Chapter 17 #4
“You forget your place, Headmaster. Because if you stop this right now, there is hope for you yet. But if you continue to do what you are doing, I am afraid I will have to ask the authorities to arrest you.”
“What authorities?” Eldric said, raising his eyebrows. “The Vanguard answer to me.”
“And there it is, uttered in front of a judge,” said the prime minister. “You heard that too, Judge Jordan.”
“I did, and it’s not a good color on you, Eldric. There is bureaucracy, and there is the hierarchy of bureaucracy that we need to respect. You cannot go circumventing every which way.”
Eldric laughed at the judge.
“You spineless fool,” he said. “All of you will regret this. All of you. You don’t know who is in that cell. She is the Death Shepherd herself. She is a danger to us all. She possesses the power to raise the dead back to life. Magic like that cannot be allowed in Aladria.”
“Let me ask you something,” said the prime minister.
“Did you give a truth serum to your grandson? Or was it just more of your dream magic that allowed you to see what had happened? Because if you haven’t given him a truth serum, maybe he is the next person that you should go and investigate.
Maybe he is lying. Maybe she is not the Death Shepherd.
Maybe all of this is just a castle of air that you have built, and then maybe, just maybe, you’re wrong. ”
That had done it. That statement had sowed the seed of doubt in Eldric’s mind.
He didn’t speak, only pondered while looking out the window.
The window gave a view of the entrance hall.
There were Vanguard soldiers assembled alongside the prison guards.
Mostly, everybody was shifting uncomfortably as the prime minister’s escort circled the hall, looking for any security risks.
“Eldric,” said the prime minister, “I understand that you have complete authority over Umbrveyl. What I don’t understand is why you have delegated the students to work at this godforsaken place.”
Eldric looked at the prime minister and said, “Those are Balthazar students, Anthony. They were gonna join Viktor anyway. I gave them an option, a choice. If they wanted to be free, they could serve here as attendants of the prisoners, and if they wanted the other option, then I was going to treat them as the enemy. Most of them did not return after the vacations. Most of them have already joined with Mortandagh. His cause is charismatic, Anthony. He wears a lot of power. The ones who listen to reason came here. They get to earn their freedom.”
Anthony scoffed.
“By working at a prison. That’s ironic.”
“You don’t get to tell me what I do with my students, Prime Minister,” Eldric said, and stormed out of the room.
He needed to go and find out what Elias was hiding, and so the headmaster crossed the courtyard and entered the Doldrum fortress and began ascending the winding labyrinthine stairs that would lead him to his grandson.
* * *
Trisha had now stepped inside the prison cell with her balms and her tinctures.
She was also allowed to use magic. She was doing all she could to heal Lesya.
She had ordered one of the prison attendants, another House Balthazar student, to bring food and water to replenish Lesya’s energy.
Lesya’s hands were bound in iron chains that prevented her from performing any magic, so those were the only parts of her body that Trisha was not able to heal.
In the last four years, Trisha had really come into her own as a talented healer, and Lesya was thankful for it because now she could sit up without wincing in pain.
Now she could talk without feeling hoarse.
She told her friend everything that had transpired, ending on the note of Cassian’s death.
And after she wept into her friend’s arms and was consoled by the offering of prison food, which tasted bland but gave her enough energy to continue to stay conscious, she listened to Trisha.
“You don’t know how bad it has been outside,” Trisha said.
“The headmaster has gone crazy. He has weaponized his insanity, and he is going after House Balthazar students.
He offered us a choice. We could either be with him or against him.
And the ones who agreed to be with him are not given any roles in the Vanguard or the Solignis Covenant.
No, we are assigned here so that we can reflect on what happens if we choose to work with Mortandagh.
“And speaking of Mortandagh, there is something I have to tell you. You may be right. He is not the person that everybody thinks he is. All the old rural places that were in disrepair, forever ignored by the government, they are all of them being taken care of. Horrow’s Heap, Dorish Town, Glenshire, the Lord’s Path, the Fray.
He is gathering followers from all over.
The old cities and the forgotten villages are healing.
Temples of Aeterna are being unearthed, and people are harvesting plentiful crops.
There’s food. There’s less suffering, and every town that Viktor has visited now bears his flag.
What’s all this about, Lesya? Where do we stand in all of this? ”
Lesya wiped her face with a wet cloth, cleaning the dirt off of it, and said, “I don’t know. All I know is that I am charged with this crime of committing Aeternumancy, and what for? For saving Freya’s life. What good did my good act do me, except land me here?”
“I could kill Elias,” Trisha said. “That son of a fucking bitch.”
“Don’t worry, he’s in a prison cell too,” Lesya said.
“They are both pieces of work, Elias and Eldric,” Trisha said. Then she leaned closer and said, “Okay then. Now to the matter that’s really important. How the fuck do I get you out of this prison?”
Lesya laughed dryly, her laugh lacking all mirth.
“I have lost everything. What am I gonna do outside? Leave me to my fate. I deserve it.”
“Don’t say that,” said Trisha. “You are one of the best mages that I know. Your only ill fortune is that you got caught up in all of this.”
“Yeah,” said Lesya, sighing. Cold. It was cold in the Doldrum Isles, and her body was still quite malnourished.
Moreover, she was wearing just a plain white dress that had holes in it.
It was provided by the Doldrum Court, and it did nothing to stop the cold from penetrating into her bones.
“I have the illest fortune of them all,” she said.
* * *
Once he had seen to the matter, the prime minister went back to his fortress, trusting that the matter would hold.
As for Eldric, he went into his grandson’s prison room to interrogate the truth from him.
Outside, the wind descended upon the Doldrum Isles like a storm out of hell.
Thunder cracked and lightning struck the Doldrum Court building beneath.
The prison guards ran for cover as the tower came crashing down.
More lightning streaks followed suit, and hit the fortress, shattering its walls.
The magic that was around the isle fluctuated and then diminished, and from the bleak horizon, like dark figures shrouded in black robes, came the Deathless, ready to attack the Doldrum Isles.
There were hundreds of them in number, their channeling devices casting spells at the defenses of the Doldrum Isles.
One of them channeled the lightning from the sky, as he had been doing so, and sent it again down on the fort building.
The fort building was in flames. The bridges collapsing, and the prisoners coming out.
The stage was set for the second battle of the Necromancy War.