Chapter 21
“The experts? What do you mean?” asked Beretrulle.
“First, I am going to have to ask for your oath of secrecy,” I said.
Beretrulle frowned slightly.
“I am not in the habit of keeping secrets from my royal brother,” she said.
“If I do not have your oath, I will have to make you sleep,” I said. “And I would like you to know, as you could be aware tactically as a general to know if it was useful.”
“Beretrulle, do you tell your brother any secrets you learn as a priestess of Aregor or Selene?” asked Chessina.
“Of course not,” said Beretrulle. “He is not entitled to know them.”
“Well, how do you expect us to want you to share with him something which is essentially a secret of Arcana?” said Chessina, reasonably.
“Oh! That’s different,” said Beretrulle. “Why didn’t you say, Castamir?”
“Because I wasn’t ready to share that it was a secret of Arcana’s as the Towermasters are a special project of hers,” I said, testily. “I hoped that friendship would be enough to accept our secrets.”
Beretrulle looked contrite.
“I am sorry; it should be. I love my brother, but he is not…” she fumbled for words.
“He lives in a world of nobles and politics and not in the real world that we do,” I completed for her.
“Just so,” she agreed. “I will keep the secret.”
“I can call upon all former Towermasters in the afterlife to advise me,” I told her.
“That’s a big secret; I can see why you don’t want it widely known,” said Beretrulle.
I put my hand on the orb.
“Grandfather Castamir, Harmon, everyone, I need advice,” I said.
“What’s the problem?” Grandfather Castamir’s voice boomed.
“How can we help you, my boy?” asked Harmon.
I described the sphere, and our predicament.
The Towermasters in the orb of my staff – all right, I know they were not really in the orb, but from my perspective, that was where they appeared to be – listened to our dilemma, and then suddenly burst out into discussion. Or, indeed, I might rather describe it as quarrelling. It was becoming an unseemly brawl.
“Boys! Behave!” snapped Arcana’s voice, also from the orb.
There was a sheepish silence.
Harmon’s voice came to the fore, and I laid my hand on the orb, wanting to hug him, and this being as close as I could get.
“We have, collectively, three suggestions about how to deal with it,” said Harmon. “One suggestion is to send someone non-magical without magical items, to find the crystal to which it is probably tied, and destroy it. The small snag there is that it would probably need a magical item to destroy it, and you can’t guarantee to find a magic weapon inside.”
“No, that does depend on many iffs, ands, and buts,” I said.
“Next, is my theory, that you could sneak through it, peeling a bit of it away at a time, but it would take a lot of time.”
“I like that, but I am not sure if I have the time,” I said.
“No; so reluctantly, I must agree with Grandfather Castamir that you need to concentrate power on one point, and effectively pop it like a pig’s bladder when children have them blown up to play with. We believe we can sustain the power from the Tower for you to do so.”
“Well, then, we might as well begin,” I said.
I concentrated on the Tower to bring up all its magic, and pointed at the sphere.
“Aim directly at the centre of it and you might get the crystal as well,” said Grandfather Castamir.
“Don’t worry about the crystal, just bring the thing down,” said Harmon. “One thing at a time.”
“It would be spectacular…” muttered Grandfather.
“Never mind spectacular, just blow this thing,” said Harmon. “Stop corrupting the boy, he’s perfectly capable without being turned into a fairground performer.”
“Did you just call me a fairground performer?”
“Gentlemen, please, stand by,” I said.
I had their attention. I peered at the sphere, concentrating on the point at which I would focus the power. I felt as if my ears were going to burst, and my body felt three times its normal size, fairly crackling and tingling with the Tower’s magic, as I stretched out an arm and pointed.
“Zap!” I said.
A white, crackling light flowed from my finger and from my staff, joining and powering into the purple globe. My ears screamed.
I screamed. I felt as if power issued from every part of me. Chessina later told me that my eyes were burning, and light issued from my mouth and from my heart. I also later found that my shirt was scorched, though I was unharmed.
Around the point at which the stream of power hit the globe it flared, briefly going black but then forced back to purple which became bluer… an area which was distinctly blue, turquoise at the point of impact, the turquoise becoming green, the blue spreading… the purple was puckered at the edges of the blue. Green became chartreuse, then acid yellow, the colour warming through the spectrum until it was a dull crimson red; and the sphere broke! Throwing off waves of energy, causing us to duck, it exploded.
“ZAP?” demanded Grandfather Castamir.
“Zap?” asked Chessina.
“What?” I said. “Arcana knew what it meant.”
The orb subsided into offended silence, but I could hear Arcana giggling.
“Oh, Castamir, I do love you,” said Chessina. “All those stuffy old wizards, upset by a word.”
“It seemed about the best one to use at the time,” I said. “I know it’s the incantation for the insect-killing cantrip, but I am sick of domestic pests like demons.”
“You know, I have a delicious image of Nosy shouting, ‘He brought down my globe with an insect-killing spell?’” giggled Chessina. “The burn! The chagrin!”
“The fear,” I added.
“Oh, good point,” said Chessina. “Yes, it was the right word. Hit him where it hurts; in the morale.”
The orb remained silent, but I had an image of Harmon pointing out that it was the perfect word, and sounding slightly smug about it. I felt very close to him. He always said, ‘Whatever choice you make, make it positively, and do everything as if you mean it.’
He would, I hoped, be poking his more pompous predecessors for centuries about it.
My mirth dissipated as if I had been thrown in an icy stream as we landed on the battlements.
The crystal was there, cracked, but around it were the guards to the castle who appeared to have knelt voluntarily and had their throats slashed, I thought with a demonic claw, into a basin in which the gem sat, absorbing their blood.
I used Demonslicer to reduce the crystal to tiny shards.
“Beretrulle! Prayers to Aregor, please, for their souls,” I begged.
Beretrulle went on one knee, raising her arms, and prayed out loud, beseeching the war god to take the souls of warriors; and Chessina and I prayed to Emaxtiphrael for his aid in making sure their souls were not taken to the Abyss, though their life force had been used.
We concluded our prayers.
“Out of our hands,” said Beretrulle. “We have to press on; it’s too quiet.”
“The sort of quiet which demons leave in their wake,” I said, grimly.
We went down the twisting turret stairs, weapons ready. The castle almost seemed deserted. At least, there was nobody about.
We had got almost to the ground floor when we could hear the noises. There were animalistic grunts, and a female voice sobbing, and saying ‘No, no, no, please stop….’
I went the rest of the way on the back of my heel, a trick I had learned in the Tower, to the amused disapproval of Harmon.
We came into what must be the great hall. A pentagram was on the floor, and at each of its points was a trestle table, on which was tied the body of a young woman, her belly slashed open and an infant torn from her womb.
In the pentagram’s centre were the unlovely naked figures of Moruk and Jolinn, coupling like beasts, in a frantic frenzy. At least, he was frenzied, Jolinn was sobbing.
I was at a fortuitous angle to summon a jet of icy water to hit Moruk right behind the business end, as you might say. I held the jet, to cool his ardour, literally. Frost ray would, after all, be a bit of an overkill.
He did not cease his frantic movements but at least all things pertinent shrivelled enough to fall out of Jolinn.
There was a faint cry from one of the fetuses.
Chessina was over there in a shot. I left it to her; Silavara had, after all, gifted her with knowledge of babies.
Beretrulle stood outside the pentagram – wisely, I thought – and swung her scabbarded sword backwards to whack Moruk on the back of the neck with the pommel.
He fell unconscious.
“By the gods!” I said, sickened.
Beretrulle knew some healing spells from her worship of Selene, even though she followed the martial aspect. She turned to me.
“That woman is pregnant with four children, and they are implanted already!” she said, horrified.
“The couple wanted an heir,” I said. “I suppose this is Nosy’s sick idea of a joke. Let me check if it is safe to cross the pentagram.”
I cast some Analytica spells, and determined that as the ritual had been interrupted, it was safe to move forward. As far as I could determine, each foetus sacrificed added directly to the number of children Jolinn was to bear, starting with the most newly impregnated, and each of the others having its life force advance her pregnancy as well. The fifth baby was almost at term; and we had interrupted the ceremony before it was added.
And, incidentally, before Moruk died of dehydration, which he was close to doing. I produced more water for his unconscious body to swallow, so he would live to face the hangman for his crimes.
His wife would have to go through childbirth before she could be turned into an ass in the usual way; I was pretty sure that, as a cousin to Sheyla and Renilla, she was the instigator.
Beretrulle picked her up and dumped her unceremoniously on a sofa; I did the same with her husband. Chessina had wrapped the whimpering bundle, and with a cry put the child to its own mother’s breast.
“Castamir!” she cried. “Arcana says she lives; can you do anything?”
“I don’t know the spells,” I said.
“I know the spells but I don’t have the power,” said Beretrulle.
“Arcana will let me channel power through you,” I said, with confidence.
I laid my hands on Betetrulle’s upper arms as she pushed the edges of the womb together, and started chanting. I channelled power into her from the tower, and the girl’s belly healed, and shrank for not being full of baby.
She opened her eyes, and screamed.
“It’s all right,” soothed Chessina. “We got here in time. Your baby lives, there is no demonic taint, and you are alive.”
“By the gods! It was terrible!” she cried.
“Of course it was,” soothed Chessina. Terrible did not begin to cover what had happened to the poor girl. “What about your husband? And what is your name?”
“I am Renni,” she said. “My husband is a hard man, he will never believe that I did not go willingly, and he will not believe that my baby is not a demon!”
“Even if told by wizards?” I asked.
“Especially if told by wizards!” she cried. “He will say you are using me for magical experiments, and he will beat us until we die, because then it’s not murder.”
It was murder in my book, but I am a peasant, and I knew plenty who would placate their consciences in saying that punishment which caused death was not intended as murder.
“You’d better come with us, then,” I said. “We’ll take care of you. Your…” I looked at Chessina.
“Daughter,” supplied Chessina,
“Your daughter can grow up as a companion to our foster-daughter,” I said. “What are you going to call her?”
“Oh! I do not know,” said the poor girl. She was hardly a woman, if she was twenty, I’d be surprised. “It was snowing when they seized me, and brought me in here.”
The peasantry do use fortune names as well as the central stock; like Rosie, who was born when her mother could smell roses blooming. Her official name is Rose.
“What about ‘Crystal?’” I suggested. “For the ice crystals in snowflakes.”
“Crystal! Yes, I like that. And she can be Cryssi, which does not sound too outlandish,” said Renni.
“Will you testify at the trials of these evil people?” I asked.
“I ain’t never had nothin’ to do with the law,” she said, fearfully.
“The law is nothing to be feared by those who have done no wrong,” I said. It sounded horribly sententious, but she appeared to have decided to trust us.
“Tie up the prisoners, and let us find somewhere more comfortable,” demanded Chessina. “I’m going in search of a kitchen; we need hot drinks and food, and that idiot Moruk needs to drink his weight in water if he wants to live to be hanged.”
I reflected that if I was under the misery of dehydration, still half under a spell, and semi-conscious from a sword pommel to the back of the neck, I’d rather die quietly than live to be hanged.
I would do my best to preserve Moruk’s life and ongoing misery. I was angry. These evil people had a lot of justice coming their way; for the killing of the guards, the snuffing out of four bright young lives who were contemplating motherhood.
If there was no fear of Jolinn’s soul being used, I would have left the pair here for the inevitable pitchfork party which would arrive in due course from the village.
Beretrulle and I helped Renni through to a pleasant sitting room, and found her a sofa in there to feed her baby in peace, and Chessina sent in an invisible servant with tea whilst she sang to herself and did things in the kitchen.
I was busy; I was looking for papers, a demonic contract for one, and other plans.
I went looking, and found what I was looking for in Jolinn’s boudoir. She had hidden everything under her mattress with a depressing level of predictability. And her diary was under her pillow.
I had hoped I might find something by which to track Nosy; but he was long gone. And we needed to get everyone back to Adalsburg.
“You know what? I’m going to cheat,” I said to Beretrulle. “I’m going to open a gate to the place of gates in the capital, and go straight there.”
“Why didn’t we come by gate if it’s so easy?” she asked.
“Because I didn’t know personally about where ‘here’ is,” I said. “And with demonic interference, even if I knew its map co-ordinates, I might have ended up diverted to the Abyss, which, I am sure, would not be a side-trip you would enjoy.”
“Oh, right,” she said.
She was learning a lot about wizardry she might have preferred not to know.
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