Industry & Intrigue (19 page)

She needed to find Darius and question
him. She looked out from the shadow-hide spell, everything appeared
in a grey shade. She saw the Paragon of Nature, Kietzel Fox. Unlike
most mages he was solidly built and preferred to wear short sleeved
shirts and dress pants instead of traditional robes, though he kept
his paragon sash draped over his chest.

The paragons were the elite of
Warded Spirals, absolute masters in their chosen field of magic,
and
served
as the school’s council. She followed him, to test how well her
shadow-hide was working.

He walked into his lab and
locked the door, not having noticed her in the slightest.
Good
, her
spell was holding up in close proximity to a paragon, now to find
Darius.

She went up several more floors, until she
reached the level that housed the Illusions headquarters. She moved
down the corridor and coming the opposite way was exactly who she
was looking for, Darius Sidonius, the Paragon of
Illusions.

He was the youngest of the
paragons at only thirty four and his promotion to the position had
been supported by Archmage Feyton himself.
Zuri kept close to him, she needed to
know if he was the one who had abused Kyle.

Darius had
been involved in a scandal a
few years ago, involving one of his students. When he had ended his
relationship with her, she had tried to bring disciplinary action
against him in retaliation but Darius had powerful friends. The
girl had been convinced into remaining silent in exchange for a
payoff.

The only reason Zuri
knew
is that
she had been close with the girl and heard the details from her.
The girl was satisfied, the money was what she had been after and
nothing ever came of it. The girl had only been sixteen and Darius
had been twenty eight, not illegal, although it was against the
Center’s policy of liaisons between teachers and
students.

As she followed him, he
appeared to be muttering to himself, but she co
uldn’t make out the words. The
shadow-hide spell was dampening the sound. He walked up several
sets of stairs and opened a door to what appeared to be nothing
more than a simple cleaning closet. Zuri followed him
through.

It was
a small office with shelving and an
open area at the back covered in a brick wall. Darius was pacing up
and down nervously and his muttering increased in
volume.

“
Damn, damn, damn,” he said.
“What to do? What if they know?” He continued pacing and began
wringing his hands, his state of anxiety increasing. Zuri was
curious now and she continued to watch. “What should I do? The
master…the master will know what to do.”

Upon hearing this Zuri clenched her hands,
it was so similar to what Kyle had written. Could it be that Darius
was under the influence of the same corrupt mage? Her anger took
over and she dropped her shadow-hide and leapt at Darius from out
of the shadows.

He squawked in shock and she clutched his
throat with her hand. She pushed him back against the wall. She
murmured a quick spell and a red ball of fire encircled her other
hand. She curved her fingers and aimed the ball at Darius’s face.
“You have one chance to tell me what I want to know. Who is your
master?”

He tried to grab at her fingers but he was
reedy man and didn’t have the strength to pull her off him. “Tell
me now. Or by Strathis I’ll burn off your hair. It’ll go fast
because of the oils, but the pain on your scalp will last for days,
I promise. Then I’ll burn your feet. Every step you take for months
will be agonizing. If that doesn’t work, your body will still have
plenty of skin left to burn.”

He stopped struggling and
looked at her with dead eyes
. “It was Kyle wasn’t it? That gave us away didn’t
it?”

She had him now.
“Gave who away?
Your master? The sick fucker that raped Kyle and cut into his
mind.” She was so close to finding out the truth. “Who is
it?”

“
It’s-”

But his voice choked off and he laughed.
“It won’t work, I can’t tell you his name.”

Of course
,
he manipulates his victims so they’re
unable to incriminate him
thought Zuri. She took her hand away from Darius’s
throat but kept the fireball aimed at his face.

“
It’s too
bad,
” said
Darius, “he was so close to being ready, the master was pleased
with him. He would have been away and none of this would have
happened, but his will was too strong.”

“
What do you mean ready? Ready
for what? What did your master do to him or to you for that
matter?”

Darius laughed, she could see
his eyes moving wildly as his mind became more unhinged.
“It’s not only to
fulfill his twisted desires you know. He gets paid for them, rather
well in fact,” he said and he laughed again and slid down the
wall.

H
is head tilted to the side as he kept
laughing. She wasn’t going to get anything more out of him. She
shook her head in frustration and dispersed her fire spell, Darius
wasn’t even listening to her, his mind was too far gone. Who knows
how long his mind had been dominated or how often it had been
ripped into.

She pondered on what to
do
. Despite
his poor mental state, Darius had given her clues to narrow down
the list. It had to be someone who had been an authority figure
since his days as a student, which left only two names. She found
it impossible to believe either one of them could do that to Kyle.
How could she find out for sure? She decided to try a different
tactic to get around the mental safeguards placed on Darius’
mind.

“
Darius, how often do you
meet your master?”

He looked up at
her
.
“Whenever he wants.”

“
And when did he last ask to
meet?”

He closed his eyes for a few
m
oments and
Zuri thought he would start his crazed laughter again, but he
answered her question. “This morning before class.”

“
And what did you do after
that?” she asked.

“
Research in my lab, and
then I heard about those detectives coming back to continue the
investigation and my head felt like it was going to
explode.”

So
he had been in his lab all day. Now
came the hard part. “Have you seen Rai Chek today?”

“
No I have
n’t,” he replied. That cleared
the head of teaching which meant…, no she had to be
certain.

“
Have you seen Archmage Feyton
today?” He tried to reply but his throat choked and he couldn’t get
out the words. That was it, his inability to say the words was all
the confirmation she needed.

She trembled
with shock.
Archmage William Feyton himself had raped Kyle and ripped apart his
mind. He had done the same to Darius and Strathis knew how many
others, he had been at the school for decades.

She pulled
Dariu
s to
his feet and slapped him, bringing him out his mumbling daze. He
stopped, shook his head and looked at her with his usual
intelligence rather than crazy idiot from a few moments
ago.

“
Paragon, I’m going to have to
do something you may not enjoy and I apologize for it. I am truly
sorr
y for
what has been done to you,” she said.

He looked at her as if he had only now
noticed her. “What in the hells are you talking about Ms. Abeliah?
What are you doing in here anyway? This is my private room.”
Feyton’s mental blocks were potent enough to erase the whole
encounter from his memory.

“
I’
m sorry,” she said and rubbed the
metal bracelet on her left arm before placing it on his chest.
Thick, black shadows began to spill out. He gave a startled gasp
before the shadows covered him from head to toe. In less than a
minute his body was nothing more than an unmoving dark
shape.

She pushed his body
to one of the
room’s corners and it shrank into the natural shadow, no longer
discernible from other shadows in the room. The shadow trap would
last eight hours. That was all the time she had do something about
Feyton before he found Darius, cracked into his brain and unlocked
the memory of this encounter.

Feyton
was incredibly powerful and as
archmage wielded considerable clout. She couldn’t take him on
alone, she needed to bring this to people she trusted. But she
didn’t have evidence.

Feyton had enemies at the school, no one
could reach his position without doing so. Yadra Torres, the
Paragon of Necromancy had had numerous disagreements with him and
she had a strong sense of justice. Then there was Bracus Tor, the
orc shaman and Warded Spiral’s representative with the Hydrus
Scepters, the magical division of the imperial army. Archmage
Feyton was well known as a racist towards the goblinoid races and
it had caused problems for him. Added to that was how much Bracus
was a stickler when it came to imperial laws of magic.

She left the
room
, making
her way through the corridors of the tower as fast as she could.
The shadow trap would hold as long as no one went looking for
Darius. Yadra’s room was located on the second level of the tower
and Bracus would be in the Blue Tower. She would talk to Yadra
first and try to convince her. Then they could fetch Bracus and
bring in the school’s security, one way or another Feyton would pay
for what he had done.

“
You realize how insane this
sounds
,”
replied Yadra Torres after Zuri had finished explaining the entire
story to her. The older mage’s oblique eyes had widened in shock
with each detail that Zuri had revealed to her, goose bumps forming
on her olive skin. She had a round face, moonlike in shape, common
among Kordatian natives.

Her Kordatian ancestry
went
hand-in-hand with her field of magic. Death in native
Kordatian culture was given a special reverence and they did not
have the same level of squeamishness that Alkons did regarding
necromancy.

“
So you don’t believe me?” asked
Zuri.
She
should have known how crazy she would sound.

“
I didn’t say that. I said it
soun
ded
insane but not impossible. What I’ve had to put up with from the
archmage in my time as paragon, I wouldn’t have put anything past
him. He’s unscrupulous and amoral. But even this is a serious and
outlandish accusation, Zuri.” She rubbed her hand through her
short, black hair.

“
I have to do something after
what you’ve told me, but there needs to be unquestionable evidence.
You’re correct, Bracus would be the best person to see. He’s
friends with many of the Center’s guards. He’ll be able to convince
them to follow his orders and confront Feyton.” She looked at Zuri,
“It’s good you came to me first.”

“
What do you mean?” asked
Zuri.

“
Well
, Kyle was one of your favorite
students. I could understand that you may feel the desire to do
something sudden and irrational.”

Zuri realized that
Yadra was
insinuating something. “Like confronting the archmage
myself?”

“
Yes. If what you say is
true, then I don’t think he would appreciate you bursting into his
office and telling him you know all about it.”

On her way to see Yadra, Zuri had
considered doing exactly that, but the rational part of her brain
had won out. Not because it was right to go through the proper
procedure, but because confronting a powerful mage like Feyton was
not a good idea.

“
What did you do with Darius?”
asked
Yadra.

Zuri winced. “I put him in a shadow trap,
it will dispel in several hours.”

Yadra
scolded her. “Zuri. You put a paragon
in a magical trap! Do you have any idea of the disciplinary action
you could face for that?”

“
I didn’t have a choice, his
mind had been corrupted by the archmage. If I’d left him to wander
off, Feyton could have found out and stopped me.”

Yadra
shook her head. “Under the
circumstances I can understand. I can’t promise you that the rest
of the Center council will though. We’d best go and see Bracus
before he leaves then,” said Yadra.

“
Leaves? Where would he be
going?”
Zuri
had thought he lived in the Blue Tower.

“
At
this time of night he usually goes to
the imperial army headquarters to submit his daily report,” replied
Yadra. “Let’s go” She pulled on her ebony colored robe and ushered
Zuri out the door.

***

Archmage William Feyton was in
a foul mood. His day had been one problem after
an
other. The
out of control experiments in a hydromancy class, the Scepters
demanding greater recruitment access to his students and two
mastermages had resigned from teaching. Not to mention the watch
officers continuing to poke their noses around in
school.

They would find nothing beyond the suicide
of course, but their presence had been disruptive. On top of all of
that Alkon’s Minister of Treasury was due to visit tomorrow and he
had to ensure nothing went wrong during her visit or he wouldn’t
receive the increased imperial subsidy he had requested.