The Heavenly Host (Demons of Astlan Book 2) (53 page)

Antefalken nodded, thinking back. “Guardian of House and Home, or some such title; hardly seems like the sort to be consorting with archdemons.” He shrugged. “However, they disappeared several hundred years before I arrived on the scene. I have seen their old temples. Very impressive, but again, long gone from the Astlanian localverse, at least. I don’t get much outside that, so can’t say where they might have gone.”

“Well, she mentioned that apparently, both Elrose, who works for Lenamare, and Gastropé’s friend, Maelen, got hit by some visions that were tied to all of this; it was the whole reason they’d been traveling to meet each other.”

“Seriously?” Antefalken asked.

“Serious enough that Trevin has set off on a mission to investigate the possibility and has taken Maelen, Elrose, Jenn and Gastropé along with her.”

“Why Jenn and Gastropé?” Antefalken asked.

Damien chuckled. “You may recall the reason we were surrounded by two armies?”

“Oh, yes… they were persona non grata,” the bard remembered aloud.

“Exactly, and fortunately, I had sent the animage Edwyrd and his apprentice Rupert off to hunt down the remaining demons. So no real cause to surround us.”

“Hence the wards are down.”

“Mostly,” Damien admitted. “They are, more accurately, suspended. We can raise them quickly if need be. Say, if Exador comes marching back for revenge with his horde of demons.”

“Good idea,” Antefalken agreed.

“Yes. Unfortunately, the Rod and Oorstemoth both had similar thoughts and so have not completely withdrawn.” Antefalken grimaced. “Although we do have a truce agreement with them. They are technically here to assist us if the horde comes back.”

Damien smiled, having given his friend a nice, quick rundown of the insanity in Freehold. “So, what insanity have
you
been up to that’s so crazy?”

Antefalken grinned at Damien in a manner the wizard thought seemed almost evil, as if the bard were going to enjoy telling his story a little too much.

~

Hilda and Trisfelt sat on the small balcony of Trisfelt’s suite. There was barely room for two chairs and a small table filled with meats, cheeses and of course, wine.

“Ah, one forgets how nice it is to see the night sky again!” Hilda remarked.

Trisfelt chuckled. “Even though it’s only been a few days since we were both camping outside the city in the woods.”

Hilda laughed too. “So maybe that was a bit melodramatic, but you have to admit those wards rather wore on one after a bit. Plus at night they cast that weird red sheen over everything.”

“I completely agree. I am very much an outdoorsman… at least as long as I have the basic necessities.” He gestured to the table, indicating the food and wine. Hilda raised her glass to toast his observation, and Trisfelt clinked it with his.

“So life gets back to normal.” She turned her head slightly to look at him better. “Or sort of; you are quite out of your routine here in the city. What will your new routine be?”

Trisfelt rolled his head his shoulders. “Well, we must resume classes for the students, which I think shall be challenging with Elrose gone and Lenamare and Jehenna likely to double down on their precious book. It will mainly fall to Hortwell and myself to teach most of the classes.”

“What is so important about this book? One would think in such times as this, when they are shorthanded with one master gone, one senior student dead and another off chasing down a goddess, that they would put aside their hobbies and focus on their charges,” Hilda said.

“I fear you might be starting to actually believe those charming things you say about them to their faces. You forget they are two of the most narcissistic wizards on the planet.” Trisfelt grinned and popped a cube of ham in his mouth. Hilda chuckled and took another sip of wine.

Trisfelt swallowed and continued, “Remember, this is the book that Exador and Lenamare went to war over.”

“I thought Exador wanted Lenamare’s school and property or some such?” Hilda asked, puzzled.

Trisfelt shook his head. “That was only the pretext told to the Council. The book was the real reason. Lenamare acquired it, screwing Exador over with Oorstemoth in the process. Once Exador had dealt with the Oorstemothian courts, he immediately marshalled his forces and came for the book.”

“How did Lenamare get Exador in trouble with the Oorstemothians?” Hilda asked, puzzled.

Trisfelt took a long drink of wine and inhaled. “He hired this group of inter-dimensional brigands…”

“What are inter-dimensional brigands?” Hilda interrupted.

“Well, I don’t know if that is the precise term, only that they’ve somehow made themselves unwanted on multiple planes both within and without the localverse. Wherever they go, carnage and cataclysm ensue.”

“You mean like what is happening now?” Hilda asked.

“Hmm.” Trisfelt stopped to think. “You may be right, but I think in this case, it was bound to happen anyway.” He shook his head. “These brigands are actually quite skilled and very experienced. Lenamare promised them any riches they found other than the book he wanted, plus a large sum of money, and he provided them in advance with quite valuable arcane devices that they could keep as payment.”

“A very good deal, then. I take it that it was a difficult mission?” Hilda asked.

“Apparently. I don’t know all the details, but I do know that while others had known of the book’s location, none had ever retrieved it. These fellows managed to do so.”

“Well, that is good, but how—”

Trisfelt raised a finger so he might continue. “What I have not mentioned was that the book was located deep underground in a designated historical preserve of Oorstemoth.”

“Oh, and they removed the book from the site.” Hilda nodded.

“And, one presumes, a fair amount of other antiquities.” Trisfelt poured more wine for both of them. After setting the empty bottle on the floor beside the other empties, he continued. “Now comes the duplicity. The brigands escaped the historical site, but were apprehended by a small army of wizards and soldiers of Oorstemoth.”

“Awkward, I’d imagine,” Hilda said.

“Indeed, and apparently Oorstemoth suffered severe casualties. However, here comes the answer to your question. You see, Lenamare had given them a special bag to hold the book once they found it. It turns out that this bag was actually a Bag of Safekeeping—you know, the extra-dimensional storage space bags?” Hilda nodded, she had heard of them. “However, this bag was
twinned
, in that there were actually two bags that opened onto the same extra-dimensional space. The brigands put the book in the bag; Lenamare then opened his bag and removed the book. He then destroyed his bag so it could not be traced back. The Oorstemothians were left with an empty Bag of Safekeeping.”

“Ingenious, one has to admit,” Hilda said.

“Don’t tell Lenamare that.” Trisfelt shook his head, feeling this fifth bottle of wine. “In addition, those arcane devices he had given the brigands as payment?” Hilda nodded that she remembered. “They had very powerful hidden enchantments on them such that when questioned about who hired them, the brigands always replied ‘Exador.’ ”

“So devious.” Hilda shook her head. “Ethically challenged, but devious.”

Trisfelt nodded. “So long story short, the brigands went to Oorstemothian prison, where they were held so they could testify against Exador before being executed, and Exador was served notice by Oorstemoth and had to go prove his innocence. This gave Lenamare and Jehenna quite a bit of time to read the book.”

“I thought they couldn’t open it?” Hilda asked the wizard.

“I said it gave them time; unfortunately, they were forced to use that time to try to figure out how to unlock and open the book. To date, they have had no luck.” Trisfelt chuckled.

Hilda shook her head and grinned. “All that for nothing?”

“Exactly.”

“So what is in this book? What secrets does it contain?” Hilda asked.

“I have no idea; they are not willing to share that information with anyone.”

“So they blew up their own school and disrupted the lives of all their people over a book they cannot read and which none of those affected by this upheaval knows the import of.” Hilda shook her head as Trisfelt nodded. She frowned and continued, “But the Council believes that the demon horde was here before Lenamare blew up his school?”

“Yes, that is the theory; they would have had to have been sneaked in over time,” Trisfelt said.

“And we believe they were brought here by the archdemons, Exador, Ramses and this woman who may or may not be a former goddess?” Hilda asked.

“It does not make a lot of sense,” Trisfelt admitted.

“Unless Exador expected the book to end up here in the end in any event?” Hilda asked.

Trisfelt shrugged. “That sounds consistently paranoid for Exador, or Lenamare for that matter.”

“So then, it was the arrival of Jenn and friends, pursued by Oorstemoth and the Rod, that threw the game wide open again?” Hilda suggested.

Trisfelt frowned for a moment, thinking. “So it would seem.”

“And their arrival and that of their pursuers were all precipitated by the intervention of Lenamare’s greater demon?”

Trisfelt stared at her for a moment. “My dear, I see the rabbit hole you are following. You think that Lenamare suspected that Exador may have set a trap for him in Freehold and so Lenamare summoned the demon as part of a twisted plan to thwart Exador’s army of hidden demons?”

“It worked, did it not?” Hilda replied. “He has the book again and Exador, his allies and army have become unwelcome and untrusted within Freehold.

“I do hate to say this, my dear, but I am following your logic and think you may have hit upon something! It appears we are now both thinking like Lenamare or Exador; thus, I can only conclude we have drunk too much wine!”

~

DOF +6

First Period 16-03-440

“Does it seem oddly dark out there?” Boggy pointed out the balcony window. He, Rupert, Talarius and Tizzy were playing whist, while Tom sat on the sofa lost in his own thoughts, simply relaxing and listening to the rain splash against the large metal pentagram outside his open balcony door. Their respective masters had summoned Antefalken, Reggie and Estrebrius.

Tom looked out the door. It was quite dark outside, as if it were night. He mentally dove into the Rod, moving through it to the throne and then to the complex. It did not take him long to notice a new set of runes had come online; he spent a few moments exploring them, or more precisely, inhabiting them.

“It’s nighttime,” Tom said, startling the others, who had gone back to their game.

“Nighttime?” Rupert asked.

“Yes, the complex has artificial days, just like the courts. The runes controlling the days came back online sometime within the last period or two,” Tom said.

“How do you know this?” Talarius asked.

“You remember how I sort of inhabited the Etonian runes where we found the mace?” Tom asked and Talarius nodded his upper body. “My link to the mace and the throne allows me to inhabit the entire complex. There are a huge number of various runes and spells surrounding this place. All of them have been dormant for thousands of years with no mana to power them. I can sense them, and flow into them as I did the Etonian runes. Sometimes I can get a feel for what they are doing; not always though.”

“So why are they all coming alive now? Where is this mana coming from?” Talarius asked.

“Me, at first.”

Boggy blinked and both he and Rupert turned to look at Tom. Tizzy continued to stare at his hand of cards and puff on his pipe.

“When I established my link with the mace,” continued Tom, “I blasted it super-f of mana. That mana then fed from the mace to the complex, which is what restarted the volcano.” Boggy nodded. “What I didn’t realize until this afternoon was that I never actually shut off the flow of mana once I inadvertently lit the volcano, and my mana continued to flow throughout the mountain, turning things back on. That is the big reason why I was napping this afternoon. I was feeding the entire complex with mana.”

“So are you going to go dry and pass out or something?” Rupert asked.

Tom chuckled. “No. I don’t understand it completely yet, but this place is actually a giant mana engine. Various runes control access to the elemental planes. Fire, Earth and Air are already here, and thus fairly straightforward to tap. There is also a more complicated portal to Water; once that opened, the storm clouds started forming, and eventually it rained. You combine that with the heat of lava and fire, you get steam. Steam is the demi-element of Water and Fire. As you saw, things are rather smoky out there also. Smoke is Earth, Air and the heat of Fire. Both Steam and Smoke fill the complex and permeate the living residents—the D’Orcs and us. We provide the animus, which is the material form of the fifth element, Spirit. All of these elements rubbing up against each other—”

“Creates the elemental friction that generates mana!” Rupert said, nodding. “It’s exactly what I was taught in school!” He shook his head. “Normally it just sort of floats around until absorbed or collected by animus—a person.”