The Rings of Salammis

Closure - Part 4

     Seskip and Saturn passed only one more proctor on their way to the tunnel, and he barely glanced at them as they passed. Then they rounded a corner and ahead of them was an intersection where two corridors crossed. To one side was a flight of steps leading up to the first floor, and on the other side was a door beyond which, Seskip knew, were the steps down to the basement. The guards would be in a small room on the other side of that door, and Seskip paused for a moment as he pondered how to deal with them. An already difficult task had been given a whole new dimension of complexity by his need to keep an eye on Saturn. Or perhaps he could use his captive. Use him as a diversion.

     "Stand close to the door," he commanded, and the other wizard obeyed meekly, with the air of someone who'd accepted total defeat. Alarm bells rang in Seskip's head. He was about to try to escape. He had to keep a very close eye on him.

     He opened the door, then slipped to the side, out of sight of the guards inside. "Yes?" he heard a voice say. "What do you want?"

     Saturn simply stood there, staring straight ahead like a soldier on report.

     "This is a forbidden area!" the voice added impatiently. "What do you want?"

     Seskip heard a chair scrape against the floor as the man stood. "Step back," whispered the Head Proctor, and again Saturn obeyed, forcing the man inside to leave the room to confront him.

     A spell would have taken too long to cast, so Seskip linked his hands together and brought them down hard on the back of the man's head. Then he leapt into the room, where the second man was jumping to his feet and raising a wand. He jumped to the side, and a bolt of energy grazed his shoulder, blasting a small crater in the wall behind him. Then Seskip jumped onto the table between them and kicked the proctor in the face. He fell without a sound and crumpled to the floor, his jaw broken but still breathing, Seskip was relieved to find. He would have hated to have killed a loyal proctor who was only doing his duty.

     He looked around, and wasn't surprised to see that Saturn was gone. He cursed under his breath, but the renegade wizard wouldn't get far with his hands manacled and unable to use spells. He'd rescue his men first, and then there'd be three of them to look for the renegade wizard. He dragged the two fallen proctors out of sight, therefore, tied them up and raced down the stairs to the basement.

     It took him half an hour to traverse the hundred yard long tunnel, as he had to stop at each trap and barrier to deactivate it, but eventually he came to a massive steel, magic proof door that he opened using the master key that the Head Proctor always carries on his person, smiling to himself as he imagined his counterpart racking his brains as he tried to figure out how the prison's impregnable defences had been breached.

     In all the University's long history, prisoners had escaped or been rescued from the magic proof cells only a handful of times, and on every occasion it had later (sometimes centuries later) turned out to have been an inside job. A renegade proctor who'd been bribed or blackmailed. Seskip's actions would trigger a ruthless interrogation of every proctor as they tried to find the culprit, an investigation that would grow steadily more ruthless and merciless as it failed to produce results. Seskip felt a moment of sympathy for the loyal, dutiful proctors of this time and the ordeal they were about to undergo because of him, then put it out of his mind to concentrate on the job at hand.

     On the other side of the door was a large room divided into half a dozen cells by inch thick bars of bronze. The entire room was saturated with anti-magic and he felt a tremble of apprehension as he felt his inner defences sliding automatically into place, preventing the raw magic suffusing his body from being sucked out and neutralised. Any spell cast in this room, no matter how powerful, would be snuffed out like a candle plunged into a cask of water.