Matabar

Book II. Chapter 33 - The Long Night (Part 4)

While the mound of fat and flesh pulsed near the manor’s entrance, the skeletons, moving with a speed that did not seem possible for mere bones to possess, advanced toward their visitors. Ardan could feel the tension hanging in the air with his entire body. But it was a strange sort of tension. Fractured, somehow. Incomplete.

Alexander’s right hand was clenched around the grip of his revolver, and he kept rubbing the brass knuckles on his left hand against his thigh. Din was tugging at the harness of his throwing knives, his daggers never still. He would sometimes spin them between his fingers, which was a nervous habit, it seemed.

Milar was the worst off. After all, despite his passable skill with a sword and his decent aim (up to a point), he possessed no combat talents beyond an uncommonly calculating and perceptive mind, and an ability to see through people as if they were glass.

Ardi himself, if you removed the half-ton of “goo” from the equation—that hideous stew where flesh, bone and building rubble churned together—didn’t feel particularly threatened by the skeletons. Given their physical forms, it was unlikely that they could break through Orlovsky’s Shield…

The three skeletons in the lead raised their rusty axes and, bringing them down as one, caused the runes from the Fae tongue that were inscribed on their ancient hafts to flare. And as the runes ignited, waves of not flame, but of pure blue light, surged out from the axe blades. Wherever they passed, small explosions of compressed air followed. First, a shimmering bubble would swell like a bud, then, just as quickly, the wind would rush in to fill the void it had left behind.

If a person, or any creature with blood in its veins, were to be caught in such a blast, their blood would instantly boil from the pressure difference, to say nothing of the impact itself.

This was Void Rupture—a three-Star spell. It was rather outdated by the standards of modern military magic, but still monstrously dangerous.

“Ahgrat,” Ardi cursed, making Milar flinch and reach for the amulet hanging around his neck.

Alexander and Din reached for similar amulets. Ardi knew that these were single-use protective artifacts issued to operatives and senior investigators of the Second Chancery. They cost a considerable number of exes, so they were not given to just anyone, and only after a set amount of years of service.

Three waves of light, crossing and overlapping, leaving behind the popping sound of compressed air, surged toward the seven uninvited guests.

Ardi expected Mshisty to strike his staff against the ground, but… he merely stepped aside, making way for his captain, Parela. The woman, with a deliberate intensity that somehow mirrored the skeletons’ own, stepped forward and struck her staff against the ground.

The accumulators on her bracelet flared. He spotted three of them activating: the Red, Blue, and Yellow Star ones. The Green Star accumulator remained dormant, which was surprising.

Three seals ignited beneath her feet and merged into one, forming an intricate blueprint, a labyrinth of vectors, and a whole library of arrays.

The head of her staff glowed with a steady, pinkish… soap bubble. Swelling like a child’s creation, it enveloped the seven people in a greasy, oily film. And when the waves of light touched its surface, they pressed the shield’s boundary inward by a handspan at most before dissolving amidst the iridescent streaks. The shield itself, which was inflating more and more, soon absorbed the entirety of the explosions of compressed air as well.

It enveloped them in an oily puddle, crushing the ones trapped in its pink embrace and ignoring their reflexive resistance. When that, too, faded, the bubble burst. Dozens of droplets, with the speed of bullets fired from a rifle, streaked across the meadow. The skeletons unlucky enough to be in their path were riddled with holes, or rather, outright obliterated. The end result looked sort of like cheese that had been grated for hours.

Their rusty weapons and equally-rusted armor had no time to even fall to the ground before the next wave of soap bullets finished what the first had started.

Only a few of the “living dead”—in reality, these were biological puppets endowed with instructions and Ley-charges—had survived. These were the ones wielding small hammers, but much larger shields. Despite the fact that these shields looked to be just as rusty as the other equipment, sort of like cabbage leaves that had been gnawed on by beetles, the full-body shields had dug their spiked supports deep into the ground. And beneath each of these shields, a relatively simple Green Star-level seal had flared up. This had been enough to save them from the calamity as the ghostly silhouette of a massive personal shield had covered them.

“Face of Light…” Milar exhaled.

Alexander and Din nodded absently.

The captain had likely not witnessed the use of military magic on such a scale and at such a high level all that often.

“That’s far from all of it,” Parela smiled. Her look was no less predatory than the one her own superior was known for.

And indeed, the seal beneath her feet showed no sign of fading. A moment later, the soap-like droplets scattered across the meadow were shining with a soft glow, which was no longer pink, but the color of steel. Thin threads of what appeared to be fishing line, left in the air where the bullet-like droplets had flown by, lit up.

A second passed, then another, and the threads started vibrating like a guitar string disturbed by an unskilled touch; a restless note swept across the field, causing goosebumps to march in a neat line up one’s spine.

The soap-like droplets, which had now turned to steel, soared into the air and, straightening the threads trailing behind them, whirled around in a furious, circular dance. Like a saw blade, they rotated on an axis around Parela, who served as the center of the steel vortex. And wherever the threads touched anything—the remains of the skeletons, grass, the few sparse trees and bushes, the ghostly shields created by the spells, or the shields themselves—it all turned to dust.

The droplets, as they went around in a circle, rose higher and higher. First, they formed a cone, then a funnel, and finally, they intertwined thirty meters above the ground, looking like the tip of a knight’s lance made for a jousting tournament.

Parela was biting her lip until it bled. Clearly, concentrating on such a complex seal was not easy for her, and the slightest mistake, even at this level, threatened to hit her with a Broken Seal backlash. Slowly, she lowered her staff parallel to the ground. Following her movements, the thirty-meter, rotating cone woven from hundreds of vibrating steel threads also descended.

The captain barely twitched her wrist forward, and the cone, rotating at the same speed as Ardi’s Ice Spear, flew across the meadow.

Whistling loudly, tearing through the earth with the force of its rotation alone, it plunged directly into the center of the “goo.” The thing shuddered and swelled, bursting apart soon after and scattering bloody scraps and debris across the area.

“What a night,” Milar muttered, wiping drops of blood and pieces of flesh from his face, which had reached them even though they were standing at least two hundred and fifty meters from the estate.

Din and Alexander vehemently agreed. Din did so quite enthusiastically as he was brushing the same scraps from his cloak, while Alexander remained silent, though his movements were accompanied by eloquent facial expressions.

Ardi, who had momentarily covered himself with a simple shield that had cost him only a single Red ray, could not tear his gaze away from the seal that was currently disappearing beneath the feet of the exhausted Captain Parela.

It was difficult to underestimate the power of the Yellow Star and what a military mage possessing it was capable of. As far as Ardi could tell about the structure of Mshisty’s department (even though there had been four of them on the train, not three), Klementiy specialized in Ley Engineering in the broadest sense, Captain Parela in shield magic, both stationary and personal, and Mshisty…

“The load in the pressure distribution node shifted a bit, and the rotation speed went out of sync with the movement speed,” Mshisty, who was holding his staff under his arm, bit the ends of his hair and tightened the knot holding his gray ponytail. “There’s still work to be done, Parela, before I approve this seal for serious operations.”

“Yes… exactly… Major,” Parela saluted, out of breath.

…and Mshisty, who somewhat resembled Edward in his demeanor, calmly strode across the scorched earth. Dirtying his shoes in puddles of bloody remnants, he looked so self-assured that it bordered on carelessness.

Yes, Major Mshisty still lagged a whole Star behind Lord Edward Aversky, but he had managed, despite this difference, to earn a reputation as one of the Empire’s strongest military mages. And this was despite the existence of other Black Star Mages in the Grand Magister’s lodge.

“Let’s go,” Milar swung his revolver and headed down the path.

“Maybe we should wait here?” Din pleaded, spitting out drops of foul-smelling liquid. “What could we possibly find in there, besides more nightmares?”

And despite the fact that the entirety of Milar’s team, including Ardi, agreed with Din, they still needed to get inside the estate, if only because everyone had to do their job. Operatives, be they Mshisty’s hounds or Alexander and Din, merely cleared the way for the investigators.

So, ignoring the Ralian tracker’s lamentations, the seven Black House employees headed toward the estate.

And even though a quarter of a kilometer separated them from the building, they walked unhurriedly. No matter how strong and knowledgeable Mshisty might be, and no matter how reassuring the presence of two more Yellow Star Mages was, no one was going to underestimate the danger of a possible mistake. If the estate was not the lair of an ancient vampire at all, but a Pink Star Mage… That was far more dangerous than a vampire.

Military doctrine stated that a magic user within their own territory possessed capabilities a whole Star—or even one and a half—greater than “in the field.” This applied to both Star Mages and Aean’Hane. This was why, in ancient times, even before the War of the Birth of the Empire, mages’ towers, dungeons, and castles were considered the most dangerous structures in the world. Despite this, seekers of quick profit who were not deterred by the prospect of an equally-swift and rather painful death still sought them out.

“I’ve heard many good things about you, Corporal Egobar.”

Ardi flinched in surprise. He had been so focused on his Ley perception that he hadn’t noticed Mshisty’s subordinate approaching him. Perhaps Ergar wouldn’t have praised him for that, but among the Alcade trails, no young hunter was ever taught how to simultaneously monitor the surrounding area and also avoid getting blown up by some treacherous Ley-trap.

“I beg your pardon?” Ardi asked politely.

“The city, of course, is b-big,” Klementiy stammered. “But the mage community is quite small. Especially among capable Ley Engineers. I saw your blueprint for the Water Shroud. A good variation on the transfer of invasive energy. Even some third-year engineering students would not be able to make such an array.”

“Thank you,” Ardi said. “I didn’t think it would interest anyone.”

“No offense, Corporal, but it didn’t really interest anyone,” Klementiy chuckled. The sound was somewhat stiff, like a cough. “I was just c-curious what Aversky’s student was like.”

Ardan nodded. It sounded quite plausible.

“Our superior,” the mage nodded toward Mshisty, whose staff had just pushed aside a particularly massive piece of flesh from his path. “He and Lord Aversky, may the Eternal Angels receive him, were not c-comrades in the usual sense of the word.”

Ardi had figured that the two best mages of the Black House had likely been connected by some shared history, but he had never asked Edward directly. At first, he hadn’t been interested, then he hadn’t had the time, and now he couldn’t…

“When Aversky received his Grand Magister’s medallion, he and my superior met at the award ceremony in the Guild, and a verbal altercation ensued between them, which they resolved in a bloody duel,” Klementiy’s voice sounded a little dreamy and thoughtful. It was thoughtful because he had clearly been present for this event. The dreamy part was because, like most mages, he had surely fantasized about being a legendary figure like those two great men. “That time, Lord Aversky w-won. Then they fought several more times. Ultimately, after almost twelve years of duels, the score was five to four in favor of Lord Aversky. Their last b-battle occurred after the Lord had already ignited his Black Star.”

So, at the time when Mshisty had not yet lost the opportunity to advance further, and Edward was one step below his peak, their strength was roughly equal. Quite curious… On the other hand, a far more important question remained.

“And why are you telling me this, Mr. Klementiy?”

The sergeant (Klementiy most likely held this rank) looked at Ardi with a somewhat condescending smile. Not one intended to wound, but one that was rather warmly arrogant, if such a thing were even possible.

“Because you, Corporal, are Aversky’s student, and my superior likely sees in you an opportunity to settle the score with the deceased Grand Magister,” Klementiy shifted his small suitcase to his other hand and slung it back over his shoulder. “But don’t w-worry, he won’t bother you for now. There’s no point. But one day, I’m sure you’ll receive a challenge from him to face him in a bloody duel.”

Ardi merely shrugged. A bloody duel, all things being equal, posed no particular danger to the combatants. This was the case simply because the Crown could not afford to have a wasteful attitude toward valuable specialists. Especially those with many Stars. As Professor Convel liked to say, from a production standpoint, it was a complete failure.

“Judging by your calm expression, Corporal, you don’t know where exactly Aversky lost his foot and fingers.”

Ardan slowly turned to the sergeant.

“He said it was during one of his experiments… or on the front.”

“Aversky was always ashamed of that fact,” Klementiy stated, not without pride. He clearly respected and, to some extent, revered Major Mshisty. “But most of his injuries are connected to none other than the Major.”

Ardi shifted his gaze to Mshisty’s back. He was now standing close to the imperial staircase. Despite being somewhat average in terms of height, he was built like a trench stormer, if not even more sturdy, and he looked as detached as ever. He bore no resemblance to the legends that circulated about his quick temper and bloodlust, which was comparable only to that of anomalies.

But perhaps the saying that there’s no smoke without fire was all too true in this case.

“Parela, don’t dawdle,” Mshisty’s tone was practically seething with impatience.

“Yes, sir.”

The captain, wiping large beads of sweat from her forehead and slightly stumbling over her own feet, approached the stone staircase. Once she was near the steps as well, she adjusted the Ley-goggles on her face.

“There’s a presence-reactive seal hidden under a simple notification structure. It’s connected to a generator,” the captain reported, enunciating each word. “Not my specialty.”

“Klementiy,” Mshisty called.

“Yes, of course, sir.”

The sergeant, nodding barely perceptibly to Ardi, still holding his small suitcase, bounded like a mountain goat over to his colleagues. He placed the wooden “box” on the ground and, clicking the locks again, pulled out something resembling an astrolabe.

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Ardi could recognize this outdated marine navigation instrument thanks to seeing pictures of it in his History textbook.

Applying the “tube” to the lens of his glasses, Klementiy twisted a few gears, pressed a couple of levers, and finally, he looked at the indicator readings.

“Overall, it’s nothing special,” he commented on the situation and, opening his grimoire, began to make notes. “But if you step on it, a malefic curse will activate.”

“Characteristics?” Mshisty asked dryly.

“It will remain dormant in the first carrier initially, but upon touch, it transfers to up to two new carriers. Then each of those can transfer it to up to four others, then up to eight, and-”

“A geometric progression?”

“Exactly, sir,” Klementiy confirmed. “The effect, because of this, isn’t particularly impressive. Something like diarrhea, only with gas… I’ll write down the main characteristics for Parela now, but it will take a little time.”

“Get to it.”

Klementiy once again brought the “astrolabe” to his face and began hastily recording the parameters. At first, Ardi, like the others, focused on the twilight frozen around them, the meadow ruined by the spell, and the estate looming overhead, whose windows suddenly appeared to be the menacing gaze of hundreds of eyes. But with each new stroke of Klementiy’s pencil, Ardi began to notice how the sergeant was recording… all the same things that Ardan himself recorded when he used the Misty Helper.

The only difference was that Klementiy wasn’t using a rather simple spell (in terms of Ley-load, at least. The complex matrix of runic connections linking with recursive array functions was not exactly kid stuff), but Ley-goggles and an “astrolabe” that performed the same function as Ardan’s spell.

The device checked the main nodes of the shield seal, but with an allowance for additional equipment like the goggles, and even the mage himself. Perhaps Ardi had been too hasty again and “solved” a problem that simple equipment could already deal with.

On the other hand, no matter how accurate the device turned out to be, anyone could make a mistake, while the Misty Helper, which worked autonomously, made none…

“Done!” Klementiy tore out a page and handed it to Parela.

The captain read the recorded parameters for a few seconds, then struck her staff against the ground. A lock-picking seal flared beneath her feet. A very complex one. It was far from the typical and uninspired ones Ardi usually used.

As befits a Guild mage, her spell took on a clear outline as she cast it. It looked like a paw. Clicking its joints (of course, the spell made no actual noise, but in Ardi’s imagination, it sounded quite distinct), it scratched its way through the trembling “glass” of the tricky protective spell. Ardi once again noted the total superiority of multi-component seals, which was only possible for mages of the Blue Star and above to create.

When several functions were mixed in one seal, the freedom of application increased manifold. It was no wonder that, in the end, Star Mages had managed to match the Aean’Hane in terms of capabilities. Though, if one thought about it, such stratagems surely looked, from the perspective of the Aean’Hane themselves, like inconvenient crutches.

What the Aean’Hane controlled with the power of their mind and will, Star Mages created with complex schematics, calculations and instruments.

Finally, the paw disappeared inside the shield, and a moment later, it crumbled into barely-visible fragments.

“Klementiy,” Mshisty said again.

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant brought the “astrolabe” to the lens of his goggles and peered inside.

Ardi had suspected that Star Mages required far more effort to “see” Ley-structures than even the Speakers, but witnessing it firsthand was still useful. And even without his otherworldly vision, Ardi had easily sensed that Parela’s spell had successfully destroyed the trap. In fact, if he’d had a few minutes to spare, he would have been able to detect it without any instruments.

What did this mean?

That all these were thoughts for tomorrow, because…

Klementiy folded the “astrolabe” and carefully put it back in his small suitcase.

“The staircase is clear. The doors, too.”

“And inside?” Mshisty asked.

“Can’t see inside until we go in,” Klementiy replied glumly after a moment. “Too much distortion due to the Ley-wiring in the walls.”

“Then we’ll act as circumstances dictate,” Mshisty nodded. “When it comes to you laymen, I will remind you to stay strictly behind us, touch nothing, wander nowhere, and, if anything happens, pray very loudly. For all of us.”

“Go to hell, you-”

Mshisty did not let Milar finish that response, turning to his subordinate.

“Parela, be so kind as to provide our colleagues with the hope that they’ll get to see the sunrise,” he ordered and was the first to ascend the stairs.

The captain tapped her staff against the ground, and around each of them, except the major himself, a typical Blue Star shield came to life, blazing with Ley energy. It was a structure that vaguely resembled a Universal Shield, with the same shimmering magical veil. However, it was capable of echoing the movement vectors of the one to whom it was attached. And this feature—maintaining its function while moving—cost several rays of the Blue Star.

Due to this, two accumulators of the corresponding color immediately crumbled to dust on Parela’s bracelet, which the captain hastily replaced with new ones.

“Don’t fall behind,” was all she said.

If one were to convert the volume of magic that Mshisty and his hounds had used in the last few hours into money, then… it seemed like the total cost had already exceeded four hundred exes in terms of accumulators.

Ardi pulled at the edge of his shirt collar.

Sleeping Spirits… How right Mart Borskov had been, and how naively the young man had previously looked at things in general, and the Metropolis in particular.

Mshisty, who’d clearly used some spell whose seal Ardi hadn’t managed to discern due to the staircase, touched the head of his staff to the massive, tall doors of the main entrance.

At first, nothing happened, and then the thick planks of bog oak, adorned with silver monograms and held in place by forged brackets, swelled as if water were being pumped into them. With a deafening crack, the doors burst and shattered into a hundred sharp, long splinters. But these were not destined to simply fly everywhere.

The splinters froze in the air, then turned and pointed their sharp “stingers” toward the hall. There, among many dusty paintings, a moth-eaten Kargaam carpet, and once beautiful but now moldy furniture, as well as an insane amount of marble and gilding, half a meter above the floor, hovered… shadows.

“Fucking ghosts!” Milar shouted and raised his revolver.

“Ghosts do not exist!” The four mages thundered in unison.

“Then what, by the Eternal Angels, am I looking at right now?!” The captain roared in response.

“Klementiy,” Mshisty called out calmly. He was standing at the threshold, but not crossing it.

The engineer, adjusting his Ley-goggles once again, opened his small suitcase and pulled out something that looked like a… mirror? It was a steel hoop on a handle, only instead of the mirror itself, inside it was a plate with several miniature crystals, cursors, and many divisions. It appeared to be something like a slide rule, but for studying Ley-structures.

Constantly adjusting the cursors, Klementiy directed the device from side to side, waiting for one of the Ertalain crystals to light up. Ardi, who’d been listening to what the surrounding world was whispering to him, was about to say something, but the older mage beat him to it:

“These are elements of the local stationary defense,” Klementiy delivered his verdict, putting away the instrument. “They are passive until we cross the threshold. After that, each of the shadows will attach itself to a new visitor and become something like a Ley-beacon, only not for ships, but for everything else in this estate.”

Ardi closed his mouth, never voicing roughly the same thoughts. He’d felt a Ley-thread extending from each shadow and going deep into the estate, where they then intertwined into a tight ball that was, most likely, a seal—his “Speaker’s Whisper” had not gotten that far. Perhaps this ability had some other, more concise name, but that was what Nicholas the Stranger had called it in his book.

“Parela?” Mshisty turned to the captain.

All this time, Milar, who was currently paler than the first snow, had been shifting the sight of his revolver from one shadow to another. Ardi couldn’t understand why Captain Pnev was so terrified of ghosts. He would have to ask sometime…

“Unlikely,” she said simply.

“Could you elaborate, by the Eternal Angels,” Milar muttered. He seemed to be barely restraining himself from pulling the trigger.

Adjusting her tight hairstyle, which had loosened slightly due to sweat, the captain explained while her gnarled fingers worked:

“If these structures are directly connected to the main seal, then severing them will cause… the same effect as bombs with a delayed trigger, if that’s clearer to you, Captain Pnev.”

“Now it is,” Milar nodded. “And these gh… shadows, they won’t kill us?”

“Klementiy?” Mshisty redirected the question.

The engineer adjusted his goggles and, frowning, checked his notes.

“No. These nodes are not designed for attack, only for passive coordinate determination. Well, that and…” The sergeant cast a quick, far more condescending glance at Milar than the one he’d “bestowed” upon Ardan. “…for intimidating particularly impressionable burglars.”

Captain Pnev, as was always the case with him before he erupted into a sharp and concise tirade, squinted slightly. Alexander beat him to it.

“Are we going to crowd the doorway all night?”

Surprisingly, Mshisty reacted to the operative’s words with a respectful, slow nod.

“Parela, you’re on protection duty for our colleagues, Klementiy, try to notify us before any crap activates, and Corporal Egobar-”

“Corporal Egobar will not stray from his own department by a single step,” Milar interrupted, suddenly cold and emphatic. “He is not an operative, but an investigator, Major. And you will not give him orders.”

Mshisty and Milar engaged in a staring contest for a while, but, in the end, the Black House’s attack dog merely shrugged carelessly.

“Then let’s go, gentlemen. I don’t want to spend the whole night in this shithole,” and the major, setting an example, was the first to step over the threshold.

The wooden splinters, some as long as a grown man’s leg, still hovered above his head. And as soon as the tip of Mshisty’s shoe crossed the threshold, one of the shadows, which had been calmly hovering in the air, froze. Slowly, jerkily, like a broken doll put under the command of an unskilled puppeteer, it turned toward the visitor.

Its arms stretched out, and from them, at first glance, the threads of a dress extended. But the closer the shadow came to the light, the clearer it became that this was not the torn silk or satin of a dress at all, but its own skin. Unraveling like wide bandages, it fell in torn scraps from exposed bones and muscles.

With an unnaturally wide grin, which tore through its illusory cheeks, exposing crooked, sharpened, yellow teeth, and skin covered in scabs, it dissolved into hysterical cackling, which slowly transitioned into a scream and… Rushing headlong through the hall, it froze for a moment when it was a few centimeters away from Mshisty’s face, and then, like a fish, it dove into the major’s shadow, where it disappeared.

“Oh, to hell with it,” Milar put away his revolver and was about to turn back toward the car, but he bumped into the imperturbable Alexander.

“You brought us here,” he grumbled and all but pushed the captain inside.

Milar only managed to offer a very indecent gesture to his friend and colleague before it became hard to discern who was screaming louder: the shadow that had flown up to the captain or Milar himself. For a couple of seconds, it even seemed like the two were competing to see who could be louder.

Milar won.

He proved more resilient.

He continued to scream even after the “ghost” disappeared into his shadow. The exact same thing happened to everyone else. As soon as Din, Alexander, Parela, and Klementiy entered the estate, an illusion rushed headlong toward them, screamed in their faces with no less gusto than a banshee, and then disappeared into their shadows.

Ardi was the last to enter. Memories of that night in the house on Baliero and the family home where Lorlov had worked as a nanny still scratched at his mind too persistently. Out of old habit, Ardan even wanted to prop the door open with something, but quickly remembered that there was no door left.

The pseudo-ghost flew up to him, too. It appeared in the same form, screamed in his face, and, diving behind his back… hit his shadow. It didn’t dive inside it, as had been the case with everyone else, but literally crashed into it, as if it had encountered an insurmountable obstacle. It slammed into it and then dissolved into a transparent, gray haze.

Five of the Cloaks looked at Ardi with suspicion and slight disapproval.

Only Mshisty said:

“In his case, that’s normal.”

“But-” Parela began to object.

“Captain, you don’t have the necessary clearance,” Mshisty immediately interrupted her. “But in this case, you don’t need it, and the fact that you suspect nothing makes me want to send you to the library for some bonus assignments.” The major added after a moment’s thought, “Two days of them at least.”

With that said, he turned to Klementiy and gestured with his staff.

“Show us where to go, sergeant.”

“Yes, of course,” the sergeant looked at Parela with obvious glee at her plight, to which she responded with a grimace that could only be read as “you’re next.”

Recalling the episode on the train, Ardan realized that, apparently, they had some kind of competition going on where winning meant a night off, and losing meant additional work assigned by Mshisty.

Parela, who was looking at Ardi now, suddenly raised her eyebrows, and an expression of clear understanding appeared on her face. Tilting her head to the side, she instinctively flipped her grimoire open somewhere toward the end of it, but then quickly caught herself.

“Speaker,” she mouthed, and, frowning pensively, turned away from him with a sharp motion.

One didn’t need to be an investigator to understand that the female captain was an operative of the Black House for a reason. And, judging by the emotions that she had briefly displayed, said reason was connected with the art of the Aean’Hane and its wielders.

The emphasis was on “female” there because he now understood Mart’s words. There were plenty of talented female mages in the Grand—take Elena Promyslov, for example—but almost none of them were in the Military Faculty, with the possible exception of Polina Erkerovsky. And in general, the ratio of students in the Military Faculty came down to women making up an almost vanishing, mathematically insignificant percentage.

And so, mages like Captain Parela didn’t just “happen.”

“Is everything alright?” Milar asked him.

“Quite,” Ardi replied.

They moved into the intricate maze of corridors. Their footsteps echoed hollowly, vibrating somewhere beneath the ceiling and irritating the spiders. Every now and then, the scraps of thick cobwebs, which had been catching stale air and dust in their sticky embrace for years, would descend upon their heads.

On the walls, slightly lighter rectangles were visible in some places, hinting that portraits or paintings had once hung on the torn, mold-and-spore-covered wallpaper. There were also niches where marble statues or lacquered furniture made of precious wood had probably once stood, and now only darkness and that same mold hid in their shadows.

The roof, which was more like a sieve or a colander, was letting in not only light, but also moisture, along with a lost wind, which was cautiously howling with longing and loneliness. Not even the spiders and cockroaches wanted to keep it company. And so, it was left to wander amid the desolation, rot, damp, mold, and, surprisingly, burning Ley-lamps.

“Stop,” Klementiy raised his hand. He’d been staring at his mirror-like device all this time.

Ardi, who had felt a tingling in his fingertips a few seconds ago, had already stopped and had wanted to call out to the others, but didn’t get the chance to. And perhaps it was for the best that he didn’t.

“What is it?” Mshisty asked while peering into the emptiness of the corridor leading to an inconspicuous, spiral staircase descending toward the basement.

“A passive offensive seal,” Klementiy replied, twisting the gears to their maximum and extending the lenses forward.

“Where?” Mshisty looked around.

Ardi, however, kept his gaze fixed on the flickering lamp above the staircase. As he looked at it, the tingling in his fingertips intensified.

“That lamp,” the sergeant pointed to the faulty fixture. “The flickering is most likely caused by a conflict between the Ley-wiring and a hidden seal.”

“Understood,” Mshisty raised his staff. “Properties?”

Klementiy once again took out his “astrolabe” and began to twist and turn the complex mechanisms, reading the indicators and making notes in his grimoire.

“I don’t like any of this, Magister,” Milar, who was standing nearby, whispered in his ear.

“There is no such thing as ghosts-”

“Go to hell with those ghosts, Ard,” the captain cut him off. “I’m talking about something else. We’re supposedly in one of the Puppeteers’ houses, where they do their shady business, and all we can see around us is peace and quiet. It’s like we’re on an excursion, not a dangerous mission.”

Ardan couldn’t help but agree with the captain. Admittedly, before getting here, they’d had to get past an obstacle that could not be bypassed easily. The skeletons and that mound of flesh would have stopped the majority of those wishing to visit the abandoned estate.

An abandoned estate where Ley-lamps were still burning…

But the problem was not even that, but that the Puppeteers should have assumed that the “welcoming committee” would not be enough. Because it could stop “most,” but not everyone. Which meant…

“Do you think this is all one big trap?” Ardan asked.

Milar nodded reservedly.

“There’s no doubt it’s a trap, the only question is what exactly it entails,” the captain looked around, but clearly couldn’t find a useful clue in the emptiness of the abandoned corridors. “We only ended up here because we started unraveling the mess around Le’mrity Tower, right?”

“Right.”

“And what if we misunderstood the Spiders’ motives that day, Ard?” Milar continued after clearly posing a rhetorical question. “What if, instead of the auction, we rushed to investigate Anwar Riglanov’s death? And the Spiders, and therefore their masters, found out in the end that the Riglanov in ‘The Heron’ was a fake? Then what?”

“Then we wouldn’t have ended up in the Temple of the Old Gods.”

“And who wouldn’t have ended up there with us?”

Ardan felt his heart skip a beat.

“Aversky. Aversky wouldn’t have ended up there with us,” he said, feeling the familiar, sticky and icy paws of fear beginning to squeeze his heart. “And the Puppeteers’ goal was to destroy Aversky.”

“And the Puppeteers, as we already know, always have a backup plan, so…”

He and Milar exchanged glances and, turning toward Mshisty, to whom Klementiy was already handing the page torn from his grimoire, shouted in unison:

“Stop!”

But it was too late. Mshisty had already twitched his staff, and his hovering splinters had darted off. The Ley-lamp burst, and from its “nest,” a murky, gray cloud resembling an odd gas rushed into the corridor. Parela’s shields flared and withstood the pressure, while Mshisty’s splinters began to decay. They disintegrated before their very eyes, as if time had accelerated a thousandfold for them. They rotted, decayed, and disappeared amidst the howling wind, until nothing at all remained of them.

Milar and Ardan couldn’t even move from their spots. It was all due to Parela’s shields. While they were not in an active state, they could move with their assigned carriers, but upon activation, they acquired a stationary property. And Parela had avoided the possibility of someone accidentally moving beyond her shields’ boundaries by ensuring that when one of the shields transitioned to a stationary position, everyone under its dome lost the ability to move.

No, it was unlikely that the Puppeteers had foreseen precisely such an outcome, but what they had certainly anticipated was the casters’ relative strength. At the moment, there were four mages here, two of whom were Yellow Star Mages, and one of whom was a Pink Star Mage. This was quite enough to match the strength of a Black Star Mage, albeit approximately.

The howling of the wind intensified, and the other mages, along with Milar, Din and Alexander, all of them currently unable to move, were literally lifted by the wind sweeping through the building and carried into the abyss of a bottomless maw that opened right where the staircase had just been.

Ardi was left alone. He was standing on the edge of a black pipe going deep underground. He stood there and peered into the darkness of the abyss, where his colleagues had disappeared and where, most likely, something unpleasant awaited all of them. It would surely be the sort of nastiness intended to assassinate the late Grand Magister of military magic, Lord Edward Aversky.

The smartest decision would have been to turn around, go outside, and use all the signal medallions that had been left in the various “Derks’” glove compartments.

But…

“Of course,” Ardi said in a heavy, tired tone.

As soon as he turned to look at the entrance to the estate, it became obvious that the Puppeteers had indeed set things up here.

The doorway from which Mshisty had removed the door was gone. In its place was the same shabby, moldy brick wall as everywhere else. Ardan sighed and looked at his belt with its remaining accumulators.

Three Ertalain crystals blinked back at him with a dull, almost reluctant gleam.

“Just splendid,” Ardan exhaled and cursed.