Court Wizard (Spellmonger Series: Book 8) (10 page)

“I’d like to be the first to welcome you back to Vorone, Your Grace,” he said with a deep bow.  “Many of us mourned your parents on that fateful night.  Many of us were saddened to see you go with your . . . to see you go.  But welcome back, your Grace.  May the gods give you the strength to set things aright!”

“Who authorized the bloody gate being opened?”
came an angry shout from the tower room above the gate.  “Who the
bloody hell
said open the
bloody gate
when the baron gave
explicit
instructions that it should remain closed until morn?” demanded a slovenly-looking guard with a lieutenant’s sash hung haphazardly around his neck.  He wore an impressively bushy specimen of the mustache that was currently in style among the Wilderlords, but it was about the most impressive thing about the man.

“That would be me,” Anguin said, from horseback.  He did not sound pleased.

“And who the bloody hells are
you
, my lord?” demanded the lieutenant angrily, leaning on the rail of the balcony.

“Your liege lord and master of this town, Anguin,” the Duke replied.  Despite the entourage behind him, the lieutenant did not believe him.  Indeed, he laughed derisively, filling the air with the aroma of slightly-used juniper spirits.

“Anguin’s a bloody prisoner in Castal!” snorted the man derisively as he descended the stairs.  “Now kindly get your noble arse back through that gate, your lordship, and bloody
wait for the dawn
like everyone else to begin your reveling, or you’ll answer to Baron Edmarin in the morn!”

“Ancient Randaw?” Anguin called, quietly.

“Yes, Your Grace?” the guard asked, quizzically, but with a properly subordinate tone.

“Arrest this man,” he commanded.  “Secure him until I have time to judge him for his foul language and uncouth manners.”

Ancient Randaw snapped to attention, and did not hesitate.  “Aye, Your Grace!  You!  Lieutenant Maref!  By order of the rightful Duke of Alshar, I take you into custody and request that you relinquish your sword!”

The lieutenant looked at his subordinate blearily.  “What kind of game are you playing at, Randaw?  Do you want to be chasing goblins through the Penumbra for the next six months?  Get these folk back out of the gate, close it, and then put yourself on bloody report!”

“Lieutenant, this is your last warning,” Randaw said, soberly, putting his hand on the hilt of his infantry sword. 

“This is insubordination!” Lieutenant Maref exclaimed, as he realized his man was serious.

“Permission to subdue him, your Grace?” Randaw asked, his hand gripping the hilt and drawing it an inch.

“Allow me,” Pentandra finally said from behind them.  While she enjoyed the drama, she was tired, starting to feel the cold even through her spells, and wanted the comfort of a fire and a bed more than she wanted political entertainment. 

She kneed her roan rouncey ahead and within the town’s limits.  She held out her hand, and before the uncouth lieutenant could speak again, he was laid out flat on the dirty snow.  In a moment he was snoring.

“Thank you, my lady,” Ancient Randaw grunted, as he stooped and dragged his superior back into the guard house.  “You are a mage?” he asked.

“I am your new Court Wizard,” she agreed, casting back her snowy hood.  “Lady Pentandra of Fairoaks.  You are loyal to your duke, Ancient Randaw?”

The guardsman nodded solemnly, as he threw the unconscious body on the cold floor of the guard house with impressive strength for his age.  “Oh, aye, my lady.  My family have worked at the palace for three generations.  I expect to try for the palace guard, someday, myself . . . assuming the management changes,” he added, disgustedly.

“Good.  Then aid his plans now by keeping quiet about his return until an announcement is made – lest some with evil intent attempt to keep him from doing so.”

“Aye, that’s sensible.  Enough of
those
sort in Vorone these days,” Ancient Randaw sighed wearily.  “I’ll keep mum, I swear.”

“In about a half an hour,” Duke Anguin continued to the man, “there will be the vanguard of a mercenary company bearing the arms of the Orphan’s Band coming up the road. They are in my service.  You are to admit them without difficulty and assist them in securing the gatehouse.  Is that understood?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” Randaw nodded enthusiastically.  “Orphans?  Tough buggers those,” he said, admiringly.

“And go ahead and take that foul fellow’s sash from him, Randaw,” advised the Duke.  “I don’t think he deserves it.  It looks a lot better on you, Lieutenant,” he added.

“
Yes,
Your Grace!” Randaw said, proudly.

“That was well done, Sire,” Pentandra told the young duke, as they rode into the town, proper, the rest of their party trailing behind them.  “And quite an impressive feat of memory.”

“Not that impressive,” shrugged the young duke with a grin.  “I recall his daughters because the older was quite pretty, though she had a gap between her teeth that made her look like a rabbit.  I was just a lad . . . but I had taken notice of femininity, before I left here.”  He looked around at the silent snow-covered streets.  “This place looks so . . . different than when I was here last.  I’ve never seen Vorone in the winter.”

“Enjoy the sight, Your Grace,” a gruff, deep voice suggested from the next rank of riders.  “The snow cloaks all with its pristine beauty.  Yet we’re but a warm day away from seeing the filth and despair it conceals.”

“My husband, you are
so
full of Yuletide cheer,” Pentandra reproved, sarcastically.  She could feel his wry grin without even turning around.

*

*

*

There were two hundred in the advanced party, a score of them mercenary soldiers of the Orphan’s Band.  The rest were loyal knights and retainers who had quietly joined the Duke in exile in his estates in Gilmora last autumn, and had assisted in planning (and, in some cases, funding) his restoration to power.  Partisans, patriots, and soldiers-of-fortune, it was an odd assortment of adventurers she found herself with.

She had come to know them a bit in the scant weeks leading up to their departure.  Their motivations were as varied as their individual stories. 

Many served out of fierce devotion to the cause of supporting the Alshari ducal house.  Many others served for lack of a better position or opportunity.  Many were Wilderlords who had lost their holdings to the goblin invasion or the turmoil after; some were Coastlords and even a few Sealords disgusted with the rebels who had usurped ducal authority in the rich Southlands of Alshar and sought to restore the rightful heir to the coronet – and their own political fortunes.  Still others were Castali gentlemen-adventurers, younger sons of great houses or landless knights eager to take part in a noble and potentially lucrative political cause.

But they had all pledged their swords, their purses and their lives to this untested, untried, and unbloodied Orphan Duke as his sworn men.  They could all, theoretically, be dead by morning for doing so.

Leading the motley assembly of nobility were the three men most responsible for the effort to put the teen-aged heir known as the Orphan Duke back into power: Landfather Amus, the High Priest of Huin for Vorone, and the boy’s personal chaplain.  The high priest of a peasant’s god was a strange protector of the line, but he looked after the lad with the tenacity of an aging bitch with her last puppy.  The man was huddled under a thick, plain woolen cloak as befitted his ascetic order, but there was no disguising the delight in his eyes to be back in his home ecclesiastical territory.

Count Salgo rode next to him on a magnificent destrier, a contrast in appearance and vocation.  Salgo was a soldier, the former Royal Minister of War, who was recently forced to retire from the Royal Court in favor of a younger man after quietly assisting the Magi against the goblins against orders.  He was disgusted with the Royal court and was eager to prove his value in a theater where active hostilities might break out at any moment.  A dedicated man, his loyalty was to his men, first – but he had never proven untrue.  His oiled leather travel cloak obscured his mail and sword, but his true power lay in his strategic vision.

Ahead of them rode Count Angrial, a career Alshari diplomat who had been living in self-imposed exile at the bottom of a wine glass in Wilderhall for the last four years.  Under the Spellmonger’s recommendation he had been chosen as the new Prime Minister to replace the Steward, Baron Edmarin, who King Rard had left in charge of Vorone. His star having waned at the Alshari court in ages past, the talented administrator and politician was determined to rebuild the Alshari state from the remains of the duchy. 

Only such dark and desperate times could have recalled a degenerate sot from exile, Pentandra knew, but the challenge and importance of the post had transformed Angrial.  He had approached the difficult feat of restoration with a passion and a genius for organization that kept the odd band motivated and regulated.  Whether or not that professionalism would extend to governance was yet to be seen, but there was fire in the reedy little man that gave her hope.

A fanatical priest, a worn-out soldier, and a destitute drunk.

Each had something to prove by their efforts.  Amus was as devoutly loyal to Anguin as he was to Huin the Tiller, and seeing the boy he had ministered to since he was a child come into his rightful inheritance was his most fervent desire.  Count Salgo was stinging from his removal from office at the height of his military career.  His efforts here was the only way he could keep himself on the front line of the only war that mattered, the war with the gurvani.  And Angrial, a courtier with a troubled past, saw this attempt at restoration as a pathway back into political power long denied him.

Each man was able and talented in their field.  Each was as loyal to the Orphan Duke as one could hope.

But then there was Pentandra.  She was the fourth player in this mad attempt to steal power.  She represented the Arcane Orders’ interests in the Alshari Wilderlands, which were significant.  Minalan had convinced her to give up her cushy post as the Steward of the Arcane Orders in the cosmopolitan capital of Castabriel for the important-sounding title of Ducal Wizard of (A Third Of) Alshar in the quaint, rustic, remote resort of Vorone, the summer capital.  At the height of winter. 

She had always dreamt of being a Ducal Court Wizard, ever since she had come into her Talent and begun learning the family’s Art.  Ducal Court Wizard was the highest position a mage could attain, in her youth.  Now, as she was entering the town and the reality of the task ahead of her was pressing, she wondered if she should have stayed in warm Castabriel, sorting parchment and attending balls and luncheons at the fashionable salons.  That’s what her mother would have wanted her to do.

She might have, once-upon-a-time.  But a former warmage-turned-spellmonger, former classmate and former lover, had summoned her from her comfortable estates in civilized Remere to come rescue him from certain doom at the ass-end of the world and messed up her hedonistic approach to life.  But it wasn’t her fondness for Minalan that had motivated her.  Pentandra knew in her heart of hearts that despite her affection for Minalan, she never would have ventured into her new life if there hadn’t been the promise of power – ironite.  That intrepid rescue party had set a course of events into motion that had shattered her peaceful – and utterly boring – existence.

Using Minalan’s bold and foolhardy maneuverings against the Dead God as cover, she’d not only gotten her own stone of the ultra-precious magical mineral, she’d attained nobility, power and position beyond her ambitious girlhood dreams.  She’d taken a personal hand in restructuring how magic was done in the new Kingdom, gained a small fortune and immeasurable professional respect to the point where accepting a post as a mere Ducal Court Wizard seemed like a demotion.

But it wasn’t.  If the assumption of the position belied her girlhood fantasies of power, it was because, ultimately, she had found the entire exercise underwhelming and unfulfilling. 

Being Steward of the Arcane Orders had given her unanticipated power, but Pentandra had quickly grown weary of responsibilities that always seemed more burdensome than the perquisites they accompanied.  When it became clear to her that a future as Steward meant being locked in a room with thousands of sheaves of parchment for all of eternity, she had started to question her goals.

Then she’d met Arborn. 

As a student of the arcane and obscure magic of sex, Pentandra had a highly discerning eye when it came to evaluating people, sexually.  A casual glance at a man or woman told her volumes about that person’s sexuality, once you understood the arcane rules of human sexual attraction and interaction.  It was far more than good looks and base attraction.  Pentandra’s professional eye evaluated social context, age, bearing, charisma, and nuances of musculature that escaped everyone else.  It was amazing what a casual glance could tell you about a person’s inner soul, if you knew how to read it.  And that was before she added her magical perceptions into the equation.

When she’d met Arborn, her assessment of the big Kasari ranger was perplexing.  She’d never met a more perfect man – literally.  He was physically appealing, of course – the traditional Tall, Dark, and Handsome, Strong and Silent, but he was no mere muscular slab of man.  He possessed a marvelous intelligence, had keen insights, and was surprisingly educated for a barbarian – far more than the average nobleman.