Enchanter (Book 7) (42 page)

The three of them glanced at each other.  “Just . . . how
many
more castles?”

“Three, four lifetimes’ worth,” I shrugged. 

They reconsidered their objections, and after that were quite happy having Erenwal use the wands for them.

Erenwal the Wall was a good warmage – of the six I’d hired, he was the one I knew best.  He’d been all the way to the City of Rainbows and back with me, and had never once asked for a witchstone.  To my mind that made him not just trustworthy, but demonstrated amazing control.  I wanted that kind of man in charge of my domain’s outer defenses.

Bastidor Castle was of sudden strategic importance because it overlooked the easiest route to my domain.  A stout defense here by determined vassals could keep anyone from ever getting to the Diketower, not to mention the lands and castle beyond.  I needed a loyal lord, a stout castle, and a strong warmage overseeing this piece of our defense, and Erenwal was the man for the job.

They didn’t call him The Wall for nothing.  He’s a big, broad-shouldered man, but that wasn’t what named him.  He did specialize in defensive magic, actually, but he got his nickname for his combat style.  Early in his career he and his squadron had been pinned down in a barn by crossbowmen.  Unable to see a better option, He cut the leather hinges on the barn door, wrapped his broad arms around it, and charged his attackers with no better weapon at hand.  His mates fell in behind him and not only secured escape, but captured most of the archers. 

That was the kind of man I wanted to pay a lot of money to sit on his arse and guard my front door.

As most warmagi Erenwal had a non-combat specialty too – not sex magic or thaumaturgy, as I’d explored, or even enchantment.  His interest involved the lore of the stars, and he found Bastidor’s secluded environs ideal for viewing the sky at night. 

Sire Motaran did not see much utility in such study, but he appreciate a veteran warrior when he saw one, and the two men got along well from the start.

“A warmage, Excellency?” he asked, as he washed my hands for me before dinner.  “Here in Bastidor?”

“This is a mageland now,” I observed.  “Having a few magi around keeps people from talking.  Do you object?”

“Me? Nay, Sire!  Object to the expense it must cost you, perhaps,” he said, warily. 

“I have no intention on passing that cost along to you, Motaran,” I assured.  “It’s matter of baronial security, so it will be a cost borne by the barony – which has better ways of making money that squeezing it from peasants and smallholders.  Can you house the man?”

“Oh, aye, we’ve the room – we’ll have plenty, when the new section of keep is finished.  He can stay in my hall until his own chamber is complete, of course.  And you say he’ll be mine to command?”

“Your advisor, more than your servant,” I corrected.  “These men have been schooled in my policies and have been given what tools I can provide them to make them formidable in their posts.  But while they answer to me, alone, I have instructed them to lend their aid and assistance to you with magic as they can – and anything they cannot do, they shall pass along a request to my Court Wizard, Dranus, for consideration.”

“I aim to be an asset, not a burden, my lord,” Erenwal assured him, politely.  “Nor a spy – I will tell my master what he wishes to know, but I do not linger here to put my nose in your household business.  That was made quite clear to me by the Spellmonger.”

“It’s not that I don’t welcome the assistance,” Motaran said, as he walked me to the high table where his wife, daughter, sister, two brothers, and young son all sat with Father Miton.  He gave me the courtesy of leading me to the canopied chair which was clearly his, and sitting in his wife’s less-ornate chair beside me.  “Never has a knight been so pleasantly conquered.  My domain has never thrived like this before.”

“It sounds as if there might be a ‘but’ in that sentence, my lord,” Landfather Miton said, bowing to us formally with the rest of the household.  “Do you still bear the Spellmonger some doubt?”

“Not doubt, Father,” Motaran sighed.  “Just suspicion born of ignorance.  My villeins were shocked when you plowed their fields in a day, depriving them of weeks of toil.  Now the baron has given my masons a tool that will deprive them of yet more labor – yet that labor is owed.  And the men who once counted on my reeves hiring them to plow the remainder of my demesne are now wondering how they will survive the spring without the pay work.”

I cursed in my mind, and then absently shot my eyes to Brother Hotfoot, who looked amused at the end of the table.  “Well, then they can apply to the castle works, where they can earn the given wage instead; or they can work for hire on improving the road through Bastidor, as I’ve had my villeins do; or they can take their plows up to the ridges and plow for the smallholders, if they have the fortitude to go so far for so little.”

“They will not like that, my lord,” Father Miton observed.

“They would not like a great many things,” I countered.  “Indeed all my life I’ve heard that plowing is the most hateful toil – sorry, Father – a man can be condemned to.  Here I’ve lifted that from them, and they complain.  Let them complain further, when the harvest is twice as abundant as last year.”

“There are worse burdens to bear,” conceded Miton.  “Father, will you give the blessing?”

The meal was a fine one, casual and formal at the same time.  Motaran did his best to honor both his secular master and his spiritual advisor.  I learned, in fact, that not only did Bastidor have close ties to Seratodor, the tiny ecclesiastic estate he ran two domains to the west, but Motaran and Miton proved to be both first and second cousins, on different sides of the family.  Miton had become Motaran’s spiritual advisor not only because Motaran was a pious – and openhanded – worshipper, but because they were kin.  That kinship had been part of the basis of the good abbot’s attempt at intervening in Sire Gimbal’s aggressions.  This had been in his family’s backyard.

Since then, the abbot had been a good friend to Sevendor, and I’d made sure that his temple had prospered accordingly.  Every major holiday Sire Cei had sent a present to the man’s estate, and many of my people had done likewise.  That didn’t necessarily buy me the favor of the Divine Tiller, but it did give me the attention of his important clergy.  Father Miton rumbled through a powerful and moving blessing of the bread in the name of the Tiller, and praised his name for the fruits of the earth he was to bless us with at harvest.

Of course the
actual
god at the table couldn’t resist shooting off his big fat mouth. 

“Landfather, Huin the Tiller has never been known as a god of magic . . . how do you think he would feel, to have one of his sacred precincts overtaken by mere enchantment?  Spiritually speaking, is it the grain that grows from soil that hasn’t been plowed truly a blessing from the Divine Tiller?” he asked, as he held his cup out for wine.  The
bastard.

“I anticipated such spiritual questions, Brother . . . Hotfoot, did you say?  Which is why I plowed the First Furrow around the entire perimeter of the fields to be prepared.  Huin’s demand for the sacrifice of sweat in the soil was thus fulfilled,” the hardy old priest assured, equally amused.  “I prayed long and hard to reach the solution, but as long as some sweat is mixed with the land, then the prescription is fulfilled.  And it was quite the warm day, when I plowed that furrow.” 

Motaran’s family kept quiet – theological debates were entertainment, for the aristocracy.  I never much favored them, myself, but it was suddenly interesting in light of my recent spiritual experiences.  The monks kept at it. 

“Oh, I have no doubt as to either the piety or the sincerity of the sacrifice,” chuckled the masquerading god.  “No doubt the peasants are satisfied by the boon of freedom, at your expense.  Yet . . . is
Huin
satisfied?”

“Huin’s blessing is the weight of the grain in the fields,” Father Miton observed, wryly.  “Come harvest, we shall see if the sweaty feet of one priest is equal to that of hundreds of peasants.  Come, does your own lord discount the travails of those who journey by cart, horse, or wain, merely because they chose a more expedient method of travel than their feet?”

Hotfoot conceded the point with a nod.  But the bastard couldn’t leave well enough alone.  “Yet those who journey by foot are accounted the most pious, in his estimation, from what I understand.  The sacrifice of human effort for the journey is what supports his power, not the sweat of a roncey or the squeak of an axel.”

“That would be Kulin the Horselord’s province, if I am not mistaken, in this land,” Brother Iral said, hesitantly.  “The gods are a bit different, where we come from.”

“Yet are you brothers not concerned with using arcane devices in pursuit of your divine orders?” Hotfoot asked, holding out his cup again for Motaran’s daughter to fill.  “Do not the Bricking Wands and other toys of the enchanters spoil the pious nature of the work?”

Brother Iral shrugged in his oversized gray clerical robe, complete with ceremonial smock embroidered with the compass-and-square symbol of his temple.  “Brother, Avital is a god of magic as well as the deep craft of engineering.  While few of our brethren have followed that path in the last few centuries, there is no spiritual sin in using the arcane forces of nature to aid in the Holy Work.”

“It just seems to be cheating a bit,” Hotfoot observed, airily, “depriving the human soul of its natural challenges through the expedient of the supernatural.”

Brother Iral, may his god bless him, snorted derisively. “Why, would you have us eschew the forces of gravity or friction or leverage in the completion of our rites as well?  The purpose of our order is to build to the glory of Avital’s holy vision, using his divine teachings and lore to improve the lot of man through sacred geometry, engineering . . .
and
magic.  Our novices learn the Laws of Magic as faithfully as they learn the Laws of Motion, and memorize the
Padu
and the
Parensi
as faithfully as they do the
Periada.”
 

That
was
impressive – there were few outside of scholarly magi who even knew what the basic Imperial system for channeling magic was, or the twenty basic laws of how magic affected the physical world – the
Padu
and the
Parensi
, in the Imperial school of magic – though many were familiar with the more well-known
Periada
, the Periodic Table of the Lesser Elements.  Why, I realized, these fellows had half of Imperial magic down, if they but had the
rajira
to use it!

“Yet from his reputation, he delights in honest toil,” Hotfoot insisted, as the porridge course was served. 

“Yet he also blesses those who use their ingenuity and the principles of engineering to fulfill his divine vision,” insisted Brother Iral, confidently.  “Inspiration and ingenuity are always preferred to needless toil.  Indeed, to indulge in such inefficiencies when better ways are available is an affront to Avital’s grace.”

“I concede the point,” Hotfoot sighed, with a punctuating belch. 
“Bloody Imperial gods . . .”
he mumbled under his breath. 

I breathed a sigh of relief.  The last thing I wanted was for a spirited theological debate to turn into a referendum on mixing magic and the other crafts just as I was trying to push forward the art of enchantment to new levels. 

I would have words with Hotfoot. 
Bloody Narasi god
.  Of
magic
, no less.

But Herus’ interest in magic was very specialized, and limited by his folksy nature.  The spells he was devoted to overseeing were the common-man’s enchantments and simple resource charms, tailored specifically for travel or thievery.  The magic of the common footwizard. And he was one of our
major
gods of magic.

Though my people’s pantheon was robust and lively, they had a barbaric understanding of magic that I would have to constantly struggle against, I realized.  The institution of the Censorate had given a presence to their superstitious fears, developed over centuries of being blasted on the steppes by Imperial warmagi, but the cultural bias against it was stronger than the stubborn pride with which much of the minor aristocracy boasted of their illiteracy.  A knight might grudgingly allow his son to study his letters with the priests, to better rule his estate -- but any interest in the study of magic was met with revulsion, thanks to the Bans. 

At least in the largely-Narasi duchies of Castal and Alshar.  The remnants of Imperial culture in Remere had allowed that duchy and its theological descendants of the Magocracy to thrive with a far more enlightened attitude, as Brother Iral demonstrated.  But that did lead to my inevitable question.

“Tell me, Brother,” I asked, casually, as I pushed away my empty bowl, doing my best to maintain my composure, “do any of your initiates ever demonstrate
rajira
?  I assume they come to you early in their youth, as most young monks do.”

Brother Iral looked uncomfortable, for a moment, then glanced around at the table at the magi and priests and nobility of magelands.  He sighed, as if revealing a closely-held secret.

“There is a temple to which these young initiates are sent, if they show signs of displaying Talent.  Once such monks were carefully cultivated, back in the days of the Magocracy,” he explained, reluctantly, “and before the Conquest they often arose to the highest ranks of our small order.  Magic and engineering, together, accomplished the greatest of glories when Avital’s hand is involved in the work, our rites declare.”