The clearing kind of looked like one of those paintings he’d done at a carnival, where he’d squirted paint onto a rotating piece of cardboard. The main difference was that the clearing was painted mainly in red, with a little purple here and there. In the center of the clearing lay the wizard, unconscious, obviously suffering from some relatively minor sword wound. Over the wizard stood the little demon he’d noticed upon arrival. It seemed to be standing guard over the wizard, and glaring defiantly up at Tom.
“Stay back!” shouted the little demon as Tom landed a few feet away.
“Why?” asked Tom.
“’Cause I’m not going to let you hurt him,” said the little demon, with such seriousness and conviction that Tom had to restrain a bit of smile, despite his sour mood. Apparently, the little demon considered Tom a serious threat to his master and was quite intent on defending the man. A rather strange thought, actually, Tom decided, why would a demon want to protect its accursed master?
“Why don’t you want me to hurt him?” Tom asked in curiosity. “If I offed him, you’d be free.” Not that Tom had any desire to kill the wizard, the guy had been a little paranoid and pretentious, but he didn’t deserve death.
“Cause I said so,” retorted the little demon. “Besides, he’s the best master I’ve had in a long, long time, and I don’t want to give him up and get stuck with someone a lot worse. So you just back off, or I’ll make you sorry.” The little demon puffed.
“Oh,” said Tom with what he thought was an amused grin. The little demon blanched, so Tom figured the grin must not have worked like he’d intended. “Very well then, I’ll just go back to my cave.” The little demon said nothing, it just glared.
Without wasting any more time, Tom visualized his cave and began to will himself back to it. As the image of the cave began to superimpose itself upon the clearing, he noticed that the little demon wasn’t glaring so hard, but was still extremely vigilant. As he was almost completely back in his cave, he gave the demon a friendly wave and a nod.
Chapter 24
Lenamare shut the door to his study and motioned to Jehenna to take a seat. She sat down in her traditional chair across from Lenamare’s desk. Lenamare moved briskly around his desk and took his seat. “So, you wanted to speak?” He asked with a slight smile.
“Yes, this teleportation trap of yours, what’s the story.”
“Not much actually, simply that anyone trying to teleport within the vicinity of this castle, without the proper password, will end up in a specific location of my choosing, and not theirs.”
“Uh huh. And the bugs you mentioned?”
“Well... simply that the standard version of the spell puts them in a stasis field. Unfortunately, because they rematerialize in stasis, they’re kind of permanently stuck in it. I haven’t figured out how to get them out of it. That’s all.”
“They’re stuck in stasis? Meaning we can’t question them?”
“Or do anything to them. They’re in a complete Vergian Time Stasis, so we can’t affect them. Apparently, materialization into frozen time fixes their reality in a different time frame.”
“Why would this be? I mean, people have been doing Vergian Time Stasis’ for centuries, and they always get out.”
“I’m not sure, my guess is that it has to do with the entry into Skew Timespace. Remember, teleportation reorients the individual’s energies to perfectly align with new space-time coordinates. If the teleportation aligns them more perfectly with Skew Timespace than the normal stasis spell, then it could be a hell of a lot more difficult to realign them to normal space-time.
“Essentially, the normal spell method of entry allows a small communication channel between our reality and Skew Timespace. If this entry isn’t made, then the communication channel doesn’t exist...”
“And so we can’t communicate with them in anyway, especially by magic. The reversal spell can’t find them since no path exists between us and them.”
“Precisely. Now if one could undo their teleportation spell, from outside, one might just be able to pull them out of it, the same way they got there.”
“But no one knows how to do that, or even if it can be done.” Jehenna concluded. Lenamare nodded.
“However,” Jehenna said as she realized something, “if there is no communication channel, then light can’t pass between here and there. You couldn’t see if anyone was there or not.”
“True, but I know where I sent them, and when I go there I can detect the normal warping of space-time that you experience when examining someone trapped in a Vergian Time Stasis. It also happens to be fairly good size, so I am fairly sure that there are more than one would be infiltrators there.”
“So what do you intend to do about them?”
“I haven’t decided yet, there is not much I can do. For one thing, we don’t have a whole lot of time. These wards aren’t going to last indefinitely now that we’ve lost that student. Damn him for dying on me.” Lenamare stood up and began to pace around the room, his elegant slippers making a slight whisper as he glided through the deep carpeting.
“Well, what do you plan to do, take them down and start from scratch?”
“No, that would take way to long and Exador would be in and crush us. I’m thinking of leaving.”
“True, with that teleportation trap, we could safely teleport out of here.”
“Exactly, as I’d thought. Except for one problem.”
“Problem?”
“Yes, the students and retainers, peasants etc... I can’t take all of them with me in a teleport, and most of them can’t teleport themselves. We don’t have enough people to carry everyone else out.”
“Since when did you care about them, let them and the men at arms fend for themselves.” She was gazing at him with a slightly speculative demeanor.
“Normally, yes. But in order to exact my revenge on Exador, I’m going to have to have Council help, and they frown on School Masters who lose students they’re sworn to protect. So I think, if possible, we should get them out too. It would make for a much better bargaining position later on, if I still had them.”
“Good point. So how do we get everyone out without Exador knowing about it, and following us?”
“We’ll probably have to use the escape tunnels and split up and make our ways separately in small groups to Freehold.”
“Right. And while we’re doing this, with the physical shielding nullified so we can get out, Exador comes trashing through, and brings the castle and tunnel down on top of our heads.” Jehenna shook her head.
“Slight problem.”
“Isn’t it, though?” She said drily.
“Well, the two of us will just have to think of something,” said Lenamare as he finally came to rest, leaning on the right hand corner of his desk.
Jenn sighed and put her diary down. What a day, at least it was over, for the moment. She’d just finished writing up the day’s events in her diary after returning from Alvea’s quarters. The poor girl was still practically catatonic over the loss of Rex, even now. Jenn herself was just numb. So far the shields continued to hold out, but for how much longer? Old Ugly had destroyed the offensive attack on the wards, all by himself. Actually rather impressive; killing three type two demons, a type three, a fairly powerful wizard and somewhere around twenty to thirty soldiers in less than fifteen minutes, overall not to be scorned. In fact, it just made Jenn all the more nervous about the thing. Monsters that powerful shouldn’t be allowed to wander around freely as much as Lenamare seemed inclined to let them.