Book 2, Chapter 74

As it turned out, the Hierophant wasn’t much help at all. He did stop the rest of his personal guard from attacking me when they caught up to us. It was no surprise that they were jumpy; the guy they were supposed to protect had run off after his two mages to stop them from trying to kill me and caught his entire guard flatfooted in the process. In their positions, I might have attacked first and asked questions later, too.

Once he was safely surrounded by elites and mages, and the two guys who’d attacked me had been treated for their injuries, I finally got the story out of him. Unfortunately, the Hierophant didn’t have much to offer.

“I can tell you where the entrance to the Old Grounds is,” he said.

“Sure.” That would save me a few minutes of work.

“And get you some equipment,” he added. Then he frowned and said, “Maybe. We don’t exactly keep a lot in your size.”

“If it’s not raw mana, I’m not interested.”

“No… I don’t think we have a supply of mana?” the Hierophant asked as much as said. He shot a look at one of the mages in his entourage, who shook his head back.

“It sounds like the only thing you can do for me is point me in the right direction and then get out of my way,” I said. “And, not to be rude here, but the longer I delay, the more time I’m giving Monarch to prepare.”

Left unsaid was that she’d already had four days to prepare. I’d used that time to gain mana myself, and I suspected most of her time had been used to organize and coordinate the failed ambush on me, but that didn’t make it a good idea to give her any more extra hours than I had to right now.

The Hierophant hesitated for a moment, then reached under his shirt and pulled out a necklace with a small metal disc on it. “You can have this,” he said, “if we can reach an agreement. This will let you bypass any ward in the palace, including the ones in the Old Grounds.”

The entire entourage froze in place when he pulled that disc out. “But, my Lord…” one of the mages started to say before the Hierophant cut him off with a glare.

“Potentially useful,” I said. “But what agreement? I was under the impression we already agreed that the Wolf Pack needed to go.”

“Most of them do, but not my daughter.”

“Your daughter is a mage?” I asked. Hopefully she wasn’t Ash, else I’d be delivering some bad news.

“She is about this tall,” the Hierophant said as held a hand up over the ground. “Blonde hair. Blue eyes.”

“Echo,” I said.

“Zara is her real name, but Monarch got hold of her when she was young. It was another way to gain a lever against me. There’s no breaking her out of the cabal’s grasp now, not while Monarch is still alive. But I want you to promise you won’t hurt Zara. I’ll deal with her once the cabal is broken.”

“Where is she now?” I asked. I didn’t think I had much choice but to agree to the Hierophant’s terms, not unless I wanted to fight all thirty of his personal guard. Unfortunately, Echo had been the biggest problem since I’d gotten here. Her use of prophetic divination had done more to trip me up than anyone else since my first encounter with Freak and their subsequent discovery of my existence.

“I don’t know. But that’s what I’m asking. Break the Wolf Pack’s control over my city without killing my daughter.”

“That would be easier to promise if you could tell me where she was,” I said.

I ignored the scandalized looks from the Hierophant’s entourage. I’d long since grown numb to adults being incredulous or upset at having to argue with a child, though in this case, I thought it might be more that anyone would dare to argue with the ruler of the city. Though, now that I thought about it, calling him the ruler might have been stretching things. Monarch was the one who was really calling the shots here.

“We don’t know,” the Hierophant told me. I could hear the frustration in his voice, but I couldn’t much sympathize. I’d never had children of my own, none that I was aware of, anyway. Regardless, Echo was an adult who could make her own choices, though I could admit that she’d likely been groomed for her role among the Wolf Pack.

“All I can promise is that I won’t go out of my way to hunt her down,” I said. “If she’s standing next to Monarch and attacks me, I’ll do my best to stop her without killing her.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“It’s the best you’re going to get from me.”

“What if I send some of my people with you? If my daughter is in the Old Grounds, they’ll subdue her and bring her back to me. If not, you’ll have some help in the battle against Monarch.”

“That… could work,” I said after thinking about it for a moment.

“Perfect. It’s a deal then.”

I didn’t know that I’d actually agreed to anything there. I also wasn’t sure I wanted to let Echo live. She was deeply tied to the Wolf Pack, so much so that breaking their power probably meant she should die unless she could be suborned like Tetrin had. Somehow, I doubted she was quite as willing to abandon the cabal, not if she was still clinging to them when the other option was to stand at the highest echelon of this society.

The Hierophant lifted his hat, pulled the necklace over his head, and handed it to me. I examined it while he centered the hat again. It appeared that, despite every single person needing to be individually keyed to the wards, there were still other barriers deeper in the palace that could only be passed with this necklace as well. That wasn’t terribly uncommon, but usually anyone who bothered to individually key his staff to the warding scheme also did the same thing for himself. Having a physical token that allowed the holder to pass through on top of their own mana signatures being challenged by the wards was redundant.

They must have had something they considered extremely valuable hidden away in here.

I could replicate this key easily enough. It was actually fairly simple, as such things went. The ward keys the staff at Velvet’s castle were using were actually more complicated than this one. It was only when I flipped it over and saw the teeth etched into the metal that I realized it was an actual, literal key as well, though since the Hierophant hadn’t seen fit to tell me that, I suspected I wouldn’t be needing that function.

“Alright, it’s time for me to go,” I said. I stood up and summoned my staff back into my hand. “Who’s coming with me?”

  *

“Six people seems like overkill,” I remarked as they led me through the palace.

This whole set up made me extremely wary. I foresaw a time in my near future when Monarch was dead, I was weakened, and the Hierophant’s soldiers jumped in to finish me off. After all, why would he suffer to let a mage even stronger than Monarch live in his domain? What if I started to set up my own cabal? The Hierophant could end up right back in the same spot again.

“Our lord was not willing to risk Lady Zara’s life,” the closest mage said. He was one of the red-robed ones who’d attacked me before the Hierophant could intervene, the one I’d thrown into the wall a few times. The healer who attended him had done a decent job of patching him up, though the mage was still wincing with every step. He was trying to hide it, to not show any weakness in front of a temporary ally who might turn back into an enemy.

After all, I’d killed dozens of people in the last hour in this palace, people who’d done nothing besides get in my way. He would have joined them if the fight had gone on another few seconds. It was lucky for him that the Hierophant had arrived so quickly to intervene.

I’d been thinking about that, and I had a suspicion that Echo wasn’t the only one in the family using time-based magic. Hastening invocations were expensive to keep going, but for a short burst of speed, they could be worth it if strategically used. I hadn’t been able to see how big the Hierophant’s core was or how much mana he had on him, but I could easily picture him blurring down the walls, one hand grasping that stupid hat on his head to keep it from flying away.

It certainly wasn’t the only possibility, but the only one I considered to be equally likely was that he’d been lurking around the corner, waiting and watching to see if his pet mages could take me. If I died, then I wasn’t the threat to the Wolf Pack that he needed. That was exactly the kind of cold, callous decision I could expect from the leader of a city or country.

Either way, I didn’t trust this alliance. I’d be keeping a close eye on them to make sure no one tried to betray me at an opportune moment. That included some discreet mind reading as the opportunity presented itself. I’d already pegged one of the elites who seemed extra nervous about everything.

“Sure, and I’m all for letting you handle her when the time comes,” I said. “But do you think we’re actually going to run into her?”

The mage shrugged. “There is a possibility of it. That is enough to justify this excursion.”

We’d been walking for about ten minutes. The adults set an annoying pace, one that forced me to hustle to keep up, not quite fast enough to justify using magic, but too fast for me to walk. It was petty of me, but I’d considered slowing down and forcing them to walk at my speed instead. The only thing stopping me was that I’d wasted too much time just getting this far.

“If we do spot her, I’m not detouring to help you out. You guys are on your own,” I said.

“We are aware. As long as you are able to kill Monarch and do not harm Lady Zara, you will have fulfilled your half of the bargain.”

“Wasn’t much of a deal to begin with,” I muttered. I’d gotten a ward key I didn’t need and hadn’t had to fight my way through the Hierophant’s personal guard.

“We are here,” the other mage in my little group announced from the front. I looked past everyone to see a hallway sloping sharply downward. Cracks circled it, but some enterprising transmutation specialist had taken the time to reinforce the hall so that it was basically a slide with a set of stairs next to it. There was no light other than what we had with us, but that wasn’t surprising. Once I’d gotten past the Hierophant’s chambers, there’d been a lot of evidence of neglect and disuse. Apparently, people didn’t come to the very center of the palace that often anymore.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” I asked. “Let’s get going.”

Those elites with their draw stone shields might as well be good for something. They could go first and trigger any traps Monarch might have left here. There was no guarantee that the draw stone would save them, but that was a risk I was willing to take.

The dirty looks I got from the three guards with shields told me that they knew exactly why I was sending them to the front. “What?” I asked. “Isn’t this basically your job?”

“Our job is not to protect you,” one of them said.

“Fine, go back to your boss and I’ll go in by myself.”

There was some grumbling, but my entourage started moving down the stairs. I made sure my shield ward was completely topped off and followed them.