Tarah Woodblade (12 page)

The basilisk only slowed. One singed hand began to push into the wall of air, its digits thinning and sharpening into talons. There was a sharp crack as the rocks making up the walls of the buildings around them exploded, peppering the alley with heated shards of rock.

“
That won’t stop it
,” Mellinda warned. “
You’re killing it too slowly
!”

“What do you suggest!” he snapped. The basilisk continued to push its arm through the wall of air. Its claws were only a foot away from his face.

“
Reach into its body with the magic of the rings
!”

“I don’t know how,” he shouted back.

“
I do. Let me take over
!” she suggested.

Arcon laughed. “Never. I’d rather die right now.”

“
I don’t have my powers and this is your body
,” she urged. “
You could always wrest back control
.”

“Yeah, right,” he said. He took a step back and increased the thickness of the wall of air. The basilisk pushed its head out of the blaze and into the wall. The burnt remains of its face reformed into a bird-like beak. Arcon winced. Even so, it wasn’t as frightening as the prospect of Mellinda taking over his mind.
Just tell me what to do
.

“
That could take too long. We could die while I try to explain
!”

Then talk quickly, because I wasn’t joking when I said I’d rather be dead
.

Mellinda snarled in anger and said, “It’s similar to healing magic. Reach into its body as if you wanted to probe an injury, just try to send your magic through the rings themselves as if they were a tool.”

Arcon blinked as he processed her instructions, then did as she said, picturing the magic flowing through the rings and out of the undulating fingers at the end of his hands. His energy pierced the basilisk’s flesh. What he found was confusing. The thing had no organs, just unformed tissue, except for the muscle and bone in its spine and limbs. The intense heat of the fire spell ate away at its form, but at a slow rate.

“
Don’t try to make sense of its body make-up. Just paralyze the thing
!”

That was a spell Arcon understood. He expertly wove an intricate latticework of air and water and sent it through every fiber in the creature’s strange body, holding it in place. It stopped pushing through the wall of air, but the basilisk immediately fought at the spell, its very flesh rejecting the magic.

“
Blast! I’d forgotten. Stardeon had the same problem with the creature. Find its brain. It won’t look like a human brain but it’s a cluster of nerves inside the thing. It’s the only part of a basilisk that never changes, no matter the form
.”

It took Arcon a moment to find it. The creature’s head was filled with unformed flesh, as was its chest. He finally located the knot of nerves that Mellinda had described deep in the creature’s hip, one of the places least likely for an attacker to target.

“
Destroy it
!”

Arcon’s paralyzation spell had deteriorated to the point that the basilisk was pushing through the wall again. Only its rear leg was still engulfed by his pillar of flame. Quickly, he tried to burn the area, but its flesh was too resistant. Finally he simply latched onto the nerve cluster and pulled as hard as he could.

The basilisk’s brain shot out of its body and ricocheted down the alleyway, a pulsing lump of pink flesh. Its body trembled, then froze. Its tissues began to harden, stiffening until they were solid as rock.

What the
?

“
You did it
,” Mellinda said with a laugh of triumph. Arcon found a smile of his own creeping along his pale face. “
That’s what happens when a basilisk dies. They turn to stone, statues of their own moment of death
.”

The creature’s final form was quite hideous, part man, part beast. Its twisted head was frozen in a soundless screech, a forked stone tongue escaping its open beak. It’s clawed arms were extended, the joints on one of its legs bent in the wrong direction.

Mellinda chuckled grimly. “
I used to keep them around as decorations in my main palace
.”

Arcon’s smile faded.

“You! Stop!” came a gruff voice from the far alley exit.

Arcon turned just in time to throw up a spell deflecting several ropes of air that had been cast around him. Several guards and a man wearing wizard’s robes stood blocking his way. They wore the livery of the Mallad guard.

“
Just kill them
,” Mellinda commanded. “
Best do it now before more arrive
.
They won’t be able to trace it back to you once the rings are off
.”

Arcon wasn’t so sure. He gestured and another column of fire rose, blocking off the rest of the alley and obscuring them from the armed men at the entrance. Another wall of air went up, holding back the heat of the blaze. Several arrows thumped into it, hanging in mid air while their fletchings burned.

“
That was foolish
,” she growled. “
Now you’ve trapped us here. There are probably even more guards
.”

Arcon turned and faced the wall of the alley, then gestured with a slicing motion, sending a razor thin blade of air through the stone. He made two vertical cuts, then one horizontal one into the wall, then pushed it inward.

No one was inside the building as the rectangular block of wall crashed down. The people inside must have evacuated. It was a workshop and the fire outside had heated the room, causing several tables and some shelving to start on fire. Arcon built a shield of cooled air around himself and stepped into the room, leaving the alleyway blazing.

“
Very well. So you’re not always as foolish as you seem
,” Mellinda said.

Arcon walked deeper into the building and cut a similar rectangle through the far wall. Shouts rang out as the stone crashed down. It was another shared wall and this building was full of people. It looked to be an eating establishment. Arcon caught a glimpse of several tall gnomes and stewards wearing green sashes before he sent multiple weaves of air into the room, absorbing the light and turning the room pitch black.

While people yelled and stumbled around in surprise, Arcon made his way to the front exit and stood just to the side of the door as he began removing the rings from his fingers. As he did so, the vitality returned to his body, filling out his flesh and returning the health to his face. The power also faded. The roaring pillars of fire in the alleyway vanished. So did the walls of air. The last thing to go was the blackness that enveloped the building Arcon stood in. Light returned to the room as he removed the last ring from the thumb on his left hand.

While people looked about in shock, some of them picking themselves up off the floor, Arcon placed the rings back into the hidden pocket inside his shirt. He wasn’t worried that he’d be recognized. The man that stood next to the door looked very different from the emaciated mage that had burst into the room. His clothes were a different color and his hair was a deep auburn.

Nevertheless, he quickly exited through the door and walked into the street beyond. The road was filled with guards and Arcon did his best to look dazed as several of them pushed past him into the building. He joined the crowd of onlookers watching as Mallad’s official mages put out the fires.

Chapter Six

Arcon watched with his mage sight as the mages, their robes emblazoned with the Mallad crest, worked efficiently. They had the fires on the exterior of the buildings extinguished within seconds, one of them sending gouts of water into the burning sections while another pulled the very oxygen out of the air around the blaze. They were well-trained, but the way they cast the spells was different than Arcon was used to. This likely meant they were from Alberri’s mage school.

“
What are you doing? Just get out of here
,” Mellinda urged. Arcon obliged her, turning away from the scene and continuing on his way towards the section of the city known as the Gnome Homeland and the scholar’s estate.

He kept his jaw clenched nervously for the first few minutes, but to his relief, no guards shouted at him.
I was gauging how strong they were. I need to know what I’m up against if they’re going to be after me as well
.

“
Don’t be ridiculous. They don’t know who they’re after
,” Mellinda assured him. “
Besides, the basilisk statue in the alleyway will just confuse them further. All they’ll know is that the dark wizards are somehow involved
.”

Right
, he replied. She had a point. Alberri’s constant problem with dark wizards was the reason they kept such a close watch on magic in the first place.

Still, he waited until he was sure that he was too far for the wizards to sense it before he sent a muted spell through his clothing, deflecting all dirt and ash as he walked. By the time he approached the gate to the Gnome Homeland, he looked as clean and immaculate as if he had come fresh from a bath.

“
You cast that spell differently from the way I learned it
,” Mellinda remarked.

The spell they teach at the Mage School takes much longer
. Arcon replied.
I learned this version from watching Ewzad Vriil
.
The man never truly bathed
.

The capital of Alberri was in actuality one enormous city split into two very different sections. Mallad was the eastern half of the city. It was elevated above the other, covering the top of a raised plateau in the desert highlands. The western half consisted of the Gnome Homeland and it covered the plateau’s slope and the lowlands below. 

Mallad was the newer, but more run down section of the capital. This was where the tradesmen, the nobility, and the palaces of Alberri’s human king were located. The King of Alberri was little more than a figurehead, though. Everyone knew that the true authority of Alberri came from the gnome scholars in the homeland.

Arcon was relieved to see that the line at the gate was only ten people long. On past days, the line had stretched a block. If only he had a steward’s sash or scholar’s badge he wouldn’t have had to wait at all. But there was nothing to be done about that so he stood and waited his turn at the guard station. He put on a calm face, ignoring the sounds of commotion down the street. The wizards had put the fires out, but smoke still filled the air as the onlookers were questioned.

Finally it was Arcon’s turn at the gate. The homeland guards were very thorough, forcing him to remove his cloak and making a close inspection of the dagger he wore at his waist. Still, it went relatively quickly compared to the first time he’d been through. Arcon had learned quite quickly what was and wasn’t allowed in the Gnome Homeland. The guards gave him a temporary pass and let him through the gates. He slid the paper into his pocket and hurried on his way, knowing it only gave him leave to stay in the homeland until dark.

“
They are a lot more particular now, than when I was last here
,” Mellinda remarked.

“Yeah I know. You say it every time we come through,” he mumbled. “It’s been a thousand years, what do you expect?”

“
It doesn’t look much different, though
,” she said and he could tell that the reminder of her age stung her. “
The gnomes haven’t changed much
.”

Arcon shook his head.
Of course not. Some of them were probably around before you were imprisoned. Do you see any familiar faces? Gnomes you tortured, perhaps
?

She slipped into a sulky silence as he came upon the huge entrance to the estates of scholarly house Mur. Arcon smirked, knowing that her silence wouldn’t last long. The longer they were stuck together the more talkative she got.

“
What do you expect
?” she snapped. “
There’s nothing else for me to do, but talk to you. My mind used to be vast, my thoughts endless. I could speak with hundreds of servants at once. Now it seems like I can barely hold two thoughts together
.”

Arcon raised one eyebrow, surprised that she had admitted it. He took no more than four steps into the gardens at the front of the estate before a green-sashed steward was standing in front of him.

“Oh, it’s you. The mage,” the steward said. She was a sour-faced human woman, but Arcon thought she had likely been quite a beauty in her younger days. He guessed she was now somewhere around her fortieth year. Like all stewards, her attire was plain, just a white robe and her long brown hair was tied up in a bun. A green sash crossed her body starting at her right shoulder, designating that she was one of the stewards whose job it was to take care of the physical needs of the scholar.

“Good afternoon, Steward Molly,” Arcon said, giving her the most charming smile he could muster.

“You don’t give up easily, do you?” she replied, and his charm must have worked because a slight smile of her own curled the corners of her lips.

“I believe that once all is said and done Scholar Aloysius will be quite glad that I have been this persistent. I am bringing him an offer that falls squarely in the realm of his focus,” he said.

She folded her arms. “So you say and yet after a week, he still hasn’t found the time to call you in.”

“He also hasn’t told you to send me away,” Arcon reminded.

“That could mean that he has a vague interest in you,” she admitted with a shrug. “Or he simply forgets you’re waiting.”

Arcon’s smile faded only slightly. That was one of his fears. Gnomes were known to be forgetful.

“
No, I’m sure about this one
,” Mellinda prodded. “
Especially after what we learned last night
.”

You had better be
, Arcon said.
When word of that dead basilisk reaches the dark wizards they will know I’m in the city for sure
.

“Come then,” Molly said, turning her back on him. “Follow me to the waiting area. You’re not the only one here today.”