The Baldari (Book 3) (55 page)

“The static ones are more vulnerable.  The personal shields have the advantage of being able to move away from the disruptive magic to some degree.”

“You didn’t happen to learn any of this magic through the
Linkage
?” Nycoh asked.

“I am aware of what some of it is, but I am nowhere near strong enough to learn it.  I gained nothing that we can actually use.”

“Do you have any idea where they have gone?” Rigo asked.  “Perhaps we have an opportunity to take this fight to them before they are ready.”

“I fear they are already far too strong for us,” Jeen replied.  “Not that it matters.  I believe they have gone to a cluster of islands far off the eastern coast of Sedfair.  Much farther than anyone has explored.  The Brryn I linked with had many memories of visiting that place, and there are structures on a number of them.”

“Can you use the memories to make a
Bypass
?” Rigo asked eagerly.

Jeen looked uncertain.  “I haven’t tried.  The memories are not like those obtained from a reading, and I don’t know if they can be used.  In addition, you should know the Brryn do not make portals the same way we do.  They use a different approach, and theirs are completely untraceable.  They see ours as transparent, even those we think are masked. They can sense the existence and the ends of any portal we make near them.  If we attempt to go there, and they are nearby, they will be aware of us.”

“What choice do we have?” Rigo asked.  “We need to know where they are, and take what action we can while they are at their weakest.  I think we need to seek out their hideaway as soon as possible.”

Jeen nodded.  “I will see if it is even possible when we finish here.  Perhaps I can find one of the islands where we don’t expect to encounter them just so we can experiment.”

“Did you learn why they were in the chamber?” Nycoh asked. “If they created it, why did they seem trapped?”

“They warred with the rebel wizards, our precursors, and matters grew out of hand.  Even the Ruins became more than planned.  Do not underestimate them.  It was very clear from the mind I tapped that the Brryn hate those of us with power who are not pure Brryn.  They see us as vermin to be exterminated.  We will not be able to reach any kind of truce with them.  They were expecting to be released several thousand years ago, around Daim’s time, but something must have gone wrong.  The Brryn I
Linked
with hadn’t been awake to think about his situation, but I could sense he expected to be in the chamber for about half the time that actually passed.”

“I wonder if the Rift had something to do with it?” Daim pondered aloud.  “The Rift disrupted magic worldwide and might have disrupted their system as well.”

“I think there is more to it than that,” Nycoh said.  “The Hoplani Farms came after the Ruins, and predated the Rift.  There is something else involved.”

Jeen explained what little else she knew, and promised to keep them informed if anything new materialized.  While she and Nycoh went off to test whether she could create a
Bypass
to the far off islands, the three men discussed developing teams of combat wizards trained in
Linking
their abilities.  With the multiplicative gains to be realized by Linking, perhaps they could gain the power required to offset the shielding Jeen had warned about.

“You don’t know what Nyk had in mind?” Hyndl asked. The two Brryn that Kytra had rescued were now fully awake and mostly recovered.  Hyndl was nearly as tall as Kytra, but decidedly heavier, although compared to Rigo he would have been thin.  Next to Kaler he would have looked emaciated.  He was well muscled, his strength apparent.  Like her he had very pale white skin.  His lavender eyes, common to all of the true Brryn but which neither Nycoh nor Rigo had inherited, were half hidden by his thick brows.  His hair was cut very short, but not so much its distinctive color was lost. 

Now that Kytra was free of the pod in which she had spent the last few thousand years, her true height could be appreciated.  She stood just a little taller than Rigo.  Willowy and slender, she moved with a careful grace.  Her eyes showed the sharp intelligence and hinted at the cruelty lurking inside.  Tryll on the other hand, was decidedly shorter and not nearly so shapely.  Her face was also coarser, and her widely spaced eyes lacked the bright intelligence that marked Kytra as a leader.  While Kytra had her hair in a thick braid, Tryll had allowed hers to hang free.  Thick and straight, it nearly reached her waist.  All of them had an ageless look and no one would have guessed they were older than their mid-twenties.

They could have actively attacked the wizards and Caster’s home bases, but Kytra wanted to show them what she knew of the world as it existed now, before they began their campaign.

“Not beyond the fact he intended the rest of us to stay asleep inside the chamber for as long as it suited him,” Kytra replied, addressing Hyndl’s question.  “I have no idea how long he was gone from the valley before I awoke.  Obviously it was a very long time.  There is ample evidence of his activities dating back thousands of years.  I would guess he wasn’t in the chamber with us more than a couple hundred years.”

“Just long enough for the disruption to pass” Tryll mused.

Kytra shrugged.  She didn’t know what Nyk had intended, but clearly he’d had more in his mind than he had revealed when all of them had initiated the extended sleep.  “Whatever he planned, something must have gone wrong.  I have seen no signs of him since I have been awake.”

“At least now we will have the opportunity to eliminate these rebels once and for all, “ Hyndl said.  “From what you have told us their magic falls far short of those we had to deal with during the Conflict.  Everything seems somewhat primitive.  Are they really as backwards as they appear?”

“Something happened, something beyond the fall that followed the Conflict and the spread of the Ruins.  It had been difficult to piece together an accurate history from the remote access to their brains.  I have sensed a series of collapses.  We will need to grab a number of the people in both lands and extract additional background from them.  That will give us a full knowledge of the languages they use as well.”  The Brryn could always communicate with the locals via their mental link, even to the point of extracting thoughts from those who couldn’t project, but that would reveal who they were.  Kytra could see reasons where they would want to pass anonymously, at least until they were ready to reveal themselves.

“It will take some time for us to advance this primitive technology,” Hyndl said.

“I guess we will have to get used to the backward living for some time,” complained Tryll.

“Maybe the people will welcome us once they understand we are their superiors who can show them a much better way of life?” Hyndl wondered aloud.

“Not at first,” Kytra replied.  “I have seen enough to understand that these people value their freedoms far too much.  They will resist our rule.  They will need to be taught otherwise.  They will also need to accept once again that the practice of magic by anyone other than Brryn is forbidden.  The law will once again provide harsh penalties for those who violate this rule.”

“That never worked in the past,” Hyndl reminded her.

“This time we will enforce it more rigorously and eliminate all who have the gift when they are discovered.  We have seen what benevolence breeds.”

Kytra ignored the Baldari tribes as she showed the others the current status of things.  The Baldari were of far less use now, partly because the rebels had the ability to defend against them, and more importantly without the amplifier, they would be unable to effectively control large enough numbers of them to accomplish much of anything.  That would be the situation until a new amplifier could be constructed, which might not be possible at all if the chamber wasn’t simply buried under the massive piles of rock.  She worried the rebels had found a way to destroy it somehow, which would be a significant setback to their plans. 

For that reason they had come back to the mountains that surrounded the valley where they had all been entombed and protected through the centuries.  It was imperative they understand if the chamber was simply resting under all the rock that had been dropped onto the valley floor.

“Do you remember where exactly the chamber is located?” Tryll asked.  “I hope we don’t have to move all of this.”

Hyndl looked at the valley in disgust.  “They are crude, aren’t they.  They couldn’t really hope that burying it would keep us from it?”

“I don’t know their thinking,” Kytra said, “but I am concerned they might have done more than simply bury it.  We need to know what remains.”

Hyndl nodded, and after Kytra pointed out the approximate location of the chamber, they set to work.  It was a good test of their endurance, and as they reduced the rock to powder and swept it away, she was able to evaluate how much progress they had made toward a full recovery.  Even as powerful as they were, there was a lot of rock that had been knocked free of the mountains.  It took most of the morning to work through it to the floor of the valley itself, and then to search around to find the remains of the chamber.

“I thought you said their magic was primitive and limited,” Hyndl said as he examined a badly burned section of now inert wall material.  Even the residual magic one would have expected in the pieces had been overcome.  “The chamber and everything in it has been completely consumed.  To be able to do this requires control of some of our most advanced spells.  The chamber was designed to resist nearly every form of magic.  I should know.  I helped Nyk design it.”

“I cannot explain it,” Kytra said, her thought distracted by the immense loss she saw before them.  “None of those I have witnessed have demonstrated this level of ability.  There is something at work here I don’t understand.”

“We better understand it before we get ahead of ourselves,” Tryll suggested.  She wasn’t eager to go up against rebels who might have powers equal to her own.  That had been what had cost them the Conflict the last time, and she’d hoped from what Kytra had been saying they would have only low level wizards to deal with now.  There were also a lot of the rebels, and only three of them.  She didn’t like the odds.  That had been one of the shortcomings in the Conflict.  The Brryn had been greatly outnumbered. 

“I took over two hundred of them as
helot
,” Kytra argued.  “None of them could have done this.  None of them could use any of the advanced forms.”

“Perhaps there are some among them more powerful than the others,” Hyndl said softly.  “Perhaps those you never encountered.  They might have remained hidden from you.”

“Do you think Nyk created his own little kingdom after he left the chamber?” Tryll asked.  “He might have left behind descendants who are in control and more powerful than the others.  They might not be happy to know about us, and might share powers equal to our own.”

That was a thought that hadn’t occurred to Kytra.  Nyk could have escaped the chamber after a few hundred years, found himself the most powerful sorcerer in existence, and ruled the world for the remainder of his life.  Without the offsetting effects of the chamber he would have died thousands of years ago, but he could have left behind a brood of offspring who inherited some or all of his powers.

“I want to show you something,” Kytra said, and took them to the oasis in the Ruins where the halfmen and the Hoplani had been created.  She showed them the underground caverns where the creatures had been spawned for thousands of years.

“Why would he have created this, if he were in charge of the world?” she asked.  “What purpose would it serve?  This is something that would have been created to eradicate the remainder of those that had survived the Conflict.  Something that could act while he was busy elsewhere.  Why also did he not undo the effects of the Ruins?  If he ruled, he would have wanted the land restored.”

Hyndl nodded his agreement.  “This is very like Nyk,” he said.  “Perhaps something happened to him after he created this place.  Whatever transpired, he may have left progeny we need to be aware of.  Perhaps he didn’t rule as Tryll suggests, but he was always one to intermix with the natives.  Those like him were the cause of the rebel wizards.”

Kytra ran her hands over the rough walls of the cavern.  The facility was slowly regenerating itself.  In another fifty years it would once again start producing the creatures.  The rebels had not been as thorough as they had thought.  For a moment she considered simply bringing it back to full production immediately.  It wouldn’t take much effort.  More of the Hoplani would certainly be another distraction for them.  Then she let her hand fall from the surface of the cavern wall.  Even if the beasts were in full production, it would take them months to make the journey to the far off lands.  By then, this matter should already be resolved.  She would let the caverns develop naturally.  If all went well, she would return and end it.  If not, well she could always activate it later.

They spent the next couple of days jumping around the kingdoms, becoming familiar with the various lands and the seats of power.  On the second day they brought several citizens from the kingdom of Branid to the island for mental probing, where they extracted the memories, before discarding the useless bodies into the sea.  That had worked well enough they repeated the process each of the next several days, acquiring victims from various locations.  By the end of the week they were very comfortable with the languages and history of the land.  Surprisingly the understanding of history by those they had taken was very vague.  There had been a series of plagues that had been quite devastating over the millennia, and a hint of a major anomaly several thousand years ago.  Perhaps if they could acquire one or more of the wizards they might be able to learn about that.  The average citizens were not very helpful, and were every bit as primitive as Hyndl had feared.

The Brryn had never been particularly gregarious, and now that all three were mostly recovered, sharing the poorly restored accommodations provided by Kytra was becoming increasingly uncomfortable.  Hyndl’s private quarters, also on one of the nearby islands, had never had the underground areas, and nothing was left but hints of the foundations.  The island had fully reverted to its natural state, and unlike Kytra, he had little interest in reclaiming it.  Tryll had always lived within the ancient cities, almost always on the western shores overlooking the oceans.  Now that they were fluent in the local language and customs, and had acquired a suitable supply of the currencies in use, they decided to separate and see what they could learn.  Hyndl would move into Sedfair, and explore the seat of power there.  Tryll would relocate into Branid, and learn what she could of the western kingdoms.  Kytra planned to remain where she was.  It might take time, but she fully intended to restore her home to its former glory.  She had her own list of locations she wished to investigate, including having another look at the old location of their Citadel.  It was gone, but perhaps there was something that could be recovered that would be of use.

They agreed to a week.  That should be more than enough time to establish whether a corps of senior wizards existed somewhere.  If Kytra was correct, and the preliminary information they had gained supported her claim there wasn’t any such group, then their plan going forward was already decided.  They would eliminate the strongholds known as the Guild and Outpost, and then search out and eliminate as many of the wizards as they could find.  Next, all seats of government would be destroyed.  Then they could start to rebuild properly, while continuing to seek and eliminate any of the rebels who had managed to escape the initial attacks.  If, on the other hand, they learned of a group with superior powers, they would rethink their plan before proceeding.  They would meet back at Kytra’s island at the end of the discovery period with what they had learned.