Warcaster (Mage Song Book 1)

by J. C. Staudt

  “Best be moving on this evenfall, milady,” said Sidarga. “Moving westward. And not back to your keep, neither. Not to anywhere them Dathiri Pathfinders might know to look. Frightful souls, them. They won’t stop looking until they find you. Olyvard King is not like his father. He won’t forgive. He won’t forget.”

  “Aye, the wench has the right of it,” Triolyn agreed. “We’ll need to find you some safe haven in another kingdom, you want your boy to live to see his first name day.”

  “What about Darion? I can’t hide away somewhere without telling anyone. He’ll never know where to find me when he returns from the war.”

  “If you care at all for your son, you will, and you must,” said Kestrel. “The fewer who know where you are, the better. We’ll keep our ear to the ground for news of Sir Darion’s return. When the right time comes, we’ll be there to help him.”

  “How will you know when the time comes, and where to find me?”

  Kestrel’s smile was as keen and charming as ever. “Fear not, Lady Alynor. So long as the mage-song lies over this world, it shall bring us all together again one day.”

  Excerpt from Reclaimer (Mage Song Book Two)

  Chapter 1

  Snow fell across the rocky shore, trimming the dark stone of the distant Korengadi capital in white. Darion Ulther pulled his furs tighter about his shoulders and shivered against the chill, hunkering down in his longship as the oarsmen drove the fleet onward. The northmen’s boats were thin-keeled and quick, yet the coxswains at their rudders were no less wary of the juts of stone standing like spears along the shoreline, or the sucking waves which threatened to drag them in and dash them to splinters.

  Rylar, deposed Prince of Korengad, gave Darion an appraising stare from the prow of his own longship, one of the fastest in the King’s fleet. The corner of the Prince’s mouth drew upward as he took stock of Darion’s discomfort.

  I am not afraid, Darion wanted to say. Only cold.

  “Cronarmark,” the Prince said, lifting his voice to be heard above the waves and raising a finger toward the city, as if Darion could’ve missed it.

  “This is where it ends,” Darion replied. “All the hard-fought years will be worth it when the city falls.”

  The Prince frowned, either unable to hear him or unable to understand. Rylar had made some effort to learn the tongue of the realms these past years, and could string together a coherent sentence when he needed to. His father was another matter. Rudgar King kept to his traditions, and had spent these years fixated on the goal of reclaiming his homeland. The king’s gaze was now fixed on the city, where the black-and-white checkered flags of the occupying Dathiri host wavered on the offshore winds.

  “Go you to front,” the Prince called across the distance between their boats. “I for you make path.”

  Darion shook his head. “This is your moment, Rylar. I will clear the way so you and your father may be the first to set foot inside the city gates. Your home awaits you.”

  Rylar Prince smiled and looked to his father, whose gaze had not broken from the city. Fewer than a hundred boats, two-score men to a boat, were all that remained of Rudgar King’s army. Weeks overland to Belgard, months at sea, and years spent trudging across the tundras of Korengad, laying siege to city after city in efforts to drive out the Dathiri, had taken their toll. So entrenched was the Dathiri army that hundreds of its soldiers had taken Korengadi wives and got them with child by the time Darion and the royals returned to liberate them. He was sure they would find more of the same when they sacked Cronarmark. This was the last Dathiri stronghold in all of Korengad, though. Here they would dethrone Olyvard King’s Regent and restore the realm to its rightful rulers.

  Ahead of the fleet, the impenetrable phalanx of stone along the shoreline gave way to a stretch of sandy beach. Darion remembered Rudgar King’s finger, cracked and bloody from cold and battle, tapping the parchment map on the table in his tent to denote his intended landing point on the beach of Daro Kolir, leaving a bloody print behind. Once the army made landfall, what lay beyond was a long and treacherous slog through sand and stone and tall seagrass under surveillance of the archers and warmachines upon the city walls.

  Pinpricks of blue light began to awaken on the spires and parapets of Cronarmark. Darion felt the mage-song stir around him and knew at once what this meant. The first of the longships had yet to clear the rocks, and a great distance remained between the bulk of the fleet and the patch of sandy shore ahead.

  “They’ve been waiting for us,” Darion said, almost to himself. “And they have Warpriests.”

  Rylar Prince knew it too. “Did not I tell they bring priest of wild-song?” he called.

  “You did, my friend,” Darion muttered, not bothering to shout back. “You certainly did.”

  Rudgar’s armies had encountered a handful of Dathiri Warpriests dispersed throughout Korengad during their conquest, but never more than two at a time. Darion tried to tally the blue lights in the city and lost count. The pinpricks streaked into the sky, forming graceful arcs against the night. They might’ve been beautiful, had Darion not known what they were bringing with them. Rylar was already casting his own spell, as were several of the other mages scattered among the longships. Darion’s first instinct was to order the men to raise their shields, but boiled animal hides would do little to protect them now.

  Coldfire crashed down amidst the fleet in a series of piercing blasts. Billows of biting air frosted the waves and turned the decks to ice. Blue flame rushed out behind to blacken the men’s skin and tear the planks asunder.

  The sound of cracking wood was the last thing Darion heard before the deck of his longship disintegrated beneath his feet. He did not remember the moment between standing and sinking; only the sudden sensation of frigid ocean water flooding his armor, dragging him down, and a wave rolling in to cover his head with a slap. He stretched his toes for hope of sand or stone beneath him, but none came.

  The leather straps of Darion’s plate armor and the fingers of his mailed fists froze solid in an instant. Flailing his arms did nothing but pull him down. All above him was bright blue, a sheet of fire slithering across the surface of the waves. Men were drowning all around him. Some struggled; others drifted motionless toward the bottom, frostbitten faces purple and blistered like spoiled grapes. If this is how I am to die, Darion thought, then let it be with the hope that I have done some good in this world.

  Darion’s breath ran out. Seawater flooded his lungs. In those final moments, he thought of Alynor; of the child who had been in her belly when he left, but who would’ve surpassed three years of age by now. I will never know the name of my own child. I will never know my son or daughter.

  Then his feet touched down. It was sand, not stone, but it was something. He let the weight of his armor push him down until his knees were bent at the sea floor, then sprang off his toes and swam for the surface. The heavy cold stunted his progress, and he surfaced only long enough to spew out a mouthful of seawater. He was sinking again before he could inhale half a breath. Eyes bleary with salt, lungs empty of air, he wondered if it was the last breath he would ever take.

  Fingers closed around the armhole in his breastplate and tugged him toward the surface. A second pair of arms joined the first. Darion spilled over the side of the Prince’s longship to lay gasping and coughing on deck. Rylar was standing tall at the prow, speaking the sigils of a spell even as he manipulated the mage-song in front of him. When he flicked a hand out over the water, warm orange flames spread across the waves to devour the coldfire in a gout of steam.

  “Die you not today,” the Prince shouted over his shoulder.

  Darion rolled onto his side and coughed until he vomited.

  “Try you on that,” said the Prince.

  “What?”

  “Try you on that.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Darion.

  “I believe he wants you to stay there until you feel better,” said Vaeron Shask, the King’s
interpreter.

  “What are you doing on this boat?” Darion asked, breaking into another fit of coughing.

  “The King had no more room aboard his vessel, and little need for my services without you there.”

  Darion removed a gauntlet to sweep his long hair from his eyes with a frigid hand. Dozens of Rudgar’s longships were still afloat and speeding toward the beach while his mages conjured protective spells to shield the fleet’s advance. Rylar was doing more than that; he had covered several of the boats in flickering fields of warm yellow mage-song and was tossing spells toward the city walls.

  “It’s good you’re here,” Darion told Vaeron. “Tell the Prince I will be back on my feet as soon as I can feel my legs.”

  Rylar laughed when Vaeron spoke the translation. “That you do,” the Prince said. “I for you take Cronarmark.”

  “He says stay there while he--”

  “I heard him.” Darion staggered to his feet. His knees wobbled and his head swam, but he clutched the boat’s gunnel to steady himself beside the Prince. “I haven’t come all this way to quit now. Move over and keep your voice down. You’re not the only one on this boat with spells to cast.”

  Darion and Rylar stood side by side at the longship’s prow, awakening mage-song with the decisive fervency the war had often required of them. Had there been debate before the war as to who was the greater Warcaster, that debate would’ve grown only the fiercer since Darion and the Prince began fighting together. Though they came from different lands and spoke separate tongues, the language of magic and its song were their common bond. The two Warcasters had learned from one another, growing all the more powerful in tandem.

  There was no time to stop the longships, and no area clear of debris in which to weigh anchor and let the men wade ashore. Instead Rudgar ordered the remaining boats run aground and evacuated in haste. Darion nearly toppled over the prow when the prince’s ship scraped to a halt on the beach. He flung himself overboard and landed on a gentle slope of coarse, rocky sand. He stood beside the boat to expend the last of the spells he had cast, shielding himself with protective mage-song and sending a blaze of green darts across the sky toward the city.

  Then the Prince was beside him, tackling him to the sand as a wave of bluefire crackled over the longship and blasted it to splinters. Rylar pulled Darion to his feet as frozen chunks of wood rained down around them. He shoved Darion up the beach, spouting a string of Korengadi curses to get him moving.

  Together they trudged across the open expanse, stumbling over black rocks and seaweed toward the tall dune grasses and the solid ground beyond. Darion was still unsteady on his legs; the padding beneath his armor was soaked and twice as heavy as normal. When he looked around, he was startled by how few of the men were with them.

  The beach was clogged with longships. Behind them, a tangle of boats floated on the waves with nowhere to make a landing. Some of the men were attempting to wade ashore in the freezing waist-deep water while others thrashed their oars, vying for position.

  Rylar dove behind a stand of grass to wait for the army, motioning for Darion to join him. “We make run. Have more men.”

  Darion came down beside him, shivering and numb. He nodded. “Straight ahead. That’s the only way.”

  Between the mainland and the high rocky plateau on which Cronarmark was built, there lay a long wide bridge of natural stone. This bridge was the only way in or out by land; the walled city was otherwise surrounded by the sea on all sides.

  Rylar frowned. He touched a finger to his lips. “Mouth blue.”

  “Yes, I’m very cold,” Darion said.

  “No move.” Rylar put a hand to Darion’s breastplate and spoke the sigils of a spell.

  Warmth flooded him, subduing the chill for a few precious moments. When the tundra winds blew over him afresh, though, Darion was still wearing the same soggy gambeson and frozen armor. He and Rylar helped each other to their feet as a meager host of soldiers clambered over the dune, many as wet and cold as he was. The King stood among them, silent and determined.

  Rudgar gathered his men around him and gave a brief but impassioned speech, most of which Darion did not understand. When the men gave a shout and began to move, he knew it was time.

  They advanced up the beach until the sand turned to hard permafrost beneath their feet. A fresh layer of snow blanketed the expanse of tundra between themselves and the bridge to Cronarmark. All fell silent as Rudgar’s army drew into position, stamping to shake off their nerves as much as the cold. Dathiri archers stood vigilant on the city walls, preparing to thwart the charge they knew was coming.

  Rylar raised his sword, shouted a command, and began to cast. The Korengadi army broke into a sprint toward the city gates while Darion and the other casters followed at a slower pace, flinging spells at the waiting defenders. If they stood any chance at victory against these odds, Darion did not see it.

  Afterword

  I hope you’ve enjoyed Warcaster. If so, be sure to check out Reclaimer, the next in the series. To receive updates on new releases and advance copies of future works, sign up for my Readers’ Group. Thanks for reading!