The Lady of Shalott (Merlin's Legacy)

Chapter Fourteen<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

Lucas pulled himself out of bed, ignoring the sleeping body of the serving girl beside him, and checked his watch. The Clockwork Guild had presented it to his father in the hopes that the Duke would support their attempts to block out upstarts from challenging their monopoly and his father and passed it onto him. It was barely five hours before the wedding was scheduled to begin. He would have gone then, or never, but his father had other ideas. The wedding would provide a priceless opportunity for networking and he had no intention of missing any of it.

He patted the woman on the shoulder and she rolled over, tiredly. Lucas was tempted to wake her up all the way and have another round, but he was never sure where he stood with the serving girls. Were they willing to share their bodies with him because he was their master’s son, because they hoped that he would reward them, because they dreamed that he would make one of them his wife...or because they’d been charmed into obedience? His father had never had doubts or cares; he’d just taken any woman who took his fancy and to hell with what she felt about it. Lucas...liked to think that he was kinder, even if he didn't quite dare stand up to his father.

The servants had heated up the bath already and he washed himself quickly, before donning his formal robes and strapping his sword to his belt. His father had warned him to carry a sword at all times and Lucas hadn't objected, even though his rank and position had always protected him from all harm. Besides, his father had made a bargain with the Dark Sorcerers and, for all his confidence, Lucas was much less sure that it was a wise idea. The Tribunal was still out there somewhere...and Merlin had always been merciless to anyone caught working with the Dark Sorcerers. But Merlin was gone...

His father was waiting downstairs impatiently, wearing his own formal robes. Beside him, Lucas’s little sister waited, wearing a green dress that neatly offset her blue eyes and blonde hair. Lucas felt an odd flicker of protectiveness as he saw his sister, for Emma had her mother’s hair and appearance. His father would, he knew, one day use Emma for his political games, but until then...Lucas spoiled her, as much as he dared. She was the one sweet thing in his life.

“So you’re finally up,” he said, darkly. “I have always told you not to dally overlong with the serving wenches.”

“Yes, father,” Lucas said, flushing. He’d have bet good money that his father didn't enjoy his dalliances with commoner women, even if he did have a different woman in bed each night. It was all about propagating the bloodline and creating magicians outside the strict control of the Colleges of Magic. “She was just remarkably good in bed.”

He’d hoped to irritate his father, just a little, but the Duke showed no reaction. “The coach is waiting for us outside,” he said, tightly. The wedding wasn't just the social event of the year; it was likely to be the last social event of the year. Lucas didn't have his father’s skill at reading the ebb and flow of politics in Camelot to know that people were already choosing sides and firming up alliances. “We’re late, boy.”

There was still four and a half hours before the wedding officially began, but Lucas knew better than to point that out. Instead, he followed his father and Emma out of the mansion and down towards the coach, already decked out in the ducal colours. They could have walked from the small mansion to the Summer Palace and arrived with plenty of time to spare, but that wasn't his father’s way. Making an impressive appearance – with the suggestion of limitless funds and manpower – was all part of the game. Emma shouted out in delight as the coachman opened the door and helped her to climb into the horse-drawn carriage. Lucas merely felt bored. If it had been up to him, he’d have preferred to walk or ride. Carriages had always made him feel sick.

His father waved a finger in the air, testing the privacy spells someone had carefully spelled into the coach, and then looked over at Lucas, his cold eyes boring into his son’s skull. The coach shook and shivered into life, heading down towards the road that led up to the Summer Palace. Not by coincidence, their route would take them though Waterford and allow the population to see the Duke’s power.

“I expect you to mingle, as you have always done,” his father said. “Keep a firm hold on Emma” – both son and daughter looked rebellious at that order, but their father ignored their expressions – “and ensure that you’re both seen.”

Lucas scowled, inwardly. He hadn't wanted to go to the wedding in the first place. The only thing that had made it acceptable was the chance of meeting up with some of his friends and enjoying some...darker pleasures somewhere within the Summer Palace’s endless corridors. With Emma at his side, that wouldn't be a possibility.

“I understand, father,” he said, reluctantly.

“See that you do,” his father said. “I shall be speaking to the other Dukes and then to some of the Lords. Between us, we should be ready to act when the Privy Council finally loses its grip and power naturally passes to us, the House of Lords. We shall control a heavy block of votes that will put us in control of the Empire.”

“Yes, father,” Lucas said.

His father eyed him for a long moment, and then smiled. “And I think I am going to have to teach you how to get your hands dirty,” he added, with a smile that might just have been mistaken for paternal. “The only people you can rely on in this world are those who share your blood.”

The coach shook again as it turned onto the long road that led towards the Summer Palace. Lucas reached for the heavy curtain and drew it back, staring up towards the building – and the line of coaches making their way up the road. His father wouldn't be too pleased to see that they’d been beaten to their goal, although their ducal precedence would allow them to push their way to the front of the queue. The Court would see and people would talk. He sighed and lent back as Emma scrambled to the window herself. She’d never visited the Summer Palace.

Merlin had designed it himself, or so the legend went. It was a strange spindly building, with towers reaching up towards the sky, creating an effect that suggested something out of Avalon. Unlike the Iron Palace, it hadn't been created and held in place with magic, although the wards Merlin had established to guard his retreat had fallen when he’d left the world behind. A handful of Knights, backed up by combat magicians, were checking everyone as they passed through the stone gate and into the courtyard. Lucas felt their questing magic passing over him, only to be deflected by the wards his father’s magicians had constructed around him. His father lent out of the coach, barked a few orders to the Knights, and they were waved forward to the front of the queue.

“Come on, boy,” his father grunted, as the coach finally lumbered to a stop. Lucas scrambled out of the vehicle and looked upwards, momentarily stunned by the sheer immensity of the Summer Palace. The building had a sense of presence that seemed to belay its fragile appearance. “We need to present ourselves before the fun really starts.”

Lucas rolled his eyes, but followed him up the steps and into the first chamber. A pair of uniformed servants took their coats while a third escorted them down a long crystalline corridor and halted them at the top of a second flight of steps. The herald took their cards, checked their faces, and raised his voice. It echoed through the entire chamber.

“His Excellency, Duke Rufus Valditch, Duke of Effrul; The Honourable Lord Lucas, Heir to Effrul; The Honourable Lady Emma...”

It struck Lucas as pointless – the ballroom had only a handful of people watching their descent – but his father walked as regally as if he were stepping into a crowded room, with every eye following his process. A handful of lesser lords started to bow and scrape in front of his father, who pointed Lucas towards a pair of noble-born girls who had been admiring the delicate wooden statues someone had placed on a long table. Sighing, Lucas took Emma’s hand and headed over to join them. Maybe they’d say something interesting, after all.

***​

Robin was shaking inwardly, despite his armour and Excalibur, as he walked up the aisle behind the Archbishop of Canterbury. He would have preferred another priest, perhaps the Knight’s Father Confessor, to perform the ceremony, but there was no way that they could refuse the Archbishop when he’d ‘offered’ to perform the wedding. Politics, again. It had occurred to him that politics would always be a part of his life if he married Tiffany, yet there was no avoiding it. The mere possession of Excalibur – as long as the blade chose to stay with him – would make him a focal point for politics.

The room had filled up with the great and the good, the Empire’s hereditary aristocracy and the hundreds of Commoners who had fought their way into powerful positions. Some of them weren’t entirely human, but Merlin had empowered them and – so far – no one had worked up the nerve to act against them. A splashing sound at one end of the room announced the presence of a merman and his four wives, floating in a pool someone had specially constructed for their presence; behind them, a pack of werewolves sat, their faces oddly canine, marking them out for life. Robin felt an odd flicker of guilt as he saw their canine eyes; he'd killed a werewolf once, two years ago. He’d been bitten and driven mad by the experience, but the werewolf had still come alarmingly close to ending his life. Robin had eventually run it through with a silver dagger and burned the body. It was the only way to be sure.

Merlin had been ambient, at best, about near-human creatures – and most humans were inclined to fear and hate those who had been unlucky enough to be born into the supernatural. Werewolves were banned outside their own lands – the old prejudice was too strong – and mermen tended to live away from shipping lanes. It wasn't too surprising, really. What merman and mermaids called singing everyone else regarded as a dreadful racket. And some mermaids became sirens and lured sailors to their deaths on hidden rocks.

The room started to quieten as Robin took his place – the glowing Excalibur on his belt – and waited for quiet. The Archbishop glared around him, intimidating most of the noblemen into silence. At a nod from him, the choir stood up and started to sing a long and complicated hymn, silencing the remainder of the room. Robin saw angry glances being passed from commoner to commoner and scowled inwardly. The hymn concentrated on the need for servitude and contentment with one’s lot, not something to appeal to those born to the lower classes. But then, the church had always been in bed with the noblemen. It was a thought that almost made him smile.

Silence fell, broken only by the sound of a handful of people coughing and shuffling their feet. Robin had a moment to feel nervous – she might have decided not to marry him, after all – before the door opened and Tiffany stepped forward, followed by her five bridesmaids. Her face was hidden behind a white veil, but it couldn't hide her long red hair, nor the shape of her body as she kept moving forwards. Robin felt a sudden sense of contentment that had nothing to do with Excalibur. Everything just felt right.

Tiffany stopped in front of him and dropped a curtsey to the Archbishop, who nodded to the choir. The small boys broke out into song again, this time a more popular hymn about God’s creation of the world and how humanity was charged with protecting it from abuse. Robin knew – he didn't know if the Archbishop knew – that the song had its origins in humanity’s brutal wars with the Elves, and many of the creatures from the Greenwood. It was a fairly martial hymn.

The Archbishop stepped forward as the hymn came to an end and silence fell. “Dearly beloved,” he said, his voice echoing around the huge chamber. The Church’s official stance on magic notwithstanding, Robin suspected that he was using a spell to enhance his voice. “We are gathered here today to celebrate the marriage of two God-fearing Christians, Lady Tiffany of Shalott and Sir Robin, Knight of the Round Table.”

Robin smiled, inwardly, at the reaction. It was rare for noblewomen to marry outside the nobility, even though Knights of the Round Table often counted as nobles. Putting Tiffany’s name first was a mocking reminder that she was his social superior. The Church hadn't said anything, overtly, about its view on the marriage, but that had been when Merlin had been present. If they had a different opinion...

“Marriage is a holy state, conceived by God,” the Archbishop said. His voice kept echoing outwards, loudly enough that it could be heard outside the Summer Palace. “When the Lord created man and woman, he ordained rules for them, that they might live peacefully together and rise towards Heaven. He created man to serve as the protector and maintainer of woman; he created woman to serve as the mother of children and companion of man. Marriage is the ultimate expression of those rules, when a young couple chooses to live together, forsaking all others, sharing their lives until death does them part. The man must keep and protect the woman; the woman must bear his children and serve and obey her man.”

There was a long pause. “It is a solemn commitment, sworn before God. For those who enter into marriage rashly, without due reflection and prayer, it can become a burden. For those who shrink from entering marriage, fearing to lose themselves in their partner, their lives are often spent alone, without children to being them comfort and care for them when they grow old. Marriage is not an act to be entered into through passion, or guilt, but solely through the desire to form a partnership and rise towards God.”

He stopped, his gaze sweeping over the audience. “If there is anyone here who knows just cause or impediment why these two should not marry,” he said, “speak now or forever hold your peace.”

Robin froze. He was familiar enough with Tiffany’s body language to know that she was nervous too. Merlin had blessed their match, but Merlin was gone. If someone in the audience – Lord Lucas, perhaps – wanted to object...it would certainly throw a spanner into the works. The Archbishop would have an opportunity to forbid the match, if he wanted to forbid the match. The seconds seemed to tick on endlessly...

“I ask again,” the Archbishop said. “If there is anyone here who knows just cause or impediment why these two should not marry, I command you to speak now or forever hold your peace.”

There was a long, pregnant pause. The Archbishop repeated the question a third time, and waited. No one spoke.

“No one has raised just cause or impediment why these two should not marry,” he said. If he was angry or even irritated, he said nothing. “Sir Robin of Loxley, Knight of the Round Table. Do you accept the woman Tiffany, Lady of Shalott, as your lawfully wedded wife, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others and hewing solely to her until death do you part?”

Robin could feel Excalibur’s soft amusement as he spoke. “I do.”

The Archbishop smiled. “Lady Tiffany, Lady of Shalott. Do you accept the man Robin of Loxley, Knight of the Round Table, as your lawfully wedded husband? Do you accept him as your protector and maintainer, swearing to love, honour and obey him until death do you part?”

“I do,” Tiffany said.

Robin flushed, inwardly. He'd never realised how...condescending the marriage vows were to women, at least until he’d faced marriage himself. Perhaps the nobility had had a point when they’d raised objections, even in secrecy; Tiffany could place Shalott and everything that a noble title brought into his hands. He swore to himself that he would not abuse her love and faith in him.

“You have sworn to accept one another,” the Archbishop said. He reached into his robes and produced a simple golden case. It opened at the touch of a finger, revealing a pair of golden rings. Merlin had produced them personally and presented them to Tiffany when they’d become engaged. It surprised Robin that they still glowed when so much else Merlin had created had died when he’d vanished. “Sir Robin, take one of the rings and put it on her finger.”

Robin’s fingers felt unstable as he picked up one of the rings and studied it, noting the writing Merlin had engraved along the edge. It fitted Tiffany’s finger perfectly, unsurprisingly. Merlin had done his work well. A moment later, she placed her own ring on his finger...

...Something was wrong. He could feel it. Excalibur was screaming a warning into his very soul. Unaware of what he was doing, or why, he lunged forward and knocked Tiffany to the ground. The Archbishop opened his mouth to protest, too late. Something was happening at the rear of the chamber. Something bad...

An instant later, a flash of green light struck the Archbishop and blasted him into the choir.

 

Chapter Fifteen<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

The Sorcerer Vale had never expected the plan to work.

Like all great plans, it was simple in concept and execution. The Dark Sorcerers – freshly charged with magical energies drained from sacrificed humans – had transfigured themselves into small objects, which their master had then arranged to be shipped into the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1lace><st1laceName>Summer</st1laceName> <st1laceType>Palace</st1laceType></st1lace>. The Dark Sorcerers might have privately had their doubts about the plan, but none of them had dared to object when their master ordered them to prepare to depart. Now, when the spell ran out of time, they found themselves amidst a crowd of rich and powerful aristocrats. The slaughter began instantly.

“Take them,” Vale roared, casting a lethal spell towards the young couple on the dais. The man had the reactions of a cat, for he knocked his wife down before she could be caught by the spell and killed. Vale barely noticed, for he was too busy casting other spells, right into the crowd. Their master had given them a list of people he wanted targeted and killed – senior aristocrats, powerful politicians – and they all knew better than to return unsuccessful. “Kill them all!”

A Knight of the Round Table was halfway through drawing his sword when a green flash of light caught him in the chest and killed him instantly. Vale smiled to himself, even though the death had been mercifully quick rather than unpleasantly prolonged, allowing necromancers such as himself to draw power from the dying man. A Knight was a dangerous opponent and the sooner they were all killed the better. He had better luck with a magician who’d produced his wand and tried to cast a spell of his own, only to see it glance off the sorcerer’s wards. Vale struck him with an agonising curse that even another sorcerer would have struggled to lift, just before firing another series of curses into the packed crowd. Caught by surprise, unused to anything like physical danger, most of the aristocrats were starting to panic. The few who were armed and willing to fight would have problems even reaching their foes.

Behind him, an explosion shook the entire <st1lace><st1laceName>Summer</st1laceName> <st1laceType>Palace</st1laceType></st1lace>. The spell-controlled maid hadn’t been the only one to have been turned into an unwitting saboteur. When the fun began, the others had been ordered to wreak a little havoc, raise a little hell. The forces outside on the lawn wouldn't have the slightest idea of what was actually going on, at least until it was far too late. Vale blew a wave of fire into a teenage noblewoman who’d been knocked to her knees by the pressure of the crowd, watching as her body slowly burned away to ash. He laughed aloud, a terrifying sound. His master would be pleased.

He ducked, instinctively, as a wave of bright spells cascaded over his head. A pair of combat magicians had forced their way through the crowd and were throwing spells at the Dark Sorcerers, trying to keep them busy long enough for reinforcements to arrive. Vale lifted his own wand and cast a shimmering curse, trying to hold them in place long enough to start draining their power, but even though they had smaller reserves of power than his own, they were clearly skilled in using it. They escaped the trap, jumped back and kept moving. One of them was killed by a spell from one of the other Dark Sorcerers; the other fired back a spell Vale didn’t recognise, somehow burning through his companion’s wards. The Dark Sorcerer died in agony, just before Vale dispatched the second combat magician with a single quick spell.

A low rumbling sound caught his ears and he turned, just in time to see a brass statue of a horse come to life and gallop towards them. Vale almost smiled; enchanted statues would serve as a defence against normal men, but they were useless against Dark Sorcery. He blew the first statue into rubble before it could get anywhere near him, ordering his followers to concentrate on the others. Flames were starting to spread through the building, drawing on dark magic to ensure that they couldn’t be extinguished in a hurry. The entire <st1lace><st1laceName>Summer</st1laceName> <st1laceType>Palace</st1laceType></st1lace> would burn to the ground before the defenders could organise their remaining wizards into fighting the fire.

Laughing, Vale pressed his attack. There wouldn't be much time before the defenders rallied and launched a counter-attack, but until then, the day was theirs. A father, trying to shield his two young children, was struck by a mind-controlling spell. Helplessly, he could only watch as his fingers closed round the necks of his children and squeezed hard, crushing the life out of them. There was much necromantic power to be drawn from sacrifice, Vale had been taught when he’d dared to reach for sorcery, and unwilling sacrifices offered the greatest power of all. He laughed again and killed the man with a final spell…

***​

Robin felt the entire building shake as most of the crowd tried to flee. By long tradition, very few defenders had been permitted within the ballroom, where the wedding had been taking place. The small army outside would need time to get organised and fight its way into the building…how the hell had the Dark Sorcerers even gotten inside? Sorcerers could teleport without needing anchors or the pathways that led through Avalon, but that was such an obvious way to attack that the building had been warded against teleport spells. It wasn't hard to disrupt an incoming teleport and scatter the sorcerer over several thousand miles…

He rolled off Tiffany and triggered the spells built into his armour. White-gold armour plate, created by Merlin himself and bonded to Robin’s very soul, spread out over his body. The first time he’d tried to walk in the armour, he’d kept falling down; now, it felt almost like a second skin. Carefully, he pulled himself to his feet and drew Excalibur. The sword’s eerie – and yet welcoming – glow spread out, calming the room. He felt the sword’s energies shimmering into him, refreshing his body. It was time to fight.

Nine Dark Sorcerers stood on one of the marble tables, wands in hand. They weren’t trying to hide the damage wrought on their bodies by Dark Sorcerer, presenting a terrifying impression to the rest of the world. These were men, Robin knew, who wouldn't hesitate to bargain with demons or consort with goblins for power, their depredations held in check only by Merlin’s power and his servants, the Tribunal. They would be desperate and yet confident, knowing that Merlin was gone. He didn’t want to think about how many had died in the handful of minutes since they’d revealed themselves.

He held Excalibur up in front of him and had the pleasure of seeing the Dark Sorcerers hesitate, as if they feared the magical blade. They did fear a weapon that could cut through wards as if they weren't even there, killing its target and sending them to face judgement. No one became a Dark Sorcerer without making a few questionable bargains along the way and if they died, those bargains would come due. For a fraction of a second, he dared to hope that they would surrender or teleport out, before they broke free of their paralysis. Their leader pointed a long wand at Robin and uttered a word that sounded utterly inhuman, as if he’d pronounced the sound of broken glass. There was a blinding flash of light and a flicker of…something flashed out at Robin…

Excalibur moved, as if it was acting of its own accord. The spell clashed against the glowing blade and vanished, absorbed into the material that formed the sword. Robin felt a brief tingle passing through his hands and then nothing. The Dark Sorcerer stared at him, and then raised his wand again, chanting a spell in a language so old that no one apart from magicians and scholars even knew that it existed. Robin felt the hair standing up on his neck even before the spell was completed and a colossal wall of flame appeared between the two of them. The heat was so great that he found himself taking a step backwards, but it offered no relief. The hellfire was burning away at his very soul…

His hands tightened on the blade and a wave of coolness flowed into his body, leaving him standing upright, if weakly. He took a step forward, and then another, until he was walking right into the flames. They couldn’t touch him any longer, as long as he held the glowing blade. The fires suddenly receded behind him as he stepped out of them, meeting the Dark Sorcerer’s eyes as he stared in shock. His eyes were burning embers set within a frail skull, a warning of the horrors to come. Eventually, Dark Sorcerers lost control of their own powers and were consumed by them, burning to embers and leaving nothing, but ash.

The Dark Sorcerer stepped backwards and leapt, suddenly, drawing on magic to enhance his flight. He was across the room in a second, standing by the ruined doors that had once opened to allow Tiffany and her bridesmaids to enter the chamber. A second Dark Sorcerer appeared out of nowhere and lunged forward, carrying a stone wand in his left hand. Robin didn’t need Excalibur to feel the power emanating from the wand, revealing its true nature – an Object of Power. There were a hundred legends about stone wands and none of them ended well. The wand clashed against Excalibur and shattered on the glowing blade. Robin felt a shock passing through his hands, but he ignored it, swinging the mighty blade through the sorcerer’s chest. It felt as if he’d driven a hit knife through butter. The sorcerer’s body, cut in two, flared into dark flames before collapsing on the floor.

“Excalibur,” Robin breathed. His armour tingled as a new attack began, a handful of Dark Sorcerers throwing spells and curses right into his face, trying to keep him off guard. Excalibur moved as if it had a mind of its own, blocking and deflecting curses with ease, even knocking two of them back towards their senders. He raised his voice as he swung the sword upwards, remembering the battle cry that had terrified thousands of sorcerers over the years. “For Camelot and Arthur!”

He lunged forward and they fell before him like wheat under a scythe.

***​

Vale hadn’t believed most of the stories about Excalibur, not really. In the world of the Dark Sorcerers, King Arthur had never been anything other than Merlin’s puppet. Excalibur, an Object of Power, had been created by Merlin to ensure that his favoured candidate became King of England, while the real power remained firmly in Merlin’s hands. It was what they would have done in his place, they knew; those with magic had the right to rule those without magic. The idea of a sword making anyone, even a Knight of the Round Table, a match for a sorcerer was a terrifying thought. It could not be tolerated.

And yet, the bridegroom they’d come to kill was tearing through his followers. Vale didn’t waste time mourning them, not when he knew that they would have tried to kill him as soon as they felt powerful enough to challenge him, but watching them die was…disconcerting. Excalibur sliced through their wards as if they weren't even there, somehow protecting it’s wieldier from attacks both physical and magical. Vale watched a curse that should have burned through any level of protection glance off the sword and shatter harmlessly against the wall. He didn’t dare run – his master would kill him – and he didn’t dare face Excalibur and its bearer alone. And there were no others to help him. The Dark Sorcerers who hadn’t been committed to the surprise attack had been held in reserve, joining their master in his attack on the outskirts of the Palace.

Cursing, he knew that he had no choice. Drawing on spells he’d memorised years ago, he started to chant. It was incredibly risky to perform any kind of summoning without proper wards and careful preparation, but somehow he doubted that the Knight of the Round Table would allow him to draw a pentagram on the floor and spend two hours casting wards around the chamber. Shaping the wards in his mind, casting a final illusion spell to win a last few seconds, he performed the ritual of summoning. The air seemed to bend and twist in front of him as something began to emerge from the Darkness, a presence that was far darker than anything born to mortal man. A wash of flames shot up from the floor, driving Vale back, and formed into the shape of a man, wrapped in burning flames. The demon laughed, its presence soiling the air on so many levels, and lunged towards the Knight. And Vale, exhausted after burning through the last reserves of his sorcery, turned and fled. The demon should keep the Knight busy for a while…

***​

Robin flinched backwards as the demon lashed out with one fiery hand and washed fire over his armour. The heat was overwhelming and pain seared down his left side, even though the armour and Excalibur’s protection. He tried to focus against the pain, but the living wall of fire lunged towards him again and washed fire right into his eyes. Excalibur’s protection spared him from instant death, or blindness, yet it was still hard to see. New fires were springing up everywhere the demon walked. The flames were running from body to body, causing a horrific smell to appear in the air, like a thousand roasted dead bodies. Robin gagged as the demon laughed, before shooting a wave of fire towards the dais where he’d married Tiffany. He shouted an angry curse at the demon, which turned and stamped towards him. He’d feared that Tiffany wouldn't come to the wedding, or that one or more of the noblemen would take the opportunity to forbid the match, not Dark Sorcerers and demons!

He scowled, drawing on the sword’s vast reserves to jump backwards, winning time. In hindsight, the marriage would have been an obvious target for the Dark Sorcerers. All the great and good of the Empire, the elected representatives and hereditary noblemen, gathered together in one place. How could any Dark Sorcerer resist such a target? And yet, the High Magus and many of the House of Magus were here too. The Dark Sorcerers might have bitten off more than they could chew. Or maybe they believed that, without Merlin, the advantage was firmly in their hands. They might have the power to win.

Robin breathed a prayer for Tiffany as the demon’s fiery hands reached down towards the dead bodies. Flames licked through them and they slowly rose to their feet, shambling forward in a mocking parody of human life. Rage flared through his mind, only to be dampened by Excalibur. The sword was forcing him to remain calm and composed. If the demon wanted to play with him, rather than simply killing him at once, it would give them an opportunity to banish the demon back to hell. He waited until the first shambling figure was right on top of him, then he jumped, drawing on the sword again to leap right over the figures and down between them and their demonic master. It was hard to read the demon’s expressions on its ever-changing face, but it looked surprised.

He didn’t hesitate. Excalibur sang as he stabbed forward, pushing the sword right into the demon’s fire. The demon howled in pain, yet seemed to remain alive; the fires that the sorcerer had used to anchor the demon in the fixed lands simply wafted around Excalibur. Robin pushed the sword forward, heedless of the flaming zombies that had turned and were now shambling towards his back. The power that formed Excalibur clashed directly with the power that had summoned the demon out of Hell and bound it to the mortal realm. There was a final flash of fire, so hot that Robin felt sure that he was about to catch fire himself, and then the demon was gone. The shambling zombies dropped to the floor as the controlling will vanished. Robin cut off their heads anyway, just to be sure. Demons were tricky creatures, powered by malice and eternal evil. And turning invisible was one of their tricks.

Breathing hard, he looked around. The ballroom was deserted. Most of the guests had either fled or had been killed, either by the Dark Sorcerers or by the panic. Excalibur was pulling at him, guiding Robin forward. He took one last look for Tiffany – he hoped that she’d had the sense to get out of the way - and then followed the sword’s call.

Outside, he found himself staring down a blackened and twisted corridor. The demonic flames were slowly consuming the whole building. He could hear screams and cries for help in the distance, so he started towards them when he heard a gasp and turned, sword in hand. The Dark Sorcerer was kneeling there, trying desperately to recover from expending so much magic. Robin met his fiery eyes and knew what fate awaited him. The ruler of Hell, Merlin’s father, would not be pleased with the loss of a fire demon. And the Dark Sorcerer had, long ago, damned his soul to hell. Unless he repented in the next few seconds, he would be in the hands of Satan…

The Dark Sorcerer let out a cry and lunged forward, silver knife in hand, launching one last desperate attempt to win. And Robin slashed down with Excalibur and beheaded him, sending his body crashing to the floor. For a moment, he stared down at the dark flames consuming his enemy’s body and then turned to run towards the screams. He had a horrific feeling that the worst was yet to come.

 

Chapter Sixteen<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

The power burned through Maledict as he led the charge against the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1lace><st1laceName>Summer</st1laceName> <st1laceType>Palace</st1laceType></st1lace>. There was no doubting that this first attack had achieved the advantage of surprise – and the spells they’d unleashed inside the wards had crippled them, rendering the <st1lace><st1laceName>Summer</st1laceName> <st1laceType>Palace</st1laceType></st1lace> defenceless. The soldiers who’d been patrolling the gardens seemed caught between two fires, unsure of which threat to tackle first. Maledict chanted words in a long-forgotten tongue and struck down most of the soldiers before they could react. The remainder scattered and started to flee. There was no escape from the oncoming Dark Sorcerers.

Maledict laughed aloud as he drew on his power and flew over the wall, coming down amidst the dead and dying bodies. This was true power. He’d never dared call upon his sorcery so blatantly before, even in the <st1:City><st1lace>Greenwood</st1lace></st1:City>, but now the power was his and there was nothing to stop him taking what he wanted. Merlin was gone and Maledict, his true heir, would take his rightful place as ruler of the Empire. And then the whole world would be at his mercy.

He pointed his wand at the palace and chanted a spell aloud, enjoying the sensation of power. A flicker of light shot from his wand and smashed through the palace’s upper windows, adding to the chaos and the fires already burning through the building. The remaining guards were trying to fight or run, but it hardly mattered. Maledict cast a command spell over a handful of guards and sent them turning against their fellows. The combat magicians were disorganised and likely to remain so for the next few minutes. They’d be unable to put up any defence against the advancing Dark Sorcerers.

A pair of Knights of the Round Table, armour glowing in the sunlight, leapt out of the building and onto the ground in front of them. Their armour provided some protection against dark magic, but the sheer power the dark Sorcerers could throw at them overwhelmed their protections and rendered them helpless. Spending power freely, knowing that there might not be a second chance to slaughter so many of their enemies in one go, the Dark Sorcerers took the opportunity to torment the Knights before killing them, drawing on their life energies to add to their power.

Maledict barked commands into the air as they captured the gardens. A team of Dark Sorcerers would head down the road towards <st1:City><st1lace>Waterford</st1lace></st1:City> and the soldiers garrisoned there, using their powers to sow fear and panic among their enemies. The remainder would go into the building itself, hunting down the remainder of their foes before they could escape. Maledict chuckled to himself as he blasted a hole in the wall and forced his way into the <st1lace><st1laceName>Summer</st1laceName> <st1laceType>Palace</st1laceType></st1lace>. The enemy had never dreamed that they would be attacked at a wedding, or they would have assembled an entire army to protect their First Councillor. Not that it would have made much difference, of course.

The magical field flared around him as he stepped into the building. They’d blown their way into the dining hall, which had been set for a feast to honour the bride and groom. Maledict remembered what it had been like to be hungry and poor, back before he’d discovered his magical talent, and felt anger burning through him, feeding his power. A wave of his wand sent the tables crashing down, showering their expensive contents onto the floor. He spoke a curse, poisoning the remaining food and drink, before leading his sorcerers onwards, into the antechamber. The magical field ahead was strengthening, suggesting that another sorcerer was waiting for them. There could be little doubt who was ahead…

He stepped into a large chamber, meant for smaller gatherings, and smiled. The High Magus stood alone at the far end of the chamber. He should have had a small army of lesser sorcerers and wizards from the magical colleges, but he was alone. In one hand, he held a wand hewn from wood and sharpened by magic; in the other, he carried a single golden key. His long beard hung down towards the floor, twisting and curling as if it had a mind of its own. With sorcery involved, that was very possible.

Merlin had tried to prevent wizards from turning to sorcery to expand their powers, but at that, at least, he'd been unsuccessful. A magician would sell his own grandmother to expand his powers, if he wasn’t contented with his lot. The few sorcerers who survived the attempt without losing their lives or their sanity were often powerful and dangerous, but they were rarely as powerful as the truly insane. A sorcerer who remained sane was inhibited from drawing too strongly on his powers, a weakness Maledict had never understood. In the end, there was only power – and he was the most powerful magician left in the fixed lands.

The High Magus half-bowed, never taking his eyes off Maledict. “This is going to end,” he said, very calmly. He sounded tired and worn, even though he hadn’t been fighting. “You have no idea of the dangers of what you are trying to do.”

Maledict felt a hot flash of anger. How dare the senile idiot talk down to him? It occurred to him that the High Magus was trying to make him angry, in the hopes that he would make a mistake, but it hardly mattered. Sorcery was driven by emotion as much as anything else and an angry sorcerer could be incredibly dangerous. And besides, what did he have to fear from a man who had refused to give up his sanity and claim true power?

He hefted his wand, shaping a curse in his mind. “Give up your power and I will let you live,” he growled. It wasn't a sincere offer. His power was already building up around him, waiting for release. “You could…”

“No,” the High Magus said, simply. “Give this up now before something goes really badly wrong.”

Maledict didn’t bother with a response. He threw the nastiest curse he could at the High Magus, a complex spell that needed perfect timing and skill to defect. The High Magus, trained in magical arts and wizardry, caught it with seemingly effortless skill and tossed back a trick of his own. Maledict parried it neatly and shot a simpler curse, trying to overpower the High Magus’s defences. The High Magus countered with a network of glowing spells that threatened to push Maledict and his allies back into the gardens. Dispelling it required more brute force than Maledict would have preferred to use.

The other Dark Sorcerers fell back, watching the duel. They wouldn't help either side, not when two mighty sorcerers were settling their differences. If Maledict won, they’d be intimidated enough to refrain from challenging him for a while; if he lost, they’d turn on the High Magus while he was weakened from the duel. Maledict scowled as he threw several spells at once, only to see them rebound off a glowing golden shield that the High Magus had summoned out of nowhere. Rage built through him as the High Magus started to taunt him, mocking him.

“You’re nothing,” the High Magus said. “You have power, without the wit to control it. You never learned the basics of wizardry before you gained power and…”

“Shut up,” Maledict snapped. His power shimmered out of him, without focus. He pressed it forwards against the High Magus, bringing their magic fields into contact and pushing, hard. The golden shield vanished as the High Magus staggered backwards, trying to fire off a set of spells that might break the contact long enough to save his life. Maledict kept pushing, allowing all the power he’d gained from the sacrifices to flow into the High Magus. It was easy to twist the power and burn through the High Magus’s wards…

The High Magus opened his mouth, although there was no way to know if he wanted to shout a curse or beg for mercy. Maledict’s power broke through his wards and slashed into his body. All the knowledge and power the High Magus had gained over the years lay exposed in front of him. Maledict drained it into his own wards, and then blasted the High Magus backwards, slamming him into the antechamber. He chuckled darkly, feeling slightly dizzy from the battle, and waved his Dark Sorcerers onwards. By the time they left, they would leave nothing behind in the ruins, but corpses.

***​

Lucas hadn’t had the slightest idea that something was about to happen until the Dark Sorcerers appeared and started firing down at the crowd. His father had reacted coolly, as always, and grabbed his son by the scruff of the neck, pushing him into a secret passageway right behind them. Lucas had taken Emma’s hand and pulled her into the passageway, praying that they’d be overlooked in the chaos. It didn’t seem too likely. The entire building was shivering as magical spells shook its very foundations. The <st1lace><st1laceName>Summer</st1laceName> <st1laceType>Palace</st1laceType></st1lace> might be on the verge of collapsing, just like the <st1lace><st1laceName>Iron</st1laceName> <st1laceType>Palace</st1laceType></st1lace>. A tingle ran through the air as one of the combatants unleashed a spell that seemed to have no designated target. In the overheated passageway, it was enough to send sweat trickling down his back.

He knew nothing about the tunnel network – he hadn’t even known that it had existed, at least until his father had shoved them in and shut the door behind them – and found himself forced to crawl towards the light. The light proved to be coming from a tiny peephole, not unlike the ones he’d used when he’d started to become interested in girls. He peered through the peephole and saw the final moments of the High Magus’s battle with the Dark Sorcerer, his body smashed and left to bleed out on the floor. The Dark Sorcerer no longer looked even remotely human. Behind him, a line of his followers spread out, intent on slaughtering everyone in the building. One of them was Shade.

My God, Lucas thought. He didn’t dare speak aloud. He’d known that his father was ruthless, but this…it was insane! Lucas or Emma could have been killed in the crossfire, or…had his father chosen their position so he could get his children out of the firing line, once all hell broke loose? And if his father had known what was coming…what could Lucas do about it? What could anyone do about it?

He clutched his sister’s hand and prayed, silently in the darkness, for a rescue that might never come.

***​

Tiffany muttered a spell under her breath and most of the wedding dress disintegrated into dust, leaving behind only her undergarments. It would have been scandalous under normal circumstances, even though she was still decently covered, but now she needed to move. The entire building was coming down around her ears. She could feel shockwaves threatening the building’s very foundation as she ran, wishing she could stay and fight. If she died, she knew, the Empire would fragment. She knew that she didn’t dare be captured…

A spell struck her in the back and sent her falling forward, eldritch energy skittering over her body. It took everything she had to break the spell before it broke through her wards and into her mind. Her would-be captor rolled her over and gazed down at her through burning eyes. Tiffany snapped out a spell and had the pleasure of seeing her attacker thrown backwards, just before a massive shockwave ran through the palace and the whole section disintegrated. She covered her head desperately as walls and ceilings started to collapse, flashing back to the fall of the <st1lace><st1laceName>Iron</st1laceName> <st1laceType>Palace</st1laceType></st1lace>. Her attacker stumbled forward, murder written on his twisted face, only to be struck by a piece of falling masonry. Before she could react, strong hands grabbed her from behind and shoved her down to the ground. Dark magic flared around her, keeping her from fighting or running.

She looked up, into the faces of a pair of Dark Sorcerers. They clearly knew who she was and had more in mind than murder, or rape. As a hostage, Tiffany would have great value – although perhaps less than they thought. One of them hauled her to her feet and ran his hand down her arm, unlocking half of her protection wards. Once she was effectively naked, they could reprogram her at will. She called desperately to Merlin, to the power she’d always been able to call upon in the past, but there was no answer. She was alone, with nothing to call upon. Even Robin and his sword were somewhere else…

There was a colossal roar. A shimmering gout of fire blasted down, reducing one of the Dark Sorcerers to a pile of air. Tiffany heard the beating of mighty wings as a dragon floated high overhead, blocking out the sunlight with its colossal scaly body. Brilliant golden eyes fixed upon the second Dark Sorcerer, just before the dragon’s claw reached down, pinched through the wards and crushed the sorcerer like a bug. A dragon was the most magical creature to live in the fixed lands; their power was awesome, if concentrated on flying and defence. It took special wards to stand up to a dragon.

Tiffany felt the spell break and nearly collapsed onto the ground. “Get up,” Eleanor shouted at her. The Dragon Mistress looked nervous, even though it took a very powerful curse to harm or even threaten a dragon. There were still too many Dark Sorcerers wandering the grounds, trying to kill all of the guests. “Get onto the dragon’s back, quickly!”

“Coming,” Tiffany said. Her body hurt, but she managed to banish the pain with a small spell. The reserves of power she should have been able to call upon were gone, a lingering result of the capture spell. “What’s happening?”

“It looks like war,” Eleanor said. She sounded excited. The Dragon Riders hadn’t; gone to war ever since the Serpent Wars. “The entire building is burning down and there are flames and smoke coming from <st1:City><st1lace>Waterford</st1lace></st1:City>. There are Dark Sorcerers everywhere.”

Tiffany shuddered as she climbed onto the dragon, scrambling up the scaly green plates that made up its skin. Robin had warned that the Dark Sorcerers were planning something, but who would have considered this? Who would have imagined…but then, they’d been far too used to Merlin’s power limiting magical depredations. And with his departure, they’d entered a whole new world…

Behind them, as the dragon climbed into the sky, the <st1lace><st1laceName>Summer</st1laceName> <st1laceType>Palace</st1laceType></st1lace> burned.

***​

Maledict watched angrily as the dragon vanished into the clouds, carrying with it the planned kidnapping target. Lady Tiffany would have made a useful slave once her mind had been broken and reprogrammed, but it wasn't going to happen now. He was tempted to keep fighting and slaughtering, yet there was little point. The Garrison would have dispatched reinforcements as soon as they heard of the attack – and they might have sent other dragons to join the fight.

He turned to gaze upon his remaining Dark Sorcerers. He’d led nearly fifty into battle, but seven of them had been killed outright and two more were on the verge of death and useless. He killed them both with a wave of his hand and then turned to look at the fires burning through the <st1lace><st1laceName>Summer</st1laceName> <st1laceType>Palace</st1laceType></st1lace>. Whatever happened now, the Empire had taken a bloody nose, losing so many aristocrats and the High Magus in a single day. The chaos had only just begun.

Chuckling to himself, he teleported the Dark Sorcerers away from the building and back to the lair. The other mission, the one he’d entrusted to his most favoured servant, would be complete by now. In many ways, the attack on the <st1lace><st1laceName>Summer</st1laceName> <st1laceType>Palace</st1laceType></st1lace> had been a division. And then the chaos would really start.

***​

Robin watched in horror and helpless rage as the last of the Dark Sorcerers vanished in a flash of light. They were fleeing, having accomplished their mission. Behind them, the remaining defenders and the survivors of the massacre would have to rebuild, somehow. Tiredly, he returned the sword to its sheath and then stopped. Redrawing it, he stared down at the glowing blade, feeling its presence in his mind.

“Why?” He asked, sadly, as if he expected the sword to answer. “Why did this have to happen?”

Do you expect answers to all your questions? A voice asked, in his head – or perhaps he was imagining it. It was impossible to tell. You have to stand on your own feet.

Shaking his head, he walked over and started to organise the few remaining defenders. The flames rising from <st1:City><st1lace>Waterford</st1lace></st1:City> suggested that the town had been attacked as well, perhaps as a diversion to keep the garrison occupied. And Tiffany…

This was supposed to be our wedding day, he thought, bitterly. He walked into the ruined <st1lace><st1laceName>Summer</st1laceName> <st1laceType>Palace</st1laceType></st1lace>, hearing the cry for help from someone trapped within the building. We should have been happy…

The body of the High Magus lay where it had fallen, guarded by an apprentice wizard who hadn’t taken any part in the battle. Robin didn’t really blame him. No one could be expected to fight Dark Sorcerers without proper training, but then, proper training hadn’t helped the High Magus…and without him, the House of Magus would be up for grabs. Who knew who would come out on top in the coming power struggle? The chaos would make it harder for Tiffany to rally the magicians against the Dark Sorcerers.

He felt the warm ring around his finger. Tiffany had placed it there personally, binding him to her as solidly as she was bound to him. And the Dark Sorcerers had set out to ruin their wedding…and they’d succeeded. No one would ever feel safe again. The Dark Sorcerers could strike anywhere.

Silently, he looked into the bright blue sky and vowed revenge.

 

Another well written story from the master of suspense.
Keep it coming I'm hooked.

 

My fience is here so the chapter rate may slow. Please comment anyway.

Chapter Seventeen<!--?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

The <!--?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1lace><st1lacetype>Tower</st1lacetype> of <st1lacename>Camelot</st1lacename></st1lace> stood alone, for all that it was part of Merlin’s capital city. It rose up into the sky, surrounded by wards that would have daunted even a Dark Sorcerer, providing a safe and secure prison for Merlin’s more powerful enemies. Very few entered the Tower to emerge safely again, everyone knew; to be condemned to the Tower was to be condemned to death. The prisoners were held under a personal charm that prevented escape and interrogated until they had spilled all of their secrets, and then they were ritually executed. Everyone knew that the <st1lace><st1lacetype>Tower</st1lacetype> of <st1lacename>Camelot</st1lacename></st1lace> was impregnable – but then, like so many other buildings in Camelot, it had drawn its power from Merlin’s indomitable will.

Faye stood beneath a hood and watched the rain falling down around the Tower. It was one of Merlin’s little jokes to give the Tower its own constant rainstorm – or perhaps it was part of the anchors that kept the wards in place – and it never failed to depress anyone looking at it. Faye wasn't particularly concerned as she used her Sight to parse out the Tower’s defences. With Merlin gone, the Privy Council had had to fall back on more ordinary magical wards, wards that could be broken or outsmarted or simply overpowered. The guards she could see in the mist presented no real problem, but then they were there to serve as a tripwire. The real defences would be deeper within the tower.

She pulled back her hood and allowed the rain to fall on her bare face. Female magicians were rare, female sorcerers were rarely still – and there were no other female Dark Sorcerers. Faye had turned to Dark Sorcery after an older and more powerful magician had left her face brutally scared, merely for daring to try to learn magic on her own – and she wanted revenge. Her mind hadn’t been destroyed by Dark Sorcery, if only because she’d never been very stable in the first place. The glamour surrounding her concealed her appearance, transforming the scarred girl into a desirable noblewoman. They’d never see her as she truly was, until it was far too late. Touching the amulet she wore under her shirt, she started forward towards the gates. No one was permitted to enter without permission. It was believed to be impossible for anyone to enter without permission. Her lips tightened into a parody of a smile. That bit of common knowledge would be broken today, along with the <st1lace><st1lacetype>Tower</st1lacetype> of <st1lacename>Camelot</st1lacename></st1lace>.

The gates loomed over her as she reached the portal, feeling spells crawling over the stone, somehow infused into the very material itself. Merlin had known tricks no other magician had been able to match, but without his power to constantly replenish them, the spells were rapidly losing their effectiveness. She reached under her shirt and held up her amulet, allowing the magic infused into the golden badge to touch the spells woven into the stone. The gates opened slowly, with a dull rumbling sound, and she stepped through the first line of defences. Faye wasn't fooled by the apparent ease of it all. The next steps would be much harder.

She smiled as she walked up Dead Man’s Walk, up towards the guards standing in front of the second gate, the one that led right into the Tower. Very few walked up the path and came down again, even now. The friends and families of those held in the Tower preferred to keep their distance and swear that they knew nothing about whatever landed the prisoners in such hot water. Mostly, their claims of innocence were shams, but it hardly mattered. The guards stepped forward, weapons raised, and Faye held up the amulet.

There was no way of knowing how Maledict had managed to obtain the amulet permitting a single person access to the Tower. Maledict kept his secrets well, knowing that one of his followers would try to unseat him soon enough. Faye smiled as the guards saw the amulet and pratically bowed and scraped as they opened the door, although that might have been because of the glamour. She’d tuned it perfectly, ensuring that the guards not only saw feminine beauty, but also someone who had the power to exile them to one of the few hellhole postings in the Empire. They might well have seen her as the Lady Tiffany herself!

Her stomach clenched as she passed through the wards and into the <st1lace><st1lacetype>Tower</st1lacetype> of <st1lacename>Camelot</st1lacename></st1lace>. The entire building was crawling with spells, picking away at her magic field and hampering her ability to use magic. A stone golem emerged from the shadows and lifted one rough hand, inviting her to follow it. Faye watched the creature warily as it turned and started to head up the stairs, trying to ferret out the magical field within the Tower. There was so much magic crackling on the air that her Sight was almost useless. It was like staring into a blinding light.

She touched one of the stone walls as they advanced up the stairs and saw a flash of blue light, flickering over her hand. It was harmless, she suspected, yet there was something badly wrong about the whole building. The magic field pressed in on her, pushing down on her mind, blocking out most of her abilities. It shouldn’t have surprised her. The <st1lace><st1lacetype>Tower</st1lacetype> of <st1lacename>Camelot</st1lacename></st1lace> had been built to hold powerful magicians and insane sorcerers. Merlin wouldn't have relied upon his own power for that, not when there was a well of magic within the city itself. He’d built his prison right on top of a well, tapping it to hold the prison in place and secure.

They reached the first level and started to walk down the stone corridor, allowing her to look left and right into each cell. Most of the cells were empty, but a few held prisoners, each one sitting calmly and helplessly on a wooden bed. There were no bars or even locks holding them in place, not when they were helpless to do anything, apart from obey orders. It was a neat system, she had to admit, if rather inhuman. But then, everyone who had been brought into the Tower was guilty of inhuman crimes. If Faye failed in her mission and was captured, she would find herself occupying one of the cells. It wasn't a particularly comforting thought. Only the awareness that returning without success would prove lethal kept her going onwards, into the darkened tower.

Light flared in the distance as they passed through a dimensional doorway, into another part of the Tower. Merlin, she realised suddenly, had bent time and space in order to construct his prison. If there was a serious attack on the prison, just as she intended to do, the Tower’s very internal structure would serve as a weapon against her. If the amulet failed…she was likely to end up a prisoner herself, or dead.

The golem stopped outside a single cell. This one was larger than the others, although lacking in creature comforts. Faye stepped forward and peered through the doorway, seeing the man seated on the bed. An unpleasant stench rose to her nostrils and she waved it away absently. After everything she’d done to attain her powers, the smell shouldn’t have bothered her, but it did. The man on the bed didn’t look up at her.

Duke Blackrock was tall and surprisingly handsome, without any of the physical degradation that accompanied the use of dark sorcery. But then, the deadly games he’d played with children hadn’t been intended to attain power, but merely to indulge a perversion. That, more than anything else, had amused Faye and her master. The Duke could have expanded the handful of magical gifts he possessed, rather than simply indulge himself. And now he was at Merlin’s mercy…or would have been, if Merlin was still within the world. Faye shared Maledict’s belief that Merlin was dead. What kind of magician would give up power if there was any other choice?

She risked opening her Sight and saw a network of spells covering his body, holding him firmly within the cell. Most of them were designed to control him without affecting anyone else, although a handful were general-purpose security spells. If the Duke tried to leave the cell, the spells would hold him firmly in place; if anyone tried to force him out, the spells would turn on them too. No one had ever escaped from the <st1lace><st1lacetype>Tower</st1lacetype> of <st1lacename>Camelot</st1lacename></st1lace>. Carefully, Faye reached into her belt and produced her wand, angling it towards the golem. The complex network of spells that kept the golem together had a single weakness, if she could just hit it before the golem realised that it was under attack…

Faye shaped the spell in her mind and blasted it into the golem. For a second, its unchanging face almost looked surprised, before it crashed down into dust. Merlin was no longer animating them by his magic, leaving them with nothing to draw on. Even so, it had been a gamble. Pushing the thought aside, she turned and ran into the cell, waving her wand ahead of her. The network of spells that kept the Duke imprisoned wavered and started to collapse. Faye whispered a Word of Power into the air and reality itself seemed to shimmer, just before the network of spells faded and vanished. The Duke jumped upwards, as if someone had rammed a hot spike into his rear end, almost hitting Faye before he caught himself. His eyes were wide and staring. A few weeks in the <st1lace><st1lacetype>Tower</st1lacetype> of <st1lacename>Camelot</st1lacename></st1lace> would have felt like an eternity. All things considered, the Duke had held up surprisingly well.

“Come on,” Faye snapped. By now, the spells governing the Tower itself would be aware of their presence. The amulet was glowing as it struggled to hold off the angry waves of power beating down on her, demanding to know who she was and why she was trying to break a prisoner free. A normal magician could never have endured that battering, but Faye had planned carefully, designing her wards to absorb a terrible pounding before they finally collapsed. “Move, now!”

The Duke didn’t argue; he followed her out of the cell and into the corridor. Faye reached out with her Sight, risking blindness, to sense the corridor that led back to the Tower’s exterior. The whole structure was altering around them, trying to trap them within an inescapable maze until the combat magicians arrived from the Iron Triangle. Her lips tightened into a smile as the entire building locked down around them. The guards would think that they had the upper hand and, normally, they would be right. No one, not even a sorcerer, could teleport out of a pocket dimension.

She spoke another Word of Power into the air, shattering most of the spells binding the other prisoners in place. The guards wouldn't realise that she already knew that she was trapped; indeed, some of the prisoners made her master look sane and reasonable. Duke Blackrock would normally have never encountered this part of the magical world. The guards would believe that she was trying to cause chaos…and they’d be right. They wouldn't realise that the chaos would serve as a distraction.

Ignoring the howls of the newly-freed prisoners, she pulled the Duke further down the corridor. Her Sight told her that the corridor had been twisted around; if they kept walking, she’d simply run back into the freed prisoners. The normal laws of time and space didn’t operate very well within a pocket dimension. Smiling to herself, she reached into her robes and produced her trump card, a Hand of Glory. The Duke’s eyes went very wide when he saw it, knowing that even knowing the spells to produce a Hand of Glory were forbidden, on pain of death. But with the Dark Sorcerers under a certain death sentence anyway, it hardly mattered. They could only be killed once.

It felt…unpleasant in her hand, a cold piece of dead flesh waiting to be activated. Maledict had cut it from the arm of one of his enemies – no shortage of those – and transfigured the fingers, turning them into candles. He’d done other things too, invoking the darkest of magical spells to transform the hand into a powerful Object of Power, a key to any doorway in the world. Faye held the Hand of Glory up into the air, whispered a spell that ignited the candles, and closed her eyes, feeling the spells bound into the Hand of Glory slowly coming to life. The magic surrounding the <st1lace><st1lacetype>Tower</st1lacetype> of <st1lacename>Camelot</st1lacename></st1lace> pushed back, of course, but the Hand of Glory was coming to life and it would not be denied. A powerful presence flared within the chamber, a small demon Maledict had trapped and bound to his service. The Hand of Glory’s power shimmered out in front of her…

Keeping her eyes closed, she walked forward, through a door that had just appeared out of nowhere. She felt the coldness of the world between dimensions, hearing things whispering deadly names outside the barriers of reality, just before she stepped through a second door. Her Sight expanded suddenly until she could see the tangled web Merlin had constructed to shield his prison. It was easy to find a way out of the pocket dimension and back into the real world. The voices howled their anger as she passed through the doorway, leaving them behind. Their words echoed in her head.

She opened her eyes and saw a pair of guards gaping at her, levelling their matchlocks at her face. Faye shaped a deadly spell in her mind and turned both of them into flaming corpses, watching with gleeful pleasure as they died. They hadn’t managed to summon a team of wizards to their aid, which meant that the main attack on the <st1lace><st1lacename>Summer</st1lacename> <st1lacetype>Palace</st1lacetype></st1lace> was working perfectly. And who would imagine that an attack on the most important target of the year was a mere diversion?

The Duke’s hand was terrifyingly cold and Faye cursed her own mistake. She’d kept her eyes closed, but he hadn’t – she hadn’t warned him to keep his eyes closed. Anyone who saw the world between the worlds was flirting with madness, to say nothing of possession by any of the inhabitants. She slapped him, hard, and was relieved to see some colour coming back to his cheeks. Ignoring his gasps of pain, she pulled him with her down the corridor and out into the open air. The rainfall had slowed to a light drizzle, for reasons she couldn’t even begin to imagine, unless it was a warning sign that the <st1lace><st1lacetype>Tower</st1lacetype> of <st1lacename>Camelot</st1lacename></st1lace> had been breached. She might be right; Merlin hadn’t been known for being particularly subtle, but his successors didn’t have access to his vast power.

A line of guards were running towards the Tower, so Faye pulled the Duke in the opposite direction. The guards shouted and levelled their weapons at her, but the bullets glanced off the shield she’d raised around both of them. And then she was running through the wards, feeling them tightening around them and trying to force them back into the <st1lace><st1lacetype>Tower</st1lacetype> of <st1lacename>Camelot</st1lacename></st1lace>. Desperately, she held up the Hand of Glory and triggered it one last time. The strange energies of the Hand flared around her and the wards shattered. As soon as she was outside the wards, she pulled the Duke to her and triggered a teleport spell. The world went away in a flash of brilliant green light.

Maledict had given her specific orders as to what to do with the Duke. Instead of returning him to Tara, she teleported them both to a safe house on the edge of one of the free cities, where they were met by two of Maledict’s other servants. One of them gave her a potion that would restore her energy after the wards had tried to crush her powers; the other took care of the Duke, working complex charms that would ensure that the Duke would remain loyal to the Dark Sorcerers. The Duke had been completely stripped of his mental defences in the <st1lace><st1lacetype>Tower</st1lacetype> of <st1lacename>Camelot</st1lacename></st1lace>, leaving him hopelessly vulnerable to their powers. By the time he was returned to <st1lace>Tara</st1lace>, he’d be doing Maledict’s bidding – and he wouldn't be even remotely aware of it. And his wife, Faye had been assured, would be grateful. She would put the resources of an entire duchy behind the Dark Sorcerers. <st1lace>Tara</st1lace> itself was small, but the Duke commanded other lands, scattered across the world. With one daring rescue, Maledict had turned the balance of power on its head.

Shaking her head, she stood up and prepared to teleport back home. By now, Maledict and the remaining Dark Sorcerers should have completed their attack on the <st1lace><st1lacename>Summer</st1lacename> <st1lacetype>Palace</st1lacetype></st1lace> and escaped, leaving behind a devastated government. Merlin had always served as the linchpin of his own government; without him, who knew what would happen when the government faced an unexpected crisis? Perhaps they’d even killed Lady Tiffany, Merlin’s lapdog…

She looked over at the Duke and smiled. A few specific potions had helped clear his head and restore some semblance of health. He’d be able to leave shortly, helping to add to the chaos gripping the country. And then the government would fall, bringing in a new world of Dark Sorcery, where might made right. And then she would have her revenge on all of those who had mocked her while she had been a weak and female magician.

With that thought, she teleported out of the safe house and was gone.

 

Chapter Seventeen<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

The <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1lace><st1laceType>Tower</st1laceType> of <st1laceName>Camelot</st1laceName></st1lace> stood alone, for all that it was part of Merlin’s capital city. It rose up into the sky, surrounded by wards that would have daunted even a Dark Sorcerer, providing a safe and secure prison for Merlin’s more powerful enemies. Very few entered the Tower to emerge safely again, everyone knew; to be condemned to the Tower was to be condemned to death. The prisoners were held under a personal charm that prevented escape and interrogated until they had spilled all of their secrets, and then they were ritually executed. Everyone knew that the <st1lace><st1laceType>Tower</st1laceType> of <st1laceName>Camelot</st1laceName></st1lace> was impregnable – but then, like so many other buildings in Camelot, it had drawn its power from Merlin’s indomitable will.

Faye stood beneath a hood and watched the rain falling down around the Tower. It was one of Merlin’s little jokes to give the Tower its own constant rainstorm – or perhaps it was part of the anchors that kept the wards in place – and it never failed to depress anyone looking at it. Faye wasn't particularly concerned as she used her Sight to parse out the Tower’s defences. With Merlin gone, the Privy Council had had to fall back on more ordinary magical wards, wards that could be broken or outsmarted or simply overpowered. The guards she could see in the mist presented no real problem, but then they were there to serve as a tripwire. The real defences would be deeper within the tower.

She pulled back her hood and allowed the rain to fall on her bare face. Female magicians were rare, female sorcerers were rarely still – and there were no other female Dark Sorcerers. Faye had turned to Dark Sorcery after an older and more powerful magician had left her face brutally scared, merely for daring to try to learn magic on her own – and she wanted revenge. Her mind hadn’t been destroyed by Dark Sorcery, if only because she’d never been very stable in the first place. The glamour surrounding her concealed her appearance, transforming the scarred girl into a desirable noblewoman. They’d never see her as she truly was, until it was far too late. Touching the amulet she wore under her shirt, she started forward towards the gates. No one was permitted to enter without permission. It was believed to be impossible for anyone to enter without permission. Her lips tightened into a parody of a smile. That bit of common knowledge would be broken today, along with the <st1lace><st1laceType>Tower</st1laceType> of <st1laceName>Camelot</st1laceName></st1lace>.

The gates loomed over her as she reached the portal, feeling spells crawling over the stone, somehow infused into the very material itself. Merlin had known tricks no other magician had been able to match, but without his power to constantly replenish them, the spells were rapidly losing their effectiveness. She reached under her shirt and held up her amulet, allowing the magic infused into the golden badge to touch the spells woven into the stone. The gates opened slowly, with a dull rumbling sound, and she stepped through the first line of defences. Faye wasn't fooled by the apparent ease of it all. The next steps would be much harder.

She smiled as she walked up Dead Man’s Walk, up towards the guards standing in front of the second gate, the one that led right into the Tower. Very few walked up the path and came down again, even now. The friends and families of those held in the Tower preferred to keep their distance and swear that they knew nothing about whatever landed the prisoners in such hot water. Mostly, their claims of innocence were shams, but it hardly mattered. The guards stepped forward, weapons raised, and Faye held up the amulet.

There was no way of knowing how Maledict had managed to obtain the amulet permitting a single person access to the Tower. Maledict kept his secrets well, knowing that one of his followers would try to unseat him soon enough. Faye smiled as the guards saw the amulet and pratically bowed and scraped as they opened the door, although that might have been because of the glamour. She’d tuned it perfectly, ensuring that the guards not only saw feminine beauty, but also someone who had the power to exile them to one of the few hellhole postings in the Empire. They might well have seen her as the Lady Tiffany herself!

Her stomach clenched as she passed through the wards and into the <st1lace><st1laceType>Tower</st1laceType> of <st1laceName>Camelot</st1laceName></st1lace>. The entire building was crawling with spells, picking away at her magic field and hampering her ability to use magic. A stone golem emerged from the shadows and lifted one rough hand, inviting her to follow it. Faye watched the creature warily as it turned and started to head up the stairs, trying to ferret out the magical field within the Tower. There was so much magic crackling on the air that her Sight was almost useless. It was like staring into a blinding light.

She touched one of the stone walls as they advanced up the stairs and saw a flash of blue light, flickering over her hand. It was harmless, she suspected, yet there was something badly wrong about the whole building. The magic field pressed in on her, pushing down on her mind, blocking out most of her abilities. It shouldn’t have surprised her. The <st1lace><st1laceType>Tower</st1laceType> of <st1laceName>Camelot</st1laceName></st1lace> had been built to hold powerful magicians and insane sorcerers. Merlin wouldn't have relied upon his own power for that, not when there was a well of magic within the city itself. He’d built his prison right on top of a well, tapping it to hold the prison in place and secure.

They reached the first level and started to walk down the stone corridor, allowing her to look left and right into each cell. Most of the cells were empty, but a few held prisoners, each one sitting calmly and helplessly on a wooden bed. There were no bars or even locks holding them in place, not when they were helpless to do anything, apart from obey orders. It was a neat system, she had to admit, if rather inhuman. But then, everyone who had been brought into the Tower was guilty of inhuman crimes. If Faye failed in her mission and was captured, she would find herself occupying one of the cells. It wasn't a particularly comforting thought. Only the awareness that returning without success would prove lethal kept her going onwards, into the darkened tower.

Light flared in the distance as they passed through a dimensional doorway, into another part of the Tower. Merlin, she realised suddenly, had bent time and space in order to construct his prison. If there was a serious attack on the prison, just as she intended to do, the Tower’s very internal structure would serve as a weapon against her. If the amulet failed…she was likely to end up a prisoner herself, or dead.

The golem stopped outside a single cell. This one was larger than the others, although lacking in creature comforts. Faye stepped forward and peered through the doorway, seeing the man seated on the bed. An unpleasant stench rose to her nostrils and she waved it away absently. After everything she’d done to attain her powers, the smell shouldn’t have bothered her, but it did. The man on the bed didn’t look up at her.

Duke Blackrock was tall and surprisingly handsome, without any of the physical degradation that accompanied the use of dark sorcery. But then, the deadly games he’d played with children hadn’t been intended to attain power, but merely to indulge a perversion. That, more than anything else, had amused Faye and her master. The Duke could have expanded the handful of magical gifts he possessed, rather than simply indulge himself. And now he was at Merlin’s mercy…or would have been, if Merlin was still within the world. Faye shared Maledict’s belief that Merlin was dead. What kind of magician would give up power if there was any other choice?

She risked opening her Sight and saw a network of spells covering his body, holding him firmly within the cell. Most of them were designed to control him without affecting anyone else, although a handful were general-purpose security spells. If the Duke tried to leave the cell, the spells would hold him firmly in place; if anyone tried to force him out, the spells would turn on them too. No one had ever escaped from the <st1lace><st1laceType>Tower</st1laceType> of <st1laceName>Camelot</st1laceName></st1lace>. Carefully, Faye reached into her belt and produced her wand, angling it towards the golem. The complex network of spells that kept the golem together had a single weakness, if she could just hit it before the golem realised that it was under attack…

Faye shaped the spell in her mind and blasted it into the golem. For a second, its unchanging face almost looked surprised, before it crashed down into dust. Merlin was no longer animating them by his magic, leaving them with nothing to draw on. Even so, it had been a gamble. Pushing the thought aside, she turned and ran into the cell, waving her wand ahead of her. The network of spells that kept the Duke imprisoned wavered and started to collapse. Faye whispered a Word of Power into the air and reality itself seemed to shimmer, just before the network of spells faded and vanished. The Duke jumped upwards, as if someone had rammed a hot spike into his rear end, almost hitting Faye before he caught himself. His eyes were wide and staring. A few weeks in the <st1lace><st1laceType>Tower</st1laceType> of <st1laceName>Camelot</st1laceName></st1lace> would have felt like an eternity. All things considered, the Duke had held up surprisingly well.

“Come on,” Faye snapped. By now, the spells governing the Tower itself would be aware of their presence. The amulet was glowing as it struggled to hold off the angry waves of power beating down on her, demanding to know who she was and why she was trying to break a prisoner free. A normal magician could never have endured that battering, but Faye had planned carefully, designing her wards to absorb a terrible pounding before they finally collapsed. “Move, now!”

The Duke didn’t argue; he followed her out of the cell and into the corridor. Faye reached out with her Sight, risking blindness, to sense the corridor that led back to the Tower’s exterior. The whole structure was altering around them, trying to trap them within an inescapable maze until the combat magicians arrived from the Iron Triangle. Her lips tightened into a smile as the entire building locked down around them. The guards would think that they had the upper hand and, normally, they would be right. No one, not even a sorcerer, could teleport out of a pocket dimension.

She spoke another Word of Power into the air, shattering most of the spells binding the other prisoners in place. The guards wouldn't realise that she already knew that she was trapped; indeed, some of the prisoners made her master look sane and reasonable. Duke Blackrock would normally have never encountered this part of the magical world. The guards would believe that she was trying to cause chaos…and they’d be right. They wouldn't realise that the chaos would serve as a distraction.

Ignoring the howls of the newly-freed prisoners, she pulled the Duke further down the corridor. Her Sight told her that the corridor had been twisted around; if they kept walking, she’d simply run back into the freed prisoners. The normal laws of time and space didn’t operate very well within a pocket dimension. Smiling to herself, she reached into her robes and produced her trump card, a Hand of Glory. The Duke’s eyes went very wide when he saw it, knowing that even knowing the spells to produce a Hand of Glory were forbidden, on pain of death. But with the Dark Sorcerers under a certain death sentence anyway, it hardly mattered. They could only be killed once.

It felt…unpleasant in her hand, a cold piece of dead flesh waiting to be activated. Maledict had cut it from the arm of one of his enemies – no shortage of those – and transfigured the fingers, turning them into candles. He’d done other things too, invoking the darkest of magical spells to transform the hand into a powerful Object of Power, a key to any doorway in the world. Faye held the Hand of Glory up into the air, whispered a spell that ignited the candles, and closed her eyes, feeling the spells bound into the Hand of Glory slowly coming to life. The magic surrounding the <st1lace><st1laceType>Tower</st1laceType> of <st1laceName>Camelot</st1laceName></st1lace> pushed back, of course, but the Hand of Glory was coming to life and it would not be denied. A powerful presence flared within the chamber, a small demon Maledict had trapped and bound to his service. The Hand of Glory’s power shimmered out in front of her…

Keeping her eyes closed, she walked forward, through a door that had just appeared out of nowhere. She felt the coldness of the world between dimensions, hearing things whispering deadly names outside the barriers of reality, just before she stepped through a second door. Her Sight expanded suddenly until she could see the tangled web Merlin had constructed to shield his prison. It was easy to find a way out of the pocket dimension and back into the real world. The voices howled their anger as she passed through the doorway, leaving them behind. Their words echoed in her head.

She opened her eyes and saw a pair of guards gaping at her, levelling their matchlocks at her face. Faye shaped a deadly spell in her mind and turned both of them into flaming corpses, watching with gleeful pleasure as they died. They hadn’t managed to summon a team of wizards to their aid, which meant that the main attack on the <st1lace><st1laceName>Summer</st1laceName> <st1laceType>Palace</st1laceType></st1lace> was working perfectly. And who would imagine that an attack on the most important target of the year was a mere diversion?

The Duke’s hand was terrifyingly cold and Faye cursed her own mistake. She’d kept her eyes closed, but he hadn’t – she hadn’t warned him to keep his eyes closed. Anyone who saw the world between the worlds was flirting with madness, to say nothing of possession by any of the inhabitants. She slapped him, hard, and was relieved to see some colour coming back to his cheeks. Ignoring his gasps of pain, she pulled him with her down the corridor and out into the open air. The rainfall had slowed to a light drizzle, for reasons she couldn’t even begin to imagine, unless it was a warning sign that the <st1lace><st1laceType>Tower</st1laceType> of <st1laceName>Camelot</st1laceName></st1lace> had been breached. She might be right; Merlin hadn’t been known for being particularly subtle, but his successors didn’t have access to his vast power.

A line of guards were running towards the Tower, so Faye pulled the Duke in the opposite direction. The guards shouted and levelled their weapons at her, but the bullets glanced off the shield she’d raised around both of them. And then she was running through the wards, feeling them tightening around them and trying to force them back into the <st1lace><st1laceType>Tower</st1laceType> of <st1laceName>Camelot</st1laceName></st1lace>. Desperately, she held up the Hand of Glory and triggered it one last time. The strange energies of the Hand flared around her and the wards shattered. As soon as she was outside the wards, she pulled the Duke to her and triggered a teleport spell. The world went away in a flash of brilliant green light.

Maledict had given her specific orders as to what to do with the Duke. Instead of returning him to Tara, she teleported them both to a safe house on the edge of one of the free cities, where they were met by two of Maledict’s other servants. One of them gave her a potion that would restore her energy after the wards had tried to crush her powers; the other took care of the Duke, working complex charms that would ensure that the Duke would remain loyal to the Dark Sorcerers. The Duke had been completely stripped of his mental defences in the <st1lace><st1laceType>Tower</st1laceType> of <st1laceName>Camelot</st1laceName></st1lace>, leaving him hopelessly vulnerable to their powers. By the time he was returned to <st1lace>Tara</st1lace>, he’d be doing Maledict’s bidding – and he wouldn't be even remotely aware of it. And his wife, Faye had been assured, would be grateful. She would put the resources of an entire duchy behind the Dark Sorcerers. <st1lace>Tara</st1lace> itself was small, but the Duke commanded other lands, scattered across the world. With one daring rescue, Maledict had turned the balance of power on its head.

Shaking her head, she stood up and prepared to teleport back home. By now, Maledict and the remaining Dark Sorcerers should have completed their attack on the <st1lace><st1laceName>Summer</st1laceName> <st1laceType>Palace</st1laceType></st1lace> and escaped, leaving behind a devastated government. Merlin had always served as the linchpin of his own government; without him, who knew what would happen when the government faced an unexpected crisis? Perhaps they’d even killed Lady Tiffany, Merlin’s lapdog…

She looked over at the Duke and smiled. A few specific potions had helped clear his head and restore some semblance of health. He’d be able to leave shortly, helping to add to the chaos gripping the country. And then the government would fall, bringing in a new world of Dark Sorcery, where might made right. And then she would have her revenge on all of those who had mocked her while she had been a weak and female magician.

With that thought, she teleported out of the safe house and was gone.

 

Chapter Eighteen<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

The dead bodies stretched as far as the eye could see.

Tiffany stood, surrounded by three Knights of the Round Table, and watched bitterly as the forensic magicians did their work. Each of the bodies was pulled out of the wreaked palace, checked for signs of dark magic that might turn them into zombies of other undead creatures, and then placed on the lawn to await burial. The clerks working to identify the bodies were struggling; some of the bodies were so badly injured that it would take days of effort to identify them. At least there was a list of who had been expected to attend the wedding. Without it, some of the bodies might never have been identified.

She felt an insane urge to cry as the line of bodies grew longer. It had been her wedding, the day that should have been her happiest on Earth. Instead, it had been turned into a slaughterhouse by the Dark Sorcerers; hell, she wasn’t even sure if she was married. They’d exchanged rings, but the ceremony hadn’t been completed. The Archbishop of Canterbury would have to rule on the issue, once he recovered from his wounds. God had to have protected him, if only because the curse that had struck him should have been lethal.

One of the forensic magicians waved her over and she walked slowly towards one of the bodies. Even in death, there was no mistaking the High Magus; the real surprise was that there was something left to identify. Magical duels, except when perfectly controlled, generally led to the loser being blown apart or transfigured beyond hope of recovery, but the High Magus’s body was unscathed. He’d died in tremendous pain, yet his magic hadn’t consumed his body, which suggested that the Dark Sorcerer who had attacked him had successfully drained his power - and perhaps his memories too - before he died.

Tiffany kept her face expressionless as she removed his badges of office. There was no sign of his wand, which wasn’t too surprising, yet the Dark Sorcerer had clearly not bothered to strip the body of its other badges. The jewelled start that represented a seat in the House of Magus, the golden orb that signified power…both of them had been left in place, as if they weren’t important. Tiffany shivered as she picked up the final badge and felt spells crawling over it, warning her that any attempt to use the gem to focus her own spells could cost her dearly. The High Magus hadn’t just been an immensely powerful magician. He’d combined the skills of wizardry and sorcery into one deadly package.

She wanted to weep for him, but she didn’t dare show weakness. In life, she’d wondered about his loyalty – and if he would be consumed by the sorcerer’s desire for power that led so many to Dark Sorcery. In death…there would be a power struggle in the House of Magus, as powerful magicians sought to claim his title for themselves. The Dark Sorcerers, wittingly or otherwise, had shattered the Privy Council, at least until a new High Magus was appointed – and he might have his own ideas about the proper balance of power. Merlin had kept the sorcerers in check through a mixture of bribery and intimidation. Tiffany knew that she couldn’t do either of them.

A low cry of shock echoed in the air as the next set of dead bodies was dug out of the wreckage. Children, barely old enough to walk on their own, hadn’t been permitted in the ballroom, where crying children would detract from the gravity of the scene. Instead, they’d been in a playroom – and the Dark Sorcerers had broken in, slaughtering some of the children and mutilating others. The entire Empire would be up in arms about the atrocity, yet anger would be mingled with fear. If the Dark Sorcerers could carry out a successful raid, slaughtering Knights and Garrison soldiers as they pleased, what else could they do?

She walked closer to the dead bodies and, finally, allowed tears to slip down her cheeks. One of the children, a girl no more than five years old, looked as if she was sleeping, but she was under the curse of endless sleep. Tiffany had studied it back at Beneficence, where they’d learned about curses old and new. The curse of endless sleep couldn’t be broken, save only by true love’s kiss – or, more practically, the sorcerer who’d cast it being forced to take the charm off the girl. Tiffany saw the girl’s parents, weeping in the knowledge that their child was as good as dead, and wanted to pledge that the Dark Sorcerer who’d cast the spell would be hunted down and forced to reverse it. She knew that it was a promise she couldn’t keep.

Her gaze moved away from the children – she couldn’t bear to look at them any longer – and towards the adult bodies. Two Dukes – both strong supporters of the Privy Council – lay dead on the grass, surrounded by their retinue of armed guards and followers. Many of their relations cast accusing looks at Tiffany, as if they blamed her personally for the crisis that had overtaken the Empire. Others were clearly calculating their next step, now that the patriarch of their clan was dead. One of the Dukes had left an acknowledged Heir, but the other hadn’t been so foresighted. Tiffany shook her head, tiredly. There would be another power struggle underway before the day came to an end.

The mangled – and unidentified – bodies lay at the edge of the gardens, as if no one wanted to get too close to them. A couple looked as if they had been ritually flayed, a method used to obtain precise amounts of human flesh for the darkest of rituals. Others had merely been blown apart, leaving little for the investigators to pierce together. The Law of Similarity would allow the magicians to eventually identify them, but God alone knew if it would be enough for the grieving relations. How many of them, she wondered darkly, would blame Tiffany for the disaster that had overtaken their families? After all, it had been her wedding…

She looked up as she saw Robin advancing towards her. Her husband – if he was her husband – looked tired and worn, covered in blood. It wasn’t his, she could tell, yet it leant his armour a menacing appearance. The other Knights of the Round Table drew back, allowing them some time alone, even though Tiffany was aware of their presence and of the small detachment of combat magicians that had arrived from the Garrison, too late to play any role in the fighting. How many others would blame the Garrison for failing to protect them when the Dark Sorcerers attacked?

“Is this how it’s going to be from now on?” Robin asked. Tiffany had found herself lost for words, something that had been happening more and more frequently since Merlin had departed for parts unknown. It was growing easier to believe that he’d died, or been killed, even though a magician powerful enough to match Merlin should have been detectable right around the globe. Surely, Merlin wouldn't have allowed the Dark Sorcerers to run rampant if he’d known what was happening. “I fought a demon in there – not some minor creature from the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Greenwood</st1lace></st1:City>, but a demon!”

Tiffany shrugged. Without being quite aware that she’d moved, she found herself in his arms, hugging him tightly. The smell of blood was horrific, but she ignored it. All that mattered was that strong arms were holding her while she stood on the verge of collapse. Robin put his arms around her and held her back, but he was clearly distracted. His eyes had a distant look that didn’t surprise her. She’d seen it before, when a handful of sorcerers had realised just how powerful Merlin truly was. It was the mark of a person who had found themselves out of their depth.

“Without the Strictures of Sorcery in place, what can’t they do?” Robin asked, pitching his voice low so that others couldn’t hear. “They can release demons, summon monsters out of the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Greenwood</st1lace></st1:City> – perhaps even wash the wild magic through a city or town and command the monsters that survive their transformation. They can teleport anywhere, launch their attacks and then get out again before reinforcements arrive. They could be anywhere in the world…”

“We’ll find them,” Tiffany vowed. She had never heard Robin on the verge of giving up before, but then…they’d ruined his wedding too. Her mother, in one of her embarrassingly frank moments, had told her that young men were always nervous on their wedding night and might welcome enemy attack to avoid having to expose themselves to their wives. The joke didn’t seem so funny now. “Wherever they are, we will find them.”

She looked down at the glowing hilt at Robin’s belt. “You fought a demon?”

“Excalibur fought a demon,” Robin said. He looked…daunted for a long moment. “I’ve faced <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Greenwood</st1lace></st1:City> monsters before – and creatures summoned by rogue magicians, but the demon was something else. If it had been able to materialise properly on this plane, we would have been in the midst of another Kentigern.”

Tiffany rubbed her eyes and let go of him, slowly. “I have faith that we will overcome this crisis,” she said, firmly. It was hard to think straight, which was probably what the Dark Sorcerers were counting on, but they were effectively at war – and she, Merlin’s First Councillor, could declare a state of emergency. Even the most bloody-minded aristocrat or independent-minded commoner wouldn’t refuse to accept a state of emergency, not after pulling so many bodies from the ruins of the <st1lace w:st="on"><st1laceName w:st="on">Summer</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">Palace</st1laceType></st1lace>. The <st1laceName w:st="on">Iron</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">Palace</st1laceType> had been an accident, if a tragic and disastrous one; the <st1lace w:st="on"><st1laceName w:st="on">Summer</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">Palace</st1laceType></st1lace> was an act of war. “They want us to be scared. I won’t let them make us scared.”

A shadow fell over them and she looked up, into the golden eyes of a dragon. Half of the dragons in <st1:country-region w:st="on">England</st1:country-region> had been raced to the <st1lace w:st="on"><st1laceName w:st="on">Summer</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">Palace</st1laceType></st1lace>, a hundred beasts quartering the sky overhead and attempting to track any Dark Sorcerers who had remained in the area. Tiffany doubted that they would be successful – the Dark Sorcerers could be on the other side of the world by now, in a single teleport bounce – but it would provide some reassurance to the soldiers and magicians sifting through the wreckage. Oddly – unintelligent immature dragons were dangerous beasts with large appetites and a habit of stealing cattle if unfed – she felt a flicker of reassurance from the golden eyes. She dismissed it a second later. It was probably nothing more than her imagination.

Robin drew Excalibur and held it up in front of her. The glow from the sword was somehow reassuring as well, even though she wasn’t sure how far Excalibur could be trusted. No one knew who had forged the sword, or given it to the Lady of the <st1lace w:st="on">Lake</st1lace> for King Arthur, but it was an Object of Power. And no Object of Power, particularly one with a mind of its own, could be completely trusted. Merlin had drummed that into her head, time and time again. There were books back at Beneficence that were effectively Objects of Power in their own right – and people who read them were forever changed by the experience, or dead.

“We can prevail,” Robin said. Even his voice was different when he held the sword unsheathed. “We shall prevail.”

Tiffany, more worried than she wanted to admit, took his hand and held it tightly.

***​

An hour later, a flash of green light announced the arrival of a sorcerer, teleporting right into the midst of chaos. Robin had Excalibur in his hand before his mind had quite registered the arrival of the sorcerer, the humming blade swinging around to cover the target. The sorcerer, wearing the black robes patterned with the white of a messenger, looked startled at the reception. Robin scowled as he stamped over to greet him. He should have known better.

“I have an urgent message from Camelot for the Lady Tiffany,” the sorcerer announced. It had to be urgent. Few sorcerers volunteered for communications duty and those that did often resented having to carry routine messages. Any magician could send messages with the proper training; the only reason to send a teleporting sorcerer was security. The sender wanted no one else to read the message. “Where is she, my good man?”

Robin fought down the rage that threatened to overcome him. “She’s counting the dead bodies,” he said, coldly. Didn’t the sorcerer even recognise him as the Lady Tiffany’s husband – assuming that they were legally married, of course – or even Excalibur itself? “If you’ll come with me…”

The sorcerer looked unbothered by the hundreds of dead bodies as they picked their way back into the wreaked palace. A team of engineers from the Garrison swore that some of the building was still viable, although Robin had his doubts. If they hadn’t needed to find a place to put all of the bodies, at least until they could be released to their heirs, he would have talked Tiffany out of going back indoors. The sorcerer followed him into the building, glancing uneasily towards the spot where Robin had fought the demon. A sorcerer often made questionable bargains with the Darkness and developed a sense for demonic presences. The chances were that the demon’s mere presence, if only for a few minutes, had permanently blighted the land.

Tiffany looked up from consulting with a pair of priests from <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Waterford</st1lace></st1:City>. There had been a surprisingly large church in the town, allowing Tiffany to call upon the priests for Last Rites for some of the dying. Even Healers hadn’t been able to save some of the ones struck by terrible curses. Excalibur glowed warmly in Robin’s hand, promising justice if not revenge. Robin looked at his bride and saw just how brutally tired she was. They’d made no plans for a honeymoon, but he promised himself that he would take her back to bed and make sure that she slept properly before she addressed the Houses of Parliament. It would not do to have her fall asleep while trying to convince the MPs to back her request for a state of emergency.

“I bring a sealed message for you, My Lady,” the sorcerer said, producing a glass ball from beneath his robes. It glowed with strange magic, ensuring that only the person for whom the message was intended could open it and read the message inside. Robin knew that some of the Knights of the Round Table – and their attached combat magicians – had long suspected that the communications spells were compromised. It seemed that the Tribunal shared the same suspicion. “I suggest that you open it at once.”

“Thank you,” Tiffany said. She took the globe with a gloved hand and placed the other hand, without a glove, against the glass. Instantly, the ball’s glow spread up her arm and surrounded her, allowing her to hear the message in privacy. Robin waited, watching her face carefully. The news wasn’t good news. Slowly, the glow faded away, leaving Tiffany alone. “Can you take a message back?”

“Of course, My Lady,” the sorcerer said. He sounded mildly affronted at the suggestion that he couldn’t enchant the ball with a new message. “What message do you wish me to carry?”

“Inform the Sorcerer Black” – Robin’s eyes went wide; the Sorcerer Black was the feared leader of the Tribunal – “that I would like to speak with him as soon as we return to Camelot,” Tiffany said. “I’ll hitch a lift back with the Dragon Mistress Eleanor.”

“Understood,” the sorcerer said. “I will carry the message personally.”

He nodded to Robin and then stepped back, muttering a spell under his breath. There was another flash of green light and he was gone. Robin looked over at Tiffany and frowned. She looked badly shaken, even after having her wedding ruined by Dark Sorcerers and nearly becoming the victim of a kidnap plot. In fact, she looked, for a moment, as tired as he felt.

“Bad news,” she said, as soon as she’d drawn a spell around them, safeguarding their privacy. Robin felt the spell’s effects and nodded to himself. The spell was easy to circumvent, but it was impossible without alerting the person inside. “That was a message from the Tribunal. The <st1lace w:st="on"><st1laceType w:st="on">Tower</st1laceType> of <st1laceName w:st="on">Camelot</st1laceName></st1lace> has been breached and…lost.”

Robin stared at her. “Lost?”

“The <st1lace w:st="on"><st1laceType w:st="on">Tower</st1laceType> of <st1laceName w:st="on">Camelot</st1laceName></st1lace>’s internal dimensions have always been a bit fluid,” Tiffany said, grimly. “Merlin intended to make it impossible for anyone to escape, no matter how powerful they were; if there was trouble, the doorways linking the interior of the Tower to the exterior would collapse, trapping the prisoners in a room with no doors and no way out. The wards were so powerful that no one, not even a powerful sorcerer, could be sure of opening a doorway into the pocket dimension.”

Robin nodded. Pocket dimensions were a favourite spell for both sorcerers and wizards, for they could be used to store anything in a very private space. One sorcerer could open up a link to another’s pocket dimension, but only if he knew the coordinates and the right spells to get through the wards without destroying the dimension or suffering blowback into his own realm. And as a prison, it was hard to beat a dimension that could only be accessed by the authorities, operating from the correct location. As always, Merlin’s sheer power had been able to force through tricks that no lesser mage had been able to copy.

He rubbed his eyes, tiredly. “Who did they try to free?”

“We’re not sure,” Tiffany admitted. “The intruder somehow broke out of the Tower and escaped, taking a prisoner with him. But all of the witnesses who saw the prisoner clearly are dead. We don’t know who was freed and they can’t get back into the Tower to count heads. By now, the prisoners will probably have killed each other before they realised that they were trapped.”

Robin stared down at his hands. “The <st1lace w:st="on"><st1laceType w:st="on">Tower</st1laceType> of <st1laceName w:st="on">Camelot</st1laceName></st1lace> was supposed to be invulnerable,” he said, slowly. But then, it had been Merlin’s magic that made it invulnerable. Without him, the impregnable prison had been penetrated. “If they can break into the Tower…”

Tiffany nodded. “They can break into anything,” she agreed. “God help us all.”

 

Chapter Nineteen<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

Maledict stood on a ruined building, looking down.

Below him, the Dark Sorcerers were celebrating. A hundred captives had been taken, mainly young, pretty and female, and the Dark Sorcerers had bound them with controlling spells before turning them loose and using them as slaves. The more powerful and experienced Dark Sorcerers had little interest in anything apart from power – even sex – but the newcomers were abusing the girls in any way they liked. Power was a heady experience for those who had never touched it before they’d discovered their magical gifts and allowed them to be perverted; they allowed themselves to be corrupted by it, gleefully. Besides, it would add another nail in their coffin if they were ever caught by Merlin’s lapdogs.

He watched dispassionately as two noblewomen were forced to run through the fire naked, while the Dark Sorcerers laughed and placed bets on the outcome. Both of the girls were largely worthless as hostages – if only they’d caught the Lady Tiffany – and allowing his followers to slake themselves on the two girls would reward them for their efforts. By the time the girls were finally sacrificed to the Darkness, they’d view it as a relief and go willingly into the hands of the demons. It would only give their sacrifice extra value.

And yet, he was brooding.

Maledict knew himself to be powerful. In fact, he was almost certainly the most powerful sorcerer in the world, now that Merlin was gone. Few sorcerers who didn’t touch dark sorcery could hope to match him for power – and he’d be able to sense their presence, just as they could sense his presence if it hadn’t been muffled by the Greenwood or the ruined city. And yet, the High Magus had come alarmingly close to defeating him in a duel. He’d been more powerful and…only clashing his magic field directly into the High Magus had won the fight. If he’d lost the battle…

It didn’t take much imagination to guess what would have happened then. With their leader dead, the Dark Sorcerers would have started scrabbling over who should be leader, while the High Magus and his cronies wiped out any of them that didn’t flee fast enough. The <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1:City w:st="on">Battle</st1:City> of the <st1lace w:st="on"><st1laceName w:st="on">Summer</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">Palace</st1laceType></st1lace> would have turned into a disaster, even if they did capture Lady Tiffany and free Duke Blackrock from his cell. And Maledict didn’t care what happened in a world without him. All that mattered was his power and his survival.

He was sure that it was possible to make himself immortal. Merlin had certainly lived for a very long time, even if he hadn’t been as immortal as everyone had thought – and even magicians could extend their lifespan using magic and potions. But that wasn't immortality, or anything else to immortality, and coming so close to defeat had forced Maledict to concentrate on the possibility that he might be defeated and killed in the future. And then all the questionable bargains he’d made over the years, to obtain and maintain his powers, would come due. Maledict had seen enough of the hellfire to know that he wanted to put off his death as long as possible.

The High Magus had been weaker than him, he was certain. A sorcerer who hadn’t fallen to madness wouldn’t gain the powers of a Dark Sorcerer, even if they were relatively sane. And yet he’d almost won, because he’d understood the basis of magic far better than Maledict had thought possible. Maledict had never attended one of the magical colleges, even before he’d started embracing the Darkness and become a Dark Sorcerer. It had quite simply never occurred to him that the colleges would have anything useful to teach him.

It wasn’t hard to understand why Merlin had created the colleges in the first place. Humans with magical talents were far from uncommon – and some of them could be very dangerous, either to others or to themselves. Merlin’s academies of magic allowed him to ensure that most were steered towards wizardry, rather than the far more dangerous sorcery, and kept most of the magicians fairly loyal to him. Wizards never risked tearing open new channels in their minds and expanding their powers, but they were far more capable of using what little they did have with a subtlety that was alien to Maledict and most of the Dark Sorcerers. Raw power could always overcome them, yet even dark sorcery had its limits.

A great shout went up from below as one of the captured women finally caught fire and started to burn to death. She wanted to run, but the spells binding her wouldn't let her escape, leaving her trapped in the flames. The Dark Sorcerers laughed and snickered at her plight, enjoying her suffering as if it were the finest of wines. Maledict smiled to himself, knowing the truth. At some point, they’d passed beyond committing atrocities because they were necessary to gain power and reached a stage where they committed atrocities because they were fun. To a Dark Sorcerer, mundane humans – even weaker magicians – were nothing more than toys, in the hands of a playful child. And toys were often broken…

Maledict concentrated, sending out a summoning. Most of the Dark Sorcerers had never been through any of the colleges, but a handful had studied before being forced to flee. Some had pushed the limits too far too fast, others had believed that the teachers were deliberately holding them back – and one had been pushed out by her fellow students. Faye flew through the air, laughing as her long dark hair streamed out behind her in the wind, and landed neatly in front of her master. She went down on her knees, a gesture of respect that had its origins in a fabled land of dark sorcery, destroyed by Merlin centuries ago.

Even with her scars – and the degradation wreaked by dark sorcerer – she was striking, Maledict acknowledged. Some of the newcomers had seen her as little more than a servant, or a whore, and had tried to force her into their beds. Faye had killed one of them, transfigured the second into a screaming statue and broken the mind of the third. Maledict didn’t care; the more his subordinates fought one another, the less they thought about trying to overthrow him and claim his power for themselves. Sorcerers rarely worked well together – even those who hadn’t embraced dark sorcery – but it had been known to happen. The alliances often fell out very quickly afterwards, but that was little consolation to the leader they’d defeated. He was, if he were lucky, dead.

“Master,” Faye said. Her voice was respectful, even submissive, but Maledict knew better than to take it on trust. Faye, like the others, would be watching for a sign of weakness before she tried to stab a knife in his back. A female dark sorcerer would have problems governing the males – dark sorcerer was all about unleashing the primal instincts of mankind – but Faye could, if any woman could. She was powerful, dangerous, and right on the verge of madness. It would take a braver man than most of the Dark Sorcerers not to fear her.

“Faye,” Maledict said, shortly. “You were at Beneficence, were you not?”

Faye bowed her head in agreement. She’d studied there – one of the few women to be accepted into any college – and had shown promise, too much promise for some of the other pupils. There was always a degree of hazing in the colleges – young magicians often picked fights with each other, purely to set up a pecking order – but Faye had been hazed until she’d snapped and fled the college, after killing one of her tormentors with a spell right out of a forbidden tome.

“You were given a through grounding in the basic elements of wizardry,” Maledict continued. “I wish you to tell me everything you were taught.”

He watched Faye’s mind ticking over, seeking an advantage for her own ambitions. She wouldn't know just how badly prepared Maledict was, unless she guessed when she started trying to teach him. And then, she wouldn't breathe a word of it to anyone else. It would be an advantage to her, one that would lose its potency if everyone knew about it.

“Yes, Master,” she said, finally. “When do you want to begin?”

Down below, a trumpet sounded as the Dark Sorcerers finished their calibration and prepared for the sacrifice. The remaining prisoners were herded forward until they were standing in one of the pools of corruption left behind by the demon who had rampaged through the city, infernal energies shimming out of nowhere and stroking their bodies with malicious glee. He watched as the prisoners began to scream, crying out for salvation that would never come. By the time the final stage began, they’d devote themselves to Satan if that was what it took to save them. And it would damn them to the deepest pits of Hell.

“Soon,” Maledict said. He chuckled darkly as one of the prisoners collapsed in the infernal fires, her body seemingly unhurt while the flames burned away at her soul. “Once the sacrifice is complete, I have to make a trip south. We will start when I return.”

His mouth shaped into something that could charitably be called a smile. “And then you will tell me everything you know about the defences of Beneficence,” he added, feeling a dark exultation spreading through his very bones. All the prizes he had never dared to reach for and claim for himself when Merlin was alive were within his grasp now. “I think we will soon claim it for ourselves.”

“Yes, Master,” Faye said.

Drawing a stone knife from beneath his robes, Maledict leapt into the air and floated down to where the sacrifices were screaming and begging for mercy. Their torment was almost a fine wine to the Dark Sorcerers, who were drawing on it to expand their own powers. With a gesture, he commanded the first of the sacrifices to be brought to him and placed on the stone alter. The girl, barely old enough to bear children, stopped screaming – until she saw the knife. Held down by binding spells, all she could do was scream and scream as he brought down the knife, savouring her every second of torment, until he finally started to cut her flesh. Blood dripped down and pooled under the stone altar, a heady brew for the Dark Sorcerers. The girl screamed and screamed until he finally ended her life. By that point, her sanity was long gone.

Maledict shaped a spell with his mind and summoned some of her blood into the air. Dark sorcery, powered by the infernal energies, shaped and transfigured the blood, transforming it into an intimate part of a dark rite. He took the transfigured blood – now with the consistency of jelly – and pressed it against his bare chest, shaping ritual marks on his flesh. Power flared through him and he laughed aloud, allowing the remains of sanity to slip away into the darkness. Even Merlin hadn’t known the joys of drawing power through a necromantic rite.

The Dark Sorcerers pressed forward until he stopped them with a glare. Pressing his hands against the dead girl’s chest, he whispered words in a long-forgotten tongue, dedicating the sacrifice – and the girl’s soul – to his demonic ally. A second wave of power, stronger than the first, flared through his mind and he rode it, allowing it to reshape his mind at will. Laughing, he stepped back and watched as infernal flames consumed the body, destroying all traces of the girl. No one would ever know what had happened to her.

“Begin,” he commanded.

As one, the remaining captives were sacrificed. Maledict stood at the heart of the power, sharing it out among his disciples. They joined him in the blissful abandonment of all scruples and drew on the power, united in their dark cause. Today, they had killed hundreds of men and women who had stood in their way; tomorrow, the world would belong to them. And then their lives would become those of gods, taking whatever they wanted and treating the entire world as a toy. There would be enough for all of them…

He stepped back, drawing on his power. The dark ritual would continue until the last dregs of power had been absorbed by one of his sorcerers, but there was no longer any need for his presence. It was easy to shape the teleport spell in his mind and he vanished in a flash of green light, rematerialising halfway across the country. He stood in the midst of the village they’d attacked and slaughtered, a day before Merlin had departed – or died. The handful of guards the Duke had left there reached for their weapons, their faces contorted with panic, and he froze them with a casual spell. He could have killed them, easily, but he still needed the Duke.

“Forget,” he ordered. Their eyes went blank as a chunk of their memory vanished. By the time they recovered, he would be long gone and they would have no memory of his visit – until it was far too late. He cast about with his Sight, seeking any traces that he was being watched from a distance, and saw nothing. The Duke clearly had better uses for his magicians then watching an empty village. He was, of course, quite wrong.

Chuckling to himself, Maledict started to walk up towards the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Greenwood</st1lace></st1:City>. Three weeks ago, it had been a hard walk. Dark sorcery was hard on the body and he’d moved like a man of ninety years old, barely able to remain upright. Now, he drew on the vast reserves of power he had taken from the dying girl and strode confidently forward, barely even aware of the effort until he reached the boundary line. He stopped and probed it carefully with his Sight. Merlin had linked the boundary lines to the wellsprings and streams of power that dotted the countryside, yet it was clear to him that the boundary lines were weakening. Soon they would collapse and usher in a new era of wild magic, where sorcerers would be gods and mundane people their servants – if they chose to let them live. Maledict wasn’t scared of the Faerie, or the Elves, or any of the other dark creatures lurking beyond the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Greenwood</st1lace></st1:City>, in Avalon. He could hold them all at bay. Their very presence would help terrify the common folk into submission.

Crossing the boundary line, he kept walking. The wild magic within the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Greenwood</st1lace></st1:City> was stronger than he recalled, more potent. Few magicians could hope to tap the wild magic, but one day, Maledict was sure, he would reach a level of knowledge and experience that would allow him to command the uncontrollable magic. And then let the Faerie and Elves beware. He drew in his Sight as he walked down to the clearing near the lake, smiling at the reminder of the ritual they’d conducted back when they were scared of Merlin, and then emitted a mental call. Slowly, cautiously, the creatures of the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Greenwood</st1lace></st1:City> gathered around him.

Maledict smiled and some of them, remembering their long-lost humanity, shivered. Many of them had been human once, before they’d been transfigured by wild magic and forced to remain in the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Greenwood</st1lace></st1:City>. Others were creatures of miscegenation, creatures born from parents who had both been transfigured by the wild magic, but in different ways. A handful had even refused to enter Avalon and had chosen to remain in the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Greenwood</st1lace></st1:City>, perhaps hoping to recapture the affinity they’d once felt for humanity. But that had been a long time ago, before Merlin, the devil’s son.

Had Merlin understood, Maledict wondered, just how much suffering he’d caused over the centuries? Few chose to be transformed by wild magic, yet Merlin had confined them all to the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Greenwood</st1lace></st1:City>, with local villagers stoning them every time they dared show their faces. Within the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Greenwood</st1lace></st1:City>, where time ran fluid and a man could step over a thousand years in a split second, they had nursed their resentments for a very long time. They hated the pure humans and wanted revenge. How could anyone blame them?

“Merlin is gone,” Maledict said. He didn’t try to charm his words to encourage belief or submission. This was the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Greenwood</st1lace></st1:City> and a simple charm like that would be drowned out by the wild magic. Besides, they would have felt his departure. “Merlin is gone…and his Empire is vulnerable as never before. This very day, I struck at the heart of the remains of the Empire and slaughtered much of its ruling class. I will overthrow the rulers and take it for myself.”

He allowed them to sense the truth in his words. “I offer you a chance for revenge,” he said. “Over the years, you have been driven further and further from your human roots, forced into the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Greenwood</st1lace></st1:City> by Merlin’s charms. Now is your chance to take it back from those who forced you to hide. The <st1lace w:st="on"><st1laceType w:st="on">Kingdom</st1laceType> of <st1laceName w:st="on">Merlin</st1laceName></st1lace> is at your mercy.

“Join me and help me to overthrow the remains of the Empire. I will grant you freedom to roam where you will, to live as the humans you are…and to take revenge on those who condemned you. You are mighty and they fear you – why not give them a reason to fear you as you feared them? Join me and take a whole new world!”

The transformed creatures discussed it amongst themselves. Not all of them were interested, but enough were to provide a powerful army of monsters that all feared. The Duke who thought he owned these lands would be in for a nasty surprise, now that the boundary lines were weakening. There would be little trouble in helping the monsters to escape and then unleashing them against an unsuspecting world. He waited patiently for their answer.

Finally, over four hundred monsters accepted his offer. Maledict smiled as he shook hands with their leader, a once-man named Thorn. With a little careful preparation, his new army could be transported to its next target, one that would please the Duke and his allies. The Free City of Londinium.

And then, waiting for him like a ripe plum, Beneficence – and Camelot itself

 

Comments?

Chapter Twenty<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

Lucas shook helplessly.

He’d never realised just how ruthless his father could be before. No, that wasn't entirely true; he’d seen how ruthless his father could be with the peasants who owed him their fealty. But then, they were just peasants whose lives belonged to his father, who could dispose of them as he saw fit. Indeed, his father was a kinder master than the Duke of Tchernobog, who had been known to hunt peasants on horseback and kill the ones who failed to run fast enough. Lucas cared little for their thoughts – but the aristocracy was quite another matter. His father had encouraged the Dark Sorcerers to strike at – and kill – members of the aristocracy.

How could he have risked so much? Two Dukes were dead, along with over two dozen Lords, Earls and Courts. The deaths from the House of Commons weren't important – Lucas fully shared his father’s belief that the House of Commons had been getting more and more uppity over the last hundred years and it was time to slap it down hard – but they’d come alarmingly close to assassinating or capturing Lady Tiffany herself. And then…they’d nearly killed Emma!

He lifted his head, hearing the quiet sniffles from the next room. Emma had collapsed the moment the Dark Sorcerers had retreated, leaving behind a wreaked palace and hundreds of dead bodies. The Healers his father had called in had been unable to do much for her, besides suggesting that they be allowed to perform a memory charm that would ensure that she remembered nothing of the battle. Lucas, who had been horrified at how reluctant his father had been to call in the Healers, had refused, even convincing his father. Or perhaps his father, who believed firmly in toughening up his children by any means necessary, had chosen not to accept their suggestion. It certainly made more sense than him finally deciding to listen to his son and Heir.

Emma hadn’t stopped breaking down into tears ever since they’d returned to Camelot. Lucas cared for little, but he did care for his sister and watching her collapse wasn't a pleasant experience. And his father had put her life – both of their lives – at risk. It was utterly unforgivable, and yet he didn’t dare express his horror and rage to his father. The Duke wouldn't hesitate to punish his son for speaking out against him.

He wanted to step into Emma’s room and promise her that it was going to be all right, but he couldn’t. His father had given his sister privacy charms, although Lucas was sure that his father could override them at will, and Lucas didn’t have the key to enter the room. Her maids could enter, but spellbound as they were, they wouldn't be able to help her. They’d carry out her orders unless her father countermanded them – and would leave her alone if she commanded, even if it wasn't what she needed. Lucas clenched his fists as the sound of weeping grew louder. What good was he if he couldn’t even help his own sister?

The Duke hadn’t bothered to raise his children himself. That would have taken him away from politicking. Instead, he’d left them to be raised by a series of tutors, all carefully chosen for their grasp of etiquette and inability to teach what a young Heir really needed to know. Lucas’s father had gained his Duchy through overthrowing his own father and he had no wish to encourage his own son to do likewise. Instead, Lucas had delved into the heroic tales of the past, from the search for the Holy Grail to the final charge of the Serpent Wars. Few of the stories had any resemblance to reality, but that hardly mattered to him. All that mattered was that the stories were exciting. He’d used to fancy himself a knight in shining armour, yet his father had constantly forbidden him to attempt to gain a knighthood through serving in the Garrison. It was not right and proper for a young Heir to risk himself in combat, his father had said, and closed the subject. And now Lucas couldn’t even help his own sister.

He remembered being envious when he’d heard that Sir Robin – the commoner-born Sir Robin – had been granted Excalibur by the Lady of the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1lace w:st="on">Lake</st1lace>. How could she have given the sword to a commoner, unless he was worthy to bear it – and could Sir Robin be truly worthy? He had to be if he’d been granted the most famous sword in all of history. Lucas would have given up anything, even the Duchy, to be in his place – and yet he still couldn’t help his own sister. Sir Robin, he was sure, would have managed it without breaking a sweat.

A cough brought him back to himself and he looked up sharply, one hand falling to his sword. He’d been wearing full armour even indoors, cursing the weight, but knowing that the protection would be vital if the Dark Sorcerers struck at his father. Yes, they’d made a bargain with him, through the services of Lucas’s half-brother, but Dark Sorcerers were noticeably erratic. One of them might break the bargain merely because he thought it would be funny. Or, perhaps, they’d decide that the Duke had outlived his usefulness and betrayed him before he could betray them.

He scowled when he saw the messenger standing there, wearing his father’s livery. It was uncommon to use messengers in Camelot’s lordly mansions, but his father had always enjoyed showing off his wealth and power. Besides, a spellbound messenger was much more reliable than a message sent by magic, even by the Duke’s loyal magicians. The House of Magus plotted and schemed against one another constantly and they’d developed spells for unlocking and cracking every known encryption spell. A message in a locked head was far more secure.

“My Lord,” the messenger said, in the flat voice that signified that he was merely relaying a message from someone else, “your father requests your presence in the study.”

Demands, more like, Lucas thought, sourly. His father wouldn't need him for anything, he was sure. It was more likely that he was trying to drag Lucas away from his sister in hopes of toughening him up. After all, Lucas would inherit the Duchy – and his sister would be married off as soon as she could bear children, to someone carefully picked to expand the family’s power and influence. Emma had used to speak of finding true love, but it wouldn't happen. She had no value to her father other than as a brood mare.

“I understand,” Lucas said. He kept the messenger waiting for a long moment, and then sighed inwardly. What was the point of tormenting a man who was merely passing on a message? “Inform my father than I will wait on him presently.”

Taking one last moment to listen to Emma – and noting with some relief that the sobbing had trailed off, to be replaced by choked snores – Lucas turned and walked down the corridor, passing a chain of guardsmen as he walked. They struck their breastplates in salute, although Lucas knew that they’d kill him in an instant if his father commanded it. His father had been bringing in more and more guardsmen to Camelot, as if he expected to have to fight for his life – or to take the city for himself. He wasn't the only one; the population of Camelot had tripled over the past week, with thousands of extra guardsmen and servants being shipped into the city. Everyone knew that it was just a matter of time before all hell broke loose, perhaps literally. The power struggle in the House of Magus had only just begun.

His father had set up duplicates of his study in each and every one of his properties. It was a luxuriously decorated room, with fine drapery, a selection of wines and more security spells than Lucas had seen anywhere else, outside of the <st1lace w:st="on"><st1laceName w:st="on">Iron</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">Palace</st1laceType></st1lace> while Merlin had been present. Even his small talent for magic could sense the deadening effect of the spells, crawling over the building and blocking all attempts by seers to peer through the defences and spy on the Duke. His father had once commented that all of the aristocracy spied on one another constantly and that there was a quiet, but very lethal war underway to develop and deploy new spying spells before counter-surveillance spells caught up with the latest development. He’d spent several fortunes making his personal space as secure as possible. It couldn’t have kept out Merlin, but then, Merlin was gone.

Lucas nodded to his father and bowed to his guests, surprised to see them entering the Duke’s mansion without demanding a meeting on neutral ground. Duke Vlad of Carpathia was a tall man, so inhumanly thin that some people whispered that he had vampire blood somewhere back along the family tree – or that he was a vampire himself. Lucas discounted the latter rumour on principle, knowing that the wards his father had designed to protect the mansion would keep out vampires and other forms of supernatural vermin, but he had to admit that the Duke was an alarming personality. His eyes, tinted red after a magical attack had come very close to assassinating him, never failed to unnerve his enemies.

Duke Olav of Tchernobog was the real surprise, a young swarthy man with a cruel face, pockmarked by sores from a disease he’d caught when he was a child. Tchernobog was infested by all kinds of supernatural creatures and some of them spread disease, even infecting the Heir to the Duchy. It was no surprise that the past Dukes had been strong supporters of Merlin and the Privy Council – without the boundary lines, Tchernobog would have been overrun by the <st1:City w:st="on">Greenwood</st1:City> centuries ago – but Duke Olav’s father had died in the attack on the <st1lace w:st="on"><st1laceName w:st="on">Summer</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">Palace</st1laceType></st1lace>. He was a young inexperienced man, perfect for Lucas’s father to manipulate how he pleased.

The other three guests were less surprising, although Lucas wondered at his father inviting them to the meeting. One, Lord Randolph, was that rarity, a commoner whose father had been ennobled by Merlin himself. He was one of the largest factory owners in the world, with interests everywhere and a fortune that outshone much of the aristocracy. The second, the Sorcerer Harm, had a bad reputation, even though he hadn’t been dabbling in dark sorcery. His position in the House of Magus and unquestioned power kept his enemies from whispering too many unpleasant things about him behind his back. The third, Baron Darling of <st1lace w:st="on">Ewing</st1lace>, controlled some of the lands between Effrul and Camelot. He had long resented his submission to Merlin and had often been on the verge of losing his title and lands.

“Hey, Lucas,” Olav said. They’d been friends once, enjoying many nights together between studying – when they hadn’t been able to ditch their tutors. Olav’s reputation for cruelty – and carnality - was well-founded. “Glad to see you.”

“Take your seat,” his father said, brusquely. “We have much to discuss and very little time to make plans and permanent arrangements.”

He strode over to the chart on the wall and tapped it, meaningfully. “Tomorrow, Lady Tiffany intends to address the Houses of Parliament and request a state of emergency,” he said. “A few of my allies have been delaying matters, pushing to see just how far she was prepared to push things. Her reluctance to force the issue forward suggests that she is weaker than we dared hope. Merlin’s backing no longer exists.”

His smile darkened. “It’s time we faced facts,” he said. “Merlin is gone and he’s not coming back.”

There was a long moment of silence. Lucas could understand their feelings. Merlin had been the centre of the Pendragon Empire for so long that being without him was almost unimaginable. And yet – the collapse of the <st1laceName w:st="on">Iron</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">Palace</st1laceType> and the attack on the <st1lace w:st="on"><st1laceName w:st="on">Summer</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">Palace</st1laceType></st1lace> suggested that Merlin, if he was still alive, had lost interest in ruling. And if he were dead…all sorts of possibilities began to open up, for those with the will to seize them for themselves.

“We do not know that he is dead,” Baron Darling pointed out, calmly. “He may be taking a long vacation and planning to return to us…”

“Unlikely,” Lucas’s father said. “In all of his years in this world, Merlin only ever retired to the <st1lace w:st="on"><st1laceName w:st="on">Summer</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">Palace</st1laceType></st1lace>. He showed little interest in visiting the lands our ancestors conquered for him. And he just vanished. I think we were wrong to believe that he is – was – immortal. I think that his years caught up with him, just as they did to the Sorcerer Wilde.”

There were nods from around the table. Wilde had been a talented sorcerer with enough discipline to preserve his sanity – and power – for nearly two hundred years. Eventually, however, his spells had weakened and old age caught up with him, aging him to death in a handful of hours. His body had collapsed to dust long after he’d passed beyond the point of no return. And Merlin had lived for over five times as long as the Sorcerer Wilde.

“The alternative is to believe that someone killed him,” the Duke continued. “And yet…we have not sensed the presence of a sorcerer with that much power. Merlin was unique; no one ever managed to convince the Lord Below to have more children. He’s gone – and we won’t see him again. And that means that we have to start thinking about the future. The Privy Council cannot rule forever.”

“I think I know where this is going,” the Sorcerer Harm said. “You believe that we should be ruling in their place.”

“Exactly,” Lucas’s father said. If he was upset by Harm jumping right to the point, it didn’t show in his voice or face. But then, he had always been an accomplished dissembler. “We represent continuity – that was why our ancestors were chosen in the first place. Who do you believe would do a better job of running the Empire? Those who have the training and experience to think in the long term – to plan for the good of the Empire - or those who depend on being elected by a fickle population into power, and who must pander to the commoners to remain in power?”

“Not all of us have bloodlines stretching all the way back to King Arthur,” Lord Randolph pointed out, mildly. “Indeed, my own father was one of those commoners you so despise.”

“And yet, Merlin saw fit to ennoble him,” Lucas’s father said. “I believe that Merlin’s judgement was always sound. You are one of us.”

“And Merlin also appointed the Privy Council,” the Sorcerer Harm said. “Do you refuse to accept his judgement in that particular section?”

Lucas’s father ignored the quiet mockery in his tone. “The Privy Council was set up to provide day-to-day governance of the Empire,” he said, coldly. “Merlin thought in the long term, but the Privy Council…cannot. They have simply too many crisis points to face in the next few weeks to provide effective long-term governance.”

He leaned forward. “And the Lady Tiffany is married to a commoner,” he added, darkly. “You know how Thomas Cromwell has been pushing for reform over the past five years; you know how he wants to strip power from the House of Lords and vest it in the House of Commons. If we allow the Privy Council to have free reign, we will wake up one day to discover that we have been stripped of power and marginalised. How long will any of us last if Cromwell does manage to push through his Reform Act?”

Lucas watched their faces, shaking his head inwardly. Thomas Cromwell had been pushing for a near-complete reform in how the Empire was governed, including weakening the positions of the aristocrats, freeing the peasants from the land and giving the commoners – even the ones living in the aristocratic lands – the vote. No one had any illusions about what would happen next. Even the most liberal aristocrat was despised by most of his peasants. The steady stream of escapes to the free cities proved that. Give them the vote and the aristocrats would find themselves voted out of houses and land. It was an intolerable thought.

“The fact remains that there is no clear procedure for…removing a Privy Councillor,” Duke Vlad pointed out, mildly. “We have always had to put up with whatever dotty halfwit Merlin insisted on placing on the Council. I don’t think he wanted us mice voting to bell the cat.”

“But if she were to lose a vote of confidence,” Lord Randolph said, slowly, “she’d have no choice, but to resign and return to Shalott with her commoner husband.”

Lucas’s father nodded, triumphantly. “And if she were to lose a vote in all three Houses of Parliament, she’d definitely have to go.”

“The House of Magus is still squabbling over who is to be the next High Magus,” Harm said. “I doubt that you could get the required one hundred and one magicians to vote against her. She is a graduate of Beneficence and a strong friend of the Lady Aylia.”

“She would still lose in the House of Commons, if I were to organise a party targeted against her,” Lord Randolph said, suddenly. “And I am sure that you could deliver the Lords. And then she would have to go, allowing us to place our own candidate on the Privy Council.”

“More than that,” Lucas’s father said. “Those of us who had a coalition built and ready would be able to reshape the Privy Council at will, creating a much more functional design. A few more…problems and the Lady Tiffany will be nothing more than a memory.”

“And then there are the Dark Sorcerers,” Harm said. “Do we really want a political crisis with them on the rampage?”

“No better time to get rid of the person who isn’t very…effective against them,” Lucas’s father said. He smiled at them all. Lucas knew that he was already measuring their backs for the stiletto. “Shall I order wine?”

The servants entered and poured the expensive wine into glasses. Duke Rufus Valditch stood up and held out his glass, striking the formal toastmaster position.

“To the end of the Privy Council, and the new world order,” he said. “To a world that belongs to those with the power and will to take it – and to do what must be done to keep it.”

They drank.

 

Chapter Twenty-One<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

The House of Lords looked rather unfriendly to Tiffany’s eye, even though everyone was being as obsequious as they had been before Merlin had left. She kept her expression carefully composed as she walked through the long corridors and into the House of Lords itself, carefully avoiding glancing at either of the guards placed just outside the stone doors. Camelot was taking on the look and feel of a city under siege, even though no one had seen anything of the Dark Sorcerers since five days ago, when they’d destroyed the Summer Palace.

She pursed her lips slightly as she walked down the centre of the aisle, towards the podium. Someone had been pulling strings in the shadows, delaying her chance to address the combined Houses of Parliament. She had her suspicions, but there was no way to prove who was behind it. It had to be one of the Dukes, if only because only they would have had the levels of influence required to get away with it. And yet...why did anyone benefit from delaying the response to the Dark Sorcerers? No one would be foolish enough to use them as allies...

The thought didn't comfort her as she stopped on the podium and allowed the Speaker to call for silence. The MPs quietened, but slowly, far slower than they would have when Merlin was alive. The fact of his absence – and seemingly permanent departure – was sinking into their heads. She was grimly aware that a dozen factions were starting to consider what they could do, now that Merlin was gone. The very existence of the Empire was threatened by the Dark Sorcerers and they were wasting time playing politics. How long would it be, she asked herself, before one of the fault lines Merlin’s power had kept in check exploded in her face?

“Members of the Houses of Parliament,” she said. She spoke quietly, knowing that the magic woven through the building would ensure that everyone heard her words. A pair of broadsheet writers, normally barred from the Houses of Parliament, could be seen scribbling down her words on notepads. They’d have a special broadsheet issued afterwards, telling the public just what was going on in the Houses of Parliament. “I have come before you to request a state of emergency.”

She paused, waiting for that to sink in. The last time Merlin had declared a state of emergency, it had been back when Kentigern had been destroyed and later abandoned. Merlin had needed to gather the resources of the Empire to help the remaining population evacuate, those who hadn't been confined to the Greenwood or killed by the demon. The Houses of Parliament had bent over backwards to ensure that Merlin got what he wanted – but then, they’d had no illusions about the likely consequences if they refused. Tiffany simply didn't have that sort of power. The cold ring on her finger only underlined the absence of the immortal figure who’d held the Empire together by sheer force of will.

“The Dark Sorcerers have come into the open,” she continued. It was a slight exaggeration. After they’d ruined her wedding, a handful of other attacks – seemingly random – had been reported. None of them had been on the same scale as the attack on the Summer Palace. It was tempting to believe that the Dark Sorcerers were reluctant to bite off another large target, but Robin suspected that they were merely biding their time. “They struck directly at the heart of the Empire. Hundreds of people were killed, including two Dukes” – which should have alarmed the remaining eleven Dukes, even Duke Blackrock, wherever he was – “and seventeen MPs. I believe that they intended to decapitate the Empire.”

They’d come alarmingly close to success, too. If she’d been killed – along with the Privy Council and much of the higher-ranking MPs and aristocracy – nothing would have saved the Empire from fragmenting into chaos. The Dark Sorcerers could have moved at will while the Empire came apart, breaking up into hundreds of independent states. It was the nightmare that Merlin had always dreaded – an end to humanity’s unity meant the end of the Second Golden Age – and Tiffany had sworn to prevent it at all costs. Did anyone ever recognise a golden age until it was over?

“The Dark Sorcerers are individually more powerful than our own sorcerers and magicians,” she said. It was something that the House of Magus would normally have disputed, however irrationally, but the power struggle was only starting to tear their ranks apart. The battle to nominate the next High Magus was far from concluded. “They can teleport, crossing the entire world in a second – and they are the enemies of all. I must request that we put aside our differences and unite to deal with the threat. We must hunt them down and destroy them before it is too late.”

She paused, refusing to show any signs of weakness. “By combining our forces, we can secure the likely targets and start an intensive search for their base,” she concluded. “We will locate their base – and we will catch them and kill them before they can wreak havoc. I must ask the Houses of Parliament to vote now.”

There was an immediate buzz of chatter. The MPs didn't like being dictated to, even when Merlin had been alive and they’d had no choice, but to honour his representative. Tiffany watched as the different power groupings made themselves clear; a handful of aristocrats there clearly in favour, a handful of commoners clearly unwilling to grant more power to the First Councillor. It was hard to blame them; the commoners were already weakened by the Houses of Parliament and some of the reformers wanted more of a say in how tax monies were spent before they paid. The Lords might control most of the lands, but the free cities were far more productive and paid most of the taxes. In some ways, the Reform Party had a point.

Merlin would have allowed the Empire to slowly shift until it settled, with more day-to-day power in the hands of those who paid the bills. Tiffany didn't have that option, not when the Lords didn't fear her like they’d feared Merlin and saw his departure as a chance to press their own agendas. Pleasing both Houses of Parliament would be impossible, not when the Lords wanted to reclaim the powers they had lost and the Commons wanted to take most of their remaining powers. Merlin could have dictated a solution; Tiffany didn't dare even to try. It would tear the government apart.

The Speaker stepped forward and tapped his long staff against the floor. Three great booms echoed through the chamber. “Shall I call the vote?”

“No,” a voice said. Tiffany looked up in surprise. Duke Rufus Valditch, Duke of Effrul, had objected. “I claim urgent business.”

“Duke Valditch claims urgent business,” another Duke said. Tiffany forced her expression to remain calm, somehow. How could anything be more urgent than the state of emergency, so they could confront and destroy the Dark Sorcerers? “I move that we consider the urgent business first.”

There was a second buzz of chatter. Some of the Lords were clearly surprised and moved to rebuke Duke Valditch and his allies. The Commons were outraged and angrily demanded – pushing parliamentary order to the limits – that the Duke step back and allow the state of emergency to be debated. There was no united response from the House of Magus, but Tiffany saw a number of magicians throwing their support to the Duke. Some of them, she realised grimly, were clients of the various Dukes. Others seemed inclined to get it over with so they could get back to the important business of choosing the next High Magus.

Tiffany scowled as the debate got out of hand, despite the Speakers pleas for quiet. She’d never really appreciated the High Magus enough, definitely. He’d had the force of personality – and power – to keep most of the House of Magus in line. Now, without him, the magicians seemed on the verge of tearing away at each other in a desperate power struggle. The Speaker seemed to have the same thought, but what could they do about it? Two hundred of the most powerful magicians in the world were gathered in the Houses of Parliament. If they started fighting each other, they’d take out the entire government.

The Speaker finally managed to get a quietened room. “Duke Valditch,” he said, firmly. “State your urgent business.”

Duke Valditch smiled, stroking his chin. Tiffany caught sight of Lucas in his father’s box, looking worried. He’d been at the wedding and had nearly been killed, along with hundreds of others. The thought almost made her smile. For a young man who’d tried to court her, and acted as if she should be so grateful for his attentions that she should open her legs at once, he was actually starting to grow up.

“On a point of order, My Lord Speaker,” the Duke said, “I believe that when a Duke wishes to address the assembled Houses of Parliament, he has priority over everything else?”

There was a long pause. “That is true,” the Speaker said, finally. It was one of the aristocratic rights, the right of precedence. The House of Commons hated it, not without reason. A nobleman who was determined to keep a particular bill from becoming law could just keep talking and talking until time ran out and the bill died in committee. “However, these are volatile times...”

“And that is precisely why we must not abandon the right of precedence,” Duke Valditch said. There was a murmur of approval from most of the House of Lords. “In such unsettled times, we must cling to whatever order we can, knowing that it provides the stability that ensures that our Empire remains stable.”

He smiled around the chamber. “However, it is not I who wishes to address the assembled Houses of Parliament,” he continued. “It is one of the other Dukes, claiming the rights that he has been denied. He has insisted that I present his representative to the chamber...”

A hooded figure, seated at the back of his box, stood up. The hood was pulled so tight that it was impossible to make out a face – or perhaps there was a masking spell, concealing the face within the darkness – but Tiffany felt a sense of growing disaster. A Duke wouldn't need such shenanigans to address Parliament, not when they controlled so much land and resources, unless... The hooded figure drew back its hood, revealing a Husk. Gasps ran through the chamber.

Tiffany fought to control her own emotions. The only person who’d used Husks had been Merlin and, for a moment, she dared to hope that Merlin had returned at last. But there was no sense of his presence, no power flowing through the ring...and anyone could create a Husk, if they knew the right spells. The spells were on the edge of darkness, yet they weren't – quite – illegal. Merlin had never forbidden them, for whatever reason of his own.

The Husk dropped the robe to the ground, revealing that it was dressed in the formal colours of Duke Blackrock. Some members of the House of Commons got to their feet and started shouting abuse, others were staring, realising who was going to address them through the Husk. Tiffany’s gaze swept along the ranks of the assembled noblemen, noting who seemed pleased, who seemed horrified...and who wasn’t surprised by the appearance of the Duke’s representative. How many of them had known what to expect?

Her mind raced, rapidly. Duke Blackrock had escaped from the Tower of Camelot, with a little help from a Dark Sorcerer. And that meant...that he was in league with the Dark Sorcerers. The thought made her blood run cold. Tara wasn’t the largest duchy in the Empire – that honour belonged to the Duchy of Tchernobog – but any Duke commanded vast resources of land and money - and guardsmen. And Duke Valditch had announced him...what was he playing at? For a moment, she considered approaching Lucas, before remembering that his father rarely shared anything with him. But then, no one in their right mind would have shared something sensitive with the old Lucas.

The Speaker seemed just as taken aback as the rest of the House. “Duke Valditch,” he said, finally, “it has also long been established that a member of the Houses of Parliament must be physically present to address this august body.”

“That is true, yet it was waived on several occasions,” Duke Valditch agreed. “Duchess Matzo, who was crippled by dark magic nearly a hundred years ago, was permitted to speak through a magical avatar by Merlin personally. Lord Nottingham and Lord Calcutta were both permitted to send representatives to the House of Lords when they were on the front lines of the Serpent Wars. Our esteemed First Councillor has declared a state of emergency. Precedent states that in a state of emergency, members of the House of Lords can send a representative to the Houses of Parliament.”

Tiffany swore inwardly as another burst of chatter swept over the assembly. The Speaker seemed stunned, unable to decide how to act. Tiffany couldn't blame him, not really. The Houses of Commons were governed by precedent as much as anything else – and Valditch was right, damn him. Precedent would allow Duke Blackrock to address the Houses of Parliament from the safety of Tara. She cursed her own hesitation under her breath. If she’d had the nerve to execute him herself, long before Merlin had departed, this crises would never have arisen. But who would have anticipated that Merlin would leave the world and abandon his Empire? He hadn't mentioned it to his most trusted councillors.

“You are correct,” the Speaker conceded, finally. There was a howl of outrage from the House of Commons. They knew – everyone knew – why Duke Blackrock had been in the Tower of Camelot. The thought of allowing a child rapist to address the Houses of Parliament was outrageous. A number of the aristocrats looked uncomfortable as well, but Tiffany could see which way they would jump. They would allow the Duke to address the Houses of Parliament, if only to support their own aristocratic rights. “The Duke may address the Houses of Parliament.”

It took nearly seven minutes for the chamber to quieten down. Several of the independent MPs – and even some of the magicians – were howling abuse at the Husk. Tiffany concealed her facade of despair behind a wry smile, knowing that most of the magicians weren't so much outraged by the Duke’s crimes as perplexed – what had he gotten out of them, apart from satisfying his perversion? A Dark Sorcerer might sacrifice children to the Darkness to gain power, but he wouldn’t actually rape them.

“Members of the Houses of Parliament, thank you for listening to me,” Duke Blackrock’s Husk said. It had a dull raspy voice, rather than the aristocratic voice Duke Blackrock had possessed, before he'd been thrown into the Tower of Camelot. “I would have addressed you in person, but a well-founded fear of persecution convinced me that sending a representative would be far safer. The First Councillor, who seeks to rule in Merlin’s place now that the great tyrant is gone, wants me dead.”

There was another outburst of angry remarks from the House of Commons. This time, the Speaker moved his hand in a complicated gesture and the spells tightened, muffling out their voices. The Husk seemed more amused than anything else by the commotion, although there was no way of knowing just how tightly it was bound to its master. Tiffany found herself wondering if she should destroy the Husk, hoping that the feedback through the psychic link would kill the Duke. There was no way to know – and besides, the Husk had parliamentary immunity. If she broke that, the Houses of Parliament would turn on her. It was outrageous – and yet, what could she do?

“I have done nothing that was not done by others, over the years,” the Husk continued. “And yet, I am the one tried by the First Councillor and thrown into the Tower of Camelot – without a chance to plead my case before the Houses of Parliament, or even Merlin himself. The Lady Tiffany wanted me dead. It was only through sheer luck that I was able to escape and make my way back to Tara.”

“Help from the Dark Sorcerers,” Tiffany snapped, aloud. Her words would be heard by everyone. They’d all know how the Duke had escaped, even though it would further dent the reputation of the Tower of Camelot. It hardly mattered; even a team of dedicated magicians had been unable to re-establish the link to the interior of the tower. They’d need to built a whole new prison, one that couldn't be anything like as secure as the Tower of Camelot. “They broke you free.”

“Yes, they did,” the Husk agreed. It turned, until its dead face was staring at Tiffany. “The Dark Sorcerers only want to explore the limits of power, but for that they are hunted down by Merlin’s lapdogs. Why, now that Merlin is dead, should we tolerate his rule?”

Tiffany stared. The words were – almost literally – blasphemy, something that had occurred to the remainder of the Houses of Parliament. MPs – Lords, Commons and even Magus – were on the feet, shouting angry demands for the Husk to be removed by force and destroyed. Even the ones who had clearly supported the Duke’s right to speak were horrified. She looked up at Duke Valditch and frowned. The Duke’s face was expressionless. Had he known what he was going to unleash?

“I am forced to take the most drastic action to preserve myself and my lands from the power-hungry bitch who aims to rule in Merlin’s place,” the Husk said, effortlessly outshouting the remainder of the chamber. “In the name of my family, I declare independence from the Pendragon Empire. Tara will become an independent state, where the laws and strictures that Merlin signed into law will no longer apply. I invite you all to join me in preserving our rights against a ruthless woman who wants power...”

The chamber collapsed into chaos.

 

Comments?

Chapter Twenty-Two<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

“I cannot believe his nerve!”

Robin looked up sharply as Tiffany stormed into their apartment within the Keep He hadn’t been at the Houses of Parliament, but bad news had a habit of spreading quickly. Duke Blackrock’s declaration of independence had been passed through the Knights of the Round Table, none of whom expected Parliament to let Tara go without a fight. And even if they had been so inclined, Duke Blackrock’s announcement of a de facto alliance with the Dark Sorcerers who had freed him would have put a stop to that. Dark sorcery was the one thing that might unite Lords and Commons in opposition.

“He’s insane,” Tiffany snapped. She twisted away as he reached for her and sat down hard on a chair. “Does he really think that we’d let him get away with it?”

“He may not be thinking at all,” Robin pointed out. “How does declaring both independence and an alliance with the Dark Sorcerers help him?”

Tiffany glared at him. “I cannot believe that you’re taking his side,” she said, sharply. “Do you not know what that complete...sinner of a bastard man did?”

“Of course I know,” Robin said. He hadn't been part of the party that had arrested the Duke, but word had spread rapidly even before Tiffany had made a formal announcement. Duke Blackrock had kidnapped, raped and murdered a number of small children, merely to indulge his perverted lusts and passions. It had shocked even the hard-boiled House of Lords. Used to indulging their right to lust, intrigue and skirmish as they saw fit, even they had limits. “And yet, why has he told the world he’s in alliance with the Dark Sorcerers?”

Tiffany contemplated it thoughtfully. “Good point,” she conceded, reluctantly. It had been the act of an insane man. Why tell the world something that would ensure that he wouldn't be allowed to go free? “Are you suggesting that he’s no longer in control of himself?”

Robin nodded. It was easy to use magic – even without touching dark sorcery – to control a person’s mind. The aristocracy warded themselves thoroughly against spells that could take control of them – with or without their knowledge – but Duke Blackrock had been stripped of all his wards before he'd been placed in the Tower of Camelot. He would have been vulnerable to any kind of control spell – and some of them were powerful enough to rewrite his personality, turning him into a slave for the Dark Sorcerers. If the Duke was now their slave, he would be doing their bidding – and all of Tara would follow him. He was their Duke, their sworn liege lord...and Merlin was no longer present to intimidate any of his followers into changing their allegiance.

“Right,” Tiffany said, sardonically. “It doesn't matter, anyway. We can't get Tara leave the Empire, even if its Duke isn't in control of himself.”

“Maybe,” Robin said, reluctantly. There was something about the whole scenario that didn't quite make sense. If Duke Blackrock hadn't confessed to working with the Dark Sorcerers, there were enough aristocrats who might support him to prevent the Privy Council from moving against Tara. And that would have ensured that the Dark Sorcerers had a base that would provide protection against detection. They might have reasoned that Duke Blackrock’s liberation would draw a red line between Tara and the Dark Sorcerers anyway...or they might be up to something else. But what? No matter how he looked at it, he couldn't escape the sense that the Dark Sorcerers had thrown away a considerable advantage – and he couldn’t convince himself that it had been caused by their near-insanity.

“I have a meeting with the Privy Council in one hour,” Tiffany said, finally. Cold determination was written all over her face. “Duke Blackrock won’t be allowed to get away with this. We’ll mass our forces and invade Tara within the week. Even if he escapes, he won't be able to help his masters any further.”

Robin frowned. The last serious war the Empire had fought had been the Serpent Wars, three hundred years ago. The Garrison had never had to fight a serious battle since then; even the handful of peasant uprisings or various Dark Sorcerers hadn't required a full mobilisation. Even with the advantages Merlin had given his personal army, he doubted that they could launch an invasion of Tara within the week. Tara was an island and if the Duke’s own forces moved quickly, they could secure the free cities and the Garrison’s outposts before reinforcements arrived.

“The sooner we deal with this problem, the better,” Tiffany said. She stood up and paced over to the window, staring out over the glittering towers of Camelot. Robin watched her, feeling his heart swelling with love. “The longer we leave the Duke alone, the more chance that someone else will try to follow him into declaring independence.”

Robin stood up and walked over to her, placing an arm around her waist. She snuggled up to him gratefully, although he could read the tension in her body. A moment later, she turned her face and kissed him gently on the lips. Robin almost smiled, recognising the signs. One thing they had in common was that they would both place their duty first. As tempting as it was to spend the next hour in bed, they couldn't indulge themselves. Duty was a hard taskmaster.

“I love you,” he whispered, kissing her red hair.

“I love you too,” Tiffany said. It didn't seem fair that they hadn't even had the chance to take a proper honeymoon, but they’d agreed to wait until the Empire stabilised. “I...”

She kissed him again and, for a while, the horrors of war seemed to recede.

***​

The Privy Council assembled without fanfare or formality. There were formal ceremonies for the opening of the council, but Tiffany had pushed them aside after Merlin had departed, knowing that they didn't have time to waste. The High Magus’s seat was still empty – the reports she’d had from the House of Magus said that they were no closer to finding a successor, even though nine magicians had been turned into small hopping things and three more had been killed – and one of the others had been injured in the attack on the Summer Palace, but the others were present. None of them looked particularly happy.

“Duke Blackrock must be stopped,” Tiffany said, once the room had been sealed. She’d asked Robin – and Excalibur – to sit in, but she had carefully refrained from inviting anyone else. The broadsheet writers had asked if they could have a place in the chamber; Tiffany had refused the request with an unholy amount of glee. By now, the broadsheets would be telling the entire Empire that Duke Blackrock had declared independence, in the name of dark sorcery. “We cannot permit Tara to become independent, let alone serve as a base for the Dark Sorcerers. There’s no way that we can talk sense into him; we need to remove him by force.”

There was a long pause. “The Houses of Parliament have granted us all necessary authority to deal with the rogue Duke,” she continued. That was only technically true; the Houses of Parliament had voted her the authority, but they’d done it in a thoroughly limp-wristed way that suggested that some of them were waiting to see which side proved stronger before they jumped. “However, we need to move fast. In Merlin’s time, an attempt to declare independence would have been fatal; now, if we fail here, we will encourage nationalists of all stripes to launch their own declarations of independence.”

She nodded to Major General Sir Valiant, who unfurled a map on the table. Once, they would have had a magical representation of the entire world in front of them, but that had been powered by Merlin’s will. Now, the combined power of the combat magicians assigned to the Garrison hadn't been able to repower the crystal display. Some of them believed that the spells could be simplified and rewritten to operate with less power, but Tiffany wasn’t holding out much hope.

“The Island of Tara,” he said, by way of introduction. “The communications magicians have been busy. There are three free cities in Tara and all three of them have come under siege. Duke Blackrock’s personal guard has moved from their patrol bases and taken up positions outside the cities, cutting all lines of access. So far, they haven’t tried to take the cities, but if they remain where they are for more than a few months, the cities will starve.”

Tiffany nodded, grimly. The free cities might control most of the factories and the other means of production, but the aristocracy controlled most of the farmland and supplied food to the free cities. They’d used the food weapon before from time to time, when too many peasants had fled their nobles and gone to the free cities, yet Merlin and the Privy Council had always been able to keep a lid on the crisis. Now...the thought of the Dukes using the food weapon without restraint shook her to the bone. The free cities would hardly let that pass without brutal resistance.

“We have one base on the island; the Garrison of Béal Feirste, near the free city of Béal Feirste,” the Major General said. “So far, it hasn't been attacked, but there’s only one maniple assigned to the base so I’d be surprised if the Duke left it alone much longer. I believe that our best course of action lies in summoning the free city guardsmen to the banner, reinforcing the Garrison with forces from England and then launching a direct strike against the Duke’s residence. If we can capture him and his family, the remainder of Tara should surrender. The Duke has never made himself very popular.”

He frowned. “Our weakness is that we don’t have that many reinforcements on hand,” he continued. “We can spare a couple of maniples from England, maybe four more from overseas, but that won’t give us parity with the Duke’s men. If the Duke has assistance from the Dark Sorcerers, we may find ourselves out-powered as well as outnumbered.”

Tiffany frowned. “Are you saying that we can't win?”

“I’m saying that it will be hard to defeat him without making a much larger commitment,” the Major General said, flatly. “Merlin never allowed the Garrison to grow to a strength that matched its obligations. We need to build up a much larger force without compromising its quality and that will take time. It takes nine months to produce a Garrison soldier from scratch; much longer to produce a combat magician. Our only real hope for rapid expansion of our forces comes from summoning the noble forces and civil guardsmen to the banner, but that will pose political problems.”

Robin leaned forward. “What about a small team?” He asked. “We go in, break into his castle and assassinate the Duke. His Heir might not be so inclined to risk all-out war with us.”

“It’s a possibility,” the Major General conceded, “but Tara might well fall into chaos. The Dark Sorcerers would thrive in chaos.”

“Besides, there would be political issues,” Tiffany added, reluctantly. A neat little assassination would have solved many problems, but it would have created others. No matter how much they despised him, the House of Lords would be...unhappy about creating such a precedent. Part of her was starting to wonder if the Houses of Parliament had voted her the authority to stop the Duke in the hopes that the Privy Council’s forces were scattered, or weakened by the conflict. They’d hardly authorise new recruitment, or conscription.

“There’s also the issue of cost,” Lord Chancellor Rupert said. “The cost of maintaining the Garrison isn't cheap; fighting a war, even a very short war, would be immensely expensive. We are due to start collecting taxes and tithes within the next four months, but...”

He allowed his voice to trail off. They all understood. Merlin could command that taxes be paid and they would be paid, but the Privy Council didn't have that power. The Houses of Parliament would hardly vote them money without demanding a say in how it was spent. It seemed absurd to think that an empire that dominated an entire world could be poor, but Merlin had never collected taxes himself. The Privy Council would be dependent upon the Houses of Parliament to fund the empire. And they who paid the piper called the tune.

“Cost isn't an issue,” Baron Blackley snapped. “This...man has been abusing children for years; now he thinks he can declare independence and build himself a world where he can keep abusing and murdering children for the rest of his life. We need to bring him to justice or no one will have any faith in our government!”

“If we can't pay for the war,” the Lord Chancellor said, “the Duke may win by default.”

Tiffany tapped the table and they fell silent. “We have enough time to make a start at removing him and his...dreams of independence,” she said. “Major General – start moving forces to Béal Feirste. Everything we can spare; men, magicians, combat dragons...I’ll even authorise the use of the few remaining Objects of Power. I’ll speak to the Sorcerer Black; he may have little official standing in the House of Magus, but perhaps he can convince them to choose a new High Magus, or at the very least send additional magicians to Tara.

“Once we’re ready to move, we’ll move. We’ll try to keep damage down to an absolute minimum, but whatever happens, the Duke is not going to walk away from this with his freedom, let alone an independent state. Is that clearly understood?”

There were nods from around the table. “Good,” Tiffany said. “I’ll speak to people from the House of Commons; perhaps they can spare guardsmen to reinforce the Garrison’s forces. If not, we may need to start recruiting again, quickly.”

On that note, the meeting ended.

***​

Robin held Excalibur in one hand, feeling the energy shimmering within the sword. It always surprised new recruits when they discovered just how heavy swords actually were, but Excalibur seemed to be light in his hands, as if it were made of air. The brilliant white glow illuminating the chamber seemed to pulse steadily, endlessly. Merely holding the sword gave him a burst of confidence that nothing else could match. A single man holding Excalibur could destroy an entire army.

He returned the sword to its scabbard as Tiffany stormed into the room. She looked...angry, and frustrated. Robin watched her as she poured herself a drink and swallowed it hard, not without some concern. Tiffany had never drunk more than a glass of wine in all the time he'd known her, even on their delayed wedding night. To see her drinking now was worrying.

“No one wants to spare forces from their own petty concerns,” she said, as she put down the glass. Robin winced. That was worrying, if not surprising. The aristocracy would see their personal forces as their only protection in a time of chaos, while the free cities would be reluctant to release their own guardsmen while the aristocracy had their own forces mobilised. Besides, the Garrison could send its forces where it willed, but the free cities had limits. Sending troops halfway around the world might prove...unpopular with the voters. “What happened if we can't defeat the Duke?”

Robin took her in his arms, trying to comfort her. The answer was simple enough; absolute chaos. Without a strong central government, the Empire’s factions would tear it apart. And then the Dark Sorcerers would claim control of the remains and doom the entire world to an endless nightmare of blood and suffering – if the Elves or Faerie didn't destroy the world first.

“I need you to go on a diplomatic mission,” Tiffany said. Her body felt rigid in his arms, as if she was too stressed to think straight. “Londinium has enough guardsmen to make a difference, even if they only send half of their forces to Tara. They won’t listen to me, but they might listen to you. You’re a commoner – and you carry Excalibur. If you could talk them into taking a hand in events...”

Robin frowned. “But won’t that upset the House of Lords?”

“I'm sure it will,” Tiffany said, grimly. “But on the other hand...if we don’t act now, we lose the entire Empire. We have to stop this before it gets any further out of hand.”

She let go of him and stalked over to the table. “We’re already moving as much as we can to Tara, but we need more,” she added. “You have to convince them to spare some of their guardsmen, or we may well fail in Tara.”

Robin nodded, considering. Duke Blackrock had indulged his tastes on commoners, not children of noble blood. It had made him extremely unpopular in the House of Commons, who were often elected by people who’d fled the aristocracy. That alone should encourage the Commons to assist with the war, but they’d be watching their backs carefully, untrusting of the other noblemen. And yet...Excalibur might be enough to convince them to spare at least a few thousand guardsmen. And if Londinium made that gesture, the other free cities wouldn't want to be left behind. Hell, he was surprised that they weren't already fuming over the threat to their brother cities in Tara.

“I’ll go,” he promised. In the scabbard, Excalibur seemed to hum at the prospect of action. “You take care of yourself here, all right? Watch your back.”

Tiffany smiled up at him, even though she looked tired and worn. “I will,” she said, “and you watch yours. The House of Lords is still uneasy over you carrying that sword.”

“But if I was the King of England,” Robin said, with a snort, “don't you think I’d be on the throne by now? I don’t want to rule.”

“I believe you,” Tiffany said, “but do you really expect the aristocracy to believe it?”

 

Comments would be nice...

Chapter Twenty-Three<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

It seemed to be a law of nature that wherever there were soldiers, there were camp followers. Even the Garrison, Merlin’s personal army, had camp followers surrounding its bases, although it hadn’t gone on campaign since the Serpent Wars, three hundred years ago. There were hawkers and traders, soldier’s wives and – inevitably – prostitutes, selling themselves to the soldiers in exchange for a handful of bronze pieces. The practice was officially forbidden by the Church – which had been moralising for years on the subject – but no amount of preaching had ever put a stop to the practice.

Concealed behind a glamour that suggested she was nothing more than the wife of a common soldier, Faye watched from a distance as the Faerie Mound split open, disgorging a line of soldiers walking up to the base. The Faerie Roads ran through Avalon and could be used, with the proper pacts, to move soldiers all over the world very quickly, without needing to worry about shipping or even logistics. It had taken the maniple only an hour’s hard marching to cover the distance between Oceania and <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1lace w:st="on">Tara</st1lace>, although it was clear that some of the soldiers had not enjoyed the experience. The Faerie Roads could be disconcerting to those who possessed no magical talent of their own.

Her lips curved back in a humourless smile as a flight of dragons roared overhead, swooping down towards the dragon pens that were rapidly being expanded by workers from Béal Feirste. The free city was on the verge of panic, with a strong force of guardsmen loyal to Duke Blackrock enveloping the city at a safe distance, even though the guardsmen had shown no sign of warning to storm and sack the city. They’d been delighted when the first reinforcements started to arrive and their MPs had been loudly demanding action, hoping that the Privy Council would see fit to dispose the Duke’s family completely and hand his lands over to the free cities. It wouldn't even be a bad solution either, Faye acknowledged, if they ever had the chance to put it into practice. The Duke’s forces were chosen more for loyalty than competence – and they had no dragons. Their best chance to win the war had been in the first few days, when they could have secured the Faerie Mound and then overrun the free cities. Now…they were helpless observers as the Privy Council mustered its troops.

Faye stepped down, starting a long walk that would take her around the Faerie Mound. Even from a distance, she could sense the wild magic tangling the air around the Mound, reminding her that there were some powers in the world far greater than the Dark Sorcerers. And then it struck her…how long would the Faerie Roads remain stable? No one knew who’d built them, but all the sources agreed that they were far older than Merlin, anchored and guarded by Beings of Power far superior even to the man who should have been the Antichrist. How long would the pacts Merlin had struck with the <st1:Street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Faerie Road</st1:address></st1:Street>’s masters remain in force, now that he was gone?

A handful of soldiers waved to her as she walked back, her glamour ensuring that they took her for granted, without questioning her presence. She sensed the position of a combat magician and altered her path to avoid him, knowing that if he sensed her she would have to flee. Silently, she counted the soldiers as the maniple took up positions, with sergeants bellowing orders and chivvying the soldiers into action. Men were already digging latrines and organising watch parties. It wouldn't be long before the Garrison was ready for its first serious war in three centuries.

Ambling aimlessly towards Béal Feirste, she waited until she was out of sight and well away from any detection wards cast around the camp, and then teleported back home. Maledict would be very interested to discover that the plan had – so far – worked perfectly.

The trap was about to be sprung.

***​

“Old blood, old blood!”

Robin recoiled in surprise and horror as the old crone grabbed his leg, almost pulling him off the horse. The beast whinnied in surprise as the lady seemed reluctant to let go. Robin almost reached for his sword, before realising that there was no real threat. The old lady seemed harmless, if crazy.

“Old blood,” she repeated. She met his eyes with startlingly bright blue eyes, undiminished by the age crippling the rest of her body. Her grey hair covered a scarred face, a legacy of a life on the streets. Robin suspected, from her stare, that she had a vague precognitive talent, a talent that Merlin had alternatively tried to ignore or suppress. True Oracles were rare, but whenever they appeared, trouble followed in their wake. That had been enough reason for Merlin to outlaw their talents, or consign them to the Tribunal. “You have old blood.”

Robin slipped off the horse and took her hand in his. “Old blood?” He repeated, perplexed. “What do you mean…?”

“You can’t avoid the sins of the past,” the old woman said, earnestly. “All you can do is learn from them. Your father’s father and his great-grandfather would have understood, but you’re their son and you have to learn for yourself…”

“Don’t worry about her, sir,” the guardsman escorting him said. “Old Tilly is a harmless old baggage, wandering the city offering to tell people their futures in exchange for gold and silver coins.”

Robin looked up at him sharply, and then back to the old woman. She was gone. He recoiled in shock and reached for his sword, feeling Excalibur’s presence flowing into his very soul. It was reassuring, a sense that there was no true danger, yet he couldn’t avoid the shiver running down the back of his spine. He’d seen too many fortune-tellers in his hometown, but to see them in Londinium was unusual. Or maybe not so unusual. The free cities were often home to those who had no place on noble lands, or were persecuted by the Church. And someone who had been brought up like that would have plenty of experience in disappearing without a trace. It didn’t have to be magic…

“I’m glad to hear it,” he said, dryly. He clambered back onto the horse and pressed his hands against the beast’s neck, feeling its racing heartbeat. Animals were often more sensitive to the supernatural than humans and the horse felt as if it had had a nasty fright. It was well-trained, too well-trained to bolt at the first sign of danger, yet Robin could tell how close the horse had come to breaking the conditioning, and the loyalty spells woven into its harness. “Shall we resume our ride?”

It had been a hard journey from Camelot to Londinium, even through he’d ridden on the railway rather than galloping all the way from one city to the other. Over a short distance, the railways didn’t have too much of an advantage over a man on horseback, but over a longer distance they effortlessly outpaced the horse. And a railway could carry far more goods than any horse, although they were only able to run where engineers had laid down tracks. Robin suspected that the transformation effected by the railways had only just begun – and the aristocracy suspected it too. Why else would most of the senior noblemen have chosen to ban the railways from their territory?

The city of <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Londinium</st1lace></st1:City> was larger than Camelot – and ugly. Where Camelot affected a fairy-tale air, with soaring towers and magically-supported buildings, Londinium was composed of lower buildings and dirty factories. A few dozen stone buildings in the centre of the city, straddling the great river <st1lace w:st="on">Thames</st1lace>, looked clean, but much of the rest of the city appeared poor. And yet…the city bustled with life in a way that no lordly-owned city ever could, for the people living within the free city were free. They owed no aristocrat the fruit of their labour; they could work for themselves or work for others, and change jobs as they chose. In the free cities, they could even read and indulge themselves in ways forbidden to those of their low-born station.

Robin scowled as the wind changed and he smelled the smog drifting down from the factories. In some ways, the free cities were less welcoming than the aristocratic lands. Merlin had created the aristocracy and charged them with looking after their peasants, although many of them only paid lip service to the rules, but most of the governors of the free city felt no such obligation. A peasant who arrived in Londinium might be lucky enough to find a career that would allow him to build a life for himself, or he might fall into one of the many pitfalls awaiting the unwary or the naive. He might fall into debt and end up owing everything to a loan shark who would take everything and then leave him for dead, or he might be entrapped into working for low pay in a dirty factory, bound by contract never to leave or seek a change in his working conditions. There were some of the lowly-born who were just as poor masters as the aristocratic lords; indeed, some of them were worse. And with their wealth, often created by fair means or foul, how long would it be before they managed to gain titles and sit in the House of Lords?

The thought worried him as he was escorted over the bridge and up towards the Town Hall. It was a massive building, as suited the largest of the free cities, almost a palace in its own right. The study nature of the building belayed its true nature; a castle, without ever crossing the line that would have marked it out as an encroachment on aristocratic rights. He hoped that the city fathers had paid the designer handsomely; without magic or artillery, assaulting the Town Hall would be expensive in lives and gold.

By law, the free cities weren't allowed to recruit their own private armies. They’d circumvented the law by raising city guardsmen, who were technically a police force, but had training in military weapons and tactics. A surprising amount of retired soldiers from the Garrison – and deserters from the various lordly armies – had also made their home in the free cities, offering their masters a military option that didn’t – quite – break the law. Londinium produced most of the weapons for <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">England</st1lace></st1:country-region>, as well as several other parts of the Empire; it would be easy to produce an army at short notice. The great advantage of firearms was that, unlike swords or magic, it didn’t take years of training to produce a soldier.

The Town Hall was heavily guarded, he noted as they rode up, but that didn’t stop the crowd of demonstrators outside from shouting their demands over the walls and into the ears of the city fathers. Robin found himself struggling to understand what they actually wanted, before giving up in wry amusement. No aristocrat would have tolerated such a rabble on his doorstep for a moment, but the city fathers of Londinium knew that they couldn’t afford to alienate large sections of the population. In the aristocratic lands, the men who composed the lordly armies were often rejected and despised by their families, but in Londinium a city guardsman was a very honourable career. Ordering the guards to charge might have them turning their guns on the city fathers instead – and then, there was the prospect of losing their seats at the next election.

He slipped off the horse as they reached the yard and spent a few moments stroking the beast, trying to calm him down. The horse still looked spooked and Robin passed him over to a stable boy with some reluctance. Even the highest of noble lords took care of his horse personally; it had been drummed into him from the very first day at the Garrison. And instead, he was placing the horse into someone else’s hands, again.

The guards at the main doors balked until they saw Excalibur, and then they couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. Robin concealed a smile and allowed the building’s castellan – a surprisingly young woman with dark skin and darker hair – to escort him through luxurious wooden corridors and into a reception room. The castellan bowed and introduced him to Thomas Cromwell, the Lord Mayor of Londinium.

“Welcome to Londinium,” Cromwell said. Robin shook hands with him, studying his face thoughtfully. He’d expected to face the entire city council, not just the Lord Mayor, who was also the leader of the Reform Party. Reform was strong in the older free cities, even though many of the wealthier factory owners campaigned against it. Having arrived, they wouldn't want anything to upset the apple cart. “We need to talk.”

Robin nodded, slowly. He preferred fighting, not…verbal fencing. Tiffany seemed to be good at it, even if she didn’t enjoy it, but Robin liked his fighting to be out in the open, not hidden agendas and secret motives. The chair was sinfully comfortable, even against his armour. The glow from the sword seemed amused at Robin’s dilemma.

“Certainly,” he said, finally. “I have a brief to put before the city fathers…”

“Your wife wishes to borrow some of our guardsmen,” Cromwell said, dryly. Robin looked up in surprise. “It wasn’t too hard to guess. One doesn’t have to have agents in sensitive places to know that the Garrison is dangerously overstretched, even before the Dark Sorcerers attacked your wedding.”

A maid came in with a bottle of red wine and two glasses. Robin wasn't fond of wine, even though he knew that Tiffany loved the stuff, but he accepted it gratefully, recognising the hidden message. The commoners were reputed to drink beer and nothing, but beer – serving wine was a subtle warning that he wasn't dealing with someone who would bow and scrape before him.

“That may be arranged, once the city fathers have had a chance to debate the issue,” Cromwell assured him, once the maid had departed. “I will ensure that it is put before them, but I need to discuss a separate issue with you.”

Robin sipped his wine, waiting. Cromwell’s support would ensure that the city supplied guardsmen to augment the Garrison – and he clearly had a price. Absently, Robin wondered what it would be. Support against one of the noblemen, political support in the Houses of Parliament, or even a relaxation of some of the rules governing the free cities? There were just too many possibilities for him to guess a possible answer.

“The Empire is in a desperate situation,” Cromwell said, sipping his own wine. “Even before the Dark Sorcerers, even before <st1lace w:st="on">Tara</st1lace> declared independence…we were heading for a fall. Merlin was the glue that held us together and without him, the different factions within the Empire started scrabbling for position. The Privy Council can only serve as a temporary measure at best. It won’t be long before the taxing season comes around and we start demanding a price in exchange for paying the bills.”

“True,” Robin said, neutrally. If Cromwell thought that he could pressure his wife into doing something she didn’t want to do, he didn’t know her very well. “But if we all work together…”

“We won’t work together,” Cromwell insisted. “When we had an unquestioned monarch, everyone could jostle for position in relative safety, without tearing the Empire apart. Now…we risk destroying everything we built over the centuries. This Empire needs an Emperor.”

Robin smiled. “And I’m sure you have a candidate in mind?”

“We do,” Cromwell said. “You.”

“No,” Robin said, flatly. “I am no monarch.”

Cromwell shrugged. “You carry the sword that anointed the last king of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">England</st1lace></st1:country-region>,” he said, ticking points off on his fingers. “You are of common-birth, yet you married into the nobility. Your ability to fight in defence of the Empire’s population is well-known. You’re not exactly a diplomat” – Robin snorted at that – “but you could learn.”

He paused. “And you would have the support of the House of Commons,” he added. “That would count for a lot in the first days of your rule.”

Robin didn’t pause to consider it. “I don’t want to rule,” he said, firmly.

“That might make you the best person to rule,” Cromwell said.

“Enough games,” Robin snapped, suddenly angry. “What do you want from declaring me Emperor of the Pendragon Empire? What do you get from all this?”

“I get a stable Empire,” Cromwell said. He smiled in a manner that Robin suspected was intended to be disarming. “Even before <st1lace w:st="on">Tara</st1lace>, there were rumours that the aristocrats were plotting to crush the free cities and restore unquestioned – and unquestionable – aristocratic rule on the Empire. Now…Duke Blackrock has shown the way. They may strike at any time.”

“I’m sure you’ve made preparations to counter the aristocrats,” Robin said, slowly. Cromwell might well be right. Tiffany had concealed nothing from him, even the depth of her worry at the reports of secret meetings and shadowy preparations. If most of the noblemen turned on the Privy Council, its grip would be shattered. “But why me?”

“The Empire needs a ruler, an unquestioned dictator who can keep matters in line,” Cromwell said. “War isn’t good for business and a civil war fought between aristocrats and free citizens – and the Dark Sorcerers as well – would be devastating. And that doesn’t include any worries we might have about the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Greenwood</st1lace></st1:City>. My magicians say that the boundary lines are slowly collapsing. What happens when they fall?”

There was a knock on the door. “Sir,” someone shouted, from outside. “You’re needed in the tower, now!”

“The tower?” Cromwell asked. “What’s going on?”

“This city is under attack,” the voice said. It sounded as if the speaker was starting to panic. Robin came to his feet and followed as Cromwell raced towards the door. An attack could only mean one thing – unless the noblemen had decided to speed up their own plans and start the civil war. “We’re surrounded by monsters!”

 

Hi Chris, I just got back from vacation...I left off at like chapter 5 or 6 so it will take me a while to catch up.

 

Chapter Twenty-Four<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

Morag hated magicians.

It wasn’t that they had power and she – a lowly servant in the Magician’s Circle – had none. She’d been born to a poor family and expected little better than servitude for the rest of her life. It was that power made magicians arrogant and careless. She’d been used as the butt of their jokes every time the magicians held a convocation, where they’d shown off their powers to one another by using them on the servants. Morag had spent a week as a frog before a team of wizards had managed to undo the spell, been charmed into obedience more times than she could count and suffered a hundred minor humiliations at their hands. Worst of all, there was no recourse; the magicians enjoyed a form of immunity from the Civil Guard that criminal masterminds would have envied. No Civil Guardsman wanted the magicians mad at him.

And then she’d met the old man. Her memory was hazy on exactly where and when they’d met, but she remembered his words clearly. There was a way she could get back at the magicians who’d used her as their plaything. All she had to do was take them some drinks, after carefully placing a fine white powder into the glasses. Morag wasn't quite sure how she’d been talked into it, but the thought of humiliating a dozen magicians and wizards was too good to refuse. They’d pay for what they’d done to her and the rest of their servants.

The Magician’s Circle was the centre of magical activity in Londinium. In theory, the magicians were supposed to work together for the good of the city, but in practice the only good they did was maintaining the wards that protected the city against supernatural attacks. The wards weren't perfect – which Morag blamed on the magicians having fun rather than doing their job – but they worked, after a fashion. A Dark Sorcerer who wanted to slip through the wards would find it a difficult task.

She pushed the door open and stepped into the chamber, holding the tray of drinks in front of her. A dozen magicians, each one capable of turning her into a frog with a snap of their fingers, were lounging on comfortable sofas, channelling their considerable powers towards the defence of their city. Morag had acquired a certain minor sensitivity towards magic in the years of her servitude and she could feel it crackling around the men, leaving her wondering if she was really doing the right thing after all. As a free citizen of Londinium, she enjoyed the right to be judged by a jury of her peers, but that would cut no ice with the magicians. They could punish her in any way they saw fit – from permanent transfiguration to binding her as a slave – and no one would protest. The voice of the old man echoed in her head and she pushed forward. A little humiliation would be good for them.

Morag moved from figure to figure, handing out the glasses. Powering the wards was evidently tiring work, although that didn’t stop a couple of the younger magicians from pinching her buttocks as she passed. It only fired her determination to ensure that they all drank. She watched as they started to sip at their drinks, praying that the old man had been right and the powder actually was tasteless. The magicians were supposed to have personal wards that would keep out anything that was actively poisonous, but something designed to be humiliating would slip through the net. Or so the old man had sworn.

And then it dawned on her that she couldn’t even remember his face…

The first magician, a young man whose dapper looks were enhanced with magic, clutched his throat and emitted a gargling cry for help. Morag opened her mouth in horror as five other magicians quickly followed, one of them starting to thrash around until he fell off his sofa. A sixth magician opened his mouth, perhaps to utter a curse or cry for help, but blue flames burst out of his mouth, just before his entire body went up in fire. It was a very strange fire, part of Morag’s mind noted; it didn’t seem to touch the sofa, even though the heat sent her staggering backwards.

She stared as two more magicians stretched, seconds before their skin started to warp. Bones forced their way out of their skin, sending blood flowing down towards the floor. There was a terrifying cracking sound and the seventh magician seemed to explode as his bones shattered. The eighth and ninth found themselves merging into one monstrous being, their joined mouth screaming out in silent agony before they lost even the appearance of humanity and became a fleshy mass on the floor. She stumbled backwards as the tenth and eleventh caught fire and blazed into pillars of light.

The twelfth magician stumbled to his feet. Blood was running down his nose and spewing out of his mouth, but he somehow managed to remain upright. He lifted one weak finger and pointed it at Morag, his lips trying to form a spell. She found herself frozen, unable to move, waiting to see what he would do to her. He was trying to chant…and then a wave of blood seemed to burst out of his skin and he collapsed to the floor, nothing more than a pile of flesh and bone. Morag found herself suddenly able to move again and she fled, running for her life with no destination in mind. Raw panic left her with only one thought in her mind; Dear God in Heaven, what had she done?

***​

Robin reached the tower a moment after the Lord Mayor and caught his breath as he peered out over Londinium. The free city was surrounded by charmed walls, intended to deter any of the nobles from launching a swift raid to recover peasants who had fled their masters in the hope of finding a better life; outside the walls, an army of monsters had gathered, surrounding the city. Some of them were little more than warped humans; others seemed to have forsaken even the humanoid form.

His eyesight seemed to have sharpened ever since he’d been given Excalibur. It was easy to see the monsters, misshapen humans whose lives had been wreaked by wild magic. They didn’t have the faint shimmer that marked Elves and other creatures from Avalon – the sense that the form the human eye saw was one that it could comprehend – which was something of a relief. Robin had dreaded an attack from Avalon ever since Merlin had departed and the boundary lines had started to collapse.

The monsters were waiting, but waiting for what? Robin rapidly skimmed through his memory of encounters between the Knights of the Round Table and monsters from the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Greenwood</st1lace></st1:City>. Some had remembered enough of their humanity to want human desires – women, wealth, freedom – while others had been warped beyond recognition, to the point where they were little more than unthinking beasts. But they’d never formed an army, or launched a raid outside the <st1:City w:st="on">Greenwood</st1:City> in force; they’d known that Merlin’s magic and his armies would throw them back into the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Greenwood</st1lace></st1:City>. And now Merlin was gone.

“The Civil Guard is mustering now,” a voice said. Robin half-turned to see a messenger addressing Cromwell, informing the Lord Mayor of something he had to have already known. The church bells had been ringing ever since the monsters had arrived, summoning the Guardsmen to duty and calling the rest of the city to pray. Robin wondered, absently, just how prepared the city actually was. In his experience, some Guardsmen were fully the equal of Garrison soldiers and others were only playing at war. “They’re forming up in the square.”

Cromwell looked over at Robin. “But what are they waiting for?”

Robin nodded, thoughtfully. Assuming that there was more to this raid than a simple smash and grab – and moving such an army through the hidden pathways in the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Greenwood</st1lace></st1:City> would be tricky – the monsters had to be waiting for something. But what? By now, the communications magicians would be sending a desperate cry for help to Camelot. Dragons would be on their way; what few troops could be spared would be rushed through the Faerie Roads to reinforce the city. And it might even convince the House of Magus to unite and join the coming battle. What were they waiting for? Their best hope of victory had to be when the city had been surprised, unprepared to resist an immediate attack.

If the enemy looks as if he’s doing something stupid, his old master had warned, you’re missing something. The enemy knows something you don’t.

“I don’t know,” he said, out loud. The wind shifted suddenly, blowing the scent of the monsters – unwashed humans, unclean things, tingling with wild magic – into his face. Carefully, he unsheathed Excalibur and held it up, taking refuge in the power pulsing around the brilliant sword. He wondered suddenly if the monsters would see it and start to run. “I don’t know what they’re thinking.”

Cromwell frowned. He looked nervous, understandably so. A human army wouldn't want to sack the city, not if it could be avoided; Londinium was worth far more intact, even to the nobles, than as a burned ruin and slaughtered population. The monsters, on the other hand, would hardly be able to keep the city even if they did capture it. They’d loot, rape and slaughter their way through the burning city, and then retreat before reinforcements arrived.

“Perhaps we should launch an attack ourselves,” he said, finally. He stroked his beard as if it would calm his nerves. “We could drive them away from the city…”

“Unlikely,” Robin said. In his experience, fighting monsters from the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Greenwood</st1lace></st1:City> on their own terms was asking for trouble. “When they try to storm the walls, we’ll have the position to inflict huge loses before they can break through the walls.”

He studied the city for a long moment. “Get your Guardsmen working on evacuating the houses closest to the main gates and the wall,” he said, finally. “They may have to be turned into strongpoints to hold the line.”

Cromwell stared at him. “You’re not suggesting that the bastards will make it over the wall?”

Robin shrugged. “I’d be surprised if they didn’t,” he said. “They have a very large army and your men are inexperienced…”

A subtle flicker of magic ran through the air, a sense that something gossamer-thin had just shattered. Robin swore as he drew on his Sight and peered out over the city. The magic worked by the magicians in the magicians’ quarter was as strong as ever – hardly as strong as any of the Great Colleges – but the wards surrounding the city had collapsed. They’d just flickered out of existence.

“Lord Mayor,” a messenger shouted. He was holding a communications crystal in his hand, one created by an enchanter to pass messages from place to place. “We just had word from the <st1:Street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Magicians Circle</st1:address></st1:Street>! The magicians who were holding the wards are dead!”

Cromwell’s face paled. “If the wards are gone…”

“There’s nothing stopping any kind of supernatural vermin from making their way over the walls,” Robin said. A low rumble echoed through the air, coming from the lines of monsters. “I think they’re about to attack.”

Dark specks appeared in the sky, heading towards the city. For a moment, Robin dared to hope that they were dragons from Camelot, but they were too small and bulky. They looked like hawks and eagles, monstrous mutations caused by the wild magic of the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Greenwood</st1lace></st1:City>, ridden by humanoid creatures holding primitive weapons. The swarm descended towards the city, shrieking their cries into the air. The sound of gunfire broke out as Guardsmen tried to shoot down the giant birds, but for every one that fell two more were there to take its place. They swooped down, dropping small bottles onto the city, and flames began to spring up wherever the bottles fell. Some of the birds rose up again, men and women caught in their talons, only to drop them when they’d reached a suitable height. None of their victims survived the fall.

“Get behind me,” Robin snapped. Either through luck or judgement, perhaps aware that they were targeting the leaders of the city, a pair of birds were dropping down towards the small party on the tower. He lashed out with Excalibur and sliced one of the birds in half, killing it and its rider with a flick of the wrist. The second bird spat something towards him and only a warning from Excalibur caused him to lift his armoured hand to cover his face. Green liquid splashed against his armour, acid powerful enough to melt through his flesh within seconds. He jumped forward and sliced the bird’s head off. The humanoid on its back tried to raise a primitive sword to block him, but Excalibur shattered his blade on contact. Robin killed him and kicked the remains off the tower.

Cromwell’s face was very pale. He could see flames rising up all over the city; hear the cawing of the birds as they tore through unsuspecting citizens. Others were being shot out of the sky by the Guardsmen as they recovered from their surprise. Robin glanced at him once, noticed his trembling fingers struggling to grip his sword’s hilt, and quietly abandoned any hope of convincing the Mayor to fight. He wasn’t a warrior.

“Get him down to the council chambers,” he ordered, grabbing a pair of servants. Unlike their master, they’d come armed with knives and clubs. If they’d had guns, or even swords…he pushed the thought aside, sharply. There was no point in worrying over what might have been. “I’m going to the front.”

Holding – and trusting – Excalibur, he took a flying leap off the tower and jumped right to the nearest rooftop. His armour had to work hard to protect him from the impact, but there hadn’t been any other choice. Another bird swooped down at him, only to change course as soon as it saw Excalibur. The building under him was on fire, burning rapidly; Robin jumped to the next rooftop, and then the next, hoping that he could reach the walls before the main body of the attack made it over and into the city. If the magicians who were supposed to have been maintaining the charmed walls – and the city’s wards – were dead, there would be no magical help for the defenders. With so much chaos in their rear, it would be impossible to coordinate a defence.

Catching sight of another messenger picking his way through the streets, Robin leapt down towards him, relying on his armour to shield him from the spreading fires. The messenger looked up and then cowered, as if he expected Robin to split his head open with Excalibur. Instead, Robin shook him until the messenger looked faintly aware of his surroundings. If there’d been time…

”Go to the Magician’s Circle,” he ordered. All the magicians in the city should be members, but they’d be in the magicians’ quarter or dead by now. Any survivors, he hoped, would be making their way to their guild house. “Tell them to concentrate on rebuilding the walls first; they can work on the walls afterwards.”

Giving the messenger a shove, he turned and sprinted down towards the walls. The baying of the monsters outside was growing louder as they struggled forwards, despite the gunfire and cannon fire from the walls. Robin hoped that they’d wipe out entire parties of monsters, but the odds were against it. The <st1:City w:st="on"><st1lace w:st="on">Greenwood</st1lace></st1:City> produced many freak mutations and those that survived their first few weeks tended to be tough and hard to kill. He'd met a monster once that had had to be burned alive to kill it…and even then, he had never been quite sure that the monster was dead.

He heard a shriek and turned to see a woman, knocked to the ground by one of the monsters who’d been dropped into the city by the birds. Robin wasn't sure if he was trying to rape or murder the young woman, but it hardly mattered. He ran forward, sword in hand, and sliced the monster in half. It let out a disconcertingly human cry and collapsed on the ground. The young woman, her shirt torn away exposing her breasts, looked up at him gratefully and then collapsed on the ground. Robin pulled her into a corner where she should be safe and left her, praying to God that he was in time. Ahead of him, the guardsmen on the walls suddenly fell back. A brilliant green light appeared, shimmering over the walls, and then they collapsed. Robin cursed as the guards fell back, and the monsters advanced.

Some were very human, the only signs of their true nature being warped faces and arms. One appeared almost normal, until Robin saw the tentacles that had replaced his arms, rendering him almost helpless in human society. The others were true monsters, shambling brutes that bore little relationship to humanity. They seemed to be leading the charge, their wounds slowly healing when they hadn’t proved fatal. One of them would pose a challenge even for a Knight of the Round Table – and thousands of them seemed to be coming right at him.

Robin caught at a handful of fleeing guardsmen and pulled them to him, holding Excalibur aloft like a glowing talisman. The light from the sword seemed to give the monsters pause, just enough time for Robin to convince the guardsmen to form a line. They couldn’t hold the monsters indefinitely, but if they held them up for a few minutes, there would be time to form a second line of defence.

“Come on, you bastards,” he yelled, as the monsters started their advance. Their howls were deafeningly loud. “Come and get us if you think you can!”

 

Great story Chris.

 

Chapter Twenty-Five<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

Londinium was burning.

The Sorcerer Maledict floated high over the flames, watching as the city was swiftly consumed by the fires. Despite the best efforts of both magicians and mundane fire chains, the flames were rapidly spreading out of control, at least in the poorer parts of the city. They’d had to build their houses out of wood or other flammable materials and the flames spread quickly, forcing the inhabitants to flee for their lives. The richer parts of the city were built from stone or brick, often charmed to make it harder for the fire to spread, ensuring that parts of the city would remain intact. The Duke would be pleased.

Maledict let his mouth fall open in a laugh, his high-pitched cackle echoing out over the city. In the long run, who cared what the Duke thought? He might have delusions about using Maledict and his Dark Sorcerers to firmly plant his ducal buttocks on the Iron Throne – once it was removed from the wreckage of the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice:smarttags" /><st1lace w:st="on"><st1laceName w:st="on">Iron</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">Palace</st1laceType></st1lace> – but the delusions wouldn't last forever. Once the Privy Council had been defeated, the Duke’s usefulness would come to an end. And then Maledict would introduce him to the true power of dark sorcery.

His smile grew brighter as he sensed the strands of magic burning through the flames. The magicians in the city were struggling to join the battle, trying to use their powers to put out the fires or knock the deadly birds out of the sky, but it was a losing battle. They’d already lost their most powerful members and the city was burning down, destroying the enchanted focal points they’d created to protect the city. They could probably sense his presence in the air, yet they hadn’t even tried to cancel the spells holding him aloft. It was the ultimate expression of weakness.

The river seemed to be glowing with light, the shimmering glare of the fires reflected back at him. He smiled as he sensed the pulses of magic making their way up the river, now that observers and river wardens were distracted by the monsters tearing their way through the main gate. They’d be in for a nasty shock when the next prong of his attack finally surfaced. He glanced down and caught sight of a small street urchin running from building to building, perhaps carrying messages for the defenders, or perhaps merely trying to save his young life. Maledict pointed a long finger at him and spoke a deadly charm; the boy’s figure exploded into a mass of rats, which promptly scattered in different directions. It would be impossible for any magician to gather them together to restore the boy’s human form, if any of them cared enough to try.

He soared higher, allowing the heat from the flames to buffet him upwards. This was true power, he told himself; this was what Merlin had denied humanity all those long years he’d ruled the world. They couldn’t stop him, even if they could find him – and the city was on the verge of destruction. If – when – his forces left, they’d leave behind ruins and a shattered population. The Duke would seize his chance to move in and establish his control, still convinced that the Dark Sorcerers were working for him. And then he’d be in for a nasty shock…

Maledict laughed out loud. Down below, some of the struggling population heard his laugh and shivered, even if they didn’t understand what it signified. He knew that he was going insane, that the vast reserves of power he’d tapped into were burning through his body and soul, but he didn’t care. He had the power to keep himself alive, even as his body broke down. Indeed, perhaps even immortality was within his grasp.

A stream of bubbles broke the surface of the water and he smiled. It wouldn't be long until the final phase of the attack began.

***​

The stream of monsters didn’t bother with subtlety. They just charged at the thin line of men Robin had assembled, relying on weight of numbers to overwhelm the defenders. Robin clutched Excalibur tightly as they closed in, drawing comfort and power from the sword. The mere presence of Excalibur seemed to hearten the defenders, even though the monsters had overcome their fear. An entire army was bearing down on them.

“Fire,” Robin barked. The men with firearms opened fire, blowing great chunks of flesh and bone out of the advancing horde. It would have deterred any purely human enemy, but the <st1lace w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Greenwood</st1:City></st1lace> monsters just kept coming, crushing the bodies of their fallen comrades below their feet. They were a horrendous mass of humanoid figures, each one warped in a different way, either through wild magic’s touch or through misgraantation. There were entire communities in parts of the <st1lace w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Greenwood</st1:City></st1lace>; indeed, some savants believed that Goblins and Orcs had originally been human, before they’d been touched by wild magic.

He lifted Excalibur as the monsters closed into arms reach and swung. Robin was strong, strong enough to drive a normal sword through their heads and slide into their brains, but Excalibur slid through flesh and bone like a knife through butter. He saw a disturbingly human expression of vague surprise on the face of his target before he died, yet he had no time to sit and ponder the implications. The dancing sword, moving almost of its own accord, was swinging from monster to monster, slicing through them and leaving their bodies bleeding out on the ground.

The Guardsmen were fighting bravely, but they didn’t have a magical weapon. Robin saw four of them fall when they make the mistake of assuming that they could slice through their bodies as easily as they could slice through an unarmed human. The monsters seemed to absorb the blow and crash into them, their powerful hands ripping off arms and legs, leaving the helpless guardsmen to be crushed beneath their feet. Other Guardsmen, the smarter ones, nipped in and out, slicing away at the monstrous legs. Disabling the monsters seemed to be the only way to win.

Robin leapt forward, guided by the sword, and laid about him with the glowing blade. A pile of dead monsters rapidly surrounded him, but they kept coming, unafraid to die as long as they took him down. He could no longer tell where he ended and Excalibur began; the sword’s constant shimmering presence had merged into his mind, guiding his strikes with deadly efficiency. And yet the monsters kept coming.

He was barely aware of a semi-humanoid beast three times the size of a man, lashing out towards him with a fist bigger than Robin’s body. The sword pushed him into the air and he leapt towards the beast, landing right on its forehead. He was gone again, his sword slashing down into the body and scattering blood and guts everywhere, before the giant could react. It hadn’t been one of the two legendary giants who’d ruled <st1lace w:st="on">Tara</st1lace> until Merlin turned them both into stone, yet it had been dangerous enough. He jumped again as its body crumpled to the ground, crashing down with tremendous force. Excalibur’s power seemed to flare into him and he simply took it in stride. A detached part of his mind reacted with horror, realising for the first time how Arthur had been able to forge a Golden Age that had lasted until his bastard son reached his majority and came to Camelot, burning with determination to punish his father for fathering him and then leaving him to the tender mercies of his sorceress mother.

A crawling monster that might have been a man – or a centipede before the wild magic transfigured it into something new and deadly – lunged at him, long claws reaching out to spear him and hold him in place. Robin lashed out and sliced through the tentacles, but new ones formed almost as soon as the old ones fell to the bloody ground. He leapt forward and sliced the creature’s head off with one blow, only to watch in horror as the body kept marching forward. The beast kept pushing him backwards, glowing strands flickering on its skin suggesting that leaping onto the monster would be fatal. Robin backed away, discovering that most of the Guardsmen were dead or had retreated to another defence line. He was the only person still holding the monsters back…

Cursing, he kept moving backwards, jumping in to slash at the beast and then back again before it could catch him. Even Excalibur seemed to be balked by its regenerative capabilities. No matter where he cut, or how much he cut off, the beast seemed to keep moving, an unstoppable force. Indeed, he was starting to wonder if the parts he’d cut off were going to grow new bodies and create new monsters. It had to be stopped before it got into the city.

Inspiration struck and he turned to run, right towards a burning hovel. The centipede-monster emitted a noise that might have been a shriek of victory and gave chase, clearly believing that he had a Knight of the Round Table on the run. Robin kept running – he could have outrun the brute, except it didn’t seem to be tiring – until he put his back to the fires and then – trusting to luck – he made a rude hex sign at the monster. As he had hoped, the monster roared with anger and lunged forward heedlessly. Robin jumped backwards, calling on all of the protections built into his armour to protect him from the flames; the centipede was less lucky. The fire raged around it and, for the first time, it showed signs of pain. Robin caught up pieces of burning wood with an armoured hand and threw them towards the creature, trapped within the blaze. Its disturbingly human eyes stared at him with a look of infinitive malice, just before the fires roared up and incinerated it. Robin waited just long enough to ensure that the creature was dead, and then turned and ran towards the next defence line.

He saw a shape at the corner of his eye and turned to look. It was a statue of a guardsman, standing there with an expression of horror and despair on his face. Puzzled, Robin stepped forward – and realised that it wasn't a statue at all. Wild magic was flickering over the stone, suggesting that it had once been a guardsman. A figure moved behind him and he saw a young girl, her face oddly shrouded by a hood. She was young and shapely, yet she moved like a very old woman, with slow tentative steps.

Robin opened his mouth to ask her who she was, when she threw back her hood, revealing a serpentine face. Green scales seemed to have merged into human skin, with no way of knowing where one ended and the other began. Her face started to shift and transform into something inhuman – for a second, he saw writhing snakes – and everything clicked together in his mind. He twisted away from her, breaking eye contact, as a burst of wild magic crackled over his armour. She might have been human once, but now she was a gorgon. Or maybe a gorgon and a human had mated and produced children. Her face suggested elements of both races.

He squeezed his eyes shut as she emitted a second blast of wild magic. Unlike the more controlled forms of magic Merlin had introduced and the Great Colleges taught, the wild magic needed eye contact to turn its victim into stone. And yet, it was almost impossible to restore someone after they had been transfigured into stone by a gorgon. This hybrid’s magic might be less dangerous, but Robin wasn't prepared to bet his life on it. He’d never even heard of a gorgon-human hybrid before the battle had begun.

The girl’s voice was low, almost hypnotic. It was laced with seductive magic that would worm its way through all defences, through all awareness that something wasn't right. Robin clutched Excalibur tightly, thinking of Tiffany, as her voice tried to crack into his mind. If he lowered his defences, she could twist his mind until he walked willingly into her magic, or said or thought or believed anything she wanted.

“Look at me,” she whispered. It took all of Robin’s determination, enhanced by Excalibur’s glowing presence in his mind, to keep inching away from her. His legs felt as if they had already been turned to stone. “Look at me…”

“Right,” Robin said. Even speaking was hard. “If you insist…”

Desperately, he held up the sword, using it to reflect her image back at her. There was a blinding flash of light and a long helpless cry before the magic faded away and was gone. Carefully, he turned to look and saw that the girl-gorgon had become a stone statue of herself. There was nothing left of humanity in her face now, just snake-heads oozing out of every pore. He held up a fist, reinforced his armour, and struck the statue a terrible blow. She shattered and fell to dust.

There were other monsters advancing now, pressing down towards the makeshift barricades the guardsmen had been assembling. Robin leapt into the air again and soared towards a stone building that had remained intact, even in the fires. He could hear people crying below, trapped in their house, but there was no time to do anything to help them. The monsters were pressing in all around the burning buildings, advancing upwards towards the heart of the city. Smoke and flames filled the sky. The sound of the advancing army was deafening. Their mutated birds cawed as they flew through the sky, swooping down to snatch up unwary victims and drop them from a great height.

Robin heard another feminine cry from the building under his feet and made up his mind. Using Excalibur, he cut through the hatch that led down into the building. He was greeted by more screams from female throats and a rock that clanged off his armour and fell onto the roof. He shouted his name down the hole and held Excalibur forward, allowing the sword to identify him. Finally, four women – one mother and three daughters, who were barely entering their teenage years – showed themselves. Their faces showed no doubt about what awaited them if the invading army won the day. Robin privately resolved to ensure that they were safe, whatever else happened.

“Come on,” he ordered, sharply. Peasant women would have obeyed at once, but then obedience – to their fathers, brothers, husbands and local headman – was hammered into their heads from a very early age. City women were more independent. At least these four realised that they couldn’t stay any longer, not with monsters pressing against the walls, monsters that would eventually break down the door and storm the building. “You have to get out of here.”

Straightening up, he looked up towards the heart of the city. Like many other cities, Londinium had little bridges and pathways leading from roof to roof, used by messengers and – illegally – street children and criminal gangs. It was the only hope of getting the women to what passed for safety in the city, but the fires had consumed most of the nearby bridges long before he’d heard their cries and come to help. There was a safe path, yet it wouldn't stay safe for very long.

He helped the mother through the hatch and pointed the family towards the first bridge. “Hurry,” he ordered. “Keep your heads down and be careful!”

There was a chance that one of the giant birds would catch them, but there was nothing Robin could do about that. The first of the girls looked reluctant to run along the bridge until her mother slapped her ass hard, at which point she started running as if a demon was after her. If the Dark Sorcerers were involved in the attack, which seemed fairly likely, they might release demons as a parting shot before they departed. They’d unleashed a demon before, at the <st1lace w:st="on"><st1laceName w:st="on">Summer</st1laceName> <st1laceType w:st="on">Palace</st1laceType></st1lace>.

Robin waited until the women were across the bridge before following them. It creaked and shook under his footsteps; a moment later, after he reached the far end, it collapsed and smashed down onto monstrous heads. Praying that the impact had killed a few of the monsters, Robin kept his unwilling charges running until they finally reached the barricades. From above, it looked as if the guardsmen had dragged out everything from furniture to concrete supplies and started working them into a construction that might – just – cost the monsters a few hundred lives to break. Robin waved at the women, ordering them to keep running, and then headed over towards the barricades. A giant bird saw his armour and swooped down at him, talons extended and ready to seize him, but Robin sliced it out of the air and sent its body tumbling down to form part of the barricade.

He braced himself to jump down and join the defenders, but something caught his eye. The river looked…odd. It flowed through the city, past the Town Hall and the other government buildings – and another of the Great Colleges – before it wandered down to the sea. Part of Londinium’s importance was that it was well-placed to profit from ships and shipbuilding, just like a hundred other free cities scattered around the world. But now the river was…bubbling?

Robin saw it, but he didn’t believe it. Giant shapes were moving under the water, bubbles marking their passage as they advanced towards the Town Hall. Monstrous shapes, strange misshapen bulges, could be seen breaking the water – and then a giant claw broke the surface. Robin felt a cold chill running down his back as the first of the giant crabs came into view, claws larger than a tall man reaching out to pick up fleeing humans and snapping them in two with casual power. The boats that were being used to evacuate the population upriver or down to the sea were smashed as the crabs advanced, moving with deliberate power…

…And heading right towards the Town Hall.

Cursing, Robin left the barricade’s defenders to fend for themselves and started to run. Even as he moved, he realised that he would never make it in time.

 

Chapter Twenty-Six<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

No one had ever seriously expected to have to use the war room. Thomas Cromwell’s predecessors had feared the power of the nobility, yet they’d been confident that the peace enforced by Merlin would remain in place. Even when Merlin had departed, the city fathers had been reluctant to rehearse their defence plans. It might have outraged the Privy Council, or the House of Lords. Now, Thomas found himself staring down at a paper map, outdated almost as soon as it was updated. Messengers ran in and out, shouting updates to the councillors, while a single communications magician tried valiantly to keep in touch with the city’s remaining magicians. The entire scene was chaos.

“They’re breaking through the West Gate,” a voice shouted. Thomas winced; the South and North Gates had already broken, allowing a tidal wave of monsters the chance to push their way into the city. The slums surrounding the outskirts of the city were already gone, either in flaming ruin or smashed by the advancing army. He didn't want to think about what might have happened to those who hadn't fled in time. “They’re pushing the Guard back to the barricades!”

“They’re bombing the housing in Brixton Plaza,” another messenger shouted. That wasn't good news; Brixton Plaza held housing for senior factory workers and lower-class merchants. Some of the families living there were surprisingly wealthy. “We need magician cover, now!”

“There isn’t any magical cover,” the communications magician snapped. Calling him a magician was being generous; he could barely muster the magic to send mental communications to his fellow magicians. He was only here because he was little use to the Magicians Circle. “Every time we try to strike at the Dark Sorcerers, they push us down and suppress us!”

Thomas tried to tune it out, studying the map. He had no military experience – apart from a brief stint in the Guards, a vital necessity for one who might have to command them – but he was sure that he could see a pattern emerging. The poorer parts of the city were being ransacked, with the invading army looting, raping and burning its way through the ramshackle housing, yet they weren’t targeting either the factories or the richer parts of the city. It made little sense. Everyone knew that the Dark Sorcerers thrived on chaos, so why were they trying to spare the most important and wealthy parts of the city?

“We need reinforcements at the northern barricades,” a third messenger bellowed. He was sweating; he’d run past several burning city blocks on his desperate flight to the Town Hall. “They’re on the verge of falling!”

“Sir Robin has deserted the barricades,” a fourth voice snapped. “He’s fleeing into the city!”

Thomas focused, trying to think. Everyone knew that most humans who were touched by wild magic retained their intelligence, even though they lacked human form and were driven away by their former friends and family. Could it be that the monsters wanted the city for themselves? Or was there a deeper plan at work? There was no way to tell; as far as he knew, the monsters hadn't done anything as civilised as demanding the city’s surrender before they attacked. His lips twitched humourlessly. The last time a city had been attacked by an outside army, not including the skirmishes with the aristocratic armies, had been back during the Serpent Wars. They had rarely ended well.

A hand shook him. “Sir, Lord Mayor, they’re coming out of the water,” a voice snapped. He turned to see one of the girls who handled clerical work in the Town Hall, her blouse stained with sweat and blood. She’d volunteered to work in the medical corps, he recalled suddenly. The blood wasn't hers. “You have to get out of here!”

Thomas fought for mental stability. “Who’s coming out of the water?”

“Monsters,” the girl blurted. “You have to run!”

The entire building shook, echoing with the sudden sound of guns being fired from the rooftops. Thomas had supervised the positioning of the weapons himself, intent on a desperate last stand. Instead, he saw now what the monsters had been planning. Attack the walls to draw off the reserves, then launch an attack from the river, capturing or killing the city’s leadership in one solid blow.

“Everyone out,” he bellowed. He tried to think of where they could meet up and take control of the situation again. An idea struck him and he smiled. “We’ll meet at the Jolly Boar!”

There were some chuckles, swiftly suppressed as councillors and messengers started to evacuate the building. The Jolly Boar was a pub further inland, one patronised by almost all of the city’s upper class. It would serve as a base until they found somewhere better – and the invading army would never even suspect that it housed the city’s council. At least it would buy them some time.

He was nearly out of the building when it started to shake. They’d built it strong, knowing that they might have to fight to defend it one day, yet something was tearing it apart like paper. Walls and ceilings started to crumble as something battered away at the far side of the building. For a second, he watched, hypnotised by the destruction, before a hand caught him and pulled him towards the exit. It was barely in time as a colossal claw smashed through the walls and waved about, knocking down the supports. He had a moment to hope that the building would collapse on whatever was knocking it down, but as the creature came into view, he realised that it wouldn't do much harm. A crab, almost as big as a house, was tearing the Town Hall apart.

Thomas ran for his life as the inhuman army advanced. Guardsmen were trying to slow them down with gunfire, but bullets simply rebounded off their shells, or simply didn't inflict enough damage to slow them down. A cannon would have worked better – he could see at least one seriously injured crab, lying where it had been hit – but the cannon had been destroyed when the building had been knocked down. He saw the crab pick up one of the guardsmen and snap its claws, cutting him in half. Blood tricked down onto the ruined building as the crab kept advancing. A brave or foolish guardsman ran forward and hacked away at its scuttling legs with his sword, but the blade just glinted off the creature. It squashed him casually and kept moving.

“Keep running,” he yelled, at a handful of office workers who had stopped to stare. Others were fleeing in incoherent panic, terrified out of their wits. They’d need dragons to stop the crabs, unless the magicians could throw up some kind of magical ward capable of stopping their advance. “Get to the pub and get in touch with the Guard! We’ll need cannon out here!”

Behind him, the monsters continued their advance.

***​

Faye walked through the burning city, wrapped in a terrible power. The few who tried to stop her, or didn't run away fast enough, were struck down with a wave of her hand. A handful of young children had been caught and killed, allowing her a chance to bolster her magic reserves, for she’d been spending magic at a terrifying rate. Somewhere through here, she’d been told, the city’s councillors would be trying to regroup and reassume command of the City Guard. That could not be allowed to happen, not when reinforcements were doubtless already on the way from Camelot.

She smiled as she saw a young man, barely old enough to marry, step out onto the streets. He’d been captivated by her glamour, a projection of a young girl walking through the city, utterly untroubled by the chaos surrounding her. She wondered absently where he’d been hiding – instead of joining the guardsmen or fleeing the chaos – but it hardly mattered. A wave of her hand brought the young man over to her, clearly expecting a reward for his appearance. The free cities tended to have an open-minded attitude to romance between young people, even through the Church disapproved. She doubted that the young man was a virgin. It was a pity, in a way; a virgin sacrifice was worth so much more.

A snap of her fingers froze him just before he reached her and he stopped, his eyes filled with surprise and horror. Faye kissed him, shaping a charm with her mind, and the young man crumbled to dust. Giggling a little as power flowed through her mind, she kicked the pile of dust and kept walking, occasionally pointing her finger at a building and blowing it apart, just for fun. Sometimes she heard screams from inside the buildings as they collapsed, at other times she heard nothing. It hardly mattered to her now.

She stopped and looked up as something intruded on her magical senses. There was an Object of Power nearby, one so powerful that it should have been detectable from well outside the city. Forgetting her mission, Faye started to run through the burning streets, following the lure. It kept tickling the back of her mind with odd familiarity, just before she turned a corner and saw a figure in white-gold armour running up towards the Town Hall. The sword in his hand glowed with brilliant light. It had to be Excalibur – and Sir Robin. Faye didn't hesitate. She shaped a curse with her mind and launched it towards the target. If she could take Excalibur, her master would be pleased with her...and if she could figure out how to use the sword, she would soon be the mistress of the Dark Sorcerers.

Laughing, she sent a second curse, and then a third.

***​

Robin never saw the attack coming until Excalibur screamed a warning into his mind. A flash of bright red light struck his armour, hurling him forwards; if he hadn't been holding the sword it would have killed him outright. He hit the ground and rolled over, bringing up the sword to block and deflect a second pair of curses. A figure, standing in the shadows, made a gesture and another wave of power struck him. It took all of his strength to remain upright as power crackled around him.

A Dark Sorcerer, he realised. He took a look as the figure stepped into the light and realised that he’d mistaken her for a man. Even wearing Sorcerers Black, the figure was unmistakably female. His Sight showed him a badly scarred woman, who might have been attractive if dark sorcery hadn't claimed its price for power. A Dark Sorceress.

The Sorceress didn't seem to have realised that she might have made a mistake. She kept tossing curses at him, each one harmlessly deflected or absorbed by Excalibur. Robin gritted his teeth – every time a curse struck the blade, his fingers tingled unpleasantly – and started to walk towards her. She lifted a wand, spoke a word that sounded like glass breaking, and the ground under his feet seemed to come alive. Robin leapt backwards as lava flowed upwards and congealed into the rough shape of a man, eyes and a mouth appearing on the blocky misshapen head. It turned and swung an extending fist towards him, almost knocking him down. Cursing under his breath, Robin lifted the sword and sliced its arm off, letting it crash harmlessly to the ground. The monster howled, a sound that was very far from human, and stamped forward. It grew a new arm as it moved.

Robin hopped backwards, ducking and dodging as it kept swinging at him. There was nothing elegant in its movements, but it didn't have to be, not when it could regenerate from any blow he landed. And somehow he doubted that this creature would be bothered by a fire. It's skin seemed to be burning already. The Sorceress tossed another curse at him and Robin ducked, allowing the curse to strike the monster she’d created. He’d hoped that her magic would destroy her creation, but nothing happened. That would have been too easy.

He lunged forward, allowing Excalibur to guide his strikes, and started to slash away at the beast. It disintegrated around him in a shower of rock and lava, yet before he could do anything else it started to form again. The beast lashed out with a half-formed hand and struck him right on the chest. His armour absorbed most of the blow, but it sent him flying backwards and into a wall. He almost dropped the sword from the shock. The Sorceress let out a cackle – drunk on her own power, he realised – and started to cast a darker spell. Reality itself seemed to shimmer as something started pressing against the borders of the human world. She was calling something out of the Darkness!

Robin ran forward, heedless of the danger, and rammed Excalibur through the tear in reality. The Sorceress let out a howl as the sword sliced through her spell, but she vanished in a flash of green light as Robin attempted to decapitate her. He cursed her as her stone monster kept advancing on him, intent on smashing him to a pulp. Its glowing red eyes seemed to blaze with hatred and inhuman fury. It seemed completely indestructible, even with Excalibur...

There’s always a way, he thought. It’s burning skin gave him an idea and he started to jump backwards, hunting for an underground pipe. The city’s designers had known about the relationship between tainted water and bad health and they’d created a network of underground pipes that rivalled anything the Romans had ever created, even at the height of their power. The beast came lumbering after him, seemingly unconcerned that its mistress had left it to fight and win – or die. Robin waited until it was in the right spot, and then dived between its legs, slicing down at the stone cobbles covering the ground. As he had hoped, the beast lunged for him and toppled over, nearly squashing Robin beneath its bulk. Excalibur sliced through the underground pipe and a colossal stream of water exploded up from under the monster. The water flashed to steam almost instantly, but as he watched, the monster started to die. It came apart into a hail of flaming rocks, and then melted away.

There was no time to enjoy his victory. He jumped upwards, prompted by the sword, as a curse shot at him from behind. Robin turned to see the Sorceress, desperately casting spell after spell. He defected them all calmly and started to run, unwilling to allow her any more time to summon something nasty. A moment later, he realised what she had in mind as the debris around her started to levitate into the air and fly right at his face. It was a cunning move, he realised with a sudden flicker of admiration, perhaps the only way to use magic against a man holding Excalibur. A physical impact could still hurt him.

The sword slashed through the air, shattering rocks and bricks, but there were just too many of them. One clanged against his armour, sending him backwards; a second banged against his left arm. A third struck his right hand and it opened, letting go of the sword. Before he could recover, a fourth slammed right into his head. His mind seemed to explode, and then collapse into darkness...

***​

Faye caught her breath as she saw the Knight fall. She hadn't realised how powerful Excalibur was, despite all the rumours, until she saw it casually absorbing her strongest curses. Challenging the Knight had been a misjudgement, one that could have cost her everything – and she’d abandoned her mission to challenge him. And yet, she’d knocked him out and captured Excalibur! Her master would be delighted!

She stepped forward carefully and examined the sword. It glowed with power and she reached down for the hilt, before catching herself. An instinct warned her that touching Excalibur without proper preparation would be very dangerous, perhaps fatal. Indeed, she was sure that it wasn't really a sword, but something else, something utterly beyond her comprehension. It seemed to exist in more than three dimensions. She didn't dare touch it. Instead, she used her magic to form a protective sheath around the blade and levitated it into the air. It should have been impossible, but somehow she was sure that she could still feel the sword’s magic pulsing away inside the sheath. It felt as if the sword was burning its way through the cover.

The Dark Sorcerers had discussed Excalibur ever since the blade had resurfaced, before it had killed many of them at the Summer Palace. Excalibur was a legend in its own right, the sword that had made Arthur King of England and allowed him to shape a Golden Age. Even in the hands of someone who didn't really know what it was, or how to use it, it had slaughtered Dark Sorcerers and come alarmingly close to killing her. It was a legend...

And yet, even legends had a hard kernel of truth. Given time, she was sure that the Dark Sorcerers could figure out how to control the blade – and how to turn it against its former masters. At Beneficence, she’d been taught that every Object of Power, even the ones with murky origins like Excalibur, could be mastered and eventually duplicated by enchanters and alchemists. Excalibur was powerful, but it was far from all-powerful. It could be mastered.

Shaking her head, she bent down to check on Sir Robin. The Knight had been knocked cold, but his armour had protected him from an impact that should have killed him outright. Removing the armour was beyond her power; the spells Merlin’s lapdogs had woven into it would ensure that removing it would kill the bearer. Faye considered for a moment, and then placed her arms around Sir Robin, carefully shaping a teleportation spell in her mind. There was a flash of green light and they both vanished from the field.

 

If you're reading this, please can I plead for a comment?

Chapter Twenty-Seven<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

From above, great plumes of smoke marred Londinium.

Eleanor felt her dragon’s wings beating frantically as he swooped down towards the battle, leading seven other dragons into the fray. Her mental link with the beast – which had cost her any hope of a normal life or relationship – shimmered with cold delight at the thought of combat. The semi-intelligent dragon hatchlings that were handed over to the Garrison by their parents never developed true intelligence. They took delight in fighting and in their bond with a human who provided the brains of the partnership. Anyone who got between a dragon and its rider was risking life and limb.

Through the link, she could see what the dragon saw with its far sharper eyes – and magical senses. Dark figures hovered high over the city, occasionally casting spells down towards the flaming ruins below. Giant birds, some almost as large as a full-sized dragon, flew through the smoke, seemingly unbothered by the heat rising from the fires they’d helped to start. An army of monsters, some human, some very far from human, was pushing its way into the city. And thousands of humans lay dead, killed by the invading forces. Cold anger burned through Eleanor’s mind and shimmered into the dragon. Those responsible would not go unpunished.

The dragon howled and opened its mouth, blowing a long stream of fire towards the Dark Sorcerers. A full-grown dragon could throw fire a considerable distance – and the magicians at the Garrison had improved the hatchlings they’d been given, to the point where they could throw their fire for nearly a mile. One Dark Sorcerer had almost no time to turn before he found himself wrapped in flames, burning through his wards. Perhaps he could have held it off on the ground, but floating up in the air it spelled his death warrant. Unable to maintain both the wards and the floatation spell, he found himself plummeting towards the ground and hitting it with a splat. No one, not even a Dark Sorcerer, could have survived such an impact.

Eleanor twisted the dragon’s path as the other Dark Sorcerers scattered, casting angry spells towards the dragons. They would have been lethal if they’d struck her or one of the other riders, but dragons were among the most magical creatures to dwell on the mundane world. Their skin repelled almost all charms and curses, deflecting them back towards the enemy or knocking them harmlessly towards the ground. Eleanor felt the dragon’s glee as it twisted in the air, a trick that had caught a hundred enemies in the past, and snapped at one of the Dark Sorcerers. The man let out a yelp and vanished in a flash of green light, seconds before the dragon’s jaws snapped shut. Eleanor had to smile at the dragon’s outrage; it had been cheated of its prey. It roared its fury and threw a great gout of fire towards the nearest Dark Sorcerer.

The beating of the dragon’s wings was pushing the smoke aside, allowing her to look down with her merely human eyes. Giant crabs – escorted by what looked like warped mermaids – were advancing through the centre of the city, ruthlessly destroying everything in their path. Eleanor shuddered as one of the crabs seemed to look upwards, snapping its claws towards the dragon. She was used to huge beasts – dragons were larger than a house; the largest of them were larger than the Iron Palace had been – and yet the crabs sent unpleasant shivers down her spine. They were slow and cumbersome, unable to actually capture buildings their bulk sent crashing down in ruins, but they were effective terror weapons.

She pushed her mind into the dragon’s mind and directed it down towards the ground. The dragon resisted for a long moment – it wanted to keep hunting Dark Sorcerers and snapping giant birds out of the air – before reluctantly following her command. Eleanor braced herself as the dragon spiralled down towards the first crab and blew a vast gout of fire over the beast. The crab lifted its giant claws to defend itself, emitting a high-pitched keening that hurt Eleanor’s ears, but it wasn't enough to save it. Or perhaps it was; the crab’s shell had absorbed the heat, without cooking the softer flesh inside. A second gout of fire sent the crab scuttling backwards, yet it was still unharmed.

The dragon’s mind radiated fury – it couldn't comprehend defiance – and it came to a half, hovering just above the ground. Its craws reached down and snatched the crab, its mighty wings beating a path up into the air. The crab was heavy enough to slow the ascent, but not heavy enough to save itself. Eleanor watched in amusement as it struggled to free itself, claws and legs waving away helplessly at the air, before the dragon let go. The crab plummeted a hundred meters to the ground and came down on its back. It seemed injured, but even at full strength it couldn't have turned itself over. Eleanor grinned as the dragon aimed a vast plume of fire at the crab’s exposed – and vulnerable – underside and cooked the beast. Other dragons were following her beast’s example, apart from one that had decided to challenge a crab to single combat. A snapping claw cut off its head and smashed the rider to a bloody pulp.

Eleanor cursed as her dragon roared its anger and went after the treacherous crab. The crab was trying to retreat, but it was far too late. Her dragon caught its legs, tipped it over easily and jammed its teeth and claws into the exposed underbelly. Crab meat flew everywhere as it ripped the monster apart. Eleanor caught snatches of its emotions as it swallowed large pieces of meat, even though she tried to deter it, knowing that the pieces of this crab might start coming together inside the dragon’s belly and then try to gnaw their way out. The Healers who cured cancer used live crabs to assist their rituals. Afterwards, the crabs had to be boiled and then buried under the sand. Eating them was deadly dangerous.

The dragon – either in response to her prompts or because it had satisfied its hunger – leapt back into the air. They’d killed all the crabs – the scuttling beasts hadn't had a chance to retreat – but there was still a mighty army burning its way into the city. The dragon roared and swept down towards one of the army’s prongs, composed of humanoid monsters who started to scatter when they saw the dragon. It was far too late. The fire the dragon breathed down upon them was too powerful to avoid, an endless stream that vaporised whatever it touched. Hundreds of monsters simply vanished in the flames. Eleanor found herself praying, as the eerie glow of dragon fire gave way to more conventional flames, that they hadn't incinerated surviving humans as well. No one would know, now or ever.

A hail of arrows, guided by simple charms, flashed into the air, only to glint off the dragon’s scaly green underbelly. The monsters didn't lack for courage, Eleanor realised, although it wouldn't help them escape. The dragon twisted and blew down another gout of flame, incinerating the archers, the buildings they were standing on and several buildings too close to the original buildings. The flames were rapidly spreading out of control. Even if they drove off the monsters, they might be unable to save the city. With most of the Garrison’s available forces in Tara, they wouldn't even have reinforcements coming to fight the flames.

The dragon soared into the sky and roar, blowing a bright wave of fire through the air. Eleanor watched through its eyes as the monsters began to retreat, heading back towards the gates they’d broken down to enter the city. None of them were trying to surrender, but that was hardly a surprise, not when many of them had been driven from humanity’s towns and villages simply because they’d been touched by wild magic. A handful were trying to continue the fight, yet the advancing guardsmen – having taken heart from the arrival of the dragons – were able to swiftly dispose of them. The battle was almost won.

A flash of green light rocketed up from the ground and struck one of the dragons. Eleanor watched in horror as green light cascaded over the beast, seconds before its wings folded and it plummeted helplessly towards the ground. There was magic running through the dragon’s body – nothing so large could fly without magic – and the Dark Sorcerer had somehow managed to cancel the natural magic that powered the dragon’s flight. The beast struck the ground and went up in a colossal fireball as the magical field protecting its insides collapsed.

Eleanor caught her dragon and pointed it down towards the ground. The Dark Sorcerer was roaring and chanting, summoning power from the Darkness to kill a second dragon. She caught sight of him through her dragon’s eyes and recoiled. The dark sorcery he used was eating away at his flesh, aging him before his time. He might not have realised it, but he was far too close to becoming a lich, an undead skeleton. And a lich could be very dangerous.

The dragon plummeted towards the Dark Sorcerer, breathing fire down onto his wards. They held as dragon fire flared over the shield, but the building under his feet couldn't hope to stand up to the flames. It caught fire instantly, sending the Dark Sorcerer tumbling through the roof and crashing down into the debris. Maybe he’d survived – Eleanor’s dragon blasted flame through the rubble, just to be sure – but he was definitely out of the fight.

She smiled grimly as the dragon clawed its way back into the sky. If nothing else, they’d taught the Greenwood monsters a lesson. Perhaps they’d be less eager to listen to the Dark Sorcerers in future.

***​

Maledict felt power roaring through his bones as he lashed out, shattering part of the barricades the defenders had hastily erected. A hail of arrows, knives and axes rained down around him, but they glinted helplessly off the wards he’d created to protect him. The defenders didn't have a chance. Dark flames – a spell long forbidden by Merlin and believed to be lost, before he’d uncovered an ancient spellbook – cascaded over the rubble. Those caught by the fire wouldn't burn, but they’d lose their souls and become monsters. If they survived the experience, their comrades would cut them down before they could flee.

He found himself giggling, just before he saw a golden flicker of fire in the corner of his eye. The wards glowed as a vast wave of fire flashed down and struck his defences. He forgot the defenders and pulled the wards around him, channelling his last ounce of strength into defending himself. The fires faded away, revealing a dragon hovering just a few meters above the ground, staring down at him with great golden eyes. Maledict met its eyes and, just for a second, he found himself daunted by the beast. He might have wielded magic, but the dragon was magic – and the bare breasts of its rider taunted him, reminding him of what he’d given up in his quest for power.

Angrily, he snapped off a pair of spells, both aimed at the rider. The dragon’s head darted up sharply and both spells were absorbed harmlessly by its green scales. Maledict had heard of spells that allowed sorcerers to control a whole flock of dragons, yet countless hours of research had never uncovered them. The Garrison knew some spells, but they’d been devised by Merlin and they were – intentionally, he suspected – limited. The dragon’s mouth lolled open, clearly preparing to unleash another dose of fire - and Maledict teleported away. Dragon fire was magical too, powerful enough that it might burn through his wards.

He appeared on a rooftop, one of the tallest remaining buildings in the city. The attack was being beaten back by the dragons, he saw, but that hardly mattered. The Greenwood monsters were expendable. He didn't care if they all died in the fighting. All that mattered was power – and although it looked like his side was losing, they’d already won. He smiled as he saw which parts of the city had been spared; the factories, some of the wealthier sections and even some of the housing. The Duke would be pleased.

Another dragon flew overhead and Maledict teleported away, back to the rendezvous point. Faye sat there, staring down at a figure in white-gold armour. Maledict felt his mouth fall open in shock as he realised just who – and what – Faye had captured. The glow from the supernatural sword, even concealed within a sheath of wood, drew him to it like a moth to a flame. Only his natural caution, the same caution that had prevented his dark sorcery from burning through his soul and wiping him from existence, kept him from touching the blade.

“He’s alive,” Faye said, slowly. She knelt to him, but Maledict knew better than to take her submission at face value. After capturing such a valuable prize, perhaps the most valuable prize of all, she would have ambitions for her future. There had never been a woman leading Dark Sorcerers, but Faye would hardly allow that thought to stop her. If she thought she could dispose of him safely, she would. “I can't remove his armour.”

Maledict peered at it through his Sight. The armour was held together by intricate spells, some bound to the wearer’s very soul. It would be simple enough to kill him, but Sir Robin was the husband of the First Councillor. His value as a hostage would be considerable. Maledict contemplated the spells for a long moment, and then cast a simple sleeping spell. Sir Robin wouldn’t wake up for hours. By then, they’d be back home – and they’d have all the time they needed to undo his armour and start twisting him with their magic. The thought of having Lady Tiffany assassinated by her own husband almost made him giggle. Without Merlin’s wards, who would they know they could trust?

“Get him back home,” he ordered. Faye could do that, and see that he was settled in before he awoke. “I’ll stay here until we’re ready to leave.”

Faye vanished in a flash of green light, taking Sir Robin and his sword with her. Maledict frowned, and then teleported himself, back onto the burning streets. The fires were spreading further now, partly because of the magic the Dark Sorcerers had woven into the original flames, but also partly because the dragons were making it worse. Their flames were devouring entire regiments of Greenwood monsters. The army Maledict had brought to the city was in full retreat, back to the Greenwood. Somehow, he doubted that many of them would escape before they were killed by the outraged citizens.

He threw himself into the air and soared over the city. The flames rose higher as he laughed out loud, enjoying the sight. He’d worked his will on the land and the broken city below stood in silent testament to his deeds. This was true power; this was what Merlin had sought to deny the human race. After today, everyone would fear his followers – or seek to become like them. Even if the attack was beaten off – and the dragons were driving his monsters back – the city had still been devastated.

Another cackle escaped his lips. The power flared through him, calling him onwards. He could do anything now, anything at all. It crossed his mind that he could challenge the Duke now, remove his wards and make the man his helpless slave, but he pushed the thought aside. It was far more amusing to let the Duke believe that they were allies, or that Maledict was prepared to be subordinate to him, before the time came to end the charade. Besides, some of the lesser Dark Sorcerers were already in Camelot, laying the grounds for the next offensive. And that one would start his final bid for power...

Chuckling, he closed his eyes and signalled the retreat. It was time to go.

Behind them, the city burned.

***​

Once the Dark Sorcerers had departed, the outcome of the battle was no longer in doubt. Eleanor and the remaining dragons harried the remaining monsters until they crossed the closest boundary line and escaped into the Greenwood. She was tempted to continue the pursuit, but exposure to too much wild magic might be incredibly dangerous. Instead, she directed the dragons back towards the city to assist in fire fighting. Now the battle was over, the entire city had turned out to fight the fires.

The remaining magicians – reinforced by a team of combat magicians who had been rocketed down from Camelot – were casting spells into the river, sucking out great streams of water and directing them into the heart of the fires. The guardsmen were working desperately to evacuate entire sections of the city, before knocking them down to prevent the fire from spreading further. Hundreds of thousands of people who had lost everything in the attack were helping as best as they could, forming fire chains and transporting buckets of water to the flames. Even the dragons helped, using their wings to create vast gusts of wind that blew out entire fires.

Eleanor directed the dragon to rise up into the air, above the burning city. Even from above, it was clear that the attack – for all of its violence – had been surprisingly selective. Some parts of the city had remained untouched. She frowned, stroking her chin in puzzlement. Had the monsters dreamed they’d be allowed to retain possession of the city? Or was something else at work here?

Shaking her head, she directed the dragon down towards the ground. There were fires to fight. The mystery of what the enemy had hoped to achieve would have to wait.

 

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