And trying to experiment on humans is strictly forbidden, I thought. But they’re breaking the law right here.
I worked through the scrolls, putting the pieces together. The kidnapped people had been brought to the fort and rendered down for raw materials, which had then been used to make an enhancement potion. It wasn’t perfect - it killed about half the people who took it, simply because their hearts couldn’t handle the strain - but it worked. Sort of. I knew enough about alchemy to realise the potion had been mixed with a strong loyalty brew, a warped variant on a fixation potion. The people who drank the potion would be compelled, from the very core of their being, to serve their master. They wouldn’t even be able to conceive of the idea of resistance, let alone actually resist.
My stomach churned - again - as I finished the last scroll. There were a whole bunch of unanswered questions, starting with who was actually behind the mad plan, but ... I thought I knew the basics. Someone was building an army of super-soldiers. Incredibly strong, incredibly tough ... perhaps even with some slight resistance to magic. And then ... and then what?
My imagination suggested a rush to take the city, the supermen climbing the walls or simply jumping over, leaping tall buildings in a single bound. Their lifespan would be much reduced - even if they survived the first dose of potion, they’d still be putting immense strain on their bodies - but as long as they lasted they’d be unstoppable. An arrow would normally stop an infantryman in his tracks. I wasn’t sure it would stop a super-soldier.
And if they hadn’t been kidnapping magicians, we might not even know what was happening until it was far too late, I thought. There was no shortage of people who wanted to reunite the empire - under their rule, naturally. It was a good idea. I would have supported them, if I’d thought they could do a good job. Who are they and what do they really have in mind?
I put the scrolls back where I’d found them - I didn’t want to sound the alarm too early - and inched further along the corridor. The wards were starting to feel a little more hostile, despite the keystone and my glamour. It felt as if I was going somewhere forbidden, even to Chuter ... even to someone who could hardly reveal the truth without admitting his own role in the affair. I pushed the feeling aside, linking to the wards and feeding them a set of comforting lies as I kept moving. It helped that whoever had designed them hadn’t woven the spells into a single network. The interior wards had a tendency to assume that anyone who passed through the outer wards had a perfect right to be there, a weakness most sorcerers - including Chuter - would know to avoid. I remembered the spells I’d seen in the scrolls and frowned. Was I facing someone who’d learnt his magic through books?
My jaw clenched as I reached a second door and peered inside. It was another alchemical lab, operated by a single woman wearing a simple robe. She was bent over a cauldron, her back to me. I watched her warily, something about her movements nagging at my mind. She poured the contents of a tiny vial into the cauldron, then straightened up. I saw it immediately. A heavy iron collar sat on her neck. I could feel the charms poisoning the air from metres away. She’d been enslaved.
Which means she isn’t a willing participant, I thought. I’d seen slave collars before. They could be resisted, by someone with the power or skill, but they were designed to just wear the wearer down until they couldn’t hold out any longer. The slave would do as she was told, by anyone keyed to the collar. I’d seen them before, over the years. They were never easy to remove. If I can free her ...
She turned. Mistress Layla stared at me, her eyes filled with horror and despair. I understood. The slave collar was just too strong to be resisted. She was nothing more than a puppet, unable to do anything more than follow orders. She couldn’t even kill herself. She might even have had the collar on long enough to damage her ability to think, to look for loopholes in her orders. I’d dealt with slavemasters, in the past. They knew how to keep the slaves under close supervision, long enough for the collars to do their work. And then they could be safely sold to their new owners.
Her mouth opened to scream. I froze her with a wave. It wasn’t friendly - the spell was a great deal stronger than it needed to be - but she wasn’t going to help me. Her master would have given her standing orders to alert him, if something went wrong. She might not have access to her magic - the slavemasters might have forbidden her to use it, without permission - but she could still shout. I inched forward, ignoring the panic in her eyes. The collar was having a nervous breakdown. It wanted her to resist, to fight back, but she couldn’t do that without magic and the collar wasn’t allowing her to use it. I grimaced. Contradictory orders could destroy her if she tried to carry out both of them at once.
I pressed my fingers against her neck, charms snapping and snarling at me. They were designed to
