Transcendent (Ascendant Book 2) by Alanson Craig

Author:Alanson, Craig [Alanson, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2016-12-28T16:00:00+00:00

Madame Chu crossed the river by swimming, mostly letting the current carry her along. She wore leather outer garments to protect her from being chilled by the river water, which even in late summer was uncomfortably cool after a long exposure. She had ridden north along the east side of the river, going far enough to be above the enemy’s camp, and went into the water after sunset. Two other wizards had enveloped her in a spell of concealment, although such spells did not work well, or long, in water. The spell worked well enough so that her gently swimming out into the current was not noticed by the enemy sentries on the far side of the river, and she had chosen a bend in the river where the strongest part of the current came close to the eastern shore. Her plan was to swim across the river, being careful not to splash the surface as she moved, and allow the current to carry her to another bend downriver, where the current came close to the western shore. In that regard, her plan had worked, although as she approached the bend in the river, she saw the land there was strongly garrisoned by orcs. The enemy knew that bend in the river, where the Fasse bent around a tall, rocky bluff, was a likely place for spies to come ashore. Chu was not overly alarmed, she swam close enough to the shore to be in the slack waters out of the center of the current, and floated slowly along, around the bend, coming ashore a quarter mile farther downriver from her original plan. It made no difference where she came ashore, and long as it was in the orc’s sector of the enemy camp, and she was not seen.

Hiding behind a rock under an overhanging area of the bluff, where the river’s spring floods had undercut the cliff above her, she stripped off the leather outer garments that had kept her warm in the water, and dressed in black clothes which she kept in a waterproof pouch. Before wrapping herself in a concealment spell, she warily sent out her senses, feeling for enemy wizards. While enemy wizards often had considerable destructive power, their skills were often crude and their use of power easy to detect. Chu quickly found an enemy wizard, an orc, less than a mile from her. The orc was sending its senses across the river, attempting to see what General Magrane’s army was doing. She smiled when she sensed the orc wizard’s great frustration, for wizards on the other side of the river were pushing back, blocking the orc wizard from seeing the raiding force that was gathered, awaiting orders to carry their flimsy assault boats forward.

Confident her use of magic would not be detected, Chu Wing drew a concealment around her, and headed off into the night, climbing the bluff. She only had two hours, she judged, before she needed to signal either success or failure. Failure would require Magrane to send nearly a thousand people to their deaths.

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