[Damiynn]

Plots and plans
Cyadine watched the bird and his rider, following with ice blue eyes until they were nothing but a speck. All his master’s plans that he had put into motion over twenty years ago were finally coming to fruition. The people implementing them were serving well. Most were eager to receive things they thought they deserved, they didn’t know yet what they were to truly receive.

Suddenly, his body gave a reflexive jerk as a jolt of magical energy crashed into him, searing past his internal defenses. Magic flowed so fast into him that it felt like a river bursting a breaching dam. The surging impact drove the royal advisor down onto his knees, hard and pain shot through him as he staggered, striking the stony earth.

Caught completely unaware, Cyadine didn’t know how he could be under attack. He had sensed no one else out on the barren plane and had created wards against such an attack while he had been talking to the Terian Commander.

Before realizing that he had done so, the ex battlemage reacted instinctively, pulling without thought, hard on the creational energy around him. Both of his hands filled with crackling power. Force spells, that would drive away almost any attacker with explosive bursts of energy. His mouth was also saying the words to a shield that would deflect weapons.

A heartbeat later his trained mind realized what was going on and he released the drawn energy. Turning, he faced the gigantic stone edifice far across the rocky plain known as the Godshall or more formally as Illsador.

Icy blue eyes locked on the far away building where the gods lived while on Tyrus and somehow, even from this distance, it still seemed to be looming over him. He stared at its walls so hard, that it looked as if he was trying to see through them.

The creational power that he had mistaken for an attack was actually his own long gone magic returning. That meant one thing. His undead construct, his Golath, created nearly twenty years ago using forbidden blood magic and the body of Colin Lightbringer, his old battlemaster’s second student, was dead.

He had placed Colin’s enchanted body inside of the royal burial chamber to protect the Dragon rings and prevent anyone from taking them.

That thought led to another. Damien Daverge, who was also trained as a battlemage, had somehow succeeded in destroying his golath, the other battlemage.

A formidable task, thought Cyadine, impressed. Colin was a man who he had only barely defeated in single combat. This meant that Damien had the Dragon rings. They would name him the true ruler of the fourteen kingdoms and heir to the Throne and Crown if they didn’t kill him when he put them on.

Only the Dragon rings could activate the Golath’s magic, and only an heir could successfully enter the royal burial chamber to retrieve them without being killed. Powerful wards and glyphs protected the royal tombs and would not allow any not of royal blood to enter. There were, as far as Cyadine could tell, no other members of the royal family left but this Damien Daverge and hopefully soon he would too be dead.

Not even Seth, the Royal Regent’s son, who would be named king on his eighteenth naming day if they kept this Damien away long enough, could enter until he was proclaimed.

Only after he had been named such upon the Sunstone Throne could he then enter the Godshall and recover or wear the Dragon rings. The magical rings had been linked to the throne in that way in order to prevent wars of succession amongst the humans.

As his red and black robes with their gold trim whipped around his tall frame and the wind tore through his long white blonde hair, Cyadine stood and slowly tapped one long thin finger against his bottom lip as he always did when thinking.

Even as royal advisor to the Throne and Crown, he couldn’t enter the far away building. No way to check on the heir, no way to know whether or not he was a success or failure. The guardian dragon serving as watcher for the gods and guarding the entrance would never let him inside without an outstanding reason.

This guardian dragon was the most powerful, smartest and largest of its kind ever created by the ancient wizards of the Tua-latin, it was also almost the last. Long before their banishment, the war wizards had taken the essences of all of the long dead ancient dragons and created their own special creatures to protect them. This was the one that the Elvynn had created, thinking that it could protect them from the gods wrath.

Cyadine wasn’t about to try and do battle with the gigantic dragon, not even armed with Spellbreaker. Nor did he have any intentions of standing out here much longer in the freezing cold, waiting for some sign of what had occurred inside of the hall. Either he would have risk contact his son, who was traveling with the heir’s group or he would have to wait.

Or, he could go with his earlier plan. If this Damien Daverge and the group traveling with him had recovered the Dragon rings, they could only be headed towards one place.

A cunning smile crept across the royal advisor’s cold countenance. If he correctly timed out the next several days, men could be put in place along the route that this heir would be taking towards the Krannion knight’s island citadel, Gremillion.

That had to be where the group was heading. Damien Daverge had to go to the Citadel. Without the knights vows, no one would follow him, no matter who he claimed to be. Unless, he thought, then dismissed the idea, Damien Daverge was only a wearer of the rings like all other Kings before him.

The royal proctor and protector, Gunther Haldron, along with a group of his knights would be the perfect thing to place in their way. Let them ambush this heir and let them deal with it. Somewhere near the mountain city of Embry would be good. If they all still lived, Gunther could kill them, unless, Caliban did it, they had recovered the rings.

With a final piercing stare at the looming rock walls of the Godshall, Cyadine turned away. Focusing, he drew upon the energy needed to open another fiery doorway that would take him back to Kallamar. The powerful spell, that most battlemages couldn’t cast, was almost easy for the advisor. With his return to full strength, a lot of things would now be easier.

A cold cruel smile curled the edges of his thin lips. The battlemages, who he would have served with before being cast out of their order, already considered him dangerous. Now, finally, he would be able to use all of his abilities, all of the skills that he had learned while training with the Tua-Latin against those who had once degraded and spoken out against him. Those of his old order who had taken away his coveted black and gold robes would be made to pay for their mistake. They would soon find out how powerful he truly was. How dangerous the lessons he had learned were when turned against them. He would use every tactic and stratagem learned from the greatest battlemaster on the planet to destroy them. Personally, he would crush their order.

That was the promise of his true masters and of himself. It was also the cost of his betrayal. Vengeance against those who had cast him out! Vengeance against those who had dishonored him! It would be his to savor once all of the other battlemages were in iron chains and manacles, begging at his feet. This thought filled his mind as he stepped through the fire.
* * *
“What do you mean, the heir’s alive?” the Royal Regent exploded angrily. “You assured me, Cyadine, that your son would see that he was killed and what? Now he has failed! Now this heir has the Dragon rings naming him King!” Vargas Salidor’s, voice echoed off of the walls and veins bulged in his neck. “That means that you failed!”

Cyadine did not answer. He endured the Royal Regent’s arrogant criticism and the smug looks from Gunther Haldron stoically, actually glad that his son had failed in his attempt on Damien Daverge’s life. If he hadn’t, his masters might have found a more suitable punishment for his having killed off the one who might be one of the signs that their banishment was ending. Failures such as this to his masters usually meant death. Vargas losing power over the fourteen kingdoms meant little, once his masters succeeded, he would be one of the rulers here.

Keeping his face devoid of emotion, Cyadine listened to the dark haired ruler’s disparaging comments, concealing his contempt behind an icy mask of calm composure. He would lose nothing.

In a way Vargas was right, he had made a mistake and had severely underestimated the abilities of this battlemage heir and his accompanying party. He had neglected Tiko’s first rule, never underestimate your enemy. Mistakenly thinking that they could not get by the powerful undead Golath, he would remember his despised battlemaster’s second rule. Never ever forget rule number one.

Despite the smug expression on his face, Gunther Haldron stood off to one side taking in was occurring between the pair in thoughtful silence. The large white haired proctor served now in the same position as the cousin that he had betrayed, champion to the Throne and Crown and the personal protector to the Royal Regent.

Gunther was large, with arms and legs the size of small oak trees and a chest so big that it made most blacksmiths jealous. His stark white hair did not match his forty something face with its leonine features and he might have been considered handsome if it weren’t for the evil looking scar running from the edge of his right eye in a split down his cheek, ending at the corner of his mouth. The jagged scar disfiguring his face gave the proctor the appearance of a permanent looking sneer.

He listened, after Vargas was done with his tirade, to the advisor’s suggestions and slowly nodded. All he would have to do was tell his knights that they were still under orders to capture or kill the female cleric of Dar and the murderers with her for having been involved in the death of Lord Dalmar. Dalmar had really been killed in his sleep by Cyadine’s son using a bolt belonging to one of Lord Richard Daverge’s guardsmen. That bold had later been used to implicate the rebellious Highlord in the murder.

Richard’s plot to unite the six western kingdoms under Damien’s rule and for his having decided to go against Royal Regent’s orders made it easy for him to be implicated for treason. Cyadine’s son had done well in planting the evidence necessary damning the group going for the rings and placing the blame squarely on all of the people who had plotted to remove them. In that, the advisor hadn’t failed, but Vargas only saw failures that affected him, rather than the successes that helped. That, Gunther knew was only one of the Royal Regent’s many failings.

Because of the deception that Lord Richard Daverge the Highlord of Castlekeep and the rest of the western Highlords were trying to perpetrate. They couldn’t say anything in their defense in order to keep his adopted son’s existence from being discovered. By trying to buy Damien time to recover the rings, Richard had to allow himself to be removed from his office of authority.

Gunther chose thirty of his closest, most trusted knights to accompany him north and made arrangements for there to be fresh horses at every knight’s station along the way. He would not use one of the advisor’s fiery doorways to carry him or the knights to intercept the group. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he knew the journey to be only about a four day trip and thought the activity would do him some good.

As the royal protector and Regent’s champion, he had been locked up here in his position of authority for too long under the mantle of leadership and felt like he was growing soft, losing some of his skills acquired from daily knightly duties.

According to Cyadine’s calculations, he should be able to capture the heir’s party and deal with them somewhere near the forests bordering the mountains near the city of Embry.

Gunther saw through gray eyes glinting like cold steel that they would also be near the Elvynn swamps of Edgemoor. An idea began forming in his head about what to do with the heir’s party. A way ensuring that none of them were ever heard from again.

Mulling it over, he reached a decision. If all went well, no one would ever know of this heir being alive or of their part in his disappearance.

Outside of the western realm where only the Highlords, halflings and dwarven rulers knew who he was, no one else was aware of his existence. Most already thought Damien Daverge was dead and that the group with him were murderers.

His knights could simply dispose of the bodies in the swamps where they would never be recovered. With this heir’s death, the claim to the Throne and Crown would die. He would personally chop the Dragon Rings off of Damien Daverge’s dead fingers and present them himself to Seth Salidor on his eighteenth naming day after he had been crowned King.

As the early morning sun cast the sky in a bright vivid shade of orange, the krannion proctor with thirty knights rode out from the palace’s shining tall walls. All wore the plain mud brown armor of mercenaries rather than the silver gray of their order. Wearing their true colors would draw attention and that was something that neither the Royal Regent, his advisor or the protector wanted to have happen. The quieter they kept this, the better.

Krannion knights serve as the protectors of the people and always drew attention whenever they rode out. If the public noticed he was with them it would definitely set a lot of tongues wagging about why. He was sure Lord Richard, even out of office, still had resources and spies in place in the capitol city. Mercenary knights, though, hardly ever drew any attention unless a war was being fought.

Cyadine almost smiled at their unnoted departure. He knew that his plans wouldn’t start for several days, but it was also possible that Gunther might be caught in the middle. He was heading towards Embry. If he was lucky, the advisor thought, maybe he would be killed, if that happened it would save him the trouble of having to do it later.

There was a second group of legitimate knights also riding out of Castlekeep on Vargas’ orders hunting for the group. But no one had heard anything from them or knew of their location. Obviously, Cyadine reasoned, they hadn’t caught up to or captured the group going to the Godshall because they had arrived at their destination.

Both he and Lord Vargas watched the group depart, each absorbed completely in his own thoughts. Cyadine wondered, watching them ride northward, why he hadn’t heard from his son. If this Damien Daverge was still alive, he expected to hear from Caliban with a report. He hoped again as he had earlier in the week that nothing had happened to the young man whom he had trained since earliest childhood to be an assassin mage. Trained to use the same skills of warfare and combat that he had learned himself as a battlemage at the academe and from his Elvynn masters. He wouldn’t feel sadness if his son were dead, but he would feel pangs of regret. Caliban was his most valuable tool. Honed into a weapon of deadly efficiency and it would hurt his master’s cause to lose him.

He decided to give his son three more days. If he hadn’t heard from him by then he would take a chance and try to make contact. For no other reason than to insure that Gunther’s party was at least on the right course. After that Gunther could or would kill the heir and retrieve the rings. He had decided that if Damien Daverge’s death delayed his master’s plans, he was still in a place of power here. In the kingdoms he could rule from behind the throne just as well as being on it. If Gunther did it unknowingly, his master couldn’t put the blame on him.