They took off down the hall towards Elrose’s apartments. “So, I get that this is a ‘get out of town’ sort of thing for Gastropé and me, but what is this expedition you and Elrose have planned with Councilor D’Vils?” Jenn asked.
Maelen chuckled. “I probably should wait until we are all together, but being the friendly sort” — he laughed at himself — “I’ll go ahead and tell you. We are hunting down a goddess.” He laughed slightly evilly.
Jenn looked at him askance, noting from the corner of her eye that, as expected, Gastropé had just gotten paler. “You are kidding, of course,” she stated.
“Not at all!” Maelen smiled. “As you may recall, Trevin noted that the dark-skinned woman on the flying carpet with Exador and Ramses looked exactly like images she’d seen of the now vanquished goddess, Bastet. Both Elrose and I have had visions linked to her name, and the goddess appears to be involved in some way. We are therefore going to seek out some of her old temples to see if we can get some sort of linkage to determine if she’s actually involved, and what she might be up to.”
“Seriously?” Gastropé was shaking his head in disbelief. “We just managed to evict a giant horde of demons and a party of archdemons, and now we’re going to try to track down and spy on a goddess?”
“Is there something they don’t teach us in school? Does too much mana use cause one to go insane?” Jenn asked, half rhetorically.
Maelen chuckled. “I understand, and trust me; my chuckling as we speak is a defense mechanism to hide my own unease.” He smiled brightly at both of them. “However, from the visions we’ve had, I think I’d be more nervous not knowing and just sitting around waiting for things to get worse, than trying to get a handle on what’s going on so that we can prepare for it, and maybe even try and nudge things in a less disastrous manner.”
“Less disastrous manner?” Gastropé asked in shock.
“Yes.” Maelen suddenly turned very somber. “The visions that we are seeing imply a rather massive conflict between gods, demons, several armies and us. And by us, I mean in general, Astlanian wizards and animages, and since we seem to be in the heart of the maelstrom, if you will, it appears specifically the Council and the three of us plus Edwyrd and Rupert.”
“Rupert? He’s still out being stupid with his cousin!” Jenn exclaimed. How had that slipped her mind? That wine was evil. “What’s going to happen to them once they return?”
“They need to be gone from Freehold as well, I’d assume,” Gastropé added.
Maelen nodded. “Trevin has assured us she’ll have a large, long-distance mirror on our vessel. When they return, Damien can contact us, and depending on the distance, hopefully be able to teleport them to us.”
Gastropé frowned. “We are going to the Southern Hemisphere. That’s thousands of leagues away. That would have to be one huge teleport spell.”
“I’m not even sure that’s possible,” Jenn said, worried.
“I know very little of teleportation. Personally, I prefer to walk or ride a horse as a rule; however, Damien seems to feel it should be no problem for them to join us,” Maelen replied.
“Agh, of course. I wasn’t thinking.” Gastropé shook his head.
Jenn looked at him askance. “What do you mean, ‘of course?’ You make it sound obvious. I don’t think you know that much more than me about teleportation. That distance is clearly out of range of any standard teleportation spell.”
Gastropé got an awkward look on his face but then recovered. “Yeah, but remember, there are other ways besides just a teleport spell. According to the maps I studied here, we jumped nearly 500 leagues from Exador’s camp to Gizzor Del.”
Jenn blinked and looked back at him angrily. “That wasn’t jumping, that was traveling through the Abyss and then back to a random location in Astlan.”
Gastropé nodded. “Exactly my point, and we did it again in a more controlled manner to get to Freehold.” He nodded at Maelen to get the seer’s agreement. Maelen shrugged.
“Yes, but that means going through the demon Tom’s cave, the only place we know in the Abyss. Given what happened out there” — she gestured vaguely beyond the walls of the city — “what we saw that demon do, do you seriously think it’s safe for Edwyrd and Rupert to travel through that demon’s cave? For one thing, the demon probably has a very angry knight held hostage in his cave!” Jenn waved her hands in the air. “You seriously want Edwyrd and Rupert to walk right in on that scene?”
That seemed to stop Gastropé’s arguments. He sputtered and made all sorts of weird expressions trying to figure out something to say, but finally just remained silent, granting the wisdom of Jenn’s argument.
“I thought so.” Jenn nodded decisively, her point made. Maelen simply shook his head and shrugged.
“There you are!” Elrose’s voice came from up ahead. The wizard was backing out of his apartments pulling a very large wooden trunk that had wheels on one end and a large handle on the other. Quite interesting, Jenn thought, she had never seen anything like it. The wizard was also wearing a backpack like the rest of them.
“I see you’re traveling light.” Maelen chuckled.
Elrose did not seem to get the joke; he just looked down at the trunk and shook his head. “These are just my personal things; I’ve sent my larger apparatuses on ahead to Trevin’s lab with some valets.”
Jenn frowned. “Where did you get so much equipment? You certainly didn’t haul it with you from the school.”
Elrose smiled. “No, no, I’ve had these quarters for the last four years since I joined the Committee on Sorcery. As you know, I’ve been seeing troubling things for several months, which is why Maelen was coming to visit me, so I’ve been stockpiling things here in readiness.”
“Wait.” Jenn turned to Maelen. “You were coming to visit Master Elrose?”
Maelen smiled. “I know, very small world. I had no idea when we met that you and Elrose worked together. I must confess, my failure to See that on the ship is a bit embarrassing.”
Elrose laughed at Maelen’s admission. “That makes me feel better,” Elrose told the seer. “The way you can simply See things without going through rituals or using devices makes me quite jealous.”
Maelen grinned but shook his head. “No, trust me; it is nothing to be jealous of. It leads to a lot of bad dreams.”
Elrose chuckled as he shut his door and made the necessary gestures to magically lock it. “So, we are off to Trevin’s lab.” He grabbed the handle on his trunk and rotated it so he could pull it behind him, then gestured forward for the others to lead the way.
“Isn’t fierdset an odd time to start a journey?” Jenn asked.
Maelen laughed. “I would say so, but Trevin has her reasons. We are heading to the Grove and from what I’ve read, getting in and out of that place is non-trivial.”
“Other than Trevin, of course, Trisfelt is the only person I know of who has been there,” Elrose remarked as they walked down the hall.
“The surrounding mountains are a bit overwhelming,” Gastropé stated.
“Yes,” Elrose noted, “you’re from Turelane, which is adjacent to the Grove.”
“Yes, I’m from Freelane. I studied at Master al Bastante’s Academy, which is located about seventy leagues east and south of Freelane, nearly up against the mountain ranges. The outer range is about the same height as the mountains around Freehold, so about half a league in height; the next range in, which you can easily see at a distance, is probably twice that, and the innermost ranges are said to be another two to three times as high.”
“What? Are you saying there are mountains that are two or three leagues high?” Jenn asked incredulously.