Dance of Destinies (The Galactic Mage Series Book 5) Read online

  Black Sander saw the marchioness’ small clean room in his mind, in the concert mind, a teleportation chamber outside on the grounds. He saw it, and saw it disappear from beside the great house. It appeared in the spell, barely, the seer only just holding on to the view.

  But there it was, the marchioness’ teleportation chamber, sitting crooked atop the bodies nearest the central crimson stool. On Citadel.

  Four mechs erupted through the clean room wall. So carefully built into it as they had been, now they burst forth from it in a spray of bullets. In seconds, half of the remaining wizards in the room were gone.

  Two men climbed out of the wrecked stone box after the mechs. Black Sander recognized one to be his big brute henchman Twane. Twane held a truncheon nearly as big as a mammoth leg. With one stroke, he dropped the elf to unconsciousness even as the Royal Assassin was clambering to his feet.

  “Hurry, you fool,” Black Sander heard the marchioness say breathlessly.

  Twane bound the elf up quickly.

  The conduit was casting more teleports; another clean room flashed through Black Sander’s mind, the concept of it more than a vision, larger perhaps, or perhaps just a crate of wood. It all went so fast, he could hardly hold on to ideas. Again he felt as if he were going to have his brain ripped out. He couldn’t understand how the conduit was casting in such a way. The mana wasn’t working properly. It was as if … as if it had turned to water somehow.

  Then he realized that the conduit must have Liquefying Stone. Suddenly he understood. The marchioness had one. She’d had it all along. Or perhaps she’d gotten it from the ancient priest. But she had one.

  Black Sander knew enough of its power to hope that idiot addict didn’t get them all killed. He considered letting go of the spell. But he was second in the cast. If he did so, the release would whip back through the chain and kill all the rest.

  Still, it was better than dying himself.

  But the next part of the spell was cast. He still had his life and his magic intact. For now.

  The other man that had emerged with Twane was Black Sander’s right-hand man, Belor. Belor looked pale and doughy compared to all the rest. It was obvious the screaming, silent in the seeing spell but apparent in all the O-shaped mouths of the wounded wizards who had survived, unnerved him. It must have been a tremendous cacophony. It embarrassed Black Sander to see how timidly Belor picked his way over the bodies in the concert hall. He held a sack limply in hands that trembled. Perhaps they should have let El Segador go instead, as the man had asked.

  But Belor did as he was supposed to, if too slowly for Black Sander or the marchioness, and he gingerly pulled the sack over the elf’s head and handed Twane a length of cord. The burly young sailor, long used to working with rope and tying knots, made quick and secure work of it from there. And just like that, the elf was rendered harmless, a simple anti-magic spell and a plain old burlap sack, the former the invention of the Queen’s own favorite enchanter, Peppercorn.

  “Take us up top. Quickly. I need to see.” That, of course, from the marchioness.

  The conduit had to fuss with poor, addled Kalafrand, for the seer was terrified. But eventually he managed to get the spell under way, and the vision fed to Black Sander, at first, and once again, lots of flashing light and dark as the sight slid through the floors of Citadel up to the battlement. By the time the sight magic emerged, the scene was much the same as it had been in the concert hall, bodies strewn all over the redoubt decks. The tightly packed combat towers were littered with dead wizards and dead invaders from … well, from the alien world they were on, apparently, dead human aliens—again. The remaining Prosperion wizards—having repelled the invaders as had the Queen and those in the concert hall below—had not been so lucky against the unexpected attack of the marchioness. They were already being herded together by ten more mechs, sent in one of the large shipping containers used for freight on Earth. It sat crookedly, bridging the space of two redoubts and looking just as alien as any of the bodies lying there.

  The Citadel commander, Aderbury in his brown robes, stood among them, looking angry and holding a cloth to an enormous bleeding cut at the back of his head.

  The marchioness’ men, Jefe’s men, had done their job.

  “All right,” commanded the marchioness. “It’s time to do the rest. Send our friends to Citadel so that Master Jefe can claim his armor from the Queen. And Councilman Gangue, get your people at that Amphitrite TGS depot near Earth to send the rest of my mechs to the Palace. Vorvington is waiting for us by the entrance he’s built for us in the wall. The time has come to take Kurr back from the ruinous reign of the War Queen.”

  THE END

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  Table of Contents

  Series

  Title

  ISBN

  Dedication

  Map

  Chapter_1

  Chapter_2

  Chapter_3

  Chapter_4

  Chapter_5

  Chapter_6

  Chapter_7

  Chapter_8

  Chapter_9

  Chapter_10

  Chapter_11

  Chapter_12

  Chapter_13

  Chapter_14

  Chapter_15

  Chapter_16

  Chapter_17

  Chapter_18

  Chapter_19

  Chapter_20

  Chapter_21

  Chapter_22

  Chapter_23

  Chapter_24

  Chapter_25

  Chapter_26

  Chapter_27

  Chapter_28

  Chapter_29

  Chapter_30

  Chapter_31

  Chapter_32

  Chapter_33

  Chapter_34

  Chapter_35

  Chapter_36

  Chapter_37

  Chapter_38

  Chapter_39

  Chapter_40

  Chapter_41

  Chapter_42

  Chapter_43

  Chapter_44

  Chapter_45

  Chapter_46

  Chapter_47

  Chapter_48

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