Shadowmage: Book Nine Of The Spellmonger Series

by Terry Mancour

  “While the lower chambers are for their men and such,” nodded Tyndal. “The storerooms are full of junk, we think. Old looms, spools, shuttles, that sort of thing. But perhaps more,” he shrugged. “There’s some interference, Ron thinks, from the lowest section.”

  “Interesting,” nodded Lorcus. “Well, I tried the Long Ears, but the hook wouldn’t let me get but so far within the old crypt. Some basic wards – I suppose the rodents aren’t entirely stupid. I tried to wander. Didn’t you say you had a shadowmage friend who could get in there and find out what’s going on?”

  “Yes, and I’ve sent word for him to meet us, but it could be a few days,” admitted Tyndal.

  “I’ve got something that might get us past the guards,” Rondal said, after a moment’s pause. “Something I worked on with Rudi, before we left. We had a couple of ideas . . .”

  “Well don’t sit there waiting for my beard to grow,” Lorcus encouraged, “what is it?”

  “It” proved to be a small, spindly-looking device of slender weirwood rods joined together by cleverly-crafted leather joints, that Rondal produced from a hoxter pocket. It looked extremely fragile to Tyndal’s critical eye. More like a broken marionette than a magical device.

  But when Rondal produced a small wand and spoke a word, the leather joints stiffened and the legs began sorting themselves out until the thing stood on its own in the middle of the table. The center of its “body” was a small wooden block no larger than a turkey’s egg, with six slender legs suspending it like a spider’s thorax.

  “What . . . is that little pretty?” Lorcus asked, entranced by the thing.

  “I call it a dahman, after those spinning bugs next to the ponds back home,” his friend said proudly, as the little construct marched from one side of the table to the other. The legs each ended in a soft pad of leather that made the tiniest noise as it pranced. “It should be able to get in that place.”

  “Sure, a wooden spider the size of my hand won’t arouse any suspicions,” Tyndal said, rolling his eyes.

  “It wouldn’t . . . if it was on the ceiling,” Rondal chuckled, as the dahman reached the plaster wall and mounted it as easily as it walked across the wood. In seconds it was overhead, amongst the shadows and beams above.

  “So once we get it inside, what do we do?” Tyndal asked, skeptically. “Drop it down their shirts and eliminate the entire crew with the willies?”

  “Not at all,” Rondal said, ignoring the jest. “Gorach – I call him Gorach – is imbued with the enneagram of a creature who liked to hide and stalk the way Haystack likes to brag. When I tell it to hunt, it will creep its way across the roof, into the gable, and sneak its way into this upper chamber,” he said, nodding toward the magemap. “There it will wait and lurk until we recall it.”

  “Bringing me to my earlier point about the utility of the willies,” Tyndal observed, thoughtfully. “Once we get it there, what does it do?”

  “Oh, I had another sympathy stone inlaid inside, with the appropriate spells. We can hear or see anything that it does,” he said, nodding at the dahman. “Just like we were there. And if they sweep the place for concealment spells, there won’t be any. Once Gorach is in place he goes dormant. No active spells. Just the sympathy stone.”

  “That’s brilliant,” Lorcus nodded, looking at the insect-like creation. “Does it do anything else?”

  Rondal shrugged. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Oh, I have a few amusing ideas,” assured the mage. “But how are we going to get it up on the roof? You prepared a pigeon, as well?”

  Instead of answering, Gorach’s legs suddenly pulled in on themselves, though the tiny body continued to hold its position in space.

  “Knot coral,” Rondal shrugged. “It’s easier than a pigeon.”

  Tyndal had to admit, he was impressed at the elegant little enchantment. He started to grin. “This is going to be spectacular!”

  “No, my boy,” Lorcus said, with a wicked chuckle, “we’re just leading up to spectacular. But this shows uncommon promise.”

  The effort to get the dahman to the roof after the three magi completed its enchantments was simple: Tyndal went to the roof of a building nearby and lobbed it through the air, within twenty feet of the sentry. But Rondal deftly activated the knot coral before it landed, keeping it from making noise as he directed it to the edge of the gable window.

  Tyndal watched, increasingly impressed, as the arcane construct slipped into the window and disappeared. When he returned to the inn Rondal was sitting on the bed, his legs folded, and his tiny sphere of irionite in one palm while he used the control wand in the other. There was a small black earthenware bowl in his lap into which he stared with especial concentration.

  “Smart lad, that one,” Lorcus grunted, quietly, as he poured the last of the wine into his cup.

  “He does pretty well,” Tyndal agreed. “Getting anything, Ron?”

  “A fine appreciation for a good chambermaid – there are years’ worth of old cobwebs up there! But we’re getting close to their . . . conference room? Den of iniquity? Dark chamber of murderous secrets?” he asked, rhetorically.

  “Got a flair for the dramatic, too,” Lorcus mentioned, under his breath.

  “Noticed that?”

  “All right, I’m right over the conference table, or whatever it is, clinging to the chandelier. Three men, a pile of parchments, a stack of books – ledgers, like at Solashaven.”

  “Any coin?” Tyndal asked, curious.

  “Forget the coin,” Lorcus dismissed, “they wouldn’t haul the heavy stuff upstairs, anyway. Criminals are lazy,” he said, with the assurance of man with personal experience. “This is more important. Those ledgers are likely copies of each of the crews’ ledgers who report to this place. And this is likely where they compile all of those lovely numbers into much larger numbers, to send to someone yet more important,” he reasoned.

  “That makes sense,” Tyndal agreed. “Like a unit commander, reporting to a general officer,” he suggested.

  “Close enough,” Lorcus agreed. “The central location of this place makes it an ideal point at which to accumulate coin – and numbers – for the entire coastlands and Enultramar. And the Great Vale, coming downriver.”

  “If you two will shut it a few moments, they’re actually saying things,” Rondal pointed out, patiently.

  “They often do,” quipped Lorcus. “But pay them no mind, they’re criminals!”

  “Not gossip,” Rondal continued, ignoring the jests, “intelligence.”

  Tyndal spent the evening jotting down notes on parchment as Rondal recited the conversation of the three men, and observed their plots. To Tyndal, it was a seemingly endless series of coded phrases and mysterious ciphers of numbers. Rondal’s droning voice sent his pen scratching every time he mentioned what the three were saying, and he drifted beyond the point of even casual attention after a while.

  “That’s it!” Lorcus exclaimed, excitedly, as Rondal seemed to be drawing to a close. “We’ve got them!”

  “We do?” Tyndal asked, dully.

  “What do you mean?” demanded Rondal.

  “Just keep listening!” insisted Lorcus. “Every detail!”

  Rondal sighed, and paused a moment. “They’re bitching about their wives, now,” he reported. “Now, what do you mean, ‘we’ve got them’?”

  Lorcus took a deep breath, and dug his pipe out of his belt. “You remember that bit toward the end, the part about the ‘final business’?”

  “Yes,” Tyndal said, a little guiltily. “I was hoping they were finishing for the evening.”

  “They were, but like most organizations, they save the important stuff for last, if it isn’t a crisis. They mentioned the mudfort, right?”

  Tyndal glanced back at the previous page of parchment. “Yeah, they said that word had come from the mudfort that the deal was on, despite the problems, and that the noose was bringing Lord Zulduk – Zulduk? – to the gallows to meet t
he nurse. Then Rat Three asked if the take was set or not, and Rat Two told him not to ask stupid questions. Rat One then said that he’d heard that it depended on the fishing this year, and whether or not the grocer could keep the frogs in the pond, and if both went well then it would rain maiden’s piss and the goat would be holding the axe behind the chair.” He blinked. “Do you have the slightest idea what any of that means?”

  “Yes!” Lorcus and Rondal said at the same time.

  “Most of these gangsters use code names, like we use war names,” explained Rondal. “Gareth put together a list of the ones he figured out, and a much longer list of the ones he didn’t.”

  “Some of those were more obvious than others,” Lorcus agreed. “Like the Mudfort: that’s one of the Brotherhood’s headquarters, away to the southeast, in Caramas. So anything from there has authority. If they say the deal is on, the deal is on,” he declared.

  “What deal, though?” Tyndal asked, confused.

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” urged Rondal. “The noose has to be Igzily the Noose,” he agreed, looking through the stack of parchment on the table until he found the right one. “He’s a kind of mid-level administrator for the eastern Great Vale counties. Not a lot of business up there, but he’s respected in the records as one of the major players.”

  “And I would reason that anyplace The Noose called home would soon be known as The Gallows,” Tyndal suggested.

  “Hey!” Lorcus said, snapping. “That does make sense! But who is the nurse?”

  “No idea,” confessed Rondal, after scanning the list for a moment. “But whoever it is, they’re important. They were mentioned earlier, as being at the ‘regular meeting’, tomorrow night.”

  “The nurse and a few others,” agreed Lorcus. “That sounds like a perfect place to begin our inquiry. By liberating those records, and slaying all who stand against us. Now, how exactly did you want to dash the place to tinder?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  A Raid On Rats

  They chose the busiest time of the Brotherhood’s busiest night to strike, to ensure the most carnage possible. Eliminating as many of the villains as possible was the goal, as quickly and quietly as possible, without arousing the suspicions of the authorities.

  Thankfully, the lack of complexity of their plan kept the chances of something going horribly awry to a minimum. After surveying and scrying the guildhall for a few days and understanding how it was being used, Lorcus’ battle plan for the raid was apt:

  “We’re going to turn the whole thing into a big sack o’ rats,” he drawled, as he presented his plan to the boys. “Then we’re going to stab it. Beat it with a stick. And squash it under a rock. Before we throw it into the fire.”

  To that end the plan was to secure with magic as many of the possible means of escape available to the crew inside and then ‘project force’, as Lorcus euphemistically called it, until the last Rat was dead.

  As they had discovered, the guildhall was a hive of criminal business and a hub for goods, coin, and agents of the organization going upriver, downriver, east into Rhemes or west into Falas. As such it was a convenient place for meetings between different divisions, and regular conferences to conduct business were common.

  Through their use of the construct they’d learned that one such meeting – comprising the leaders of four different crews – was scheduled for a few nights after they’d arrived, and the three of them decided that would be a most opportune time to conduct their raid.

  “If we just wanted to prick them with the point, we’d wait until the place was almost deserted,” Lorcus reasoned. “This way, it’s clear from the outset that their preparation and strength meant little to us. That they were, in fact, inconsequential.”

  “That’s still going to put almost two dozen rats in that bag,” Rondal reminded the Remeran warmage. “That’s a lot of killing.”

  “It would be a lot of killing regardless,” Tyndal said, shaking his head. “This just makes it more worthwhile. Removing officers is a great way to send the foe into disarray.”

  Before the fateful meeting, Lorcus took another stroll around the guildhall in the guise of a monk . . . and when he was certain he wasn’t being observed, he secured the infrequently used trap door in the back of the place with a spellbinding, and then did the same with the side door.

  Most of the thugs used the front entrance, which thanks to its orientation faced the river, where there was little chance of being seen. While that was convenient for evading the notice of the civic authorities, it also concealed the entrance from any trouble that might erupt from those same authorities. When Lorcus signaled that all of the principals had arrived for the meeting, the two young knights began their assault.

  They changed their somber monks’ habits for their personal arms and armor. For each of them that was a suit of enchanted leather with light steel plates covering their most vulnerable parts. Though as light as an archer’s armor, the enchantments binding them together made the gear significantly more protective. While Rondal included a tight-fitting steel helm, Tyndal simply tied back his hair with a thong. He disliked having his vision and hearing impaired in a fight like this.

  Rondal bore his shortish mageblade, the rod Bulwark, and a round shield. Tyndal got by with his collection of wands and his own mageblade. He could call Grapple to his hand at need . . . but the task ahead looked far more like a job for a war staff than a thaumaturgical baculus to his eye.

  I’m in position, Rondal told him, mind-to-mind, an hour after the sun set and darkness covered the town. As soon as you give the word, I’ll go.

  Tyndal checked with Lorcus, who was acting as a reserve for the operation, still in monk’s garb, at the grog shop across the street where he was quietly scrying the place from afar.

  Oh, I’m ready, he assured Tyndal. Just going to sit here and flirt with this widow until you lads need me.

  Tyndal took a deep breath. Both of his comrades were waiting on his signal, his leadership.

  He looked at the door ahead, where two Rats were lounging, smoking pipes and acting casually, and pulled his mantle over his armor before he approached them. The key, he reminded himself, is sudden, unexpected surprise. He pulled out his own pipe, and palmed a short wand as he did so.

  “Gentlemen!” he said, cheerfully, as he approached. “Could I trouble either of you for a taper?”

  The two thugs – dressed in rough workmen’s clothing – looked at him in surprise. One began fumbling at his belt for the requested taper automatically, while the other stood and began to approach Tyndal menacingly.

  Tyndal tried to fake surprise on his face, but before he could tell if the Rat bought it, his arm was already in motion. While his right hand, with the pipe and palmed wand, went wide, his left hand held a very long, very plain dagger about six inches long, which he then buried in the thug’s gut with augmented speed.

  The man just stood there, eyes wide, looking helplessly at Tyndal while his friend quickly rose . . . only to sit back down again, hard, when Tyndal activated the wand, blowing off half of his face. The man with the dagger in his navel sank to his knees and fell over, succumbing to shock almost immediately at the surprise attack.

  That was far too easy, Tyndal noted to himself. The door behind them was unlocked, and there wasn’t anyone immediately on the other side.

  I’m in, he reported to Rondal. Go ahead and start your ruckus.

  For Estasia, Rondal replied . . . and Tyndal heard a loud bang from within the building. Now I’m in. Meet you on the top floor.

  Tyndal drew his mageblade and summoned a half-dozen spells – nothing fancy, he decided, just good basic protections. The sort of thing that might make the difference between a blade sliding off of his armor or finding its way home.

  Two around the corner from you, lad, cautioned Lorcus, who was following their path on the magemap.

  Tyndal nodded – though the warmage couldn’t see him – and decided to face these two
without his warmagic augmentations. He pictured where they were in his mind, prepared his warwand, and spun into the room.

  He caught one of the men on his way toward the privy, hands on his belt and unprepared for a fight. Tyndal didn’t bother wasting a spell on him – he just shoved the point of his blade quickly through his throat, creating a fountain of blood that sprayed across the chest of his fellow. While the poor thug was looking at his soaked tunic in horror, Tyndal pivoted and sliced through his windpipe before he could scream.

  But the alarm was already raised. Rondal’s dramatic entrance at the rear had stirred the guildhall’s defenders like a kick to a beehive. He could hear shouts and yells as the ruffians sprang into action against the loud intruder . . . and presented their backs to the quiet one.