Heretic mage, p.23
Heretic Mage, page 23
part #3 of Paranoid Mage Series
He only saw mages when he visited Alpha Chester, the ones set on him as observers and spies, and even then it was at a distance. The riskiest, most stressful thing he’d done was comb through House Fane’s stuff, and they had been far too preoccupied to even notice the little drone perched on top of a roof decoration. But relaxed as he was, he was still vigilant enough to notice when one of his portal anchors started charging of its own accord.
Callum wasn’t aware of saying anything, but apparently he said something because Lucy turned away from the tiles setup she was tinkering with to stare at him. She asked a question but he was far too busy wrestling with the portal focus to explain, hurling spatial attack forms at it after a moment of frozen surprise. That forced the forming thread to collapse, preventing it from actually creating a portal, but it didn’t solve the problem.
“I need you to break this,” he said, teleporting the anchor over to the table in front of Lucy. He could have done it himself, but it was easier to spend all his attention making sure the portal anchor didn’t fully activate, and that none of the others were doing the same thing. To her credit, Lucy didn’t even ask questions, just grabbed her hammer and screwdriver from next to the tiles and plied them against the anchor.
It didn’t take much to deform the little bit of metal enough to disrupt the enchantment. Once it was broken, the intrusion stopped but Callum didn’t relax. He had no idea how such a thing could happen, and until he knew for sure he had to assume all of his anchors were suspect. For the moment he pulled all the anchors out of his cave cache – three pairs total, including the one that Lucy had just destroyed – to examine.
“The heck was that for?” Lucy asked, placing the bent and destroyed anchor next to the others on the table.
“Someone hacked my portal anchor I think?” Callum hazarded, heart still pounding. The anchor in question was paired with the drone that he had used to surveil House Fane, which was in a way a relief. That one had definitely been in enemy territory, and could have been compromised, though a close sweep showed no foreign vis. It had to be something on the House Fane side, which he didn’t understand but it at least explained why such an intrusion hadn’t happened before.
“We need to figure out a way to completely depower these things without destroying them, just so we can make them safe on our end. There’s no way we can just leave them as they are.”
“Whoah there, slow down,” Lucy said drawing out the last two words. “Are you sure they can even do that?” She added, reaching out to find Callum’s hand and squeezing it as she spoke. “Gotta be Duvall. If anyone can do that, it’s the Archmage. But she’s been around a while without this happening.”
“Yeah, I know.” Callum scowled at the portal anchors lined up on the table, feeling nauseous. “I’ve gotten lazy. I haven’t been making sure to clean up every single teleport with the drone, because they already knew that we were doing stuff.”
“You think that they could open the portal because of, what, traces you left? How would that work?”
Callum blinked, then realized that while he knew nothing about proper magery, at least he could sense magic. Most mages didn’t really seem to even notice the traces they left, so of course Lucy wouldn’t know about it. He took a moment to explain about how vis got stuck in ambient mana, and how he had cleaned it up, while he got up and paced to burn off some nervous energy.
“I figure that they found some of that residue and exploited it,” Callum concluded. “It’s that or any set of portals is vulnerable to being opened this way, but if that were true, they would have found me after I rescued you. There was probably enough magic getting flung around there to hide things, but at the Fane household? Nah, some of the buildings were practically dead.”
“So we disconnect them like with the tiles? Or put them somewhere it doesn’t matter?” Lucy suggested. “Like, just put a bunch of them at the bottom of the ocean and have only one leading back?”
“Something like that, yes,” Callum agreed, and took a deep breath. “No matter how we go about it we need more bane material. I’ll have to be careful, but we definitely need to put our portal network somewhere inaccessible. Until then we’ll have to be very careful and rather less mobile.”
“And we’ll have to recycle this,” Lucy said, holding up the dented portal anchor.
“And we’ll have to recycle that,” Callum agreed.
***
“I don’t care what you think,” Serena Duvall said coldly, staring at the visitor in the receiving room of her main House complex. It was austere compared to some of the Houses, but each chair was well made and matched, each painting by one of her own House. The man sitting in one of those chairs was out of place - his unctuous tone, his garish canary-yellow suit, his very presence. She did not like having her carefully-arranged day interrupted any more than she liked having her carefully-chosen furniture abused by uninvited guests. “House Duvall is not involved in Wells’ actions. We have declared him heretic! Surely you see why, if he’s subverting my network to this extent!”
House Duvall was perched high in the mountain-sized tree that towered over the portal to Earth, taking up the entirety of a limb ten miles across and fifty miles long. Not that it was densely occupied, but she’d wanted to future-proof her claim. She didn’t trust Faerie, she didn’t like the Night Lands, and she didn’t like the mana density of Earth, so the Deep Wilds it was.
Her position forced mages to make the trek to her, though flying up to House Duvall’s limb was hardly onerous for any competent mage. Let alone an Archmage like Corrilon. Yet he still seemed somewhat out of breath, though she couldn’t fathom how.
“Nevertheless, it was the network that was used to remove Archmage Fane. We still haven’t found—”
“Would you ban doors if an enemy walked through one?” Duvall snapped. “We have safety features, but nothing is safe if you let some ignorant criminal walk up to it and pervert it into a trap!”
“Be that as it may,” Archmage Corrilon said doggedly, which fit his lined and wrinkled face that reminded Duvall of a grizzled mastiff. “Be that as it may, it is hard to trust your network, considering what it has been used for. Wells has demonstrated a number of heretofore unseen abilities with spatial magic, and you can’t convince any of us that you’re unable to do the same thing.”
“I have dedicated my craft to useful and constructive applications of spatial magic,” Duvall said. “We have always known that portals and teleports were an enormous strategic advantage. That’s why I built the network. Just because Wells is better at using it for combat potential than you, that’s no reason to suspect me.”
She had already known some of what Wells was doing — though the specific applications were strange. Breacher portals were one of her oldest collaborations with the Guild of Enchanting. But using them at the size Wells did required a very sharply focused vis sense — which he clearly wasn’t using. His method of accelerating matter was a very spatially focused version of telekinesis — effective in a very coarse way, but it didn’t compare to the real thing.
It was obvious his ability to slip through wards and probably his ability to use the tiny portals came from his extensive use of ultrafine vis. Her best guess was that he had a specialized tool that let him use it more effectively than the ones from the Guild of Enchanting — making its origin a mystery. Someone had to be backing him, somehow, and it was really damn infuriating that it was leading her fellow Archmages to question her.
“If we can’t verify your network is safe, how can we use it? You must turn it over so we can—”
“So that’s what this is about,” Duvall said scornfully. She should have known that was the first target the others would go after. Her transport network made her all but untouchable — because it was hers. GAR owned the land, the pads, the screening enchantments, but every single core was purchased with House Duvall money.
Duvall knew she was no good at fighting — she didn’t like it and spatial wasn’t actually any good at it, Wells’ exploitation aside. But that was fine. She just enabled those who could fight. So she had other kinds of power, and the more simple-minded Archmages hated that they couldn’t just dominate her with their combat prowess.
“I am not giving up my life’s work because you can’t find a single heretic mage,” Duvall told Corrilon.
“We must insist that you submit the teleportation network to be verified and controlled properly. Now that we know what can be done with it, we cannot allow you to hold such a potential weapon over the heads of everyone in GAR.” Corrilon’s voice was reasonable — unlike his words. No wonder he’d been selected to talk to her. Most people started yelling much more quickly.
“That will not happen,” Duvall said flatly. “If you’re so worried about what will happen if you use the network, don’t use it.”
“That’s not reasonable, Archmage Duvall,” said Archmage Corrilon. “Too many people and goods move through the teleportation network every day to simply stop using it.”
“I wasn’t offering you a choice,” Duvall said, rising.
Below her personal house, in the living wood of the tree, there were storage rooms filled with her projects — and a certain number of personal spatial devices. She didn’t use any spatial expansion herself — she knew how dangerous it was. A pulse of vis gave her enough of a line to travel down herself, and a brief glance around the rigidly ordered rows found the portal frame she wanted.
It was one of her better designs, a portable folding model that could be deployed or stowed with a few twists. Her friends at the Guild of Enchanting had enjoyed the challenge — even if nobody else needed such portals. Not even the BSE, since they already had larger models.
She deployed one half in a matter of a few seconds, setting it up on an immaculately swept floor facing a number of storage bins and returning above to where Corrilon was still waiting before he could grow impatient. He blinked at the wooden case in her hand, but she ignored his confusion — Corrilon was just a mouthpiece. One of the least inspired water mages she’d seen, despite his power.
Another vis pulse let her find the anchor for the teleport between House Duvall and GAR Europe. She latched onto the core and used it to open a portal. Mostly to speed up the process of getting Corrilon out of her hair.
“Go on,” she said, shooing him through the portal and following herself.
“Archmage Duvall, what are you doing?” Duvall spared him a glance. Even his jowls reminded her of a dog. An absurd caricature of a dog in an absurd yellow outfit. Utterly ridiculous – and not worth her time.
“It should be obvious,” she said, twisting the handles on the portal frame as the wood clicked out into a tall frame. “If you will only use my network if you can take it from me, you will not use my network.” She cast out another vis pulse, locating all the cores stored at the switchboard behind the operators.
Not all of them were hers, actually — even she had to permanently sell some to Houses or GAR or the BSE. The teleports between GAR buildings, the private House transports, the portal world stations. The barest bones. Everything else, all the hundreds of locations — those were hers. So she took them back.
Though the portable frame she could see the racks that were designed to hold cores, so she began teleporting them through into her basement. They were all numbered, and she had all the documentation of which core number went to which destination, so while returning them would be tedious, it would merely be the work of an afternoon for some dedicated people.
If she returned them.
A lot of people would capitulate simply from the interruption of their normal habits, but Duvall wasn’t certain she should return things to what they were before. Shutting down the GAR network was not a whim or caprice — she’d long considering the implications if she needed to use that card. Perhaps she’d let the network grow too large, and be used too easily.
It was her power, but now she realized that it was a power that was taken for granted — and she did not like what was hers being taken. Power that was never exercised was impotent. Given a few days or weeks of trying to work without her contribution to magekind, all the accusations and power-grabs would dry up. Or grow more blatant, but she was prepared for that.
“You cannot—” Corrilon began, but she reached out for the teleportation core to the American GAR offices, ignoring his words and the stares of the switchboard operations who suddenly had no enchantments to switch.
“My network, my rules.” She told him. For all his kindly charm and raw power, he was completely unimaginative and spineless, exactly the kind of person she disliked the most. “If you care to revise your accusations, you know where House Duvall is.”
She left Corrilon behind as she repeated the process twice more for America and China — though China was truncated since Fane held sway there. Over a thousand teleport cores. Then she returned to the House and sent messages to each of her apprentices. Most were already at House Duvall — a necessary step, for their own safety. Those that were on loan to BSE were told to return.
One of them came with news.
“Did you see what was sent out to everyone about Fane, Archmage?” Young Cormac asked, shoving a small electronic device far too close to her face. “It says Constance sent it, but who knows if that’s true.”
“It probably isn’t,” Duvall said, after she had pushed the device away and saw what it contained. Constance didn’t have the imagination. Which left only Wells — and that meant there might be a trail. “Keep the defenses up,” she decided abruptly. “I’m going out. If anyone wants to complain have them leave a note.”
“Yes, Archmage,” Cormac said, and Duvall went over to her personal teleportation nexus. There were connections to each of the portal worlds, a few of her allied Houses, and the Guild of Enchanting. It was that last she energized and stepped through.
The Guild of Enchanting headquarters was located in Faerie, so of course it was improbably picturesque. Everything in Faerie was. They couldn’t just have a river or a mountain or a tree — it had to be a perfect ribbon of blue, a heart-stopping snowcapped peak, or some mossy elder titan. There was a reason Houses competed for space on Faerie, but Duvall mistrusted a landscape so disproportionately beautiful.
She ignored the jewel-like birds flitting around enormous gleaming blossoms and marched through the receiving room to where a servant stood by the door. Some half-sized fae, which didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous — the Guild of Enchanting took their security seriously. Duvall’s Archmage pin was enough for the servant, though, and he opened the door for her to step into the main part of the Guild.
Grand Magus Rossi himself met her a few scant minutes later, which she hadn’t asked for but wouldn’t turn down. It would make things easier for her. And faster. Time was of the essence.
“Welcome, Archmage Duvall,” Rossi began but Duvall held up a hand.
“I’m in a hurry, Grand Magus,” she said. “I need to borrow one of your finesse scribers and lenses.”
“Why, certainly,” Rossi said, startled. “What for, may I ask?”
“Since GAR seems to be too incompetent to trace Wells, I’m going to do it myself,” she said bluntly. “He uses finesse threads, and those just break when I try to handle them, so I need one of your scribers.”
“Of course,” Rossi said, making a sign to one of the servants in the corner of the room. “We’re interested in locating Wells ourselves. We’ve taken some steps ourselves — employing mundane detectives to find where he may have manufactured his enchantment blanks. But that is a rather slow and tedious process.”
“If I locate him, I’ll let you know,” Duvall said insincerely. She would actually have to get her own mages first, since she wasn’t going to take him into custody herself. He was dangerous. But she would be able to lock down his use of vis — if she could get close enough.
When the servant returned with a cart bearing the items she’d asked for, she plucked them up with her telekinesis focus and bid Rossi an abbreviated farewell. The man was competent enough, but far too impressed with the sound of his own voice. She also didn’t like the subtle remonstrance about taking Well’s enchanting work first.
She grimaced at the pointlessly elaborate halls of GAR China as she made her way to the House Fane teleporter — one of the ones she had not confiscated. She simply energized it and went through without any hesitation or even concern. Without Archmage Fane there was nobody of any standing to even protest. She ignored the challenge of one of the savages House Fane had masquerading as mages and went outside, hauling the equipment with her as she flew into the air.
Finding Wells’ traces among the business of a House was not going to be easy, but she knew the area that he was in thanks to the video. Her foci carried her to Archmage Fane’s old building, with all its useless frilly roof things, where she deployed the enchanting lens. It was specially designed to help a mage focus on small and subtle pieces of vis, like those generated by a finesse scriber — and actually doing most of the work to screen out the traces of other mages. Duvall had already seen what Wells’ portal anchor structure looked like, so she had a clear idea what to look for.
It still wasn’t easy. Wells’ anchor was very small and he’d shown he could easily put it inside walls or in other cubbies, so she had to use a combination of close range passive perception and the lens to track down where it might have been. Under the circumstances she was prepared to spend all day at it, considering how many Houses she’d cancelled work for.
Fortunately for her she found the traces after only an hour of scrutinizing the outside of the building, tracking it down to just above the surface of a roof. Whatever he was using to hold his portal anchors wasn’t very large, but it was still offset far enough that he had to be using something. Once she had it located and had the lens locked in, she channeled her vis into the scriber.
