.  The Elves continued searching the trees along the path high and low, climbing up and down.  But they didn’t venture onto the other surrounding trees much—too sparse and most were too far to jump across.  They did not count on their intruder being part squirrel.

As dawn broke, Trevor found that he had wormed his way through the trees undetected in nearly a day in what had taken him less than half an hour to walk up on his arrival.  He was incredibly sore and stiff.  But beyond some thorny scrub brush immediately below, he could almost see the point at which he and the other Elves stepped out of the creek to begin walking up the stone path.  A heavy mist hung in the air as the grey light of dawn struggled to hit the valley that marked the gateway to Thalanthalas.

Unsurprisingly, there were three Elves standing at the
creek bed, each with a bow.  They were thirty yards away—too far for his darts.  Not too far for their bows.  Trevor allowed himself a silent sigh, as he eavesdropped, trying to figure out what to do next.

“You make breakfast, Manoramoshi.  We’ll make sure no one passes.”

“We could do with some rabbit or something.  This might be awhile.”

“Wishful thinking—no time to go chasing rabbits, Mano.  Just build a small fire to warm us and cut through some of the dawn mist.”

Trevor heard some grunts and watched the one Elf effortlessly build a fire. 
Druids. 
He thought he saw a butterfly or a moth flittering below him, on one of the thorns. 
One of the thorns…

Moving down and concealed behind a tree, he was about ten feet from the ground, and inches away from the top of the bed of thorns bushes that covered the forest floor.  He looked at the thorns closely.  The poison was inside and outside—he could see tiny drops on the tips of the thorn that were sticky, judging by the occasional strands that dangled from the tips of some them.  And they were yellowish in color; definitely not dawn mist.  The plan began to form in his head as he began breaking three-inch thorns off the bushes with a gloved hand.  When he had fifty or sixty, he climbed back up to the top of his tree.  He found a thin branch that he could snap off without too much effort or noise, and began jamming the needles into the wood, making a crude, one-handed staff with spikes lining it.  He couldn’t take a chance fighting hand-to-hand; too easy to sound the alarm, and he only had one dart left.

He knew he had one shot here.  Soon the mist would lift and he would have even less concealment.  He hoped they wouldn’t see him in the fog till he got close.  He couldn’t climb down into the thorn bushes, nor could he jump over them from ten feet up.  There were no good paths to climb back along branches back toward the path, either.  That left one option as he flung a rope over another tree, testing the length and the grip.  This was his swing to freedom.  Club in hand, he took a breath, and broke his silence, swinging through the mist as wispy branches noisily slapped at him.

The three Elves turned and grabbed their bows at the
whooshing
sound.  Out of the mist swung Trevor, and he had slapped one on the arm and the other across the face with his thorny staff before the first arrow was loosed.  It glanced off his thigh, and he let go of both his staff and the rope, dropping into the midst of their camp.  He had his blowgun in hand as his feet hit the ground, though his leg nearly buckled.  He fired his last dart into the neck of the third Elf, who dropped to the ground while he was nocking his next arrow.

The other two Elves drew their knives, but stopped to grab their waterskins.  They looked at the staff, with its broken off thorns, some on the ground…some stuck to their skin, and were both infuriated and parched.  Draining their waterskins, one of them started to advance on Trevor, cursing him, before he hurled his knife at him and ran toward the river.

The other followed suit, hastily throwing his dagger in Trevor’s direction, but he dodged them both.  With a slight limp, he followed them at a distance and watched them plunge headfirst into the water.  They stayed under for minutes until Trevor saw their legs lift off the shallow creek bottom and their bodies float away.  Both had drowned.

Hurrying past, Trevor went to the spot where he thought the sinkhole was, and he chanted the same thing he’d heard from the Elves upon his arrival.  He took a deep breath and plunged his head beneath the surface, patting his pocket one last time to make sure the fruit of his labor was still secure.

~Magi~

It did not take long for both Magi and Kyle to get the hang of riding again.  Once they cleared the city and had grown accustomed to the saddle, they prodded their mounts into a gallop.  It did not take long for them both to return to the home village of Brigg from Gaust, their horses spent from hard riding along the edge of the Elomere all the way back.  It was past dusk, two days since they had “borrowed” the mounts and trotted out past the city gates.  It was not even a question whether they would or would not wait until morning to discuss the situation with Marik.  They rode straight to his barracks upon entering the village.