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    Cloak of Illusion
    Cloak of Illusion
    Cloak of Illusion
    Ebook377 pages5 hours

    Cloak of Illusion

    By Jonathan Moeller

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    About this ebook

    A hidden enemy. A bitter price for victory.

    My name is Nadia. I'm a Marshal of the High Queen of the Elves, and I've lived through some terrifying things.

    Including the Mage Fall.

    And now, to my enormous annoyance, they're making a movie about it.

    The High Queen wants it to happen, so it's going to happen.

    Except someone has been sabotaging the production, and the sabotage has escalated to murder.

    A new enemy is in the shadows, and if I don't solve the murder, a lot of bad things are going to happen...

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJonathan Moeller
    Release dateNov 16, 2024
    ISBN9798224842575
    Cloak of Illusion
    Author

    Jonathan Moeller

    Standing over six feet tall, Jonathan Moeller has the piercing blue eyes of a Conan of Cimmeria, the bronze-colored hair of a Visigothic warrior-king, and the stern visage of a captain of men, none of which are useful in his career as a computer repairman, alas.He has written the "Demonsouled" trilogy of sword-and-sorcery novels, and continues to write the "Ghosts" sequence about assassin and spy Caina Amalas, the "$0.99 Beginner's Guide" series of computer books, and numerous other works.Visit his website at:http://www.jonathanmoeller.comVisit his technology blog at:http://www.jonathanmoeller.com/screed

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      Book preview

      Cloak of Illusion - Jonathan Moeller

      1

      SO NOW WHAT?

      After the death of Duke Vashtyr, the destruction of Foundry, and the defeat of Singularity’s attempt to kill the High Queen and the Elven nobles with one blow, I expected things to immediately get much worse.

      Like, more bioweapon attacks with Terminal 1X, more armies of Singularity clones storming out of rift ways from the Tower, that kind of thing.

      Instead…nothing happened for the next several months.

      Okay, that’s not quite right.

      A lot of stuff happened in the long, hot summer of Conquest Year 319, some of it rather dangerous, and I was never bored.

      But none of it was as dire or apocalyptic as Vashtyr trying to overthrow the High Queen or Maestro and I fighting at the foot of the Washington Monument with a million lives hanging in the balance.

      Even though I constantly feared another massive attack on the scale of Vashtyr’s failed coup.

      But that didn’t happen. At least not right away.

      Here are a few of the things that did happen.

      The first thing that happened after I returned to Fort Casey was an orcish attack.

      It wasn’t the orcs of Rakh Torbal and Warlord Kaldraxar. One of the good things to come out of that mess with Baron Rymaris – in fact, the only good thing – was that despite the Baron’s betrayal and attempt to get a big chunk of the Army of the Great Gate killed, we still inflicted a serious defeat on Warlord Kaldraxar’s soldiers. It was a big enough defeat, in fact, that the world of Rakh Torbal had fallen into a vicious civil war. Orcs love to fight far more than humans or Elves or dwarves, which was odd because the orcs were always so stoic and grim in person.

      But while orcs loved to fight, they didn’t like to lose, and Warlord Kaldraxar had sent his warriors to a lot of defeats against the Army of the Great Gate. Worse, he had done it out of sheer pettiness. Kaldraxar had a grudge against the dragon Delaxsicoria’s uncle Malthraxivorn, and after Malthraxivorn’s murder, Kaldraxar transferred that grievance to Della. I had thwarted Kaldraxar’s attempt to ruin one of Delaxsicoria’s concerts, which meant that the Warlord added me to his list of foes.

      So he had sent his warriors to fight and die because I had stopped him from sabotaging a concert. Yes, he really was that petty.

      Of course, it probably helped that so much commercial traffic flowed through the Great Gate that raiding from the Shadowlands could be quite profitable.

      Anyway, after their defeat on the day of Baron Rymaris’s treachery, a significant portion of the orcs of Rakh Torbal turned against their Warlord. But the Shadowlands connected to many worlds, and the merchandise moving back and forth through the Great Gate was a tempting target.

      Other raiders sometimes tried their hands, and we taught them that was a bad idea.

      So on the morning of June 22nd, Conquest Year 319, I stood in the Shadowlands as the men-at-arms of the Army of the Great Gate drove away the few remaining orcish raiders, and I looked over the battlefield.

      The sky in the Shadowlands is an empty black vault, yet for some reason, there was always just enough ambient light to see, though it never came from any particular direction. This region of the Shadowlands was a rocky plain, dotted here and there with black trees with glossy, obsidian-like bark and blue-glowing leaves. A dozen dead orcs lay strewn on the ground before me. I had killed them in about two seconds with my spells, elemental fire leaving smoking tunnels carved through their skulls.

      That is the last of them, said Riordan MacCormac, and I looked up at my husband.

      I had to crane my neck a little to do it since he was a full foot taller than I was and strong enough that he could lift me over his head without much difficulty, even without drawing upon his Shadowmorph symbiote. Like me, he wore tactical armor over black combat fatigues. Unlike me, he held a spell-made sword of molten lava. You’d think a sword made of lava would fall apart, but the spell held the molten stone to a razor’s edge. That, combined with the heat and his raw strength, and a swing from that weapon would cut a boulder in half.

      Or two or three orcish raiders in a single swing.

      The rest are retreating, said Riordan. I don’t think we should pursue them. Chasing people across the Shadowlands is a great way to get killed. He sure wasn’t wrong about that. Our scouts had seen packs of anthrophages and wraithwolves lurking in the distance, ready to spring upon anyone who got separated from the main force, which was one of the many excellent reasons I had given strict orders that no one was to wander off on their own. And I think we’ve taught them a sufficiently harsh lesson.

      A lesson? I said, watching as my soldiers prepared themselves for the trip back to Earth and Fort Casey.

      Riordan nodded and dismissed his Magma Blade, which vanished as if it had never existed. Since Kaldraxar is occupied with his civil war, other raiders might think to start preying on Fort Casey. Letting the survivors escape might warn off some of those raiders.

      Very sensible, I said, rolling my shoulders. I was a bit surprised at my lack of fatigue. I mean, I was a little tired – I had gotten up early to help stage for the attack, and I had used a lot of magic in the battle – but I wasn’t anywhere near as tired as I should have been.

      But perhaps it made sense. Killing those orcs with magic hadn’t been nearly as difficult as battling Maestro.

      I was still somewhat astonished that I had survived that fight at all, let alone won it.

      We didn’t even lose anyone, did we? I said.

      No, said Riordan. Some wounds, mostly minor, one almost serious. Everyone should recover.

      Good. There had been too much death lately – too many soldiers of the Army of the Great Gate had died from Baron Rymaris’s treachery and more during the savage fighting in Washington. I hated losing men, hated having to write the notifications to their families.

      The only consolation was that if those men hadn’t died in Washington, Singularity would have killed everyone in the city, and even now they would be conquering Earth and converting it to the cybernetic hell that was their vision of paradise.

      It was a consolation. Not enough of one, though.

      Let’s get everyone back to Fort Casey, I said.

      I wanted to be ready for the next attack whenever it happened.

      And for the big counterattack. The one I knew was coming.

      When Singularity struck back after their defeat at Washington.

      I expected it to happen any day, and I would be prepared.

      Except…

      I kept waiting.

      On July 4th, Riordan and Russell persuaded me to go to the Marneys’ Conquest Day barbecue.

      As I got busier with the Great Gate, I went to visit James and Lucy less frequently, which bothered me. James and Lucy Marney had been unable to have children for medical reasons, and as part of my deal with Lord Morvilind as a child, Morvilind had placed Russell with the Marneys as their adoptive son.

      That had been a long time ago. An entire lifetime ago from Russell’s perspective.

      Much longer from mine.

      Russell regarded the Marneys as his parents, but I wasn’t as close with them. Morvilind’s various retainers had more or less raised me, making sure I would learn the skills Morvilind required of his shadow agent. But I was grateful to the Marneys for raising Russell, and I tried to visit them whenever possible.

      Lately, I had been worried that Singularity might try to use them as a lever against me and Russell. After I had started Cloak Corporation, I bought one of the houses on their street, and it now served as a permanent surveillance station, with some of the security professionals from Cloak Corporation keeping an eye out for trouble.

      So far, there had been none. The surveillance and discreet bodyguards had cost a lot of money, but I didn’t begrudge the expense. For one thing, I had too much damn money now anyway, which was something I never thought I would say. For another, if I had cheaped out and then something terrible had happened, I wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself.

      I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. I didn’t want to make an avoidable one.

      But it was peaceful today, which seemed unsettling after all the fighting I had seen recently.

      Maybe even startling. I still half-expected Maestro and a troop of cloned soldiers to spring out of every doorway, even though I had killed Maestro myself.

      But despite my somewhat tense mood, it was a nice day. It was fairly hot, well over ninety degrees Fahrenheit, but enough trees shaded the Marneys’ small yard that it was pleasant. For that matter, James had invested in expanding the concrete patio behind their house, and he had bought a new set of deck furniture, metal chairs surrounding a glass-topped table beneath an awning that provided additional shade. I wasn’t sure why he had bought deck furniture in Wisconsin since it was too cold to sit outside for like half the year, but both he and Lucy seemed happy with it. James grilled some steaks, and I helped Lucy cut up fruits and vegetables for a salad.

      I felt younger doing it. I had done this kind of thing a lot back in the bad old days between jobs for Morvilind. I would come and visit Russell and the Marneys, and James and Lucy would make dinner, and we would talk. I wasn’t nostalgic for those years by any stretch of the imagination. I had lived in constant fear that a mistake would get me killed, or that Morvilind would use magic to kill me remotely, and then Russell would die of his frostfever.

      I didn’t miss those times, but they had been much simpler. I had worried about myself, Russell, and the Marneys, and that was that. I hadn’t worried about Singularity and fighting off raiders from the Shadowlands or about how Singularity seemed to have allied with the Dark Ones and was seeking the Sealed Army. I hadn’t been a Marshal of the High Queen and responsible for the link between Earth and Kalvarion.

      Then again, I hadn’t worried about those things because I hadn’t known that they existed. Now that I knew, I couldn’t turn back. I couldn’t stick my fingers in my ears and go about my life like I didn’t know.

      I had so much more power now than I had in the bad old days, but the price of power is responsibility, isn’t it?

      Tarlia had told me that not long after we had met for the first time, and I had seen the truth of the High Queen’s words again and again.

      I also had more friends now, and some of them had come to dinner as well.

      Thank you for inviting me, Mrs. Marney, said Neil Freeman, shaking me out of my reverie.

      I glanced at him. We sat around the new patio table under the big awning in the Marneys’ backyard. Our dinner of steak and salad had been finished, and Neil’s daughter Emilia was running around the little backyard with her dog Monty, a black Labrador retriever whose complete lack of brains was counterbalanced with a cheery demeanor. Emilia was six years old alternated between proper English manners and bursts of hyper-frenetic energy. Of course, she had actually been born over two hundred years ago and went into one of Catalyst Corporation’s stasis units when her Ashford-Carr syndrome threatened to kill her.

      Which was how Neil had gone into a stasis unit as well.

      And why he was wearing a long-sleeved button-down shirt despite the heat since it concealed his cybernetic right arm.

      Oh, it’s no trouble, Mr. Freeman, said Lucy. She was a thin woman with hair well on its way to gray. Any friend of Nadia’s and Russell’s is a friend of ours. Besides, if you’re in America, you need to celebrate Conquest Day in the American way.

      In the UK, Conquest Day is on October 22nd, said Neil. I admit it feels odd to celebrate it on July 4th.

      Why October 22nd? said Lucy.

      Battle of Hastings, said James Marney. He was a bit older than Lucy, tall and rawboned, and lately, he had grown a gray beard. His cane rested propped against the table next to him.

      Oh, yes, of course, said Lucy.

      In France, it is on May 5th, said Simone Deneuve, who sat next to Neil. She had been in town on business for the Shadow Hunters, and Neil asked if he could invite her. Since Neil asked me to babysit Emilia whenever Simone passed through the Milwaukee area, I suspected they slipped off together to a hotel room, which was a mental image I did not want in my head.

      French Revolution, said James.

      Simone smiled. Very good, Dr. Marney. I see you know your history. She wore a white sheath dress, stark against the light brown of her skin, her black hair arranged in an elaborate bun, sunglasses shielding her eyes. I had absolutely no idea how she had managed to eat dinner without getting a single speck upon that brilliant white dress, but she had done it. Simone was one of the most effortlessly elegant people I had ever met, and she was an absolutely lethal hand-to-hand fighter. I suspect many of her foes had seen a petite woman of mixed French and Algerian ancestry and assumed she would be an easy target.

      Then she drew on her Shadowmorph for speed and strength, and that was that.

      I hadn’t liked Simone at all at first since she and Riordan had been lovers before I met him. But Simone and I had survived a lot of crazy shit since then – the Crystalmorph, the Great Draconic Council, the battle at Washington – and while she still wasn’t my favorite person, I did trust and respect her.

      James shrugged. It’s a hobby. I need something to read between patients, after all.

      You could fill out your paperwork, said Lucy.

      I thought that was what the nurses were for, said James, and she sighed and gave him a gentle smack on the shoulder. Since James was a doctor and Lucy was a nurse, I had heard the same conversation between them like a thousand times.

      But as Neil said, thank you for having us today, said Simone. I do not think I have ever been in the United States on its Conquest Day before.

      Oh, it’s no trouble, said Lucy. James did all the grilling. And we’re always glad to have friends of Russell over.

      And if you’re in the country, said James, you must have some important work to do.

      Simone hesitated for a half-second, then nodded. Shadow Hunters generally kept the Family and their business secret from most people. But I had been married to Riordan for a while now, and more to the point, James had seen Riordan fight during the Archon attack on Milwaukee. Both he and Lucy knew exactly what a Shadow Hunter could do in a fight.

      Well, said Simone, one cannot work all the time. She offered a smile. I am French, we do not like to work from sunrise to sunset without a break the way you Americans do.

      Hopefully we can have some peace and quiet for a while, added Russell. My brother didn’t look like a lord of business today. He was wearing a T-shirt and shorts with a green-and-gold ball cap for the state of Wisconsin’s football team. I could just make out the edges of his white hair beneath the cap. The T-shirt was snug enough to show that he had put on a lot of muscle in the last few years.

      That would be nice, agreed Riordan.

      Well, I am always in favor of peace and quiet, said Lucy.

      She didn’t know how right she was. The aftermath of Singularity’s attack on Washington hadn’t exactly been quiet.

      They had been defeated, but a lot of people had been killed. Foundry, the criminal network that had once been the American and British intelligence services until Maestro had taken it over, had been destroyed. All the Elven nobles who had sided with Duke Vashtyr’s faction had been killed in the battle (often by friendly fire from their Singularity allies), or captured and executed later.

      Tarlia had pardoned Duke Vashtyr, and she had goaded him into confessing his crimes against Victoria Carrow, who had then beaten him to death and received a pardon from Tarlia as well.

      The High Queen could forgive almost anything except betrayal, and Vashtyr had betrayed her again and again.

      I think the only reason she had spared him as long as she had was in memory of her son Prince Talvindar, who had been friends with Vashtyr.

      That, and she had wanted Vashtyr’s defeat to destroy any moral authority his cause had possessed.

      Despite all that, I was surprised how little news of the showdown in Washington had leaked out to the general public. I mean, lots of people knew what had happened. Thousands of people, Elves and humans both, had been involved in the events leading up to the battle and the battle itself, and quite a lot of people across the world suddenly had new Elven nobles as their overlords. But there had been no reports about it in the news. No official statement had been given. As far as most people were concerned, life had gone on.

      We finished dinner and then moved on to dessert – Lucy made apple pie. I didn’t usually eat pie, but it was a special occasion. Night fell, and we went from the backyard to the front yard to watch the fireworks. I helped James and Russell carry lawn chairs from the garage, and I ended up standing with James near the end of the driveway. Sometimes, he didn’t like to sit for long periods of time because it cramped his leg.

      He was smoking, I wasn’t. Though I really wanted a cigarette. I used to smoke a lot more, but lately, I tried to keep it down to when I was really stressed. The fact that I had gone through Baron Rymaris’s death, my trial, and then the battle at Washington without smoking like five cartons of cigarettes a day had more to do with Riordan’s influence than with my self-control.

      I appreciate, said James, all that you’ve done for us.

      Sure, I said. But I can’t take credit for it. Russell’s the one who built Moran Pharmaceuticals and Moran Imports. I just gave him the money to start.

      James smiled and blew out a cloud of smoke. That’s not what I meant. The security guards.

      I said nothing, and James nodded toward the house down the street that Cloak Corporation had purchased. They’ve been very vigilant. Very discreet, too. I knew you had probably pissed off some powerful people, so I started buying more guns. Then I saw that you had bought the house and staffed it with security people to keep an eye on us.

      How did you know? I said, hoping he wasn’t angry.

      Well, I was a man-at-arms and a combat medic for six years, said James, and I’ve been the chief of an emergency room in a major urban area for a while. I know what a police officer looks like, even when he’s out of uniform, and I know how to spot a security professional.

      I sighed and rubbed my face. Neil’s going to be disappointed. The men were supposed to keep quiet.

      Oh, they did, said James. They’re very good, but let’s face it, Nadia – I’m a clever old coot, and it’s hard to get one by me. I snorted but didn’t have a good rejoinder. Why didn’t you tell us?

      Maybe I should have, I said. Russell and I…we were up against a group of people who don’t like others knowing about them. So long as you didn’t know about them, I figured they would probably leave you alone. It seems like they did. But probably isn’t the same thing as certainly.

      Guess not, said James. Russell might have some business rivals, but I don’t think they would go that far. He looked at me for a few seconds. We’re not talking about business rivals, are we?

      No.

      Something to do with all that, uh, eventfulness in Washington last month?

      You know about that? I said.

      Not really. It hasn’t gotten reported on in the news. But like I said, I notice things. It seems like suddenly most of the country is having special elections for new Congressmen and Senators. That was because a significant portion of Congress had been Foundry members and hadn’t survived the battle. And there are a lot of new Elven nobles inheriting their titles. Something happened, didn’t it?

      Yeah, I said. It’s not something we should really talk about, but a terrorist group allied with some dissident Elven nobles and tried to overthrow the High Queen. It got…messy.

      James nodded. And you stopped them.

      Not by myself, I said. I had a lot of help. Russell. Riordan. Simone. If Neil hadn’t shown up when he did, we would have been in a lot of trouble.

      I don’t doubt it, said James, just as I also don’t doubt that if you hadn’t been there, things would have gone a lot differently.

      I sighed. You know I don’t like it when people say nice things about me.

      The battle had been horrible. Thousands of people had died in the fighting, and thousands more had been executed in the aftermath. I wished things had gone differently. I wished that so many people hadn’t died.

      And yet…

      It could have been worse. So much worse that it boggled the mind with its sheer awfulness. Thousands of people had died. If I had made different choices, if I had done anything differently, then millions would have died, and millions more in the resultant wars as Singularity conquered Earth and started purging off those who wouldn’t fit into their shiny new utopia.

      Do you know what the really horrible thing about responsibility is?

      Sometimes, things turn out badly, and yet they could have been so much worse.

      I know, said James, and he clapped me on the shoulder. You get this look on your face like you’re really constipated.

      I do not.

      Ask Riordan, he’ll agree with me, said James. But…thank you, Nadia. For looking out for me and Lucy. And for whatever you had to do in Washington. He nodded towards the street, where various families had set up their lawn chairs to watch the Conquest Day fireworks. I think people like you do what you have to do so others get to live in peace.

      Tarlia had told me much the same thing on numerous occasions. I didn’t have to like it, but it was the truth. The Rebels and Nicholas Connor had believed that Tarlia was a ruthless tyrant. In Nicholas’s case, he had wanted to be the tyrant himself. Tarlia had done some brutal things in the three centuries she had ruled Earth, but if she hadn’t…

      Like the things I had done, it would have been so much worse if she hadn’t.

      Thanks, I said. Let’s go watch the fireworks.

      We headed to the lawn chairs, and I sat down next to Riordan.

      When someone gives me a compliment and I don’t like it, I said, do I look like I’m constipated?

      He was silent for maybe a second too long.

      It’s clearly not your favorite experience, said Riordan.

      I sighed, took his hand, and settled in to watch the show.

      I half-expected Singularity to launch a massive attack on the Conquest Day holiday in retribution for what had happened in Washington, but as far as I could determine, the day was as peaceful as a holiday ever was. At Fort Casey, there were the usual arrests for drunk and disorderly conduct. One of my soldiers got very drunk, relieved himself against a wall in Gate City, and then was arrested for indecent exposure since he failed to realize that he was in full sight of a party bus hosting a bachelorette party. The soldier apologized profusely and was let off with a fine and a month of mandatory alcohol abuse counseling.

      But nothing else happened.

      2

      SHADOW HUNT

      July 11th, one week after Conquest Day, I stood hidden within a Cloak spell in downtown Minneapolis.

      Specifically, I was in a luxury condo that occupied the top floor of one of the city’s high-rise buildings. The condo was in the process of getting remodeled, and I stood on the bare concrete floor, the walls stripped down to their metal studs. On the floor was an elaborate sigil that had been drawn in the blood of a woman who had been murdered four days ago, a sigil that was currently glowing with sullen red light.

      A man named William Carfield stood behind a podium before the sigil. That podium held an open copy of the Summoning Codex, the book that Sergio Cortez had written two hundred years ago to bedevil the world, and right now that particular copy was open to the formula necessary to summon anthrophages. Carfield himself looked like a successful business executive in his fifties – relatively trim, with black hair turning gray at the temples and blue eyes. He actually was a successful business executive with a company that specialized in electronics exports, and so he flew around the world. Lately, he had been traveling the world with his copy of the Summoning Codex, calling up anthrophages and killing people, which was how Simone had gotten on his trail and why she had come to the United States.

      This had been all too common over the last few years. We had learned that Foundry had printed several thousand copies of the Summoning Codex and sent them to random addresses. It had been one of Maestro’s plans to create chaos and destabilize things before they made their big push at Washington. Of course, nothing happened with most of the copies. People got a weird book in the mail and they threw it out. Some people recognized what it was, called the Inquisition, and handed it over to the authorities with relief.

      But a few people used the book, started attempting to use the summoning rituals on its pages, and they went mad and became serial killers.

      That was the danger of calling creatures from the Shadowlands. To summon and dominate something like an anthrophage, the summoning spell created a mental link with the creature. If that part went wrong, the anthrophage killed and ate its summoner on the spot. But even if it worked right, the link was two-way, and the creature’s warped mind would start influencing the subconscious of its summoner.

      That was why people who summoned Shadowlands creatures almost always went off the deep end. In the years since I had married Riordan and worked on and off with the Family of the Shadow Hunters, I had seen it happen again and again. The sort of people who used the Summoning Codex were usually nasty jerks who wanted to settle a score or find an untraceable way to murder someone they disliked. After all, Shadowlands creatures sometimes found their way to Earth without a summoner. But the bloodlust and violence of an anthrophage or a wraithwolf always influenced its summoner, who would become more and more violent.

      This was why William Carfield had been traveling around the world, summoning anthrophages and using them to kill random people. Simone’s research revealed that Carfield had first summoned anthrophages to kill a business rival in Paris and make it look like an accident. Since then, he had escalated, and he had been killing for the vicious pleasure of it.

      He had come home to Minneapolis to continue.

      Three anthrophages stood around the summoning symbol, bound to Carfield’s will. I had seen a lot of anthrophages in my life, but my skin still crawled with revulsion and hatred when I saw them. They looked a bit like gray-skinned humans, but

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