“There is a way we could banish them from the city.” Lenamare stated suddenly after several more minutes of uncomfortable silence.
“Yes?” Gandros asked.
“It will require some work, but we could utilize the city wards along with some parasympathetic wards I would create to sort of suck all the demons out of the city, physically.”
“Interesting,” Gandros beamed suddenly excited. “and will it be strong enough to also compel the three archdemons that are wondering around the palace?”
“The what?” Lenamare and Jehenna asked in shocked unison.
Chapter 77
Edwyrd would have loved to have discussed some of what he’d read the night before with Maelen, but he didn’t know how to do that without exposing his charade as an Animage. The stuff he read had been fairly basic; he’d had to skip over some of the more technical things, but it was pretty weird.
But it had informed him of some really weird stuff; apparently there was a second moon that went north to south; hence the whole thing about second tide. He just hadn’t seen it because of the time of the month, or months or whatever. Their calendar was insanely complex; and they tied it out to astrology. Astrology? Everyone knew that was nonsense; but on the other hand; demons, wizards, elves and dwarves were also nonsense; so maybe there was something to astrology here.
The weirdest thing, though, was that the wizards thought of what they did as ‘science.’ Except that it was ‘magic’; they even called it magic; science and magic were two separate things. Everyone knew that. OK, sure, there was that saying that said ‘any sufficiently advanced technology appears to be magic to people of lower technology’ that got used a lot in movies. Now that might be well and good, but everything else he read was all mumbo jumbo about magic. Honest to god, magic.
He wasn’t sure why he was shocked though, he’d seen the magic work; he’d used the magic himself. Edwyrd supposed it was probably just the referring to wizardry as being a science that bothered him. He’d always been taught differently. Or had he? His biology teacher said that science wasn’t a thing, it was a process a methodology. That was why many science teachers talked about ‘the scientific method’ rather than ‘science’ as a thing. Could the scientific method be applied to Animus and Mana? Was that what the wizards were doing?
A lot of the intro material almost read like background info for some sort of roleplaying game, or video game. Of course, to be fair, he was a giant demon running around shooting blasts of fire and lightning bolts, so he supposed this was something like and overly immersive first person shooter.
He needed to stop that line of thought. However wacky, this was real life and real death for a lot of people. He really had killed people, viciously. He couldn’t let himself lose sight of that. He thought back to the soldier he’d popped. Edwyrd shuddered.
There was, however, some interesting stuff. Lots of stuff on links and bindings that helped him sort of get a hold of the astral cord and that link from him to Lenamare. He’d looked at it again. He didn’t want to follow it too far for fear of alerting Lenamare, but it seemed that it led into the abyss and presumably back out again to Lenamare. All very interesting; apparently, one could use these links for all sorts of things, including tracking people. It might be handy to put a link on Rupert so he could find him when he got whacked or disappeared.
Jenn sat and took a breather at a table in the cafeteria before she’d have to get up to get her dinner. It had been a long day. She’d pestered both Jehenna and Zilquar about the horses and they’d finally told her to deal with them. They were apparently both absorbed in some new project of Lenamare’s. Zilquar had informed his general that Jehenna would help him deal with the Council and Magistrates to do something about the horses.
Not knowing where else to go, she’d gone to Damien. He’d been a bit surprised, annoyed really, about discovering an army with a cavalry camped in his basement. They’d spent a good part of the day working with Damien, Guard Commander Bergon, along with both Zilquar’s Arms Master, and Captain Markoff from Lenamare’s school trying to integrate the basement army with the city’s own guard. They had to move and stable the horses, arrange for provisions and above-ground boarding for the army. In all, a lot more than she ever imagined doing. Seriously? She thought she’d signed up to be a thaumaturge, not a Combat Mage.
Alvea and Bromagni came in looking almost as worn as she was. The two plopped down at her table, Bromagni plopping his head on the table. “Long day?” Jenn asked.
“The longest.” Bromagni said without moving his head from the table.”
“Jehenna has us running all over the city gathering components. Some really expensive components.” Alvea told her.
“Extremely expensive components?” Jenn asked.
“Remember the stuff we used for the wards back at the school, like that, only much bigger. Apparently, they are working with the council to do something extremely complicated with the wards. Lenamare, Zilquar, Hortwell, Elrose, Jehenna, Gandros, half the council of wizards plus their best masters. Whatever it is, it’s going to be big.”
“We ended up buying over 10,000 crowns worth of materials from various apothecaries, alchemists and metallurgists. It’s one seriously big spell.” Bromagni finally looked up shaking his head. “Gandros, Lenamare, Hortwell, Jehenna, and Trevin were locked in planning all day, and Alexandros Mien was even coming and going for consultation. He’s the most experienced wizard on the council, and so old he has to float himself down the corridors.” Bromagni shook his head in awe of the Elder Archimage.
“I think he’s like 120 or something.” Alvea said shaking her head in agreement. Jenn nodded, everyone knew of his record. One of the brightest mages of the last few generations. No one had seen him do much, other than float around the palace in the last decade, but when he’d been active, he’d been a major force in the world.
“Where were you today?” Alvea suddenly asked. “Normally Jehenna has you stand by to be her whipping girl.”
Jenn grinned, “Someone had to do something about the horses and the army in the basement since we couldn’t get food for them, or remove their manure. I pestered Jehenna and Zilquar so much they put me in charge of bringing the army and the horses above ground. So I spent the day with Councilor Damien, Markoff, and Zilquar’s captain, and the city guard captain. It was an all-day ordeal.”
“So, the rumors are true then,” Bromagni smiled at her, Jenn tilted her head in puzzlement, “you have switched over to doing combat magic!” Jenn hit him on the arm.
Wing Arms Master Heron sighed and put his head down on his desk upon his hands. He was getting too old for this. Despite his best intellectual reasoning, and common sense, there were times when he wished diplomacy were illegal.
He’d spent the morning discussing the situation with Arch-Vicar General Barabus and Arch-Diocate Iskerus. This was truly a tricky situation. Apparently, the same malefactors he was charged with dealing with were subject to a prior set of charges from the Church of Tiernon and the Rod. This prior claim arising from actions inside Church property before the vile Asmeth had ever set sail. Abduction, imprisonment, illegal interrogation and mental, if not perhaps physical, torture of the Church’s highest representative in Gizzor Del. Defilement of church property, blasphemy and perversion of religious rites, fleeing Tiernon’s justice among other charges. Heron was not familiar with the exact laws of the Church, but, clearly, these would be capital crimes in any jurisdiction.