“Does that look like a victory to you?” I asked, a little angrily, as I nodded to my invalid wife.
“Victory rarely occurs without cost,” he said, quietly.
“That is not particularly soothing, at the moment,” I replied, bitterly.
“I trust you and the gods, Minalan,” Cei assured me. I bit back a retort about the wisdom of either faith. Sire Cei was a good man, a better man than I, and he did not deserve my ire.
“Let’s gets some sleep,” I sighed, cracking the window. The rain had stopped, and I watched a few miles of barren Sashtalian fields and leafless trees roll by. Someone tried to contact me, mind-to-mind, but I ignored it. I was on a mission. The rest of the world could continue on without me, for a little while.
*
*
*
The barge trip down the frigid Burine and beyond was uneventful and bittersweet. Being on the river with Alya brought me fond memories of our honeymoon – what parts I could remember – and what felt like a more innocent and uncomplicated time. Of course, we were on the run from the Censorate and planting rumors of spellmonger-led peasants revolts to throw them off our trail, but it seemed innocent and carefree in retrospect.
Talry-On-Burine slid past on the left bank mid-day. My home village seemed tiny. The visceral excitement of seeing someplace with which I was intimately familiar was tempered by the sight of my father’s two giant ovens, like red-painted boobs jutting out from the bosom of the riverbank, sitting dark and cold. Dad was talking about reopening them, once Baron Lithar came to his senses, but he wasn’t in a hurry. He was enjoying the extended holiday at his son the Spellmonger’s barony playing with his grandchildren.
Even once we got to the much-smaller Teelvar things were uneventful. At this time of year there was little traffic, and no sign of the Redwater river pirates I’d battled five years before, but then perhaps the weather had something to do with that. As soon as we changed course up the Teelvar, the drizzle we’d endured since leaving home turned to sleet and then snow. A mile upriver we were sailing through a fall of big, luscious-looking snowflakes that pelted the muddy riverbanks.
I tried to see that as a sign.
I mostly kept to myself on that trip. I joined the others for meals, and I checked on Alya’s condition every few hours, but I was not in a mood for conversation. Sire Cei seemed to understand that, and after a few feeble attempts he stopped trying to get me to talk.
I wasn’t just sulking, however. I was studying.
I’d brought the scribbled account we’d concealed in our final bottle of honeymoon mead, before getting our memories magically altered, and I pored over it looking for as much information as I could about what I would be facing. It was unfortunate that I could not ask Ithalia about any of it – she’d been there, after all – but I was doing everything I could to keep the Alka Alon from knowing about my excursion.
Why? Firstly, because what I was doing was, technically , forbidden by the Alka Alon Council, their ruling body. Lilastien was a criminal, by their accounting, confined to her quarters and prohibited from pursuing what they considered a dangerous course of study: humanity. That in doing so she’d also attracted the favor of at least a couple of benevolent human divinities suggested that her crimes were not completely without merit, for humans. And by my own hand I’d recorded how pro-human she was. Going to visit a prisoner without the consent of the Council was likely to attract their ire, and I did not want to cause any unnecessary political complications.
No, really.
But that wasn’t the only reason. Our first trip to visit the Sorceress of Sartha Wood we’d apparently attracted the attention of the Enshadowed, the ruthless and fanatical faction of Alka Alon who were determined to get vengeance on the Council, and remake Callidore (or at least the part of it the Five Duchies were occupying) for their own purposes. There was a growing body of evidence that suggested the Enshadowed were not only working in concert with the gurvani, but that they were behind the gurvani’s creation of Shereul the Dead God in the first place.
If the Council became aware of my trip, the Enshadowed (who were known to have spies in the Alka Alon territories – Noutha had said as much) might learn of it. I didn’t need to show up just to be overpowered by sinister songmasters bearing a grudge.
So I couldn’t tell Ithalia. Or any other Alka Alon... save Onranion. He was so far out of the Council’s good graces he himself had been sent into exile... to Sevendor. And he’d apparently been a part of whatever mess got Lilastien condemned to internal exile. As much of a pain in my ass as he was, the old coot wasn’t going to be telling anyone about my business in Sartha Wood.
Going to see Lilastien would irritate two groups of Alka Alon. While that made it additionally challenging, it also suggested that it was the right course of action. The Council had a habit of treating humanity in a patronizing manner, even though our civilization was once at least as mighty as theirs. There was a lot of history there, and at one point a lot of interference. For us humans, that was ancient history. For the long-lived, nearly immortal Alka Alon, it was just a few years ago. Recent enough so that a few of the Council members still bore active grudges. By making this trip I would be inflaming those.
Well, I consoled myself, at least there was no human political problem with the trip. Rard didn’t even know he had a powerful Alka Alon songmaster living imprisoned in the middle of his kingdom, nor did he care.
By the time we got to the river hamlet of Gilasfar, my resolve was firm. Even though I had technically been made a member of the Alka Alon Council as a representative of humanity’s interests and in token of our alliance against Shereul and now Korbal, I was treading on ice thinner than the frost on a puddle. Even if the Council saw the matter of Lilastien as an internal affair, the fact was she was the foremost Alkan authority on humanity gave me every reason to visit her.
“Minalan, you expect to find assistance... here?” Sire Cei asked doubtfully as he looked around at the ratty hamlet as we off-loaded.
“This is just a way-station,” I promised. “It’s not far, now. We head overland from here to some Alkan ruins.” I pulled the carriage out of its hoxter pocket in my staff while Joppo and the porters lead the team off the barge. Then I had to bribe them heavily to keep them quiet about my presence, after they witnessed that bit of magic. While it was unlikely that anyone followed us, this was also the closest riverport to Sartha Wood. It would be natural for someone who was following me to ask questions of the Gilasfari. Hopefully my silver and the threat of my return was enough to silence them.
At that point in the journey I was overcome with an odd feeling, as I moved through country both strange and familiar. I didn’t recognize any of it... but I did. I could not tell if they were legitimate memories or fictions supplied by my imagination and informed by my written account.
“Shrine ahead, Magelord,” Joppo called, at one point. “Looks like to Herus. You want to stop and pay our respects?”
“No!” I said, perhaps a little too forcefully. “Ride around it. We make haste,” I added, forcefully to the driver. I didn’t need to explain to him how I was trying to avoid the attention of even the gods. I liked Herus, and he was an ally, but the last thing I needed was him persuading me not to do what I was about to do. Besides, the God of Travelers was a notorious gossip.
As dusk began to fall across the autumnal landscape, lightly dusted with snow, and I directed Joppo to make the proper turn off the miserably ill-repaired road to the wretched rut that pretended to be a road, thence to the trail through the woods. The leafless trees were hovering over the path when it opened up into a meadow. I ordered Joppo to halt the carriage, and led Sire Cei outside.
“This is the Meadow of Arrogant Vegetation,” I informed him. His bushy eyebrows raised under the hood of his mantle.
“It’s called that?”
“It is now,” I nodded. “Magelord’s prerogative.”
He shrugged. I guess he was used to my flamin
g ego by now.
“I suppose that’s how most things get their names,” he conceded. “But why—”
As if to answer him three odd-looking “trees” reformed themselves into simulacrums of humanity. The Knights of Chlorophyll.
Okay, maybe not all my ideas for names are gilded.
“They’re here to bar our passage,” I explained. “Last time I was here, I fought them.”
“This road is forbidden to you,” one of the saplings-at-arms grunted in perfect Narasi. “Turn back, now.”
“They said that back then, too, according to my notes. In fact, that’s about all that they say.”
“Shall we lay into them, then?” Sire Cei asked, as he appraised the strange-looking knights.
“That is our alternative,” I said, pulling a small sphere of thaumaturgical glass out of a pouch. “But when I described the guards to Olmeg he’d heard of them. He created this to counter them,” I said, as I took a careful step forward. The lead knight took an answering step, blocking my path across the meadow.
“This road is forbidden to you,” it said in a hollow voice through its... hell, I had no idea how it was speaking.
“I’m thinking it’s not ,” I said, lobbing the sphere into the midst of the knights. They did not react, likely because the sphere wasn’t a mammal of some sort. But once it landed and shattered, an eerie, high-pitched noise filled the brown tufted meadow. At once the three green knights froze.
“It’s a sonic spell,” I commented, raising my voice a bit as I lead the team past the guards. “Plants are subject to a lot of sonic cues, believe it or not. That one convinced them that it was the depths of winter and time to hibernate.”
“Ingenious,” Cei admitted, as he eyed the frozen vegetables. “Are there many such obstacles in our way?”
“According to the notes, there should be at least two more,” I nodded. “We’ll walk and lead the team from here. There’s a hamlet of woodcutters, up ahead. We’ll rest there before we continue through the next two challenges.”
We paid the headman of the nameless hamlet a few silver pennies to watch the team – the carriage I made disappear again. The elder seemed to remember me from my last visit, and I played along to see if I could coax any more detail out of him. Just as my notes suggested, he did not advise going anywhere near the ruins – the Elf’s Gate, as he called them. The vegetable knights largely left his folk alone, unless they came too close.
“We’ll stay the night, here, then press on to the gate in the morning,” I decided. The shadows in the wood were already growing darker and gloomier. While I could have managed with magesight or Cat’s Eye spells, I preferred to see where I was going with the naked eye.
The woodsmen were happy enough for the company, especially when I shared two bottles of wine from my magical store. They rarely had cider, and this was on the second time in their lives they tasted “the lords’ wine”. I didn’t mind. The poor bastards who scratched a living cutting firewood and firing charcoal for the other villages were the poorest of the poor, in a remote and poverty-stricken region. While we drank around their fire they told us of the devastating peasants’ revolt of a generation before, one which took the lives of half the village. They didn’t even know how it rightly turned out.
On the subject of the Sorceress they were more circumspect. She was a figure of great mystery, reputed to be the most powerful witch in the world. Village lore suggested that every couple of years some knight errant or Censor would appear, ready to confront the Sorceress... but if they came back from the Elf’s Gate at all, they were unable to penetrate the mysterious force that kept them out.
I didn’t mention that the force had been placed there by the Alka Alon to keep the Sorceress in... nor did I mention how the gods reinforced it to keep dangers at bay. If everything went according to plan, neither would be an issue anymore.
The next morning we rose and departed at dawn. Alya could walk, after a fashion, if she was well-led and directed. Her eyes stared blankly ahead but she would still follow, if someone tugged on her hand. She was utterly compliant... but otherwise unresponsive to most stimuli. I’d like to say she was better than directly after Greenflower... and she was... but that didn’t make her well. In other ways she’d actually seemed to grow worse.
But the outdoors seemed to do her well, I noticed as she stumbled along, a nun on each arm. The day was cold but clear, with just a trace of breeze, and the air was filled with a rich, loamy smell from the few day’s precipitation and a few million fallen leaves. There were still small pockets of snowflakes from the dusting the region received hiding in shady corners of the forest. I tried to see them as good omens.
“That, I take it, is the Elf’s Gate,” Sire Cei said as we rounded a bend in the path and came to the ruin. A solitary arch, part of some much longer structure, was the final intact piece of the ruin. It seemed to be more gateway than anything else. There were dead vines and debris all over the rest of the ruin, but this small section looked more... maintained.
A flash of magesight and I could see why: the entire complex – what was left of it – served as the perimeter of a massive magical wall or fence that stretched out on either side. Though I could not prove it, I was pretty sure it extended far into the air, too.
“Shall we knock?” Sire Cei asked, as we halted in front of it. There was a faint shimmering across the entrance one could see even without magesight.
“Unnecessary,” I informed him. “Lilastien’s door-warden has already been informed of our arrival. He’ll be along directly.”
“Not more of those plant-things, I hope,” he said, his eyes narrowing.
“Oh, nothing like that. He’s a perfectly normal troll. Well, perhaps not normal – but he’s a troll.”
“A troll?”
“His name is Dargarin,” I explained. “He’s been working the gate for around four centuries, now. Maybe five.”
“Four... centuries? Trolls live that long?”
“If they survive, and if they’re agents of the Alka Alon Council, they do,” I answered. “He’s also well-armed and armored. Unless it’s Theridald, or Arsimbal.”
“Who?”
“His partners. He’s the reasonable one.”
I’m not sure if that soothed Sire Cei or disturbed him more. We waited patiently for ten minutes or so – while I reviewed my notes, just in case I missed anything – and just as I was getting impatient I heard heavy footsteps in the distance. A moment later my spells detected a troll headed directly for us.
Sire Cei tensed up, and put his hand on the haft of his warhammer, but I laid a hand on his shoulder to calm him.
“Let me talk to him, first,” I said. “Dargarin was almost friendly. For a troll,” I added.
“And if it is one of the others?”
“Then by all means, feel free to rescue me from my folly.”
Thankfully, it was Dargarin. When the trees began to part and a black-clad troll appeared out of the woods, he bore a long spear, not an axe or a staff.
“Sir Dargarin!” I hailed him, before he could properly take his guard. That startled him, and he peered through clenched eyes before he hefted his spear.
“You know me?” he asked, surprised.
“It is I, Minalan the Spellmonger,” I said. “I believe we crossed swords five years ago?”
“Sir Minalan? The wizard? ” Dargarin asked, his mighty eyebrows raised under his iron helm. “I thought you’d died!”
“I escaped,” I demurred. “I met with the Sorceress. Now I need to meet with her again.”
He looked uneasy. “I don’t think that’s going to happen, Sir Minalan,” he said, doubtfully.
“Would you be open to a bribe?” I asked, activating a hoxter pocket I’d prepared. I had a cluster of the things on the studded belt I wore, now. It was handy for this sort of work. A stack of books, all recently copied works from the library in Sevendor, appeared on the ground. “ The Complete History of the Five Duchies, Perwyn Bef
ore The Flood, Ater’s Almanac, The Nine Barons’ Revolt ... and a dozen more,” I promised.
The troll eyed the tomes the way I was used to them eyeing a plump Tal Alon.
“That’s awfully tempting, Sir Minalan,” he said, with a sigh. “But I can’t let anyone in here without permission of the Alkan Council. That is the rule ,” he recited.
A thought struck me. “What about members of the Alkan Council?” I proposed. “Are they denied entry by the rule?”
“Uh... no,” he admitted, leaning on his spear and eyeing the books. “They have the right to make inspections. But that dainty Fair One who came by last time was not a member of the council,” he warned.
“You are completely correct,” I agreed. “But as it happens, I have been made a provisional member of the Council,” I reported, matter-of-factly.
That was technically true; after arranging the rescue of the survivors of Anthatiel when none of their kin would make the dangerous journey, the Alka Alon had grudgingly allowed me on the Council, in some diminished capacity. It was an effort to secure our shaky alliance, I’d discovered through the Alkan web of gossip. There were splits growing in various Alkan factions, when it came to the war against Shereul. But once the Enshadowed released Korbal, a powerful undead lord of necromancy from the Alka Alon’s own past, things had changed. The Alka Alon needed our help, now, and I was representative of that help.
Provisionally. In an associate capacity.
Still, it was enough, I hoped, to talk my way past Dargarin without fighting him again. From the account in my notes, though I’d won the battle he was a mighty warrior. And his partners were close by.
“You? On the council?” he scoffed. “You’re humani!”
“Nonetheless, thanks to the alliance of humani and Alka Alon, I have been granted a position on the council. As such, I am asking you to open the way and allow me to make an unscheduled inspection of the premises.
“I dunno, Sir Minalan,” the troll said, scratching his wide, ungainly chin. His hair was trimmed short all over his body, and particularly short near his face. I suppose one of his mates did it for him. It did little for his comeliness. “I haven’t heard anything about humani on the Council.”
The Spellmonger's Yule: A Spellmonger Series Short Story Page 4
