Fire Within: Book Two of Fire and Stone (Stories of Fire and Stone 2) (40 page)

“Yeah…” Toman said. They all knew that, but Esset wasn’t done.

“We learned this lesson before—we don’t wait for Moloch to come to us. We should be trying to get ahead of him,” Esset said.

“And how do we do that?” Tseka asked.

Esset glanced at Erizen, but he seemed completely oblivious to the conversation. One of his women was feeding him his breakfast in tidbit-sized morsels. Esset thought it a sad state of affairs how used to his behavior they’d all become and shook his head before continuing.

“Well, we know Moloch—if we can work through this scenario, we can figure out what he’ll do next. We sort of already did, but it seems we were wrong the first time. We created a network here in the Mage Lord kingdoms, since we assumed he’d want revenge on them and us and stay here himself. Only he doesn’t seem to have stayed here. So where did he go?”

“That’s exactly what we don’t know,” Tseka replied, not getting where he was going with this.

“What do we know about Moloch?” Esset asked, backing up to the first step.

“He’s sadistic, greedy, loves power, and has a massive ego,” Toman replied promptly.

“He holds a grudge and can’t let go if he thinks someone has bested him. So we’ve bested him and he’s lost much of his power,” Esset added.

“That’s why we predicted that he’d go on a killing spree in these territories to replenish his magic with blood and death energy,” Toman said.

“But he clearly isn’t doing that, at least not anywhere near here. It’s safe to say that he wants revenge against us more than against the Mage Lords—I imagine he sees the other Mage Lords as petty threats at best. So how else might he try to get back at us?” Esset asked.

“Well, he can’t find us personally,” Tseka said—the pendants given to them by the Ashiier ensured that.

“So he’ll try to go after those close to us,” Toman said logically, but without urgency. “But Salithsa is safeguarded, and Sergeant Warthog and our parents are safe there with the Nadra. Moloch can’t reach them.”

“Okay, so what would he do next? You know him best, Toman,” Esset said. He glanced at Erizen—Esset wasn’t actually whether Toman or Erizen knew him better, but Erizen still didn’t seem to be paying attention.

“Oh that’s easy. He’ll try to undo or outdo any notable accomplishment of yours that he can discover,” Erizen said. Apparently appearances could be deceiving. His lady cooed and fed him another tidbit.

“Okay, so we list places that are important to us,” Esset said.

“Home. Sedina,” Toman said.

“Salithsa, but that’s safe. If he couldn’t break the defenses before, he won’t be able to now,” Tseka added. “What about Sergeant Warthog’s tavern?”

“I could see him targeting the Staggering Tankard,” Toman agreed.

“Baliya. That was our first great accomplishment that would be widely known,” Esset added. They brainstormed some other ideas, but few would be widely known or notable enough to target, they decided. The Staggering Tankard, their home city of Sedina, and Baliya were the most likely targets.

“I’ll send animations to those places immediately,” Toman said.

“How sure are we of this? That we’ve chosen the right places?” Tseka asked.

“Sure. Because he’ll pick places he knows we’ll think of. Remember, in the end, he wants to fight us, to prove he’s superior.” Toman spoke with a grim certainty.

“You’re forgetting something important,” Erizen said, although his attention still seemed to be on his adoring harem. Toman, Esset, and Tseka waited, but Erizen’s long silence irritated Esset into speaking up.

“And what would that be?” Esset asked tightly.

“Hm? Oh. Patience, my dear boy. Moloch has a very large capacity for patience, when he chooses to exercise it. He must really hate you, to have been able to provoke him into rashness that night he sent the bulk of his mages after us. Either that, or—” Erizen stopped and tilted his head to the side for a moment, thinking, but then he shook his head.

“No, nevermind,” the mage concluded. Toman knew what he’d been about to say though; either that or Moloch feared them—he hadn’t come himself, after all. Toman remembered Moloch’s enduring rage over the injury Esset—or rather, the phoenix, through Esset—had done him. Could some of that rage been born out of fear? Moloch had certainly never met someone close to matching him, after all. He was always smarter or stronger or both than anyone around him. Smarter. Another thought occurred to Toman.

“And you outdid Moloch too, didn’t you? You built the Greymaker, and he had to
copy
it,” Toman said.

“Yes, my brilliance is unparalleled,” Erizen replied. “And there’s no way to improve upon it—” He cut himself off and actually paled.

“What? What is it?” Esset asked—he’d never seen that kind of reaction in Erizen before.

“A Ghostmaker,” Erizen said. Tseka, Esset, and Toman exchanged looks. Erizen shooed one of his ladies off his lap and shifted so he was sitting properly in his chair.

“It was after I shared the Greymaker design with him,” Erizen explained, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “We were discussing how it might be improved on, back before I decided it was already as good as it could be. Moloch suggested changing the Greymaker so that it would take
everything
in its radius. All energy, all life, snapped up in as short a time as possible. He called it a Ghostmaker.”

“Can he do that?” Tseka whispered, aghast at the mere notion.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. There are problems with the amount of energy it would generate. I toyed with the idea later and did some very small-scale experiments to see if it was possible,” Erizen said. Tseka hissed, and Erizen locked his dark grey eyes on her.

“I wouldn’t have shared any successes with Moloch. I may play in morally grey areas a great deal, but there are lines even I won’t cross. I looked into it because I had to know. It was horrific, but I knew Moloch would pursue the idea and I had to prepare for the possibility of his success. A Ghostmaker could be used as a weapon too, you understand. It would take some doing, but if he could create a Ghostmaker over an enemy’s territory without them noticing, he could obliterate entire kingdoms and come out of it with a nearly unimaginable amount of power.” Erizen’s words were greeted with silence. Everyone had gone very still, even Erizen’s harem. Finally Tseka spoke up.

“So what did you find out?”

“In the limited trials I performed, I had minimal success. The smallest-scale ones were successful. In an area up to a square foot it performed exactly as it should have, but anything past that started having issues. The spell structure would be scorched by the energy it was supposed to channel. If anything living—I used mice—was caught inside the radius, the spell would destabilize even further. As far as I could tell, creating a Ghostmaker on any practical level would be impossible,” Erizen said.

“But?” Toman asked. He knew there had to be one, else Erizen wouldn't have reacted as he had.

“But I never did test it as thoroughly as I wanted to,” Erizen confessed. “And I’m not as certain as I’d like to be that it’s not possible to create a successful Ghostmaker.”

“And Moloch is smart and committed,” Toman added grimly. If anyone besides Erizen could figure out how to make it work, it would be Moloch. Erizen nodded in agreement.

“I doubt he could have designed the Greymaker himself, not from scratch, but given the schematic of the Greymaker to work from… Moloch is clever. I wouldn’t put it past him.” That was a high compliment, coming from Erizen.

They all sat and contemplated that horrifying possibility for a moment.

“Nothing has changed,” Tseka finally said, drawing the attention of the others. “The stakes were always high—now we know how high they might be. If left alone, Moloch will kill many people. So we find him. We have new targets to search. We have three locations. Do we each go to a place, or do we move as a group from location to location?”

“Speed in diversity or safety in numbers,” Esset said quietly—those were their two choices. He didn’t like the idea of any one of them running into Moloch alone, but he wasn’t sure they could afford to give Moloch any more time to scheme and prepare. They’d already spent a dangerously large amount of time trying to find him where he wasn’t.

“I’ll go to Sedina,” Toman said. “Esset, Baliya? They know us there, and you have an easier time staying warm. Tseka and Erizen can go to the Staggering Tankard. They’ve seen a Nadra before there. If anyone finds Moloch, don’t engage him. Everyone can take a few small creatures of mine that can fly with a warning to the others. Keep your heads low and your senses sharp, and if we’re right, we’ll find him. Then we can meet up and destroy him.”

Esset wasn’t sure he liked splitting up, but he glanced around the table and didn’t see anyone else willing to object. The summoner considered saying something, but he wasn’t certain that going the slower route of checking all the places together was that much a better idea, so he held his tongue and went along with the plan.

“We’d best make haste then,” Esset said instead. “I’ve got the farthest to go. I’ll pack a few things and be gone by noon. Good luck everyone.”

The group dispersed quickly—they all had a long way to go.y all had long ways to go.

Esset chose his smoky carrion bird mount and meandered through the realms of the Dark Mage Lords to obscure his flight path. As often as possible, he flew in the clouds or hugged mountainsides so he’d be difficult to spot. He didn’t want anyone to be able to track his path back to the castle’s hidden location.

When he saw the small town that marked the edge of those realms, he breathed a sigh of relief. Now he could go for speed. Esset landed on a hilltop and banished the carrion bird; a moment later, he’d summoned one of his bright, fiery bird mounts. Anyone looking for them knew they hid in the lands of the Dark Mage Lords; now that he was free of them, he could make haste to Baliya.

Esset’s bird was impossible to miss now as it streaked across the sky in a blaze of fire, even during the day. Now it would be to his benefit for them to see he was coming. Given the aid he and Toman had given in the war against the undead all those years ago, Esset didn’t doubt he’d receive a warm welcome back.

He flew high, but even where the air thinned, the heat of his mount kept the cold at bay. Baliya was weeks away by fast horse, and while he could make it there in a fraction of that time, it would still be a long, grueling trip.

The wind and heat alternately chapped the exposed skin on his face as the light faded in the sky and night overtook him. When his eyes began to blur with fatigue, Esset landed and made a cold camp, passing out as soon as he was curled in his sleeping roll. The following morning he was in the air with the rising of the sun, and he repeated the routine as the landscape turned snowy beneath him and the air grew even colder. Esset was relieved when he finally saw the jagged peaks of the Wolfsmouth Mountains in the distance; he was close.

Sure enough, within a few hours he could see the walls of a fortress—Castle Ballan. Esset circled a few times to make sure he wasn’t going to surprise anyone before slowly descending into the outer courtyard. Once the bird landed, he dismounted and banished the fiery bird into a tiny puff of ash, smoke, and sparks. A few of the guards eyed him warily, but Esset saw a number of familiar faces, men he’d fought with back in the war. Some nodded or smiled, but none moved to approach him, so Esset simply waited where he was.

Castle Ballan was a fortress in every sense of the word; its size made Toman’s castle look like a village hut, and it had been designed with war in mind. The curtain walls were almost as thick as they were tall—and they were tall. They’d proved their mettle in the war, too, protecting the defenders until the tide of the war had been turned. Great towers marked the corners of the curved outer walls, allowing a vantage point to watch for foes from and plenty of arrow slits to discourage would-be attackers. And even in the unlikely event that the outer walls fell, the inner walls were even taller and just as sturdy, and the keep was formidable as well. Yet Esset knew well that these were only physical defenses; against a magical foe, the fortress could be—and had been—legitimately threatened. Fortunately, with a little help, Castle Ballan stood yet, and Baliya was once again at peace.

But Esset didn’t have long to wait and mull over the past; the captain came through the gates from the inner courtyard after a couple minutes. The captain was a wiry man of average height; like almost every Baliyan man, he wore a full beard, but he kept his trimmed as neatly as his short-cropped hair. His uniform was likewise pristine, and Esset knew the captain took as much care and attention with every aspect of his life and of his job. Those sharp brown eyes didn’t miss much.