Jared nods and then picks up speed again. The dust cloud diminishes the further away from the mine they go.
Lights appear out of the darkness ahead as citizens of Ki come to investigate what happened. Hundreds of people are hurrying up the road, those on horseback leaving those on foot behind in their haste to reach the mine. James cancels his orb and plunges them back into darkness.
“Don’t stop for anything,” Jiron yells to the others as the riders come near. The lead rider slows down at their approach and starts speaking to them as they fly by. The man yells something but then is left behind. Moving to the edge of the road, Jiron takes the lead as they race past worried and fearful townsfolk.
As James rides past, he can’t help but see the worry and fear on the faces of many women. He knows they aren’t likely to find their men alive when they get there. Sadness comes over him a moment then he swallows it down and tries to concentrate solely on keeping his horse behind Jiron and not on what he just did to these people. Riding fast in the night, they soon leave Ki behind as they race westward.
Sweat streaming down his face, Kerith-Ayxt faces Aekion where he’s bound within the pentagram. Twice the height of a man, Aekion towers over the High Mage. Wreathed in flame, the heat coming from him is almost to the point of being unbearable. He can feel Aekion working against the spells holding him.
Tendrils of power come to him from the other mages within the Great Hall. Several have already fainted away from the exertion despite the power being taken from the slaves. They started with a hundred and twenty two slaves, now only forty four remain with a couple dropping every minute. And the spells that are to bind Aekion to hunt for the mage have yet to be completed.
Aekion’s form shifts as he stands within the pentagram. First the shape of a man aflame, then that of a wildfire and then something even more bizarre. But Aekion always returns to the humanoid form.
Kerith-Ayxt wrestles to place spell after spell upon the creature before him. Another mage sags to the floor, and then another. This is taking more than I thought. The errant thought comes to him, disrupting his concentration for a split second before he banishes it. Concentrating on the task at hand, he steadily works to bind the creature.
When all but the final spell has been laid upon the creature, the power coming to him begins to diminish. Casting a glance toward where the slaves are being held, he finds there are no longer any left to supply power. Panic begins to ensue as he realizes he’s not going to have the power to finish what he began.
Out of desperation, he yells to the mage who had been draining the slaves, “The Novices!”
Nodding understanding, the mage rushes from the Great Hall and shortly afterwards, the flow of power is restored.
Returning to the flaming creature before him, The High Magus completes the task at hand and lays the final spell of binding upon the creature. When at last it is complete, the glow of the pentagram fades and Aekion stands free before him. If any of the spells he laid this night was not done with perfection, the creature will kill him.
What would you have of me, master?
“A mage walks the Empire,” he tells it. Between them a shimmering image begins to form and then solidifies into an exact replication of the rogue mage. “Find this man and kill him.”
Yes master.
The flames wreathing his body suddenly flare to twice their brilliance and then Aekion is gone. Thus begins the hunt.
Chapter Twenty
After leaving Ki behind them, they ride for several hours after taking the southwest road out of town. Wanting to put as much distance behind them as they can, they push their horses almost to the point of exhaustion before they decide to pull off the road and make camp.
Throughout the ride, James was expecting whoever tried to find him magically several days ago to attempt it again. What he did at the mines had to have been a beacon telling anyone where he is. Why they haven’t yet makes him wonder. No matter the reason, he’s glad he didn’t have to fend off another of their probing attacks.
Jiron tells him to sleep through the rest of the night while he and Jared take turns at watch which suits him just fine. Twice during the night, riders could be heard moving in the direction of Ki. Neither time did the riders notice their camp set back off the road.
Jared was on watch when the first band of riders appeared and woke Jiron who prevented him from waking James. “I doubt if they will even know we’re here,” he explains. They don’t have a campfire and are not very close to the road. Sure enough, the riders went on by without even slowing.
When the sound of the riders disappears in the distance, Jiron returns to his blanket. Before settling in he tells Jared to only wake him when ‘Riders slow down and approach the camp’. The second set of riders passes by during Jiron’s turn at watch. Keeping an eye on them in the moonlight, he watches while they race past.
Even before dawn begins to dispel the darkness, they get underway. The short rest break they had wasn’t enough, but they need to put as much distance between themselves and Ki as they can. Now that it is light, they will be much more leery of anyone approaching.
James takes out his mirror and brings the mine area into focus to see what he wrought. As the image clarifies he finds the mine complex completely gone, buried under tons of stone. The whole area is crawling with people as they search for survivors, though he seriously doubts if they’ll find any.
Then he scans their immediate vicinity and finds a force of a thousand men east approaching Ki from the south. Whether in response to what he did there or if they were already on their way, he isn’t sure.
Scrolling the image, he scans the road ahead and finds where their road intersects with another at a sizeable walled town. There they will need to take the road moving more westward in order to reach the next and most important area to hit.
He wasn’t entirely truthful with Jiron and Jared when he told them of a storehouse and stockpiles of weapons. What he plans to hit is much bigger than that and likely to prove quite dangerous. For further to the west lies the Empire’s School of the Arcane. He doesn’t have any grand design to take on the mages there and kill them all, it’s doubtful if he could even accomplish that.
No. What he wants to destroy is their library. Of all the things he’s come to understand about making magic do what you want, is that knowledge of what you are trying to accomplish is the most important thing. He believes that taking out their library and the books contained within will greatly reduce their ability to train more mages effectively. The idea of destroying aged tomes of knowledge really bothers him however. But leaving knowledge in the hands of those who will use it to the detriment of others bothers him more.
Finished with his mirror, he returns it to his pack. “The area ahead of us looks clear,” he tells the other two. “By tonight, we’ll be at a crossroads where we will turn more to the west. Then another day and a half will see us to our destination.”
“After that we head home?” Jared asks.
James nods. “That’s right,” he replies. “After that we rejoin the others and get out of the Empire as fast as we can.”
“Good,” says Jiron. He’s been thinking about Aleya and has been missing her. The memory of her in his arms makes him want to see her again.
All that day they keep a steady pace with short stops to keep up the horses’ strength. It was during one such rest in the latter part of the day when James again pulls out his mirror to check for hostiles in the area. Not finding any, he scrolls down the road to the town ahead that lies at the crossroads. From the looks of it, it isn’t more than an hour or so away.
As he brings the image closer to the city, the image starts turning hazy. Using more magic, he tries to overcome the distortion. Suddenly, the glass of the mirror begins to warp and the metal frame which he is grasping grows red hot.