Knights Magi (Book 4)

by Terry Mancour

  Knights Magi

  Book 4 of the Spellmonger Series

  First Kindle Edition

  Copyright © 2014 Terry Mancour

  The Spellmonger Series

  (In chronological order)

  Spellmonger

  “The River Mists of Talry”

  Warmage

  “Victory Soup

  “The Spellmonger’s Wedding”

  Magelord

  The Road To Sevendor

  Anthology

  (contains the first three short stories and four previously un-published stories)

  Knights Magi

  (forthcoming)

  “Stonesinger”

  “The Spellmonger’s Honeymoon”

  “The Ugliest Maid In Castal”

  Hawkmaiden (Cadet Novel)

  High Mage

  Prologue

  Part I: Inarion Academy

  Part II: Relan Cor

  Part III: Errantry

  Part IV: Mission

  Epilogue

  Dedication:

  To my boys, Owen and Hayden.

  They aren’t Tyndal and Rondal,

  But I have no doubt they will be legendary

  Knights Magi in their own right, some day.

  And a father could not be more proud of his sons.

  Cover Description

  Opposites Attack!

  When the Magelord Minalan the Spellmonger’s two apprentices, Tyndal and Rondal, were knighted after the battle of Timberwatch, they were dubbed Knights Magi: a new class of nobility for distinguished High Magi. Designed to combine the pursuit of arcane knowledge with the noble aspirations of chivalry, it elevated them above common warmage . . . in theory. The problem was they had no idea how to be a Knight Mage . . . because no one had ever been one before. And as a couple of half-trained rustic apprentices from the Mindens they did not feel up to the task or the high ideals of their title.

  But Master Minalan the Spellmonger decided to cure that ignorance. He arranges for Tyndal and Rondal to be tutored and trained together in their new vocation, learning the arts of magic, the craft of warfare and the subtleties of chivalry from the finest masters in the kingdom.

  If they didn’t kill each other, first.

  The two young spellmonger’s apprentices from the Minden mountain domain of Boval Vale have much in common: both had their homes destroyed, they were both sent into exile by the goblin invasion, and they both serve the same master. Yet they could not be more different.

  Rondal is quiet, bookish, and introspective, dedicated to the disciplines of academic magic and anticipating a future of study, service, and, perhaps, romance. Tyndal is bold and brash: an extroverted over-achiever with dreams of glory, gold, and girls. Fate, circumstance, and the whims of the gods have forced them together, but the raw emotions of adolescence and the trauma of war put them at each others’ throats with depressing frequency. Master Minalan can’t have that, especially not in his fragile new domain with another baby on the way . . . so he sends them on the road.

  Jealousy, anxiety, passion and frustration conspire to make them rivals - but if they don’t figure out a way to learn to work together, and quickly, then their stubborn feud could end up affecting the fate of the entire war. Along the way they pick up some enemies, gain a few allies, master a few new skills, and attempt to learn the laws of love. But as they stumble through their lessons and learn to master their tempers they discover that the strongest bonds between men are forged by the most difficult of trials.

  For after they become proficient at magic, war, and errantry they are put to the test in the field, the most difficult of circumstances . . . a mission where the strength of their friendship and the quality of their honor may be what defines them best as

  Knights Magi!

  Prologue

  Sevendor Castle, Winter

  Year One of King Rard I’s Reign

  “I,” I pronounced forcefully, my finger stabbing the air in front of my two older apprentices, “am about to throw both of you off of the tallest mountain in Sevendor!”

  Tyndal snorted. Asshole, I thought to myself. His defiance and open contempt for authority - when he wasn’t being obsequiously charming - was irritating me beyond belief, these days. We were sitting in my workshop in my tower, with both of them sprawled on stools while I paced back and forth. Tyndal had started a fight that I felt obligated to finish. I hoped he had enough sense to keep his mouth shut.

  “That wouldn’t be much of a fall, compared to back home,” he laughed, contemptuously. I could feel my nostrils flare.

  I growled. “This is ‘back home’, as far as you are concerned,” I reminded him, harshly. “At least Sevendor is my home, a home I’ve spent a thousand hours and thousands more ounces of gold than it was worth to restore. The home my son was born in. The home my daughter will be born in. The home my wife seeks comfort and security in while she is bearing our second child. The home . . . you two seem hell-bent on destroying!”

  They both blanched at my rebuke – no one likes being reminded of their dependence on other people’s generosity, and in truth I disliked using such tactics on (generally) good boys like Rondal and Tyndal, but today’s little tussle justified it.

  I don’t know where or how the argument started, but they’d been at each other’s throats for days. In fact, they had been skirmishing beyond the bounds of healthy rivalry since we’d returned from Barrowbell last month.

  Mostly I had ignored it, dismissing it at first as the them just going a bit “castle crazy” in the winter - you put too many people in a castle around the same fire for long enough, and they start to lose their composure. The weather had been cold and wet lately, and we were all starting to get a little rough.

  But this morning had been bad. They had been using magic against each other — not deadly, not even particularly offensive, but when two talented apprentices start lobbing arcane power around your dining room because of some girl or some chore or whatever it was, it was time to put my boot down. On their necks, if need be. My castle already made it easier to do magic here than any place on Callidore. I didn’t need a full-scale magical duel to entertain the folk with through the winter blahs.

  I continued in a slightly calmer tone. “Every day it seems I hear of another dig, another scrap. You can’t seem to be in the same domain without sniping at each other, and I blame you both. Tyndal, you go out of your way to provoke Rondal.”

  “Master!” he protested. I do not!”

  “You call him names, you boss him around, and you challenge his mastery of magic regularly. Rondal you sneer at his abilities, call him ignorant, and undermine his success and achievement just as regularly. And I’m sick of it.

  “You are both High Magi, magelords, and knights magi . . . but you are still my apprentices! And this is my home!,” I said. “At first I thought this was about Dara,” I said, naming my new thirteen-year-old female apprentice, “but this isn’t about her at all. It’s about the two of you.”

  “Master, he tried to talk to Maid Hilma when it’s clear she’s not—“ Tyndal began.

  “Master, he told Hilma that I enjoyed the virtue of maiden goats—!“ Rondal shouted back, angrily.

  Maid Hilma was a year older than they were, the niece of one of my Yeomen, Jurlor, whom I had taken into service as a boon. She was a pretty girl who enjoyed attention, and my two young idiots were eager to compete for it -- as eager as she was to play them off against each other.

  Hilma was a problem. I’d have to assign her some duties far away from them until I could get her safely married off to some farmer in the spring. She was a distraction they didn’t need. It seemed an opportune time for a fatherly rant, and as neither had fathers of their own, a
s their master it was my duty to beat them into manhood.

  “ENOUGH!” I bellowed. “I don’t want to hear it from either one of you! You are both intelligent, competent, and loyal . . . so why can’t I get you two blockheads to bloody well get along?!” I demanded angrily. As they both opened their mouths again I interrupted. “That is not an invitation for comment!”

  I sighed and paced back and forth in my workshop. Pacing is one of my favorite ways to think, and I’d become accustomed to walking back and forth in front of my workbench. I’ve even started to wear a bit of a path in the wooden floor. I had gotten into a pattern where I could think and focus best when I was pacing.

  But it also meant trouble, if you were the subject of my attention. The boys knew they were in trouble. They were a study in contrasts, but both of them were on the cusp of manhood and wearing my patience threadbare. I studied them severely for a moment.

  Rondal, the older of the two, was actually – technically – the junior apprentice, as I had inherited him from his former master and he had been with me six months less than Tyndal. Rondal was a wide-shouldered lad, shorter than Tyndal by four inches, and his hair was nondescript brown, flat, and cut with a bowl. He was just a bit nearsighted and had to correct his vision magically. He had the broad face and wide nose of the Wilderlands peasants and dark green eyes.

  Rondal was smart. He was also better educated than Tyndal, as he had spent more than a year under the mediocre instruction and sub-standard care of Garkesku the Great. I could fault my former professional rival for a host of things, but insisting his apprentices have a good grounding in basic Imperial magic theory and practice was not one of them. Rondal was a sponge when it came to learning – math, magic, masonry, you name it.

  Tyndal, by contrast, was taller, skinnier, and only a few months junior than Rondal. He had a strong Talent and a dislike of hard studying. That made him powerful but haphazard in his spellcraft. He had a shock of dirty blond hair that never quite seemed to stay put, and blue eyes that the village girls found dreamy. He was well-muscled for his frame, the result of countless hours spent on the practice field. If Rondal was an arcane scholar, Tyndal was a warmage by vocation. He loved swordplay, horses, and the trappings of nobility, too.

  Tyndal had initiative and ambition in spades. He also had just a bit more Talent than Rondal, and he was more willing to use magic than his fellow. But he rarely thought things through, and we’d had at least two or three incidents since we’d returned from Barrowbell that were do almost entirely to his lack of thinking before he acted. The madcap Yule we’d had a few days ago was merely the most recent occasion.

  They were good boys – but that was the problem. They were boys, and at the moment I desperately needed them to be men. My men.

  “I have a castle overfull of guests for Yule,” I enumerated on my fingers. “I have an encampment of rowdy Stone Folk out back, I have two or three Tree Folk dropping by every week to check on construction of their precious spire or ask me about snowstone, I have a subject domain on the brink of insurrection, I have three magical orders already fighting about their prerogatives, I have a teething baby and a pregnant wife, and I have a King who thinks I should be doing a lot more than I am about the . . . what was it? Ah, yes, the genocidal ball of magical evil that has invaded the Wilderlands and Gilmora and is trying to kill us all!”

  They blanched again. Unfair of me, I know. After all, the undead goblin head who had launched this invasion had taken their home first. Reminding them of that wasn’t sensitive.

  But it was necessary. They weren’t children anymore. But they were still boys. And that would have to change. That was precisely why they were in my workshop. I felt obligated to explain why.

  “Neither one of you have fathers,” I observed, “and as your lawful master, it is my place to usher you into the realm of manhood. I’ve never done that before. Maybe there is some subtle art or magic to it. But until I discover that wondrous spell, it is my duty to ensure that you become men.”

  “I’m already sixteen,” Rondal boasted. “I doubt I have much more growing to do, Master.”

  “This isn’t about your boot-size, Ron,” I said, disparagingly. “The fact is the two of you are full of piss and vinegar and boyish energy . . . and you’re getting on everyone’s nerves. Poor Dara barely survived that lesson you gave her on thermomantics. You are boys, but you are boys in the bodies of men. Age does not bring manhood,” I explained.

  “But Master,” Tyndal beseeched, “we’re both old enough to marry or fight in a war. We have fought in war,” he boasted. He was proud of his military service and the lauds it had brought him. That was not the emotion I wanted him to feel.

  “And you did so as boys,” I said, sternly. “Under ample adult supervision. The problem is, I don’t have time or energy to supervise you both anymore, or even the one of you. As much as I would like to devote the time to turning you into men, and men I can use, I do not currently have that capacity.”

  “But Master, we’re still learning plenty from you!” protested Rondal.

  “Couldn’t we study with Lady Pentandra instead?” asked Tyndal eagerly.

  “She cannot teach you what you need to know. Women become women by Trygg’s grace. It takes a man to make a man.”

  I remembered my own influences as I went from boy to man: my father, of course, but after he had raised me, the teachers at Inarion, the instructors at Relan Cor, and the veterans on the warmage circuit had filled in the gaps in my education. They had taught me the essentials of manhood, inclusive of so much more than choosing the proper barber and the best wife.

  I didn’t even understand properly what they had done until I had returned from the war in Farise. But they had given me guidance and taught me what I needed to know, not just about my profession, but about how to be a man. What it was to be a man.

  And I turned out pretty well.

  So I was going to try to re-create the experience with Rondal and Tyndal. They didn’t look committed yet, though. Time to scare them.

  “Show me your stones,” I said, after a long pause.

  Their eyes shot open, and they looked frightened. They had cause to be. Under the oaths they’d been among the first to swear, I had the authority to demand the return of their stones at any time. They were honor-bound to surrender them to me, if asked. And they were sworn to retrieve a stone from any other High Mage who refused to return their stone upon command.

  They slowly removed them from the tiny silk bags around their neck and held them out for me. I stared at the two small pieces of green amber and shook my head.

  “You have in your hands more power than the Mad Mage of Farise, gentlemen,” I said, looking at their stones. “More power than any mage since the Imperial Magocracy. You’ve destroyed castles with those stones. You’ve slain hundreds of foes.

  “But you are both still boys, as much as Urik was a boy when he went mad. And I cannot have a boy who cannot control himself in charge of irionite.

  “So you’re both going to Sendaria Port in the morning, thence downriver to Inarion in the south. You’re both familiar with the place,” I reminded them – it was the destination we had chosen to rescue them and a few thousand of their fellow Bovali from a certain death. “Put your stones away. You are to report to the headmaster and then spend the next several weeks of winter being tested and examined by the faculty. I want to know just how much you know about magic.”

  Tyndal, especially, had large deficits in his knowledge, due in part to my poor library and in part to the goblin invasion. Inarion Academy was one of only two magic academies in the Kingdom, now, and they were in the process of kissing my arse devoutly. I’d used their greed for irionite to get a few concessions, such as this special tutoring for my apprentices.

  Tyndal wasn’t stupid, he was actually very bright. But he lacked education. Inarion should repair that, at least enough for the time being. And Rondal, who was advanced even for a normal apprentice, would love the oppor
tunity to dive into their libraries and learn from the very best academic magi.

  “Then you’re both going to the War College at Relan Cor this spring,” I continued. “Tyndal, you will improve your mastery of swordplay and take formal classes for warmagic. You’ve mastered the basics of combat, but you need polishing to become a truly impressive warmage. And Rondal, I’ve arranged for you to be initiated into the Mysteries of Duin.”

  I heard them both suck in their breath, again with good reason.

  The Mysteries were legendary. Legendary for their brutality and rigor. Duin the Destroyer, war god of my ancestors, had stolen them from Gobarba, the old Imperial war god, and now all the gods seemed to prefer them. I’d endured them myself, in abbreviated form, when I was drafted. To my knowledge there was no better way to turn a man into a soldier than the Mysteries. That didn’t make them comfortable or pleasant, however.

  But Rondal needed it. Tyndal was a bit of a bully, I knew, and while Rondal was fairly good-natured, he needed to learn how to fight back. Without involving me. Rondal was smart, but he wasn’t strong. Tyndal was strong but he wasn’t smart. Rondal whined. Tyndal bitched.

  “Aw!” complained Tyndal, looking at Rondal for the first time. “You’re lucky! Why him and not me?”

  “Because you’re going to be spending the first two weeks he’s there on additional study at Inarion,” I explained. “And because you don’t really need them, not the way he does.”

  “He gets advanced training?” protested Rondal. “That’s unfair! Master, of the two of us I am—”

  “—going to be enjoying a lovely spring in southern Castal, learning the ancient and honorable trade of the infantryman,” I said, dreamily. “But that’s not all. When your terms at Relan Cor are up, you will return here . . . and spend some time learning what it means to be a knight mage.”