Labyrinth by Blaze Ward

Author:Blaze Ward
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781644703557
Publisher: Knotted Road Press

Chapter

Fourteen

Dan’s job was usually to run interference for Stewey. That had always been the thing that made them more powerful, more dangerous than just two warlocks working together. Dan was the face, Stewey the bones. Diviner and Enchanter.

All the Beijing folks back in Seattle expected a Chinese boy like him to be the expert on their history, when Dan preferred late Roman Empire and Dark Ages stuff. Stewey could read all the old stuff better than just about anybody Dan knew.

Today, they had a third with them. A Sorcerer more powerful than the two of them put together. Throw in a Conjurer, like he suspected Koschei was, and an Illusionist, and you just about had your bases covered. Assuming all the stories about Necromancers were more fable than truth.

What had Faucher been? The meditation maze in the back yard was pure enchantment, with some conjuring thrown in, opening portals to other places by walking through a shadow plane. The camouflage on the wall was a nice illusion but had leaked a little wrong.

Dan wondered if him breaking the meditation maze had overloaded the illusions in here and caused them to shift a little. Worth asking Stewey later.

And this wall was pure conjuration. Say the magic word, as it were, and open a portal, except he didn’t know where it went.

Lots of power bound up right here, though.

“Stewey,” Dan said as he walked around the fake wall on the floor and got a better look at the runes. “Can you read the path enchanted here?”

He felt both approach, different echoes in the way the magic around them flowed.

Stewey was as grounded as the earth. Maybe that was why his enchantments worked so well, if all magic that was lost went back underground?

Khulan reminded him of a bird, gliding on thermals, even inside this room.

Dan glanced back and returned her smile.

“Is Koschei Russian, like you?” he asked her.

“What?”

“You had to physically come here from somewhere else, when I broke the stepping disk,” Dan explained. “That took time. Stewey just woke four people up downstairs, and I’m assuming you and Koschei are two of them. How long until someone could respond and find this wall?”

“The others might think it was a trap,” she replied after a moment of thought. “They would divine, but it would take time for them to decide to approach. Days, not years. Probably not hours, unless one of them killed Faucher themselves and already knows what the barrier breaching implied. A spirit such as the one that attacked you earlier might come first, but those are from the darkness, and the sun is arisen.”

“Then we have eight to ten hours before we could expect an ambush?” he asked her.

Her face got cuter when she got confused. More innocent and human, and less like an angry god forced to walk among peons like him and Stewey.

“Most likely, yes,” she answered finally.

Dan smiled.

“Stewey, how hard will it be to open this thing and peek inside?” he asked.

“You are completely, fucking insane, Dr.

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