The man in black ascended the stairs and greeted the necromancers. Xander took the man’s hand in greeting, “What have you learned?”
“Alia knows that Byrn is within this tower,” Ryonus removed his hood and took a seat next to Riona. “Tomlin figured it out.”
“He is a sly one,” Xander admitted irritably. However, his frustration was with being found out at all rather than that it being done by Tomlin, who held an unwavering loyalty for Alia ever since she rescued him from the streets. He would have encouraged that kind of genuine loyalty if it had not been turned against him. “Does she intend to bring this information to me and demand to see Byrn or will she try to circumvent me?”
“Neither for now. I told her of the kingdom army approaching and convinced her to wait until after the battle had been won, but if I had to guess her mood, then I’d say she would try to go around you to hear the tale from Byrn’s lips. She has not said what, but there is something about your description of Byrn’s capture that does not ring true to her.”
Xander took the third seat by the hearth. To hear that his child did not trust in him was discouraging. It may be best that once this war was over he would never see her again. “Excellent, you have done well in postponing her.”
“If I may make a suggestion, whatever you intend to do with Byrn, you should do it and then get rid of the body as soon as possible,” Ryonus proposed the idea politely. He had just the right combination of loyalty and fear after witnessing the destruction of Baj. “Then when Alia comes to the tower and finds nothing she will have no further recourse but to accept your… version of events.”
“Do not presume to know what I have planned,” Xander snapped, “Byrn is not going to die. He is far too valuable to simply be killed. Is there anything else I should know about Alia’s plans?”
“No, sir.” Ryonus bowed his head in submission.
“Good, then let us prepare for war.”
Ryonus and Riona left Xander alone in the tower. Ryonus did not like being left in the dark, but he understood the reason for it since he was working so closely with such a skilled pair of enchanters and his own knowledge could be turned against him. Perhaps Xander was too hard on Ryonus, but the man should keep his opinions to himself on subjects he knew nothing about. No, Byrn Firemas would not die anytime soon. Everything was fitting together quite nicely. Even the kingdom had played a part in that by sending their army here and win or lose it will be the grand necromancer who sits on Aurelia’s throne when all is done.
Chapter 18
A heavy wind blew through the tower and the magic-worked stone cage that Xander had imprisoned Byrn in. Then another and another, as he slowly lurched awake. It was always windy this high up and he wondered if Xander thought he was doing Byrn a favor by leaving the shutters open during the day so that he could get some natural sunlight in here. The view of the tower’s uppermost ceiling greeted his still groggy eyes.
His fingers traced the outline of one of the anti-magic runes that lined the stone cell. It had no door. Xander said there was no need for one yet. Byrn conjured up ideas to break free, but all of them were useless without magic. Xander knew how difficult the cells in Baj were to escape from personal experience and he clearly used that knowledge in the creation of this room. How long had Byrn been held here? It was long enough for him to lose track, but guessed it had been a month or more.
If they were going to kill him, then why not do it already? The council of masters must have some reason for keeping him alive up here. To Byrn it seemed that there were only two viable options: Kill him or let him go. Keeping him imprisoned served no one. Perhaps it was by Xander’s will that he was spared. That would explain why the necromancer was the only person to visit him since he woke up in here, but that didn’t seem right. Alia would have come at some point by now either to console or condemn him. She was not the type to sit idly by.
Sane said that Xander planned to control him or steal his power. That was why he lived. It was an unsettling thought, but again why wait? Why not just do whatever he was going to do without hesitation?
The sudden sound of explosions could be heard coming from all directions. Byrn wished that his cage extended out to the windows on either side so that he could look out and see what was happening. A second round of explosions soon followed. To the south and west of Wolfsbane stood farmlands and forest. To the north and east of Wolfsbane the sea rolled in.
The Collective was under attack by Aurelia’s army and their navy.
***
Alia sat at her old workbench and held the now useless collar in her hand. Hundreds of magicians were arriving outside of the castle’s walls wearing these collars and there was nothing she could do to help them. Many of them would die. Many of the magicians inside the castle would die too.
The kingdom army was allowed entrance into the town without a struggle. Everyone had already evacuated and was now holed up in the easier to defend castle. Let them burn the town if they desired. Everything of value had already been moved inside the castle’s walls.
They knew the army was coming and had prepared for that. There was ample warning, but the surprise was the arrival of the navy coming from the eastern shore. Their spotters had been watching to the north, but saw nothing. It was clear now that the navy took a very circumspect course to keep well out of view and approach from the side that they had not expected. Perhaps if they knew that before, the council would not have been so sure of the Collective’s superiority despite the disadvantage of numbers. Then again maybe it would not have mattered. Her father single-handedly killed ten thousand people in Colum. Maybe he could do so again. Of course the circumstances were different. These were soldiers ready for a fight and backed by Kenzai and other magicians, not unprepared shopkeepers and city folk.
Elementalists, necromancers, and manipulationists would be up on the walls and ramparts preparing to rain down whatever power they could to squash the kingdom soldiers. Enchanters like her held little value in a fight like this. There were some traditional defenses, trebuchets and the like pointed out to sea, but nothing of the caliber needed to repel a whole navy.
The Collective boasted four hundred magicians and many of them were versed in magical combat with the power to take out a dozen men with ease, but still Alia could not help feeling troubled. The addition of the naval forces would mean that they would have to stretch their forces thinner than expected.
She could hear explosions all at once and they seemed to come from everywhere. Avelice began to cry and Kaleb tried to calm her, but soon regretfully handed her back to Alia. Another round of explosions came and she fished the rune to Lion’s Landing out of her pocket for comfort. If it became necessary and it looked like they would be defeated every magician that could cast a transportation spell was given a rune that would take them to a safe location so that they could regroup and begin the fight anew. Sane told them before his unexpected departure that the collared magicians were never taught that spell, because their jailers did not want them to have any spell knowledge that would make it easier for them to escape should something happen to their collars, so any runes found on a dead body would be useless to them.
The battle of Wolfsbane had begun.
***
Wind elementalists did their best to repel the iron balls that flew at Wolfsbane Castle, but for every one that got past them another hit the magical barrier of a manipulation magician, driving them to their knees from the impacts, or smashing into the walls.
That was on the land. On the sea the magicians did not fare much better as cannons fired across the water. Some of their cannons struck the walls in an attempt to cause a breach, but other soared much higher so that they would land somewhere within the castle grounds in an attack that was clearly an attempt to cause panic as much as genuine destruction.
Elementalists more suited to the nature of water attempted to manipulate the sea itself to wash away the warships or at least throw off their aim. They were backed by a ret
inue of the most powerful necromancers the Collective had at its disposal who summoned water elementals, spiritual creatures that took the shapes of giant half-men and were composed of water. Each one required tremendous energy to manifest even for a master, but there was no creature better able to withstand a cannon’s fire and do massive damage to a ship than one of those beasts.
Xander watched the battle unfold in all directions from his tower. His soldiers were outnumbered at greater than twenty-five men to one, but they fought bravely. Refusing to give any ground whether on land or sea. He did not want this fight yet. Apprentices and journeymen that still required much training made up two thirds of his army and were not ready force a conflict of this scale. He would have preferred another year or two to complete their educations, but the gods were rarely so kind to magicians. Never the less, he felt a sense of pride as he watched them do battle.
He descended the tower and made his way to the front lines. Riona was summoning an earth elemental and sending it out into the midst of the kingdom’s front lines to join a host of other spirits and magical creatures summoned by her fellow necromancers and bolstered by magicians using fire and lightning from the walls.
Kenzai were dispersed throughout the army. Their glowing weapons and anti-magical talents were wreaking havoc among the spirits they faced. War wraiths were being pushed back and dispelled almost as fast as they were summoned. Minor spirits and spells would not so easily defeat the ancient enemies of magic.
The grandmaster longed to attach himself to one of these young men who fought at either side of him and absorb their essence to fuel his most powerful spells, but it would be foolish to attempt such a thing with so many witnesses. Instead he would have to rely on his own weakening powers for a little bit longer. Dark tentacles loosed from his fingertips and snaked across the open field where arrows, magic, and cannon balls flew seeking unwary soldiers that he could use to fuel his magic.
The tentacles latched onto several of the soldiers and for an instant Xander felt a surge of power rush toward him before it was immediately cut off and the black feelers could not find a new host to attach to. He extended his vision and looked more closely at the soldiers and cursed aloud. From each man who a tentacle touched a blue flare of light burst from his chest. He looked even closer and could make out the familiar symbol of a magic absorbing rune etched into each of their armors. If he had been closer, then he would have been able to overpower the rune or mar it enough to render it useless, but from across the battlefield the runes had won out. Those damnable runes would weaken every spell that came near them. Every ball of fire or magical spirit would be drained of some of its energy. Many of those soldiers would still die, but they would be that much more difficult to kill and the runes would act as an erosion to the Collective magicians’ reserves of power.
Kingdom magicians sent balls of flame and water toward the castle walls and main gate. They were stationed at either side of the regular battalions away from the rune-guarded soldiers, but were already beginning to suffer heavy losses. Xander noted that the commander of this army did not seem concerned with protecting his magical units as expected.
Xander was about to check on the magicians defending against the warships when several blasts of blue flame broke through magical barriers and seared some of the magicians on the wall to his far right. All magic ceased in that area and a wave of cannonballs came crashing into the wall at that point scattering the magicians stationed there. He ran to their aid even as he ordered others to move into that area and reestablish a defense.
“Are you all right, son?” he asked the first magician that he came to- a young man in his teens. He had dirty, brown hair and wore a brown apprentice’s cloak. He looked in pain, but no injuries were immediately apparent.
The young man coughed and allowed Xander to help him to his feet. “I am unharmed, my lord. Just feel a little…” He was unable to give words to the way he felt, but Xander had a guess of the cause. He reached out to feel the subtle flow of magic that all magicians exuded as naturally as they drew a breath and felt nothing from this young man. It was as he feared.
“You’re magic has been expended by a Kenzai flame. Go and get some rest,” Xander told him. “You’ll be fine by morning.” To the others he shouted, “Don’t allow the blue fires to touch you. They will burn away your magic in an instant.” Several nearby men nodded and passed on the message even as more Kenzai attacks came interspersed from the captive magicians and traditional siege weaponry.
The magicians became stretched thin as their numbers lessened from the Kenzai magic and the occasional attrition over the next hour and the kingdom’s army pressed closer crowding into the town’s streets and hiding behind buildings to avoid the magicians’ assaults. Explosions could be heard from the streets below to Xander’s surprise. These were not the explosions of the far off warships or the army’s cannons, but something much closer. A look to the streets below revealed the mystery as men jumped out from behind homes and shops with a stick in hand and pointed it at several magicians along the wall. A loud series of bangs was followed by smoke wafting from the holes of those sticks and one of the magicians fell over clutching at his chest. He knew these things. Tomlin carried one around with him like a trophy. It was a hand-cannon and as the name implied it could be easily transported in one’s hand and fire little metal balls wherever they pointed.
“Those are hand-cannons!” It was Alia. She must have gotten fed up with waiting in safety. The role of damsel was one that she was not accustomed to playing and it would seem that this time would not be any different. “Remember what you have been told and don’t get rattled. Elementalists make a priority of targeting them. It takes a minute or so for them to reload, so they are slow and their weapons can be easily disabled with your spells. Fire and lightning will ignite the weapons’ powder causing them to explode prematurely. Water can douse their powder and wind can blow it away. You have nothing to fear from them.” Their eyes met from across the wall and Xander nodded in approval. She nodded back, but quickly returned to the task of directing these men.
The magician who was struck in the chest was quickly dying when Xander made it to him. The iron ball was lodged near his heart and his valuable blood source was pouring out. “You will soon be dead,” Xander told him matter-of-factly, “but your death does not have to be in vain. I could use your life energy to lay waste to the men who did this to you.”
“Do it,” said the wounded magician in a hurried gasp and Xander placed his hand to the man’s wound. He pulled the dying magician’s energy into his own body and felt the surge of power course through him. He would make this man’s death count for something.
Black energy emitted from him in waves as he formed the power into a terrible spell. His staff shook in his elderly hands as he pushed the energy out and created a dark ball of magic about the size of a man’s fist. The last time he had used this spell was at Baj when he laid waste to the prison. Then it was a far more impressive spell powered by the lives of thousands of people. However, it would still serve his needs well and give the kingdom a reminder of why they feared magicians the same way that a rabbit knows to fear a hawk.
He pushed his staff downward in the general direction of the hiding kingdom soldiers who were in the middle of reloading their hand-cannons. The ball pulsed its black energy as it slowly made its decent, but Xander did not wait to watch the effect. Instead he made his way a little further down and took aim at another group of soldiers, this time with Kenzai in their ranks and sent another black ball in their direction. Some of the magicians that were with him at Baj saw the small black orbs making their way to Xander’s intended targets and warned those around them to get down.
Then he saw an even more appealing target. Far off beyond the town and in the middle of the farmland stood an array of command tents. They were far out of range of most spells and so the men there who orchestrated this conflict surely felt safe from the deaths they set into motion on this day.
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Xander gathered the last of his power for one more energy ball and sent it floating over the battlefield. It was halfway towards the command tents when the first black ball of energy exploded a short way from the castle’s main gate. The ground rocked at the force and several magicians had to grab the wall to keep from inadvertently falling over though most had listened to their fellow magicians’ warnings and were already braced for the impact. A dozen buildings of wood and clay were ripped asunder by the blast at its core along with any living creatures caught in the immediate area.
The second blast occurred only a half minute later and the effect was no different to Xander’s pleasure. More buildings and bodies were thrown outward from the violent release of magic and Xander thought he could feel the dark countenance of his goddess, Kassani, smiling at him. He had given her many new souls on this day and would give her more if she willed it.
Already kingdom soldiers and Kenzai were falling back to the outskirts of Wolfsbane. Only the magicians with their control collars remained, because no one had thought to tell them to retreat. Fortunately the Collective did not want to hurt their collared brethren any more than necessary and they were left relatively unmolested.
The third energy ball was now descending on the command tents and the nobility that lead their foot soldiers here to die were scattering like cockroaches. The ball was going to fall a little short and it appeared that many of the kingdom’s leaders would have enough warning from the first two explosions to get out of the blast radius. It was a shame that he would fail to remove the military’s head this day, but he took some solace in watching their personal tents, the luxuries that were always within such places, and a retinue of Kenzai masters who thought they could drain the energy from the spell get ripped apart once the explosion triggered.
Magician Prince Page 14
