Heron’s eyes seemed to glow in the dark. “Are you telling me that the vile miscreants who sunk our Constabulary Vessel had the book with them at the time?”
“Indeed they did, and it was fear of exposure to this crime among many more that caused them to behave in the reprehensible manner in which they did.”
“The heathen savages. How despicable of them. Their traitorous actions simply compound themselves.” Heron was visibly annoyed, not that he hadn’t almost expected something of the sort.
“Further, if one were to investigate a little farther, one would find that they are consorting with an entire horde of demons. With which they are holding the city to their sway. One need only ask the Rod members for confirmation of this.”
“Really? Demon hordes in the city?” Heron was appalled; this was starting to get unbelievable. “So why are you still there, Exador? I would assume you’d wish to exit to some more pleasant surroundings.”
“Admiral, these vile evil doers have vindictively and unjustifiably tarnished my good name and besmirched my honor through their false accusations, of which you are aware. Further, they are threatening the lives of a great number of innocent people within the city. Do you think I could leave, when such a gross violation of the law and common decency was at hand. I seek these people brought to the justice they so richly deserve. I have stayed to see that they get it. Now that you have arrived, I am certain that they will, and I wait to be of assistance to your lawful arrest of these perfidious individuals.”
Heron stared at Exador for a moment, trying to decide how much he believed. “Very well, Lord Exador, your valor and steadfast devotion to justice will be noted. I am sure it will be in your favor on the inquisition over your illicit boarding practices. Are you or any of your people capable of watching this vessel from in the castle?”
“Certainly, admiral.”
“Very well then, we will be in touch with you via mirrors, I trust your people understand the standard code?”
“I will assign someone who does.”
“Very good. If you have no other information to impart, I will be in touch.” Heron said, dismissing the wizard. Exador nodded somewhat stern fully and vanished.
Edwyrd sat in his bed listening to Rupert’s breath ease into slumber. Even if he did sleep, he probably wouldn’t have been able to, given all the insanity outside the gate and inside the gate. He could, of course, just duck out to the Abyss to escape; however, Gastropé had admitted to him that if he were in the Abyss, Lenamare could summon him again. As long as he was in Astlan, Lenamare would have to know where he was to bind him.
So, basically, as long as he stayed in Astlan and didn’t reveal himself to Lenamare, he was safe. If had to be in this stewpot, he wanted to be his own agent, not a slave to Lenamare with no real choice in his actions. He supposed he could pop back to the Abyss and then hunt for a wizard to let him back in to Astlan; however that didn’t work so well last time, and what about the others? He had promised to help them.
He propped himself up on a couple pillows and grabbed one of the smaller books Maelen had set aside for him. It was fairly dark in the room, just the soft glow from the lights of the city coming in through the open windows; however he could adjust his demon sight so as to easily read the book.
Interestingly enough, it was in cursive English. Or was it? He had to squint a couple times, but realized that it wasn’t actually normal cursive English; but he had no trouble understanding what it meant. He tried reading aloud, it was in the same language he was speaking: Astlanian apparently.
Chapter 76
Hortwell and Lenamare were going over a few additional calculations near the runic gateway when the light from the gate suddenly went out, leaving them with only the torch light in the dungeon room rather than the morning sunlight through the gateway. Simultaneously they looked to the now closed portal.
“It went out.” Hortwell stated. “It isn’t supposed to do that.”
Lenamare was frowning. “Someone must have put up wards around either the palace or the city.”
“Exador?” Hortwell asked.
“Possibly, but I doubt he’d be that brazen. It must be the council. Perhaps they are getting an inkling of the number of recent arrivals.”
“Or fear more? Or are preparing for attack?” Hortwell added. “Is it bidirectional? Can it be unidirectional even? We couldn’t do that.”
“I’m not sure. At the very least, it is incoming, that would make sense, and possibly outgoing or maybe just warning for outgoing. Assuming they’re what I built for them, they are considerably more versatile and tunable than what we had. When I downscaled for the keep, I had to give up a lot of functionality; and while I did make a lot of improvements, we simply didn’t have the staff to do something so customizable.” Lenamare replied.
“Unfortunately, there is no way I can tell without risking alerting whoever controls the wards. Either incoming or outgoing would shut off a Runic Gateway though. The question is how tight is it? I had really hoped to use this gateway as an escape route if things went bad. Any thoughts on reactivating it by punching through the wards in an emergency?”
“Good question. Also given the distance that will make it harder. It might be possible to do some retuning to a closer gateway, like the Rod’s. Given their proximity, the power required would be much less, and hence we’d have more energy to break the wards. Of course the Rod is not exactly the best place to escape to.” Hortwell told Lenamare.
“True, but at least they have nothing against me, and they are honest. The same can’t exactly be said about the Oorstemothians.”
“Well to be fair, the Oorstemothians are technically honest, too honest, in their own strange way.” Hortwell said.
“Inconveniently honest. They want the book back, even if they don’t know what it is. I don’t relish facing them directly and having to refuse to return it. That’s the sort of bloodshed that will cause them to be an annoyance for a good number of years afterward.” Lenamare said sourly.
“Whatever,” Lenamare said getting up from his stool. “I know you can’t physically retune the gateway with the wards up, and without trying to break them. But if you could at least make the necessary calculations and preparations so we can do it if and when we may need to?” Hortwell nodded, and Lenamare smiled with an answering nod and left the room.
“Well, this is going to be inconvenient.” Jehenna harrumphed looking out the window.
“What?” Jenn asked, since she was the only other person in the room, she assumed Jehenna was talking to her. She was assisting Jehenna with grinding materials for yet another attempt at the book in the next day or so.
Jehenna glared at her, apparently for interrupting her not so internal monologue. “The council has set up wards around the entire city. Most likely to keep the Oorstemothians and Rod at bay. Since I’m not a part of the link, I can’t easily tell the settings; but the most common thing would be to lock out all magical and physical ingress to the city. Meaning, it will have cut off our Runic gateway.”
“Where are we going to dump the horse manure? And get more food for the horses?” Was Jenn’s first thought, thinking about the army and all the horses cooped up in the dungeon. Her second was that it was a good thing Trisfelt and the kids had gotten inside without a moment to spare yesterday. Although he hadn’t been at breakfast this morning, which was odd.