Shadow Pass (Last Life Book #8): A Progression Fantasy Series by Osadchuk Alexey

Author:Osadchuk, Alexey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Magic Dome Books
Published: 2025-01-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

I HAD TO MAKE SOME CHANGES to my initial plans. Vaira arrived during the night with a message from Baron Reese, in which he informed me that our main caravan would be arriving slightly later than we had planned.

They had hit an unexpected snag before departing Gondreville. It turned out that many, many more people were interested in moving to my Margraviate than we had initially expected.

There was also another unpleasant surprise for me — as if summoned by a magic wand, a group of mages from the Amber Guild had appeared in Gondreville just before the caravan departed and attached themselves to its baggage train. The commander of the little group informed Baron Reese that he was carrying a very important message for me from Gilbert de Ambrelle, the grandmaster of the Amber Guild. Basically, there would be no getting rid of the bothersome new arrivals.

Oh well, I thought... Just one more reason to set out for Bone Grotto even earlier than I had planned. I felt practically obligated to discover its secrets before the Amber Guild’s rubbernecking spies could insist on coming with me. I knew for a fact that they were coming specifically for that reason — they wanted to sniff out the secret that the Scarlets had discovered on the frontier. The Guild had already secured the Royal monopoly on the trade in Shadow resources, and they wanted to dig their greedy claws into my developing business.

In private, other mages usually referred to the Amber Guild simply as the Royal Guild. Nobody — including me — gave any credence to the idea that the grandmaster was acting on his own initiative. I mean, the King himself had sent me here with a single goal in mind. Namely, to knock the Scarlets out of the Margraviate in order to take over their corner of the market. Besides that, apparently, Carl was also hoping that the Margraviate would become a permanent base for his legions. And that his new Margrave would be completely under his control.

Obviously, neither the King nor the grandmaster had any idea of what was actually going to happen. Neither had any desire to see a self-sufficient, independent me right next to a valuable source of Shadow resources. The only thing I didn’t yet know was what could possibly be across the barrier, beneath the mountains. But I knew that it would be best to keep that information out of their hands.

Baron Reese sent some other news in his message as well. The Sapphire Guild had finally swung into action. Exactly as we had suspected they would. Baron de Bacri’s mountain men, who were serving as the Citadel’s garrison, managed to catch two intruders who were trying to break into the secret treasury. Unfortunately, they didn’t get a chance to talk to them. The strykers put up fierce resistance, and our werewolves had to kill them both.

Sure, it was possible that my announcement about the auction had provoked some other third-party guild into action, but I was pretty sure that the Sapphire Guild was behind this break-in.

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