“He’s right. You’re the only one with solid knowledge of what the world looks like beyond Mekhana’s borders,” Elcarei agreed.
“I suggest, gentlemen,” Gafford interjected, “that we don’t care about where the mirror-Gates are aimed, so long as they are aimed somewhere that we can safely escape to. Afterward, we can journey to a predesignated meeting place.”
“In that case, I suggest picking spots ahead of time where we can toss through some wealth to await our escape if needed,” Torven said. “I’ve been cast once before through something like a Gate with just the items I wore . . . and I would far rather not have to start from scratch like that again. If there is no need to flee, then we can use levitation spells to bring the goods back through our mirror-Gates once the Lesser-Prince is bound. If there is, then we will have already set the mirrors to scry upon a safe location, we will have funds, and we can escape as we go.”
“What’s to prevent the others from following us?” Brother Grell asked. The young man was not yet a bishop in rank, and until they regained power probably never would be, but he was one of the stronger mages within the temple grounds and thus had to be included in this shelving-flanked planning session. “If we all go through, the mirror-Gates would remain open for anyone to pursue—and don’t say one of us will have to sacrifice himself to remain behind. The power room is too huge to have one man go around casting the powder upon each mirror in turn to seal it shut again, never mind the time it would take to shift the scrying image.”
“We just need time-delayed destruction spells,” Torven stated. “Break the frame, and you shatter the opening. While the rest of you double-check the main warding circles against the diagram I made, I can make enchanted sheets of paper to be laid at the base of each mirror. Stomp on it as you go through, and it’ll explode after ten heartbeats have passed. If anyone tries to follow, it’ll be just one or two at most, and they might even be caught midway through and cut in half.”
“Clever. Do it. But first . . . where should we meet up again?” Gafford asked, his voice taking on a pointed edge. “I know the lands to the north of here far better than anything close by. I’d be relatively safe because I’d be hundreds of miles away. If you stick strictly to what you know locally, the locals might realize where you have gone and send their version of Hunter Squads after you, and you’ll be besieged within the hour if you stay wherever you go.”
“Outkingdom,” Koler grunted. The others looked at him, and he repeated himself. “We head outkingdom. Mekhana is falling apart, and from what you told us, young man,” he added, eyeing Gafford, who bristled at the patronizing words, “the Patriarch is none too happy about the idea of binding and draining demons for power, so don’t be too sure of your ‘hundreds of miles away’ protecting you. It takes less than ten minutes to transmit a short message from one end of Mekhana to the other via talker-box, after all.”
“It is gratifying to see that each of us can think, when we put our minds to it,” Torven stated dryly. “If we cannot bind a demon tonight, we head out of the kingdom. I suggest we pick a place that is not in the next kingdom over, for that matter; your neighbors would not be pleased with you if they realized you were ex-priests of their former divine enemy.”
“We each have the spells in our books—or should—that teach us how to make translation pendants for interrogating captured foreign mages,” Gafford said. “So traveling to another nation should not pose a language problem. But there is the concern that other, farther-flung lands might think a foreigner with an accent from Mekhana would be suspicious, and not want foreign priests congregating in their lands. I suggest we change professions if we have to flee.”
“To what?” Elcarei asked his former superior. “Excepting the Aian, we were all raised and trained to be priests, not journeymen of the Tinkers Guild or whatever.”
“Scholars,” the green-clad archbishop said. “We are scholars, and we will be traveling to the one place where a foreigner would not be amiss: The Great Library of Mendham, in the kingdom of Mendhi.”
“Good,” Bishop Koler grunted. “I approve.”
“Looking forward to new books to peruse, Brother Koler?” one of the other priests asked him.
He shook his head slightly, fingers first scratching at his chin, then combing through his long, streaked beard. “No, looking forward to somewhere warm for a change.”
“I certainly cannot disagree to that,” Torven said. Even Elcarei let his mouth curl up on one side in humor. “Any opposed? No? Motion passes. Let us move the mirrors, find and secure our retreating sites as quickly as possible, and begin the binding ritual. And not a word to anyone else. Take what apprentices and journeymen you can—make sure they know that only the last one through is to stomp on the paper—but only tell them where we will be headed after the mirror is destroyed.”
“How will we know when the mirror is destroyed on the other side?” Priest Grell asked.
“Bits of debris will come through the opening, before the Gate collapses and is sealed,” Gafford told him. “Make sure to shield yourselves as you count to ten, and then check the floor behind you. If something has fallen through, grab your goods and retreat from the region, in case they recognized where you went through. If nothing glasslike has fallen . . . then flee even faster.”
• • •
“Today, I serve Guildra, Goddess of Guilds, Patron of this land.”
The motorwagon jolted over a rut in the road. Alonnen clenched his jaw and continued loading his hand-cannon. Like most of the weapons developed in secret by the Munitions Guild for the Mages Guild, it was not a standard cannon. He didn’t have to measure the munitions powder and pack it into the barrel; he didn’t have to drop in the flannel charcloth or the lead ball and ram it down into place. Nor did he have to grease the openings to keep any moisture from reaching the powder and ruining it before the sparking gear could ignite it.
“Today, I shall be a warrior of the Light of Heaven, striving to defend the innocent and protect this land from the profane.”
Some clever soul with a secondary status in the Brassworks Guild had come up with clever little capsules with the powder tucked behind the payload. In Alonnen’s case, the missile being fired out of the short, heavy barrel was not one large ball, but rather, many smaller beads. The range was short, but that was fine with him; Alonnen was headed into the stone-walled confines of a temple, not facing down a foe from the far side of a battlefield. These “buck beads” might not go through a man unless fired from up close, but they would turn a chest, an arm, a leg, whatever got in their way into painfully shredded meat.
“Today, I ask my Goddess to forgive my flaws, and grant me the purified instincts to do what is right and just with my foes.”
He had the faces of Torven Shel Von and Archbishop Elcarei firmly in mind. He wasn’t entirely sure if firing a hand-cannon into their faces was going to be right or just; he only knew he’d feel safer without them in the world. Still, he tried to focus on the fact he was going to the temple to rescue the woman he loved and not to kill the most dangerous, annoying men in the world.