The Sword of Retribution

The Spies - Part 7

     Tragius spent the rest of that day, and all the next, in conference with the rest of the University’s senior staff, briefing them on everything that had happened during the council and discussing what they were going to do to help the war effort. The next day, though, he was free and, saying that he wanted a little time alone to think, he went to visit the world’s youngest ark rak in his castle.

     He walked all the way along the narrow, winding path that led up the ridge, not wanting to waste a spell teleporting there in case he needed all his magical power during the confrontation. He didn’t expect things to turn nasty, but you could never be sure with raks, and Malefactos had always had a reputation for unpredictability even when he’d been alive. Just in case, he carried a selection of his favourite wands on his belt and wore an Amulet of Invulnerability around his neck. He was getting old, but he wasn’t yet so old and foolish as to walk into an ark rak’s stronghold without some pretty hefty protection.

     Arriving at the summit, he spared a moment to gaze around at the scenery. To his right, the whole valley was spread out below him. About five miles across and roughly circular with a lake in the middle into which a number of small streams ran, too small to properly be called rivers. There were three clusters of buildings. On one side, off to his left as he faced the central lake, were the teaching buildings and dormitories. Each in a different architectural style, due to their having been brought from different parts of the world, and separated by gardens, walks, orchards and animal breeding compounds.

     Directly across the valley from him, huddled beneath Barkol Crag, were the research buildings, lined up along both sides of The Wizard's Way, a road that led to the feet of a magnificent palace in which the most important work was carried out. The entire complex was surrounded by invisible barriers of force to ensure that no students or mundanes could reach it, where they might cause irreparable harm to the delicate experiments conducted there, as well as to themselves.

     The third cluster of buildings, just off to the right of the lake, was the village, where the valley’s non-wizards lived. The mundanes. Gardeners, caretakers, carpenters, masons, cooks, maids and general maintenance workers. Few of them lived there permanently, although some chose to retire there. Most of them were on five or ten year contracts, working for vast sums of money before retiring to their homelands. A tour of duty in Lexandria University was often seen as the pinnacle of one’s professional career.

     All around the valley were tall, jagged mountains encased by sheets of glittering ice and swept by howling blizzards and, turning his back to look down the other side of the ridge, Tragius got a bird’s eye view of one of the deadliest, least hospitable terrains the planet had to offer. Lexandria Valley was fairly flat and level because several whole mountains had been demolished to fill the narrow, steep sided passes that had originally existed there, but the sight that greeted Tragius as he looked west from Malefactos Ridge was a reminder of how the area had originally looked, before the wizards came.

     It was all steep mountain faces, with ice capped peaks separated by plunging crevasses the bottoms of which were hidden by a white haze of snow and ice dust. It was a living hell of freezing winds inhabited only by yaks, yetis and the occasional frost giant, although even they found the climate around Lexandria Valley rather uncomfortable and tended to remain in the slightly less extreme northern arm of the range. It was the ideal protection against unwelcome intruders, and in all the University’s long history, no-one had ever made it there by travelling overland.

     Turning his attention back to the castle, he walked the remaining few yards up to the great door. The castle was a blocky, square edifice, fifty yards on a side and four storeys high with narrow windows protected by thick iron bars and with battlements and catapult emplacements all over the roof. Once, it had been a border fort of one of the tiny kingdoms that were scattered along the coast of the great Eastern Ocean. It had been brought here by Malefactos himself, making it the most recent addition to the valley, although it now looked as though it had stood on the ridge for centuries. Its defences remained fully intact, even though unmanned, no longer being necessary. Malefactos hadn't seen the point of clearing them out. The only change the new owner had made had been to replace the royal coat of arms above the door with his own; a winged lizard wearing a crown.