Chapter 74
Jenn wobbled down the dimly lit stone corridor, wondering if she was going to drop before she reached her room. The last several hours had been quite taxing to say the least. It had taken a while to find a large, empty, out of the way room in the underground complex with an extra doorway suitable for the gateway, and large enough to house a small army.
After finding it, she had spent the next couple hours playing lackey to Hortwell in setting up the runic gateway, while Lenamare kibitzed in the background. Then bringing all of Zilquar’s people through, getting them set up and supplied, posting guards to ensure privacy, working out details like food, water and toilets. She was just glad it was over, for now.
It was probably about dawn, as far as Jenn could tell, when she made it back to her room. The corridors were silent as all rational people were long since asleep. Amazing, Jenn mused, that one could hide and entire army in a dungeon and have no one else even know. Rather frightening actually.
That dungeon was large; there could easily be a couple other armies down there as well. If he hadn’t been staying with the guys, Jenn would have checked on Rupert. However, she doubted they’d appreciate her sneaking into their room in the middle of the night to kiss Rupert good night. She’d see him in the morning, whenever she got up.
Master Trisfelt slowly sank back to the ground. He’d floated above the edge of the trees to try and get a better glimpse of the situation. He and the children had arrived at the edge of the forest surrounding Freehold, shortly after sunset. Unfortunately, they’d found the city completely surrounded by the Rod. Surrounded by a lot more soldiers than had passed them on the road, a couple orders of magnitude more. While the gates of the city were closed for the night anyway, it appeared to Trisfelt that even if they were open, getting in wouldn’t be easy. The Rod seemed to be guarding the entrances to the city, completely besieging it. Whether they were letting people in or out was unclear.
He’d settled the children down, fed them and gotten them to sleep, and gotten a few hours of sleep on his own. All inside the minor protection wards he’d set up around them. When he’d awoke shortly before dawn he’d decided to try and review the situation again from the air, while staying relatively close to the warded children. The situation hadn’t changed much. It was not at all clear they’d be able to enter the city.
Exador strode into the sitting room of his apartments, his mind sorting through the implications of what his demon spies in the castle had told him. Apparently, late yesterday evening, Lenamare had smuggled an army into the cellars of the castle. He wasn’t sure what army had been smuggled in, but in all likelihood it belonged to Zilquar. Overall, it was an annoying turn of events that could easily shift the control of power from his own forces, both his demons and the remains of his army, also hiding in a remote corner of the vast underground labyrinth under the Council’s fortress.
His musings were suddenly put on hold when he realized that one of his second order demons was kneeling respectfully on the floor by his sofa. “What do you want?” he asked the demon.
“Lord, I have word on the greater demon you wanted found.”
“What word? You’ve found Lenamare’s demon?” Exador asked impatiently.
“Lord, they were spotted in the Courts and followed, as you ordered,” the demon answered, not looking up.
“They?”
“Yes sir,” the demon looked up hesitantly. “It seems he was with two or three other demons.”
“Do you know who the other three were?” Exador was not in the mood for question and answer, “and what they were doing?”
“One demon was the bard, Antefalken...”
“Damien’s lackey.” Exador stated under his breath.
“Another was Bogsworth,” Exador shook his head not recognizing the name, “and the third was unknown but looked identical to the greater demon except about half the size.”
“What? You mean of similar form? Type?” Exador asked impatiently for clarification.
“No, sir, identical as in pretty much an exact duplicate only smaller.”
Exador frowned, what was this other demon? As a rule, demons, especially the more powerful ones were all unique. One just didn’t get duplicates. Not unless, perhaps, Lenamare’s demon had cloned itself. But that wouldn’t make much sense. “So where are they now?”
“Uhm, we don’t know sir.” The little demon cringed.
“What do you mean you don’t know? They were followed weren’t they?”
“Certainly lord, it’s just that the big one opened a gate to Astlan and they stepped through, except for Bogsworth, who went back to the Courts. The trackers couldn’t follow them through the gate of course.”
“This Bogsworth went back to the Courts? Where did they go in the meantime, between when they were found in the Courts and Bogsworth returned to the Courts?”
“Uhm, to the estate of Lord Ramses sir.” The demon looked hastily down at the floor again.
“Ramses? What the hell?” First Lenamare’s demon teamed up with Damien’s pet and then they both pay a visit on his own erstwhile ally? Was Lenamare playing bigger games than he appeared to be? But what would Ramses and Lenamare have in common? Exador knew Lenamare too well. The man would never willingly consort with anyone he knew was a demon except in the traditional Master-Slave sense, and there was no question that Ramses would never be anyone’s slave.
“So what did they do at Ramses’ place?” Exador asked.
“Uhm, nothing sir, they just went to the edge of the grounds and stood there staring for a little bit. Then they walked around it part way, but never entered. After that is when they opened the gate.”
That made Exador feel better, perhaps Lenamare wasn’t dealing with Ramses behind his back. However, was Lenamare on to him? Did Lenamare finally begin to suspect exactly whom he was dealing with? The man was not completely stupid, and given the book, he’d have to plan on archdemons getting involved at some point. The question was, did Lenamare know just who the archdemons were?
“Interesting isn’t it?” Bess asked from an archway across the room. Exador looked up in surprise, not knowing she’d been there.
“What are you doing here?” Exador snapped.
“Why, Exy,” Bess purred in mock hurt tones, “you invited me to breakfast.” She straightened slightly before continuing, “to discuss our ally.”
Exador frowned; he’d forgotten. He glared down at the messenger demon. The damn thing had to have known she was there. It should have known better. “Get out of here. I’ll deal with you later,” Exador snapped at the messenger demon. The smaller demon cowered and sobbed, realizing it had made a mistake and vanished in a puff of flame.
“So, since you obviously heard. What do you make of it? And what will we do about Ramses? The man is going to give us away before we’re ready. Obviously, Lenamare and Damien have already caught on to him.” Exador asked Bess, gesturing for her to proceed him onto the dining patio.
“Perhaps,” Bess purred. “It’s not clear to me that Lenamare’s demons will go right to him with this news.” She looked at him archly as she sat down at the table. “After all, wizards and demons don’t always get along, especially slaves and masters. Or didn’t you realize that?”
Exador sneered slightly at her as he sat down. “I won’t even bother to answer the last, but nonetheless, we can’t assume they won’t. What I do know from the past is that Antefalken is rather loyal to Damien, master-slave or not. We can assume that Damien knows something. Whether this other demon goes to Lenamare is another question.”