Pawn Of The Planewalker (Book 5)

by Ron Collins

  When he was finished, Garrick left the mage’s room as he had found it. He wanted nothing of this man beyond what he had now, and there were still horses to release.

  Garrick completed those chores, then left the manor.

  The mage’s life force warmed him as he picked his way down the rocky outcropping to reclaim his mount. Two more Lectodinians remained on the list of those who had raided Alistair. When he was done with them, he would go west to hunt Koradictines. If his planning was adequate and he spaced them out properly, his tour could keep his hunger fed throughout the winter.

  Garrick set his jaw and began to ride.

  Will—who was perhaps twelve years old but was maturing rapidly—would be waiting. Garrick wasn’t looking forward to the boy’s wide-eyed stares, or the questions they would bring.

  Will had joined him with great enthusiasm, and Garrick had taken the boy along because he felt something that was hard to explain about him—a kinship, or a connection like Will was a brother of some kind. And for his part, Will seemed to think similarly. The boy just understood Garrick, he listened like no one else did. The boy instinctively knew that Garrick’s magic was different from others, and seemed to sense when it was best to stay away from him and when it was safe to be nearby.

  And, of course, Will had saved his life.

  Convincing him to stay behind as Garrick hunted was getting harder. But he remembered what it was like to be Will’s age. He knew exactly how hard it was to take care of yourself, better yet someone else. Will shouldn’t have to deal with that, and Garrick would do what it took to keep him safe.

  When he returned to camp, however, the boy was nowhere to be found.

  Will’s horse was still tied to a tree, and their fire pit still gave off thin wisps of smoke. The bedrolls had been prepared, but were not yet loaded onto the animals.

  Hackles raised along the nape of Garrick’s neck.

  “Will?” he said in a low voice.

  He felt the presence of two people sitting behind a slab of shale that jutted from the ground nearby. He pulled his sword silently and reached for his link. He had been an idiot to leave Will alone, a fool to think the Lectodinians would take the swath of destruction he was cutting through their ranks sitting down.

  He brought magefire to his fingertips and he turned the corner.

  A mage was sitting on the rock beside Will, but he was not clad in Lectodinian blue or Koradictine red. This man was tall and thin, and dressed in black trousers. A travel cape, also black, was pulled over his green tunic.

  “Garrick!” Will said, standing up.

  Garrick gritted his teeth as he calmed himself. His magic had its head, and it was everything he could do to pull it back. He gazed at the young man standing beside Will.

  “The Freeborn were to leave me be,” Garrick said.

  “Don’t worry about Jawsie,” Will said. “He’s got a message for you.”

  “Jawsie?” Garrick replied, still holding his blade before him. “I don’t recognize you.”

  “My name is Jaw Millerson,” the mage said, holding out a hand. “I’m new in the Torean House.”

  Garrick finally sheathed his blade.

  “A message?”

  “Indeed, Lord,” the mage said. “Two messages, actually.”

  “Go on.”

  “The first is that Superior J’ravi needs your voice. The house is struggling over several key points.”

  Garrick winced.

  In a politically deft step that was made to draw the Freeborn together, his friend Darien—a man without magic—had appointed Garrick to his board of consultants. Garrick promised to support his friend, but he had no interest in sitting at a table when there were Lectodinians left to hunt.

  “And the second message?”

  “Commander J’ravi wishes you to know that his father, Commander of the Dorfort guard, is not well, sir.”

  Garrick sighed.

  Will, too, seemed to deflate. Darien’s father had kept Will at the manor during the battle at God’s Tower, and the boy had grown close to the commander.

  “Is he going to be all right?” Will said.

  “The physician cannot say, sir. But there are rumors that Commander J’ravi may be seeing his last.”

  Garrick’s heart dropped further. If Darien were to lose his father now it would be a great blow, and one that would hit double–hard with the stress of keeping a house of mages together.

  “Well, Will,” he said. “It appears we’re going to spend some time in a city after all.”

  Will, who had been enjoying their trek through the wooded countryside, gave an empty grin. “All right,” he said. “If nothing else it’ll be nice to have Imelda and Daventry’s cooking for a while.”

  Chapter 4

  “Do I have your full attention?” Ettril said.

  Four mages nodded, each glancing at Iona’s body, which was tacked to the wall with iron spikes. Ettril sat at a low table that held a single sheet of paper and a quill on its polished surface.

  The four mages were Quin Sar, a sharp, experienced wizard who had been in the order since he was a boy, Fil, a legacy mage from a line in good stead, Hirl-enat, an elder—passed over again and again for his final trigger, but who spent his days watching the goings on within the order like an ancient buzzard, cackling with glee at the occasional carcass but content to wait until others had finished before feeding on them himself—and then Neuma, a young woman of obvious ambition who had been climbing the ranks swiftly—perhaps too swiftly, Ettril thought.

  They were in a chamber under de’Mayer Island, a room large enough to hold three times as many sorcerers. Blood–tinted magelight provided illumination. The mages sat, wrapping robes over their shoulders to ward against the chamber’s unremitting chill.

  “We are now the core of the order,” Ettril said.

  “Do we have enough mages left to even be an order?” Neuma asked.

  “There she goes again,” said Hirl-enat.

  “What’s that supposed to mean, old man?” Neuma snapped.

  “It means you’ve been able to step over other mages by exposing their weaknesses,” Hirl-enat said in a crusty voice, his bushy brow twisting like a wooly worm. “But I think you’re making a mistake trifling with the superior. Unless, of course,” he glanced at the young woman, “you intend to be the superior?”

  “I would never—”

  “That’s enough,” Ettril said. “We have an order until I no longer draw breath. Have no mistake about that.”

  The mages quieted.

  Neuma sat in a silent huff, and Hirl-enat gave a satisfied snuffle. Fil merely shifted about nervously.

  Quin Sar, however, stared with distracted indifference. Ettril knew how dangerous it was to mistake Quin Sar’s expression, though. The mage had not come by his powers randomly. Quin Sar saw and heard all, and he possessed a sadistic streak that provided him with intuitively divine and considerably effective ways to expose weaknesses.

  Ettril scanned the four of them, his hand resting on the ivory ball at the end of his staff.

  “Neuma’s question is fairly made, though,” Ettril said. “The Koradictine order is suffering the greatest peril of its long history, and it’s up to us to take action now.”

  “So, what do we do?” Neuma asked.

  Ettril twisted his hand over the ivory orb. A translucent map appeared in the air before him, de’Mayer Island far to the west, the mainland looming eastward, the Daggertooth mountains to the north. Badwall Canyon sat on the mainland’s western coast, Dorfort commanded the central and southeastern plains. The wildlands of Whitestone, Warville, and Crystal Island lay to the far south.

  “The Lectodinians were not damaged at God’s Tower as gravely as we were,” Ettril said.

  A rune symbolized the solitary mountain where the orders had recently clashed. Captain el’Mor was supposedly trapped there, locked, if rumor was true, in a loop of magic with the Lectodinian god–touched mage.

  �
�They have a stronghold somewhere here, in the Vapor Peaks.”

  An area to the north glowed with green enhancements.

  “Where do we still have people?” Quin Sar said, his voice smooth as water over worn stone.

  “Scattered,” Neuma replied self–assuredly. “Our communications have broken down, and we don’t have a power base we can count on.”

  “Neuma,” Ettril said, fighting the urge to strangle her.

  Hirl-enat’s accusation of Neuma’s ambition had a strong vein of truth to it—she was ambitious, and the order was in chaos. It would not be beyond her to seize such an opportunity. I should kill her now, he thought. But he needed her for what would come next, and if he let his emotions get the best of him now, his order would be done.

  Neuma sat upright under Ettril’s questioning gaze. “Did you not want the truth, Lord Superior?”

  “I see the truth,” Ettril said, making his voice sharp as a stiletto and his gaze sharper still. “Never doubt that.”

  The young mage sat quietly, her mouth firmly shut but her gaze placed just as firmly on Ettril’s.

  “After the fiasco at God’s Tower,” Ettril said, turning briskly back to the map, “our people are scattered. Our first task will be to gather them up again.”

  Quin Sar spoke. “They won’t follow unless we have something to give them.”

  “What do you mean?” Ettril asked, knowing he could count on Quin Sar to lead the conversation where it needed to go.

  “If our mages trusted our viability, they would be here already.”

  “You’re right, of course,” Ettril responded. “We need to show them we are still powerful, we need to show them we can create a dominant order.”

  “Yes,” Quin Sar said. “They need to know we can survive.”

  Ettril stifled a knowing grin. Quin Sar, for all his idiosyncrasies, was a man who had come far and would go further. Unlike Neuma, he had opened the door for his superior to step through first.

  “And for that we need to rid the plane of the one force who can truly stand in our way,” Ettril said, pausing for effect. “We know now that Garrick, the Torean god–touched mage, has returned to Dorfort. I will travel there, and I will bring back his head.”

  “I think that’s a mistake,” Neuma said.

  “Do you?” Ettril said, stepping precisely to cast a dark shadow over the younger mage. “Do you think I am too old to suffer such a trip? Or maybe too far removed from the arts to be able to cast against the god–touched? Do you take me for feeble?”

  “No, Superior,” Neuma replied, her gaze suddenly unable to meet Ettril’s. “I did not say that.”

  “Then I suggest you speak clearly.”

  “I was in the east before the mage war,” Neuma said. “I chased Garrick across the plane, so I know a bit about him. I’ve seen him slip away from powerful mages. I’ve seen him kill. I’m not suggesting he would best you, Lord Superior, but I think direct confrontation in Dorfort is a losing proposition.”

  “And you have a better suggestion.”

  Neuma hesitated.

  “Perhaps it’s not a better suggestion. But I have an alternative you might want to consider.”

  Ettril nodded, smirking inside. The young woman could learn. That was good. He straightened.

  “Then let me hear it.”

  “Among the reasons Garrick was able to defeat our god–touched mage, as well as the Lectodinian’s, was that he chose the battleground, and he selected a place where he could separate our mages.”

  Ettril remained stoic.

  Quin Sar nodded.

  “As powerful as you are, Superior, we should not lose the fact that Garrick is god–touched, and should not be trifled with. I think we need to dictate the events of your meeting.”

  “How do you propose we do that?” Quin Sar asked before Ettril was forced to.

  “Garrick has a weakness,” Neuma said. “We should use it to bring him to a place of our choosing, and at a time of our convenience.”

  All eyes were definitely on Neuma, now.

  Warming to the attention, the young mage spoke of her time in Caledena, and her experiences with Garrick. When she was finished, Ettril Dor-Entfar, Lord Superior of the Koradictine order, had a plan that would make the statement he so desperately wanted to make, and a plan that would make Garrick come to him.

  As they broke their session, Ettril let his gaze fall over Neuma. He had not gotten to his position without sensing the depths of his membership, and his gaze took in a woman of action, a woman of intellect, and a woman of political acumen.

  Not at all, he thought, like Iona.

  He realized, now more than ever, that Neuma was a woman to be watched.

  Chapter 5

  Garrick let loose the arrow, and the bow gave a satisfying twang. The bolt flew with a wobble, burying itself into the farthest edge of a target thirty paces away.

  “Hoping you can best your apprentice, Garrick?”

  He grumbled, and turned to face Reynard. They’d been in Dorfort less than a week, and already he was feeling restless.

  “Will is not my apprentice, yet. I am not teaching him any magic.”

  Reynard shrugged. “Either way, the boy’s still a better shot than you’ll ever be.”

  Garrick rested his hand on the tip of his long bow.

  He wore a black jerkin that was slightly too large for him, and breeches tucked into boots that came to mid–calf. Sweat glistened from his brow and brought him a chill despite the unseasonable midday heat. A pair of guardsmen fought a practice bout at the edge of earshot, grim and silent during their skirmishes, but jesting loudly between. Garrick was fighting a headache due to a lack of sleep, and the effort he expended fighting the power inside him did nothing to help.

  “I came out here to get away from the meetings and the arguments,” Garrick said. “What did you come here for? As if I can’t guess?”

  Reynard and Garrick comprised Darien’s Council of Sorcery, ostensibly set to make policy for how magic would be developed and shared among members of the new Torean House. But Darien and Reynard were scuffling over every nuance of how the Freeborn should be run, both thinking their way was proper, and neither willing to give any space for nuance.

  “We need to discuss your friend,” Reynard said.

  “There is nothing to discuss.”

  “The man knows nothing about magic.”

  “Darien is doing what he thinks is best.”

  “He is shackling the Torean House.”

  Garrick glanced forlornly at the target, and pushed against the long bow, feeling its bend against his palm.

  “The mages voted unanimously,” Garrick said.

  “You should be ashamed of yourself, Garrick.” Reynard pointed his finger at him. “You in particular should understand how that vote was made in the heat of battle. And after Sunathri …”

  Garrick waited while Reynard collected himself.

  Memories came to him. Sunathri’s voice, soft yet firm, her eyes blazing with commitment, the touch of her hand as they joined in spell casting. Garrick, like all of the Freeborn, was here because of Sunathri’s vision, and because of the power of her beliefs. Yet her memory also made his hunger twist. It was a hunger he was learning to control, or at least to exist with, but it was still a blackness, dark and malignant, that still seeded his dreams with images of the two women he thought he had loved, both now dead because of him. And it was a hunger that was growing as restless as he was.

  “Sunathri is dead,” he said.

  “And if she wasn’t, then what Darien is doing to her order would surely accomplish the job.”

  “Do you think she would have wanted us to be bickering like this?”

  “Sunathri would do what it took to drive her vision.”

  “No,” Garrick’s reply was, perhaps, too sharp. “Sunathri would do what it took to keep the Freeborn together. There is a difference.”

  “If we use Darien’s plan, nothing will ever get de
veloped.”

  “Darien’s structure is a tightly reined approach,” Garrick admitted.

  It was, in fact, a bureaucratic nightmare that he and Darien had argued over in private for each of the past three nights—an argument that contributed to his headache this morning and hence his jaunt to the practice range. The fact that Garrick had healed Darien’s father—to the extent possible, anyway—had not given Darien any mind to bend from his position. He believed the people of Dorfort needed to see the order as being constrained or they would never accept the Freeborn as a full partner in their midst.

  Reynard spoke in a firm voice.

  “The orders aren’t dead, Garrick. You’ve said so yourself. We have to be strong enough to defend ourselves when they decide to finish the job they started. This approach of development by committee that Darien wants to create will kill our progress.”

  Garrick sighed.

  Reynard wasn’t much older than he was. But where Garrick just wanted to find his own way in his new world, Reynard was full of vision, ready to tackle the entire plane. He pushed ideas before him as if they were cut diamonds, fully expecting Garrick and Darien to be dazzled by their brilliance.

  That was the problem with the entirety of the Torean House today. They were comprised of mages who were, by nature, independent and opinionated. They did not follow rules, and they were used to doing as they pleased. That was no surprise, of course. If Toreans dealt well with organization, they would likely already have been in an order to begin with. But unions required rules and restrictions, and when it came to defining these rules, members of the Torean House were like a gang of roosters in a hen house.

  “What do you really want?” Garrick finally said.

  “I want you to lead the Freeborn.”