Imogen paced off to the side of the throne room while the archmage argued with a merchant about the damage to his warehouse. From the little she’d bothered to listen to it seemed the fat slob wanted them to use their vastly overstretched resources to repair his business before they found safe, warm places for those displaced by the quake.

The man was lucky he wasn’t dealing with Imogen. She would have set his fancy tunic on fire and ordered him out of the castle. The archmage had to be more polite than that, though judging from her fierce scowling Lidia was on the verge of doing something Imogen would have approved of.

The archmage had ordered her to rest, but Imogen was too anxious to lay in her bunk. After yet another argument her superior had agreed to let her pace as long as she stayed out of the way. How did the archmage think she could relax when Alden was out on his own hunting for someone that had already proven he could take out a sorcerer with no trouble? She should have been out there with him.

A burst of corruption, distant but powerful, stopped Imogen in her tracks. She knew that power. Jonny had activated the urn again. The archmage stood beside her, her problem merchant forgotten.

“Was that what I think it was?” the archmage asked.

“Yes. I have to make sure Alden’s okay.”

The archmage nodded. “We’ll go together.”

The two women rushed out of the throne room and into the courtyard, leaving the protesting merchant behind. They sprang into the air and flew south. Imogen let the archmage take the lead. The truth was she couldn’t have outflown the older woman if she was in peak condition and as much as Imogen hated to admit it she was far from peak condition.

At least the archmage hadn’t tried to force her to stay behind. Imogen appreciated the consideration. She’d worked with Alden long enough now that she felt responsible for what happened to him. If she hadn’t let Jonny get the best of her at the dojo nothing would have gone wrong.

The trail of corruption ended at the edge of a small village near the border of the Great Green. Bodies dressed in the red and yellow uniforms of the Iron Path dojo littered the ground around a smashed hut. They landed near the ruin.

Imogen gasped. Just inside the door was Alden’s body, his throat cut ear to ear. Deeper in was Jonny Linn, equally dead, with the exact same wound. There was no sign of the urn or the satchel that held it.

Imogen backed away from the carnage, her whole body trembling. She wanted very badly to kill someone, but the only person in the area still breathing was the archmage. A strong hand grasped her shoulder.

“It wasn’t your fault,” the archmage said. “If you’d been here you’d have died with him. The way things are going we can’t afford to lose anyone else.”

Imogen threw her head back and screamed. When her throat was raw and her lungs empty she wiped the tears away. “What now?”

“I’m no tracker and even if I were two sorcerers chasing after someone with the urn is suicide. By the time we fly reinforcements out here whoever has the urn will be long gone. I fear we have no choice but to accept our failure and move on. The enemy has two of the three urns so all sorcerers will have to be especially careful from now on. Help me prepare the bodies for transport. I don’t know the Iron Path’s preferred funeral rites. Since they died helping us it seems the least we can do is bring them home.”

Imogen snarled and sent a blast of focused soul force into Jonny’s body, reducing it to a fine ash. Pity he wasn’t still alive to feel it.