Chapter 14

  Six former prisoners started to move down the path and into a small tunnel running alongside the stream, while I placed small stones, coins, and rocks in strategic places around the cavern.

  One by one, I placed each piece, drained it of its matter, and held that in stasis as I wove a complex spell that would trigger all at once. As I ran through each of my weaves, I thought about all the other mages captured in Vale over many years, and probably tortured here. In this very cavern. These were my brethren, those who had fought for The Way in this twisted city. After what little I’d learned, it seemed their power had been used somehow, against their will—perhaps right before they were murdered. Mages had been eradicated from the land, and this place was one source of that genocide.

  As I moved through the final weaves, the distant sound of the clattering of feet on the stairwell echoed through the cavern. We’d barricaded the doorway with metal bars, and I threw up a wall of air too, but neither would hold long.

  The clattering feet stopped—there was probably a whole squad of soldiers in the adjacent room now. I heard nothing for a few moments.

  BOOM!

  An explosion hammered against the black iron door at the cavern entrance surprising me and nearly throwing the door off its hinges in one go. They had fired something explosive at the door. I glanced back and saw the men waiting for me a few hundred yards away in the mouth of the tunnel.

  “Keep going!” I shouted. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  I quickened my pace and completed the spell just at the moment a second booming explosion slammed into the door, the deafening sound echoing off the walls of the cavern, dust falling into the space.

  The door now sat ajar leaning on its lower hinge, but my wall of air survived. Several thugs tried to jump the iron door and into the cavern but ran headlong into the invisible barrier and fell straight to the ground.

  The barrier would stand for perhaps one more blow.

  Weaves complete, I turned and moved down the slope of slippery, wet rock toward the tunnel at the bottom of the cavern. I breathed deep as I moved and felt myself sweating through my thick wool robes. Darkness pervaded this place, and though I started to feel weak, I wove a small stone away, transforming it into a light that I placed on the head of my staff. I caught up to the men walking ahead of me into the tunnel.

  “Let’s move,” I growled at the prisoners when I reached the tunnel opening in the back of the cavern. “We need to be as deep into this tunnel as possible when that cavern collapses.”

  I moved into the lead. They followed me and the light from my staff into the dark, damp tunnel, the trickling stream running alongside us.

  A third BOOM! slammed against the wall of air far behind us now, and I heard the iron door itself clatter against the back of the cavern.

  I forced myself to slowly count to three, as we kept moving, allowing the guards to move past the doorway and into the cavern.

  One.We couldn’t see the cavern behind us anymore as we’d gone around a bend in the narrow tunnel. I hoped that bend would shield us from the coming blast. Two.

  “Get down and take cover,” I whispered to the men. Each of them ducked down along the side of the tunnel, covering their heads with their hands.

  Three. I stopped and lifted my arms like a conductor of the orchestras of old. I danced my hands around gently, triggering the complex spell I’d woven in the cavern.

  At that moment, a thunderclap battered the walls of the tunnel, echoing down from the cavern behind us.

  The sound was a deep, sharp thud in the darkness that resulted in what sounded like an avalanche of thundering rock. It was too dark here to know for sure, but the resulting gouts of dust and rock that spilled into the tunnel confirmed that the spell worked as hoped. Perhaps the spell had debilitated or downed the guards behind us permanently; but at the very least, I’d blocked their ability to follow us deeper.

  I turned to the men with me, the light on my staff the only illumination in the small dark, and now dust-filled tunnel.

  “If you want to live, we’ve gotta hurry now!” I called out.

  I turned and ran, and all six of them followed behind me, all of us hugging the walls of the tunnel path alongside the stream. The winding path kept us moving deeper and lower. I couldn’t tell if we were moving deeper into the mountain, or toward some inevitable outflow.

  Taking this route had been a risk, but I had to hope it was better than trying to fight off a whole division of soldiers inside the city. The liberated prisoners followed me silently, knowing we had no choice but to continue on through the dark.

  Whenever I darted my eyes back to look at the men, they inevitably flicked to Bend, the first partial mage I’d met in years. He appeared quite young, almost boyish, though his face still wore exhaustion under his eyes. But he was a mage of The Way. I only wished there were more than one of him—for then we could think about what came next.

  It was a slim hope.

  I knew that after this attack, Uof and his soldiers wouldn’t stop until they found me. We would have to be careful now?—?they would overturn every shop and home in the city of Vale to find us .

  As we ran, I recalled how Weer was seen as a prophet, leader of a new way that had overtaken the world, as he spread the gospel of The Motorized. Newer, stronger weapons and tools and vehicles were how they convinced people they were saviors.

  Many decades ago, The Motorized were just a myth, and Weer with his stronghold in Vale, a legend. It was said to be a place where steam-powered magical weapons flourished.

  Once mages of The Way of the Mark opposed The Motorized, that’s when the Magekillers from Vale started to appear. They didn’t broadcast their purpose or identity when they arrived, that came much later. Instead, they showed up in a city or a village, appearing like phantoms and ruthlessly rooting out mages, one at a time. They traveled alone, but in populated mage strongholds, groups of Magekillers arrived together. Sometimes the Magekillers killed on sight; sometimes they worked their way into a city, watching closely, evaluating defenses, counting mages, and developing a plan; while other times, they simply kidnapped a mage and disappeared.

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  As I continues to move into the darkness, I listened to the trickle of water running alongside us—the anomaly of the stream struck me—in our push to escape, I hadn’t really thought about it. The prisoners had already drank their fill of water from its banks, but I could only wonder, where was this water coming from?

  It hadn’t always been a world of drought. Over decades of war between The Way and The Motorized, the world itself began to change. The droughts began as seasonal problems, then changed into a way of life as mages went into hiding becoming more and more difficult to find. Dust storms covered the land and eroded good farming soils and made it difficult for anyone to survive. In those years, I began traveling to seek out those of The Way, to learn, teach, and encourage?—?this was decades ago?—?and of course, sometimes I’d been forced to hide too.

  But I was done hiding.

  I came across only two mages in the last five years, and one of those died in a battle with The Motorized. I still held onto the meager hope that the other still lived.

  Ultimately, I longed for a new world, a new order, a land where followers of The Way could learn and grow their knowledge and pass it on to others who would share it with any who would follow. I held onto the slimmest glimmer of hope that this dream had begun here, today.

  While I’d been consumed with my thoughts, it felt like we’d been hiking quickly along the stream for hours. Tracking time was difficult in this darkness.

  Eventually, the tunnel opened up into another cavern and the small, trickling stream we’d been following deposited into an underground lake?—?a stunning sight! I’d never seen so much water in one place, not in all my life.

  The men gasped collectively. This amount of water didn’t exist anymore, nowhere I supposed except here in Vale.

  Across the small lake, a hint of light filtered in through an opening in the cavern wall where lake water streamed out of the cave system in a thin, winding creek. This amount of water would be protected from both sides. From above by that prison. And on this side, there would be guards—I knew it. This would not be a simple escape.

  After a moment to take in the sight, we broke into a slow, careful run, making our way along the path around the lake. Minutes later we stepped close to the mouth of the cavern’s entrance, where water trickled gently outside. Dawn hadn’t broken yet, but the night sky had begun lightening.

  We must’ve been running through those tunnels for much longer than I’d realized.

  Looking around the corner, sure enough, the water channeled directly underneath a large warehouse structure, which walled off all access to this water, and guarded by a dozen or more motorized soldiers?—?and those were the men we could see. There were sure to be more inside.

  We were gifted one stroke of good luck, however, as the soldiers didn’t appear to be on high alert here, not yet. We had to capitalize on this moment because it wouldn’t last.

  On all sides of the cave exit, I saw sheer cliffs leading up into mountainous forest, making the warehouse the only viable exit. They’d built high walls on either side of the building, stretching to the cliff walls on either side. Guards walked the roof of the building and along the wall top.

  I took a deep breath.

  The effort of casting spells wasn’t so much that three, four, even five spells could tire someone so badly that they couldn’t cast another spell. But casting a dozen spells in one night took a toll on a mage’s energy level—making their effectiveness less and less over time.

  My energy thus depleted, I knew I didn’t have many more spells in me. The source of the matter was the first issue, the rarity of the spell another, but a mage’s energy was still a third piece. One must be wise about how they spent their energy?—?and I had used mine liberally up to now giving me a buzzing, charged feeling in my head. I knew I would pay for it later in recovery.

  I looked down the length of the wall that I could see. If we could get to the wall unseen, maybe we could get through it somehow and steal away quickly.

  We crouched near the cave mouth, the men looking to me for a plan.

  “Bend, you trained in survival skills,” I said. He nodded. “What spellcasts did you learn?”

  “I can make fire, water, as well as masking scents and visibility for hunting,” he said in reply. “I learned other survival skills, minor healing and binding, but nothing like what you did to me back in that cave.”

  I nodded. “Do you think you could mask all of us for a short amount of time? I want to get us to that wall without the guards seeing us.”

  He nodded, “With enough matter I can do it?—?we won’t be invisible, just harder to see. Their eyes will bounce past us for a short time.”

  “That’s okay, it’s still dark enough that your masking might be all we need.”

  I handed him a small piece of jade broken out of someone’s necklace the day before, and he took it and nodded.

  “After I weave the masking, stay close to me, all of you,” Bend said to me and the rest of the men standing around us. “The guards can still hear us clearly, so keep your steps slow and quiet. Understand?”

  The former prisoners nodded, watching the two of us carefully with wide eyes. They’d certainly not seen many mages in their lifetimes, and therefore, not many spells.

  “Good,” I said. “Start your weave, and I’ll work on a plan for getting us through that wall.”

  Bend began to move his hands around in complex forms, reminiscent of spells I’d seen before, but some of his movements were new to me. While he did that, I inspected my remaining store of matter. Granite was plentiful. I had a gold bracelet and a few copper coins left which I could spin into minor spells.

  “Okay, we’re cloaked,” Bend said, sweat beading on his forehead. “It will last us maybe fifteen minutes. Let’s move.”

  “All of you, follow me closely,” I whispered. “Bend, stay in the middle. Everyone, remember, slow, quiet steps. They can still hear us.”

  Slowly I crept out of our hiding spot at the mouth of the cave and moved out into the open. We needed to cross about a hundred yards to get us to the cover of the forest on this side of the wall. I hoped that Bend’s cloaking spell would also get us far beyond the other side of the wall, so we could sneak away quietly.

  We took slow, careful steps across the open land, heading to the wall. The only sounds were the trickle of the water and the light chatter of a couple of guards on the wall.

  We moved painfully slow, each step taking us closer to cover.

  Halfway to our destination, we heard the guards chatter increase. Voices shouted to one another. We heard men running downstairs and the clatter of more boots.

  We froze.

  Had they seen us? I highly doubted it and motioned to the men to keep moving with a small wave of my arm.

  Suddenly, a gate in the wooden wall opened up and a dozen soldiers ran through, each carrying motorized weapons and their faces looked intent on killing something.

  Surely, they had seen us.

  Before I could react, as they were only a couple dozen yards away, Bend grabbed my arm, moving us out of the way of the oncoming soldiers. We scooted quietly up the side of the hill and held our breath. I pulled the gold bracelet from my pack and held it in my palm, my breath in my throat, ready to deploy a last-minute spell.

  Then, the men ran past us, heading for the cavern entrance. They had heard about our little attack and were trying to box us in. They thought we were still in the tunnels.

  I breathed a sigh of relief.

  Looking around in front of us, I noticed that the gate had been left open. There were only two soldiers patrolling the roof of the warehouse now. There were two more at the gate, but it hung wide open.

  I looked to Bend.

  “The gate,” I whispered, gesturing with my head.

  He looked and nodded.

  Slowly, the group of us crept forward heading for the open gate, our spirits rising, as we were close to freedom, finally.

  But before we got close enough, I spied what I’d feared from the beginning: two Mage Beacons.

  The first Mage Beacon sat atop the warehouse itself, while another appeared on a staff moving about behind the gate.

  Some thug was carrying it around.

  And the Mage Beacon closest to us was changing, its amber hues just starting to light up.