Crown of Steel (Chaos Awakens) (24 page)

"Are we?" Xan replied evenly. "I'd thought we were still well north of the Reach."

"Yes, we are about three days north of Yillan Reach, but we've been traveling due south for the last few hours. I'm certain you have no intention of taking us any closer to the city, though. It would be quite dangerous. In fact, we might already be a little too close for comfort's sake." Crow kept up his guise of concerned impartiality.

Kassa and Haley had gone stubbornly quiet. They no doubt suspected what Xandrith had in mind, but there hadn't exactly been an opportunity to discuss the details of his plans with Little Crow hovering about constantly. As far as Xandrith was concerned, he only had one remaining responsibility in the coming war. He needed to retrieve the Great Vault and to free the creature sleeping within. Whatever it was that slept within the vault, it was the only possible force that could resist the chaotic god-thing that the trolls were helping rise to power.

There was a possibility that years of imprisonment in the Great Vault had driven the once peaceful inhabitant mad, but the assassin was working with limited resources. He could try to kill the god-like being the trolls were raising on his own, a task which was beyond impossible when the creature could literally rip him from the fabric of creation. Or he could free the only creature of equal power that might be able to protect the world it had created, assuming it wasn't too insane to do so. Of course, retrieving the Great Vault meant walking directly into the center of Yillan Reach.

The Reach had been overrun by the mechanna monsters. These were created from the fusing of maddened drayid, a race imprisoned in darkness and desolation by the mages, with the poor masters of metal and flesh who had once been peaceful craftsmen in their own right. The resulting creatures were mixtures of dead flesh and metal and insane from the suffering of their imprisonment. They sought only to devour more flesh and free more of their kind from the prison of the Great Vault. They were impossible to negotiate with. Anything they wanted they took by force. They could steal knowledge by possessing those with the information they needed, and they only had to tie a small amount of mechanna craftsmanship to a body to allow them to gain control. Leading his friends back towards Yillan Reach was dangerous. Last time Xandrith had entered the city he'd lost Kassa, and here he was leading her and now Haley back to that cursed place.

Xandrith stopped in his tracks and turned to face Little Crow. "Let's stop playing this game, Crow. You know what is happening here. Speak your mind."

Crow met Xan's gaze for a second and then shrugged. "I know you plan on looking for something called the Great Vault, and that if you find it you're going to summon an insane god from his slumber. In the process of doing this, you're going to lead all of our friends into a situation in which they could suffer a fate far worse than death."

Every word of it was truth, damn him. "We are hardly your friends, and none of you need to go to the Reach with me. I left by myself so that I wouldn't risk anyone's life in my endeavor but my own. You can all turn back if you want."

Haley was the first to speak up. There was a fierceness in her voice. "We've come this far, Xandrith. I won't turn around now. I don't know if what you're doing is right, but you're my friend and I'm going to fight by your side."

Kassa was next, and her voice was quieter, calmer, but equally steadfast. "I know only too well what happened last time we went to the Reach, but that isn't stopping me. I believe in you, Xan, and I believe in what you're trying to do. I'm afraid, but only a fool wouldn't be."

All eyes fell on Crow. He held up his hands, palms open. "I didn't say I wanted to turn back, but I felt like we needed to get that out in the open.  So all of you are really alright with this waking a mad god idea? No second thoughts from anyone?" Crow's eyes went from one to the other of the companions, the gray pupils a familiar echo of Xan's and Haley's, though Xan was short one gray eye these days. Xandrith noted that Haley looked away as Crow looked in her direction. She had doubts. Xan didn't begrudge her those doubts, and didn't believe for a second that she would turn her back on him, but he did take mental note of it.

The only one of his companions that he really didn't trust was Crow, and that was for obvious reasons. Little Crow would try and stop him at some point. What Xan was doing was in direct opposition to the trolls, and it was only a matter of time before their agent would have to make a move. The assassin would need to be watchful.

"The alternative to waking a mad god is letting the world succumb to the chaos that the trolls and their god will bring about, Crow. Is that something you want?" It was a question that Xan had asked himself on several occasions.

"I'm simply advising that we choose the enemy we can see over the enemy we cannot." Crow said with a knowing smile and a wink, echoing Xan's words from the day after he'd first joined the group. Those were words that Crow shouldn't have been able to hear, and yet he repeated them with a confidence that told Xandrith he wasn't simply pulling them from thin air. He was letting Xan know that he was always listening.

"You're choosing the overwhelming enemy that we know is coming, over the only possible ally we might have, baby bird. It is a difference you desperately need to understand. The trolls and their god will destroy us all. At least with the creature in the Vault we can hope he might show some mercy towards us." Xan's voice had gone flat as he fought with a desire to lay Crow out cold. The boy was a fool, and he was dangerous, and as Xan became agitated Crow only seemed more dangerous in his eyes.

"In all I'd heard about you, Xandrith, I never thought I'd discover that you were the type who would grovel for mercy at the feet of someone with more power for protection. You aren't the man I thought you were. And I think I prefer 'Little Crow' to 'baby bird.'" Crow's voice had lost its playful edge as well. A war of wills was building quickly. There was a heavy tension hanging in the air between them. Xandrith thought he could sense impending violence. He'd been a better judge of such things before the splitting that had resurrected Kassa, but he'd have to be dead to miss the hostility hanging in the air now.

"Boys." Kassa broke the dangerous silence. "Now isn't the time for these kinds of arguments. Crow, you can leave whenever you want. Haley and I have already said we're with Xandrith on this, so you can either go with us or go on your own way. There is no point in arguing over this. Our path is set."

Her words shattered the impending violence. Crow smiled his cocky, assured grin. It reminded Xan a little of his own mask of a smirk, but there was more honesty in Crow's face. He was young enough to still feel the mirth of his own self-assurance. "You're right, of course. We mustn't let our convictions get in the way of the friendship we're building here. We have more time to discuss matters. Nothing is set in stone yet."

He was wrong, of course. Xandrith could see it, and he guessed Crow probably knew it as well. They were destined for a confrontation. Crow was at the whim of the blade, and Xandrith couldn't allow the trolls to get their way. Those facts wouldn't change. However, before their final showdown could occur they would have to deal with a more pressing situation.

Xandrith hadn't alerted the others, but he was only too aware that they'd picked up a couple followers in the previous hour. He wasn't entirely certain he knew how he could sense them, but he could feel the presence of the mechanna-drayid creatures that were following them. They were like soft, barely noticeable wafts of magical energy that sometimes stirred the hairs on the back on his neck. He hadn't yet seen them in the open, or heard them, or even seen the signs of their passage. Still, he knew they were out there and following him and the others using the same senses by which he was able to identify their presence. Crow knew that they were getting close to Yillan Reach, but Xandrith doubted he knew that the Reach was already coming for them. Xandrith wasn't going to tell him either. He wasn't going to do anything that might provoke the young blade keeper to take immediate action. If Crow was aware that they were already being followed, he might push forward whatever agenda he had. Keeping the others in the dark was an unfortunate side effect.

"Have you thought about how we're going to get inside?" Kassa asked, breaking the uncomfortable silence. "The route we took out isn't going to be an option this time, and I'm not sure we'll be able to just walk in the front door like we did last time either. Even if we could, I'm not sure we should."

Xandrith nodded his agreement before speaking. He'd actually put a great deal of thought into that exact problem. He'd come up with a possible solution, but he was still debating it internally. There was a magical method that could be used to get him and his companions directly through the walls of the Reach without needing to enter through the gates. The magic was an old forbidden spell, one of the ones he'd found in the deepest depths of his mental catalogue of spells. When he'd freed Kassa from her living death and broken the bonesteel blade that had been a part of him, he'd gained access to what was the equivalent of an entire library of magical techniques and powers. Unfortunately, like a library, he couldn't just pull what he needed at any given moment from the tomes. He had to know where to look and what he was looking for. After he found what he needed, he could perform any spell he drew forth, but not necessarily with the finesse of a skilled user.

The spell he'd found to breach the walls of the Reach was one he'd stumbled upon while his mind wandered aimlessly within the darkness of his cell at the mage's prison. It was known as a Tesserect passage.  Two distant points could be magically connected allowing someone to pass from one to the other without interference from any form of obstruction or distance between them. The space between the two points was irrelevant. From one end of the passage to the other, it always took about a quarter of a day to pass through the connecting tunnel. This would make the trip through the wall take longer than it should, but it would also allow them to enter at any point they chose. Of course there were risks. There was a reason the Tesserect passages had become forbidden magic even though they might have otherwise changed the world for the better.

Sometimes people who entered one end of the passage never exited the other. Tesserect, the man who'd first discovered the magic, had said that the passages within the tunnels were never the same even between two fixed points, and that he sensed a hostility in the walls. For all of that, he made many trips through the tunnels himself until he finally failed to exit on one occasion. This was all part of the knowledge of the spell, and yet Xandrith was still considering the passages. Tesserect had made nearly twenty trips before he’d vanished, and Xan was wagering that his group could make at least one.

"I have a way inside. It will alleviate the risk of the mechanna monsters following us, or cornering us, but it leaves us open to other risks." Xandrith hesitated for a moment before sharing the rest of his plan. "There is an old magic that serves to make a passage between points, but the knowledge I have about the actual nature of the passageways is somewhat limited. There are risks. Once inside the passageways magic stops working, and sometimes people go into these things and don't come out the other side. As far as I know, groups should be able to use these passageways as long as they stay close together and keep moving forward. You can't go backwards once you start through, and the passages themselves were considered hostile by the man who discovered them, a mage named Tesserect."

"That doesn't sound good." Haley noted quietly, her fox-mask expression showing a hint of anxiety.

"I'll second that." Crow piped in, always eager to be a dissenting opinion. Xandrith hadn’t felt any agitation from Haley’s comment, but it was different coming from her. When Haley said she thought something didn’t sound good, she was saying that she was worried. When Crow agreed, he was turning Haley’s words into a rebellion against Xan’s authority. Xan was about to snap at him, but Kassa entered the conversation first.

"As one of the two people here who have actually been in and out of the Reach since its fall, I'm going to agree with any idea that gets us past those things without a direct conflict. They are dangerous and there are a lot of them. I doubt they've gotten any less dangerous since the last time we entered that place. We don't know exactly what sort of mess we're in for, and I'd rather not take it on by fighting through the paths that it knows and controls." Kassa said casually. "I'm not particularly eager to be dead again."

Xan grinned, though he wasn't entirely feeling it. "See, guys, Kassa doesn't want to be dead and she's going with my plan. How bad could it be?"

Crow frowned and Xan could see the signs of him having an eternal conversation. "These Tesserect passages, I don't think we should use them. I think they're more dangerous than you're letting on. Why did Tesserect abandon his research?"

Xan shrugged. "He didn't abandon his research." It wasn't precisely a lie.

"I'm pretty sure he did." The younger man replied smugly. The blade was feeding him information about things he had no right knowing.

"He didn't abandon his research. He disappeared into one of his own passageways and never came back out." Xan explained with a sigh.

Haley and Kassa looked shocked. "You weren't going to mention that?" Haley asked, but Kassa kept quiet.

"I told you that people go in and don't come out sometimes. Tesserect went through his passageways twenty times before he vanished. We only need to make the trip one time, maybe twice if we don't find another way out of Yillan Reach once we're inside. I would take the Tesserect path ten times in a row before I'd even consider heading into the Reach through one of the paths that the mechanna-creatures know about." Xandrith tried to explain to the others. He hadn't even considered his slight omission of Tesserect's vanishing an important piece of information. Damn Crow for playing that against him. Xandrith locked eyes with the other and Crow refused to look away. The boy was trouble. A deep inner hostility roared to life in the assassin, angry and irrational.