Highmage's Plight (Highmage’s Plight Series Book 1) (14 page)

Fri’il pulled herself closer and muttered as she stirred, “Hmm, what would have been the fun of that?”

A rough tongue licked his toes. His eyes widened. A tail wagged at the base of the covers, then a tawny beast with black mane rose on its haunches. She stretched and met his gaze.

‘We have chosen the name Raven,’ Staff informed him.

“Who’s we?”

‘She and I,’ Staff replied, startling him.

“You’ve a link?” he muttered.

‘Quite a strong one, actually. Oh, and by the way, Se’and has adopted her. Congratulations: married only two weeks and already you are a father. At this rate, you shall have quite a Cathartan House!’ Staff’s laughter was downright eerie.

“I have not married them!” he growled under his breath.

‘Of course not. Although, looking through our memory banks, marriage customs often are followed by a honeymoon, which is usually celebrated in exotic places. Hmm, yes, I do believe this world might qualify as such an exotic place. So do enjoy yourself.’

The were-dog shimmered and suddenly George was gazing at the pale girl with raggedly cut black hair. His foster daughter smiled at him shyly, then crawled up to him across the blanket and sniffed him carefully.

Se’and goaded, “Go on. Do be a good girl.”

The girl licked Se’and’s face then padded back the way she had come. George glanced at the worried look on the Cathartan’s face. She whispered, “Do you suppose I’ll have to housebreak her? Oh, nevermind. Do go back to sleep. It’s been a long day and I’ll not have you wandering about.”

Fri’il murmured something in his ear.

With a groan, George hastily closed his eyes. She watched him, then giggled and buried herself under the covers.

He gasped, “Stop that!”

Se’and turned with a rueful smile on her face, certain he would stay with them. They would see to that. The house of Je’orj Bradlei had a destiny, of that she was oddly sure. It was a destiny that required the most committed of bodyguards, and they were that.

George wrested Fri’il away from him, then mentally threw up his hands and laid back down quietly as the young woman giggled and nestled close. Se’and leaned close and kissed his cheek and smiled wistfully. “Go to sleep, m’lord.”

‘So this then is married bliss,’ Raven heard Staff say as she glanced at her new family and licked at her new mother’s foreleg.

George did his best to ignore the computer’s inane laughter.

The curtains were drawn and George was in a deep sleep after a rather long night. He lay curled up with what his elfblooded healer companion thought looked like a cross between a hellhound and mountain lion. The shape-changing beast dripped tears from her closed eyes.

“She’s been through hell as the witch’s pawn,” Me’oh said, stroking her fur, looking for any sign of injury.”

“Well, now the dark Temple’s no more,” Balfour said softly. “Edous has woken to a new day.”

“And Se’and’s in her element dealing with remnants of the city council, now that the priestess’s allies have fled south.”

Me’oh gestured her lord husband to sit and join her in watching over the pair as George’s staff softly glowed standing a foot from the bed.

The computer staff shielded the room, as Balfour’s elvin ancestors would have used a warding spell. In this time of quiet, nothing outside could disturb George’s rest. Only one thing could interfere, the Summoning spell that drove them ever eastward.

Balfour shook his head, knowing George was not being particularly accepting of their having become Cathartan lords by bond. Glancing at Me’oh, he swallowed. There were some advantages to the gift, which George deemed rather problematic.

There was a soft knock at the door. Cle’or glanced inside and saw George and the were child still sleeping. “Se’and sent a messenger. She’s on her way back. Apparently Lord Gerig has a few more questions.”

Balfour nodded as the well-armed blonde, who had taken to watching over him ducked back outside. Me’oh glanced at him with a cryptic smile. He swallowed. Having Cle’or as a bodyguard and would-be wife presented him his own set of moral qualms. Luckily, he was a healer and actually could now heal himself of any physical harm. He heard Me’oh softly chuckling.

The archaeologist from a distant world, which the ancestors to this world’s branch of humanity had called home, dreamed, and he wasn’t alone….

‘George, this is really a fine mess you’ve gotten us into.’

“Oh, don’t start!” he replied to his staff, trudging up to the top of the rocky outcropping in his dream, a memory of his final days in the Great Waste.

It was terribly hot in this desert. He’d considered using his wyvern hide cloak for shade and waiting for nightfall now that he had gotten to what he considered a safe distance from the half buried colony ship the trolls called home.

He looked about him. Greth had taken him as far as he felt safe and told him to keep heading toward the mountain range on the western horizon. The computer flashed with the ship’s memory core’s images of what this land had once looked like. A great forest lay to the north that stretched hundreds of miles. The mountains hadn’t been there, and this desert had been grassy hills with flowing streams, home to wildlife that looked remarkably terrestrial in origin.

‘Because they were,’ the computer staff whispered in his mind.

War had changed all that. A war most terrible, driving the survivors and the wildlife that was able to flee these lands as magic and science were used as weapons until the elves changed the rules.

George apparently paused too long. The Summoning drove him to his knees. His head felt like a spike was being driven through it as the staff in his hands flared.

Come to me!

Stumbling forward, he fought to stop moving.

Come to me!

“Why?” he cried.

I summoned you! The need is great!

“I will not be used… against… my will!”

‘Increasing rapport level!’ the computer staff shouted as he came to a halt.

Come to me!

The pain diminished, but was not gone. “Stop this! I’ll come, but I must know why!”

The Summoning eased.
Come to me and I shall answer all questions.

“Right… Not good enough.”

There was a long pause.
You shall find food and water in the Barrier Mountains.

It offered no more.

“That’ll have to do for now.”

Out of the north wyverns raced, their demonic master shouting, “Find the mage and kill him!”

They raced for days and finally caught his scent. Yet they were not the only ones giving chase or alerted to a change in the winds of fate.

An old man watched his clan go about their daily routine, then felt the presence approaching. It was moving fast, coming out of the west and racing southward toward a place that few knew even existed, a passage through the earth leading to the trapped lands of the Great Waste.

The unicorn turned its head to look up at the mountains, sensing the old man.
I leave you to your peace
,
old friend
.

Stiffening, the old man in mountain woolens many leagues distant whispered seemingly to the wind, “Highmage be with you.”

After continuing on, George paused, sweat pouring down his face, the sun at least a lot closer to sunset, “I thought I was in better shape.”

‘Take it from me, you definitely weren’t.’

Breathing hard, he muttered, “Oh, thanks.”

‘Think nothing of it.’

“Distance to that mountain range?”

The computer flashed the distance across his mind and answered, ‘At your current pace, we’ll reach it in two days. Of course, you’ll then have to climb.’

He took a deep breath then resumed his march through the sands. “Sounds fun.”

A wyvern paused on an outcropping of bare stone as the sunset cast a lurid pall over the desert. Sniffing the breeze, its hunting companions burst into view, growling. It bared its sharp teeth.

He had moved. He lay southeastward, heading toward the mountains.

FIND HIM! KILL THE MAGE!
Their demonic master raged at them through the ether. The wyverns cringed, whining.
KILL HIM BEFORE HE CAN RUIN ALL MY PLANS!

The first wyvern roared, then its brother and sister began to howl. The sound was picked up by seven other throats and they bounded southward.

The sound was eerie and one that echoed in his memory, George glanced north. “That doesn’t sound good.”

Staff didn’t quibble. ‘No, it doesn’t. I’m detecting ten different howls.’

“Well, isn’t that just great. Looks like I’m not stopping to sleep tonight.”

Rock shifted in the mountain wall, creating an opening. There was a brilliant white light jutting up in the shape of a horn as the unicorn charged out of the stygian darkness of the secret tunnel.

The stars were coming out as it exited into the desert lands it once called home.

Wyverns are on his trail,
a faint echo of the voice it recognized whispered on the winds.

Horn aglow the unicorn ran northwest, desperate to reach the Summoned in time.

George continued through the night, the staff modifying his sight to night vision mode. His eyes dilated like a cat’s as the first rays of morning turned the darkness a lighter shade as he passed in the lee of dunes.

‘George, I’m detecting an anomaly.’

He saw shards of twisted metal jutting from the sands to his left. “Scan.”

Magnetic energy spiked around him, reacting to the computer’s effort. The metal shards quivered.

“Shit, they’re teeth!” He dove backward as what he first thought of as a trap sprang closed, just missing his right foot.

‘Uh, George,’ the staff whispered in his mind as the trap quivered, its maw opening, turning toward him. 

He didn’t dare move as he clutched his staff, which blazed and sent a blast of energy toward the far sand dune. The metal maw reoriented and turned away from him, pulled out of the ground to reveal what once had been conduits and now looked more like sinewy necks.

Concentrating, a beam of high intensity laser light shot between the conduits and his staff, ‘Transmitting
Questor
override.’

The metal maw jerked, then settled.

‘Whatever it is, it’s deactivated.’

“Probe its databank.”

‘Complete. It’s not very sophisticated, particularly for a modified housebot.’

George thought the colonists must have been desperate to create giant compacters out of household aids.

‘That’s a Class Three colonial transport housebot, gutted for use as a defense system.’

It apparently hadn’t worked as planned. There were traces of human bones deep within its innards. ‘George….’

Eyes wide, he muttered, “Great, we’re in a mine field of the damned things.”

Walking through a mine field at night wasn’t fun. However, there were advantages to having a computer with archaeological scan capabilities. Dozens of the things were long destroyed, which seemed purposeful. There was a safe path through it. Either the long ago colonists left themselves a way out or the elves had blazed a way in.

There had once been a town or outpost here.

‘Scanning.’

The evidence flashed before his eyes. Bits of energy weapons were still visible. He could see half buried components, slagged bits of gun grips. Oxidized blast burns. Their tech-base hadn’t saved them.

He could envision the place as it once had been: prefab colonial structures mixed with native metals, buildings that would have seemed at home on a hundred early colony worlds. He shuddered seeing evidence of their end.

The echoing wyverns howl decided him. This would be where he made his stand. The fact that the Summoning had gone quiescent also didn’t bode well. Apparently there was no better place for him.

“Ward.”

The computer staff planted itself firmly upon the ground and George closed his eyes to get what rest he could while his entwined mind joined the computer’s foray in conversing with the mechanical menaces around him.

They slowed approaching the place. The faint scent of oxidizing metals reached their sensitive nasal slits. The smell of a man wafted stronger.

Jagged metal lined the area. They entered, seeking to be stealthy now that their prey was so close.

Staff tracked the life sources entering the erratic mine field. It had broadcast a
Questor
code, ordering the quasi-functioning machines to not react but to be prepared. The former bots didn’t even quiver.

“Now,” George rasped as the last entered the trap.

The maws burst forth from the suddenly spewing sands. Wyverns cried in pain as metallic jaws slammed shut around half their number, crushed to death and sucked under the earth in moments.

Others found themselves confronting the snapping metal jaws, which caught at legs or flanks. Several fought free and found themselves retreating, only to have sands spew upward as they set off another trap.

A wyvern whimpered, cut in half. Its eyes grew dark as life went out from them. Another fought free then charged the bent metal imprisoning its sister. The metal snapped and now two of them were free, glancing about as a wyvern was flung high into the air by something akin to magefire.

George, staff held high, sent blasts of energy into now wary beasts.

A wyvern roared charging on three feet, a foreleg mangled and bloody. It rebounded from the man’s shield of light even as two less injured creatures joined the fray.

He fired blast after blast of balls of energy at the three creatures as the computer flashed warnings that the shield strength was dropping with every impact as the wyverns rammed it over and over. He found himself unconsciously stepping backward.

Something huge bounded past him, undetected by computer staff’s scan. “What the…!”

What looked like a horse with a glowing white horn slammed into the nearest wyvern, which cried out as that horn dipped and touched its flesh. Smoke rose from the slashing burn as the wyvern whimpered, shying away.

I brought help.
The Summoning said in his mind.

Time seemed to slow outside of George’s shielded perimeter. Yet the white horse seemed unaffected by the dilation of time as the wyvern moved sluggishly. “Target!”

The staff did, firing blast after blast, even as another wounded wyvern fought free of the odd mine field of still snapping jagged metal teeth. It entered the dilation field around them and slowed.

The unicorn reared, then the Summoning cried,
Sorry about this!

Turning, the blazing horn touched his shield. There was an explosion and George lost consciousness.

When he woke, the unicorn was nudging him.

“Ow.”

I did apologize,
the Summoning said.

“Yeah, big help,” he muttered.

Actually it is. The Demonlord thinks you are dead.

“What?” he said sitting up with his staff, which had fallen beside him close.

Before that last wyvern died, it shared its vision of you dying as its brethren tore you to pieces.