Chapter 39

Dombarovskiy was dour, flat and hostile. Our emergence or rather the Craebh Ruadh's emergence from their portal caused the mental equivalent of mayhem to a large group of Mages we could feel scanning the area. Both Morgana and I had gone into mindcloak before stepping through the portal getting a few startled looks from the warriors and were being ignored by the Coalition Mages who were now beginning some form of attack. The Craebh Ruadh had other ideas of course and immediately hared off at a very fast pace southeast towards Dombarovskiy village and the group of Coalition Mages, some of whom appeared to have the support of some Soviet special forces.

We, however, took off at a fast pace towards the northwest and the actual military base where we hoped to get close enough to put a crimp in the Coalition's plot to loose nuclear destruction down on the Council's headquarters throughout the world.

We soon spotted several mounds which concealed much of the base from a casual glance as well as the fence surrounding the base.

"Too easy," I muttered.

"Yes John, probably a trap of some kind," Morgana murmured in reply.

Behind us we could sense the Craebh Ruadh and the Coalition squaring off against each other in the form of a nasty set of offensive spells being loosed.

"Wonder how long our allies will last?" I asked.

"About an hour, I suspect," Morgana answered.

"This area should be crawling with troops, yet I can't even sense this part of the perimeter being manned, though there are plenty of troops further to the sides," I said, changing the subject.

"No, there's a Mage though. They're good, but not good enough to hide from me," Morgana replied, once again showing that when it came to magic I wasn't in the same league yet. "See if you can find him, I'll guard your back."

"Yes, my Mage," I replied and scanned various quantum channels looking for an anomaly of some kind. Eventually I found it, though it was not magic that gave them away, but their body heat and CO2 output affecting the immediate area around them, which surprised Morgana as she could only catch one.

"Clever, John. I never thought to look there. To me they stick out like a sore thumb on this isodepth banding, female too, all of them, how odd," Morgana praised and then showed me how she'd spotted her.

"I can see her now, but that's virtually at the top of my range and quite painful to hold," I answered.

"You'll get there, John. Just bear in mind that for me it's a little low on my general spectrum of sensory abilities," she chuckled.

"Yes, my Mage," I replied with a grin of my own, knowing that she'd again taught me something new to practice. "Any idea who?"

"Not yet, but I soon will," she replied.

"Have they spotted us?"

"Not sure, depends on their ability to spot our scans, so try to keep it passive for now please, John," Morgana answered carefully.

"Yes, my Mage."

I kept passively scanning the infra-red spectrum and soon had them positioned on my mental map that I pointed out to Morgana on our private band, getting a nod of acknowledgement and a frown as she seemed to have some trouble tying those readings down on her channels. Finally she called a halt and simply waited to see what would happen.

I had just begun to wonder what if anything was going to happen when darkness flicked out from one of the sources I'd spotted and smashed hard against my shields, though not enough to really test them, merely to ascertain that it was a shield.

"I think they know we're Mages now," I said out loud with a grin.

"Yes John, though their identity remains somewhat obscure as they're no longer trying to hide, but rather to block me from scanning them," Morgana replied conversationally. "They aren't Coalition though, well not hard core."

"May I approach?" came a mental request.

"Certainly, though be aware that there are a large number of hostile Mages about three miles behind us," Morgana replied.

"I know this, but they aren't my concern, rather you are as Mage Elymas sent me here to assist you, assuming you are Mage Morgana," the young looking and surprisingly female Mage announced.

"A well trained Coalition female High Mage," Morgana mused. "How ... novel."

"Mage Elymas is or rather was my master, though we rarely speak these days, my name is..."

"Mary Prophetissa, I thought you dead at the hand of Gilles de Rais or Zosimo as he was known then during the Coup of 1204," Morgana broke in. "You were the one who warned Simon and the Council and paid what we thought to be the ultimate price for that."

"Elymas was able to protect me, though he was most wroth at the time. I had to vanish out of sight from other Coalition members and he was quite clear that if I were caught I would die," Mary explained.

"Yet he still was able to contact you and send you our way. What is he up too I wonder?" mused Morgana.

"I am occasionally useful to him and I have no great love of Simon or your Council for throwing me to the wolves."

"Simon sent Mage Hermes to pull you out. Hermes says he arrived too late and only managed to just fend off Gilles before retreating without the enforcers sent to support him save only one," Morgana replied. "The survivor being the arch traitor Heinrich, come to that."

Mary frowned and I also wondered just how disaffected Heinrich had been to start this early.

"I did not see Mage Hermes, but I did see Heinrich point me out to Gilles just before I ported out. I must presume Heinrich and Gilles killed the enforcers," Mary replied, looking troubled.

"Hermes is not known for his personal courage when facing an equal. It may have been that he simply took Heinrich's word for what happened," sighed Morgana.

"Either way, I trust neither Council nor Coalition, though I will help Mage Elymas occasionally when he personally asks, in order to keep his protection from Merlin and Gilles," Mary said gravely.

"Who are your partners?" I asked, not having introduced myself as Mary was focussed solely on Morgana.

"My coven partners Ceridwen and Alcina, both Mages and full in power," Mary announced proudly.

"They must be powerful to avoid the Coalition, or indeed the Council," Morgana mused.

"We hide a lot," chuckled the Mage Ceridwen.

"So why reveal yourself to us now?" Morgana asked.

"Because Elymas asked me," Mary replied. "He cannot control Gilles, nor find him, though will take him back into the fold assuming you can thwart him here," Mary explained. "Besides, I know you are an honourable woman, Mage Morgana, and what Elymas does not know is that I seek liberation from the master tracking link he has upon me, not to assist you and simply come back into the fold ... as it were."

"Honoured to meet you Mages," I spoke into the silence and gave a formal bow as Morgana contemplated what had been said.

"Your fame precedes you, journeyman Mage John," Alcina replied as the other two acknowledged the respect given from low to high.

"Just lucky at times," I chuckled.

"So Elymas told me," Mary chuckled in return. "Though there was an element of fear too, something I never thought to see from him."

"Can't think why. Mage Morgana keeps telling me I have much to learn before I even contemplate going up against a High Mage," I replied.

"You probably have, though your reputation has them erring on the side of caution when they hear you're around," Ceridwen admitted.

"You scare them shitless John," chuckled Alcina.

"And vice versa, I simply got lucky and know a few novel tricks," I replied wryly.

"What do you hope to get out of this, Mary? Severing the link from you to Elymas will not be easy," Morgana finally asked.

"You made Mage Brianna and the other female Mages of the Coalition vanish so thoroughly that the link placed upon them was severed and the Coalition have no idea where they are, on this Earth or any other they have access to. We'd like the same favour," Mary replied along with nods from her two compatriots.

"Not a chance in hell ... well not until a far greater level of trust can be established," Morgana replied.

"We suspect you have her off-world somewhere, but we know from Elymas about Merlin that his link to her has been severed and not by her, which is a clever trick and has Merlin frustrated and both of them a little fearful of you and how you managed it," Mary said.

"You do realise that the fact that you came here under Elymas' bidding is doing you no favours whatsoever?" I said into the silence.

"We know, but until recently we haven't had the opportunity to meet Mage Morgana, whom we know offered Mage Brianna sanctuary and who appears to have the means to release us from being hunted down if or when we come out of hiding or a shielded area," Ceridwen explained. "Nor were we sure just who we could trust in the Bureaus and Council, for the Coalition had a few traitors amongst you particularly in Europe."

"Yes, we only discovered Mage Pawel recently," I admitted.

"Elymas never said but always inferred there were others, so we did not try, nor did we dare stray far from Russia as he always knew where we were," Mary sighed.

"So where did these lady Mages come from?" I asked.

"I was able to rescue them from their masters and train them," Mary replied, looking rather guilty.

"Rescue as in killing their ... owners?" I added.

"Sadly that is the only way to break the link and I am very limited as to who I can get to. Recently the emergence, survival and capture of any unattached female Mage often enough led to their vanishing without a trace, at least until you showed what those barbarians were actually up to," Mary replied for them all. "We could not even trust those women living as partners; I nearly lost Alcina that way when she was reported to be in contact."

"You'll need to undergo a full truth scan before I can progress your request further," Morgana said cautiously.

"Anything is better than hoping Elymas simply does not hand us over, or we are discovered by chance," Mary said sombrely.

"There's more though isn't there?" I asked, suspecting that the Coalition would if possible like to take Morgana down.

"We were not told, but yes, I suspect Elymas and others hope to come in, in force to attack you once you have dealt with Gilles little cabal," Alcina admitted.

"Never miss a trick do they, my Mage?" I chuckled.

"Convoluted but typical," sighed Morgana. "Release your control over the guards and let us wait to see if the idiocy of the mundanes will give Gilles what he thinks will be his chance."

"What of the Craebh Ruadh, my Mage?" I asked.

"We do nothing, John. Gilles must not suspect we are here and Operation Able Archer will last for ten days and I cannot see the Craebh Ruadh surviving another twenty minutes at their current rate of attrition, still they've taken down five Coalition Mages, which should allow the rest to escape, should they so desire," Morgana explained.

We moved further into the base and used minimal magic in the way of simple aversion spells to keep any wandering mundanes away from us and settled into an empty officers quarters residence and started to passively scan the base to see where the silos were and the line in from Moscow that would set off Armageddon. We also detected the Craebh Ruadh portalling out having taken seven Coalition minor Mages to their doom to a loss of fifteen Craebh Ruadh. We were also now aware that the Coalition Mages were doing a very aggressive scan of the area to try and smoke out any unknown Mages, though they were of no real threat to us as I suspected they did not know we'd already penetrated the base and could hide with our mindcloak far better than Mary, Ceridwen or Alcina could and they were very good at hiding indeed, having had a lot of practice with it.

"Any sign of Gilles?" I asked.

"Yes, he's with the large group of Mages in Dombarovskiy village," Mary replied.

"I think I'm going to force the issue here," Morgana stated.

"How so my Mage?" I asked.

"Cause a series of malfunctions in the missiles and try to draw the Coalition in closer," Morgana replied.

"Better than hanging around here for ten or so days," I chuckled.