The Shadowmage Trilogy (Twilight of Kerberos: The Shadowmage Books) (87 page)

“What has been happening there?” he asked.

The men looked at one another again, one of them shrugging.

“You don’t look or sound like Vos,” he said.

Lucius frowned, puzzled. “What has Vos got to do with anything?”

The man sighed before answering. “We were at the camp. But we didn’t desert. The whole place was attacked by a Vos army a week ago. We were captured, but everyone else was slaughtered where they stood.”

Rubbing his chin with his hand, Lucius thought fast.

“If you were captured, how did you get free?” he asked, and immediately saw that was the wrong question Though two of the soldiers looked furious, one hung his head in shame, which told Lucius all he needed to know.

“Forget it, not important,” he said. “So, the camp is now in Vos hands?”

“Just so,” he was answered. “We had set up a fence perimeter and had guards stationed, but they hit us fast and without warning. We rallied for a while, but they were everywhere and half of us were asleep. They also had some powerful wizard on their side, blasting holes in our ranks before we could respond. It was hopeless. Utterly hopeless. As far as I know, we were the only ones to get out. Everyone else is dead.”

“Including the wizard Tellmore?” Adrianna asked.

“Didn’t see him, and you would think he could have defended us against their magic. Figure he must have been killed early on.”

Lucius decided to change tack. “What did you discover there? Before the attack, I mean.”

The soldier held his eye for a moment before answering. “Honestly? Not a thing. Some of the soldiers had been drafted in to help with the digging, but all they found was a bunch of sunken corridors and some empty chambers. And the door, of course.”

“The door?”

“Big, elaborate thing. We couldn’t open it, and any man who tried was burned away in seconds by magic. I don’t know anything about that, but it was the thing that consumed Lord Tellmore’s attention most. Once we hit that obstacle, I don’t think he ever slept. Just stayed in his tent, chanting, casting spells and writing. His tent was overflowing with scraps of parchment.”

“But nothing worked,” the clean-shaven soldier cut in. “Time and again he would line men up in front of that door, cast some spell or charm of protection, and bid them open it. Every time, they would be... annihilated would be the term, I think. They were just reduced to ash in seconds.”

It was Lucius’ turn to glance at Adrianna this time, but he found no answer in her eyes. Just a raw hunger that here, at last, was a solid report on ancient magic. He could almost feel her desire to possess it. That would be a problem to face a little later, though.

“I need to know exactly where the camp is,” he said.

The soldiers gave him sensible directions, and he was grateful for them as, lying within a shallow valley, he and Adrianna might have ridden straight past it, knowing no better. He stood and gestured for Adrianna to follow him.

Before leaving, Lucius turned to regard all three men.

“I make no judgements on what happened at the camp and, from what I can tell, you are all damn lucky to be alive. Vos soldiers are not known for their temperance,” he said, then fished in his pouch to scatter a handful of coins on the table. “Whether you return to Turnitia or have somewhere in Pontaine to go to, you’ll find the journey much easier if you have good coin on you. And when I return to the baron, I’ll be sure to put in a good word for all of you.”

As one, they looked up at him, eyebrows raised in surprise. One recovered sooner than his compatriots.

“Well, bless you, sir,” he said, his gratitude obvious. “If you are heading towards the camp, I wish you the best of luck, but... be careful. I see no reason why the Vos army would have moved on.”

Lucius nodded his thanks and, taking Adrianna’s arm, headed for the inn’s front door.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
HE RAIN HAD
slackened off with the coming of night, but it gave little comfort to Lucius as he lay on his stomach, peering into the shallow valley where the now Vos-held camp lay. The ground was wet through and it was slowly seeping into his clothing. Adrianna had rolled out her cloak, but he knew she would later regret that when the time came to don it again.

They had both been grateful for the help the Pontaine soldiers had given them, for they might easily have missed the camp among the rolling hills of the Anclas Territories.

Their horses they had released some distance away, which had sparked a brief argument with Adrianna. She had not relished the thought of walking any great distance in what she regarded, not without cause he admitted, as a vast wilderness. However, Lucius had been more concerned with the horses giving away their presence to any wandering sentry or scout and, at the end of the day, he
was
a thief. When the time came to use mounts once more, he was sure the Vos force below them would provide.

The Vos sentries were plainly apparent as they had approached, silhouetted against the darkening sky, and the Shadowmages had wreathed themselves in magical darkness, blurring their outlines and making themselves virtually invisible in the gloom.

Such were the skills of all Shadowmages.

Straining his eyes, Lucius tried to pick out the details of the camp. The Vos force had made sure some areas were well-lit with lanterns and fires, but other parts were shrouded in darkness.

Closest to them, the camp was mainly filled with tents of obvious Pontaine tailoring, which had been taken by the Vos soldiery for their own use. Spaces were cleared in this area for cooking, rest and toiletry purposes. A few lanterns were scattered about here but the larger fires were concentrated towards the far end of the camp, and the earthworks. Even at this distance, Lucius could make out deep trenches, wide pits and, here and there, the exposed grey of long-buried stone.

Around the camp, a perimeter wooden fence provided the main line of defence. Lucius estimated it was at least eight feet high; no real obstacle to any competent thief.

“They’ve been busy,” Lucius said, and turned to look at Adrianna when she did not answer him.

Through the shadowy waves of her concealing magic, he could make out an expression of concentration on her face, and he began to feel the power of her magic radiate out.

“Do you see anything?” he asked.

After a few seconds, Adrianna shuddered and sighed as she relaxed her scrying.

“The Pontaine men said the Vos force had magic on their side,” she said. “I sense no wizard down there but... There is something strange. Can you feel it?”

Lucius stared hard down at the camp, trying to visualise the streams of magic that he could see flowing around him wherever he was, but they revealed no disturbance he could see.

“I do not,” he said at last. “What do you think it is?”

“We know magic is bound into the ruins to protect them, but this doesn’t feel like that. It is not ancient, patient, waiting. If there were active spells used by the Old Races, believe me, I would sense them from miles away. The ruins seem dead, so perhaps their magics are only tripped by certain actions.”

“Like trying to open the front door.”

“Just so. There is something else down there though, something... different. Maybe some ward, or maybe a weapon, enchanted to give its user power.”

“A charm of protection, perhaps?”

“No...” Adrianna said, her voice growing vague for a moment. She cursed under her breath as her spell of detection once again failed to give her a clear answer.

“It is something more powerful,” she said at last. “Something powerful enough to make Pontaine soldiers think the Vos army had a wizard with them.”

“Perhaps they did, and the wizard was killed,” Lucius said.

“Unlikely,” Adrianna said. “Wizards trained for battle learn wards as a matter of course and are quite capable of keeping their heads low when swords and arrows start being aimed at them.” She shook her head, as much in frustration as anything else. “I can’t see clearly enough.”

“Well then. The only way we will ever know is to take a closer look.”

Whoever was commanding the Vos soldiers had only placed sentries on the rim of the valley. It was a careful enough precaution, as the sentries would likely see anyone approaching and the signals would be seen quickly by those down in the camp, but it meant that, once bypassed, Lucius and Adrianna had a clear passage all the way to the fence line.

Leading the way, Lucius peeled off to the right to follow the fence, searching for the ideal point to gain entry. He pulled suddenly up short as a terrible stench filled his nostrils. Dead, rotting flesh.

“God above,” he hissed as Adrianna joined him. They both gathered their cloaks in their hands and held them tight to their faces, trying to block the dreadful stink. Adrianna peered into the darkness, then nudged his arm as she sighted something. Creeping forward, Lucius winced at what he saw.

Earthen mounds lay in strict rows that stretched away to his left but, directly in front, was a wide, open pit. It was filled with the tangled and maimed bodies of Pontaine soldiers, the original occupants of the camp who had not managed to escape the carnage like the men they had met in the inn. The Vos invaders had buried their own dead but left their enemies out for the wolves and birds. It was a sign of the greatest disrespect.

“Animals,” Adrianna said, with some venom in her voice, and that surprised Lucius. He had not thought she could be touched by such earthly matters.

There was, however, nothing they could do for the dead. Lucius touched her arm to bring her attention back to their task, and they turned away from the charnel pit.

Returning to the fence line, Lucius continued his search for a point of ingress. He purposefully avoided the bulk of the tents as, while they would provide superb cover for two creeping Shadowmages, he had no wish to be accidentally surprised by a chance Vos soldier walking out of his tent. Instead, he looped round the fence line, stopping when he saw the main, open entrance. That, he knew, would be guarded, so he retraced his steps a short way so they would enter at the edge of the tented area.

Summoning just a little of his magic, Lucius felt his arms and legs swell with power as he leapt upwards to catch the top of the fence. Throwing himself half over, he reached down an arm for Adrianna, who grabbed it. In one fluid motion, he pulled the woman up and over the fence as if she had been no more than an empty cloth sack. Then, he dropped down on the other side of the camp, crouching next to her to see if anyone had detected their entry.

It seemed as though no one was in their immediate vicinity, though they could hear the occasional voice caught on the slight breeze, laughter and a few shouted curses as soldiers did what they always do when not under orders or the watchful eyes of sergeants.

Taking full advantage of the cover provided by tents and the fence line itself, Lucius and Adrianna were little more than dark blurs, fully wreathed in their stealth spells, becoming one with the shadows. Heading towards the excavation site, the tents disappeared and high cover became less frequent. The area was also more brightly lit by larger fires and more numerous lanterns but the flickering shadows provided them with adequate cover as they flitted from earth mound to tool store. After sprinting across a wide open area that had been cleared to allow easy passage to the unearthed ruins, Lucius stopped behind a line of wooden barrels to catch his breath. Wrinkling his nose, he guessed his hiding place was being used to stockpile lantern oil.

Sharp movement to his left caused him to duck down until he realised it was Adrianna joining him, panting slightly from their rapid passage through the camp. She indicated a point beyond the barrels.

“They are working late tonight,” she said.

Lucius peered over the barrels, trusting to his magic to hide him but allowing his thievish instincts to make him cautious nonetheless. Adrianna was right, there was a fair bit of activity still taking place in one part of the excavation site when he would have expected any soldier not on sentry duty to be thinking about retiring. Most were involved in heavy labour, carrying baskets of earth dug up by others who manned spades, shovels and picks.

“Looks as though they are starting a whole new dig over there,” he said.