Chapter 35

“Honoured Mages, we now have a vacancy on the Council,” Sofya stated into the calm after the struggling Clarence had been dragged from the chamber and Edward had been formally welcomed.

“Indeed, Mage Sofya. Your point is?” Simon stated, his eyes twinkling.

“The work of the Council must go on unabated; I’m loathe to see decades of delays in filling a post due to political infighting amongst ourselves. We need an experienced Mage, one who commands the respect of the Bureaus and Offices of this Council and who is recognised by our allies as a Mage whom they can trust. Only one name has been put forward as a possible replacement for Clarence and I’d like to propose that Mage Morgana be offered this position.”

“Seconded,” Mage Julia added, a split second before several others.

“Do you accept this position should the vote be carried for you, Mage Morgana?” Simon asked.

“I would be honoured.”

“The proposal is Mage Morgana be elected to the recently vacated position of Council Mage. For? Against? Vote is unanimous. Mage Morgana, I welcome you back to the Council of the Wise.”

“Thank you, honoured Mages,” Morgana replied with a slight quirk to her lips as various Mages approached to congratulate her.

Half an hour later, the chamber doors opened and Mage Hermes, along with Cathenna, entered and took their places in the area from which witnesses could be called, nodding politely to the various others there as we waited for the prisoner to be brought in.

Fen herself strode into the chamber between Rinku and Nisha, disdaining them touching her, with her hands cuffed and a Null bracelet added for good measure.

“Mage Fen, you are charged with the attempted murder of Mage Hermes. How do you plead?” Simon asked into the silence.

“I call upon my ancient right as a former member of this group to challenge my primary accuser to meet me in hand to hand combat!” she sneered.

“Are you sure you wish to go down this path, Mage Fen?” Simon asked.

“I do. It is my right!”

“Very well. Mage Morgana, do you accept this challenge?” Simon asked, as Fen suddenly looked very shocked.

“I do indeed, Simon; I will even permit Fen the choice of weapons.”

“My primary accuser is Hermes!”

“No, Mage Fen. Your primary accuser is, according to Council lore, the senior Mage of the Council to witness the act,” Simon replied, with a slight smile.

“Morgana is not a member of this Council!”

“Oh, but I beg to differ. She was sworn in shortly after the trial and conviction of Clarence and hence meets the criteria you base your challenge on.”

“But...”

“You may of course withdraw your challenge,” Simon interrupted her.

“Never! You may have resorted to trickery, but I will still win, and it will be a pleasure to take down that bitch!”

“Still got anger issues,” I murmured to Jude, who had wandered in with the rest of us.

“So it seems.”

“Where are the girls?”

“In the bar playing with Mark and Joshua in the ball pool. Imelda is looking after them.”

“Ball pool?”

“Miraculous appearance,” Jude replied with a grin.

“Oh, right,” I chuckled.

“Ah, as I expected, she’s opted for Jian swords,” he noted.

“I suspect Morgana is competent at least in them.”

“Yes, though Fen will be more so, though not good enough. Morgana is very good with the similar sized spatha.”

I nodded; I’d practiced fencing and various other martial arts with Morgana and had only ever once come close to beating her with a blade, as opposed to Mage Roxanne, where I still wasn’t even in the same country, never mind class. Morgana had speed, strength and combined them with a thoughtfulness that looked several moves ahead of the current thrust or parry, something I was only just starting to get good at myself ... well, not compared to Morgana, Arch or Roxanne. But I was getting there and as Roxanne often jokingly told me, in two hundred or so years’ time I might just be up to becoming her sparring partner, who was currently Verenestra.

Arch then entered the chamber carrying two identical swords and permitted the combatants to examine them with Morgana deferring to Fen as to the first choice.

After that, Simon used his mind to create a barrier around the centre of the chamber through which neither Mage could pass, with a dividing screen separating them.

“Duel is to unconsciousness or death, except for an accepted yield. The ability to heal has been rescinded,” he stated.

“I will not accept a yield,” Fen sneered. “Prepare to die, Morgana.”

Morgana said nothing, nor gave any indication that she cared, which seemed to infuriate Fen. The central barrier dropped and, as accused, she immediately went on the offensive with a powerful and controlled set of strokes that were, however, easily countered by Morgana.

“Fast,” I murmured to Jude.

“Yes, but she cannot keep this pace up for long, nor restore herself with magic.”

“True.”

Morgana was attacking now, though cautiously, merely testing Fen’s reaction times and capabilities. Fen countered with ease and for a second I was worried as Morgana seemed a lot slower than I remembered, until I realised that she was just harbouring her reserves until she needed them.

Still, for fifteen minutes we were privileged to witness a dazzling display of swordplay as neither Fen nor Morgana could breach the other’s defences. However as a sort of expert, I could tell that Morgana still had plenty in reserve, whilst Fen looked frustrated and slightly wearier. Another ‘tell’ that I had was Roxanne looking unconcerned; if Morgana was in trouble, she’d definitely know.

Finally though, it was obvious Fen was flagging as Morgana flowed into every move and Fen’s parries became ever more desperate until finally Morgana moved past a frenzied extended lunge to slam the pommel of her blade hard onto Fen’s head, felling her and leaving her disarmed as her blade fell from her nerveless hand.

“Do you claim victory, Mage Morgana?” Simon asked.

“I do.”

“Do you accept this justice and what will follow, Mage Hermes?”

“Sadly, I do.”

“Fen is to be taken and incarcerated in Kurukshetra for the rest of her natural life. At any stage she may call for a humane death, but she will no longer be permitted to practice magic,” Simon stated his judgement.

“Well done, my Mage,” I congratulated Morgana when she approached us and was taken into Jude’s arms.

“Thank you, John, and thank you for the solution you came up with,” she replied, looking very calm and collected despite the efforts she’d put herself through.

“Bit quicker than you expected, but you did say you wanted it,” I chuckled as Nisha and Rinku dragged the still unconscious Fen away to a meeting with Rowenna, Artello the neurotechnologist, and the medical staff who would change her brain frequency to that of a Loegrian and thus be unable to do magic.

“I was seriously tempted to kill her, but for calling me a bitch I decided to make her pay for a long time,” Morgana chuckled. “But everything went to plan, didn’t it, Jude?”

“Yes, my Lady,” he replied with a grin. “Would you like to see this mysterious ball pool that’s appeared in the bar?”

“Ooh, how did that get there?”

“No idea, but the kids love it,” he replied with a sly wink.

At this point Simon approached.

“Jude, have you any idea why the boundaries of the Council headquarters have expanded by almost twenty percent?” he asked, clearly suspecting who might be behind it.

“Might have been me.”

“Might have been?”

“Just keeping the kiddies entertained and got a bit carried away with an Olympic-sized ball pool park and jungle gym along with a soft play area next to the bar, nothing major,” he replied offhandedly, before breaking out in a grin at Simon’s expression.

“This I’ve got to see,” I chuckled.

“Me too,” Morgana laughed and led us back to the bar.

“Jude, can you at least ask if you do something like this?” Simon requested.

“You were busy; didn’t want to distract you with trivialities.”

“Expanding the Council headquarters is not a triviality!”

“To me it is.”

“Oh...”

The rest of the week was spent relaxing with my wives and a little bit of helping Morgana move into a new office at the Council as she set up a place to keep a few bits and bobs to do with record keeping. I did get the job as her aide, but still continued to work for Roxanne as Morgana didn’t really need a trouble-shooter at the moment, though she also employed a friend of ours, Mage Elizabeth, to assist her in the various tasks, mostly to do with liaising with the various ambassadors of the Alliance where she was tasked, as Clarence had been, in keeping an eye on the Tuathans mostly, not that there currently was a lot to keep an eye on.

Soon enough though I was back at the alpha site whilst the other half of the staff there took their break and started going over the various plans with Roxanne to investigate Blensop.

“Right, being somewhat predictable, the military base is still in the Sahara desert, so I want it to be infiltrated and checked out.” Roxanne stated.

“But no evidence that we’re there?”

“Correct, we’re going to mess around on the Earth they call Vultoq for that.”

“That was conquered, wasn’t it?”

“Aye, but there’s no record of who or what. The Orcs appear to have expunged the records and I don’t know why.”

“Odd.”

“Very, but that’s going to be the job of the Seers to find out as somewhere or other, someone will know.”

“Still going after an Adept and his staff?” I asked.

“Yes, but that will be part of the overt missions on Vultoq. Blensop is going to be part of an experiment to see if we can bring the Orcs down from within.”