Chapter 21
Darkness. A swirl of shadow and light, hazy and indistinct, surrounding him, concealing him. He felt the shadow pulse through his fur, felt that cool sensation as he melded within it, became as shadow himself. Though he was surrounded by darkness tainted with light, he could see perfectly, for shadow was nothing to eyes that saw the spirit world, looked beyond the mundane and saw the world in shades of life rather than shades of light. That shadow was inorganic, non-living, and because of that it did not register to Kyven's eyes as he moved through it, a shadow of his own creation, an inky cloud of shadow that moved with the direction of his will. It was an extension of him, it was him, and moved with perfect harmony to his thoughts and desires. This was the oneness of shadow both the fox and Umbra had mentioned, the extension of his will into the realm of shadow, controlling that which was both a part of him, and he a part of it. Every mote of the shadow was under his control, and though he couldn't see it around him, he could feel it. He knew precisely where the shadow was, how it was moving. He could feel it coursing through him like blood, flowing through him as it came from wherever the shadow came from into the real world, where his will controlled every aspect of it.
But that was little defense against Lightfoot.
The small cat could sense him without her eyes, moved with her eyes closed and her ears turned towards him, circling him within the room. She held a shockrod in her hand and her other held towards him, claws out, as he pondered the task at hand. He had to defeat her, take her weapon, and do it without harming her. It was one of many exercises that Lightfoot now made him do, for she did not like the idea of him going into the Loremasters headquarters with no training in how to defend himself without magic.
In the weeks since he invaded the building, they still waited for the Loremasters to calm down enough for him to go in again. Lightfoot had started this basic training in self defense for him to fall back upon as a last resort, since Kyven would always use his magic as his first option. But there were times within the building that Kyven either may not or could not be able to use his magic, and because of that, Lightfoot wanted him to at least be able to fight back. Her training wasn't indepth or exhaustive. It was very basic concepts of combat that played to Kyven's strengths, and those were his strength, his agility, his claws, and his ability to blind his opponents without losing his own sight. Through control of the shadow he could summon from within himself, Kyven could blind an entire room full of opponents, and using that as a base, Lightfoot taught him some basic moves and methods for attacking his blinded foes that minimized risk to himself. She was sure to teach him that blind didn't mean helpless, though, making him think about how he intended to attack a foe that could not see him, that may be holding a weapon that could harm him. The Loreguard guarding the building were well trained and would not panic when he plunged them into darkness, so he had to be ready for when they pulled their pistols or their shockrods and tried to hit him without seeing him. Lightfoot was a good opponent in this regard, for she didn't panic and she didn't fear him. If he could disarm her, he could disarm or kill a Loreguard who opposed him.
Kyven considered her. She was standing slightly off square to him, turned a bit to the left, but her ears were facing him directly. Her shift to the left was bait, it was a feint to goad him into making a move, for he could clearly see the attitude of her hand closed over a shockrod he could not see but knew was there, its crystal hidden within her hand. He knew from experience now that the entire rod would flare with magical power just before it discharged, and that flare of light down the shaft was his warning to move. He dropped down onto all fours and slithered to her right, using her trick against her to try to get behind her, but her ears turned in his direction even if the rest of her did not. No matter how quietly Kyven tried to move, Lightfoot always seemed able to hear him. She didn't turn as he moved, though, and he thought that he finally had her. He lunged, but instead of coming in low, he instead jumped and arced at her from the air. Lightfoot's ears seemed to lose him for a second, but then they tracked right back in on him when he was a hair's breadth from her. She moved with viper-like speed, twisting away from his pounce… or at least trying to do so. His left arm impacted her side, and he hooked into her and knocked her off her feet, carrying her with him to the floor. He grabbed her right wrist and wrested it to the side, keeping that shockrod away from him, rolling partially over her and grabbing her left shoulder with his other hand.
"I gotcha this time!" he said triumphantly, pinning her to the floor under his weight.
"Really?" she asked with calm eyes, and he distinctly felt her claws declare themselves just over and between his collarbones, in a position to take out his throat. "You're dead," she announced.
"The Loreguard don't have claws, though."
"No. But they do have daggers," she told him with steady calm as he released her wrist. "But not bad," she told him as he rose up onto his hands and looked down at her. "You're getting better."
"No Loreguard would be half as dangerous as you, Lightfoot," he said with a smile down at her.
"Flattery," she told him. "Let me see."
Kyven dismissed his cloud of shadow with but a thought. Lightfoot blinked her eyes, then looked up at him with her neutral expression. It was always hard to tell what she was thinking, and even harder to tell what she was feeling. It was one of the things that made her so interesting; she was always a mystery. He let her up, pulling back to sitting on his haunches, and she turned and got back onto her feet. She wasn't wearing her belt, which usually was a visual key for him to get excited. She'd been in the habit of taking it off when she trained him, to rob him of a potential hold on her, and he'd spend half of the lesson trying to ignore the fact that she was beltless. That in itself was one of her exercises for him, to keep his mind on the fight when there were other things trying to distract him. It didn't always help, though. More than once, one of their training sessions turned into something they weren't there to do, because just as seeing Lightfoot without her belt excited him, Kyven's unclad condition got to her as well. And one could only roll around on the floor with a lover for so long before extraneous thoughts started invading their minds. But, to his slight disappointment, this didn't seem to be one of those times… at least if he left it up to her. He rose back up onto his legs and wrapped his arms around her from behind, licking her behind her ear, through her bone-white hair, in a manner she would identify immediately. "Insatiable," she accused, though she didn't push away or struggle in his arms.
"What can I say, I'm a male," he breathed in her ear as he pulled her into a more favorable position, pulling her back down onto all fours.
Fortunately, they weren't bothered, for it was still early and nobody else was really awake yet, and Lightfoot was silent, even during sex. Soft growling sounds were usually the most he could ever get out of her, and today was no different as she stayed tightly wrapped up in his arms as he had sex with her. She was by no means docile or submissive, but when he held her like that, there was little she could do but let him do all the work, or she was going to lose some skin and fur to his claws. He knew that she'd get her revenge on him next time, taking control of him the way he had control of her at that moment, but right now he was lost in the pleasure of the moment.
They finished with a synchronized pair of soft, satisfied growls, and he spent several moments licking the backs of her ears affectionately, holding her small body close to him, then he released her, and released his growing Arcan habits for the day to embrace the human in him. The illusion that covered him caused the change in his thinking, for he acted human when he wore his human illusion. He had also started wearing the illusion without bothering with clothes, for Clover had pointed out–quite wisely–that clothes for him were nothing but a dangerous vanity. If he had sudden need to use his shadow powers to hide, his clothes would make that impossible, and things were no longer entirely safe for just about anyone in Avannar. Kyven had achieved a level of mastery with his illusions to make his illusory clothing feel real to anyone who touched them, just as he had learned how to make his human skin feel like skin, so he had evolved his powers beyond the need to rely on props like clothing. He hadn't worn a stitch of clothing for nearly a week, and he found that he actually rather liked it. It gave him a feeling of confidence, of safety when he was out on the streets, knowing that he could dismiss his illusion and vanish if an emergency called for it.
And his illusions had matured. Though the fox had not visited him since he'd come to Avannar, he could sense her satisfaction, nearly her pride, every time she answered his request for the power to create his spells. The trick he had learned in that moment of desperation in the headquarters of his enemies had stayed with him, and he had practiced with it, refined it, learned to extend it to all aspects of any illusion he wore. The white linen shirt he appeared to be wearing would feel like rough linen to any who touched it, would feel like the cheap, cool, utilitarian cloth that a craftsman would wear, just as they would feel the soft strength in the leather that made the trousers that appeared to be covering his lower body and the boots encasing his feet. The sense of feel within the illusion gave it a semblance of actual substance, just as the fox had said it would… Kyven's belief, his power to instill something more than just sight or sound or smell into an illusion, was actually making it take on aspects of reality. His illusory clothes moved with him in ways that he didn't entirely control any longer, and his illusory shirts would shimmer in the wind of their own volition, as if the wind were actually grabbing a real shirt and tugging at it. Kyven's growing skill with illusion was starting to blur the boundary between illusion and reality, just as the fox had said that it would. She had told him that when he reached a certain level, when he believed in his own illusions so deeply, so completely, he could create an illusion that was almost as real as reality itself, an illusion that could actually project itself into the real world. At its ultimate expression, he could create an illusory pistol that fired a shot that could do real injury. That was the ultimate expression of the power of illusion, and a level which the fox seemed to want him to reach.
But where he hadn't been actively practicing his illusions, learning and refining through actual use, his shadow powers were something he'd been actively practicing. The fox had once told him that his shadow powers could rival his power as a Shaman, and he could… feel that she was right. As he practiced his powers, gaining more and more control over shadow, he could feel that he was only scratching the surface of its potential. There was something… different. He couldn't explain it. He couldn't quite put his finger on it. But he knew that there was a different path he could take, a different way to use the shadow that would allow it to perform something different. He'd tried to find that path over the last couple of weeks, but so far it had evaded him. He had, however, refined his control of shadow even more, expanded his ability to control and also to generate shadow. He could now fill the entire shop with a cloud of shadow, far beyond just the small area he could manage when Umbra first taught him the trick, and he could utterly control that shadow.
He opened the shop after Patches made them breakfast, and immersed himself in the deceit of his daytime life as his mind pondered his true purpose. Even now, after over a month since he had invaded their building, the Loremasters still were searching for him, searching for him hard, hot, and heavy. He thought they would have calmed over a couple of weeks, but they had only gotten worse. Loreguard were searching random houses and shops within the city every day. Veraad's shop had been searched just last week, from cellar to attic, and everyone in his shop had been interrogated in a very unpleasant, nearly hostile manner. Anyone on the street was subject to being stopped and searched, and Arcans were being harassed in a terrible manner. There wasn't a day that went by that the Loreguard didn't kill an Arcan on the streets, even Arcans being led by a leash by his owner. As a result, Arcans had all but vanished from Avannar, for the kennels were empty because of the Masked's plan, while the Arcan owners were keeping their Arcans inside else their investment would be slaughtered in the street with no chance for compensation from the Loreguard.
Kyven, Shario, and Clover had discussed this, and they had agreed on one thing. Kyven had struck a nerve. He had frightened the Loremasters, frightened them to such a degree that they were going absolutely insane trying to find him, and now Kyven wanted to know why. Their reaction was too extreme, too overblown for them to be reacting to an Arcan sneaking into their headquarters. This concentrated and extensive search, and the subsequent terrorizing of the people of Avannar, hinted that Kyven had scared the Loremasters badly when he invaded their building.
Shario had come up with an interesting point, one that he and Clover had discussed for several days. "The invasion of their building is one thing, but the reaction is too extreme when compared to the act that spurred it," he said over a dessert of bread pudding last week. "We must ask why they have reacted so strongly to the breach."
"They are hiding something," Clover shrugged. "Any organization like that would be hiding something."
"Ah, but that's still not enough, friend Clover," Shario pointed out as he speared a piece of bread with his fork. "The crime doesn't warrant the reaction we've seen unless we ask ourselves this question. What is so secret, so important within the Loremasters' headquarters that would cause them to take Avannar apart looking for the invader? This is something more than they are hiding something. They think you know something, my friend, and they are trying to find you to find out what it is you know. And if you've left, they are trying to find the Masked, to find out what you told them. It's not that they have a secret, my friends, it is which secret have you discovered? Whatever that secret is, it is something so important, so vital to the Loremasters that they are dismantling Avannar block by block to try to find out just what you discovered and just who you told. That is not a normal reaction."
"So, the question is, what are the Loremasters planning that would make them go to such extremes to keep it a secret," Clover surmised, which caused Shario to nod soberly.
"And that is the secret we need to unearth," Kyven said, to which Shario nodded again.
"I'll have my people start trying to find out," Shario said. "I'll share what I find with you, if you share what you find with me."
"And so you can send it on to Flaur," Clover had told him with a clever little smile.
Shario just smiled in return. "I am a patriot," he said simply. "This is something too dire for us to ignore. Though I left my homeland many years ago, I find it is my Flauren duty to warn my countrymen of the threat of the Loremasters."
"Well said," Clover smiled.
That had begun their debate. After several days, they had come up with nothing solid, just Shario's very wise question of just what the Loremasters were hiding. And that, Kyven had come to discover, was what he had to find. If it was so important that the Loremasters would have their Loreguard take Avannar apart looking for him, that was something he had to know. It went to the very core of why he was here, why he was opposing the Loremasters. They thought that he knew some vital information about their plans, and it caused them to disassemble Avannar hunting for either him or the people who passed on that information. But, by doing so, they tipped their hands that they did have a great secret, and now Kyven had a mission to find out what that secret was.
That was why he was going back into the building tonight, despite their increased security… and this time, he would not be going in as a shadow. This time, he was going in as a thief. That meant that he did not care if he left evidence of his presence behind, if a Loremaster came in to find an office ransacked, or if he had to kill guards to gain access to more vital areas. He had two missions tonight, to find and take records that might hint at this great secret the Loremasters were keeping, and to see what the Loremasters knew of the plan, while Clover also did her part to help with the first objective. While Kyven was in the building, Clover and Lightfoot would be invading the personal home of one of the Circle's members who kept his house outside the island compound, one that Clover had identified as having the weakest defenses. They would ransack the house and interrogate the Circle member–using torture if it was necessary–to learn anything and everything they could. Then they would cover their tracks by killing the Circle member and getting rid of all evidence of their activities.
This was not going to be subtlety and guile, this would be an attack. But Kyven knew that this was going to happen, that it would eventually come to this. They were expecting it, and they had planned for it. Patches and Tweak already knew what to do if, one morning, Kyven, Clover, and Lightfoot never came back. If that worst case scenario was to happen, they would burn the shop to the ground and go to Shario, who would help them get to Atan, get to Timble and Virren. Virren could summon a Shaman, and they would tell the Shaman everything they knew, everything they had learned. Shario had already agreed to do this for them if something happened to him and Clover, under the thin guise of having his Arcans returned to his partner, who jointly owned the Arcans with him just as he jointly owned the shop, and who would become their owner if Kyven died.
Shario knew the truth, of course. Patches and Tweak would take word of Kyven's death back to Haven and warn them of everything they could.
In the furtherance of guild and deceit, Kyven and Clover never talked about Shario's secret, pretended to go on as if they didn't know, even though they knew… and Shario knew they knew. They'd never come out and told him that they knew, they were never overt–Kyven was never overt about anything. But careful words and comments had delivered the messages we know who you are and we will keep your secret. Since then, Shario had opened up even more, started telling them about little things he knew that actually helped a great deal. It was Shario's information that got Kyven the addresses of the homes of virtually every member of the Loremasters. And while they waited for the Loremasters to calm down, Kyven and Lightfoot had investigated those houses in the dead of night, when they couldn't be seen, and assigned to each one a priority based on two things, the rank of the Loremaster and the amount of security present around the house. It was Shario's information and Kyven's work that had opened the door to tonight, for Clover and Lightfoot would be invading the home of Circle member Reldavan Darkwood, the most junior member of the Circle who had something of a vice for gambling, which drained much of his money and caused him to live in a smaller house with fewer protections than other Circle members. Clover and Lightfoot would kill his guards, Clover would defeat his alchemical defenses, then they would ransack his house, interrogate him, then kill him and burn his house to the ground to cover their activities.
It was daring. It was bold. It was dangerous. It would certainly send the Loremasters into a frenzy once they discovered it. But it was also necessary. The original mission of Kyven, to find out what the Loremasters knew about Haven and the plan, was still important, and Kyven would also be looking for that information while he was in the building, but he would also be hunting for the reason why, why the Loremasters had reacted so severely to Kyven's invasion of their building.
He was a touch nervous, but he wasn't afraid. This was what he had trained to do. Much like the first time he went in, he had all day to prepare, and Lightfoot had already helped alleviate a little of his tension. He had some work to do first, clearing all his backlog of work so he had nothing hanging over his head, and have all of Sunday to himself to digest the information he brought; it was tradition that no craftsman did work on Sunday. So, by going into the Loremasters' headquarters on Saturday night, he was buying himself an extra day.
Breakfast had passed in relative silence, and the shop was tense and quiet. What they would do tonight would be dangerous, and what was more, the Loremasters would react violently to it, so they would be taking more preparations than usual today to prepare for it. Clover would use Shaman magic to close off the vault tonight before she left, raising walls from the stone to make it look like the tiny illusory cubby the Loreguard had once seen, as well as removing all crystals from the devices within the room so they couldn't be detected if the Loreguard searched his shop again and used alchemical devices to search for crystals and other forms of magic. Patches and Tweak would spend tonight locked in Kyven's room, which had the large window overlooking the alley that would give them a fast means of escape, since both of them could easily jump to the roof of the single floor building on the other side of the alley, and then make their escape.
But that was tonight and tomorrow, and Kyven had business today. Patches and Tweak were sitting at their benches, cutting milk crystals while Kyven cut one of the four crystals brought to him by sour-smelling yet friendly alchemist named Gart, one of Veraad's friendly rivals. Kyven had a stable of customers now, six or seven alchemists who brought him most of their crystal work because he was good, he was fast, and he was dependable. The only time he pushed back their orders was when the Loremasters brought him their own work, but they didn't begrudge him that too much, since he still got their orders done quickly. He had four crystals to cut for Gart, and two crystals to cut for Veraad, but none of them was larger than seven points.
The alchemists were starting to notice, though. Crystal prices had been steadily increasing, slowly yet steadily, since spring, because the mines in the mountains weren't putting out as many crystals. Veraad dismissed it as a natural cycle, saying "well, they'll pick back up when the mines move. This has happened before, just an unlucky convergence of several larger mines playing out at the same time." Gart didn't think much of it at all, and Remaine, a rare female alchemist with a horse-like face but a funny disposition, thought it was a ploy by the crystal merchants to make money. "They're holding back crystals like they did ten years ago, holding them back to drive up prices, before the Loremasters intervened and threatened to close all their brokerages. The instant they did that," she snapped her fingers, "the crystal prices dropped in a heartbeat."
Kyven finished the crystal, put it aside, and started on the next one. "Not so hard, Tweak," he reminded for the millionth time, able to tell Tweak was using too heavy a hand just from the sound his tools made on the crystal. Both of them were progressing amazingly fast. Kyven felt a little smugly justified in taking Patches as an apprentice, because she was very good at it. She had nimble, steady hands, but what was more, she seemed to grasp the method of appraisal much faster than Tweak, and she learned so fast! Trinity, did she learn fast! She was at the same basic level as one of Timble's second year apprentices, able to appraise and cut a crystal, and she learned it in the course of about three months. But, then again, She received personal instruction for hours every day, and she had nearly unlimited milk crystal stock on which to practice, which were luxuries most apprentices didn't have. That personal training let her advance faster than most other apprentices. She could sit down with a rough crystal and inspect it, and three times out of four, she chose the best course of action for cutting the crystal. That was a vitally important skill, one half of the holy pair of appraising and cutting. Her weak point was her cutting skills, but those she would master with practice. Tweak was a better cutter than he was an appraiser, outside of his tendency to use a heavy hand with the tools, but he still wasn't nearly as good as Patches. He did try his best, though, and Kyven felt that he would become a good cutter, more than able to find work as a journeyman in some shop if he were human. Patches, on the other hand, would be good enough to be an Artisan with practice and study.
Patches would be the cutter Kyven sent back to Haven to train other cutters.
She brought her finished milk crystal to him as he inspected the five point yellow in his hands, then took the milk crystal from her and inspected it. "Very good, little one," he said. He noticed a few minor errors that caused the crystal to not achieve its maximum potential, and pointed them out to her. He wasn't condescending, instead inquisitive, asking her why she chose the cuts she did. When she answered him, he pointed out why some of those decisions were right, and some of those decisions were wrong. She seemed to absorb his teaching like a sponge. "Always remember your angles, Patches. On the whole, you did very well, but here, here, and here, these angles are wrong. They're reflecting back into this tiny little flaw, and that weakens the crystal on the whole. Your crystal would be about an eighth of a point weaker than it could have been, but that would be nearly unnoticeable. If this were a red crystal, I'd sell it. It would be viable."
Patches absolutely beamed.
Kyven went back to his office, and came back with a small one point red crystal, half the size of a child's marble. "Alright, little one, here it is. Your first real crystal. See what you can do with it," he said, giving it to her.
She took it from him with trembling hands, then rushed back to her bench.
He cut all of his backlog while Patches worked on her crystal, almost afraid of it… but actually afraid of doing a bad job. She seemed desperate to do well, to make him proud of her, so she spent a long, long time studying the tiny crystal through her glass, then made copious notes, even drew a diagram, everything Kyven had taught her about planning to cut. Kyven moved on to training Tweak as Patches worked on her crystal, then he went out to deliver all his finished crystals, pausing to chat with the alchemists as he delivered them, he even went to the guild to catch up with gossip there, to nose around to see if the guild had noticed the increase in crystal prices… and they had. The cutters who were there doing business accepted Kyven into their conversation around a posts board, and he steered them to crystal prices. They complained about it because they bought crystals too, primarily milk and small red crystals for their apprentices, while others bought their own crystals to cut and sell. They'd seen the prices go up, which meant that they had to put up more bond when they took a crystal to cut, and that meant they had to keep more money in their shops… and that was something no cutter liked to do, not in Avannar. This wasn't Atan, it was a big city, and thieves liked to target craftsmen because they almost always had something of value there. Kyven didn't have that problem because he was friends with Shario, and Shario controlled all illegal activity in Kyven's neighborhood. Shario didn't tolerate freelancers around his legitimate businesses, and since Kyven and Shario had a back-office deal, Kyven's shop was also under that protection.
"One broker tried to charge me two chits for a four point milk!" one of the cutters, a wizened old man, said in an outraged voice. "Two chits! I remember when I could buy a box of milk crystals for two chits!"
"The guild of crystalbrokers has to be up to something," another one said. "Remember about twenty years ago, when they intentionally held back crystals to drive up the prices? I think they're trying it again. I'm just glad I bought a good supply of expendables last year, so I don't have to worry about it."
"I can draw on my partner's shop in Atan," Kyven said. "Timble can ship me any milks I might need with the apprentices."
"When are you going to take on some apprentices?" one of the cutters asked, a tall, wiry man of middle years named Veddon, whom Kyven had met at the guild enough times to have an acquaintance with him. Veddon was one of the players, so he started throwing his knives. "I have a couple of good apprentices I could let you take on, my friend. They're both very good."
"I have enough apprentices in Atan," Kyven said with a chuckle. "There was almost a fight when they found out I wasn't bringing any of them. They wanted to come to the big city. But, I'm secure here now, I have a good business, and I'm making a modest profit, so I can afford to bring apprentices."
"That and you're tired of doing all the work yourself," Veddon chuckled, throwing his last knife.
"I have Arcans for all the chores," Kyven said, "but having a couple of good apprentices around to help with some of the easier contracts would be nice. Especially now, since the Loremasters are contracting me. Every time they show up at my door, they mess up my schedule, because they want their crystals now."
"What good is being an Artisan if you have to do all the work?" one of the others laughed.
"I hear you about the Loremasters," Veddon agreed. "I've been contracting out to them too, they show up and say that they want it yesterday. Bunch of pushy bastards," he growled. "They dropped a box of thirty reds on me last week and said they wanted them tomorrow. Thirty!"
"But they pay well," another cutter chuckled. "I've been doing some work for them too."
"So have I," another cutter piped in. They all looked at each other, then they laughed. "At least we're not competing with each other," Veddon said.
"Still, that's odd, isn't it?" Veddon's opponent said as he stepped up to the line. "All of us doing work for the Loremasters."
"They must be up to something," another cutter mused. "Maybe they're upgrading the arms of their soldiers or something. Anyone heard of a new version of shockrod or anything getting developed?"
"Gaven, an alchemist down the street from me, created a new device that freezes a large amount of water all at once," Veddon said. "Freezes it twenty feet wide and a foot thick in a straight line. He's developing it for the Loreguard as a quick and easy way for them to cross rivers."
"It would break away from the shore and float off it froze to the other side," one cutter chuckled.
"He's still working on it," Veddon shrugged as he took his place at the line. "It's an interesting idea, though."
"Yeah, it is interesting," the cutter agreed. "He might make some money off it if he can make it work."
Kyven left with a bigger sense of what Shario had told them, that the Loremasters were gearing up for something major. They were stockpiling crystals against the coming shortage, but they were cutting them. They wouldn't be cutting those crystals unless they intended to use them, for they would only last a few years in a cut state before their power bled away. If they were cutting the crystals, then they were going to use them. But what would they use them for?
More information to send on to the Masked.
Patches spent all day working on her crystal, which also kept her from worrying about tonight… which was part of Kyven's plan of giving it to her. He'd much rather see her sitting at her bench, absorbed in the task he gave her, than see her running all over the shop trying to clean what was already spotless in a frenzy of nervous energy. It gave her something else to do than fear.
Kyven took a short nap after he cleared his backlog, and kept the At the guild sign on his door to make sure that he didn't get any other business that day. After he woke up, he sent on the information about cut crystals to the Masked, then sat down with his big chart to go over what he intended to do tonight.
Tonight was going to be an attack. He intended to invade as many offices of the Circle as he could, and while he didn't know exactly where they were, he knew where one was, and he'd bet that there were other offices around that one. He rather doubted he'd find anything useful in the office he'd visited, that or he'd find it much more heavily defended. It was common human tendency to either not put something valuable in a room which had been invaded or tighten security to a ridiculous degree around that room, even long after the access to the room by the thief had been closed up. There was a loss of that sense of security about it, and that made humans tend to avoid using it or go overboard trying to defend it. He would invade the west tower and search every room he could find, search for any information he thought was useful, and if he managed to come across any members of the Circle or other Loremasters while there, he would interrogate them.
Then he would kill them.
That was the other side of the lever. If Kyven killed a few of their high-ranking members, he might disrupt them, give the Masked more time to pull the Arcans out of Noraam without Loremaster interference. Before, the attempt to keep himself a secret overbalanced doing something so rash, because he could have quietly leeched information out of them. But now they knew he was here, they knew a Shaman had breached their headquarters, so there was no longer the need to cover his tracks. The only covering he had to do was ensure they couldn't find the one doing it, track him down and find him here in his shop. That they discovered it was done no longer mattered. And if that were the case, then assassinating a few members of the Circle could only be useful to the Masked and to Haven. It would throw the Loremasters into disarray, frighten them, force them to focus on Avannar rather than the world beyond this city, mainly for one reason; if he made the Circle more frightened for themselves then they were concerned about the political machinations of Noraam, then they would be distracted from those machinations. Slaughtering one or two of them inside their own headquarters just might do that.
This wasn't about being invisible anymore. This was now about guile and deceit, unleashed in all its myriad forms. Kyven would trick the Circle into focusing on him and ignoring the Masked, then deceive them by hiding within the city, hiding in plain sight, an ever-present menace that would terrorize them into keeping their eyes away from where he did not want them to look. He would use the tools of guile and deceit within the building, tricking guards into lowering their defenses, then either passing them by or killing them as needs dictated. He would also disable every security device he came across by causing the crystals in them to overload them with magic, breaking them. They would have to repair or replace those devices, which would heighten their paranoia that he might reappear at any second.
Guile and deceit.
He studied the maps he had made of the building, showing where every department office was, looking at the empty spaces in those maps. Those were where he'd be going, but, he would again invade the Department of Arcan Control to find out what else they knew. He closed his eyes and see the halls in his mind, in his memory, remembering the shape of the halls, the feel of them, the shape of the stairs and how one could only partially up them, since they zigzagged their way up the building, turning back on themselves once between each floor. The guards stationed at each landing could not see the floors above and below, but the guards at the landing of the stairs on the far side of the floor could see the guards at the other landing. There were other stairs at the center of each side of the left and right hallways, but those stairs only moved between the third floors and higher on the left side, since that was the lone stairway leading to the second floor. The right side went from the ground floor to the fifth floor only, creating a chokepoint for anyone trying to reach the sixth floor or higher, forcing the invader to get past guards, and alchemical traps, and the fact that the guards on the other side of the long passage could see as well.
It was a very practical design to make sure no guard station isolated from the others, with the two stairwell guard stations leading from the floors below the keystones of the design. Three guard stations were visible to each other on the sixth floor, and each guard station could see its counterpart on the far side down the three long halls. It would be impossible to attack any one guard station without two others seeing the assault and raising the alarm. If Kyven were not faced with trying to get around it, he could appreciate its tactical soundness.
But there was a weakness to their design, and it was that they relied overly on the sixth floor blocking any invasion of the towers. In those towers, there was only one stationary guard post at the landing of the stairs, relying on that one guardpost and the traps they had. If one could get past the sixth floor, one could invade the tower with minimal resistance.
If one played by their rules.
He created a detailed illusion of the building at small scale before him, about six rods tall, and studied the exterior. The two towers rose above the glass and metal façade covering the first two floors of the front, but it was the windows Kyven studied. The rooms on the outer halls had windows, glass-paned windows, with the rough exterior stone blocks surrounding them. It would be dangerous, and something he would only do if he was cornered, but Kyven saw that he could climb the outside of the building between the fifth and sixth floors, climbing the fifteen or so rods from one window to the next, then bypass the guards at the stair landings at the sixth floor if he had to do it. Of course, then he'd have to get past the guards at the base of the stairs at the tower entrances, and those guards were visible to the guards at the sixth floor landings. If he was even more daring, he could climb out a fifth floor window, move laterally to the tower, then climb up the tower wall to the windows in the tower proper… but that would be extremely dangerous. He was a climber by nature, but that was not the kind of climb that Kyven wanted to try to do without being a master of rock climbing, for one mistake would be lethal. He would much rather try to slip past the guards than try to climb that outer wall. But it was an option.
But, that wasn't part of his plan, yet. He would invade the west tower first, going straight for it, for that was the primary objective. Information about what the Loremasters knew about the Masked would be there, as well as any hints of what plan they were hiding, that they feared would be discovered so much that they had gone crazy trying to find him. He would start at the bottom and work his way up to the very top, which was where the Councillor responsible for the affairs of Noraam in general had his office and the offices of his staff, and where they also had a small council room, where the Councillor headed his own council of Noraam affairs, one of the many sub-councils peppered through the Loremasters' power structure. The main meeting chamber for the entire Circle was on the sixth floor, a central location for the Councillors so some of them didn't have quite as far to go if, say, they had their offices in the east tower.
That Councillor, the one who oversaw the general affairs of Noraam, was named Vair Sablemane. He was said to be a middle aged man with great intelligence and foresight, but also had a reputation for ruthlessness, and he was the second in command of the Loremasters. He was the ideal target for Kyven's search, but that also meant that his office would be one of the most heavily defended. If he wanted into that office, Kyven was certain he'd have to fight his way in, and have to get past several alchemical defenses. But he was determined. He was sure he'd find a gold mine of information in that office, all he had to do was get inside it and have enough time to ransack it.
His plan relied of stealth at the beginning, then brute force at the end. He would use stealth, guile, and deceit to search the lower floors, slipping past or tricking the guards, searching the floor, then moving on. Then, when there was nothing but the top floor to go, he would go back down and kill the guards on the lower tower floors to limit the numbers of quick responders if he raised an alarm. Once the guards were eliminated, he would invade the top floor, kill the guards, then find and search the office of Councillor Vair Sablemane.
If, through some miracle, he had yet to raise a general alarm, he would go back down to the Department of Arcan Control and ransack the entire office.
That was the plan, but he also knew that plans often changed. If he happened across a Councillor up there, then everything would change as he interrogated, then killed, the Councillor, and for that he would need time and a little space. He'd have to have enough time to interrogate without being interrupted, and do it without getting himself killed by guards that might intervene… so he'd need space, a private space hidden from the guards that would give him the time he needed to tear the information he wanted out of the Councillor.
It was a grim, sobering thought. If he had the chance, he would torture to get information he wanted. He would adopt the same tactics as his opponents, who would torture and kill. But every time he thought of that, just one thought steeled him. His babies. His three coming children would be Arcan, and he had to fight tooth and claw, fight with every fiber of his being, fight using any tactic that would work, in order to protect his children. He had a very personal stake in this now, and that stake was the well being and future of his children, the first generation of the new race of shadow fox Arcans.
With that kind of commitment, he could easily find it within himself to torture, and to kill, in order to protect his children. He would do anything to protect his children. For if he did not, if he did not do anything in his power to discover what the Loremasters had planned and do everything he could to stop them when they discovered Haven, then he would be putting the lives of Umbra and his children in jeopardy.
That was no choice.
Clover came into his room as he studied the illusion, closing the door behind her. "Preparing?"
He nodded. "Are you and Lightfoot ready?"
"Yes. She drew a diagram of the house compound for me. We know how we're entering and what we're doing. It shouldn't be too difficult, the Councillor's house is poorly defended. We can get in without fighting any guards, get to the Councillor from inside, ransack his office, then set fire to the building and get out the way we got in."
"How many guards does he have there?"
"About ten," she answered. "I can eliminate them much more easily from inside. They won't expect an attack from behind."
"Good. I hope you don't mind doing this."
"I was trained the same as you, my friend. I know that there is a time to be kind, and a time to be merciless. It is the path of wisdom."
He nodded simply.
"Are you ready?"
"I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to use a heavier hand this time. They'll know I was there after I leave tonight."
"Is that wise?"
"I want them to know. I want them to be so worried about me that they're not paying attention to what our brothers and sisters are doing out there."
"Misdirection. It will make it very dangerous for us, but it may help the others."
"I know, but I think it's an acceptable risk," he told her. "They've already searched this shop, so I think we'll escape another search for a while. As long as we keep our heads down, I think we can stay hidden." He was silent a moment. "I'm thinking of having all of you go back to Atan after tonight, at least for a couple of weeks," he said, giving her a serious look. "After tonight, Avannar will be a deadly place for Arcans. The Loremasters might start butchering any Arcan they can find to try to kill the Shaman. We need to warn Shario to hide his Arcans, and I think I'd like you and Lightfoot to take the kids to Atan for a couple of weeks, at least until things calm down here. I don't want the Loreguard to break down my door and kill every Arcan in the shop. I don't want you here when they retaliate."
"No."
"Clover–"
"We are here together," she told him seriously. "We accepted this risk when we came. And you are thinking like a human, my friend. Think like a Shaman. Do you really believe I'll allow anyone in the shop to be killed? Would you? There are any number of ways we can prevent it without causing us to reveal ourselves, Kyven. The vault will be more than safe enough, and I'll take some precautions to ensure they can't take us by surprise. We'll be perfectly safe."
"But the Loreguard and Loremasters know that Kyven has Arcans."
"But they don't know which the Loreguard have slaughtered in the street," she told him simply. "The next time the Loremaster, Yoris, the next time he comes, complain to him that your Arcans were slaughtered in the street, and demand compensation."
"Clever," Kyven said with a nod, appearing to tap his finger to his human chin when it was actually tapping his muzzle. "But I'd still rather you be safe."
"We will be safe regardless," she told him. "You often underestimate the power of Shaman magic, my friend, because your own powers are so specialized. I am not specialized. I can use Shaman magic to defend our home in such a way that the Loremasters will never know magic is involved."
"How?"
"I'll ask a spirit for help," she told him.
"No!" Kyven growled, dismissing his illusion. "The cost–"
"I know how to bargain with spirits better than you, my friend," she told him with a serious look. "I will summon a spirit and bargain for aid. The spirit will watch over us and warn us, even protect us, and the Loremasters will never know. Bargaining with spirits is something Shaman do, Kyven. Your own totem told you this."
"Spirits try to take more than what they give."
"Yes," Clover said simply. "So it's the responsibility of the Shaman to bargain a fair contract. I've dealt with spirits many times before, my friend. I know a spirit that will help us, and has always bargained fairly with me in the past. Trust me. Not all spirits are like your fox. Forgive me for saying this, but your fox is deceitful and dangerous, far too dangerous for anyone to try to bargain with her. Not all spirits are like that. They still require you be careful, but they don't try to be that way."
"Tell me something I don't know," he sighed, looking at his clawed, black-furred hand. "I have this little reminder."
"Don't judge all spirits by your totem's example," she told him. "Your fox is not like most spirits. She has told you so herself, if I recall."
"She did," he admitted. "She also said she's one of the few that knows war is coming, so she's wiser than most spirits," he said, a little defensively. She was his totem spirit, after all, he had to defend her honor.
"Spirits are wise, but can be just as clouded by emotion as we," Clover told him sagely. "The desire to avoid war is jading their view. To them, both humans and Arcans are their children, to be nurtured. They loathe to see us fight one another… but that is inevitable now."
"So, you think war is coming?"
"I do," she said with a single nod. "Being here and learning what we've learned, it is clear that the Loremasters cannot be bargained with, or reasoned with. They will never see us as anything but animals and slaves. We will eventually be forced to fight them, so it's best to fight them on our terms. Let's see how well they fight in a northern winter, when all of the spirits are against them," Clover said, her jaw setting and her eyes hardening. "For they are wrong. The spirits will not help them."
"I'm glad to hear you say that, my friend," Kyven said, putting his hand on her shoulders.
"You can do more for me," she said, smiling. "Tonight I go into danger. Send me off into it with a smile."
He laughed. "Insatiable," he teased.
"What can I say, I am a female," she smiled in reply. "And I find myself nervous about this."
"Well, let's work off that nervous energy," he smiled, reaching for the tail of her ragged shirt.
It was all about Clover, so he gave himself to her. He undressed her, pulled her onto the bed, stimulated her to readiness, then laid back and let her have him. She was more than willing, climbing atop him and lowering herself onto him, then spending a long, very pleasurable time riding him. He held her by her hips for quite a while, then fondled her small breasts, then held onto her shoulders when she increased her tempo. Her tail beat against his thighs as she rose fully up and put her hands behind her head, lacing them into her hair, and he stroked the fur of her striped flanks, her coyote markings, until he felt her clench around him. That incited him to orgasm himself, and he rose up, almost breaking his tail, and held her tightly as he spent himself inside her, clutching her around her middle with his muzzle pressed up against her upper chest.
"Trinity," Kyven growled, "I love it when you do that."
She smiled and put her arms around him, licking him on the top of his ear. "Do what?"
"Make me feel so good."
"The feeling is mutual, my brother," she told him, hugging him to her chest.
"That sounds almost incestuous," Kyven noted dryly, which made her laugh helplessly.
"We are brother and sister in spirit, not body," she winked down at him.
"Thank the Trinity for that, or we'd be in so much trouble," Kyven said in a dry tone. "Feel better now?"
"I will after we do it again," she said, pushing him slowly back down to the bed, then rolling them over. "As soon as you're ready," she winked.
He spent a great deal of time licking her face and neck affectionately, then when he was ready, he gave her what she wanted. She wanted to feel safe and loved and needed, to know what she was about to go out and kill for, and he gave it to her. He made love to her with tenderness, for she wasn't looking for physical pleasure now, she was looking for the a reaffirmation of the powerful emotional bonds that tied them together, bonds renewed with intimacy. Kyven and Clover didn't love each other as a man and wife would, but they were undoubtedly closer to each other than they were to anyone else, shared a very special bond of friendship and intimacy that was very, very Arcan, one of the strongest footholds an Arcan mentality held within Kyven's human personality. It was a joining not of lovers, but of Shaman and friends, a celebration of Arcan tenets of closeness and sharing. Kyven was not taking, he was giving, and Clover was more than willing to seek out what she needed that Kyven had to offer. He knew she wasn't looking for sexual gratification as much as she was the act, the feeling of closeness, of union, so he tried to drag it out as long as possible. He made love to her with almost agonizing slowness, keeping his entire weight on her, letting her feel him against her, within her, giving her the sense of intimacy she wanted.
Feeling her short little claws dig into his back as he made love to her told him she was getting what she needed, both physically and emotionally.
But, no matter how long he tried to make it, realities were realities, and the urgings of the primeval stirred within both of them. What started in languid slowness ended with her literally pinned to the bed, clutching him and crying out as he gave her the release that was so needed, and then the clench of her returned the favor for him.
She panted beneath him, felt her chest rise and fall against his, as her hands gripped handfuls of the black fur on his back. "No matter what happens, I will always cherish these moments with you, my brother," Clover said in a low, breathless voice.
"Don't talk like that. You'll be fine."
"You are in far greater danger than I am," she reminded him. "And it is for you that I will worry far more than for myself. I will pray to the spirits that they watch over you and protect you tonight," she said, clutching him tightly.
"I'll take all the blessings I can get, my sister," he said earnestly, licking her on the side of her muzzle.
She held him to her, held him tightly, for what seemed hours, but he found peace and comfort within her embrace. Her concern for him, her love for her friend, was like a warm and peaceful blanket laid over them, giving both of them quiet, contented harmony.
They both drifted off to sleep like that, and at least for one warm, sunny summer afternoon, all was good with the world.
It was a moonless, starlit night. The warm breeze swirled lazily through the city, blowing through open windows, along deserted streets, and along the tiled rooftops of the city of Avannar. It was a sleeping city, quiet, almost reverent in its observance of the unspoken rule that the night was a time of silence. It was a time that was populated only by those few either daring enough or stupid enough to brave the unknown. Thieves plying their trade in the silent, darkened streets. Drunken revelers stumbling home after a night of harmless partying. Sleepy Loreguard, out patrolling the city searching for signs of wrongdoing. Idle-faced harlots lurking near lamps on street corners, in search of their next customer.
And then there was Kyven.
He stalked along the edge of a wide avenue, surrounded by the cool breath of shadow, which concealed him from the eyes of those that might be looking down from windows. He could see those people through his spirit sight, which looked beyond the stone and dead wood comprising the buildings around him, allowing him to see only the life upon and within them. He still had not yet mastered the trick of seeing that which did not live, but the very faint aura of those tiny, tiny things too small to see with the naked eye, yet which existed in such abundance that a preponderance of their infinitesimal bodies created a faint nimbus upon those unliving surfaces, highlighted walls and floors, roofs and porches, allowing him to see them as almost invisible, ghostly vestiges of themselves. Those ghostly shades of reality made it hard for him to see beyond the buildings, filling the city around him with a kind of glowing background radiance that blurred everything in with itself, making only the large living things apparent to his eyes easy to see on the same block. The living people on the next street over were less sharp, and the ones beyond that were all but lost to the background light of the glow of a billion microscopic creatures, making them nothing but small blurs of brighter light within the life of the city.
Kyven moved with certainty, but also with anxiety, for he knew that before this night was done, he would kill. Men would die tonight, men that may not even believe in the organization for which they worked, only believed in the money they were paid. But that no longer mattered. Tonight, Kyven would invade the headquarters of the Loremasters, and within that building of glass, metal, and stone, he would kill. How many he would kill he did not know, but it was an unavoidable outcome. To do what he intended to do tonight, guards would have to die. And they would know that their mysterious Shaman invader was still within the city, and could still move with utter impunity through their most sacred of places, the very center of the Loremasters' entire network.
Tonight, the first true casualties of the coming war would be tallied, for Kyven was not entering the territory of his enemy as a spy, but as a soldier.
Getting in was not going to be an easy matter, he knew. The bridge was now guarded by twenty Loreguard, ten at each foot of the bridge, and the bridge was blocked off by a wooden barricade to prevent horses and wagons that was flanked by alchemical lamps. They stopped everyone and interrogated them, he had learned, and turned away anyone not expected within the headquarters. There would be no wrapping himself in an illusion and talking his way past them tonight. But tonight, he would be using stealth, not guile and deceit, to gain entry to their island.
Maybe a month ago, he would never have been able to do this, but Kyven's ability to control shadows had improved since the last time he had done this, and he was confident that his powers were up to the task.
The weakness of their plan was that they did not block off the edges of the bridge. The waist-high rails of the bridge were nearly a rod wide and flat, made of granite, and they were the way in.
Kyven reached the edge of the street leading across the avenue and to the bridge, and there he did his work. First, he called forth a small area of shadow, careful to match it to the same darkness of the air over the river. He then surrounded himself with it and moved with slow, silent feet, down on all fours, across the paved avenue and to the edge of the street, with its low wall keeping pedestrians from tumbling down the bank and into the river. He slinked low to the ground along that low wall, right up to the heavy column of stone that marked the beginning of the bridge, then waited for a moment. He listened to the Loreguard talk among themselves in quiet tones, listened to them chat idly, until he was sure they had no idea they were not alone. He then climbed up onto the low wall, just by the tall square column of the bridge, tamped his feet while carefully measuring the five rods of empty air between him and the far side of that column, and then he jumped.
He landed exactly where he intended, and landed silently. He set his hands and feet on that rod-wide span of rail and moved slowly and smoothly along the rail, slinking past one Loreguard that could have reached out and touched him. He had to stop suddenly when another of the ten leaned against the rail with his back to it, so close that Kyven's nose was almost against his shoulder, so close that Kyven dared not even breathe else the force of his breath tickle the curly blond-haired man's face and neck. For agonizing seconds Kyven stood motionless on his hands and feet, down on all fours, until the man finally rose up from the railing to take a wineskin offered to him. Kyven stalked past him slowly and carefully, then once he was past them, he moved quickly along the rail, balanced between the floor of the bridge and the twenty rod drop to the water below.
The other end of the bridge was more heavily fortified. There was an alchemical device sitting squarely in the center of the bridge's width, and a magical aura extended out from it, visible to his eyes, a perfect sphere whose edges extended past the rail of the bridge… but only just. Kyven saw that he could jump over the edge of the sphere and clear it, not get inside its area of effect, if he could manage about ten rods of vertical distance. To do it, he saw, he'd have to make his jump nearly at a run, then land on a rod wide stone railing literally within arm's reach of two Loreguard that would certainly hear him land.
Or maybe not.
Kyven formed the idea of a spell in his mind, to create a zone of silence centered in such a way that only the very edge of it stretched over the rail, almost exactly the same way the alchemical device just barely encompassed the rail into its area of effect. Once he had the details of the spell firmly in his mind, he beckoned to the fox to grant him the energy to make the spell a reality. He felt her touch his mind, touch his soul, then channeled the power into him. It flowed through him, shaped by his will and conscious, forming a zone of silence that would mask his landing from the men on the far side of that device. Kyven immediately felt the drain of channeling the spell, of maintaining it on top of holding his cloak of shadows that hid him from the eyes, so he had to act quickly. He took two careful steps back, then bounded forward. The rod's width under his hands and feet seemed to narrow down to a knife's edge as he ran long it, then he bunched his legs and vaulted high into the air. He saw the sphere of the device under him, sliding under his laid-out body, and then all sound ceased when he fell into the area of his silence spell. He landed hard but securely on the rail, then bounded away. The air disturbed by his passing caused two of the men to turn and look where he had just been, but he was all the way down to the thick pillar of the edge of the bridge and jumping off the outside, landing on well-manicured grass. He ended his spell of silence immediately, then padded away on all fours as the two men called to the other eight, and they all looked carefully around the bridge. But Kyven was too far away now, moving deep enough in the shadows to banish his own shadow and meld with the natural ones.
One obstacle down, about ten thousand to go.
He moved quickly and quietly around the building, to that back entrance the pages used to go between the Loreguard barracks and the main building. He was positive that that door would be guarded now, but getting through that door would be easier than getting through the front doors and the heavy guards that would certainly be there. He got around the building, and found that the door was guarded, alright… guarded by four Loreguard, two flanking the door and two in front of it.
Too many to slip past, and he seriously doubted that they'd buy any lie he tried to tell under an illusion.
Kyven backed up, and fell to the idea he had before, but hadn't considered from this low altitude… windows. He backed up on the lawn and looked up, looked for windows that were open. He slipped almost all the way back up to the front of the building when he saw one, an open window on the second floor.
Kyven stopped a moment, to consider the issue. If he gained entry through the window, he'd have to explain to any guards on the second floor how he got there when they never saw him enter. That meant that he'd be fighting a running war going down to the first floor and then back up. But, the advantage in that was that the second floor was an orphan floor, and odds were a patrol wouldn't find the corpses for a while.
Looking up higher, he saw an open window on the fourth floor. Up there, he had a chance of getting past the guards, since there had to be people working up there tonight. He could hide himself in the guise of a Loremaster and just take a short attitude with any guard that challenged him. Both windows were along the same line; he could see how well he could climb the stone exterior of the building. If it was very hard, he could go in through the second floor. If it was easy enough for him to risk it, he'd try for the fourth floor.
It was worth a try.
The wall was not conducive to climbing. It was made of very tightly fitting granite blocks, so tight that Kyven could barely find any purchase for his claws. It took him nearly five minutes just to get his feet off the ground, for he had to feel around for gaps between the stones that had been widened by exposure to the elements and he couldn't see the cracks, since the nonliving stone did not appear to his eyes when they were open to the spirits. But then he found himself stuck, unable to find another handhold, and he slipped off the wall and fell to the grass below.
He saw on his haunches, considering the problem. Trying to get in through the doors would likely become a fight, and fighting down here would mean he wouldn't live to reach the west tower. Going up the outside of the wall, on the other hand, was virtually guard and trap free. He saw now magical auras on the wall, and there were certainly no guards up there patrolling the exterior.
So, if going up the wall was the safest move, and he couldn't climb the wall, then where did it leave him?
Magic.
He bowed his head. Fox, he called. My totem spirit. I need to climb the wall to get in, so I can continue the task you gave me. How do I do it? Please, show me. Grant me your wisdom and show me the path.
She was there. She was behind him, and he felt her paws come to rest on his shoulders as he sat on his haunches. In that touch, there was communication. If that is what you seek, then so be it, she conveyed to him. What price will you pay for my assistance?
I'm asking for your advice, not your help, he thought, a little defensively, his body shivering at what happened to him the last time he tried to bargain with this spirit.
So long with Clover, and still so little you have learned, she conveyed, a bit sharply. I will give you neither. You have summoned me, Shaman, you have formally summoned me. Now you must bargain from me what it is you wish.
I will bargain nothing, he thought immediately and with heat. I'd rather do it myself than bargain with you. And I didn't summon you, you construed my thoughts in a manner you wanted, not the intent I gave them.
You cannot run from me forever, Shaman, she answered, a touch amused. Eventually, you will have to face me in a formal summoning again. Pray that you show much greater wisdom than you did the last time.
And then she was gone.
Kyven resisted the urge to spit a few choice curses aloud, then rose up on his hind legs and looked up at the window. It was too high to jump to reach, and he couldn't climb it. Trying to go in through the doors was suicide at worst, a guarantee he'd have to flee before reaching his objective at its best. He had to get in through the window.
A sound to his right, near the corner, caused Kyven to quickly rush up against the wall and lay down, then cover himself with a cloud of his own shadow just in case they carried torches or lamps. A natural shadow would be banished by the light, but one of his conjured shadows would remain even in the face of the light of the sun. He narrowed the shadow down to literally a sheath of shadow that covered him, and only just enough to allow him to meld into it, vanishing from view.
The patrol appeared around the corner, a patrol of eight Loreguard moving in a two by two formation, two across and four deep. They didn't march so much as walk, and they were all looking around, not just walking in a stiff military manner. This was a patrol of men paying attention to what they were doing. Kyven unconsciously became very still, even though they couldn't see him, as they walked up even with his position, and he saw two of them look right where he was. They had sharp eyes, but their eyes were attuned to the lamps they carried, and the dancing shadows of those lamps concealed the pool of deeper shadow collected against the side of the building and grass before it, making their eyes pass over it, dismissing it as yet another dancing shadow.
But the men did show him how he was going to move inside. The patrols moved quietly and in a formation. If he could kill one or two of the men bringing up the rear, he could replace them with himself and an illusion of the other man, if he had to kill two, then just follow the patrol as it made its rounds. He could abandon the patrol when he was near where he intended to go, and hope they went a ways before the other six men realized that two of their number had wandered off on their own.
But that still left him with his current problem… getting in without getting killed or raising an alarm. He stayed enveloped in his shadow for a long moment after the patrol left, until their lights were too dim to prevent him from melding with the natural shadows of the night, then again reverted his eyes to normal sight as he pondered the wall. He needed to climb the wall, climb it without his claws, and do it safely. He knew it was going to take magic, but how would he perform a spell he was never taught to do something he couldn't quantify? He had to have a specific idea of what to do if he tried using a blind spell, like the spells he'd copied by watching Clover, because watching Clover showed him how to go about making the spell. Clover had never used a spell to climb a wall before, so he wasn't sure how to go about doing it.
He bowed his head slightly, looking near the base of the wall, and chanced to see a spider skittering along on the stone, surging forward, stopping, then surging forward again, on the prowl for prey–
That was how to do it!
He closed his eyes, then opened them to the spirits even as he kept his lids shut. He brought forth an image of him skittering up the wall just like a spider, his hands and feet sticking to the wall, but not so greatly that he couldn't take them off, just enough to hold his weight comfortably. He focused his attention, his awareness, on his own hands and feet, then beckoned to the fox to grant him the power to make the spell a reality, to give him the ability to climb the wall like a spider, to move vertically with the same surety and grace as a spider.
He felt the shadow fox respond. Power surged into him, power flowing from an amused spirit, flowing through him and into his hands and feet. The power pooled there, and unlike a maintained spell, he felt magic collect in his hands and feet, collect and coalesce, almost like he had little crystals in his appendages absorbing the power, saving it, storing it. The torrent of magic flowing into him ceased, but he felt the power remain behind, merged in with his hands and feet, where it would slowly fade as it powered the spell Kyven had channeled, which left Kyven to focus his attention on other things.
It was a different kind of spell, and the wolf, Stalker, his training came back to him. This was a Blessing, a different kind of Shaman spell that dealt with positive magic, of beneficial effects, which often used different rules than normal channeling. That he cast the spell on himself, directly within his own body where he could not see, was all the indication he needed that he had used a Blessing rather than a normal Invocation.
It was the first Blessing he had ever done… and it worked.
Elated, Kyven turned and vaulted into the air, and his hands and feet made contact with the wall, and they held fast! There was a strange tingling in his appendages from their contact with the wall, and he most certainly felt the pull of gravity, but the tickling in his hands and feet defied the pull of gravity and held him fast to the wall. It had worked!
Moving, he found, was a simple affair. Though his hands and feet held fast to the wall, he could, with a sharp tug, free them, almost like pulling a spoon out of a hardened jar of honey. Kyven's natural strength was more than enough to free his hands and feet to allow him to climb the wall, and his altered legs actually made climbing the vertical surface much easier. His Arcan legs were naturally shaped to allow him to move on all fours, and that allowed him to walk right up the wall on all fours with confidence and good speed. He was always careful to keep at least two appendages on the wall at all times, but that was very easy, and he moved up the wall as fast as a human would walk along a street. He moved past the second floor window, his body hidden by the natural shadows of the night and making him invisible on the side of the granite wall. He climbed up to the closed third floor window and then past it, then up to the fourth floor. Before going in, he stopped just beside it and considered something. He could walk up the walls now. What if he went up to the roof and climbed the towers, gaining entry to the towers without having to get past any guards at all? Would there be any defenses up there for him to worry about? Why settle for the fourth floor when he could go for the whole basket of eggs?
The stored power in his hands and feet, though, told him that the spell had a set duration, and he could feel the power drain almost like the ticking of a clock. From how much he had when he started to now, he felt that he had about three more minutes before the power faded, and if he was still on the wall when that happened, he would fall off if he did not recharge the power of the spell by casting it again.
A decision. He would climb up to the roof and check things out from there. If it looked like a good idea to climb the tower, he would cast the spell again and climb it. If it did not, what he could do was get into the building from the roof, through one of the skylights or hopefully a door that might be up here to give cleaners and workers access to the roof. That would allow him to bypass a great deal of trouble and only have to deal with the sixth floor and above.
He climbed up to the roof, which wasn't a simple affair, for the top of the building wasn't a single roof, and he had to look at the world through mundane eyes to take in the landscape up here. It was a series of rooftops with walkways between them, little triangular hills breaking up the top of the building, with channels and water drain pipes and narrow walkways. Some of the rooftops had stairs going up them, some did not. Most of the rooftops were made of thin granite sheets with sturdier granite blocks between them. Some of the rooftops did indeed have skylights in them. At each corner of the building, the four towers rose over the rooftops, towering a hundred rods or more into the sky over the man-made triangular hilltops atop this massive construction.
From the walkways up here, Kyven was almost certain that there had to be a door up here somewhere, a door that would give him access to the sixth floor.
He felt his spell fade as he set foot on one of those walkways, and he opened his eyes to the spirits. His eyes probed below, through the stone, looking down into the sixth floor, looking down to see just who was down there and where they were. He saw the guards at their six positions, the tower stair guards barely visible to him in the distance, but also saw quite a few others on the floor, moving around, sitting at desks he couldn't see, as well as a congregation of twelve humans sitting at what looked to be a long rectangular table that looked to be in a room in the middle of the floor. A meeting? A meeting at midnight on a Saturday night? What on earth would they be doing here at this time of night unless it was an emergency, something that–
Something he thought he might want to overhear.
Kyven stalked across the roof, having to squint to see the aura of life on the surface of the stone to see where it was, to keep him from walking headlong into a column or up a rooftop. He got himself to where he was nearly right over the twelve humans, nine men and three women, all of middle age or better, then he returned his eyes to the mundane to see if their room was one of the ones that had a skylight, windows in the roof to give them light from the sun during the daytime. To his delight, he saw that it indeed was one of the skylight rooms. He stalked up to the skylight and looked down, and saw them, twelve men and women sitting at a long rectangular table, five to each side and one on each end. They had papers and files scattered in front of them on the desk, and it was clear that they were in the middle of a deep discussion, a discussion that he couldn't make out. Their voices did carry up to the glass, but the glass muted it, garbled it. He lowered his head to the glass and put his ear against it, nearly having to stand on his head to do so, but the awkward position did allow him to hear enough to make out what they were saying.
"–is starting to complain about the levies," one of them said, a deep male voice. "It may not be much, but you know how they are. If we ask them for a single chit, they make such a case out of it."
"We'll deal with normal business at Monday's meeting, Bevan," another voice called.
Bevan. Bevan Longspike. This was a meeting of the Council of States, which meant that each person down there represented the twelve major kingdoms or city-states of Noraam, from southern Flaur to northern Menn.
"Shandi?"
"Two thousand troops left Phion yesterday afternoon, Councillor," a woman's voice answered. "The Council of Phion made no comment of it. I think they were glad to be rid of them, to be honest."
That caused a few chuckles. "Defol?"
"We've left four thousand troops in Mayam, but another six thousand are on ships now," a male said. "They should reach Stinger Bay in four days, and it will take another three to four for them to arrive."
"Why did you leave so many there?"
"The local Loremasters demanded a large troop presence to prevent unrest. You know how the Flaurens are. They resent our presence in their country."
"Damn Flaurens," the High Council's voice spat. "Does anyone need any additional support anywhere, or do you think your states are prepared and able to handle it?"
There was silence for a moment, then he heard a sharp sound. "Alright then, we're adjourned."
Kyven got out of his awkward position and looked down through the skylight. Troop movements? They were pulling troops in from all over Noraam, it sounded like. But where were they being sent? For what purpose were they be gathered? What was it one of them said? Three to four days from Stinger Bay. Well, that was on the coast, so it had to be somewhere with three days' march of Stinger Bay. Riyan maybe? Avannar was too far away, it was six or seven days of forced march for an army to march from Stinger Bay to Avannar… but it was three to four days on horseback, if one really pushed the horse.
Did they have that many horses waiting at Stinger Bay?
No, it sounded like the troops were destined for Riyan.
But still, this was… not good. The Loremasters were calling in troops from all over Noraam for some reason, which seemed opposite of what he would expect them to do. With the coming crystal shortage, they should be spreading their forces out to prevent unrest, and to take control, not concentrating them… unless they meant to form a barrier here in the Free Territories to prevent armies of the kingdoms and city-states from warring in the territories over possession of the mines, which would threaten Avannar by virtue of its location. If that was the case, well, stationing a large force at Riyan, the center of the Free Territories, that did make a kind of sense. It was three days to the borders, from Balton to the north and Rallan to the south, on horseback, and maybe seven days forced march on foot. That would give the Loremasters a central base from which they could quickly respond to any invasion, from either side.
But still… why? There was more to this. But this in itself was vital information. Shario would love to know that the Loremasters had pulled a large number of troops out of Flaur, and the Masked needed to know that Riyan was about to become extremely dangerous.
But, there was something going on, and Kyven had to learn what it was. He looked down and saw the men and women filing out, all of them but a gray-haired man who was gathering up documents and papers, one who had been sitting at the head of the table. The Councillor, the one that headed the Council of States and sat in the Circle. Kyven dredged his memory for that bit of information, and came up with a name. Gerrad. Gerrad Blackspear, Councillor of the Circle and head of the Council of States, third in command of the Loremasters.
It was almost a perfect opportunity. In just a second, the man would be alone, and Kyven would be able to swoop down and abduct him, then rip every scrap of information out of him he wanted. Looking at the man through eyes open to the spirits, he could see that the man was heavily armed with at least seven different alchemical devices, including a weapon of some sort hidden under his surcoat that might be a shockrod. This was not going to be quite as easy as just dropping down and grabbing him, he saw.
Nope, not easy at all. A contingent of six Loreguard filed into the room as the Loremasters left, and the Councillor spoke briefly with them as they waited for him. They were his guards, his escort; clearly, the Loremasters still so greatly feared him that they would not move around inside their own headquarters without armed guards.
Actually, that was wise of them, since Kyven was lurking over them right at that very moment.
Maybe taking a Councillor would be a hard job… but Kyven's eyes narrowed on those hands, hands holding papers and reports that he could see overlaid with his spirit sight, since there was visible light down there in the council room from alchemical lamps hanging from the ceiling. Those, on the other hand, would be much easier to take. A Councillor would be a prize, for sure, but the records that the Councillor used were just as much a prize, and would be easier to take.
Stalking along the roof, Kyven watched the Councillor through the roof using spirit sight, tracking him. He walked towards the west tower, as Kyven felt he would, and Kyven watched as he talked with the guards there for a second and then mounted the stairs. He climbed up, and up, past the first floor, past the second floor, and quickly faded into the background aura, out of Kyven's range of vision. Kyven quickly cast the Blessing once again, allowing him to climb the outside wall, and he scrambled up the wall until he again got the Councillor in sight. He climbed up four floors, and then went through an elaborate process of getting past the guards, surrendering most of his alchemical devices, stepping through a device, and then moving on without any of his protections. But, Kyven could see that the entire floor had a faint magical aura about it, something that had been lacking from the lower floor where Kyven had been while pretending to be a page. The entire floor, the walls, the ceilings, they were glowing with a magical emanation, some kind of protection or defense.
The entire top of the tower was itself a single alchemical device, protecting the top three floors.
That was not something that Kyven wanted to deal with while hanging from the side of the building, hundreds of rods above the ground.
Kyven descended one floor, the third floor of the tower with five above him, and channeled his spell of silence around a small window leading into a small office. Breaking the window would reveal how he got in, but he had a feeling they'd figure that out themselves anyway after they learned of his invasion, so he wasn't losing anything. Next time he came, he'd have to find another way in. He climbed down to the window, reared back a fist, and shattered it with a soundless blow, which was very odd since he couldn't see the glass. It was as if he punched his fist through something invisible, almost unreal, with only the sudden resistance meeting his knuckles that told him he'd hit anything solid at all. He felt around the edges of the window to make sure there were no sharp splinters of glass, breaking out the window to its frame, then he clambered in.
The thick pads on his feet felt the broken glass upon which he tread, but they were too thick for the glass to penetrate and draw blood. He was in a small office, probably some secretary or aide to a Councillor, but an office was an office. He channeled a very simple spell that created a very small and faint spot of light centered over and between his ears, a trick he'd seen Clover do many times, which allowed him to see the office in the world. A quick look about showed him that this was indeed an aide to a Councillor, Councillor Eredal Hardstone, and much of the correspondence in the office dealt with the Councillor's position as the deputy to the overseer of the west tower, the Councillor that was responsible for the general oversight of the continental affairs of Noraam. That made Eredal the third most important person among the Loremasters. This office was the office of one of his many aides, one that wasn't very important given that Eredal's office probably wasn't anywhere near here. Odds were, the owner of this office was almost never in here, spending most of his time tending to his boss.
The very first thing he did was gather up all the glass and throw it out the window. Glass laying on the floor showed that someone broke in, but if they only found little bits of glass on the floor and the majority of the glass on the roof below, then they might assume that the window was how he got out. It was a little thing, but misdirection was all about the little things, the attention to the little details that built into the big picture. After that was done, when there were nothing left but small little bits and shards, he ransacked the place. Quietly and thoroughly, Kyven went through every drawer, every cabinet, and every piece of paper he found, he skimmed over to see what it was about. Much of it was mundane information, about how many Loremasters were where, what they needed, routine communications, but he did come across one little blurb on a small scrap of parchment that had been scribbled in haste and thrown in the desk, nothing but a short note to one's self to remember to do something. The note read troop movement report pushed back 14 June, which was today. This note was about the very meeting Kyven had partially overheard, which showed that this wasn't something spur of the moment, something of an emergency nature. But, it had to be important for them to be having a meeting about it in the dead of night on a Saturday. Had they been waiting for some important information to arrive before starting the meeting, which made it run late? Did they have to wait for someone to arrive before they could have the meeting? Either was possible.
Another important paper. It was a report on the Arcan movement, with a scrawl at the bottom different from the handwriting on the top; investigate possible ties to a major guild or country. Clearly this is coordinated. Find out who is pulling the strings. The report was dated nearly a month ago, though, probably ending up in this aide's office because it was no longer really important. And another blurb about the Masked, this one dated two weeks ago; Councillor Ulis wants information about possibility a state has somehow gained control of a Shaman. This could be espionage, most likely from Flaur.
That was something Kyven had never really considered. What would stop a kingdom or city-state of Noraam from finding a Shaman and offering him a job? And since the Shaman were all connected, well, that was something the council at Haven very well might approve, for it would give them access to that state's internal workings.
He knew that wasn't the case in this case, but it was interesting that the Loremasters had considered it. Maybe their doctrine of hatred towards the Arcans and vilifying the Shaman wasn't as deep-seated in the humans of Noraam as Kyven believed. Or maybe some king of Noraam was willing to deal with evil in order to increase his personal power.
That was certainly possible. Men would go to almost any extreme to gain power.
Kyven finished ransacking the office, finding nothing else of interest. He was now inside, and now he had to be much more careful. The hallways outside were lit, and there were six guards at the landing. Those six guards would see the instant he opened the door, and there was also that alchemical device at the landing he had to deal with.
Now, he knew, it was time to kill.
He would have to kill those men, and do it quietly, because if he raised and alarm, he had to eliminate as many guards that would quickly respond as possible. He would have to do it in such a way that he didn't warn the guards on the floors above and below, and didn't find himself facing a small army of pistol-wielding Loreguard.
The key, naturally, was illusion.
He needed to get all their attention, do it in such a way that they didn't spread out, and he needed to lure them all onto this side of that alchemical device. He would have to be out in the hallway so he had unobstructed line of sight, but also be in position where he wasn't killed if they pulled their pistols and started shooting.
This would take preparation.
First, he again cast the spell of climbing upon himself, channeling the Blessing into his hands and feet. Once that was done, he formed a very detailed illusion in his mind, a very clever illusion of something that the men wouldn't immediately believe, but would certainly get their attention; a ghost. Creating an illusion of a ghost wasn't that difficult, because it allowed him to take certain license with reality. The image he created was a young human woman whose lower body dissolved into mist, but was nude from the thighs up, which was all of her that was discernable. He made sure she was well stacked with very generous breasts and a triangle of pubic hair to get their attention, and a pretty face that was hauntingly beautiful, and a little somber and sad. Ghosts shouldn't look happy. He made the illusion opaque, allowing them to see through it, which would reinforce its ghostly appearance. Once he had his illusion fully created and the spell channeled, Kyven unlatched the door, sent the ghost through the walls parallel to the hallway, where it would erupt from the wall behind the guards. If he was right, seeing it would scare them and send them across the alchemical device, but then seeing it and comprehending that it was a ghost, a spectral image of a naked woman would cause them to think things over before they ran off to raise the alarm.
When the ghost was in position, Kyven climbed up onto the wall over the door, then channeled another spell. It was again an illusion, an illusion centered on the six guards, and because it wasn't a physical effect it allowed him to affect them despite the wall being between them; he could see them using spirit sight. The illusion was not sight or sound or smell, it was feel, an illusion of cold. The effect was dramatic. The six men all looked around in surprise as they started to shiver, as Kyven's illusion tricked their skins to believing the temperature in the hallway had suddenly lowered, and when they had acknowledged it, he had the ghost slowly appear through the wall by the stairwell.
There were startled shouts and oaths of alarm, and Kyven used those as his cue to open the door and climb out from above, curling around the top of the doorframe, and then wrapping himself in one of his own shadows to vanish from sight. Maintaining two illusions and his shadow started taxing him, but it had done its job. The six men had indeed crossed the alchemical device and were staring at the ghost with their pistols drawn and pointed at it, as the image held her arms out to them longingly, her mouth open but no sounds coming out.
"What the fuck is that?" one man said urgently.
"It looks like a ghost!" another said.
"Ain't no such things as ghosts!" another said belligerently, then he laughed roughly. "Ain't nothin' to be afraid of!"
"Well, why are you over here with us instead of over there with it?" the first asked, a bit acidly.
Now came the second part. He saw no guards hurrying from the other floors to find out why the men were cursing, so he had the ghost move forward, very slowly, as he crawled forward on the ceiling and the men all took a reflexive step back. Kyven was keeping the location of that alchemical device firmly in mind, wouldn't allow the illusion to enter its area, so he had her move forward only a little bit, then look at the men peeringly, as if searching their faces, looking for someone in particular. After a moment, the illusion's face seemed to fall, disappointed, and she turned and floated into the opposite wall, vanishing from sight. As soon as she was out of sight, Kyven released that spell, and then released the illusion of cold almost immediately afterward.
"What the fuck was that all about?" one of the men asked nervously.
"I still say that wasn't no ghost. It was a trick! We need to warn the Lieu–"
He never finished that statement, for Kyven was now in range, and the men were all nice and gathered together. With his feet magically sticking to the ceiling of the passage, Kyven channeled his withering blast of cold, the only true area of effect attack spell he knew. A pale cone of magical light blasted from his extended hands and flooded the entire passage right where the men were standing, instantly sucking the warmth out of them. In the blink of an eye, frost rimed over their bodies and their skin turned a ghoulish blue-white, and they all were locked, frozen in their defensive stances, frozen solid.
The spell cost him. It was a very demanding spell for him, even now, and when the fox withdrew her power from him, he felt very weak. Had he not been hanging upside-down off the ceiling, he would have felt his knees tremble from the effort of holding him up. It was just the rapid succession of spells, that was all. He had been maintaining two separate illusions and hiding within a shadow of his own creation and he used a very demanding spell for him to cast all within a heartbeat of one another. He lost concentration on his shadow and felt it dissolve around him, causing him to shimmer back into visibility, and he just hung there with his arms dangling limply for a moment as his body quickly recovered its strength from the draining succession of spells. He closed his eyes and took several deep, cleansing breaths, then he swung back up to the ceiling, turned around, and then pulled off to drop to the floor. He moved quickly, breaking the frozen men off from the floor, then carried their statue-like bodies into the nearest room. One of them had been really stuck to the floor, so much so that his foot broke off at the ankle rather than breaking the ice holding the frozen boot to the floor. Kyven pried the foot up, the ice within the break red from the frozen blood and flesh, then he tossed it in the room with its original owner, who was now laying on the floor, and locked the door after he finished, hiding the corpses.
Kyven moved up to the alchemical device, saw that it was just like the one on the lower floor, and that meant he knew he could disable it before it did whatever it was it was supposed to do. He slid his hand into its area and opened himself to its magic, draining it away by attacking the crystal that powered it. But instead of holding it, he formed a bridge between the crystal and the spirit world, like casting a spell in reverse, beckoning the shadow fox to drain the crystal dry, to take back that magic into the spirit world. She complied, and Kyven felt the crystal within the device shudder as it was connected to a great power, a power that offered it absolutely no resistance to the flow of its power, allowing it to completely discharge itself back to where it belonged.
In the span of five heartbeats, the crystal powering the device was drained, shuddered, and then shattered into nothingness.
His Blessing still affecting him, Kyven climbed up the wall and to the ceiling of the stairs, then he worked his way up, wrapped within his own shadow to render himself invisible, creating a strange shadow that slithered along the ceiling. Kyven climbed up to the next landing, and peeking around the wall showed him that there were also six men here. A couple of them were standing near the stairs, and two of them were debating. "We should go down and check," one of them said. "That didn't sound exactly right."
"Pft, Drent, that sounded like one of them played a joke or something. I heard one of them shout 'ghost,' for the Father's sake, then one of them laughed. Someone was messin' around."
"I still think we should check. We're supposed to investigate anything unusual."
"Then go look. We'll be here when you get back," the man chuckled.
Kyven couldn't allow that. If the man saw the missing guards, he might go down to sound an alarm rather than go back up to his post to tell his companions. Besides, it was the perfect opportunity for him, to isolate a single guard, kill him, then take his place with illusion. So Kyven followed him, crawling down on the ceiling as he went down. He stalked along just behind the man, and when he reached the landing and saw no guards there, he paused for a critical, fatal second before deciding what to do.
Kyven grabbed him by the neck, blocking his windpipe to prevent him from screaming in alarm, then used his Arcan strength to snap the man's neck. The body jumped and convulsed a few times, and then went limp, and the air in his lungs escaped in a final sigh, even as the rather unpleasant smell of the man's bowels voiding into his pants reached Kyven's nose. Kyven dragged the body to a door on the floor and threw it in, but then he took the man's weapon belt and studied the man's face intently, then turned him over and memorized how he appeared from behind. He then left him there, belting the wide leather girdle around his waist holding two pistols, two real weapons, but also set the belt so a single flick of the tongue of the belt would pop it open and free it from his waist. He then created an illusion around himself that perfectly matched the man he'd just killed, and then went back up the stairs, careful to duplicate the sound of his boots on the steps by using illusion.
"They said they saw a ghost," Kyven said with a little open disgust, his voice masked by an illusion of the man's own. "A couple of them were trying to sound really serious about it. I think they were trying to spread their rumor."
"See, I told you," the man who had been talking to the dead man laughed. "You need to learn to relax, Vril, if you keep taking stock in all the crap the Loremasters say you'll start seeing ghosts and Shaman around every corner."
"Guess so," Kyven said. "But one of them did sound really serious about it. Either he really thinks he saw a ghost, or he was really trying to sell it to me. He said it came out of one wall by the stairs, hovered there a minute, then vanished into the wall on the other side."
"He was trying to sell it," the man chuckled.
"He said it was a naked woman," Kyven added, which made all five of them look at him, and a few of them chuckle.
"Now if I had to come across a ghost, then a ghost of a naked woman sounds like the kind of ghost I'd like to see," the man grinned. But his grin vanished in a sudden explosion of shadow that went off like a bomb around them, plunging them all into murky darkness. The darkness swallowed not just light, but also sound, for the men tried to shout and found no sound, leaving them blind and deaf.
But Kyven was not blind. He reacted with blazing speed, using the skills Lightfoot had taught him, and used his claws to rip the throat out of the man to whom he'd been talking as the others went for the weapons on their belts, and one turned blindly to flee down the hallway. But they didn't get the chance, for the other four men were gathered together and far enough away for Kyven to attack them with magic; only the fifth man was outside of the effect of Kyven's blast of cold. Kyven constructed the area of that effect very carefully, not allowing it to intrude into the area of that device further into the hall, making it a very tightly controlled effect. But it was still devastating. Just as one of the men moved to lunge across that device, Kyven's spell struck them, freezing them all instantly. The light of their lives wavered and then vanished to Kyven's eyes, as the light of the man whose throat he'd ripped out seemed to vibrate, pulsate, and then it flared, and then it slowly faded away to nothingness.
That was another floor removed, but again at a costs. Kyven hadn't used magic like this in a long time, and he was starting to tire. He spent nearly a minute with his hands on his knees, resting to recover from that exercise of power
He debated for a short minute what to do. He now had two empty floors to search, but the bigger prize was upstairs. He could search these floors now and risk a roaming patrol finding two floors of guards missing, or he could press on and go for the big fish and pass on whatever information he might find here on these floors. He had to keep in mind that he was getting tired, that he couldn't keep going on like this for much longer. But, he also knew that he may never get this chance again. The Loremasters would go absolutely nuts after this attack, an attack that left men dead and their building compromised.
The prize upstairs was a risk, but also worth it. After he drained the power of the device on that floor and moved the bodies into the nearest office, he started up the stairs.
This was the last floor before that magic that enclosed the top floors, though. He crept up the stairs, his ears straining for any sound, as he came up to the very edge of that magical boundary, that went across the stairs like a roof that only he could see, marking the beginning of whatever it was that did whatever it did. He approached the boundary warily, but having no other recourse, he reached out to put his hand on it, to try to drain it of its power. His hand touched that boundary, and passed through. But he couldn't drain the power of it, because as soon as his hand touched it, he felt the magic around him and in him drain.
It was some kind of field of anti-magic, preventing any and all magical power within its area of effect.
Thank the Trinity he didn't try to climb up the wall on the outside! It would have killed him when he hit this boundary and this effect cancelled his spell!
The denial of magic was absolute. As Kyven stalked up into the area, he found that even his spirit sight wouldn't work here, and neither did his shadow powers. But that only made sense to him, since his innate power to control shadow was based on magic, just like any other monster's powers. It may be a natural power, but it still required magic to exercise, and this strange effect eliminated it.
He saw, now. This was here to prevent any spies using alchemical devices, Shaman, and even spirits from looking inside. A boundary like this, it would extend into the spirit world. If the Loremasters did their planning inside this area of effect, not even the spirits would know what they were doing.
This was why he was sent. He was sent to go where the spirits could not, and find out what was hidden from them.
The next floor up was much different than the ones below. Kyven could only see using his normal sight, but the light up here was dimmer, giving him lots of natural shadow for his black fur to use for cover. It wasn't melding with the shadows, but his black fur still made him very see in the dim light of torches just over the lip of the steps. He could hear voices up there, another post of guards.
He paused, considering. Magic wouldn't work up here, so no illusions, but it also meant no alchemical traps, and no alchemical weapons. All they had would be pistols, swords, and other normal weapons. All Kyven had was the element of surprise, his mind, and his claws.
No. He had plenty of weapons, if he went back down and stripped the dead.
He did so quickly, going back down and stripping the dead of two pistols and several daggers, which would be a little clumsy for him to throw but would still work, then belted on two swordbelts to give him places to put the daggers and pistols. The pistols would be weapons of last resort, for the report of the pistols would alert half the building that something was amiss. But, the small round pistol shots could be useful, so he took the small pouches from the dead and combined them into a nice pouch full of small lead balls. He hurried back up into that strange anti-magic, and crept up to the very top of the steps without being seen, literally laying on the steps with just his ears and eyes peeking over the landing, lost in the murky shadow of the torchlight. He saw four men up there, wearing gold tassels which denoted them as officers, sitting two by two at a small table, facing each other as they played cards. But instead of remaining silent, they were talking amiably among themselves. Kyven found it a bit odd that these men were playing cards where everyone else was standing around, but perhaps being assigned so high up in the tower, and having the gold tassel, gave them more latitude for such things than normal guards. These men had more than pistols, though. Four muskets stood on the walls behind the men, and each man carried a sword in addition to two pistols in their belts. These men were heavily armed, and Kyven had no doubt that they were well trained in using them. They were four to his one, but they were not paying attention, and Kyven could use that. He'd never kill them all without getting killed himself, but he could get past them and continue up to the next floor. The top floor would be where the treasure lay, and that was his objective.
Getting past the men was a simple matter of misdirection. He took a single pistol ball and lobbed it over the table, where it landed on the far side. The plink-plink sound it made when he hit the floor made all four men look in that direction, and that short moment, Kyven literally leaped from the lower stairs to the upper stairs, slithered over the guard rail and up the rest of the steps, then turned to get out of their sight past the landing halfway between floors where the stairs turned back on themselves. By the time one of them looked back towards the stairs, glancing a dancing shadow out of the corner of his eye, as one of them got up to find what caused the noise, Kyven was already past the turn-around.
He crept up the steps on that side, fully aware that he was now between two guard posts and with two floors below him cleared, which would raise an alarm if a roving patrol came to check on them. This was a very dangerous position. He crept up to peek over the steps upon which he lay and found another guard post, but where the ones below were playing cards, these four, thank the Trinity and all that was holy, were asleep. Three of them had their heads on the table, while a fourth, which was probably a lookout so they didn't get caught sleeping, had his head propped on his hand and his elbow on the table, with his eyes closed and his face holding a bemused expression. Kyven moved slowly and with absolute silence, creeping across the landing, up the stairs, and then he turned and got out of their line of sight, leaving him on the last flight of stairs that led to the top floor. He crawled up the stairs on his hands and feet, staying under the level of the light, then laid down on the stairs and peeked over the top step, to see what final obstacle he would face to get up here.
Four guards. Four guards, plus the six guards Kyven remembered seeing with the Councillor, six guards he had not seen go back down. They had to be up here still, probably in the Councillor's office, and as such he had to keep them firmly in mind. But, since he felt that it was suicide to even try for the Councillor, he would satisfy himself with rifling through an office on this floor, that would undoubtedly contain important information.
There were four guards here, guards sitting at a table to one side of the passage, two by two facing each other, with their sides to the landing. They too were playing cards, but it wasn't them that Kyven had his eyes on, it was what was on the far side of the hallway, down at the other end.
It was a crystal, a massive fifty point red crystal inset into the wall. That was the source of the anti-magic field, but in order for it to work, then the device itself had to be outside that area of effect. The effect wasn't a sphere, it was a shell, like a peach with its pit removed. So, the question was, how far down that hallway did he have to go before he got back to where he could use his magic? He had no idea, but that opened up a huge number of possibilities. If he got inside, he could use magic where no one else would have alchemy, meaning he only had muskets and pistols to fear. In there, Kyven could hold off a large number of guards, then, when he was ready to leave, he just had to remove that crystal then go out a window, which would let him get back down. Once he was down, it would be a matter of sneaking back either to the bridge or to the river and getting away.
But the trick, he saw, would be getting there. He had four men standing in his way, and six more lurking somewhere on this floor, who would boil out to stand between him and his goal if he got caught or those men had time to call out an alarm. Kyven slinked back down and took stock of what he had. Two pistols, six knives which weren't balanced for throwing, and a bag full of pistol shot.
A bag full of little balls…
A crazy plan formed in his mind. He could kill the four men, but not before they raised an alarm. So, he would kill the men, take one of their muskets, and use the bag of lead balls on the floor, scattering them in front of any door that opened, which should give him just enough time to get down to that crystal. Once he was again able to use magic, he could easily protect himself, meld to the shadows, give them nothing to see, and that would let him get into a room and out of their line of fire. After that, the alarm would be raised, so he would have very short time to gather information before he disabled that device and then made his escape out the nearest window.
Actually, that was a bit too crazy. It might work, but it defeated the purpose of him being here. He abandoned the plan, and abandoned the floor. He would take his chances downstairs, but what was more important, he now knew about that device, and knew where he had to go and what he had to do if he was caught or the alarm was raised. He would go up, not down, and make for that oasis of magical power, where he could effect his escape where he had a major advantage.
He returned to the four sleeping guards, and quietly, slowly, and painstakingly snuck past them. He kept himself almost on the floor, sliding by their table, the man supposedly keeping watch with his back to Kyven. Once he was past them, he moved a little faster, but no less quietly, going to the very first door he could reach. The door was unlocked, so he opened it, darted inside, the closed it with painstaking quiet.
It was very dark inside, in what was clearly an office, but Kyven could just make out a candle and a flint and steel on the desk, what little light coming in coming through the window. Kyven first took one of his belts and stuck it under the door to block the light, then he used the candle and flint to get the candle lit, then he took stock of the room. It was indeed an office, an office that was richly appointed with very nice furniture, and a large tapestry on the wall showing an eagle holding arrows in its claws. The office had several cabinets in it, and the desk had deep drawers that, upon opening them, revealed sheafs of papers carrying the seal of the Circle.
Bull's-eye!
By the light of his candle, he rifled through the papers quickly. His eyes skimmed the pages, looking for anything that might catch his eye, like numbers or the words Arcan, Masked, or troops. He didn't have to look far before he found the first interesting paper. It was a report from Bevan Longspike to another Councillor, named Fradd Greataxe, one of their lower-ranking Councillors and an underling of Bevan. Ensure all details are included in my report about the project, the note read. Include troop deployments and logistics involved for the expedition. Remember maps and Arcan slave numbers needed for labor.
Project? What project?
He kept reading through the papers, and found another report that mentioned Arcans. Estimated 5,000 Arcans needed for the project, it said. Also requiring 1,000 kegs of gunpowder for blasting. He read on, and found that this was a recent enough report. Arcan slaves are coming up short, the report read. Arcans are vanishing from the kennels. Alamar reports they can't supply the Arcans we need, even though we don't need them until the spring. They say it will take them years to rebuild their Arcan stocks if we can't find where they're all going. There's not an Arcan in any kennel anywhere!
He picked up the next paper in the stack, it was a reply. We'll have to go with some human labor, it said. Hire enough men to do the job. We'll commandeer all the Arcans between here and Deep River, mainly the mining Arcans in Atan.
The reply in the next paper was neutral. Make sure our Lord understands how expensive it's going to be to hire that many men for an expedition that's going to take over a year, the report said. And we'll have to factor in many more supplies. We won't have the option of just feeding them Arcan meat like we could with Arcans. We'll also need clothes, shoes, everything our Loreguard will need.
The reply was simple. I'll see to it. Just start making the preparations to move forward using human labor. We have to have everything in place so the expedition can move with the first thaw, and our advance force has enough time to dig in for the winter.
That report was dated just three days ago.
Project… the Loremasters were planning something. Something big, something that was going to require a huge number of Arcan workers, and would also require explosives. For blasting, the report said. But what was more important, the Loremasters were going to march into the frontier, right through Atan, all the way to Deep River and probably beyond.
That was going to cause problems if they did this while the Masked were still working, for Deep River was the main gathering point for cells to take Arcans to send them on to Haven. But still, what purpose did the Loremasters have invading the frontier wilderness, and why did they need so many laborers? Were they going to mine the western hills for crystals?
He searched more, trying to find something about this mysterious project. For long, nervous moments he searched, fully aware that at any moment he might hear an alarm. He opened a cabinet and dug through a series of old reports, months old, until he found a piece of parchment he very nearly threw aside in his haste. It wasn't a report, it was a letter, and it was the second page of it.
It was sobering. The coming crystal shortage is, of course, the most pressing matter before us, the letter read, but this project has the unique ability of solving two problems at once. If it is successful, our crystal problem will be over, with the added bonus that we will control all crystals on Noraam, which will cause the states to be under our full control. That will allow us to begin the work to revert them to their original states. But additional to that is gaining control of territory beyond the present states of Noraam, fertile and productive farmland on the plains around the great Snake River. With this bread basket of food and our control of the crystals, we can rebuild Noraam to its former glory. And we'll also have the chance to eradicate the majority of the wild Arcans roaming the forests west of civilized lands, freeing it up for settling by human homesteaders. Just as our ancient ancestors spread west from the eastern coast, we will again spread from the original states all the way to the Blue Sea, reclaiming all the territory of the original Noraam.
The discovery of the ancient Tree Briar site has been a true gift from the Trinity. The ancient records there will allow us to rebuild the machine that created the crystals, and since it is a device of alchemy, our most skilled alchemists can do the job. Though we still haven't quite worked out how to power it yet, I'm sure we'll figure it out once we get it built. While our expedition rebuilds the device, our other expedition will excavate the ancient ruins in the Snowy Mountains and recover the device responsible for creating the original Arcans. Thank the Trinity that Egra has such an amazing memory, or she would never have pieced it together! With that device, we can understand how the Arcans were made, so we might effect some kind of weapon against them that will make it easier to control their numbers. As you know, the unchecked explosion of the Arcan population is not just a drain on the dwindling crystal supplies, but also poses a risk to any attempt to settle the wildlands west of the mountains. If left unchecked, the Arcans will breed such an advantage of numbers that humanity will be hard pressed to hold them back. And Trinity save us if they ever start working together. I know many say it is impossible, but I have seen too many Arcans who are nearly as clever as people. They are growing smarter, old friend, smarter with each new generation, and we must do something about it while we hold the advantage in intelligence and before they gain an overwhelming advantage in numbers. Finding an easy way to kill them off, reduce them to manageable numbers, would be more than worth the expense. By understanding how they were made, it might also show us an easy way to thin them out. If worse comes to worst, we will eradicate the Arcans and use the device to make new ones to serve us, as the Trinity intended the beasts of the fields to serve at the hand of man.
The paper was like ice in his hands. By–what the writer was suggesting, it was genocide. The destruction of the entire Arcan race! And then–did they have any idea what that machine did? Did they understand that to create new Arcans to serve them, they'd have to sacrifice human lives to do it? And for the Father's sake, did they know what happened the last time the device that "created the crystals" was used? It would destroy everything Noraam had regained since the disaster! It would destroy the entire civilization here!
Holy shit, was this the project they were preparing to undertake? To rebuild the machine to create crystals… which would cause a cataclysmic explosion when they breached into the spirit world! They must believe that the destruction of the ancient civilization was caused by something else. Did they really think they could control that machine? If the ancients couldn't, what chance did they have?
Were they really so arrogant?
Dear Father, how could they do something so, so, so insane?
But three things were abundantly clear. First, the Loremasters were preparing to begin this insane plan, with that advance force. That had to be Loreguard, marching out to secure the site where they would build the machine, far from the civilized lands of Noraam. Second, it put the entire Masked operation in grave danger. They were moving Arcans through Deep River, and the Loremasters intended to take over the frontier settlement. Third, Haven had to know. They had to know this. Haven itself was in danger when that expedition crossed the great central plain to the Snowy Mountains. Their scouts might discover Vanguard or the mining colony, and then the Loremasters would know.
This, this couldn't be allowed. The Loremasters, they had no idea what they were doing. What destruction they would wreak on Noraam! Dear Trinity, what madness!
They had to be stopped. Stopped before they could perpetrate this insanity.
Kyven let the paper fall from his fingers. He had to get out. Now. Right now. At this moment, the most important thing that ever mattered in his entire life was getting out of this building alive, and live long enough to pass on this information. The lives of virtually every person on Noraam, human or Arcan, depended on it.
By the Trinity, shadow fox, I wish you could hear my pleas now, he thought furiously. I would pay anything to get this information to you.
That was it. He had to get out of this area of magic-dead. If he could get either up or down, he could contact his spirit, and she could learn what he had learned, and that would help protect the Arcans and Haven. Right now, that was what mattered most.
There were two guard posts between him and the boundary. One set was asleep. The other set was playing cards. With luck, he could get past both of them.
He slipped the door open after blowing out the candle and putting the belt aside, and crept out of the room with three daggers in one hand and a fourth ready to throw in the other. The four guards were still sleeping, but a new one was now awake, the one facing the side he'd have to go, his head on his hand and looking quite bored.
He couldn't get crazy. He was careful getting in, he had to be careful getting out. Despite his heart hammering in his chest, despite his desperate need, he had to be careful. He couldn't let his urgency get the better of him and make him do something stupid. He snuck past the guards once, he could do it again. Putting the three daggers away, he put the fourth in his teeth and slunk forward on all fours, moving slowly and with absolute silence as he approached the table. He watched the face of the sleepy guard intently as he moved by step by silent step, slowly, carefully, one cautious move at a time. For agonizing moments he barely dared to breathe as he moved directly in front of the guard, aware that any sudden move might make him open his eyes, but at the mercy of whim should he open his eyes anyway. Kyven nearly jumped when the man's chin slipped out of his hand, but he just propped his head up again without opening his eyes.
Kyven got past them.
He reached the stairs and scrambled down, to the middle landing, then stopped and peered down at the next set, so keenly aware that he was at his most vulnerable possible position, trapped between two sets of guards. The guards were still playing cards, King's Crown from the sound of them bidding, and Kyven stopped to consider. Below him, at the next midway landing, he'd reach the boundary that would let him use magic again. Those men were all engaged in the game, and if he moved quickly, jumped from the upper steps to the lower ones, he could be out of their line of sight before they could draw a weapon, even stand up. But he'd then have people chasing him, and he had no idea what was below.
That question was answered for him when a horn sounded loudly from below them. A roving patrol had found his handiwork.
His heart seizing, he moved instinctively. He lunged forward, onto the rail, and then dropped from one staircase to the other even as the guards at the table started scrambling to their feet. He heard a shout above him, behind him, and he twisted around the landing just as a pistol shot struck the wall not a hand's span from his head. "Shaman!" came a cry from above, while his ears were locked on what was below. The patrol below wasn't at the floor below, they were at the floor below that, at the first floor he had entered, which gave him critical seconds. The men above were running down the stairs as Kyven crossed the boundary, re-entering the area where he could use magic.
Almost instantly, an absolute explosion of shadow erupted around Kyven, as he opened his eyes to the spirits, cloaking him in shadow and rendering him invisible as the cool sensation washed through his skin and fur. He bounded out into the passageway, running far down the passage as he heard the startled cries behind, heard one man fall and tumble down the stairs. He took the pouch of pistol balls and tore it open the threw it behind him, and the sound of them rolling across the stone floor mixed with the shouts and the sound of the horn. Shadow fox! He thought in near terror. Shadow fox! I need you! You have no idea how much I need you right now! He ran to the very last door at the left side and pushed himself into it, then slammed it shut behind him. It was an office, like many others, with a window. He jumped over the desk and pushed it across the floor, pushing it up against the door, then he grabbed a small wooden stand and threw it on top of the desk. I need to get out of here! Dear Trinity, I need out!
What will you bargain for this service?
"This is no time to be asking for payment!" Kyven shouted aloud angrily as he turned and shattered the glass of the window with his clasped fists. "Fuck you, I'll do it myself!" He knew it was a bit silly to curse her in one breath and then beseech her for her magic the next to cast the Blessing, but for whatever reason she had, she granted him her power to cast the spell. He very nearly killed himself lunging out of the window, almost missing, but he started scrambling down the side of the tower. He could hear them above him, heard them stumbling on his pistol balls as they knocked doors in searching for him, even heard a few pistol shots and the report of a shockrod. He was hidden by the shadows so he wasn't worried about them seeing him climbing down, but they would also know that he was out of the building and flood the island with Loreguard. Swimming would be out of the question, so he had to try to make it to the bridge. If he tried to swim, he'd be slaughtered unless he could stay under the water for a long time. They'd see his wake, hear him swimming, and then he'd get peppered. He dropped nearly ten rods to the roof, landing on all fours, then bounded with hard strides across the roof, getting to the side of the building facing the bridge, fear sending waves of adrenalin through him. He skidded to a stop at the edge of the roof, looking down nearly a hundred rods to see an army of Loreguard running all over the place, but what mattered most to Kyven, they were barricading the bridge as patrols roamed the coast of the island, trying to stop any escape.
Exactly what he was afraid of.
What he needed was a diversion, one hell of a diversion that would cause chaos, give him a chance to get past the Loreguard, disrupt their discipline. He needed, needed–
He needed a fire.
Easily done! The roof was peppered with skylights. He could break the skylights and channel spells of fire down into the rooms below! If he set fire to the building, they would be forced to divide their attention to put out the fires, which would give him a chance to escape!
He moved quickly, rushing to the nearest skylight, then he shattered it with a crushing blow from his fist. Below was an office, a nicely furnished office filled with all kinds of combustible material. Furniture, paper, a tapestry, even a carpet! He channeled a blasting cone of fire down into the room, and though it lasted but a heartbeat, it flash-ignited the carpet, the tapestry, and much of the paper in the room. He bounded to the next skylight and repeated it, then rushed to yet another, the same conference room where he'd listened in earlier, and set fire to the table below. He spent nearly five minutes running from skylight to skylight, breaking the window, then channeling fire into the room below. The effort exhausted him, casting so many spells so fast on top of everything else he'd done, but it had done the job. Nearly a quarter of the sixth floor was now on fire, and the Loremasters and Loreguard had a hell of a lot more to worry about than just him.
A puff of granite smoke right by his foot woke him up fast. He flinched away even as he heard the musket shot, then glanced up and saw a Loreguard in a window of the east tower, being handed another musket. Kyven had become visible when he channeled fire into the last room, and the musket shooter had drawn a quick bead on him. Kyven scrambled up a sloping roof and then dived over the other side, unwilling to let the man see him vanish and warn them he could turn invisible in the shadows. When the man lost line of sight of him, he unleashed a large cloud of shadow, then vanished into the shadows, using the cloud as cover to prevent any other marksmen from trying that he might not see. He left the cloud there, left it to keep their attention as he raced out of it and to the east wall, then tired himself out even more by again channeling the Blessing to allow him to go up and down the walls like an insect. He knew he didn't have much left in him. Channeling that Blessing had drastically exhausted him, so much so he had to stop a moment and pant to recover his breath. He couldn't cast more than one or two more spells before he was totally exhausted, but he needed to save that energy to give him control over shadow.
He had enough for one more illusion. When he got down, he could take on the guise of a Loreguard and join in the search… but he wouldn't be able to hold the illusion more than fifteen minutes before it tired him too much. He'd have to maneuver into a position where he could make a run for it, or hide somewhere and give himself enough time to rest. But where would it be safe to hide?
He started down quickly, as fast as he could go, watching the men running around under him, getting down to the ground and out of his vulnerable position as fast as he could. He got past the fifth floor. The fourth floor. He heard shouts from the third floor, shouts of fire. The second floor. He dropped nearly fifteen rods to the ground, then dashed away before he even fully absorbed the shock of landing, running far faster than any human. He rushed as close to the water as he could get before tiring himself with an illusion, weaving in and out among frenzied Loreguard who were shining lamps and torches in every direction, searching for him. He stayed wrapped in his own personal shadow and melded into it, much easier for him to do than stay in an illusion, nothing but a dark patch on the ground, a slightly darker shadow within the night, literally his own personal form of invisibility.
Shadow fox, he thought, getting over his bout of pique. Look into my mind. See what I know. If I don't get off this island, you have to take it with you. Warn Haven. Warn the spirits.
Now you are behaving as a Shaman, came her response. Go to the bridge. I will ensure you make it to the mainland safely.
He turned and rushed towards the bridge, running right past two Loreguard who seemed to see his shadow pass them, turning to look for a long moment… but by then he was gone. He rushed across the lawn, up to the barricaded bridge, and then he slowed to a stop.
Go to the water's edge.
He padded carefully down to the water's edge, a marshy merging of water and earth, filled with cat tails and marsh grass. He scrambled back as a pair of Loreguard rushed out from under the bridge, carrying lamps, but they went by him.
Go under the bridge.
He did so, stepping into the deep shadow, where the lamps and lights of the bridge and the Loreguard did not reach, a vast darkness only touched in the slightest way by the light. The deepest shadow… a place, he realized instinctively, that his spirit's power would be at its strongest, for she was a spirit of shadow, a spirit of guile and deceit.
She was there. He felt her beside him. She stood up, stepped before him, then turned and reared up on her hind legs. She placed her paws on his shoulders, and the instant she did so, he felt the shadows come alive. They swarmed around him, enveloped him, encompassed him, and he felt a strange cold shiver through his entire body. His spirit sight seemed to fail him, as the light of the life on the bridge above seemed to dim, to darken, to get lost in the shadows surrounding him, and then the shadows receded. Warmth flowed back into him, and when he looked up, he saw that the men who were above him were no longer there. He was in a dark room, and when his spirit sight seemed to reassert itself, he saw that he was under the bridge on the other side of the river!
She had moved him! She had taken him into the shadow, and just as he'd seen her do so many times, she vanished into it. But this time she took him with her!
Thus have you used up my favor, she told him, though she was very proud. Your offer of sacrifice was your payment for my assistance. You made a good bargain. Now go. Go home, and do what must be done. And know that I am proud of you, my Shaman.
Kyven climbed up the wall by the bridge, exhausted, fearful, but strangely proud that his spirit was proud of him.
But he wasn't home yet. There were now twenty guards up on the bridge, within a stone's throw of him, hastily setting up alchemical devices on the bridge, probably to either detect him or stop him. But he was behind them now, past them, beyond them. And as a bloom of red appeared in a window in the Loremasters' building, a fire breaking out a window on the sixth floor, Kyven clambered up onto the avenue, turned tail to the river, and ran like hell for home.
He was bone weary, but there was much to do.
Kyven had to break through Clover's clever façade in his vault to get to the message machine. He wrote out an urgent, desperate warning that repeated what he had learned, that armed Loreguard forces would be marching into the forests west of Atan and en route to Deep River soon, so they had to quickly change the plan the Masked was using, and to warn Haven that the Loremasters were going to invade the Snake River region. Kyven didn't know where, but they were coming. And he warned them about their insane plan to build a new machine to try to make crystals, as well as their expedition to the Snowy Mountains to recover one of the ancient machines that originally created the Arcans.
Dear Father, would Firetail have a seizure when she got that message.
He sat at his desk for a long time, his hands over his face, fear consuming him. He knew what was going to happen now. There was no choice in the matter.
War.
The Arcans would have to attack. They had absolutely no choice. If the Loremasters accomplished any one of those three objectives, then the Arcans and Haven were in danger. They could not allow the Loremasters to establish a foothold in the Snake River valley, anywhere in it. They could not let them come over the mountains. If the Loremasters recovered the machine that created Arcans, then untold thousands of humans may die as they used the machine. They could not allow that machine to fall into the hands of the Loremasters, even though their crazy idea that they could use the machine to unlock the secrets of the Arcans and create a weapon to kill them wouldn't really work. And in no way, in no manner, could the Arcans ever allow the Loremasters to build the machine that breached into the spirit world. The spirits would never allow it, the Shaman would never allow it. They would do anything to stop it. To save the spirits, to protect the humans of Noraam, to protect all life on the continent, the Arcans of Haven would come down from their cold plain to do war upon the Loremasters to prevent that from coming to pass.
It had to be done.
Kyven thought that the coming war would be a war of defense, as the Arcans defended their hidden home from the invasion of the Loremasters. Never in his wildest dreams did he believe that the Arcans would be the aggressors. But they would have to be. They would have to find out where the Loremasters intended to build this machine and attack that spot. They would have to wipe out the Loreguard preparing to invade the Snake River valley and establish a foothold there in preparation for a major expedition in the following spring. And they would have to stop the expedition to the Snowy Mountains… though that would be the easiest for them. The lands west of the mountains belonged to the Arcans. That was Arcan land, Arcan territory, and the Loreguard would find themselves in a world of pain trying to beat them back. But the third issue, finding the machine they were building and destroying it, that would require the Arcans to invade human territory–
No. From the way the letter read, they intended to build the machine out there, in Arcan lands, away from the kingdoms of Noraam. They would build it on Loremaster ground, so they could make their crystals without fear of anyone interfering, anyone laying claim to it, and then produce their crystals to control the rest of the continent. Were it not insane, Kyven could appreciate the wisdom of such a plan, but the Loremasters didn't know the truth. They didn't know they were building a weapon that might destroy everything, and they'd never believe it if they were told. They were dangerous in that they knew just enough, just enough to understand what had happened, but not enough to understand why. Either they didn't know the machine they wanted to build destroyed their ancestors, or they arrogantly believed that they, with a greater knowledge of alchemy than the ancestors, could prevent it from happening again.
Good Trinity, did they truly believe that they could succeed where their ancestors failed? Or did they simply not know what terrible danger they were bringing into Noraam?
There was sound at the door. Clover stood by the broken façade, looking in with curious eyes. She looked completely unhurt. Lightfoot padded in behind Clover as she came into the vault, with Patches and Tweak looking in from the door. Clover came to the desk and put her hands on his shoulder. "Brother?" she asked softly.
"I… Sister," he said, reaching out and clutching her middle tightly.
"What's wrong, my brother? Are you alright?"
"I found out what they're doing, Clover," he said. "It's, it's, it's–dear Father."
"Tell us about it, my brother."
"I need to. Clover, you have to send word ahead. Firetail has to know as soon as possible. And you'll need to call on your spirit to defend the house, as soon as you can. Tonight."
"You set the fire," Lightfoot said calmly.
He nodded. "It was to keep them from chasing me down," he told them, then he blew out his breath and started.
Clover's jaw dropped, Patches gasped and started to cry, and Tweak just shook his head ceaselessly when he told them what he found in that letter. "I don't have any confirmation, but–dear Father, think about it, Clover. Even if it's wrong, we can't take that chance. And I'm very sure that the Loreguard are about to march into the frontier. I overheard them talking about troop movements, I saw those reports about them making preparations, them trying to find Arcans to do their slave labor, and we know they've been preparing for something major. They've been recruiting and hoarding crystals and building weapons for this, for their expedition into Arcan territory. Clover, we can't let them build that machine. If they do–"
"I know," she said sadly, shaking her head. "They would destroy everything that has taken a thousand years or more to rebuild after the great war. Such a pity," she sighed. "They are either blinded by power, or they are fools. Either way, we cannot permit it. We just cannot."
"War," Tweak said grimly.
"War," Lightfoot agreed.
"Our poor people," Clover said sadly. "We are not soldiers. Danna has barely had any time at all to form the army. I doubt she's even truly begun! And now we must call upon our untrained people to fight against our well-trained opponents."
"But it'll be on our side of the mountains," Kyven said. "Even if we're untrained, let's see how well the Loreguard fights when they have no supplies and they face an opponent that won't engage them in open battle. We can strike from the shadows, strike and fade away, destroy their supply lines, strip them of any chance to hunt, and just bleed them to death over the winter."
"I'm sure Danna will do what's best," Clover told him. "Let her handle it, Kyven."
"Danna may abandon Haven," Kyven said darkly. "She may not lead Arcans against humans in battle, especially if we're the ones who attack first. She was never really committed to our cause."
"She couldn't!" Patches said urgently. "Not knowing what would happen, she could never do it! She won't be fighting her own people, she'll be protecting all of Noraam!"
"We can just pray she sees it that way, little one," Clover said quietly. "Let me call to a spirit to carry our warning, then I will make sure we are protected."
She was there. Kyven stood up, and Clover did as well, as they looked towards the door to the vault. She sat there with her tail wrapped sedately around her legs, her eyes glowing unwaveringly with green light. She stood up and padded towards them, then jumped up onto his desk and sat back down, wrapping her tail back around her legs. She then spoke, her voice audible within the room, even audible to Patches and Tweak. "The warning has been relayed," she said. "The spirits are aware, and Firetail and the council know. And they are starting to prepare. Shaman. You have done well, both of you. All of you. But your work is not done. Shaman. My Shaman," she said, looking at Kyven. "There is more here for you to do. We need to know what they are doing. We need eyes here, and you will be those eyes."
"I'll do whatever I can, fox, you know that, but after tonight, it's not going to be easy. I didn't just sneak in this time, I set fire to their building. I think they're going to go just a little overboard with their reaction."
"We know. But we are confident you will find a way," she told him. "You are clever and resourceful."
He said nothing, just bowed his head.
"Clover. Lightfoot. Tell him what you learned tonight."
Clover blew out her breath. "With what you told us, no wonder we forgot," she sighed. "But what we learned falls into place with your information, my brother. The Councillor wasn't home when we invaded his house, but we ransacked his office, and saw that the Loremasters are buying every crystal they can get their hands on, as well as trying to secure aid from Eusica. They want Eusican rifles in exchange for crystals."
"What are rifles?" Tweak asked.
"They're a kind of musket that have greater range and more accuracy than standard muskets," Clover answered. "Eusicans are much more advanced than we in gunsmithing, because they have much fewer crystals and rely on guns for their primary weapon, where Noraam uses both guns and alchemical weapons. Anyway, the Eusican nation of Briton has taken the Loremasters' deal, and are shipping rifles to Stinger Bay."
"What else we learned is that the Loremasters are going to take over the Free Territories this winter," Lightfoot said, looking at Kyven. "They're going to invade the mining villages of the Free Territories and close the mines," she told him. "Atan is going to be invaded."
"Which puts Loreguard in place to defend the mines when the other kingdoms of Noraam try to take them," Kyven reasoned. "Then, if they follow their plan, they can use the mines as cover when they start making crystals, so nobody knows what they're doing or where the crystals are really coming from, and that will let them eventually buy the rest of Noraam, which isn't far off from the plan we used to save the Arcans. They're going to be one step ahead of the rest of Noraam."
"Not for long," Clover said. "This is something we must get into public, my brother. We must send this to Shario, and let him spread the word. The kingdoms and city-states must know that the Loremasters are about to move openly, violating their treaties by invading and openly claiming sovereign territory. And they must know the Loremasters are looking to claim the wilderness west of Noraam to start their own kingdom. I'm sure that Alamar, Rallan, Cheston, and Phion would like to know about that, since they all sit on the border of the frontier," she said with a dry smile.
"So, things are coming to a head," Kyven grunted. "The Loremasters had a much more detailed plan than we thought, and they're starting to act on it."
"And we must stand opposed to them," the fox intoned. "The word will go out. Haven, the Shaman, and the Masked will come out of the shadows and openly oppose the Loremasters."
"And everything will change," Clover sighed.
"Change is inevitable," the fox told her with steady eyes. "The lack of change is stagnation, and stagnation brings extinction. The Arcans must come out of hiding and show the world their truth, or they will never be anything but the slaves humans believe them to be. Whether they flourish or perish depends on them. It depends on you."
"It is still difficult," she said.
"Shaman, I have something for you." She lowered her head and moved her tail, and he saw a dark medallion necklace resting on the desk where her tail had once been. "This will help you in your coming efforts to infiltrate the Loremasters, for this will hide your true nature from them in a way that they cannot detect."
"What is it?"
"When you wear it and enact its power, it will change your outward body into a human," she told him.
"But you told me that was impossible!"
"It is not permanent. And it only changes your outward appearance. Within, under that mask, you will still be an Arcan, and still retain your Shaman magic and shadow powers. But when you use this, Shaman, you will pass any test they use. You will appear human by every measure of mundane and magical inspection. But know this, Shaman. It can only work for one day, and when you use it, it requires an equal amount of time to rest as you used it before you can use it again. If you spend four hours appearing as a human, it will need four hours to recharge once you change back. And it can only work for you for a maximum of one day before it exhausts its power and you change back. So use it carefully."
"Like, when I'm about to go into the Loremasters' headquarters," Kyven grunted, picking up the medallion, looking like a woman's face. It was actually very handsome, made of a dark, smoky metal that wasn't black but wasn't gray, like charcoal, and the medallion wasn't very large. He looked carefully at the face on the medallion, and saw that it closely resembled Danna's face.
"She helped in its creation," the fox told him. "When you wear a human face, she grants it to you. And she will wear your Arcan fur while the medallion's magic is in effect. So, while the medallion is in operation, she will look like an Arcan, and you will look like a human."
"She did? Why?"
"Because she made a bad bargain with a spirit," the shadow fox intoned with a malicious smile. "And, she was so worried for you that she was willing to grant you this protection to help keep you alive. She is still of two minds about you, Shaman. Part of her wants you, part of her rejects you. The part that wants you struck a deal with me to create this medallion, to help keep you alive."
"I thought you couldn't bargain with mundanes."
"What we can do with mundanes is much less than with Shaman, but we can do some things. But, now that I have a hold on her, I can bargain more and more with her, until I have what I want from her."
"And what would that be?"
She didn't answer, just stared at him with her unblinking, glowing eyes. "Warn the Flauren thief. Spread the word. Reveal the hidden Loremaster plans, Shaman. And then bunker down and prepare to ride out the storm to come, so you are ready to keep us informed of their plans and intents. There is much more work for you to do. But in the meantime, know that all the spirits are well pleased with your service to us this night."
And then she was gone. Clearly, she wanted nothing to do with answering that question.
"Now what?" Tweak asked, a bit reverently.
"Now? Now, we do as we were told," Clover said in a businesslike tone. "There is much to do, my friends. Lightfoot, go get Shario if you would. We need to talk to him without delay. After we explain things to him, I will ask the spirits to help hide and protect us from the retaliation to come. We must seal ourselves up in this shop, our little fortress, until it is safe to come out again."
"I'll go see how much food we have," Patches said, in a frightened voice. "We'll need to have plenty here, just in case."
"I'll bring Shario," Lightfoot said, padding out."
"And you, my friend, will go rest," Clover told Kyven gently. "Your hands are shaking. You are so tired you can barely hold yourself up. So let us take over for you now, my brother. We will take care of everything. That is why we are here, to help you when you need it," she said with a gentle smile.
"I won't say no. I'm just… numb," he said, clutching the medallion in his hand.
Clover helped him upstairs, then literally tucked him into bed. He was bone tired, drained, exhausted, and numb, and when she put him into bed, he found it impossible to remain awake.
He fell asleep with a mind all but reeling from revelation. He knew what was coming, and he dreaded it. But it was not his battle to fight. His place was here, in Avannar, using his illusions and his shadow powers to continue to dig deeper and deeper into the secrets of the Loremasters. He was the eyes and ears of Haven, their ear in the middle of the enemy's den, and he had to keep them informed.
And there was so much to do. He had to warn them of Loreguard movements, Loremaster activities, changes of plans. With him in Avannar, he would save many lives by giving Haven inside information. The Loreguard would be unable to launch surprise attacks, their supply lines would be vulnerable, their plans would be known both to Haven and to the other governments of Noraam.
With Kyven burrowed deeply into the side of the Loremasters, they would find it hard to keep their secrets.
But that was later. For now, they would have to survive the certain savage retaliation by the Loremasters as they turned Avannar inside out searching for Kyven, searching for the Shaman that had invaded their deepest secrets, set fire to their headquarters, and killed their men, then vanished right under their noses. When they found out just what Kyven had learned, and what secrets had been exposed, they would triple their efforts to find him. It would be a dangerous game of cat and mouse, he knew.
And if anything, the coming fall and winter would be anything if not momentous.
Kyven fell asleep holding the medallion of Danna's likeness in his hand, knowing that what he had seen tonight, what he had done, was just the calm before the storm.
The storm of war.
The End
Thus ends Spirit Walker.
In the story, Shadow Walker, Kyven,
the Arcans, and their human
allies struggle to stop the
Loremasters from destroying
Noraam in their mad
plan to try to resurrect
a past best left forgotten.