I watched the Censor General’s face harden. “A shard of irionite, Your Grace. That foul stone that so poisoned the magi of old that the Magocracy, itself, forbade its unrestricted use. The device Orril Pratt, the Mad Mage of Farise, used to work warmagic on us.”
“Irionite,” the Duke repeated, as if hearing of it for the first time. “And this stone is proscribed by the Bans?”
“Aye, Your Grace.”
“Could you please recite the section of the Bans which specifically proscribes the use of irionite?” asked the Duke, reasonably enough.
Oh ho.
You see, Irionite has never been explicitly banned by the Bans – when my tribal ancestors conquered the Magocracy, the stuff was already exceptionally rare, being the sole property of the dead Archmage. So controlling any stray stones wasn’t as important an issue to the shamans who became the first Censors, the rebellious magically-Talented former nobility of the Magocracy were.
There are whole sections of the Bans revolving around the issue of loyalty and conduct of a registered mage, and the punishments inherent in violating those terms of the Bans. None of them explicitly ban irionite. Indeed, even Orill Pratt, the Mad Mage, hadn’t brought the Duchies down on Farise as punishment for having irionite. They invaded Farise because he used it to sink Ducal merchant ships and otherwise interfere with trade. On paper, magic had nothing to do with the invasion.
The closest they got to it, under the letter of the law, was the regulation of magical substances deemed “too volatile or dangerous to be used by an inappropriately-trained mage”. That statute was written to keep apprentices from sneaking off with some rare and special substance and using it without knowing it’s properties – and while Irionite certainly fell into that category, so did about a hundred other magical substances. Not all of which were banned by the Bans.
“My Lord?” the General asked, confused.
“I spoke clearly enough. Please identify which portion of the Bans that this Spellmonger is in violation of, and I will call him into court.”
“Your Grace,” Hartarian began, evenly, “it is well-known that the properties of irionite make it an unstable and dangerous—”
“Well, is it prohibited, or is it not?” asked Her Grace, sharply.
“Not explicitly, Your Grace,” Hartarian admitted, grudgingly. “But the Censorate may act to investigate a suspicion of a violation at the discretion of the Censor General. And the rumors I have heard – and the magical display we all witnessed last night – lead me to have a profound suspicion that this Spellmonger, Minalan, has improper possession of a witchstone.”
“So you have a mere suspicion that this Spellmonger may have a highly powerful magical artifact,” repeated Her Grace, sounding bored.
“Yes, Your Grace,” agreed Hartarian.
“An artifact that is not explicitly banned from use by the Bans you enforce.”
“Yes . . . Your Grace,” he admitted through clenched teeth.
“Well, you seem to be well within your rights then,” she said, casually. “Call this Spellmonger forth!” she commanded. Not exactly what I wanted to hear.
“Their Graces command the presence of Master Minalan of Castal, called Minalan the Spellmonger, Certified and Accepted Mage and licensed warmage of the Five Duchies!” I stood without thinking, pleased that someone had had the foresight to list my credentials. I’d earned them, after all.
I came forward and bowed, before the thrones, taking care to keep my pointy hat from falling off of my head. I stood at ease holding my staff on the opposite side of the room as Hartarian. “I am happy to be of service to Their Graces,” I said, oozing charm.
The General was not impressed. “You, Minalan of Castal, are accused of possessing a witchstone. What do you have to say in your defense?”
“It’s all true,” I said. “I do own a piece of irionite – several, if you want to be technical. I’m already attuned to my first sphere, however, so that is the only one I claim truly as ‘my own’.” There was a gasp from the crowd that had to have been staged, either that or these people were starved for entertainment. If anyone didn’t know I had a witchstone, it wasn’t because I trying to keep it a secret.
“So you admit having possession of this most dangerous and unpredictable artifact?” he said, accusingly.
“Why would I deny it? It’s not a violation of the Bans.” Another gasp.
“How is it not?” Hartarian asked, amused.
“Where in the Bans does it prohibit irionite?” I asked. My strategy had been to argue the dire necessity of the situation and throw myself on the mercy of his reason. This route suddenly seemed a lot more promising.
“The Bans do not prohibit it explicitly,” the older mage continued, “but that does not mean that irionite is outside of the purview of the Censorate. That is clearly stated in the Bans.”
“Under what clause?” I asked.
“Under the section dealing with materials deemed too volatile or dangerous to be used by an mage,” he retorted.
“An ‘inappropriately-trained’ mage,” I corrected. “I am a certified mage of the Duchies, your own signature is on my certificate, am I not?”
“So far,” he said, his eyes narrowing.
“And am I not an accomplished thaumaturge? Master Theronial is considered one of the finest minds in magical theory in a century, and he certainly considered me such.”
“Yes, it is said you have demonstrated some ability in thaumaturgy,” he said, unconvinced.
“And I am also a registered warmage, having been successfully passed through the War College and into the Ducal Magical Corps for the duration of the Farisian Campaign, am I not? Where I learned the responsibilities implicit in my position by instructors chosen by your own hand?”
“Yes, you are licensed to conduct magical warfare within proscribed limits,” he sighed. “None of this is at issue—”
“Excellent,” I said, interrupting him, “then can you tell me, my lord General, just who is better-trained to use a shard of irionite as I? I am certified, I am registered, I am an acknowledged scholar—”
“In Sex Magic!” he said, scornfully, “a discipline long derided for its pointlessness and perversity!”
“I’d rather say it’s an obscure discipline which the narrow-minded moralists within our profession have unfairly singled out for repression,” I dissented. “But that’s no matter: I am a thaumaturge, a warmage, and a mage, legally, by your own admission. What skills or training do I lack to use the irionite in my possession that some other mage might have?”
“You ask the wrong question, Spellmonger,” Hartarian said, his voice as imposing as his form. “The question is whether or not a man who is all these things and chose to waste his Talents as a village spellmonger, instead of pursuing a course as an advanced student of thaumaturgy, has any claim to such a powerful artifact, much less the wisdom and ability to use it.”
“As for wisdom, only time will be the test,” I admitted, as much to the crowd as to the General. “But I think I have sufficiently proven my ability to handle the power of the stone. I have had it two, going on three months now.”
“There is the question of whether any mage is well-trained enough to contend with the powers inherent in the substance,” he countered. “If you had continued your studies along some fruitful aspect of thaumaturgy, perhaps you would have been permitted access, under the strictest supervision, to study it. But you did not. You have been using it wildly and haphazardly, according to no controls or dictates but your own. Therefore the Censorate has no choice but to accuse you as a wild mage, and ask that Duke Rard rescind your certification and registration.”
“Thus depriving me of my livelihood,” I said to the court, appealing for their sympathy. “And you base this accusation on what evidence, exactly?”
He smiled a wolfish smile. It was not friendly. “It is the opinion of the Censorate that any unauthorized use of a shard of irionite is haphazard by definition.”
>
“So, there is no actual evidence that I have misused the stone or used it in a fashion dangerous to anyone who stands more than four feet tall and isn’t covered with black hair.”
“The possession of the stone is enough,” he said, simply. “History has taught us all too well the dangers of possession. The last human being to do so went mad and sparked a war.”
“A war in which I was deprived of the ability to pursue advanced studies, because I was drafted into the Magical Corps,” I pointed out.
“That in no way diminishes the danger of allowing even a single mage to walk around with a witchstone,” he said, crossing his arms defiantly. “In my capacity as Censor General, no one is better-suited than I to determine a magical danger.”
I turned to the Duke and Duchess in overwrought exaggeration. “Your Graces, I must appeal to your judgment. Have I proven myself a haphazard practitioner? Have I lost control at any point in my discussions? And did I not render some slight service to the Five Duchies in my steadfast defense of Boval Castle, against an army of hundreds of thousands?”
“The Spellmonger has some compelling points, Hartarian,” Duke Rard said, nodding solemnly. “He has used the stone to defend his master’s fief, and then used it to escape from the clutches of the Dead God, and now he seeks to use it to further our defense. In the process he has yet to prove himself anything but wise in employing these magics.”
“For now, Your Grace,” Hartarian admitted, not uncrossing his arms. “But for how much longer? Orril Pratt did not go mad overnight, it is known. In six months time, will he be able to control his power?”
“In six months time the Dead God will be using Wilderhall for his summer palace, if we do not act,” Her Grace said, tiredly. “Our own scouts have reported dozens of goblins with witchstones. If it is too dangerous for a spellmonger, trained and approved by every facility of the Censorate, to hold one of these stones, then what say you to the prospect of dozens of them in the hands of goblins?”
“I am charged with policing human magi, Your Grace,” he said, with exaggerated gentleness. “I’m afraid it falls to Alshar to police its borders, not the Censorate.”
“So . . . you admit that irionite is too dangerous to be deployed in our defense, but you have no opinion on it being deployed against us,” Rard said, staring balefully at the General. “Is that the sum of your argument?”
“Your Grace, my office is empowered to monitor and register legitimate magi,” he said, stiffly. “We have no mandate to regulate how the gurvani or any other race use magic.”
“Then perhaps the utility of your office may have waned, General,” Duchess Grendine said, coolly.
“Regardless of external threats, there are still magi to be regulated, and uncertified practitioners to be discovered and punished.”
“Why?” asked Grendine.
Hartarian looked confused. “Your Grace? Why . . . what?”
“Why is your office in the business of regulating the practice of magic?”
“Why, because that is how the charter for the Censorate was established over three-hundred years ago. A Royal charter, I might remind Your Grace, and a charter which cannot be rescinded by a Duke.”
“I’m aware of the legalities,” she said, curling her lip at the mage. “What I don’t understand is what use your office is to the Duchies.”
Hartarian looked astonished. “Does Her Grace propose that magic should be free and unregulated, able to be used to oppress all who face it?”
Grendine raised her eyebrows. “So you admit that the Censorate was established to protect the Five Duchies from bad magic,” she re-stated.
“Yes, Your Grace,” he said, bowing his head in agreement.
“Yet now that the Duchies are threatened by the greatest enemy ever arrayed against them, where one Duchy has already been decimated and the rest are certainly imperiled, now that danger looms on our doorstep, the Censorate has nothing to offer to protect us . . . save regulating our one defense away.”
Hartarian’s lip was trembling – but not with fear. The man was barely able to contain his rage.
“Then Censorate does not exist to protect the Duchies from attack! It exists to ensure the safe and effective use of magic in the realms! It falls to the Dukes and the military to protect!”
“Yet now the Duchies are under attack, and I, as Duke, find I’m far more interested in defending my people by any means at my disposal, not worrying about the wizards my great-grandfather were worried were hiding under his bed,” Rard said, dismissively. “If the Censorate cannot help in that defense, so be it. But if the Censorate hinders that effort, then what choice do I, as Duke, have but to mitigate its effects?”
“Mitigate, Your Grace?” Hartarian said, with far more derision in his voice than was probably healthy. “The Censorate exists to protect the people from young idiots like this,” he said, pointing angrily in my direction. I almost flinched – from a mage as experienced as Hartarian, a pointed finger is as good as a drawn sword. “Not only is he, himself, in possession of a stone, but he has given them to other magi! One bested one of my Censors in southern Alshar!”
“So the Censorate cannot even protect itself from a human mage,” sneered Her Grace. “How is it that you propose to protect us from the inhuman?”
“That . . . is not . . . my duty,” Hartarian said, slowly and with great deliberation. “The defense of the realms is given to the Dukes. How they choose to comport themselves is their affair.”
“And yet, we Dukes have a magical corps for our troops which must needs be established from the available warmagi.”
“Under the direction and oversight of the Court Wizard,” Hartarian added, testily. “So look to that dotard over there for help against the goblins, but that man is not leaving this palace with a witchstone on his person!”
“I beg to differ,” I murmured. A sharp glance from Her Grace shut my mouth at once. There was a deeper game being played here, one I didn’t understand.
“And how do you elect to enforce that edict?” Rard said, his voice raised dangerously.
“By calling upon the Duke of this realm to do his duty and assist me, as the Charter requires!”
“My first duty is to the defense of the realm,” Rard riposted. “How can I defend it if you wish to deny me my magical corps?”
“Your Grace may staff his magical corps how he sees fit,” assured the General. “You may use this mage or a seawitch or a foot wizard, for all I care, but he is not to have that stone! I will!”
The admission was not, of course, entirely out of bounds. In his role as Censor General, he was in charge of all powerful magical artifacts confiscated from wizards across the Five Duchies. By that right, if he did collect my stone, it would be “his” in the sense of it belonging to “his” office. That’s what he meant.
But that’s not how it sounded.
To me, to Their Graces, to the court, it sounded as if Hartarian, in his anger, had admitted to personally coveting my stone. It cast an entirely different light on everything he had said.
“How . . . interesting,” Grendine said. That woman could sneer a cat off a fence.
“So if I might comport my magical corps as I see fit, General,” Rard continued, his voice low, “then I suppose I should ask the advice of my Court Mage – I believe that this ‘dotard’ standing behind me, to whom I have entrusted the fate of magic in my Duchy for the last twelve years – can tell me what to do in this case. Would you agree, General, that Master Dunselen is the precise man within my court whose advice and opinions upon matters of spellcraft I should defer?”
“I meant no offense, and apologize for my rash words,” Hartarian said. It was graciously enough said, but the damage had been done. Master Dunselen looked up for the first time since the debate began, and his eyes did not look like those of a dotard. There was a profound intelligence and absolute focus in those eyes, and more than a little vindictiveness. Magi are not known for their forgiving natures. Espe
cially not politically-motivated magi who had reached the heights that Dunselen had.
“Well, my liege,” he began, his voice crackling at first, but then growing stronger as he progressed, “I would say that the Duke’s first and only duty of consequences is ensuring the security and safety of the Duchy. Any further duties would be dependant upon that. Including a perceived duty to an outside agency, such as the Magical Censorate.”
“The Royal Magical Censorate,” Hartarian reminded everyone, loudly. “Established by the hand of the King, Kamalavan I. And a King, Your Grace, out-ranks a Duke, as everyone knows.”
“Yes,” sighed Rard, heavily. “In that you are correct, Master Dunselen. And if the Duke’s first duty is to protect his fief, and he may best do so by using warmagi armed with irionite, then would voluntarily turning over the means of his defense to be warehoused with other arcane baubles until the goblins overrun it, would that be a furtherance of that first duty to protect the realm?”
Master Dunselen fixed Hartarian with an icy stare. “No, my liege, it would not.”
“Even if it meant violating the edict of the King?”
“I suppose Your Grace would have to ask the King,” Dunselen said, with such casualness that the entire gallery erupted in laughter. There hadn’t been a living king in the Duchies since Kamalavan had died and split his crown and the realm into five pieces. “Ask the King” was a well-known saying among the middle-nobility and the professional classes about appealing to non-existent authority.
“Yes, I suppose I would,” agreed Rard, just as coolly. “Tell me, General, could you bear a message from me to the King?”
Hartarian bit his lip, despite himself. “No, Your Grace, I cannot.”
“What? It is a reasonable enough request, to be certain,” Rard said, feigning amusement. The gallery politely tittered in response, on cue. “I would like you to bear a message to the King, the monarch of the realm, the supreme sovereign of the Five Duchies, and ask him what the Censorate’s course of action should be. Surely, you must feel free to appeal to this authority you claim.”
“Your Grace, the Crown has delegated the entirety of the matter of magic to me and my office,” Hartarian said, easing back into a smoother tone.
The Spellmonger Series: Book 02 - Warmage Page 50
