This post is chapter fifty-three of my not-previously-published epic fantasy novel Broken Rule, which I'm serializing here on the Steem blockchain.
The story so far:
Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52
Lorne had seen the two giants battling as he drifted down the river. The presence of the same enormous statue that he had seen in Kubara meant that Jonas the wizard was probably nearby. Magic seemed heavily involved in the empire that was growing in Kubara, so consulting a wizard on the best course seemed promising. They had worked together well in taking down the priest, albeit unwittingly. Perhaps if they worked out a plan ahead of time they would be even more effective.
When the flesh giant destroyed the stone one, Lorne wasn't sure how to feel. Clearly it was a defeat for Jonas, who Lorne hoped to enlist as an ally, but the stone giant had been defeated once in the fight with Marek, too, and that had worked out well enough in the end. He took the oars and guided his little boat over to Jonas.
“Hello, wizard,” Lorne called as he drifted close. “My condolences for your statue. I must say that you yourself look somewhat better off than the last time I saw you.”
Jonas stared in puzzlement for a moment until he recognized Lorne. “Aren't you that Black Circle fellow?”
“I am. And we have another magical problem in Kubara. I was hoping we might discuss it.” He tossed a line to Arturo, who pulled the little rowboat up onto the sandy bank of the river. Lorne stepped out, nearly slipping in the mud, and introduced himself to Arturo. He explained the situation in Kubara, the events surrounding his assassination of Danijela, and the appearance of the magically empowered woman afterwards.
“An illusionist,” concluded Arturo. “Invisibility, and then a glamour to impersonate this empress. But then I'm even more confused about how she controls people. If she has a knack for illusion magic, how can she also have mind magic more powerful than anything ever known?”
“Why should that matter?” asked Lorne.
“Wizards tend to specialize,” Arturo explained.
“Yes,” added Jonas. “Generally, facility with one type of magic makes a person unsuited to using another.”
“Asking an accomplished wizard of one school to use magic from another is like asking a soprano singer to sing bass,” Arturo said. “It runs against everything he knows.”
That didn't make much sense to Lorne, although he didn't know much about singing, so he wasn't prepared to argue. Both Jonas and Arturo seemed the type to lecture him about the subject. Any subject, really. Besides, he had sought Jonas out for his expertise and had found a second wizard in the bargain. He had no inclination to become a wizard himself, best to just leave it to them and stop asking questions.
While they had been trying to educate Lorne, Jonas had come up with a new theory. “Perhaps she uses mind magic to make people believe they see what she wants them to see,” he suggested.
“But Lorne was affected by her invisibility even when she didn't know he was there,” answered Arturo. “If she was already clouding Lorne's mind to the extent that she could alter his perceptions, why would she allow him to murder the original empress?”
“Good point.” Jonas seemed to ponder for a moment. “Maybe I had it backwards. Maybe she uses illusion to cause people to believe that they are in situations in which her preferred course of action is the most reasonable.”
“Is that possible? That would have to be an incredibly subtle spell, but operating on a vast scale.”
Jonas pointed to his broken Stone Woman. “Subtlety and scale are not irreconcilable. We should probably assume that this woman is a powerful illusionist.”
“For argument's sake, I'll accept your point. Is it anything beyond the academic?”
“Well, historically, illusion was always seen as the weakest form of magic, even back before the War of Despair. By definition, illusions aren't real, so they can't really harm you, can they? If you know it's an illusion, at least. That should give us an advantage, if we go up against her.”
Lorne didn't find that very convincing. It seemed that the woman had done quite a bit of harm back in Kubara. He still wasn't prepared to argue, however.
Arturo had been pondering Jonas's statement, and seemed to have come up with a new objection. “Putting aside the question of magic, she apparently has a vast army at her beck and call which would put things back in her favor considerably.”
“Lorne got past her army before," Jonas said. "He can sneak us past, too.”
Wait, how had he come to that conclusion? With Faber working for her, she would likely have security that not even a mouse could get through. The conversation had seemed to move on before Lorne could object.
“Even if we could get to her,” said Arturo, “and even if you are right about her commanding only illusions, how would we act against her in any meaningful way if we couldn't trust our eyes and ears?”
Jonas smiled. He must have been waiting for that question. “If she is as adept an illusionist as we believe, she must know nothing of earth magic or spirit magic. When I do my magic I can sense metal and stone. I think that bone is similar enough that I can use my magic to find her skeleton, no matter what illusions she's projecting. Since she doesn't know earth magic, she won't know to craft an illusion to affect my earth magic senses. Can you do something similar with your spirit magic?”
“I suppose. Finding spirits is one of my strong suits. My master emphasized it during my apprenticeship, as it's the first step in clearing out a haunting. With the way Torzani politics is conducted, there is an abundance of souls that meet with violent ends without resolving their mortal affairs." He paused for a moment, perhaps pondering the poisonous and chaotic culture of Torzano. "However, I've never tried to detect the spirit of a living person before. It seemed redundant.”
“Assuming it works,” said Jonas. “There's our advantage. She'll be taken completely off guard.”
“That's all very interesting,” Arturo conceded, “but I think we ought to be focusing on the problem we actually need to solve, which is this giant that you claimed you could deal with. Since Orso is mixed up in that somehow, I think it's rather more important.”
“There's no need to criticize. I assumed I had the advantage since my giant was made of solid stone. I'm rather new at this, you know.”
“Speed and cleverness are superior to brute strength,” Lorne said.
“Well thank you so much. Perhaps you and Arturo can do better.”
Lorne sighed, realizing that their arrogance would be yet another obstacle to getting them to act. It was one thing for Jonas to lecture Lorne about magic, but he had no interest in having the finer points of fighting explained to him. Still, Jonas and Arturo seemed unlikely to move on to the real problem until this matter with the giant was resolved. He would have to offer his help, whether Jonas wanted it or not.
“Can you get your Stone Woman to move faster?” Lorne asked.
“No, there are limits. The spell softens the stone in places, gives it some flexibility. It barely moves at all, in fact. It's only the vast scale of the thing that makes what speed it does have possible. Lots of tiny movements add up, you see. If I softened the stone more, it would lose its strength and be unable to maintain its shape.”
That was too bad. Lorne's fighting style necessarily focused on speed and agility, not brute strength, so there were few moves that he could teach to Jonas. There was another aspect to Lorne's preferred style that might help, though. “Can you give it a weapon? The fleshy giant must fight bare handed. If your statue had a blade, it could be quite the advantage.”
“Now that's an idea!” crowed Arturo. “Earth magic covers metal as well as stone. Can you give her a sword?”
“Does the sword need to be made of metal?” asked Lorne. “Why can't you just craft her as a statue that has a sword in the first place?”
“No, stone would never work for a proper sword. Even strengthened with my magic, the material would never hold up to the strain of striking, or hold an edge good enough to cut with. I could fashion a club out of stone, I suppose, but I don't think that would be materially different than trying to punch the brute, and that didn't work last time.”
“So you'll have to use metal,” Lorne conceded. “Can you do it?”
Jonas seemed to ponder the idea for a moment. “I think so, if I had enough metal to work with. Finding sufficient stone to create a statue of that size is hard enough. Where could I come by that quantity of metal? I don't know the first thing about mining.”
Things were looking better for Lorne now. “There's metal in Kubara. The empress has set up huge foundries. They're melting down pots, pans, anything they can get their hands on in order to make weapons for her army. If we take care of the empress first, we can use her iron to make your sword, and then take on the giant.”
Jonas looked at Arturo. “What he says makes sense. Are you up for it?”
“It seems like a dangerous distraction from the issue at hand,” said Arturo, “but giving your Stone Woman a sword does seem to be a good plan against Orso's giant. I'll help, although I feel like a fool for agreeing to it.”
“I feel quite the fool as well,” agreed Jonas. “There was a time when I told Duke Gavril that I wished to be kept as far from danger as I could. Now I seem to rush headlong toward it at every turn.”
Bowing to the inevitable, Lorne accepted responsibility for getting Jonas and Arturo close enough to Natasza to act against her. Getting into the city had been easy. Hundreds of people entered every day to go to the grand temple and hear the empress speak. Lorne and the wizards inserted themselves into the commotion when two of these groups of pilgrims joined together, and then broke off and secreted themselves in the basement of an abandoned house to make further plans.
When infiltrating a location, the Black Circle had taught Lorne that the best technique was not to use stealth, but to simply enter in an unremarkable way. People are far more likely to notice a skulking sneak than they are to notice the commonplace. Humans have an intense interest in the unusual, and an intense disinterest in the usual. Therefore, the best form of stealth was not to attempt to avoid notice entirely, but to be noticed and deemed ordinary. In the Liatian Empire, the most ordinary thing was to be seen following orders.
“We'll need to brand your forehead,” Lorne explained to Jonas. “Like mine. That will make most people assume that you're loyal.”
“Why brand me?” protested Jonas. “You already have a brand. Can't you do whatever it is you want me to do?”
“Faber knows me, and he's probably sticking close to the new empress. He's the one that figured out the branding disguise in the first place. He'll be on the lookout for me. We can't rely on him being lax, because he won't be. It will have to be someone he doesn't recognize.”
“Well, then Arturo can do it. Or we can at least draw straws,” he said hopefully.
“Arturo has a Torzani accent. He'll stick out. You'll seem like just another one of her soldiers. It has to be you.”
“There seem to be a lot of downsides to being the foremost wizard in Tarkannan,” Jonas lamented.
He was surprisingly stoic once the matter had been decided, and gritted his teeth rather than screaming while the Liatian symbol was burned into the flesh on his forehead. With the brand in place, Jonas switched into an outfit that Lorne had taken from a clothesline. It was a simple affair, but bore the badge of an overseer. With Jonas's disguise in place they placed rope bonds on Lorne and Arturo's wrists. They were dangerous criminals, after all. The overseer who had captured them was on strict orders to take them before the empress herself. Jonas mumbled to himself for a while, presumably practicing his lines, and they headed out into the city toward the palace.
Working out a plan to fool Faber had been difficult, but Lorne hoped that what he had come up with would work. Faber knew that Lorne was not a complete incompetent, so he wouldn't expect him to impersonate a guard again. But Faber also didn't have much respect for Lorne, so he wouldn't be surprised to see him taken captive. Of course, if all went well, they wouldn't even see Faber until after the deed was done.
Lorne cringed inwardly as Jonas stomped toward the palace guards. Lorne wanted to tell Jonas that it was important to be average and unmemorable, but no prisoner would give advice to his captor, so he couldn't speak up without spoiling the disguise. "Open the doors, maggots!" Jonas announced. He had affected a booming, gravelly character to his voice. Even with his limited military experience, Lorne knew it was a laughable caricature. Somehow it was getting, results, though, so Lorne kept his eyes downcast and followed meekly through the palace gates. After they slammed shut behind them, Jonas turned and beamed at Lorne and Arturo, presumably seeking praise for his performance.
"Don't break character," Lorne hissed. "You don't know who's watching."
Jonas scowled. "This isn't the first time I've impersonated someone, you know," he said.
"It only takes one mistake for it to be your last time," Lorne said.
Humbled, Jonas turned and started walking down the corridor, preparing himself for the next set of guards. Lorne hadn't known Jonas long, but he had a good enough sense of the man's temperment to know that the humility wouldn't last. As ludicrous as Jonas's acting was, it got them through every checkpoint. Obedience had become the central organizing principle of the empire, and that obedience seemed to apply to anyone who claimed to speak for the empress. Jonas might be foolish, but he was accustomed to speaking with authority and it came through in the timbre of his voice. The guards were quick to defer to him. Puzzling and confusing orders from the empress were all too common to the men who worked in the palace, and none wanted to stick their necks out to be the one to sort reality from the fictions Jonas was spinning.
They approached the empress's personal chambers, and Lorne feared their ruse would stop working here. Surely she would employ men shrewd enough to see through Jonas's performance for such a critical duty. Lorne tightened his fingers around the knife he had concealed up his sleeve. He wasn't entirely sure what spells the wizards were capable of performing, but he suspected he would be the only one with the presence of mind to act if things went poorly. The guards were big and well armed, but their throats could be slit as easily as another man's if Lorne acted quickly enough.
"The empress wishes to interrogate these prisoners personally," Jonas said, gesturing to Lorne and Arturo.
"We didn't hear anything about that," said one of the guards.
"And the empress consults with you on all of her social engagements, does she?" Jonas said with a sneer. Apparently he had struck a nerve, and the guard's face flushed red. "Get yourselves down to the barracks. The empress doesn't want you two fools eavesdropping while she questions them." Lorne was sure that Jonas had pushed too far, but after a moment the guards slumped their shoulders and slinked away. Jonas turned the knob and ushered the group through the doors. Lorne breathed a sigh of relief as he closed the door behind them, propping a small chair under the knob. There was no telling how long it would take someone to notice that the empress's chamber was unguarded, and there was no sense taking risks that someone would follow them in. They were in enough danger even if the plan worked perfectly.
They made their way to a sitting room, decorated by someone who used price as a proxy for sound aesthetics. Elaborate carpets, stunning tapestries, statuary of all types, and gold and silver in abundance dominated the room. Lorne had to wonder for a moment if they had wandered into the treasury by accident. The woman who walked through the archway that led to the bedroom, the woman who had taken Empress Danijela's face, was answer enough for that question. Lorne's plan had gotten them in, now it was the wizards' turn.