CHAPTER ELEVEN #3
Evylin and Deckard shared a worried look.
This was a question they hadn’t even considered, but it was a necessary, frightful one.
Blount was good at crafting plans with devastating endings.
They’d lost the Fire, Day, and Time Relics to his cunning.
They’d lost Hewitt to his attacks. They couldn’t afford to lose anything more.
In their hesitation, Brea continued, “We are assuming that Blount will go for the Terrae Relic. But he’s assuming the same about us. All this time, he’s used you. He’ll do it again. He’ll let you retrieve the Terrae Relic for him while he goes and enacts his own cunning plan.”
“Like what?” Rafferty asked. “We’ll already be expecting an ambush.”
“And he’ll know that,” Brea said. Then she held up a finger. “So he’ll do something you aren’t expecting. Like going for the Space Relic.”
Auden sat up straighter. “Going out of order is suicide. Blount knows this.”
“Does he?” she asked.
“The prince did study the Relics for decades,” Vayden cut in. “But Obel intentionally worked to keep his learning stunted—not that he had to work that hard.”
“How does Obel play into this?” Deckard asked.
“He’s Blount’s godfather,” Vayden explained.
“That’s why he and I are friends. He trained me to pose as the prince.
And he taught me all that Blount knew about the Relics, which was very little.
Blount didn’t even know the locations of the Relics, which leads me to doubt he knew the order in which to obtain them. ”
“I gave him the locations,” Auden said. “I told him to go in the order of creation.”
“And you think he’ll listen?” Brea returned. “We can’t afford to lose the Space Relic to him.”
“We can’t afford to lose any Relics to him,” Auden argued.
Brea shook her head dismissively. “That’s where you’re wrong, Auden.
We have a Space Mage now, who will be Bonded in a matter of hours.
With the Night and Space Relics in his hands and the Wind Relic in Ilain’s hands—she is the most powerful Mage in two centuries, after all—along with the support of a Wind Mage in Isla and a Day Mage such as yourself, plus three Warriors fighting for you, do you have any doubt that we can beat Blount, who only obtained his rank as ViceMage in the Order of the Night by means of bribery and murder? ”
In their stunned silence, she scoffed, brushing a hand through the air. “Let him have the Terrae Relic. He will burn himself out using five Relics while we divide our own, giving us control over his most powerful connections and the strength to defeat him.”
“Don’t underestimate Blount because he’s a selfish bastard,” Ilain said tersely.
“He’s studied under the best Night Mages for decades.
He was capable of shrouding himself, following us around Ephria, and moving through the entirety of the Day Keep undetected.
He has the Orders on his side—there are hundreds of Mages he can charge to fight us.
Even if he isn’t well informed about the Relics, his power is great.
And if we hand him a fifth Relic, we may as well offer him the whole continent to go along with it. ”
“You’re blinded by your fear,” Brea said. “Blount knows that you will follow the order of recovery. He knows you will go for the Terrae Relic, and he will make his plans accordingly. So we must change our tactic to beat him at his own game.”
“By getting ourselves killed in the Space Keep?” Auden said bitterly.
Ethenn angled forward, interrupting. “What if the lieutenant’s right, though?” he asked. “What if Blount does go for the Space Relic? What would that mean for us if he gets hold of it?”
There was a long pause in which Brea glared at Auden and Ilain, demanding they answer honestly.
Auden clenched his jaw, chin dipped. “It would mean our defeat,” he admitted. “If Blount obtains possession of the Space Relic . . . there’s no taking it from him.”
Evylin jumped in as he paused, asking the question she knew the Calders didn’t want to hear. “And if we get the Space Relic, regardless of whether or not Blount has the Terrae Relic, what would that mean for us?”
After a long inhale and glance at his sister, Auden shrugged dejectedly. “Likely? It would mean our victory, even if it was hard fought.”
“So,” Evylin concluded, “we have no choice. We have to get the Space Relic, even if that means risking the loss of the Terrae Relic.”
There was no response from any of the Alliance members, so Evylin pressed on.
“Because Blount doesn’t know about Jonn.
He doesn’t know that he’s a Mage, let alone a Space Mage, which means he can’t know that we’ll be Bonded when we do confront him again.
And if we have the Space Relic, his demise is secured no matter what. ”
Reluctantly, Auden nodded. “Yes.”
“Then we have our answer,” she said. “We go to Loclight, retrieve the Space Relic, and hope we can beat him to the Terrae Keep.”
“If we do that,” Auden said in a last-ditch effort to convince them, “we risk our lives. The Space Keep is the most dangerous, the most difficult. With only two Relics in our possession . . . success is nearly impossible.”
A weighted silence hung in the room.
Then Thom spoke. “What’s our timeline looking like?”
When everyone stared at him in confusion, he continued, “I mean, say Blount is headed for the Terrae Relic first: How long would it take him to get there?”
Deckard shifted beside Evylin, his hand rubbing his jaw in thought. “The Alliance’s spies reported that he was headed to Carrickbrack to rally with his new men,” he reminded them. “How long would it take him to get there from Keale?”
Auden screwed up his face in thought. “Probably . . . five or six days, depending on his speed.”
“We should assume five, then,” Deckard said. “And what about the Mages coming to join him? How long will it take for them to arrive?”
“If he sent out letters yesterday after arriving at Renaul’s estate, then . . .” Auden’s lips moved as he calculated the time on his fingers.
Ilain reached over, setting her hand upon his. “If they’re coming from the Doorstunds, Sutterlund, and Verlund Reaches, they’ll be in Carrickbrack within a minimum of a week.”
“A week?” Thom huffed. “We can be back in Loclight in a week, right?”
Deckard pursed his lips. “Eh, that’s a bit generous. I’d say closer to nine or ten days.”
“Which is essentially a week,” Thom returned. “At which point, we’ll head down to Estshire, and we could make it there in twelve days tops.”
“But,” Deckard added, “we have to account for the days we’ll lose releasing Hewitt and any wasted time in Loclight.”
“Why would we spend any longer than a day in the city?” Vayden asked.
“Like I said, Ephren will want to meet with us. We may be able to get out in two days, but what if he requires a longer debriefing or wants us to linger for some other reason? He could potentially cause us a serious delay.”
“We just tell him we’ve got to get a move on to get the rest of the Relics,” Rafferty offered.
“But he isn’t aware of any pressing timeline,” Deckard said. “And we can’t exactly tell him that we’re in a race with the Waulden heir when we’ve been lying, saying that everything is fine for the past two months.”
They all nodded.
“To be safe,” Deckard concluded, “we should allot two or three days in Loclight. Which puts us at an arrival in Olbury after an additional thirteen days of travel.”
“Which means,” Evylin realized, “three weeks and two days at the worst for us to retrieve both the Space and Terrae Relics.”
“Assuming we can even cross the border,” Deckard said. “Blount still has his writ out, remember? The Waulden border will be crawling with guards looking for us.”
“That’s not an issue,” Brea said suddenly.
The Ephrians looked at her, confused.
She smirked and glanced at the Calders. “We have a secret passage through the mountains, which is how we got our lovely friends into Ephria in the first place.”
“Right,” Deckard said.
Thom jumped back in without lingering on this revelation. “And how long will it take for Blount to get to Olbury from Carrickbrack?”
Auden turned to Ilain. “He’ll go to Virwoud first,” he said thoughtfully. “It’ll be the safest place in Ephria to restock before going into the countryside. And that will take him . . .”
“Nine days,” Ilain supplied.
“And then from there, it will only be—”
“Four days.”
“So all said and done, he is likely to arrive—”
“If Blount leaves for Carrickbrack today,” Ilain said, “he’ll arrive on the third of Radia.
After waiting a week for his relief troop to arrive, he’ll leave for Olbury on the eleventh.
From there, he’ll have to travel for a minimum of nine days, putting him in Virwoud on the twentieth.
At which point, he won’t arrive in Olbury until the twenty-fourth.
” She paused, brushing a few waves of hair over her shoulder.
“If we leave tomorrow morning and head to Loclight, we should arrive on the ninth, possibly the eighth if we ride fast. Allowing for the worst case and two extra days for Ephren’s leisure, say we leave on the eleventh—when Blount himself leaves for Olbury.
After thirteen days of travel, that puts us in Olbury on the twenty-fourth as well. ”
Evylin’s lips parted in shock.
Ilain hesitated only a second before adding, “But that’s the worst case. In my personal opinion, removing the additional three or so days for error is quite feasible, which would put us at the Terrae Keep on the twenty-first, three days prior to Blount’s arrival.”
A sharp breath puffed out of Evylin as a flare of hope lit her chest. She set her hand on Deckard’s arm, looking up at him. “We can beat him there,” she said in an awed whisper.
Deckard’s brow was crimped tight, unconvinced. While his eyes searched her face, she gripped his arm more firmly. “Jonn,” she said, “we can beat him.”
“Three days isn’t enough room for error,” he said worriedly.