The Baldari (Book 3) (28 page)

“This is where Daria made the
Bypass
?” he asked.

“We were inside,” Torusk said.

“Let’s go,” Rigo said, and stepped into the cave, triggering his mage’s light as he did so.  Torusk followed him, then Mitty, Suline and Nadine.  The interior was larger than Rigo would have guessed, and he could see the remains of a broken chest back in a far corner.

“We were standing here,” Torusk indicated, and she created the arch there.”  Torusk pointed toward a side wall of the cave.

Rigo looked around, but could sense nothing that might have disturbed the creation of a
Bypass
.  Of course, even in the Ruins one couldn’t often tell, even after years of becoming familiar with the distortions of that place.  Motioning everyone to stand back, he created a
Bypass
that would take them back to the Wanderer camp.  Expectantly, he watched as the arch formed.  It looked perfectly normal, the usual yellow color defining the edge, and the opening looking transparent showing the wall beyond.

“Curse it!” he muttered under his breath.

Then he closed the
Bypass
.  After a moment’s thought, he attempted a second
Bypass
, this time making one that would take them back to Daria’s orphanage.  That was where Torusk said they had relocated the artifacts.  Perhaps there was something about the choice of end point that might affect the portal.  Unfortunately, his second attempt looked every bit as normal as the first one.  Once again he closed it.

After a moment of thought, he looked at Suline.  “Daria is not a wizard.  She is a Caster, like yourself.  Perhaps there is something in the Casting approach that is different.  Could you attempt to make a
Doorway
?  Make it between here and the Orphanage.”

Suline nodded, and raised her staff.  A moment later a third perfectly formed arch stood waiting.  Like the ones Rigo had made, the arch looked entirely normal.

“We need Daria,” Rigo said.  “It is either something she did, or her
Bypass
was affected by the items that had been in the cave.”

“You don’t think it was simply a fluke?” Suline asked. 

“I hope not,” Rigo replied.  “If that is the case, we might never be able to duplicate the effect.”  Rigo was concerned that Suline might be right and he would be unsuccessful in his attempts to reach out to Koess.

“There is little to be done here,” Rigo said finally, and lead the group outside.  He made a
Bypass
back to the Wanderer camp, where they bid farewell to Nadine and Torusk, and collected their horses for the return home.”

“What now?” Mitty asked as Rigo sat upon his horse thinking.

“I can’t help wondering if something among the artifacts was responsible for interfering with Daria’s
Bypass
,” Rigo said.  “We need to go back and see what was there.  Jeen is due back later today.  I’d like to wait for her. In the meantime, there is someplace I’d like to go.”  He looked at the two women.

“Lead the way,” Suline said.  “I am finding this exploration interesting.”

Rigo looked at Mitty who nodded as well.  Then summoning memories he had tried to bury a long time ago, he formed another
Bypass
, and lead the others through it.

“Where are we?” Mitty asked as they stepped into bright sunlight with orange sands all around.

“The Ruins,” Rigo said.  They dismounted and left the horses in the small patch of shade nearby.  Rigo led the way around the blocking hillside, and the two women gasped when they saw the vast chasm stretching out in front of them.

“I have never seen the like,” Mitty said.  Then she looked at Rigo.  He had told her about his adventures.  “Is this where it happened?”

Rigo nodded.  He walked toward the edge and peered into the depths.  “Right here,” he said.  “I can recall the spot clearly.  We couldn’t go down, and we checked for a way around.  It was go back, or make a
Bypass
to the far side.”  He pointed to the ledge of rock they could barely see in the distance.

“Unfortunately, we couldn’t come back.  The Ruins blocked us from making a
Bypass
over there.  Even worse, Koess didn’t appear with the rest of us.”

“What do you intend?” Suline asked.

“I want to make the
Bypass
again.  See if it looks unusual.”

“You aren’t going through it?” Mitty asked worriedly.

Rigo shook his head.  “I’ve done that before.  Hopefully I’m smarter now.”

Rigo pulled the staff out of his carrier and walked back from the rim and planted it in the sand.  He didn’t want one of the offsetting staffs to be involved in his efforts.  He hadn’t had one of the staffs the last time, so the attempt should be made without it.  Concentrating on the distant ledge, he created the same
Bypass
he had made so long ago.  Once again, an arch formed not too far away.

Both Rigo and Suline examined the arch critically.  There was no mist or shimmer inside the arch.  Rigo hadn’t really expected there to be.  He would have noticed something so obvious back then.  He examined the yellow glow around the edges, and couldn’t decide if he wanted to see something, or he did.

“What do you think?” he asked Suline, not wanting to bias her answer.

“It looks almost normal,” she said.  “Almost.  I think there are infrequent specks of red in the border.  They are difficult to focus on, but I’m certain it is something I’ve not seen before.”

There it was.  A sign that something was different.  Subtle, and not something one would pick up on unless he had reason to be checking.  But it wasn’t Daria’s arch, and he couldn’t see how it would help.  Rigo closed the arch, and had Suline attempt the same thing.  Once again, she duplicated his effort.

“I wouldn’t want to step through either of those,” Rigo said as he returned for his staff.  “I believe I can consider myself fortunate to have passed through the first time.”

Staff in hand, he created a
Bypass
back to the Outpost.  They would check on Jeen and see what they could learn from the artifacts.  Rigo had accepted that finding Daria would be a time consuming, and probably fruitless task.  If they couldn’t learn anything from the items Jeen had in storage, Rigo would have to be patient until Daria completed the task she had set herself to and returned.

Jeen had arrived back at the Outpost much earlier than she had expected, but it was still after Rigo, Mitty, and Suline had set off to chase down Daria and learn what they could of the strange
Bypass
she had created.  She felt somehow uncomfortable walking the familiar halls now that she realized the one time sanctuary was a likely target, and that those who would be attacking might be their friends.  She wasn’t certain she was prepared to unleash destructive magic at someone she had known as a friend for years.  It was all very unsettling.

Word of the previous evening’s events had spread throughout the Outpost.  Jeen could sense the change in the atmosphere.  She could hear Daim’s voice coming from his office.  He was already giving instructions on how to prepare, and actions to be taken in the event of an attack.  That, as much as anything, made the situation real to Jeen.  She passed by his office without stopping.  She already knew what she needed to do, and speaking with Daim would simply delay her efforts.  She noticed Ash’urn in his workshop as usual, his head down as he studied some document on his desk.  He was probably catching up on his notes.  Jeen recalled from the days when they traveled together that he was often up early, filling his journal with his thoughts on anything he considered important.  The hair, which had been white as long as Jeen had known him, was noticeably thinner now.  With his head down, Jeen was startled to realize she could see through to the top of his scalp.  She debated for a moment going in, but knew she would be seeing him later in the day, and after a brief slowing of her steps, passed by without turning in.  She wished she knew what ailed the elder scholar.  The changes overtaking him were happening far too swiftly to be entirely natural.

Heading down to the lowest level of the Outpost, Jeen found the solid rock walls comforting in a way that she hadn’t noticed before.  Even the powerful magic that Fen and Lyes had revealed the secret to would have difficulty reaching this deep into the mountain.  If an attack were to come, she would have plenty of warning before it reached her.  She let her fingers trail along the smooth stone, cut by magic so many years ago, and then hardened with magic they no longer possessed.  Obviously, there was much they had lost.  Even Daim hadn’t been fully knowledgeable of all aspects of magic practiced in his day.

The three assistants she had worked with in the past were waiting for her arrival.  She had alerted them the previous evening that they would need to be prepared for an early start this morning, and all had arrived ahead of her.  She apologized, and led the way into the large work area, the boxes and sacks of materials spread around the back of the room.  Several large desks with old scratched chairs were set up where they would work.  The materials from Ald-del had been given a cursory inspection, but that would have to be repeated again today with an eye for items that might prove most useful.  The items the Wanderers had found and which Jeen had helped bring back had yet to be looked at.

“We want to divide the materials into four groups,” she told her helpers.  “Anything that might require a translation and which is small enough to fit into the readers at the Repository go into one group.  Two of the groups will be for relocation, and should try and contain as many duplicate items as possible.  These will be relocated offsite so they will be protected in the event of an attack.  The fourth group will be items we elect to keep here.  They will mostly be items that we don’t believe are of much value.”

The three assistants nodded their understanding, and thankfully weren’t full of as many questions as usual.  Jeen was too distracted to want to try and field a bunch of questions this morning.  The discovery of Burke’s loss, followed by the graphic vision of Suline’s remarkable
Doorway
showing the loss of another of their own with the unexplainable pit that had appeared under the two men who had dared to pass through against Mitty’s warning.  Only Nycoh might be capable of such a display of power and the ability to shape the very earth, but even she had been surprised at what they had seen.  Those against them controlled power far greater than their own.  A breakthrough was needed, and quickly, if they were to be able to stand against such magic.  The ray of green power that had been used against them was a start, but they needed the defensive capability to stand against the magic that would be unleashed against them.   Jeen believed if such a defense was to be found, it would have to be from the old magic.  She could only hope that clues might be found in the items that were located in this room.  They knew several of the items were from the time long before Daim. If only something could be discovered with answers.

She started the assistants going through the items from Ald-del while she took a first look at the boxes Daria had recovered from the bandits.  As she pulled the first heavy box from the pile stacked in a corner and used her magic to carry it over to the table where she would work, she wondered what Rigo would learn from Daria and Kaler.  She almost wished she were going along.  Suline had secrets Jeen would like to try and learn, and Mitty was one of her closest friends, despite the shortness of their relationship.  Daria, of course, was a long time friend, and Jeen had always felt comfortable around her.  Given the state of the kingdoms, she’d feel more comfortable with the pragmatic knife wielding former assassin nearby.

It didn’t take long to see that many of the items were not that old.  She was disappointed with what she found.  Most were from a period that post dated Daim’s Citadel, and therefore were unlikely to be of much use.  Sighing, she started to go through the contents of the box, setting each item aside as she looked it over.  There were two books, both in very poor shape, written in a language she didn’t recognize.  Perhaps Ash’urn or Daim would recognize the text, and if not, they would go with the other items designated for the Repository.  There were a pair of mugs, with cavities in the sides where she was certain gemstones had been removed.  She could see where the points of daggers had been pressed into the soft metal to extract the items.  There were no markings of any kind, and she set these in a pile to be left here at the Outpost.

She was most of the way through the box, having found little of interest, when she came across the flat monitor device.  It looked much like the larger monitor that had revealed Rigo’s captivity when he’d been held by the Guild.  This unit was smaller, just over half as large as those she had previously seen.  It was dark and inactive, and was covered with the same kinds of symbols all over the back side.  The discovery of the monitor reinforced the idea that very old items could be mixed in with the less valuable things she had been finding.  As she prepared to set the monitor into one of the two piles to be taken from the Outpost, she had a sudden thought, and moved it into the pile of items to be taken to the Repository.  The monitor might just be small enough to fit into one of the readers there, and maybe they could learn how it worked if the reader would translate the symbols.

As the morning moved on, the various piles grew.  Her hands were covered with dirt and grime, and the table at which she sat was speckled with grit that had come off the various items she had worked through.  Thus far she had found only a couple of items that might be of interest.  Unfortunately, she had no idea what the purpose of each might be.  She had located a broken section of what appeared to be a staff.  Remarkably, it was nearly identical to the dark staffs that Nycoh had taken to creating, and was covered with literally thousands of symbols so minute as to be almost unreadable.  She would have to show that to Nycoh and see if it meant anything to her.  Another item was some kind of weapon.  It had a handle for holding and pointing, and a series of round tubes, six of them, arranged around a central core.  Deep in the core, she could see the remains of a broken crystal of some sort.  The flattened sides that held the tubes were covered with the symbols that Jeen was coming to recognize as those used in the ancient magic.

The last item she had found was of little practical use, but had absorbed her attention for a least a quarter glass.  It was an ancient map, drawn to show the lands as they had once existed.  It was somewhere between a map and a pictorial sketch.  Jeen was certain the distances weren’t accurate, which would limit its usefulness.  It laid out what things had once looked like, and told of what existed in the lands beyond their current knowledge.  The naming was in a language she didn’t recognize at all, but after a time she thought she was able to recognize certain areas.  She had oriented it on the table to reflect how she thought of the current geography, which resulted in the lettering being upside down.  At least she thought the bold lines under some of the text was meant to be underlining.

Along the left side of the drawing was a coast she was certain had to be the western shores of Branid and Kellmore.  She could trace the large river that separated the two kingdoms from Lopal.  Far to the right was the eastern coast, and she located a spot that she was certain looked like the large harbor at Nals.  She wasn’t familiar enough with Sedfair and its coast to be positive of anything.  Cutting across the continent were two ranges of mountains.  To the south were a series of mountains where the Great Central River, assuming her guess was correct, flowed through.  Beyond was a vast area with fewer marked cities.  Along the northern edge, was another set of mountains.  These could be the Great Whites, and the map showed nothing but huge mountains extending for a great distance until the land narrowed and fell into the ocean.

Assuming she was right, then the land in the middle was the Ruins, except in this map it was heavily annotated, with rivers, mountain ranges, and as many, if not more cities, than occupied the coastal regions.  Her fingers moved between the marked cities.  Could these have really existed, and if so, what had happened to the inhabitants when the Ruins were formed.  She was lost in thought when one of her assistants came over and laid something on her desk.

“I saw this sticking out of one of the Wanderers’ boxes,” he said.  “It looks like the one Ash’urn has on his desk.”

Jeen looked up, her mind slow to react to what she was being told as she thought about the ancient land that was indicated on the map before her.  Then her eyes fell upon the arm-length black shaft, with the dulled point on one end, and the symbols spiraling around the length of the shaft.  It indeed looked the same.  It had the same color, and looked unworn by the years that had passed since it was made.  The symbols identified it as being very old, and Jeen suddenly wondered if Ash’urn had considered placing it in the reader to see what its purpose might be.  Often in the past he had fingered the rod in her presence, wondering aloud what it might be for.

Intrigued, she pushed the map to one side, momentarily forgotten.  She shuddered slightly as she picked the rod up.  She recalled having a similar reaction to the one on Ash’urn’s table, although she couldn’t have said why. 

“This is remarkable,” she praised her assistant.  “It has the same look and feel as the one he has.  Perhaps having two of them will help him determine their function.”

Realizing it was past lunch, Jeen pushed back from the table and stood up.  “I’m hungry,” she said.  “Perhaps we should break for something to eat.  I want to take this to Ash’urn, along with a couple of other items he might be able to identify.  Let’s meet back here in a glass.”

Eagerly her assistants set aside the items they were working on, and stood up, brushing off dirty hands and dusting pants that showed signs of their morning’s efforts.  Jeen followed them out of the room, carrying the two books, the map, and the disturbing rod.  As they reached the upper levels, she went one way, while the others another, as they headed off to the dining area.  Jeen wanted to see Ash’urn briefly first, then she would head that way herself.

She hurried down the familiar corridor to the workroom that Ash’urn had used for many years.  She didn’t expect much from the strange metallic shaft, but wanted to suggest the idea of using the repository to investigate it.  He and others were in charge of that effort, and given there were at least two of them, they might be important.  Mostly, she wanted to see what he thought about the map.  If it was indeed of the old world, then the area beyond the mountains might give some ideas as to where the Baldari might be hiding.

Jeen saw Ash’urn was still there as she stepped into the workroom.  It was one of the largest rooms in the Outpost.  It had to be.  Ash’urn had acquired a surprising number of items over the years, and many were in here.  She had worried he might have finished what he was working on and headed off somewhere.  He looked up from his desk near the back wall and was about to speak when it happened.

Fortunately for Jeen she was carrying the shaft loosely in her left hand which was toward Ash’urn.  The other hand carried the old books and the all important map.  She felt the sudden flash of heat that built up in the device and let go almost the same time as the bright orange lightning bolts erupted between the unit she was carrying and the one on Ash’urn’s desk.  The rod she had released didn’t fall to the floor as one would expect, but instead floated in the air where she had released it.  The one on Ash’urn’s desk had lifted off the surface, and rotated so it was orientated vertically as well, and now bright energy burned between the two devices.

Unfortunately, Ash’urn was positioned partially between the two devices.  The orange energies that were flowing between the two objects blasted through the space he filled, and Jeen could see the scholar’s body jerking in response to the light that was striking him in a number of places.