Storm of Prophecy: Book 1, Dark Awakening (44 page)

His friend stood still while he put them on. “What are they this time?”

A grin spread on his face between his mustache and the small vertical beard on the front of his chin. “Oh, nothing too bad,” he began, somehow Stacy didn’t believe that was correct, “just make sure to tell them you’re the disperser, not the food source.” He chuckled at his own joke afterward. His friend shook his head, not thinking it quite as funny. The other elaborated further while he placed another on his back. “Actually, you’ll want to stand clear once they launch themselves from you, you don’t want to get caught up in their tendrils when I decide to make them huge.”

“What if they get hungry before then?”

“Don’t worry. I’m keeping them dormant,” he said, placing another at the top of his right arm, “they won’t awaken unless I trigger them.” He attached more on different parts of the other’s blue cloth until several of the fuzzy-looking lumps were present on each side.

“I think I like the wind dispersing ones better,” the man in blue robes muttered. At the creepy sight of the moving spines before they became motionless again, Stacy thought she might too.

“Right now these will do more to protect you.”

“I hope so,” was all he said before quickly and quietly stepping with his iron rod and moving off into the brush.

Stacy entered with the others behind him and kept a good distance away so as to not be seen by their foes. While the botanical mage silently crept, he was even more diligent than the others in making sure to keep his friend in sight. The pyromancer Elf followed him from Stacy’s left with the cerebist and the seer kept further back still, wanting to stay out of any violent confrontation yet still wanting to be close enough to be protected.

It was dark, yet there was more space between each large patch of bushes than she thought there would be, and the moon lit the dead yellow grass everywhere they walked. Insects chirped, and Stacy flinched when far off to the right she heard a snake hiss and rattle its tail. Across the sky in her view, a small dark shape flew by that she at first mistook for a bird and then realized was actually a bat.

Their impromptu leader, the man with the seed bag, stopped and crouched down beside the next tall bush on their left, fingering another seed in his right hand. When Stacy came up behind him, she quietly bent over to peer past his shoulder. The Elf went slowly to look on the other side of the bush while the others remained behind.

She looked past the edge of leaves and saw Vincent’s other guard walking silently in the moonlight amidst the grass, approaching Clyde from behind. Clyde stood as though he hadn’t noticed. Stacy found this odd but continued to wait like the rest.

Just as Clyde finally turned around, he was immediately slammed in the gut by the end of an iron rod and doubled over in pain. The next moment, he was struck across the face and fell on his side, holding his stomach and unable to breathe. The mage in front of her moved from his cover to approach and Stacy followed him.

His friend stood mutely with a hand aimed toward him, and the butt of his long rod planted in the dirt, watching the man in black clothes and white apron squirm on the ground. When he recovered enough to move further, a tangle of roots shot up from the ground and wrapped themselves around his feet. He let out a cry of fright. Stacy moved closer, getting the distinct feeling that this was far too easy.

The hair was similar, the clothing was similar, but the face was not. She let out a disappointed sigh, her arms swinging ever so slightly as she came to a stop. “It’s not him.”

The heads of Vincent’s two guards immediately snapped over to her. “What?” The mustached one asked in confusion. His friend responded only with an angry frown.

Stacy heard the others coming up behind her. The voice of the cerebist woman echoed hers when she arrived, having also noticed the discrepancy. “She’s right. It’s not him.”

The two of them still didn’t seem to believe it. “Clyde must have evaded us,” Stacy said again. “This man’s a decoy.”

The botanical mage let his temper get away and rushed toward the imposter laying on the ground, kicking him furiously. “You rancid cur!” He screamed. As his blue robed friend pulled him back, he kicked once more, sending dirt and tiny rocks at the man on the ground who was struggling to breathe.

Stacy heard more footsteps. The seer approached last. “What’s happening?” His young voice asked.

The mustached man was so mad he could hardly speak, and was still being restrained by his friend. “You let him get away! That’s what’s happened!”

“What? How can that be?”

Stacy turned to look at him. “Clyde switched places with this man,” she explained. “He must have done it after he went in the brothel.”

“How?”

The cerebist woman spoke next. “Were you watching him the entire time when he went in?”

The seer thought back. “Well…no, I just saw him open the door and that was it.”

“Well now he’s gone,” the Elf complained. “Nice work, kid.” A sad look of shame came over the seer’s features.

“Why don’t we question him,” Stacy suggested, “see what he knows.”

“An excellent idea,” the botanical mage agreed, pulling himself free after his friend’s hold loosened. He pulled the knife from his belt and approached with a vicious sneer that revealed his teeth.

The man on the ground was holding his head where it bled from his injury and suddenly looked up in fright. “Wait! Wait! Wait! I don’t know anything! I was only paid to do this! Whatever he did, I’m not a part of it!” He looked around at them as though for the first time. “What! Wizards!” The botanical mage stepped closer with the knife, and the imposter regarded him with true terror. “Stay away from me!” He screamed, trying desperately to inch his body away while his feet were still root-bound.

Stacy put a hand on the plant mage’s shoulder. “Hold on, let’s hear what he has to say.”

“Tell us what you know,” the mage growled.

“I don’t know anything!” The other screamed.

The mage idly inspected the blade of his knife between his thumb and first finger; the man on the ground began taking panicked breaths. “You know
something
,” he insisted, then stopped playing with it and looked at him with unrestrained fury. “Now tell us before I strip the flesh from your bones, and make you watch while I do it!”

“I told you I don’t know anything!”

Stacy calmly folded her arms and turned her head toward the mage. “Don’t hurt him. If he’s a member of the cult, that won’t get us anywhere. He’ll just resist it until he dies. Their fanaticism knows no limits. He’ll see himself as some sort of heroic martyr.”

“Then he’ll just have to become a martyr.”

“Please!” The imposter begged loudly. “The man I talked to only told me that the magistrate’s troops were after him! He said that as soon as they realized I wasn’t him, they’d let me go! Please! I don’t know anything about a cult! I only did it for the money!”

“That man was our Grandmaster’s assassin,” he replied grimly. “You took money from the
wrong
criminal this time.”

“We’ll just have to kill him and look for this Clyde’s trail elsewhere,” his friend added.

“What! I don’t want to die!” The man on the ground cried in fear.

“
He might know where the real one went,” the Elf argued. “We can’t kill him yet.”

Stacy became lost in thought, thinking back to where Clyde had eluded them. She tried hard to discern what his true destination might have been. Memories of her last encounter and where he had gone flashed through her mind. She knew that the cult had left that site behind and could have reestablished themselves almost anywhere else by now, but one other piece of information she had come into contact with nagged her to think otherwise. Would that one bit of knowledge be enough to find him though?

She was too preoccupied to pay much attention to the ideas that the Elf and the atmomancer were passing back and forth. It seemed that the former was in favor of letting him live, the seer and the cerebist quickly joining his side, but the latter was still in favor of killing the imposter who had just wasted their time and led them astray. “…if Stacy is correct, and he’s not going to tell us anything no matter what, what choice do we have? We can’t chance letting an enemy go.”

Stacy looked up. “Wait. I think I might know where the real Clyde went.”

“
How?” The red robed Elf asked in confusion.

Stacy seriously regarded each for a moment. “Whomever Clyde serves has their seat of power somewhere to the north. I suggest we use our seer and try to pick up his trail north of the city.”

“
How could you possibly know that?” The cerebist woman asked. They all suddenly looked at her as though she might be a potential traitor.

“
From a discussion with Master Anthony…look, it’s not important now. We need to get moving before he gets too far away.” They still looked at her incredulously. Stacy let out a sigh of aggravation and addressed the cerebist. “Ask your master to talk to him if you don’t believe me.”

The blonde cerebist woman closed her eyes for a long minute. The others looked on at her and waited in earnest for what she might say. Finally, her eyelids came open and she responded, “I told them our situation. They think it’s a good idea.”

“Good,” the botanical mage announced, reaching down at the throat of the imposter while brandishing the knife in the other hand, “then we don’t need him anymore.”

“No! No! Please don’t! I don’t want to die!” He pleaded desperately, trying to scoot himself further away though the roots and the hand at his shirt’s collar held him in place.

“No!” The cerebist shouted.

“Don’t kill him!” The seer added almost instantly.

Stacy couldn’t believe how naïve they were being. “We can’t trust him,” she said. “He could just as easily be one of them. He might even try to kill us later. Or tell them that we’re coming. Do you have any idea what these people are capable of?” The other two stared back. The seer, dumbfounded, said nothing while the cerebist moved her mouth but had no answer.

The botanical mage stood and regarded them each without emotion. Then he looked toward his friend in blue robes as though some sort of silent communication were taking place. The other nodded his head.

Scratching part of his mustache on the right of his upper lip, he took a few steps back toward Stacy and turned around once he was standing at her side. The roots suddenly unfurled from around the man’s legs and burrowed themselves in the ground once more. “Alright, you’re free to go,”-he pointed with his knife behind the imposter, toward the west-“start running in that direction and don’t turn back.” Stacy looked on at him in shock, thinking this was a bad idea.

The man came to his feet and dusted himself off. “But there’s nothing down there,” he complained, “just wild land all the way to the lake.”

“I swear by the gods if you don’t go right now, I
am
going to kill you!” The other took off as fast as he could, bolting down the distant rise. The mage sheathed his knife.

“This is madness!” Stacy exclaimed, turning to the mage. “How can you just let him go!”

The mage ignored her and instead turned to his friend. “There, I think that’s far enough.”

The fair haired atmomancer whose blue robes were still covered in the large prickly disgusting seeds lifted his iron rod and pointed it at the imposter running in the distance. A thick intense stream of lightning flashed brightly through the night air and struck the man with a loud thunderclap, lifting him in the air and setting a small part of his clothes on fire. The gelatinous liquid of his eyes splattered the bush leaves around him. All was silent as his body hit the ground.

“The crows and foxes should be able to eat that before anyone cares,” the mustached man remarked, drawing his thumb and finger across his chin in thought, “and at least this time they’ll get a cooked meal.”

“You’re sick!” The novice seer screamed in horror. “He was just paid to distract us! He didn’t deserve to die! You killed an innocent man!”

The atmomancer with the iron rod was not so convinced of that. “Innocent?” He scoffed. “Hardly.”

“He didn’t deserve to die!”

The plant mage turned and regarded the boy with a look of disgust as though he were hopeless. “And
you
don’t think he was lying?”

“But there was no way to know! He could have been telling the truth!”

“You’re right, there was no way to know. That’s why we couldn’t let him live.” He walked past to start leading the way for the others but stopped and looked at him once more. “Next time don’t lose track, and people won’t die.”

The seer seemed to understand; lapses in his observation were bound to have severe consequences. While the other walked off, the seer looked away, down and to the side. His jaw clenched. Consternation, shame, remorse, and frustration covered his face at the same time, but he said nothing in reply. He knew it was his own fault. Before Stacy started out, she watched the cerebist woman put a hand on his shoulder to console him.

It took them quite some time to re-enter the city of Gadrale, or so it seemed. For speed’s sake, they asked the seer to extend his awareness far fewer times and always in a sweep to the north, always to the north. They kept a wary eye open once more in the ramshackle part of town and chose this time to take a wide detour around the ring of prostitutes surrounding the area of the brothel. A detour that would take them north.