Raging Sea and Trembling Earth: Disciples of the Horned One Volume Two (Soul Force Saga Book 2) (26 page)

A
lden flew above the forest
, trying in vain to see or sense Jonny and the urn. He missed Imogen, especially at times like this. She had a much stronger talent for detecting others at a distance. Unfortunately for him she still wasn’t fully recovered from her encounter with the urn. Her protests to the contrary aside, anyone could see she was still weak. Not that Alden was brave enough to tell her that. The archmage, on the other hand, was made of sterner stuff. She informed Imogen in no uncertain terms that she was staying at the castle until she returned to one hundred percent. Such was the power of Lidia Thorn’s personality that Imogen didn’t utter so much as a peep of complaint.

Below him twenty young men and women wearing crimson vests and trousers tied with yellow silk scarves beat the brush for any sign of Jonny. When the grandmaster woke up he put the entire dojo at Alden’s disposal in gratitude for his saving his life. He’d asked for twenty volunteers from the hundred plus students that gathered in the training room. When they learned they were hunting for the man that stabbed their master every hand in the room went up. Alden chose from the older students in hopes that they’d capture Jonny the way he wanted rather than seek revenge. He was probably being ungenerous to the students. They had all shown great discipline and determination so far and he had no doubt the ones he didn’t choose would have done as well.

Alden’s head snapped southeast. For a moment he had sensed the urn’s corruption. He couldn’t imagine why Jonny would take it out now, but it was the first sign that he hadn’t fled the area. Maybe he’d decided to abandon the artifact, use it as a distraction like Alden had done when he escaped Mikhail Santen. Even if that was the case Alden would gladly trade Jonny’s escape for the safe return of the urn.

He flew down to where the leader of the searchers, an experienced teacher who Alden guessed was in his early forties, stood watching his pupils search. The bald man bowed to Alden. “Sir?”

“Swing your people southeast. For a few seconds I sensed the urn. We have to check it out.”

“As you say.” He whistled once, a high, sharp squeal. Quicker than Alden would have thought possible the searchers gathered around him. “Shift southeast. Be on your guard, we may be getting close.”

Several of the students smiled. Alden sighed. Must be nice to be young and foolish. Alden sometimes missed it, not often, but sometimes. “Signal me if you find him. I don’t dare get too close until the urn is secured.”

“As you say.”

Alden flew back up to what he hoped was a safe distance. The students gradually approached the spot where he’d sensed the corruption. Time passed and no one shouted their success. Fifteen minutes later the bald master waved him down. Alden landed beside him in a small clearing.

“Someone fell here, recently.” He pointed to some scuffed-up dirt that meant absolutely nothing to Alden.

“Can you tell which way he went?”

The master pointed south and a little east. Alden had seen a village that way, a little flyspeck of a place with more sheep than people. Was Jonny headed there for some reason or was it a coincidence? Alden didn’t have much use for coincidences and until he knew otherwise he’d assume the decision was deliberate.

“Stay on his trail. I suspect he’s headed for a village perhaps a mile ahead. I’ll keep watch from a distance and signal you if he tries to flee.”

“As you say.” The master bowed and strode over to his waiting students.

Alden smiled and flew skyward again. Why couldn’t everyone be as easy to work with as the Iron Path students? It wasn’t just that Alden saved their grandmaster either. The students and teacher carried themselves with an exceptional level of discipline he’d found in no other group he’d ever worked with. Warlords came close, but sorcerers…their eccentricities didn’t bear mentioning. Trying to convince a large group of sorcerers to work together was like herding cats, big ones that could smash villages flat.

Alden hung in the air over the sleepy village, the only movement a pair of shepherds guiding their respective flocks. Neither of them had a big enough build to be Jonny. From the edge of the woods the students emerged and walked toward a farm on the outskirts. They formed a semicircle around the place so no one could sneak out without someone noticing.

Alden wasn’t keen on landing before they captured Jonny, but they’d need his authority to search the farmer’s house and barn. He said a silent prayer and landed a short distance from the stone hut.

“We followed the tracks right up to the front door,” the master said.

Alden nodded and knocked on the door. A few seconds later it opened partway and a grizzled face appeared in the gap.

“What?”

“Excuse me, sir. We’re tracking a dangerous fugitive and have reason to believe he came this way. Have you seen anyone?”

“No.”

“We’re going to have to search your property just to make sure.”

The door opened the rest of the way revealing the simple, one-room interior. Not a lot of hiding places, that was for certain. “Go ahead. Shouldn’t take you more than half a minute.”

The old farmer was a real charmer. Alden couldn’t understand why there wasn’t a line of women standing at his front door. Alden motioned the master and one of his students inside. Like the farmer said, the search didn’t take long. But Jonny had to be hiding here somewhere.

Alden’s fist clenched and relaxed. Should he risk using sorcery to make sure? A well-disguised hidden chamber might be impossible to detect otherwise. They could just wait. Jonny couldn’t hide forever.

Damn it!

Alden couldn’t keep the Iron Path students out here for days. He had to risk it. Even if Jonny took him out with the urn the students should have no trouble capturing him afterward. Alden drew power from his core and sent streams of soul force snaking over the floorboards. A second later the world exploded in black lightning.

K
oran Dane hated
everyone and everything. When he learned about a cult whose goal was to destroy the world he decided he’d found a home at last. For thirty years he kept a safe house for members to use when they needed a place to hide. He settled in a little village close enough to the capital that he could keep a general eye on the goings on and report to his superiors. No one bothered Koran more than once. He lived alone and liked it that way.

When the sorcerer showed up with a small army looking for the current occupant of his bolthole Koran figured his days of ease were at an end. The lid to the secret compartment fit perfectly with the floor, but it wouldn’t stop a sorcerer from finding it. When the golden energy leaked from the sorcerer’s fingers Koran eased his way closer to the door. Maybe he could escape while they were busy with the over-muscled idiot in the hole.

The floor exploded. Koran leapt out the door and rolled as far from the hut as he could, as fast as possible for a man his age. The lads in red surrounding his farm ran toward the black lightning shredding the thatch of his roof. A remarkably brave and beyond stupid thing to do. Koran’s theory was proven a moment later when the hut exploded. Lightning and shattered rock went everywhere, including three or four chips that bounced off his head.

In the center of the chaos stood his idiot boarder, waving a black jug around, screaming his lungs out and generally raising a horrible ruckus. Koran’s neighbors had never thought much of him and this certainly wasn’t going to put him in their good books.

The idiot waved his jug at three young men in red sneaking up behind him and the lightning blasted them off their feet. They didn’t get back up.

The one-sided battle lasted for less than a minute. When it ended the only person in the vicinity still conscious was Koran. He got slowly to his feet, knees creaking and complaining, and hobbled over to the nearest man in red, a young fellow with a shaved head maybe twenty years old. He touched the kid’s wrist and found a strong pulse. A quick slash of Koran’s belt knife put an end to that.

Five minutes later twenty corpses decorated Koran’s yard. It served them right for destroying his home. Just inside the door the sorcerer in charge lay in a crumpled heap, wheezing in ragged gasps. Koran put him out of his misery and added one more to the body count. Sorcerers were much easier to kill when they were unconscious.

The fool with the black jug lay in a heap in the center of what was left of Koran’s house. The item in question sat a little ways away, looking just as innocent as you please.

Koran crouched beside his unwelcome guest, his knife dripping blood, and debated whether to kill him or not. They were technically on the same side, but the fool had ruined a cover that had lasted decades. For that indignity alone Koran wanted to kill him. Hell, Koran wanted to kill him on general principle, but he had a lifetime of practice forcing that impulse down. At the very least he’d keep his unwelcome guest alive long enough to tell him what that black bauble was worth. Koran guessed the answer was a lot.

Koran poked his guest in the ribs with his knife. After that little display he figured they needed to move things along. Two more pokes brought the idiot around. He sat up and groaned. “What happened?”

“You flattened my house and killed a bunch of kingdom men. You need to tell me what the hell is going on before some people we really don’t want to meet get here. Let’s start with who the hell you really are.”

“Jonny Linn. I’m a castle guard stationed outside the throne room. We have to get the urn to the master. We won’t be safe until he has it.”

“Looks like those kingdom boys wanted it pretty bad too.”

Jonny nodded. It looked like he used the last of his strength to do it. “They’ve been hunting me for days. I need to send a message. Tell them to come get me.”

“How you going to do that?” Koran asked.

Jonny dug through his belt pouch and pulled out a black crystal bird. “Write a message and put it in the bird’s beak. It will fly to the master. Tell him where we are.”

Koran eyed the little black bird and spat. Didn’t look like he had any other way out of this mess. He dug through Jonny’s pouch and pulled out a scrap of paper and a stubby pencil. He couldn’t tell them to come here. His hunting shack would do. It was secluded and no one else knew about it.

Before he could start writing the half-dead idiot tugged on his pant leg. “What?”

“The urn. Where?”

“On the floor where you dropped it. Now shut up and let me write.”

“Put it in the satchel. Sorcerers can sense it otherwise.”

Koran raised an eyebrow. “I’m not touching that thing. It was a damn wonder I survived the first time you switched it on.”

Jonny gave a feeble shake of his head. “Only works when sorcerers are around. Safe now.”

Koran eyed the urn sitting there on his floor like a giant black turd. He found Jonny’s satchel and held it open while he poked the urn with his toe. After a bit of prodding he worked it inside and cinched down the ties. “Happy?”

Jonny collapsed back on the floor. Koran took that as a yes. He wrote a brief note giving directions to the shack then stuck it in the bird’s mouth. Crystal wings fluttered and it took off, going north and a bit east.

Koran turned his attention back to Jonny. What should he do with the idiot? He sure as hell wasn’t carrying him two miles through the woods. He fingered his knife. What was one more body amidst all this?

I
mogen paced
off to the side of the throne room while the archmage argued with a merchant about the damage to his warehouse. From the little she’d bothered to listen to it seemed the fat slob wanted them to use their vastly overstretched resources to repair his business before they found safe, warm places for those displaced by the quake. The man was lucky he wasn’t dealing with Imogen. She would have set his fancy tunic on fire and ordered him out of the castle. The archmage had to be more polite than that, though judging from her fierce scowling Lidia was on the verge of doing something Imogen would have approved of.

The archmage had ordered her to rest, but Imogen was too anxious to lay in her bunk. After yet another argument her superior had agreed to let her pace as long as she stayed out of the way. How did the archmage think she could relax when Alden was out on his own hunting for someone that had already proven he could take out a sorcerer with no trouble? She should have been out there with him.

A burst of corruption, distant but powerful, stopped Imogen in her tracks. She knew that power. Jonny had activated the urn again. The archmage stood beside her, her problem merchant forgotten.

“Was that what I think it was?” the archmage asked.

“Yes. I have to make sure Alden’s okay.”

The archmage nodded. “We’ll go together.”

The two women rushed out of the throne room and into the courtyard, leaving the protesting merchant behind. They sprang into the air and flew south. Imogen let the archmage take the lead. The truth was she couldn’t have outflown the older woman if she was in peak condition and as much as Imogen hated to admit it she was far from peak condition. At least the archmage hadn’t tried to force her to stay behind. Imogen appreciated the consideration. She’d worked with Alden long enough now that she felt responsible for what happened to him. If she hadn’t let Jonny get the best of her at the dojo nothing would have gone wrong.

The trail of corruption ended at the edge of a small village near the border of the Great Green. Bodies dressed in the red and yellow uniforms of the Iron Path dojo littered the ground around a smashed hut. They landed near the ruin.

Imogen gasped. Just inside the door was Alden’s body, his throat cut ear to ear. Deeper in was Jonny Linn, equally dead, with the exact same wound. There was no sign of the urn or the satchel that held it.

Imogen backed away from the carnage, her whole body trembling. She wanted very badly to kill someone, but the only person in the area still breathing was the archmage. A strong hand grasped her shoulder.

“It wasn’t your fault,” the archmage said. “If you’d been here you’d have died with him. The way things are going we can’t afford to lose anyone else.”

Imogen threw her head back and screamed. When her throat was raw and her lungs empty she wiped the tears away. “What now?”

“I’m no tracker and even if I were two sorcerers chasing after someone with the urn is suicide. By the time we fly reinforcements out here whoever has the urn will be long gone. I fear we have no choice but to accept our failure and move on. The enemy has two of the three urns so all sorcerers will have to be especially careful from now on. Help me prepare the bodies for transport. I don’t know the Iron Path’s preferred funeral rites. Since they died helping us it seems the least we can do is bring them home.”

Imogen snarled and sent a blast of focused soul force into Jonny’s body, reducing it to a fine ash. Pity he wasn’t still alive to feel it.