God of Magic 3 Page 20

  “This will work,” Lena said with utter conviction. “The Goddess of Luck is on our side, is she not?”

  I smiled as I pulled Lena in for a farewell kiss as well. “She is.”

  With that, we all pulled up our hoods and slipped out quietly into the night. Etienne led our party through the darkest, least-traveled back alleys toward the shining University Tower, and I was grateful to have the panthera man along. I realized now that his knowledge of the city could very well prove critical to our success here. Certainly, it was coming in handy now, since, despite their best efforts, the eight-foot-tall orc pirates weren’t exactly discreet. Without Etienne to guide us along a route where we could pass unnoticed, I would have had to use my magic to help conceal us as we took a more direct route.

  Etienne’s route was safer, but it took longer. It was only seven minutes to midnight as we neared the main street and the plaza we would have to cross to reach the tower. In the safety of the alleyway, I draped the invisibility cloak over my shoulders and pulled up the hood. I moved my arms and took a few steps to test how it moved, and I was relieved to find that it didn’t show gaps that could give me away.

  “We’ll be right behind you,” I whispered to Etienne, and I raised my hand toward Sulla and Urim. The two pirates couldn’t sense the difference, and Etienne wasn’t looking back at us, so he didn’t notice when I cast my illusion over the orcs and they vanished from his sight. The illusion would muffle any sounds they made as well, and I would only have to maintain it long enough to keep anyone who might still be out on the street from noticing the enormous orc pirates entering the University Tower. We didn’t want to raise the alarm too soon after all. Once we got behind the door into the corridor that led to the cells, it wouldn’t matter who saw the pirates which was certainly one advantage to the fact that they were already outlaws.

  At exactly five minutes to midnight, Etienne slipped out of the alleyway and crossed the plaza toward the tower with Sulla, Urim, and I close on his heels. Of course, between my cloak and my magic, the only thing any onlookers would be able to see was the panthera man.

  As we entered the tower, I made a quick sweep of the lobby, but it was empty. Just as before, the only person here was the young mage we’d met earlier when Aerin, Lena, and I had come to visit Emeline. He looked up when Etienne approached, and his brow creased in a sympathetic expression.

  “You want to see her?” he guessed.

  “Yes,” Etienne responded, “if I can.” His voice had a slight tremor to it, but whether that was due to anxiety about our plan or simply remorse, I couldn’t guess.

  The attendant mage nodded. “Just a moment, let me check with Brennon.”

  “Of course.”

  The mage disappeared behind the enchanted door again, and this time, he returned more quickly than he had when I’d come earlier. He held the door open for Etienne.

  “Just take a left down here, Brennon is waiting,” he said. “He’ll take you to her.”

  Etienne paused and reached out to grasp the young man by the shoulder which I knew was to buy me time to clear the way ahead.

  “Thank you, Nolan,” the panthera man said honestly. “I appreciate this.”

  I gritted my teeth as I was forced to split my focus between maintaining the illusion to conceal Sulla and Urim and disabling the enchantments in the corridor. I had never tried to do anything like this before, but there hadn’t exactly been time for a trial run. I kept Sulla and Urim in my periphery to make sure the shimmer of magic around them didn’t falter as I raised my hand toward the corridor and focused on the way the ambient magic rippled along the walls, the high-pitched tone it made.

  “For what it’s worth,” Nolan responded, “I’m sorry. She was-- She always seemed like such a nice girl. I’m sure this is hard for you, of all people.”

  I closed my hand into a fist, and the tone that rang in my ears lowered in pitch and then was quiet. At the same moment, the shimmer of the enchantments faded from the walls, and the corridor was cleared. I breathed a sigh of relief as I shifted my full attention back to the illusion over the orcs, and I nudged Etienne’s heel with the toe of my boot to signal to him that we could go on.

  “You’re a good mage, Nolan,” Etienne said quietly, “and a good man. Well, I should go.” He stepped away and entered the corridor, and Sulla, Urim, and I slipped in behind him before Nolan let the door fall closed again.

  Etienne’s posture was rigid as he started down the hall and sweat beaded on his brow. He swept it away just before we turned the corner and nearly ran into Brennon, the older mage we’d met before. He said nothing to Etienne but turned and led us down the same winding way as before toward the cells, and I was relieved to realize that I’d remembered all the turns from my first trip down here.

  When we came to the end of the corridor and the door that led to the jail, the same guard stood by as before. Only, this time, he followed us inside when Brennon took us through to the jail and nearly ran into me as he did.

  As the heavy door fell closed behind us, I moved quietly out of the guard’s way and scanned the room. The other five guards that I’d anticipated were here, and they stood when we entered and placed their hands on the swords at their hips.

  There was a scuffling sound from the cell at the end, and Emeline’s face appeared behind the bars.

  “Etienne?” she called, her voice hoarse but hopeful.

  “Emeline!” Etienne craned his neck to try to get a look at her when she called out to him, but Brennon and the other guards blocked the way forward.

  Brennon had his hands clasped behind his back as he regarded the panthera man. Then the corner of his mouth twitched up in a smirk.

  “To think you’d actually come back here,” Brennon drawled. “If you had any brains at all, you’d have put this city behind you and never returned. Did you really think we would believe you weren’t involved in your sister’s crime? That you weren’t helping her cover it up? The only reason Cuvier didn’t order your arrest sooner was that we hoped you might somehow lead us to the girl.”

  Brennon’s smile was cruel. “And now here you both are. I suppose it’s true what they say about panthera--“

  Whatever Brennon was going to say, he was cut off by an echoing boom, the first of Lena’s explosions.

  “What in the Goddess’ name was that?” Brennon demanded a moment before Etienne punched him in the jaw.

  I figured that was as good a signal as any and dropped the illusion over Sulla and Urim. At the orcs’ sudden appearance, the guards’ eyes bulged, and they scrambled to draw their swords.

  While Urim turned to the guard who had followed us inside, Sulla grabbed the two guards nearest to him by the backs of their necks and slammed their heads together. The orc’s strength was so great that the guards’ helmets crumpled as they connected as easily as if they were aluminum cans, and blood dripped down over the men’s faces as Sulla dropped them to the floor.

  “What is this?” Brennon demanded, his expression a mixture of shock, rage, and fear. He didn’t wait for an answer, however, before he rounded on Etienne again. The older mage raised his hand, and I saw the light of his mana flare up and begin to course down his arm.

  Etienne and I both raised our hands at the same moment, but whatever spell the panthera man was about to cast, I was just slightly faster. As I closed my hand into a fist, Brennon’s mana froze on its track down his arm, and the light in his chest dimmed rapidly.

  The old mage gave a breathless cough, and he clutched at his chest with a panicked look on his face.

  “What did you do?” he wheezed, his eyes locked on Etienne. Of course, he would assume it was the panthera man who had attacked him, given that I was still hidden beneath my invisibility cloak.

  For his part, Etienne seemed just as surprised, but before he could respond, one of the guards fell between the dueling mages with one of Urim’s axes buried in his back. Brennon took the opportunity to scramble further back into the room and to put
some space between himself and Etienne, Sulla, and Urim.

  There were still two guards left to mount a defense, but they were little match for the orcs. As Urim pried his axe out of the dead guard’s back, he swung it around and lodged it into the throat of another. Flecks of red splattered the guard’s lips as he gargled on his own blood and reached weakly for the blade in his throat, but Urim pulled the axe free, and the man slumped forward as blood gushed from the wound.

  One of the remaining guards let out a cry as he attempted to drive his sword into Sulla’s abdomen, but the orc stopped the blade against one of the thick bracers that encircled his enormous forearms before he grabbed his attacker around the neck and lifted him off the ground. The guard spluttered and kicked desperately at the air as Sulla held him up, and he clawed at the arm that restrained him, but it was only for a moment. Sulla closed his massive fist around the guard’s neck, and the man went limp.

  Brennon watched in horror as Sulla dropped the last guard to the floor, and his wide, wild eyes flicked between the orcs and Etienne.

  “You won’t get away with this!” the old mage hissed. “Not if you kill me!” He was half crouched and still had a hand on his chest, and a vein stood out on his forehead. “But let me live, and I can help you get out of here.”

  Etienne’s face was set in a mask of cold fury, his fists clenched at his sides.

  “Until a few moments ago, you were all too eager to see my sister and me executed for crimes we didn’t commit,” the panthera man said in a low voice. “I have no reason to trust you, and no reason to spare your life.”

  Brennon bared his teeth and threw up his hand, and I raised my own hand toward him to counter his attack, and the spark of the old mage’s mana stopped short before it could reach his palm. I closed my fist, and Brennon’s mana shrank back even more until it was just a dim flicker in his chest.

  Brennon jerked back and nearly fell but managed to hold himself up against the wall, and he stared at Etienne.

  “How are you doing that?” he demanded, and flecks of saliva flew from his lip.

  Etienne didn’t answer, he simply raised his free hand out toward Brennon. The panthera mage’s mana glowed brighter as he made a motion with his hand as though he was plucking something out of the air, and Brennon’s eyes went wide as he wheezed and reached for his throat.

  The old mage fell onto his knees and elbows, and he clutched desperately at his throat as Etienne drew the air from his lungs. In a last attempt to save his own life, Brennon began to crawl forward, but even as he reached out toward Etienne, he collapsed and was still, and the light in his chest went out.

  “Etienne!” Emeline cried. She must have heard the thud of Brennon’s body and assumed it was her brother who had fallen because her voice was raw with panic. “Etienne?! I can’t see you. Are you okay?”

  As I glanced back to her cell, I could see her hands wrapped around the bars and the side of her face as she tried to see where we were.

  “He’s alright!” I told her. “Hang on, we’re coming.”

  I searched the guards until I found the one with the keys, and he was already crouched in front of his sister’s cell by the time I made it over to unlock it. Emeline’s cheeks were streaked with tears, and Etienne’s eyes shone with unshed tears of his own as I unlocked the cell door and pushed it back.

  Emeline let out a choked sob as she threw herself into her brother’s arms.

  “I’m so sorry, Emeline,” Etienne said quietly as he hugged her. “I should have listened to you, I’m sorry.”

  “I’m just glad you’re here now,” Emeline replied, and as she pulled away from her brother, she turned to me.

  “You came for me.” She sounded surprised as much as relieved. “We barely know each other, but you risked your life to rescue me.” Suddenly, she rushed forward and wrapped me in an embrace as well. “Thank you, Gabriel.”

  “I told you we’d fix this,” I murmured back. “We’re going to take you somewhere safe, then we’ll find a way to prove that you’re innocent, but we need to leave right now.”

  Emeline stepped back, and her eyes flicked over to the bodies of the guards and Brennon. Any lingering fear in her expression melted away, and she had the same stony look her brother had worn when he’d killed Brennon.

  “Right,” Emeline replied. “I’m ready.”

  Chapter 16

  A few hours later, Aerin, Lavinia, Maruk, Lena, and I were back inside the walls of Ovrista. Much to Maruk’s chagrin, we had to sneak back in through the drainage tunnel to avoid being stopped and questioned by the guards at the gate, but we managed to get back inside unnoticed. Now, we could start the final stage of our plan.

  Emeline had seen Cuvier practicing blood magic, and we had to find a way to prove it. That meant sneaking into his office in the university tower to look for evidence. Compared to facing down the guards and Brennon and smuggling Emeline out of the city, I hoped it would be relatively easy.

  A thin fog hung low over the streets as dawn seeped into the sky, but the crowds from earlier in the morning had hardly abated. If anything, there were more people out now, the numbers swelled by those who had chosen to ignore the explosions when they’d initially gone off but had now decided that the situation was indeed their concern. All the same, it was easy enough for us to slip among them as though we’d always been there as we wove our way through the throngs toward the university tower.

  On Aerin’s insistence, I’d put the invisibility cloak back on before we’d come anywhere near Ovrista, but as we walked up the path to the mage’s tower, I was glad I already had it on. While there had been no one around to witness me suddenly vanish before we’d broken Emeline out of her cell, there was absolutely nowhere I would have been able to get away from prying eyes now to have put it on, and I’d need it to get into Cuvier’s office to search for evidence.

  If the streets were chaotic, the lobby of the university tower was a nightmare. Students, professors, and even several archmages were packed onto the floor, and dozens more hung back on the steps as they watched the commotion below. Everyone, naturally, was talking about the explosions, and I realized that the four gray-robed archmages that stood together around the statue in the center of the lobby were those who had gone to investigate the blasts. They were trying in vain to get the crowd under control as the other mages, from the youngest students to the gray-haired professors, demanded answers.

  “We have not yet been able to discern the cause of the explosions,” one of the archmages called out about the clamoring of the crowd. He was straining so much to be heard that his voice was almost hoarse. “However, we believe they were the work of an alchemist.”

  “Are we under attack?” someone shouted from the crowd. This triggered more panic, and people began to whisper amongst themselves as several others shouted out similar questions. The archmages could hardly get a word in edge-wise, and it was obvious that they were beginning to become frantic. I couldn’t help but feel a little bit proud of that. With the kind of iron control they usually had, maybe it was about time they had to deal with a little chaos.

  Even so, we didn’t stick around to see how the archmages were going to handle this slew of questions and the people’s rising panic. It was exactly the sort of diversion we needed to be able to slip up to Cuvier’s office and have a look around.

  As we pushed our way up the first flight of stairs, I paused on the landing and scanned the crowd below for any sign of Cuvier, but I didn’t see anyone in the archmages’ gray who matched the description Emeline had given me. I tried not to let it bother me. Just because he wasn’t here didn’t mean he wasn’t somehow otherwise occupied, and even if he was in his office when we got there, we had a plan for the others to distract him while I went inside.

  We were careful and quiet as we made our way up the flights of stairs to the appropriate floor. I knew Aerin had already prepared an excuse for why she, Lavinia, Lena, and Maruk had a reason to be up here, but as we came to the hal
l where the professors’ offices were located, there was not another soul in sight. Perhaps that should have been a relief, but I couldn’t help but feel somewhat apprehensive.

  If Cuvier wasn’t here, and he wasn’t in the lobby with everyone else in the tower, where was he?

  Now that I thought about it, I realized that the only archmages I’d seen downstairs had been the four who had gone out to investigate the explosions. There had to be at least a dozen more. It was possible they were all out on the streets or, more likely, meeting with Ovrista’s other government officials, but for some reason, I felt sure that they were still in the tower. I could imagine them, Eamon Maderel and the others, the people who really ran this city, all seated together around a table in some secret room. Not answering people’s questions, not trying to restore order to the city, but sitting back like spiders at the center of a web and plotting how they might turn this chaos into their favor.

  “We’ll stand guard here,” Aerin whispered. “You go ahead.” The elf’s posture was rigid, and she kept fiddling with her necklace the way she always did when she was nervous.

  I forgot for a moment that I was invisible and reached out to take her hand. The healer started as my fingers brushed against her knuckles, but then she gripped my hand tightly. I gave her hand a squeeze and then slipped past the group toward the office that Emeline had said belonged to Cuvier.

  Fortunately, there was a plaque on the door with Alphonse Cuvier written in a straight, commanding font, so I knew I wasn’t going to waste any time accidentally searching the wrong office. There was also the telltale shimmer of an enchantment around the edge of the door, but I was able to dispel it with a touch of my hand and a bit of mana. I opened the door quietly and paused for a few seconds on the threshold as I scanned the room for more signs of magical security.

  The office was dim, and the only light at the moment came from the three narrow windows at the far end. I was able to make out a leather armchair before a fireplace, a few shelves with neat rows of books and a few other magical objects, and a writing desk where a stack of blank pages sat ready next to a quill and a pot of ink.