Enchanter (Book 7) (80 page)

“And they just decided to come out now?  To rob my tower and slay my family?”

“You obviously had something they wanted.  The Enshadowed don’t really have a lot of stigma against stealing from non-Alon.  Kind of like how your kind usually feel about the Tal.  But that makes me wonder what they took.”

“Me, too.  I had Master Ulin make a list of the artifacts he was working with when he was attacked.  Thankfully a prisoner recently tipped me to the fact that someone had designs on my treasury, and I have tightened security as a result.  Artefacts are only taken out as needed.  Unfortunately, Master Ulin was working on a fairly major piece, when he was attacked.  He had a lot of stones out.  One of the two got away . . . so whatever isn’t in this satchel got stolen.”

“Let’s take a look!” he said, eagerly.  He seemed totally unperturbed by the idea of assassins running around the castle grounds or thieves imperiling our security.  In anyone else I would take it as an indication of guilt, perhaps, but Onranion was just like that.

We went through the dead Alka’s satchel and discovered several erstwhile prizes, including a few Waystones, some snow quartz, and a Library Stone Ulin had been using.  But most importantly we discovered the large, unique Apophylyte crystal we’d used to translate the Celestial Mother into the Snowflake. 

“That would have been a tragedy to lose,” Onranion assured me.  “So what did they get?”

“Not as much as I feared,” I sighed.  “They took one of the lesser magratheite – the pocket stones.  That’s a blow.  And two Empathy Stones, as well as one of the Telepathy Stones.  More quartz, more waystones, sixteen stones of unknown property Ulin was examining . . .” I said, wondering just what they did. 

We still had assayed only a tithe of the gems we’d recovered, and the secret cave in the Kennel was stuffed with boxes of raw, unsorted crystals and other stones the gemsingers had harvested.  They could be – could do – virtually anything.  The spell that had created the Snow That Never Melted had had a remarkable effect on the structure of any silica-bearing crystals in the vicinity. 

Nor had it been, as we had discovered, entirely confined to the circle.  There were outlying flecks of the effect as far away as Hosendor, thanks to the refractory nature of the rocks in the surrounding ridges.  Or the whims of the goddess who had a hand in it.  I wasn’t certain . . . and, supposedly, neither was the goddess.

“They didn’t get the Alaran Stone?” Onranion asked, suddenly anxious. 

The enneagrammatic affixer crystal was truly unique.  It had power over the gods, themselves.  As such I trusted it with no one but myself.  It was in a hoxter in my necklace.  “I have it.  No one would use that stone without my willing permission.

“Good thinking,” he sighed with relief.  “I’d hate to think what . . . oh . . .” he said, a disturbing thought suddenly occurring to him.

“What is it?” I demanded.  Onranion had a nasty habit of forgetting to mention something vital, just because he assumed you already knew.  He was getting better, over the time he spent among mortals.  A little.

“I think I know who is behind this . . . conspiracy,” he said, at last.  He looked even more disturbed than before.

“Who?  I thought it was the Enshadowed?”

“Oh, they’re
decidedly
involved,” he assured me, looking at the corpse at our feet.  “That is their preferred style of dress, a uniform that is now a relic of a dead age.  The fact that they display it openly means that they are feeling empowered, not pursued.  And while I can imagine that recent events have led them to be emboldened, I can think of only one alliance that would compel them to take this kind of audacious action.  Thank your gods that they were not successful.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you see, my boy?” the ancient Alkan said, his strong humanoid form belying his great age.  “They were after the Alaran stone.  The rest were mere trinkets.”

“Hardly trinkets,” I countered.

“Oh, they have value, in their way, but that wasn’t what they were after.  They had to be after the Alaran stone.  Their master would demand it, crave it, once he learned of it.  He would insist that they spared no effort in retrieving it, whatever the cost.  Even at the risk of exposure, or their very lives.”

“Why would Sheruel want the Alaran Stone so badly?” I asked.  “And why would the Enshadowed want to serve the gurvani?”

“Sheruel?  No doubt he played a role, as he would have found their help useful, and vice versa.  But the Enshadowed would never be subordinate to a mere gurvani, however powerful.  They might use him, as he they, if their purposes were aligned.  No, they would only risk this audacity for one being; the head of their line, so to speak, a spiritual ancestor.  Perhaps a real one.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, not liking the direction this was going.

“The Enshadowed, you see, claim descent from a long-disbanded cadre whose purpose was fulfilled long ago.  That’s where the quaint uniform comes from.  But the faction was most recently revived by the followers of . . . well, it was one of the most shameful episodes from our history.  The Enshadowed serve no less than Korbal the Necromancer.”

“Korbal?  The Demon God?  I know he has awakened, but—

“He has more than awakened, he has the support of loyal followers.  They can only want the restoration of their faction to power, replacing the Council with their own foul doctrines, ruthlessly enforced.  The Enshadowed would do anything their master bid them, and strengthening and preparing him for future conquests would be their first priority, after security.”

“So why did they come here?”

“Their presence here can only mean he seeks the key to immortality and necromantic dominion.  And that, my boy, we can never,
ever
let him achieve.”

Chapter Thirty Seven

The Menace Of The Enshadowed

Korbal, the Demon God of the Mindens.  The legendary evil that haunted the passes and remote vales of the westernmost mountain range, according to the Wilderlands peasantry, stole out in the depths of winter to take his fell tribute.  Supposedly he could drive a village mad and infect the people with maladies from sexual perversion to cannibalism.  According to legend, he could send the bodies of your dead loved ones to slay you in your bed at night if he took notice of you.

Only Korbal the legendary Demon God was a myth, the fragment of ancient tales cast against the ferocious and primal wilderness of the treacherous Mindens.  In reality, as I’d discovered, Korbal was an ancient Alka Alon songmaster who had gone bad.

His crimes in the pursuit of his magical arts were so dire that he was censured and exiled to the Land of Scars.  Eventually his ambitions and his pride, not to mention his antipathy toward the Council, stoked his fury until he went to war with them.  Unable to convince more than a few of his most devoted followers to join his cause, he turned to the undead and other arcane methods to build his soldiery. 

Following a terrible war he was defeated; but he had so altered his own enneagram that mere execution was just not practical, lest he rise again in a non-corporeal form.  Stuff like that happened, from time to time, when go around messing with the laws of nature.  Occupational hazard.

Instead of execution, the Council had sentenced him to eternal imprisonment.  They had delegated a company to excavate the pit in some hidden region of the Land of Scars, and then concealed it by magical and mundane means until they were satisfied that Korbal’s fanatical followers wouldn’t be able to find him.  That had been successful for several peaceful centuries.

But apparently, from what Onranion and the other Alka had inferred, the Enshadowed had aligned with Sheruel’s rising dominion to provide technical aid in return for assistance in locating the impossible-to-locate tomb. 

Unfortunately, the answer to their dilemma had been my ten-year-old new apprentice, who sees enneagrams as easy as other people hear music.  Once his talent had been discovered by the gurvani’s confederates in the Brotherhood of the Rat, poor Ruderal had been forced to help them find the tomb by peering through the rock to see the dormant enneagram of the imprisoned Alkan.

It wasn’t his fault, though he felt truly sorrowful for helping.  He knew, perhaps better than anyone, just how evil Korbal was.  But regardless how he had been discovered, the Enshadowed had been able to revive their ancient master. 

“That’s why the fixative stone is so important,” Onranion explained to me and the emergency war council that had convened at the breakfast table in the Great Hall that morning.  “Korbal’s obsession is with necromancy, which is basic enneagramatic magic.  Being able to stabilize his minions – or even his own pattern, I suppose – would be essential to his recovery.  The same power that you used to keep that darling water elemental frolicking in your pond can be used to permanently sustain the powerful entities he creates.  Between his obsession with death and undeath and his political ambitions, he’s quite the controversial figure.”

“So what are his political ambitions?” I asked, afraid to know the answer.

“He wants to rule the world,” he shrugged.  “He’s goatshit crazy, Min.  My people tend to be unreasonably sane—”

“Present company excepted,” Dranus said, quietly, as he sipped his morning tea.  There was food in plenty on the table, but the idea of eating revolted me after my busy night.  My stomach just couldn’t take it.

“Thank you.  But when we go mad, we don’t do it by half measures.  The petty megalomania of your warrior-princes is nothing compared to an Alkan lord whose obsession has driven him beyond reason.  This subcontinent was once laid to waste because of such a thing.”

“I still don’t see what the advantage of an alliance between the gurvani and the Enshadowed would be,” Dranus opined.  “They would seem to be at cross-purposes.”

“Not entirely,” Onranion countered.  “They both hate the
humani
, for different reasons.  And they both hate the Alka Council, for other different reasons.  Great alliances have been forged over less.  The gurvani got technical assistance with their magic.  They have little experience with irionite, and their spellcraft is crude and unsophisticated.  The Enshadowed could provide immense help in guiding his shamans and priests to control their power more effectively.  They could facilitate in the breeding of his horrors.  Though they are few in number, their faction includes some highly talented songmasters,” he admitted, with a hint of admiration.

“And now they have their dark lord back,” I said, discouraged, “and he’s developed an unhealthy interest in me.”

“Master, I believe it’s more than that,” Dara said, from the end of the table.  Her cheek was still red with the scratch she’d taken the night before, but Dranus had applied a healing charm that was mending it nicely.  She’d bear only a faint scar from it.  “As I was fighting them, they spoke.  They were not only interested in stealing from you, they seemed to be pursuing some vendetta.  Specifically against you.”

“Me?” I asked, surprised.  “Are you certain?”

She nodded, as did Gareth.  “They spoke of you as a villain.  They were punishing you, in part, for some crime they think you’ve committed.”

“Not all the Alka Alon are happy about the power you’ve been allowed to accumulate,” Onranion reminded us.  “The Enshadowed, in particular, have a deep-seated prejudice against magic-using humans.  They see it as worse than magic-using gurvani.”

“It wasn’t that,” Dara said, shaking her head.  “They seemed a lot more personally offended.  They mentioned a brother.  I don’t know,” she said, with a sigh, “I was busy guiding my birds and not dying.”

“Perhaps I can shed some light, Master,” Gareth offered.  “Before I was knocked out I heard them refer to you as the ‘fratricide’.  And they were, indeed, looking for a particular stone.  But they had no instruction as to which stone it was, or what distinguished it.  So they were taking everything they could carry.  But they were clearly angry and vengeful against the Spellmonger over a death.”

“But I’ve never killed an Alkan in my life!” I protested.  “I’ve been tempted a few times, but I’ve always resisted.”

“Clearly they bear you some enmity,” Master Ulin suggested, quietly.  “Regardless, they have taken from us a great prize, though not the one they sought.  Allowing such a powerful tool as one of the pocketstones to be in the hands of necromancers and renegades is untenable.   They must be recovered.”

“Agreed,” I nodded.  “The pocketstone is bad enough.  The unknown stones they took could do anything.  They, themselves, could be equivalent to the fixative stone, for all we know.  Or worse.  We just don’t know.  But we must reclaim them, if we can, and that means discovering why the Enshadowed are so eager to see me wounded.”

“I got the distinct impression they wanted you dead, Master,” Dara declared.

“I stand corrected.  But I don’t usually generate that kind of antipathy without a reason.  And I don’t believe I’ve given them one.  But how did they get involved with Isily?  And Mask?”

“The only ones who know that are, alas, Baroness Isily, Lady Mask, and these Enshadowed,” Dranus concluded.  “One can assume that the Enshadowed and Mask had some previous acquaintance, from their time in service to the Dead God.”

“And it’s possible that Isily knows Mask, whatever her real name and face are,” Gareth pointed out.  “She’s clearly a warmage with Imperial training.  There are not that many female warmagi to begin with, And fewer still who perform combat magic.  If what you say about Isily’s . . . vocation is true, Master, then it’s likely that she met her at some point, perhaps at Alar Academy.  Or perhaps when she was in her prime as a . . . companion.  She would make a formidable assassin.”