The Western Wizard
Read The Western Wizard Online
Authors: Mickey Zucker Reichert
the summons that opened a demon-sized pathway to the plain of Chaos. Almost immediately, dread enveloped the Wizard. Gradually, it took a visible form, a tarry stream, like smoke but more solid, an oily, shapeless blackness. Carcophan felt his magic pulse as the demon struggled to escape his spell-cast bands of binding, and pain hammered through the Wizard’s head, nearly breaking his concentration.
As Carcophan tightened the web of magics, each individual band glowed red against the blackness, and, finally, the demon ceased its fight. It took the shape of a massive serpent that spanned nearly the entire room.
The demon spoke, though its serpent jaws did not move. “Wizard, you called me to your world at the cost of your followers, who will die in an agony you cannot imagine. Your wards are trifling. When I shatter them, I will joyfully slaughter you first.”
Carcophan ignored the taunts. “By Odin’s Law I have called you here. You must answer my questions and perform a service to the best of your knowledge and ability.” Having spoken the necessary words of binding, Carcophan had committed both himself and the demon. Now the struggle of powers would truly begin. . . .
DAW Books Presents
the Finest in Fantasy by
MICKEY ZUCKER REICHERT
FLIGHTLESS FALCON
SPIRIT FOX (with Jennifer Wingert)
The Novels of Nightfall:
THE LEGEND OF NIGHTFALL
THE RETURN OF NIGHTFALL
The Books of Barakhai:
THE BEASTS OF BARAKHAI
THE LOST DRAGONS OF BARAKHAI
The Renshai Trilogy:
THE LAST OF THE RENSHAI
THE WESTERN WIZARD
CHILD OF THUNDER
The Renshai Chronicles:
BEYOND RAGNAROK
PRINCE OF DEMONS
THE CHILDREN OF WRATH
The Renshai Saga:
FLIGHT OF THE RENSHAI
FIELDS OF WRATH
The Bifrost Guardians
Omnibus Editions:
VOLUME ONE:
GODSLAYER
SHADOW CLIMBER
DRAGONRANK MASTER
VOLUME TWO:
SHADOW’S REALM
BY CHAOS CURSED
THE WESTERN
WIZARD
Book Two of
The Renshai Trilogy
M
ICKEY
Z
UCKER
R
EICHERT
Copyright © 1992 by Mickey Zucker Reichert.
All Rights Reserved.
Cover art by Jody A. Lee.
Interior map by Michael Gilbert.
DAW Book Collectors No. 887.
ISBN: 978-1-101-66388-2
First Printing, August 1992
 | DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES —MARCA REGISTRADA HECHO EN U.S.A. |
Version_1
To Mark Moore
for listening
(and much more).
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the following people:
Sheila Gilbert, Jonathan Matson, Jody Lee, Mikie Gilbert, and D. Allan Drummond.
Also, my “evil stepsons”: Benjamin Jordan Moore & Jonathan Lager Moore, with love.
“We . . . were by nature the children of wrath.”
—Ephesians 2:3
26. A Sword of Gray; A Sword of White
28. The Symbol of the Coiled Serpent
For centuries, the Amirannak Sea had kicked spindrift on the ragged Northland shores, but the Northern Sorceress, Trilless, watched waters glazed with calm. Perched upon a seaside cliff in the country of Asci, she stared into the fjord, watching wind scarcely ruffle ocean the color of steel. The tide tugged so gently that the waters barely seemed to pulse in time with her heartbeat.
Trilless had come to this unpopulated shoreline for the quiet solace it offered, yet the ancient champion of all goodness found no peace within or without. For all its stillness, the ocean seemed coiled and restless, locked into the dark instant of lull that preceded the most violent storms. As if in answer, the memories and surviving slivers of identity from Trilless’ eighteen predecessors seemed to writhe within her. Always before, they had remained quiescent, a conglomerate of experiences and references she called upon in time of need. Now, they heaved and fidgeted like tempest-wracked waves, while the ocean itself remained uncharacteristically stagnant.
More than four centuries ago, the ceremony that had established Trilless as the Northern Sorceress, one of the four Cardinal Wizards, had also, by necessity, claimed the life of her direct predecessor. Trilless knew that the pool of knowledge granted to her by that ceremony made her the most powerful of her line, just as her own successor would gain the benefit of her lore and become even more wise, knowledgeable, and skilled. The first four Cardinal Wizards established by Odin, including the original Northern Sorceress, had no magical powers. Haunted by dreams and images, they had written or spoken their prophecies, leaving them for later, more adept
successors to fulfill. Now, Trilless found herself haunted by the first prediction of the first Northern Sorceress:
In an age of change
When Chaos shatters Odin’s ward
And the Cardinal Wizards forsake their vows
A Renshai shall come forward.
Hero of the Great War
He will hold legend and destiny in his hand
And wield them like a sword.
Too late shall he be known unto you:
The Golden Prince of Demons.
Clearly, that promised age of change had come. Trilless knew a tense expectancy that seemed to follow her, an inescapable current that suffused the world and all the creatures in it. Some of the tenets had already come to pass. Goaded by Carcophan, who was the current Southern Wizard, King Siderin of the Eastlands had launched the Great War against the mixed races of the Westlands.
Trilless’ brow knit. A scowl formed naturally on her creased features at the thought of Carcophan, her evil opposite. Law and propriety had barred her from directly observing or taking part in this war. But, through magic, she had glimpsed those parts which involved Northmen. Only one of the eighteen Northern tribes had chosen to aid the Westerners in the War; the Vikerians had gone, allied to the Town of Santagithi. Their second-in-command, a lieutenant called Valr Kirin, showed promise as a warrior and as a possible champion of goodness. But, despite his competence, the hero of the Great War was not Kirin “The Slayer.”
