High Mage: Book Five Of The Spellmonger Series (6 page)

It was Lady Isily’s. 

Isily fit into that small class of High Magi who didn’t belong to any of the major orders.  Her stone had been a blatant bribe – not for her, but to secure the assistance of her mistress, the queen.  Queen Grendine was not just our glorious new monarch, co-head of state by Trygg’s grace, she was also in charge of the Kingdom’s secret security apparatus, known to themselves as The Family. 

Queen Grendine was the Mother, the executive authority who set the policies of the agency.  Her daughter, Princess Rardine, was a cruel, self-centered copy of her mother whose schemes to power were already beginning to eclipse those of her dame.  Isily was Rardine’s tool, an Imperially-trained Wenshari mage who was well-schooled in shadowmagic.  That made her an ideal arcane spy and assassin.

Lady Isily was not under my control, save by her oath she took when she took her stone, but then I had no just cause for rescinding her stone.  She had not been out conquering too many domains. She had, however, been quite busy piling up the bodies of her mistress’ political enemies, taking only a little time out to disappear into a secluded, rustic manor in Wenshar and give birth to my illegitimate daughter. 

She had been my lover, after I had taken her oath.  It was not love, just a point of comfort during a time of war.  I had trusted her to take the simple magical precautions to mitigate her fertility, but our coupling had produced a daughter.  I later found out that her conception had been ordered by the Family, by Rardine specifically.  Ordinarily a female mage knows plenty of magic to keep accidental conception from happening – but Isily was
that
loyal.  When her mistress ordered her to bear a spellmonger’s bastard, she opened her legs without question.

Now there was a little girl, a babe only a few months younger than my son, Minalyan, on a remote estate in rural Wenshar.

I placed Isily’s stone down on the outside circle, away from the others.  She was a special case.

Then there was Iyugi, my own magical spy.  A footwizard with a special talent for finding out secrets, the half-blooded mage had earned my trust and respect and pledged his loyal service as my spy in exchange for his small witchstone.  He was an enigma, but he had continued to bring me valuable information on his travels, sometimes on my errands, sometimes on my own.  But it was he who discovered the location of Isily’s secluded manor.  And it was he who arranged for a watch to be kept on the babe. 

But could the footwizard be trusted?  He had yet to prove disloyal, and considering his stock in trade was secret information that said a lot.  But I knew very little about Iyugi.  I placed his stone near to the space where mine would be, on the board.

The Remeran contingent was easy enough to place – they had their own section.  Pentandra’s father Orsirio, her cousin Planus, the current and former Ducal Court Magi, and a few other prominent Resident Adepts of Remere, most of whom were also members of the once-clandestine Order of the Secret Tower.  They went into the right hand upper corner of the board, six of them in all. 

There was the stone for Banamor.  Like Iyugi, he had been a footwizard for years, but instead of secrets Banamor was a packtrader who smuggled magically-valuable materials from place to place.  He was a merchant, not a spy, and more and more he had demonstrated aspirations of becoming a burgher.  Already he was a strong figure on the Sevendor Town Council.  He was Sevendor’s Spellwarden, the official in charge of magic in my domain, answering directly to me.  And he did a fair job.

But he was also accumulating a lot of power and a lot of wealth, quickly.  Two annual magical fairs had brought him a small fortune
and facilitating trade deals in magical components that were so recently heavily regulated had brought him more.  Now he was loaning money out to other artisans and traders in town. 

That was a good thing – mostly – as the investment had allowed a dozen other businesses to thrive.  But it also made the borrowers beholden to the man, and I could already see him subtly using that power.  Banamor was responsible for the drafting of the new proposed Town Charter for Sevendor Town.  It gave a significant amount of power to the small council and proposed mayor, powers ordinarily a lord would reserve for himself, except in a large city.

Banamor’s version would give significant authority to regulate the growing town, but the price for that charter was also attractive.  A sizable initial fee, followed by an annual payment, plus various and sundry remunerations for specific festivals, events, and other feudal obligations.  For instance the Town would be responsible for hiring and outfitting a respectable twelve lances – about sixty men, half of them mounted – or a hundred archers to fulfill their military obligation, and the charter proposed a standing troop of ten permanent watchmen to police the town’s affairs.

But those watchmen were hired by, and reported to, Banamor
exclusively
.  That was a problem, and one reason why we were still in negotiations.

He was also becoming a landlord.  He’d purchased small plots around town where he could, and it seemed like every lot he purchased began growing houses on it, usually twice as many than had stood before.  A new inn and a livery stable were being built even now, thanks to the steady stream of itinerate magi who had found their way to Sevendor and the constant flow of craftsman here to reconstruct my castle.

Banamor’s rise was not a threat, precisely – the man still seemed perfectly loyal to me – but it was worthy of note.  I could handle aggressive magelords making greedy land grabs.  Finding competent people to run my affairs was difficult.  My Spellwarden would have to offend me quite a bit before I’d consider replacing him.  Banamor’s stone went near Iyugi’s, next to Olmeg the Green’s and behind the stones which represented my three apprentices.

One by one I placed the labeled stones on the board, and Alya was right: it did look like I was a kid playing marbles.  But what a great, chaotic, tenuous game it was, with plenty more pieces arriving every moment.

The black marbles were last, of course.  They were easy to group, but I was loath to touch them.  They represented the dark heart of humanity that will sell out its kin for power or out of weakness.  The magi who worked with the Dead God did so knowing that Shereul’s ultimate goal was the extinction of their own kind – and yet they worked for him anyway.

There was Master Garkesku, my one-time professional rival in Boval Vale.  He had been captured by the goblins because he was hiding instead of escaping like everyone else.  He had replaced the stone I’d reclaimed from him and accepted one from Shereul’s dark priesthood after slaying one of their number in ritual combat. 

He was advising the goblins, now, and living like a lord in a stolen castle in the Penumbra.  The lands that surrounded the goblin’s territory were filled with slaves captured and tortured into service after they participated in an especially dark ritual.  They were the Soulless, those humans who had proven their loyalty to the Goblin King by slaying five other human beings on the sacrificial stone rather than die themselves.  The worst of them had also consumed human flesh, the way their goblin masters did. 

But Garky the Mediocre was not the only Dark Mage.  A vicious warmage, Jacarthi of Suars, had accepted a stone from the goblins merely so he could enjoy the power he wielded.  He wasn’t the sort I’d grant a stone to, anyway.  His sadism was legendary before his ascension, and now he did not even have the restraints of humanity to keep him from his maniacal ways.  He had been deployed in Gilmora to assist in the slave-capturing part of the Dead God’s operation, and he’d been highly successful.

There was Pumeer, a Remeran mage of Imperial descent who begun as a sworn brother of the Iron Ring – the royal order dedicated to containing the goblins.  Pumeer had changed his cloak and managed to secure a stone from the goblins.  He was now in residence in a fortified manor within the southern Penumbra, training goblin shamans and keeping the human slaves in line.  The Iron Ring wanted the traitor badly, but Pumeer’s power had kept the order away from his stout little castle.

Then there were the three others, known only by our intelligence service as Mask, Cloak and Buckler.  Mask was a human mage who constantly wore a black satin bag over his head, making him mysterious.  Cloak was a tall, thin female mage who bore a strange-looking black mantle and who sounded a lot like an enchanter or thaumaturge by the reports.  She had not been seen in battle, but there were reports of her in several strange places.

And Buckler was a warmage who had taken command of some human auxiliaries who had been bullied or threatened into service of Shereul.  Buckler was adept at using his warmagic at weakening defenses around the castles in Gilmora.  Unlike most warmagi, he carried a small shield on his left arm bearing a lightning bolt design.  Like Mask and Cloak, his identity and origins were unknown.  All that was known was that the three had actively fought to weaken defenses and further the goals of the Goblin King.  That was some puppet live goblin that Shereul used to administer his temporal realm, from what the Iron Ring could report.

Six Dark Magi.  So far.  But I had a sinking feeling there would be more, as they proved their worth to their depraved masters.  Pumeer was gathering wealth like a miser, even treating with lords outside of the Penumbra for trade.  Jacarthi was piling up pillage from stately old Gilmoran manors in legendary quantities.  Buckler had over a thousand men under his command.  With such enticements to give, there were plenty of incentives to betray your species.

That made my job even harder.  I not only had to continue to distribute the witchstones at hand and regulate their use, I had to do so in such a way that gave at least a promise of hope for talented magi who were tempted by Shereul’s grim offers. 

Alya was right, this was a game.  A game where I didn’t know the rules, and I wasn’t playing against a real opponent – unless you wanted to count Chaos, herself.

Chapter Two

The Summons To Council

I couldn’t say that I wasn’t expecting the summons to the secret council of the Tree Folk, but when it came I wasn’t prepared.

The Alka Alon had sent me three ambassadors the previous year, after the birth of my son magically transformed the castle and surrounding mountain into the magical substance known as snowstone.  The Alka Alon were fascinated with the stuff.  I was convinced that that’s why they’d sent the three beautiful emissaries, transgenically enchanted to appear as incredibly gorgeous women, despite their usual objections to interfering with mortal affairs. 

Ostensibly the three beautiful ladies were there to guide and advise me as I blazed a new trail into the unknown world of magelording, or something like that.  In reality they were investigating the origin and character of the substance, keeping an eye on me, and hoping I didn’t notice.  Snowstone’s properties had every human mage who had seen it fascinated, and the effect on the Alka Alon was if anything even more pronounced.

I knew very little about them, but I had picked up a few basics in the last year.  The three ambassadors – Ladies Ithalia, Fallawen, and Varen– were a kind of temporary group who represented the permanent council of Alka Alon lords.  Since they had proven incredibly helpful and generous since they arrived and asked for a place to build their embassy, no one had looked too closely at their motivations.

Except for me and maybe Pentandra.  We weren’t turning down their help, but neither were we accepting it without pause and consideration.  We wanted to know who we were dealing with before we got into their debt too deeply.  Dealings with the Tree Folk had historically been fraught with misunderstandings and cross-purposes, if the epics of the Magocracy period were to be believed.  Just because they were the ubiquitously friendly Tree Folk didn’t mean they necessarily had our best interests in mind.  I tried to keep in mind just what their interests might be.

The Alka Alon were interested in snowstone, and in the greater struggle against the Dead God.  We also knew that they had a historically volatile relationship with humans, to the point that they had essentially withdrawn from human affairs for the last four centuries.  And we knew enough about their culture from the epics they had passed to us to know they could be passionate, wise, subtle and insanely vindictive.  Their mastery of magic and their thousand-year or more lifespans made them powerful allies and deadly opponents.  Proceeding with caution when dealing with such powerful forces was just a good idea, even as we gratefully accepted their assistance.

But we hadn’t known anything about their timetable, their organization, or their goals, thanks to their lack of intercourse with humanity.  I’d been warned that I would be summoned soon to speak before the council that ruled the affairs of the Alka Alon.  But when you’re dealing with immortals, “soon” could mean a decade or two, I suspected.  That’s even what my friends the emissaries had counseled me candidly when it came to dealing with their superiors. 

The first glimmer that something was happening was when we quite unexpectedly received their invitation the night I closed the Spring Court.

“How went court this morning, Magelord?” Sir Ryff of Hosendor asked, politely, at dinner that evening as he sat down early, his hands still wet.  The knight had just returned from light duty inspecting the tiny garrison at Caolan’s Pass.  The high mountain pass would soon be home to a proper gatehouse, properly manned, but until then I liked to keep it well-tended.  Like Sir Staldin, Sir Ryff was serving his liege, but on his own behalf, not that of another lord.