Schneider came up the mountain in the midst of a slow moving party of men and horses who treated the landscape as if it were some fragile, easily annoyed giant who might retaliate against them at any moment for their trespass. They spoke of respect for the winter and the highlands and Schneider fumed darkly, holding nothing but contempt for the mountains that hid his enemy. They did not daunt him. What blocked his path, he removed. He might have flown here and searched from a more lofty angle, but he didn't know how long it might take and he did not wish his strength depleted when he did find Angelo.
They found tracks in the lower ranges leading north towards the plain lands and wasted time following only to discover it was a band of trappers down from the heights taking their furs to Sta-Veron for trade. They had seen no sign of anyone other than themselves in the mountains. Damned annoying. Schneider urged his men onwards, eager to discover what those who had been scouring the range for days had found out.
The base camp was in the process of moving when they rode in. Most of the supplies were packed and already on their way deeper into the mountains. The only men remaining were a few scouts left behind to advise any stragglers coming into camp of its new location. They had no good news for Schneider.
He stomped about, kicking snow, undecided what course to take. Something prickled the hairs at the back of his neck. Some sense of magic being used. He could not place the flavor of the spell, but it was powerful in nature. He jabbed a finger in the general direction he felt the magic emanating from.
"That way? What's that way?"
"That's the route lord Gara and Lady Nei took." One of the scouts said. Something more familiar tickled at his awareness. A spellcasting of an intimately familiar nature. Arshes.
He cursed under his breath and rose from the earth, leaving the startled men beneath. Damn. Damn. He had waited too long to come out here. Waited futily for Yoko to come to her senses and now the Prophet had found something else of his.
It was over before he was in the air ten minutes. The magic just stopped and there was nothing to guide him. He tried to find Arshes' mental presence but that unique plain was crowded with static and confusion. If she were agitated or concentrating on something else she would not be receptive. If he'd had more time, he could track her. He kept to the direction he had first sensed the magic and soon realized how mammoth a job searching these mountains really was. Even from the air it was nearly impossible to see past the trees. And where there were no trees the slopes were laden with crevices and shadows. Only the broad slopes of snow gladly gave up their secrets and there was little chance of men who did not wish to be seen traversing those.
He was lost and aimlessly searching, anger turning into dread of what he might discover when he did find her. Then he saw the dark shapes of two horses picking their way down a trail. Two riders. One horse being lead by a guide rope attached to the first. He swooped down, not caring it was friend or foe and the lead horse tossed its head in fright, sensing his presence before the riders did.
Arshes Nei almost reached for her sword. She came that close then aborted the movement as her eyes focused on him. Her mouth opened soundlessly. Her face was dirty and blood smeared.
"What happened?" he demanded, stalking to her side, lying a hand on her stirrup.
"Oh, Darshe. Help Gara." She cried, flinging a leg over the saddle and practically knocking him back a step in her efforts to get down and rush back to the second horse. He hadn't spared a glance for Gara. Now he did. The ninja master sat slumped in the saddle, his hands clutching the length of the Murasume, his head bowed. He was covered in blood. He reeked of it. He could feel the living presence of the Murasume struggling the anchor its master's life-force -- to shore up his failing body.
"Goddamnit." He hissed and pulled Gara down. The big man toppled unresisting and Schneider half stumbled under the dead weight before Arshes added her support and together they got him to the ground. His eyes were rolled up behind his lids and his face a pale imitation of his normal skin tone. If one discounted the blood. There were half a dozen mortal wounds piercing his body. He should have been dead. It was probably only thanks to his link with the arcane blade that he still breathed.
"What the hell happened, Arshes?" He ground out, summoning healing forces, lending some of his own strength for the second time in a week. Gara was stubborn. He might have been near death but he held tenaciously to life. He wasn't nearly the battle Yoko had been. But, Yoko hadn't had the Murasume refusing to let her soul break from her body. The damn thing was so insistent on protecting its master that it almost rebuffed Schneider's efforts to heal him.
Arshes was crying. Arshes looked as shaken as he'd ever seen her. She was weak and injured, but not to the extent Gara was. He could see it in her eyes, in the way she held herself.
"He was waiting for us." She whispered. "He -- he got into my head I think and guided me to the valley. And the mountain came down upon us. He hit me with a spell I wasn't familiar with. Gara saved me. Let him be all right."
"He's too tough to die. Was it Angelo?" He had to ask, even though he knew the answer.
She nodded, miserable, clutching her hands at her chest. "And his captain. Sinakha. He's the one who hurt Gara. I'll kill him."
"Fine. Fine. Where did Angelo go?"
"I don't know. I didn't see."
"He went west." Gara whispered, eyes still shut.
"Oh, Gara." Arshes sniffed. "You're okay."
"I feel like shit. He's using something other than magic. Old stuff, maybe. It had the feel of something of the ancients when the side of the mountain blew."
"Technology of the ancients." Arshes whispered as if she were bringing up something sacred and horrifying.
"Explosives." Schneider scowled, thinking of the wards he had worn on his wrists that had been as much technology as magic. A twisted, impossible blending of the two. Technology was anathema to magic. Yet Angelo used both. Technology and things of its ilk could cripple a creature of magic, yet Angelo's magic was stolen.
"What did he want?" Arshes asked. "Why draw us out there?"
"To get at me." Schneider deduced, clenching his fists. He recalled what the Prophet had said to him once when he'd been at the man's mercy in the cell under the temple. That he would destroy what Schneider loved if he could not destroy Schneider himself. And what else had he promised? If he couldn't have Schneider ----
"Where is Kall?"
Arshes stared at him, wide eyed. Gara slitted open his lids. "West. He's searching west."
It was slow work, combing the mountains. Meticulous work. Dangerous. Kall-Su had lost a man the day before to a misstep on a narrow mountain trail. He cursed the carelessness. The responsibility ate at him. Just as the responsibility of what had happened to Yoko did. Schneider was right. It was his fault. It was his city and his province and he had blindly let something as foul as the Prophet slip into it. He had let his guard down and an innocent had paid. Paid in blood and paid in the life of an unborn child. He could not erase the vision of that baby from his mind. He tried and it came back all the stronger.
Schneider was right. It was his fault and he would die before he let the Prophet escape these mountains. They were following what might have been a trail now. Through a narrow valley and up a non-existent path where his trackers had found freshly broken limbs. It might be nothing more than the passage of a large animal. But it was the best they had found in days.
One of his trackers came excitedly down the trail from above. The remains of a camp had been found. A trail under the shelter of the trees on the far side of the ridge. He was listening to these details when the sense of powerful magic being used scratched at his awareness. He lost track of what his man was saying, staring eastward, trying to concentrate on the nature of the magic. Then it was gone, swallowed up by the eather and he stood blinking while his men stared at him.
"My Lord?" His lead tracker prompted.
"How old a camp?" he asked, distracted.
"Not more than a day. We can follow the trail easily."
A choice. The fading aroma of a magic that might or might not signify the presence of their enemy or the concrete trail of a camp and tracks. If he went after that magic, the trail might be obscured by wind and snow. His men might come upon something they were not equipped to handle.
"Show me the camp." He decided, and his men eagerly started up the trail.
A fire pit, only powdered with blown snow. The charred remains of a fire blackening it's bottom. The trampled snow and frozen manure from many horses. A clear trail ahead. They took it at a fast pace. Through the forest and along a gully clear of trees and walled by rocky slopes on one side and the slow rise of a mountain on the other. The trail led up the gradual slope. An easy climb for mountain horses. Something glinted in the light from the top of the ridge. One of his men pointed upwards and Kall-Su shielded his eyes to make it out. But it was gone. He waved a hand at his men to halt. He wanted to see what awaited them at the top of the rise.
To the discontent of his mount, he rose out of the saddle and into the air. A hundred feet up with the wind whipping at hair and cloak. Senses stretched taught for the slightest hint of magic being summoned. And there was nothing. Just the wind and the overpowering sense of the mountain's age; of the deep rooted power that lay beneath this rocky earth.
There was a crack in the air. Something hit his shoulder, like a stone being hurled at him. But of course there was no one on the ground that could hurl a stone so hard and so fast. The echoes of the crack sounded while he was trying to figure out what had happened. Before they faded it occurred to him that the shoulder was numb and he looked down and saw a clean hole through the armor plating. He stared at it in shock, lifting a gloved hand to touch the perimeter of it.
Crack. Impact hit him again and this time it spun him in mid-air, burning through his side like a fire heated poker and stealing his wit. Blood stained his tunic and he could not quite grasp how. Something leaden and impenetrable lodged within his flesh.
Crack. The third hit and he lost control of the flight spell and plummeted like a rock to the earth. Hit snow and rolled, incoherent with the source of the pain that had invaded him. Not magic. Not mundane. He couldn't summon magic that would combat the things that he knew -- he knew lodged in his body. It wouldn't respond, as if it was repelled by whatever had struck him.
His men were running towards him. He could see them from his sprawled angle, half buried in the snow. Crack. One of them stumbled and fell. Crack. Another went down. Crack. The skull of a man was shattered. Crack. Crack. He couldn't see what happened. His vision was graying. He couldn't think. He dropped his head into the snow, sick and close to passing out.
Crunch, crunch of boots in the snow. He forced his eyes open and struggled to prop himself up. His right arm wouldn't work at all. His left was strengthless and rubbery. Robes in the snow so close he couldn't see more than an expanse of gray cloth. The figure moved, turning as another man trudged down the slope carrying a long, metal object. Metal cylinder, wooden base. He'd seen pictures. A gun. A gun, when there hadn't been guns for hundreds of years. He half recognized the man who carried it.
The man in the robes crouched. Hands reached out to roll him over. He could not at the moment resist them. He tried to organize his thoughts enough to cast a spell. It was hard with the dizziness and pain.
"No. No." The Prophet smiled down at him, placing his hand over Kall's eyes, cutting out the sight of him. "Not just yet. We'll play at sorcery later. Go to sleep."
He couldn't fight it. The fingers of something that was not quite
magic and not quite not
For two days they searched without a trace until several of the horses wondered back down the trail in search of food and warmth and Schneider invaded the animal mind to make them backtrack the way they had come. Then all they found were frozen corpses littering the side of a mountain slope. Kiro was so distraught his hands shook as he went from body to body, looking for sign of his lord. Schneider knew he wasn't there. Schneider remembered Angelo's promise.
He stood in the midst of a field of corpses killed by a means that should not have existed in this day and age and seethed. Events were beginning to spin out of his control. A series of tragedies that he was continually too late to avert. Yoko hurt and so distressed her mind was not all there. Arshes and Gara almost killed. Kall-Su just gone. His allies bruised and reduced and the bastard wouldn't come straight at him. He hit from behind out of shadows and raced back into their depths like a thief in the night.
There was a bloody spot in the snow where no corpse lay. A single glove rested half buried in the snow. Tracks led to the spot, but none led away. Schneider stared down silently.
"Search the other side of the ridge." Kiro commanded and men started to climb it's heights. Schneider didn't bother to tell them it was a waste of time. He couldn't at the moment talk. He was so incensed that his heart hammered painfully against his ribs. Angelo had hit everything that mattered to him in this world. There was nothing left, save those wounded ones that had already been hurt. Gara and Arshes were safe at base camp. Yoko back at Sta-Veron. God knew where Kall was. The devil would have a luckier guess. He wanted the others where he could protect them. Having them scattered only increased the chances of Angelo striking at them again. If they were all safe, then he could think about how to track Kall down. He'd had no success finding Angelo after the Prophet had disappeared at the eastern range. Not the slightest trace. But Kall he might be able to find, whether Angelo wished it or not. And if he found Kall, he would find the Prophet.
The place without windows was astir. More than Lily had ever seen it. More than when the master had returned weeks and weeks ago after his long absence. Nothing so much to cause rampart gossip from the somber denizens of this place, but something to set them aflutter nonetheless. Even if she asked, no one would tell her, so she followed a group of acolytes down the stairs and through the corridors only to catch a glimpse of the master himself striding into a room. The acolytes all deferred to him, casting their gazes down. Lily could barely see past shoulders and torsos, but the master's shadow, the silent green eyed man who always skulked at his heels, this time did so with a burden.
All she caught was an image of blue cloak, a quick gleam of armor. A limp hand that trailed blood and then the master's shadow was into the room and the door closed on all the curious. Lily shuddered. In all the time she had been here, no one else had been brought. No one that didn't worship the master's every word. No one that was not one of the silent acolytes that drifted like ghosts in these cold halls.
She moved away, like the others, not wanting to be caught prying into the master's business. But she was curious. Deeply curious at the anomaly that had been brought into the tedious pattern the place without windows had always followed.
The master sent for her eventually, and she came to his rooms warily with her instrument in hand. He smiled serenely at her, face aglow with pleasure. Play a song for me, he asked. A joyful song. And she did.