Shadowmage: Book Nine Of The Spellmonger Series

by Terry Mancour

  Okay, then I will, Tyndal said, shrugging. You can just watch.

  Atopol groaned again, but he did not object. Tyndal looked the creature in the eye.

  “Name?” he asked, keeping it simple. Clearly the Dradrien had only begun learning Narasi.

  “Jarn,” he said, pointing his stubby but strong finger at himself, then the fellow next to him with the gigantic nose. “Gref. Agarth,” he said, as he pointed to the thinnest of the three.

  “All right, Jarn, let’s see if you are gentlemen. You’ll be good, if I free you?” he asked the three Iron Folk, as if he was speaking to a five-year-old human.

  “Ten years’ service!” the poor Dradrien promised, unexpectedly. “Free us! Can show great tower!”

  Tyndal’s mind raced. He knew little about the Alon Dradrien, even why their name was reversed compared to all of the other Alon. They were masterful at metallurgy, he recalled, as adept at iron and every other metal as the Karshak Alon were with stone. He remembered that there was some enmity between the two sub-species – races – clans – of the Alon that the Narasi collectively called “dwarves”, but the details were more mysterious than the culture of the Alka Alon to humanity.

  He knew that the Iron Folk did not live near the Five Duchies (although where they did live, or where they lived under, was also unknown). They had to have traveled a long way. Considering their famed skill with metals, an offer of service was hard not to consider.

  “Contract?” he asked. He knew the Karshak, the distant cousins of the Dradrien, held contractual agreements in almost sacred awe. He hoped the Dradrien had a similar cultural prejudice.

  “Contract,” the Dradrien conceded with a heavy sigh, after conferring with his fellows.

  “We have an agreement, then. Let me just get you out . . .” Tyndal bent and invoked magesight to start to work on the lock. Gatina pushed him aside impatiently.

  “Isn’t this why you brought us here?” she asked, working a tiny wire into the crude mechanism.

  “I didn’t bring you at all,” he protested. “You showed up in the middle of a fight. The Nemovort decided to bring you along. I’m just being opportunistic.”

  There was an audible click as she forced the heavy iron lock open. Atopol hurriedly dabbed the iron hinges with oil from a flask on his belt before Tyndal pulled it open. It swung without grating, the way he’d expected it would.

  That was really sneaky, he praised the thief.

  That’s why we’re good at taking other people’s things, he replied. We cheat.

  The three dumpy little figures hurried out of the cell with incredible alacrity once the thick iron gate was opened. They followed Atopol as he led them down to the only entrance of the place, and paused while Tyndal rendered the two turnkeys unconscious.

  “All clear, let’s go!” he urged, waving the three dump non-humans through the doorway. “Lead on!”

  Even though it was dark, there was a lot of activity on the island. They had to hide several times as they snuck through the shadows as they approached the dark, looming tower. Though the human slaves who carted debris from around the stump of the old spire were sleeping, the gurvani workers and draugen overseers labored through the night to build upon what remained.

  It was more than repairs and reconstruction, Tyndal could see. Though the foundations of the old Alka Alon tower remained, the spire replacing it was unlike the previous edifice. Instead of a single slender spire, there were now four smaller towers, four stories tall, with crenellations and arrow slits built into the upper stories.

  This was a fortress, first and foremost, Tyndal realized, as he studied it closely. The spire was the center of the new structure, dominating it, but the foundations being laid across the rest of the island, through former parks now choked with debris and across wrecked neighborhoods and the ruins of civic buildings, looked extensive.

  There were three other large buildings being constructed around the spire, and innumerable smaller sheds. From a black basalt pyramid being assembled in the western precinct, to a sprawling series of halls in the north that could only be a barracks, the entire ruined island was being brought back into a pale mockery of the land it was. Other foundations promised unimagined dangers in their future – whether fighting decks for war machines, habitats for dragons, whatever the undead preferred to . . . un-live in, laboratories, storehouses, arsenals, foundries – there was no guessing what the massive complex would become.

  But it was Anthatiel no more, even in ruin. The City of Rainbows had fallen. This was Olum Seheri, now. Where the mist once flew into the air from the five mighty waterfalls, now some foul sludge spilled across the surface of the great mountain lake. The mist from the falls cowered across the water, clouding the air beyond a few feet in any direction until the breezes that blew from land to water kept them at bay. It gave the entire island a gloomy cast that suited its new management.

  He climbed the hill of debris carefully and deliberately, trying to see as much as he could with every ascending step. The three Dradrien motioned them closer to the foreboding structure, though it was clear they feared every step they took.

  “There,” the leader, Jarn, said, pointing a surprisingly long and dirty forefinger at the tower, unnecessarily. “Ten levels.”

  Tyndal was anxious to be this close to the place – the ground floor was swarming with gurvani and draugen going on errands. He cast his gaze instead at the upper sections of the growing spire. He found the tenth floor and searched with magesight, one window at a time. He found her, the third window over.

  Princess Rardine, though she had never looked so common, was looking forlornly out of her cell. Her gown was filthy and in tatters, and her hair was a mess. But there was a determined expression that gave even Tyndal pause as he watched. He committed her face to memory.

  “Uncle on nine level,” grunted the Dradrien. Tyndal moved his focus, until he found the Dradrien: a stocky, thick-armed creature Tyndal had no trouble imagining as a smith.

  “Is there any way we can get in there?” Tyndal asked, scanning the busy street below. It almost looked like a human street, except all the humans were dead or enslaved and there were a thousand gurvani hurrying back and forth on their errands of construction.

  “Are you completely mad?” Atopol asked, aloud. “There are at least a thousand goblins down there, not to mention those yellow-eyed freaks! You’re good, Tyndal – but you aren’t that good! No one is that good!”

  Tyndal studied the situation, but as confident as he was, with as much power as he had with him, he knew it would be futile. This was a job that would require planning and timing and a lot of other things that Tyndal would rather leave to someone else to be responsible for when it went horribly wrong. He knew his limitations.

  But she was so close . . . and he hated her so much . . . and she was worth two rich Gilmoran baronies and the acclaim of the King . . .

  “At least let me get a quick magemap drawn,” he insisted with a heavy sigh, and quickly began the process using Grapple. The baculus obediently rendered his observations into an arcane representation he could study later. He did it as quickly as possible . . . but not quickly enough.

  “Ishi’s tits, what is that?” asked Gatina in a shocked whisper. She nodded back to the street below. From the west, where a large dark pyramid-shaped structure was being built, a very tall man in a long, dark hooded robe was walking toward the great tower accompanied by an entourage of undead – Nemovorti, draugen, perhaps other sorts Tyndal didn’t know the names of. Overhead were twisting shapes he could not identify, but which coiled through the air like nothing he’d ever seen.

  Everyone in its path deferred to the procession, and work on everything stopped as the tall, gaunt man passed by. The gurvani in the area ceased their work and their errands as he approached, striding with the regal gait of a king.

  They began chanting. Tyndal hated gurvani chanting. It rarely ended well. Usually their shamans chanted their spells, the way that the Alka
Alon sang theirs. But this time they were merely repeating a name, over and over again, as the tall figure strode through the street.

  “Kor-BAL! Kor-BAL! Kor-BAL!” hundreds of furry black throats howled in unison.

  “That’s mad!” Gatina said, shaking her head. The prisoners in the tower all came to their windows to see what the fuss was.

  The tall man in the center of the crowd seemed pleased at the attention, and waved at his servants.

  “So that’s Korbal,” Tyndal said, thoughtfully, as his bowels turned to water. “I didn’t expect he’d be that tall, for an Alkan.”

  The last time he’d been near the Necromancer of the Mindens, he’d been encased in magical crystal and entombed under a mountain range. He looked a lot more hale now, in the body of some well-built human man. You could barely see the tattoos that helped keep his body intact . . . until you looked at him with magesight. Then the figure below turned into a sickly beacon of thaumaturgical power laced with the tell-tale sign of death magic . . . necromantic power. The Nemovorti’s signatures were pale, next to that darkly-burning ember. Only the maniacal grin on his face seemed to indicate what horrors the immortal mind of Korbal the Demon God, Necromancer of the Mindens, was capable of.

  “What is he doing?” Gatina asked, mystified.

  “Going out for a pint?” Tyndal shrugged. “What do evil undead lords do, on a market night?”

  “It looks as if they are preparing for something,” Atopol observed, his eyes barely peeking over the edge of the fallen spire.

  “Great . . . visitor,” the Dradrien supplied. “Heard talk today.”

  “He’s expecting company?” Atopol asked. “Who?”

  As if to answer, Korbal spread his arms wide, said something none of them could hear . . . and an arcane field the size of a wagon began to form in front of the great black tower. Even the Nemovorti and draugen were chanting his name, now, in horrific counterpoint to the guttural goblins. When the distortion effect cleared, the voices cheered, then changed their chant.

  “Shere-ul! Shere-ul! Shere-ul!” they chanted, even more enthusiastically.

  “Oh dear gods!” Tyndal said, his mind seeming to shrink from even thinking about what he was seeing. A green sphere just a bit larger than a human head floated above the ground, surrounded by a half-dozen of his skull-faced priesthood. “That’s the Dead God! That’s Sheruel! We need to get out of here, now!”

  “Is that the goblin king?” Gatina asked, curious. Why she wasn’t shrieking in terror, Tyndal could not fathom.

  “That’s far worse than any goblin,” he replied, frantically searching for the right Waypoint to go to. No one had seen Sheruel in almost five years. Now the old scrug was visiting his vassals. “That’s the abomination that is leading this entire war. We need to leave!” he insisted. He had to tell Minalan and Rondal. In person. This would not wait.

  “I’m starting to agree,” Atopol said, swallowing worriedly, sliding away from the edge of the ruin they were perched upon. “In fact, that was my idea from the start, if you—”

  He was interrupted by a horrific screech – not a dragon, Tyndal knew, but something nearly as baleful. Those wiggling shapes that had accompanied Korbal and his court through the streets . . .

  “Wyvern!” the Dradrien Jarn said, looking upward frightfully. Tyndal whirled and saw the beast as it was descending toward them like a demonic falcon after its prey.

  They were the prey, he realized at once.

  He had no time to consider. He picked the first Waypoint he could think of, the one at the Rat Trap, and started the spell . . . only to realize that he would be leaving the Dradrien to the mercy of the monster, while the two most powerful manifestations of evil ever to agree to hate humanity were having a drink below.

  The Dradrien realized that, too. Jard was frantically waving his hands in front of him, screaming “Contract! Contract!”

  It was a bad idea. Almost no one except perhaps Master Min had taken six people through the Ways at once, no one who wasn’t actually an Alka Alon, and even they would have been hesitant, he knew.

  But he had no choice. He could not leave the shadowthieves who had served so loyally, and he could not abandon the Dradrien. He had demanded their contract, after all. He could not very well ignore it now.

  This is going to hurt, was the last thought he had before he activated the spell . . . including the Dradrien.

  Taking six people strained his resources far beyond what he could manage. The spell was stretched to the very limits of his willpower, and it took every shred to include them all. He felt as if he was failing several times.

  But then he felt the familiar twist as he was pushed through reality itself. He just never quite remembered coming through the other side.

  *

  *

  *

  He awakened some intderminate time later, in his own bed in the Rat Trap. The mad idea that it was all a drunken nightmare tempted him, but the air was far cooler here than it had been in Enultramar. Or in Orem Seheri.

  And Gareth was sitting next to him with a medical baculus.

  “Ishi’s tits!” he said, as Tyndal opened his eyes while he was staring at him through the lens. “Tyndal?”

  “I . . . think,” he admitted. “Water?”

  “You’re awake!” Gareth exclaimed, leaping to his feet. “Praise Briga, you’re awake!”

  “Water?” he repeated, more adamantly.

  “Oh! Of course!” the wizard said, laying aside the medical baculus and pouring a pewter cup of water from the basin next to his bed. Tyndal drank gratefully, his throat as dry as sand. It was as if it had been days since he’d had water.

  “I . . . how long was I out?” he asked, when his throat felt less raw.

  “Five days,” Gareth sighed, holding a cup to his lips for a second sip. The water tasted like a gift from the gods. “The others were only out for a day or so – but you had us worried.”

  “Rondal?”

  “Rondal made it. Everyone made it,” Gareth conceded. “Not uninjured, but everyone who went in, came out. You were the one we were worried about. Apparently it was rough, out at the gate.”

  “It was rough in the bloody hall, too,” Tyndal nodded, his head suddenly throbbing. He desperately wanted something to dull the pain, but he had a duty to perform. “I need to talk to Minalan,” he said. “I don’t think I can manage mind-to-mind.”

  “Talk to him about what?”

  “What we saw at Olum Seheri,” he said, coughing. His mouth tasted foul. “Sheruel and Korbal, in the same place at the same time. And Rardine. She was there. I saw her!” he insisted.

  “Well, that’s certainly something we need to share,” Gareth said, looking troubled. “Just not with Minalan. He’s gone.”

  Tyndal stopped and stared. “What do you mean?”

  “The day before you came back,” Gareth explained, “Master Minalan went to his tower for a while. Later he came out in a hurry, and fetched Sire Cei. They disappeared. Then word came that they went to the abbey, and collected Alya. Then they . . . they disappeared. Minalan isn’t answering, mind-to-mind or by Mirror. He’s vanished. Sire Cei has not sent so much as a letter. The Spellmonger,” he announced, sorrowfully, “has left Sevendor!”

  The End

  Thank you for reading! As always, feel free to contact the author with any questions or comments at tmancour@gmail.com! And be on the lookout for the next book in the Spellmonger Series, Volume 10, Necromancer, coming in 2017!

  APPENDIX:

  The History of Alshar

  By Seabrother Dexus of Fairhaven Abbey

  Presented to His Grace, Lenguin II, on the occasion of his victory

  and conquest of Farise

  The Early History Of Alshar:

  The Coming Of The Sea Lords

  When Argarus the Cormeeran’s corsair ship, the Fair Maiden, blew past the treacherous Shoals of Sinbar in a springtime tempest for the first time, he thought he and his men were destined to d
ine with the Storm Lord in his hall that night. No mariner in living history had braved the rocky, reefed maze in the western bays, and if they had, none bore tale of the lands beyond.

  Argarus’ crew included a young monk, Careddas, rescued from Farisian pirates shortly before. The monk repaid his rescuers by using ancient maps in his possession to plot a course through the Shoals, to escape the rising tides. When the Fair Maiden emerged on the other side, the ship was battered and beaten, the mast broken and the hull damaged . . . but most of the crew were alive.

  Argarus put to shore in an inlet along the rocky coastline, preparing to encamp ashore, shipwrecked on a desolate coast. But beyond the rocky headlands and behind the forbidding gray cliffs the crew discovered a broad and fertile land, peopled by simple farmers who enjoyed the bounty of their fields and vineyards, untroubled by war. They called themselves the Alshari, and their fertile land, Alshar, meaning “Uttermost West” in their ancient tongue.

  Argarus set to conquering them at once, his sixty corsairs quickly seizing the unarmed chieftains of the tribes and murdering them before the eyes of their astonished families. He called the island he took for his base Vinnahaven, after the goddess of ports. There he built a small fortress in fear of an uprising, and made Vinnahaven as defensible as he could. For a year Argarus ruled the coastal people near his ship, terrorizing the populace and demanding tribute of food, wine, women, and timber to repair the Fair Maiden.

  Though the folk of the land beyond the shoals he named Enultramar were prosperous, they knew no gods but the primitive divinities who ruled the lands. When Argarus declared himself Lord of the Sea, and forced a dozen rebels to be slain in sacrifice to the Storm Lord and his five daughters, instead of a bull as tradition demanded, he loaded a hundred Alshari slaves aboard his repaired ship, took ample provision and treasure, and vowed to return to the generous land.

  Though he left a few men behind to watch his new secret haven, the pirates were lazy and grew complacent, allowing the careful watches Argarus declared to fail. It proved their undoing. Before Argarus was two months gone, the Alshari coastal folk rose in rebellion and slew their captors. They did their best to destroy Vinnashaven and all memory of the first of the Sea Lords, and return to their quiet lives.