High Mage: Book Five Of The Spellmonger Series (17 page)

“This big ol’ chest?  Isn’t it yours?”

“I don’t . . . “

“The gift from the council!” Pentandra said, excitedly.  “What is it, I wonder/”

“Master Minalan should open it,” Dara said, backing away warily.

“I didn’t think they would make good on their pledge so quickly,” I said, startled.

“The council can take centuries to study something before it acts,” explained Onranion.  “But once it makes up its mind, it acts swiftly.  Is that my voice now?” he asked in wonder.

I moved toward the chest, nearly two feet wide and a foot deep.  It was stunning, of Alka Alon manufacture and decorated with gracefully curving leaves carved in the lid.  I put my hand on it, held my breath and opened it.

The glimmer of hundreds of witchstones of all shapes and sizes sparkled before me.  Enough for an army of High Magi.

Chapter Six

A Trove Of Witchstones

The sea of irionite swam in front of me, and a wave of magical energy washed over me.  I gasped, and then couldn’t breathe.  We had hoped for help from the Alka Alon, and hoped for witchstones.   But this was far, far more than I had ever dreamed they would grant us.

“Oh, dear gods preserve us,” Pentandra whispered.

“How many?” demanded Master Guri.  “How many are your waystones worth?”  The Karshak have an obsession about value and worth the way that Alka Alon obsessed about trees.

So we sat there and counted them, like children playing marbles.  There were exactly, we discovered, two hundred witchstones in that chest.  It made the Alka Alon coronation gift look miserly in comparison.  None of the shards was over half an inch, and some were shaded differently, but they were all potent stones.  Stones that
had never felt the touch of the Dead God.

“Two hundred new high magi,” I swallowed.  “That’s more than we have now!”

“That effectively more than doubles your eventual constituency,” agreed Pentandra, excitedly. 

“If I can find two hundred worthy magi,” I grumbled. 

“That will be a problem,” Penny agreed.  “And it puts you in an interesting situation.  You’ll be creating a whole new magical nobility.”

“Well, I’m not going to hand them all out at once,” I decided.  “But . . . this does give us a significant advantage on the field.”

“And in court,” Penny reminded me.  “With nearly four hundred High Magi running around, that makes you far more important.  That’s real political power, Min!”

“Closer to three hundred than four.  I don’t want real political power!” I griped. 

“But you’ll need it if you want to get anything done,” she pointed out.  “Like build castles and destroy evil goblin heads.  Min, this is exactly what you asked for.”

“And more,” Ithalia agreed.  “Not only are we permitted to continue in these transformed bodies,” she said, gesturing to her breathtaking form, “but it is permitted for others to be  allowed to do so as well.  And we have been allowed to assist in other ways.”

“What other ways?”

“There is a project that the others and I have been considering for a few months, now, based on our acquaintance with your domain, Magelord.  In particular, concerning the little flyer your apprentice keeps.” She went on to describe her proposal in detail, occasionally lapsing into technical jargon or using Alkan words where there were no human ones.  But I could immediately see the utility of her plan.  I swallowed.

“And that’s just the beginning,” she said, happily.  “We can begin to work together much more closely.  Already the council is assembling a team to study the origin of snowstone, and see if it can be recreated.  Master Onranion is but the first of many great spellsingers to journey here and put the question to mind.”

“Better,” Lady Varen said, a faint smile on her thin lips, “a band of sympathizers wishes to undertake transgenic transformation into humani forms and fight by your side.  Refuges across the Wilderlands will be opened to your agents.  Humani and Alon will work together for the first time in centuries.  This is a very exciting time!”

It was a lot to take in.  But it was help – all the help I had asked for, and more than I had hoped for.

“Of course, there will be some conditions on that assistance . . .” Ithalia said. 

*                            *                            *

Two hundred witchstones.  After tracking down Alya and telling her I was home, and then relating what happened at Carneduin, I had her and Penny
(Pentandra’s  nickname from our school days), Banamor and Olmeg, Dara and Sir Festaran in my workshop to discuss the matter.  Even Master Guri had returned to his lodge to report.   It was the first time I had been in a humans-only situation in three days.   And we had a lot to discuss.

“Two hundred,” Banamor said, dazed.  “That’s a lot of High Magi.”

“It won’t be as exclusive a club when it’s done,” I agreed, “but that doesn’t make it a bad thing.  But we must keep this secret from the royal court and the Arcane Orders.  If it was known . . . there would be no way to go about our business without being hounded by the ambitious.”

“No one actually knows just how many witchstones there are, except us,” Pentandra pointed out as Banamor poured her glass full.  “They come through Minalan, but no one but he knows how many are in the open.  He can just continue to hand them out, quietly.”

“And make a fortune every time he does,” Banamor said, sourly.

“So what if he does?” asked Alya.  “Fortunes must be spent after they’re gathered.  What’s the harm to you?”

“Competition,” Banamor shot back. 

“Allies,” I corrected.  “Political and military.  And a market for your trinkets,” I reminded him.  “You’ve seen the kind of magic you can do with a witchstone.  You need equipment for a lot of that.  Speaking of which, did they arrive?”

“Yesterday,” he sighed in agreement.  “Nine of them, just in from Sendaria Port.  They all work as promised, and so I paid the man.  I spent all night testing them.  I was taking a nap when you summoned me,” he said, accusingly.

“What?” asked Pentandra.

“A gift to the kingdom from the Arcane Orders,” I told her, then described the scheme Banamor and I had kicked up one memorable night.  Pentandra’s eyes got bigger and bigger.

“You thought of that all by
yourself?”
she asked in disbelief.

“I was there,” Banamor objected.  “I helped!”

“It wasn’t hard,” I protested.  “I’ve seen them do that sort of thing at sea, and I thought a similar system would work with these.  You object?”

“No, I think it’s a great idea.  But that doesn’t mean it isn’t problematic, too.”

“I know,” I assured her.  “We thought of a whole lot of ways it could be used.  But most of them were good.”

“It will help,” she admitted.  “And it’s impressive as hell.  Not to mention useful, and practical, and a boon to our security.  Not to mention a crafty application of the enchantment.  It’s just . . .”

“What?” I demanded.

“I just don’t know how you thought about it without me,” she said, simply.

“I know,” Alya agreed, patting her tummy.  “It’s just not like him.”

“Hey! I give credit to other people for their work, when I steal it!  I just happened to think this up on my own.  Most importantly, Rard will love it.  It saves him a lot of time, trouble, and money.  Kings like that sort of thing.”

“And it makes the Order suddenly very important to the Kingdom in a way that doesn’t involve mageblades,” Banamor agreed.  “I like that kind of institutional stability.”

“It’s not going to keep Rard from noticing that there are an awful lot of High Magi around,” Pentandra promised.  “He’s not stupid.  You can allude to some future help the Alka Alon will give us all you want, but eventually he’s going to realize that there are far more High Magi around than the war can account for.  That leaves the Alka Alon,” she pointed out.  “And he will not be happy that you cut a deal with them.”

“I took advantage of a strategic resource,” I corrected.  “I couldn’t use the waystones myself anyway.  I don’t know the spells – yet.  But the Alka Alon loved them, and we got what we needed.  Rard doesn’t need to know the details of the exchange until . . . until he does.”

“He won’t care until he does, is what you mean,” Alya pointed out.  “That many High Magi are going to cause problems.  Even if you do it slowly.”

*                            *                            *

Penny wasn’t wrong.  I had a list of candidates for witchstones that seemed to go on for miles, with more suggestions coming in all the time.  Now that I had a wealth of them, I could sate some of the pressures that had built up for them.  Even better, my goodly supply allowed me more leeway and thoughtfulness about just who should be given priority on the list.  That was an exercise of power I could enjoy.

I didn’t have to make any decisions quickly, thankfully.  I had until the Conclave, in early summer, to figure out where I could place stones that would do the most good. 

But what was the most good?  That wasn’t particularly clear anymore, and I needed it to be.  The war effort, certainly, needed attention.  There were twenty warmagi who could do great work in the field, if they had stones.  But then the special orders, enchanters, magical medicine, and other specialists were grumbling about the rarity of witchstones in their circles, and I knew that they could do some real good. 

Then there were the academic magi who were near demanding more irionite to further their research.  Prosperous spellmongers and well-established Resident Adepts were ready to pay great sums for the stones, and I had made a practice of giving a few to poor footwizards, just to keep things fair.

There were politically wise grants I could make, bringing whole families of magi into my influence.  And there were those I wanted to keep stones away from.  But every stone I took an oath for was another marble on the board, another player in the game, another High Mage to be policed and regulated.  And regulation needed some attention, and soon.

There were a handful of magi I wanted to reward at once, and as soon as I could I sent messages to the appropriate places, and waited for them to show up.  There was little logic in some of the grants, but I didn’t mind indulging in a little honest graft after what I had accomplished.  I quietly handed out about ten stones in the next few weeks. 

Dextadot of Herring and Timion of Lista were good examples.  Neither one of them were particularly gifted or talented, but they had both attended the Academy with me. 

It hadn’t taken Iyugi, my footwizard-turned-spy,  long at all to track them down.  Timion had avoided the draft and gone on to become a spellmonger in his own right, down toward the coast, and Dex had married and become the court mage of a small barony in the southern Riverlands after his tour in Farise. 

Both were shocked and surprised at the summons, but they came, nearly at the same time.  We had a lovely little reunion on top of my tower, drinking my wine, and catching up.  They were both amazed and appalled that I had done so well.  I admit I enjoyed showing off for them.  None of us had thought we’d ever amount to much.

When I gave them their stones, I made them both wealthy men.  While nepotism played a role, of course, I also wanted to test to see if a High Mage could benefit his community without conquering it.  I sent them back home after acclimatizing them to their stones and showing them a few things.  I vowed to check up on them to see how they fared.

One mage I raised almost at once was Master Andalnam, a competent enchanter from nearby Sendaria Town.  He and his four daughters had been great friends and allies to Sevendor, particularly in the procurement and construction of magical components.  He worked closely with Banamor, too, acting as an agent-at-port for us at need.  He had been instrumental in building my present to King Rard.  There was no compelling reason to grant him a stone save that he had been of service to us, and I found that sufficient.  He was just as surprised as Dex and Timion had been.  And just as suddenly rich.

My discussion with Ithalia about security made me paranoid.  I had the stones moved, along with the exotic crystals Master Guri had harvested, inside a hidden cave behind a kennel in the Westwood.  Only a few people even knew the place existed, and I had put powerful warding spells on it.  It was as safe as I could imagine, but I still woke up chilled at the thought of someone stealing it.

That was an issue because a few weeks earlier someone tried to steal Tyndal’s witchstone while he was at Inarion Academy. An agent of the criminal gang known as the Brotherhood of the Rat had drugged Tyndal and stolen it briefly, but he had recovered it with Rondal’s help.  That was worrisome.  The Brotherhood was a criminal organization that occasionally dabbled in politics, but if they were looking for witchstones I’d have to take note of them.  I couldn’t imagine they wanted them for peaceful purposes.  That didn’t suit their reputation. 

But I had to place at least some of these damned stones, now.

Of course finding good warmagi for the war effort was a top priority.  There was almost always one of these candidates around Sevendor Castle.  I’d made it a requirement that the warmagi I granted stones to were to submit to a kind of examination, which mostly required them to hang around and do what I told them to while I watched their character.  Unless a candidate was thoroughly vouched for, I was uneasy about putting a stone in the hands of a man I didn’t know personally.