Chapter 24 - Gone But Not Forgotten

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The wizards stared at each other in amazement. Their prey had disappeared in front of their eyes in a puff of nothingness.

"Block the door, Stanverital," screamed Gravalar. "Devligrate, block the window. Make sure there's no way out. If they've become invisible make sure they can't escape."

Rumour had it they'd used invisibility when they mysteriously broke out of Mifal's dungeon. That wasn't going to be allowed to happen again here.

When Nextar and four serfs arrived, they began a systematic search of the room.

"Hands and knees, serfs," ordered Devligrate. "Explore every finger-length of floor."

They patted their way around the floor, feeling every corner and crevice. They found plenty of cobwebs and a lot of rather nasty sticky stuff but no sign of their quarry. It was a futile exercise. The room was empty except for two piles of clothes which lay untidily on the ground.

"Everyone be silent," said Gravalar. "Let Nextar use his hearing skill to see if he can locate them."

Nextar's face squished up and wrinkled as he concentrated on his ears. There were sounds, lots of sounds. Floorboards creaked, people breathed, rats scrabbled in the walls but there was no trace of the fugitives. There was nobody hiding anywhere in the room. There was nothing.

"They're not here," said Nextar. "They've gone."

"Bring up one of the dogs," ordered Devligrate.

The dog sniffed everything; the clothes, the bed, the floorboards, everything. It found nothing, but it did seem to enjoy licking up the mysterious sticky stuff.

"Well, it's not the Transportation Spell," said Stanverital. "It could have taken them miles away but the discarded clothes means it wasn't that spell."

"Yes, if it'd had been that spell, their clothes would have gone too and there'd have been the smell of burnt wood." No one knew why but a smouldering sandalwood smell always accompanied a magic transportation.

"And it's not invisibility otherwise our search would have found them."

The shouting started again as the wizards traded recriminations.

"You should have moved faster, Gravalar."

"Me? You should have blasted the door immediately, Devligrate," said Gravalar, "and trying to break down the door, Stanverital, just gave them time to escape."

"And what magic did you deploy, Gravalar?"

"Enough," said Nextar. "Don't let this become a Black versus White issue. We need answers, not people to blame."

Many theories were discussed but they only came up with one plausible explanation. The pair had invoked one of the all-time major spells and had time-travelled. They were now somewhere, or rather sometime, in the future.

"How many scrolls do these people have?" said Nextar. "We've counted at least twelve instances of magic on this hunt and you folk reckoned there were at least ten on your original chase."

"That's at least twenty-two scrolls," said Gravalar, doing the maths. "Unbelievable."

"Yes, unbelievable," said Devligrate, sharing a sly grin with Stanverital. "Anyway, that's not important for now. If they've used time-travel, then they could have jumped anything between five hours and ten years."

"And they could re-appear anywhere within a hundred miles of here."

"Dammit," said Devligrate. "That makes the task of finding them nigh on impossible."

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