Transcendent (Ascendant Book 2)

by Craig Alanson

  Clutching his limited store of coins, he walked toward the center of the town, where he hoped to buy passage on yet another cramped, uncomfortable carriage. This journey was all so much harder than it had sounded, when he had discussed it with Captain Reed aboard the Lady Hildegard, not so long ago.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Regin Falco rose early, hoping there would be a message waiting for him. A message from the crown princess, stating that she had reconsidered, and would agree to marry Kyre. He was disappointed when his servants told him no such message had been received. Hurrying down the hall, he found his advisor already up. Niles Forne had been up for hours, and was formally dressed for the Council meeting that morning. Annoyed, Regin saw the man had already taken breakfast. Partly out of spite, Regin ate the two pieces of bacon Forbe had left on his plate. “Any news, Forne?”

  “From the princess, Sire?” Forne shook his head. “No. I fear our crown princess cannot bring herself to consider the value of your proposal to our nation.”

  Regin split a sweet roll in half and ate it. “Would it help to give her more time?”

  “Perhaps, Your Grace, but the Council vote must be this morning. We could delay the investiture of Leese for several days, to give the princess time to reconsider. Perhaps if she sees that her uncle will certainly become Regent, that will overcome her objections.”

  “How many days could we delay?” Regin thought about eating the other half of the sweet roll, and decided he wanted his own breakfast.

  “Legally, no more than three day, Sire. More than three days would require a new vote, and anything can happen in three days.”

  “That is not ideal,” Regin frowned. A short while ago, he would have felt triumphant to get Leese voted Regent. Now that Fore had dangled in front of him the prospect of Kyre marrying the crown princess, Regin was not satisfied to settle for what now appeared to be second best. “Is that damned Leese up yet?”

  “No, Sire. I am reluctant to wake him earlier than needed, so he will be fresh for the meeting.” Forne knew those people who abused alcohol and stronger substances needed extra rest to be fresh. There were only two doses of magical potion left in his vial; he did not wish to use them until it was truly necessary.

  “Wake him anyway,” the duke of Burwyck ordered. “I wish no surprises this morning.”

  The duke’s wish for no surprises was not to be fulfilled. Despite the best efforts of Duke Falco’s servants, including Niles Forne, to search Leese’s rooms for troublesome substances, the man had outwitted them all. Concealed in the heals of his boots was a grayish-white powder that was one of his favorites, and because he had not enjoyed that particular substance in weeks, Leese indulged freely after the Falco household went to bed.

  The servants who found Leese unconscious in his bed knew to call Forne before they informed the duke. If Forne could fix the problem, the duke would not ever need to know, and not ever need to be angry with the failure of his servants. Forne cursed himself, regretting that he had not posted a servant to remain in Leese Trehayme’s room all night, to keep watch on that degenerate weakling.

  And then Niles Forne panicked. His magical potion did not work, not nearly enough! Leese was still unable to stand or to speak sensibly. The candidate for the Regency’s eyes were glassy and unfocused, drool dribbled down his chin. And the Council meeting was in only three hours! Forne tried using another two drops of the precious magical potion, making sure Leese swallowed it all, despite the warning of the wizard who Forne had gotten the potion from. The wizard had warned that using the potion too often, or in too high a dose, could be dangerous.

  Niles Forne panicked. His panic was not because all of his plans were about to be dashed. He panicked, because he now needed to inform Regin Falco that their chosen candidate for the Regency of Tarador was flopped on the bed, giggling to himself and drooling.

  “Well?” demanded Duke Bargann, glancing around the table at the Regency Council meeting. “Is the man here, or not?”

  “As I said,” Regin struggled mightily to remain calm, “Leese Trehayme has taken ill, and is indisposed at the moment. He is receiving treatment for his-”

  “What kind of treatment? What exactly is wrong with him?” Bargann pressed the point. He was angry. He had lost his gold mine, then the deal he had made to make Ariana the Regent had been blocked by Falco. To add further insult, Falco had approached him with inducements to vote for Leese Trehayme; inducements so pitiful they could only be viewed as a slap in the face. Falco did not absolutely need Bargann’s vote, and they both knew it.

  “He is ill,” Regin offered as explanation. “The rich food here may not-”

  “His tummy is upset?” Bargann asked mockingly. “And because of that, he can’t be here this morning? What do the experts in the hospital say? It is stomach trouble, or could it be some other issue? A recurrence of,” he looked slowly around the table, “health issues he has had in the past? Self-inflicted medical problems?”

  Regin looked pained. He was running out of answers. “He is not in the royal hospital; he is being cared for by my own physicians-”

  Duchess Portiss raised her voice. “Then let the physicians of the royal hospital examine him, Falco. If necessary, we can bring the Council meeting to his sick bed.”

  Regin was caught. “Really, I think the man only needs rest. If we could delay the vote until-”

  “There will be no delay,” Carlana spoke for the first time since she formally opened the meeting. Even though the Council had voted no confidence in her leadership, she was still officially the Regent until there was someone to replace her. “The vote will be today. This morning.” Carlana still had the power to schedule Council votes. “Duke Falco, can you produce your candidate, or not?”

  Duke Falco wanted to strangle the Regent. “No.” Regin knew that if the Council saw the drug addled state Leese was in, he could never win a vote. The entire Council now strongly suspected that Leese had once again fallen victim to his appetite for drink and more exotic substances. Regin tilted his head as his advisor Niles Forne whispered something to him. Then Falco’s hateful look was focused on Forne instead of the Regent. “We wish to,” Falco looked again at Forne, who nodded and stared down at the table. “We wish to withdraw Leese Trehayme as a candidate for Regent of Tarador.”

  “What is next?” Ariana asked, undoing the tight collar of her formal dress. She could hardly wait to get back to her apartments in the palace. Sitting next to her mother in the Council meeting, both of them stiff in their chairs, neither of them talking to each other of looking at each other, had been incredibly uncomfortable for everyone in the Council chamber.

  “Highness, I truly do not know at the moment,” Kallron admitted. “The only thing of which I am sure is that Leese Trehayme has lost his only chance to be Regent. Rumor has it that Regin Falco is going to banish Leese from the Falco estate tonight. Each member of the Council will put forward their own candidates, and scheme against each other to make deals in secret. It will be utter chaos, and we may not have a compromise on a candidate for weeks. Or more.”

  “We can’t wait weeks,” Ariana said in a near whisper. “The enemy is across our border. And Tarador has no leader.”

  Olivia looked in dismay at the pile of letters on the table next to the battered old chair where the wizard sat while taking a break from experiments on his workbench. She had cleaned off that table only the day before, and now it was completely covered again, to the point that the letters were in danger of sliding off onto the floor, or even into the fireplace. “Lord Salva, would you like me to sort those letters for you?”

  “Hmm?” The wizard did not look up from the thick book he was studying. “No, I’ve looked at those. Nothing important in there.”

  “What about this one, Sir?” She held up a letter that the wizard had opened and apparently at least looked at, for it had a mustard stain on the first page. It did not appear he had bothered to even remove the other two pages from the envelope. She recog
nized the address on the front of the envelope. “It is from the people who farm your land.”

  “Hmm? No,” Paedris waved a hand dismissively, annoyed at the continued interruption. “It is mostly facts and figures about this year’s harvest.” Carlana had granted the land to Paedris, and now that he owned it, he was even less interested in management of the farm. Although to his chagrin, he had discovered that owning the land meant he now needed to pay taxes on it. He had briefly glanced at the letter when it arrived a few days ago and quickly lost interest. The only letters he actually read was the anything from a member of the Wizards Council. Or the royal family. Or any royalty, for that matter. Paedris often received letters from dukes, duchesses, barons and baronesses. Also foreign royalty. Now that he thought about it, such messages made up most of his correspondence; and he had to read those and respond even though they were invariably tedious. Which made any other letters even less important. “You can get rid of it. Oh, uh, put it in the fire, please. That whole stack of letter can go.” Many of those letters Paedris had not even opened; he simply did not have time. It would not do to simply toss unopened letters into the trash; servants around the castle would notice and they would talk. And the people who had written the letters would be insulted.

  Olivia swept the letters off the table and into her arms; there were quite a lot of them. “Yes, Sir. Would you like more tea?”

  “Hmmm? Oh, not right now, thank you.” Although the mention of tea reminded Paedris that he was hungry. Concentrating so intensely was tiring. “I would appreciate tea and, some little thing to eat, in a while.”

  Olivia carried the letters and the empty tea set out of the library and up to the wizard’s common room, knowing that Lord Salva would not like to be further distracted. Most of the letters she placed into the fireplace, where logs were burning nicely. Others, she used to practice her skill at creating fireballs. On her own, she was able to make a faint, weak flame dance in the palm of her hand. The flame flickered and kept going out; Lord Feany said she did not lack power within her, but she needed to concentrate on feeling the ephemeral connection with the spirit world that fed power into the flame. It was maddening to Olivia that sometimes when she could not sense a connection at all, the flame held steady, and other times when she felt the connection strongly, the flame sputtered and barely came to life.

  She had found, on her own, a technique that helped build a tiny flame into something that might generously be called a fireball. Adult wizards would no doubt say that what she was doing was cheating, and bad form, and actually setting back her overall progress. But she liked seeing a fireball dance in her hand. Power from the spirit world, drawn into her hand, at her bidding! It was truly magical. She knew that not all wizards could create a fireball, and fireballs were no measure of a wizard’s true power. Lord Mwazo openly admitted that he could not manage any sort of flame at all, yet Paedris considered Mwazo to be an immensely powerful wizard at the arcane and dangerous art of peering into the future, and into the mind of the enemy.

  No matter what the adult wizards told her, Olivia liked creating a flame in her hand. At times when she was frustrated at other aspects of wizardry and despaired of ever being able to do more than simple tricks, watching a ball of fire grow out of nothing always reassured her that she had magical power within her. And that she would someday be a wizard.

  Olivia concentrated as she had been taught to do, and after a scary moment when nothing happened, a flicker appeared half-seen in her right palm. Holding her right palm open, she used the fingers of her left hand to pull the flame upward, stretching it. That was the technique she had invented on her own. Using her other hand to tease the flame higher somehow steadied it, and it grew from a faint, barely-seen glimmer into a yellow ball of fire. A ball of magical fire, dancing in her hand. Power from the spirit world, that had come into the world of the real because Olivia Dupres willed it to happen!

  Concentrating on keeping the glowing ball of fire dancing above her palm, Olivia nudged a letter into the fireball. The letter crisped up, curled and blackened, then burst into a satisfying flame.

  “Ow!” Olivia shouted, dropping the burning letter onto the floor, almost on the rug. She frantically stamped on the letter, putting out the fire, then kicked it into the fireplace. That had been foolish, she told herself. While the heat of magical fire could not harm the wizard who willed it into existence, a burning piece of paper was a burning piece of paper, no matter how the paper had been set aflame. She sucked at the red mark on her thumb where the flaming letter had almost burned her skin. If only she knew healing spell; those had not been part of education yet.

  For the next letter, she set it on fire while holding it over the fireplace, so that once the letter was burning, she could release it before she scorched her own skin. A dozen letters she set aflame that way, testing her control of magical fire. Some letters were already open, and she glanced at the contents. None of the letters contained anything important. If these letters showed the daily correspondence of a powerful court wizard, then Olivia had no wish to ever seek such a position. It all seemed so frightfully dull. Avoiding a life of dullness was why she was so eager to become a wizard!

  With the letters all gone and her beginning to feel tired from using magic, Olivia realized she had spent too much time getting rid of the letters. The wizard want tea, which she could make in the tower, but he also wanted a snack, of which there was nothing in the tower, because Lord Feany had eaten everything. Everything! Even the crisp sugar cookies that she had hidden in a ceramic crock in the storeroom, behind a box of soap, and under a box of rags. The ceramic crock that she had placed a concealment spell on; and concealment was her best magical talent, so far in her training. How had Shomas Feany found her secret staff of cookies, which were one of Lord Salva’s favorite? Olivia had filled that crock with fresh-baked cookies, keeping them in the tower so she could bring them to the court wizard quickly. Now she needed to run over to the royal kitchen and hope they had something savory for a mid-afternoon snack. She groaned inwardly, thinking that she likely would have to perform a magic ‘trick’ for the kitchen staff, in exchange for a sweet treat. And she was already tired from creating fireballs.

  But, no! First, she needed to get a bucket of soap and warm water, and scrub clean the floor where she had dropped the burning letter. There was a charred stain on the wood floor; it would simply not do to have the wizards come into the common room for wine after their dinner, and see a mark on the floor. Olivia briefly considered using a temporary concealment spell to hide the mark, but if Lord Feany had found her crock of cookies, the wizards would surely see through her amateur attempt to cover up her little accident. Glancing out the window at the position of the sun, she decided she needed to put on water for tea, rush over to the royal kitchens, and run back as fast as she could before the teapot boiled over. Then she could scrub the floor clean later.

  How had Lord Salva’s previous servant managed to do everything the court wizard needed? And Koren Bladewell had not even the advantage of being a wizard. Or maybe that is how he had been able to keep up with the workload. Unlike Olivia, who was expected to spend half of each day being trained by one wizard or another, or practicing and studying magic on her own, Koren Bladewell only had to serve the wizard.

  At times like this, Olivia wished she was a simple, ordinary person like Koren, rather than a young wizard.

  “Your tea is ready,” Olivia announced, carrying the teapot set and a plate with a freshly baked berry tart for the wizard. She had run up the stairs, and paused outside the door to regain her breath.

  “Hmm?” Paedris hadn’t even noticed that Olivia had left, or why she had been there before. Now that he thought about it, he was hungry. How nice of the young wizard to think of bringing afternoon tea for him! “Oh, thank you very much, Olivia. That was very thoughtful of you.”

  “Yes, Lord Salva, you are welcome,” Olivia replied with a smile, as she realized the master wizard had forgotten all
about his request for tea and ‘some little thing to eat’. She prepared a cup of tea the way Paedris liked it, and set the tea and berry tart on the table next to the wizard’s battered and disreputable chair. “You should rest, come away from the workbench, sir. Sitting for a long time like that is not good for you,” she pointed out how Paedris had been perched hunched over a thick, ancient book for hours.

  “I suppose you are right,” Paedris admitted. He got up stiffly and walked over to window to look out, while stretching his back.

  “I disposed of those letters,” Olivia said, waiting for the court wizard to sit down and be comfortable, so she could race upstairs and scrub the floor in the common room.

  “Letters? Oh, yes. Thank you,” Paedris said. He had forgotten about that also. He sat down and took a bite of the tart. “Oh, that is good.”

  “It is a shame about that horse, sir. I hope it comes back.”

  “Mmm.” Paedris responded, already lost in thought again as he sipped tea and stared into the fire. The dancing flames were mesmerizing.

  Olivia took the opportunity to slip out of the room unnoticed. While heating up water for tea, she had put another pot of water on the fire so she could use it to scrub the floor in the common room. There was plenty of time to do that, and put more logs on the fire there, and get the table set for dinner. She was out the door and had a foot on the first step of the stairs when Paedris spoke. “What horse?”

  She popped her head back around the doorway. “Horse, sir?”

  “You said something about a horse? You hoped it comes back? Did it run away?” Paedris had not had time to exercise his own horse, he had not even been to the royal stables in the past few days. Still, he expected that if something had happened to his horse, the stable master would have said something about it to him, directly. “Is there a problem in the royal stables?”