Michael Stackpole - When Dragons Rage

Naelros nodded. “And you will request more assistance from the empress?”

“Done, long since done.” A growl rolled from Anarus’ throat. “Come to me with news of Nawal’s conquest or do not come to me at all.”

Something ancient moved through Naelros’ dark eyes. Isaura did not know what it was, but it burned her senses. It had been equal parts anger and contempt, and yet more, woven in such a tight and complex pattern that she could only marvel at what little she comprehended. Naelros would obey the sullanciri —for now, at least—but what he did after he reported success, she could not predict.

Whatever that would be, Isaura was certain, it would not be as foolish as Anarus’ hastily snapped command.

Kerrigan Reese was finding the Conservatory students very annoying. They sat there in their encampment, at the heart of the Aurolani siege force, casting spell after detection spell. Not only were their detection spells cast in the old, sloppy style he now detested, but they were painfully easy to deal with.

Once it had been reported that a third of the Aurolani army had moved northwest toward Nawal, Princess Alexia had marched her troops to the city ahead of them. While the cavalry formed a screening force in the direction of the enemy advance, the Zamsina Guards, a light infantry unit, hurried to Nawal. Kerrigan had traveled with them and had been afforded chambers in the local Caledo Academy.

He had been tempted to ignore the Aurolani spells, but a conversation he’d had with Princess Alexia reminded him of a job he had done for General Adrogans on the Okrannel campaign. Kerrigan had prepared lots of documents that purported to be from a unit traveling covertly through the Okrans countryside. When the enemy uncovered this cache of documents, they sent troops out to hunt for these phantom warriors.

Thus Kerrigan had been introduced to the concept of disinformation. It was patently obvious that if the Aurolani thought there were more troops in the city than there were, they would be slower to attack—and vice versa. An underreporting of troops might lure them into an ambush, and an overre-porting might even make them withdraw.

Kerrigan took some time to examine the Aurolani spells and realized they were looking to detect fires burning, swords, spears, arrows, and adults sorted by gender. Clearly each mage had been given a specific result to tabulate, and together they would provide a picture of just who and what was waiting inside the city.

Messing around with the results of every spell would have been difficult, so Kerrigan chose his targets carefully. He selected the best-cast spells with the tightest search templates, and those were the ones he played with. He examined them, learned the method of their reporting, and created two spells. One sought the reports and killed them; the other sought the reports and duplicated them.

Both spells worked well and validated Kerrigan’s thoughts about how masking spells might function to conceal something from a search spell. An old-style search spell . He also created a spell to seek out counterspells employed to detect the spells he cast to alter information. Those never produced results, which actually disappointed him, even though it meant the enemy had no idea they were being tricked.

But what annoyed him about the Conservatory mages was their dogged persistence in casting their spells. He hardly got a chance to work on his detection spell for a fragment of the DragonCrown, but late in the afternoon of the second day in Nawal, he thought he had it ready. Ignoring the search spells for a moment, he set himself, then cast his spell.

Kerrigan could not help but be pleased with himself. His spell melded a number of styles and aspects. It twisted and tangled like the organic weavings of elven magick, but before the tendrils thickened, they evaporated as might urZrethi magick. When they flashed into form again, they had the angularity of a human spell, but its sharp crusts burst as elven tendrils grew out through them.

He cast the spell toward the east and at the Aurolani camp. He’d planned to cast it toward Meredo, where he knew a fragment existed, but the distance would delay the report, and he was anxious to see if the spell worked. If the enemy had a fragment of the DragonCrown, he was sure to get a report quickly. He focused the casting to a narrow arc, which would, perforce, expand as it swept forward. He figured the rate of speed would be a mile a minute, with the rate slowing as the arc grew. At that rate, however, he’d have his report back from the Aurolani camp in seconds.

He waited.

Nothing.

Two minutes. Three. Time moved with incredible sloth. Four minutes and then five.

He frowned. He could imagine one of three results. First, there was no fragment of the DragonCrown in the enemy camp. Second—and he did not like this idea at all—there was a fragment, but a spell masking it had defeated his spell. Third, which he actually liked least of all, his spell just didn’t work.

It was this third possibility that he had to address first. He reworked the spell. Instead of searching for a fragment of the DragonCrown, he opted for something a bit more simple. He picked a target suggested by Princess Alexia and decided to search for arcanslata . He recalled telling her that they could only be detected when they were in use, but he knew that wasn’t entirely true. There would be a taint on them from the use of magick, but it would be hard to detect. Still, determined not to let that defeat him, he worked out the search parameters and blasted the spell out, directing it to the east and south.

If the Aurolani don’t have any, I know the crown prince and the king do.

Within seconds he got three reports of arcanslata . One was located in the Aurolani camp and the other two were within Nawal itself. The spell would take a while to get to the crown prince and to Caledo, so Kerrigan sat back and waited.

Before he got the heralds back from that spell, he got something else. It washed over Nawal heavy and hard, blasting into the city with the force of a torrential rainstorm. It even felt like a storm, with magickal energies roiling and boiling. It raked through his mind like the screech of talons on slate, then built to drive a flaming spike into his soul.

His hands went to his head and he spilled out of his chair as pain shot through his body. Even wracked as he was, he retained the presence of mind to identify the spell and prepare a counterspell. Fingers twitched, and his lips began to move as he started to defend himself.

An inkwell, heavy and full, smashed him in the face and shattered. The bony armor rose, preventing injury, but the black ink poured over him like blood. Snarling, he rolled to his knees and looked at Bok. “Why did you do that?”

The urZrethi held a boot ready to throw, while his other arm, elongated, was seeking the boot’s companion. “Soppit, soppit, soppit.”

Kerrigan’s hands went to his head again as the mage-storm shot lightning up his spine. His back bowed and he gasped for breath, then the spell released him and he flopped to the floor. He lay there limp for a moment, then found Bok squatting near his head.

The urZrethi dabbed at the ink with a corner of the blanket from Kerrigan’s cot. The mage wanted to push the foul-smelling creature away because he was still furious with him, but the tenderness of the gesture made it hard to sustain his anger. “Why, Bok?”

“Soppit.”

Kerrigan closed his eyes and shook his head. His mind slowly began to clear, and he started sorting things out. Someone in the enemy camp was a powerful sorcerer and had cast a wild spell toward the city, but it was a spell that would only have had an effect on magickers. While it was painful, distracting, and annoying, it really wasn’t designed to do any serious damage. In fact, it was a spell that was easy to defend against—a variation of a nuisance spell all students learned to use when sparring against other apprentices.