The Darkness Before the Dawn - By Ryan Hughes Page 0,101

the wall. This is a good start.

That was practically the last thing that went right for them. They found Kitarak easily enough, but when they tried to telekinetically loosen the nut holding his restraining bolt to the wall, it resisted until they nearly twisted it off, and then it screeched like a banshee when it finally began to turn. The guards came instantly alert, and Jedra and Kayan had to flee the building to avoid being detected. They watched through their psionic vision from across the weapons practice field while dark tendrils of psionic force wove out into the night, seeking the source of the sound, but eventually the psionicists gave up and pulled back inside.

Jedra and Kayan slid back toward the building and peeked through the barred window. Kitarak and one of the other slaves—the human—were sitting up on their cots while the four psionicists faced them from their chairs, their eyes half-closed in deep concentration. The elf woman wasn’t in the building.

Even with their eyes closed, the two old men looked more interested than they had last night. They and the younger women were definitely on alert. Jedra and Kayan could see the dark bubble of the psionic suppression field surrounding the prisoners, and a lighter, wider bubble of awareness surrounding the whole building. If they disturbed that, the psionicists would know they were there.

We’ll just have to break the chains when we push over the building, Jedra said. All right, then, time for the diversion.

They rose up over the estate, looking for the best way to distract the largest number of soldiers. They could see where most of them were: relaxing in and around their own quarters after a long day. Some polished weapons, some played dice or card games, others simply sat outside in the cooling air and watched the sky change color. A few still stood guard in the towers in the main house and along the wall, and a few patrolled the compound as well.

The nobles who owned the estate were in their wooden house’s central courtyard, lying in cool net hammocks while servants plied them with food and drink.

Maybe we can take care of them all at once, Kayan suggested when they saw the situation. The soldiers’ quarters were built of square blocks of stone, but the nobles house had been built of wood to show off their wealth. And wood burned…

They started the fire in an empty dining room on the corner of the house farthest from Kitarak’s slave quarters. It took much more effort to get it going than they had expected; evidently the wood had been magically protected against fire. The latent spell was no match for Jedra and Kayan’s combined strength, however, and soon the fire grew to fill the entire room and smoke boiled out the open windows.

It didn’t take long for someone to notice. The guards in the tower directly over the fire cried out in alarm at the first whiff of smoke, and the entire estate suddenly became a frenzy of motion. Soldiers ran from their barracks and servants boiled out of every outbuilding, most of them carrying water-soaked cloths or heavy leather hides for beating out the flames. They leaped in through the windows and doors, heedless of the smoke and flame, and flailed away at the fire until they had it nearly under control.

They’ve practiced this, Jedra said. Well, let’s give them more. They moved through the mansion, setting fire after fire, straining against the magical protection spell with each one. Simply exciting the wood into flame with their own power proved too taxing to sustain, so they switched tactics, borrowing heat from the air and pouring it back into the wood. It was the same technique Kitarak used to keep his food cold, and it had the same effect: flakes of snow began to fall over the burning mansion.

That proved more distraction than the fire. Everyone outside stopped to stare up in wonder and feel the cold flakes melt on their outstretched palms, while the people inside screamed at them to come help with the fire. Jedra and Kayan kept it up for another few minutes, manipulating the crackling sound and flickering light of the fires to make explosions and lightning flashes and phantom attackers rushing out of the shadows to confuse the scene even more, then they abandoned the building and the servants and soldiers to their fate.

The soldiers were well trained; not all of them rushed to the fire. The ones