Brennus stood before the tarnished scrying cube, his mind racing.
“Look, now?” the homunculi asked. One of the constructs was perched on each of his shoulders.
Brennus nodded. He raised a hand and shot a charge of power into the scrying cube, activating it. The tarnish on its silver surface flowed together to make dark clouds, revealing the shining metal surface beneath.
Shadows spun around him wildly, aping the wild beating of his heart. He took the rose holy symbol in one hand, took his mother’s necklace in the other, held them before him, the two pieces of jewelry crafted thousands of years apart, yet together forming another piece of the puzzle he’d long sought to solve.
He’d tried to scry the Abbey of the Rose hundreds of times and always failed. He had concluded that it was a myth. He knew better now. He’d tried to scry the son of Erevis Cale just as often, and also failed, and so concluded that Cale’s son was dead or out of reach. But now he knew better about that, too. Before those examples, the only other person or thing he’d been unable to scry had been Erevis Cale himself, and that was because Mask had shielded Cale from Brennus’s divinations. But Mask was dead, was he not? So who was shielding Cale’s son?
Everything had come together at just the right time. He thought Mask must have somehow been at the root of it. Brennus was probably helping the Lord of Shadows somehow, and that was fine with him. By helping Mask, he was, presumably, hurting Shar. And hurting Shar meant hurting Rivalen. And hurting Rivalen was all he cared about.
“Now for the test,” he murmured.
Possession of Cale’s son’s holy symbol would hopefully provide the focus he needed to pierce the wards, whatever their source.
His homunculi rubbed their hands together, reflecting his eagerness.
Holding the rose in his fingers, he held his hands above his head and incanted the words to one of his most powerful divinations. He focused the spell’s seeing eye on Cale’s son, on the Abbey of the Rose, and let power pour from him. Magic charged the shadows swirling around his body, veined them in red and orange, and they extended to the face of the scrying cube and joined with the churning black clouds of the tarnish.
The silver face of the cube took on depth, darkened, but showed him nothing. His spell reached across Sembia, feeling for the focus of the spell. Brennus continued to pour power into the spell until sweat soaked him, fell in rivulets down his face. He held the rose symbol so tightly in his palm that the edges bit into his flesh. The homunculi squeaked with fear and covered their eyes as ever more power gathered.
Dots of orange light formed on the surface of the cube, like stars in the deep. Controlling his exhilaration, he willed the scrying eye of the divination to move closer, realized that he was looking down from on high at a mountain valley. The orange lights were burning trees. Struggling to control a rush of emotion, he forced the eye of the spell downward so he could make out details. A river divided the valley. Tarns dotted it here and there. Ancient pines covered it in a blanket of green. Many of them burned, with fires blazing here and there throughout the woods. He saw movement among the trees all over the valley, but ignored it for now. Instead, he focused on the structures partially screened by the pines. Although dark, he recognized it as a temple or abbey.
“I have you,” he said.
He moved the scrying eye to the frenetic motion he saw among the burning pines. Perspective blurred as the eye whirled across the valley, focusing on three men pelting through the woods. One of them, tall, dark-skinned, and with darkness clinging to his flesh, had to be the scion of Cale. The others, a deva and a bow-armed human, were his companions. Spined devils bounded through the woods in pursuit of the men. A single bone devil plodded through the woods, too.
The devils meant that Mephistopheles was somehow involved. Not surprising given the Lord of Cania’s connection to Mask. Brennus could not let Cale’s son be killed or taken by agents of the Archfiend. Brennus needed the son, needed to know what he knew, what he was, and how he could use the son to harm Rivalen.
He studied the location with care, noted the details of the valley, the abbey, committed all of it to memory, and spoke aloud to his majordomo, Lhaaril. Latent spells in his abode projected his words to Lhaaril, wherever the majordomo might have been.
“Lhaaril, assemble a force of our trusted men and their mounts at the teleportation circle in the courtyard. This instant. No one else is to know.”
The reply came immediately. “Yes, Prince Brennus.”
Brennus considered returning to his chambers to arm himself with additional wands, but decided his spellcraft and the magic gear he carried would suffice. He pulled the darkness around him and stepped through it to an inner courtyard of his manse.
A single sheet of polished basalt paved the large, rectangular courtyard. The walls and spiked towers of the manse surrounded it on all sides. A large, thaumaturgic triangle was graven in the basalt, its grooves inlaid with tarnished silver. A servant stood near one end of the courtyard, holding the reins of Brennus’s veserab mount, already saddled. As he approached, the servant bowed and withdrew, and the veserab hissed a greeting through the fanged sphincter of its mouth. It pulled its wings in close as Brennus walked to its side and slid into the saddle.
Meanwhile, his men began to appear. Pockets of darkness formed here and there in the courtyard, and fully armed and armored Shadovar warriors, their faces hidden by ornate helms, materialized from the darkness atop their veserab mounts. In moments, a dozen men and their mounts filled the courtyard. The veserabs jostled and shrieked at each other.
Brennus heeled his mount and the veserab lurched on its wormlike body into the center of the thaumaturgic triangle. His men did the same.
“We travel to a valley in the Thunder Peaks,” Brennus announced. “The devils there are of no concern to you. There are three men, one who looks like a shade.”
The men looked at one another at that, their body language suggesting a question.
“He is not Shadovar. He travels with a deva and a human. I want all three of them alive.”
Forearms slammed into breastplates and with one voice, they said, “Your will, Prince Brennus.”
With that, Brennus began the teleportation ritual.
Chapter Twelve
Devils swarmed the woods. Vasen could hear them all around, lumbering through the brush, snarling.
“They’re trying to cut us off!” Vasen said. “Faster!”
“I can hardly see anything!” Gerak said, nearly tripping over a log. Vasen forgot that he and Orsin could see clearly in darkness and Gerak could not. He lit up his shield and the glow filled the forest. Shadows rose all around them. Vasen felt them knocking against his awareness, a sensation he’d never felt so strongly before. He stared at the sword in his fist, wondering.
Flaming spines flew, breaking his train of thought, and a devil bounded into their midst. It knocked Gerak to the ground and clamped its jaws down on his leg. He screamed, tried to roll out from under the creature while Vasen shouted and drove Weaveshear through the devil’s side, impaling it on the black blade. The devil reared back, snarling with pain. Orsin appeared to the devil’s right, his hands charged with dark energy. He slammed his fist into the creature’s open mouth and drove it out the top of the devil’s skull. The fiend collapsed in a heap, its shattered head leaking brains and ichor.
“All right?” Vasen asked Gerak, pulling him to his feet. More devils were closing.
“I’ll manage,” he said, wincing as he tested his leg. Before Vasen could say anything more, Gerak’s eyes went wide and he pushed Vasen to the side while bringing his bow to bear. A snarl sounded from behind and above and Vasen whirled in time to see a spined devil leaping down from one of the pines at Orsin. Gerak’s bow sang, and an arrow caught the fiend in mid-flight, sinking to the fletching in the devil’s throat. The creature hit the ground writhing, its squeals of pain a rasping wheeze through the hole in its throat. Gerak fired again, hit the devil in the chest, and the creature went still.