Court Wizard: Book Eight Of The Spellmonger Series

by Terry Mancour

  It was confusing. Things that she used to do for herself she now had to take Arborn into consideration before doing. Her time was not quite her own, anymore. And she now had a permanent invasion of her personal privacy that she found disconcerting.

  The dramatic pace of their lives since their wedding had softened the transformation somewhat, she guessed. A few weeks in Sevendor for the Magical Fair after the wedding, and then the late autumn trek to Gilmora to join the Duke in preparation for his restoration had kept the full effect of her wedding from her. But Pentandra knew that the honeymoon was drawing to a close.

  Now she had to find some way to learn to live with a man, not just love him.

  Beyond her fears and anxieties over the intricacies of her newly-minted marriage Pentandra had other worries. In marrying Arborn she had not just followed her heart, she had eschewed tradition.

  In the Remeran aristocracy in which she’d been raised a young woman not only did not marry for love, she did not marry without the express consent and counsel of her entire family, particularly her female relatives. In finding the perfect man Pentandra had committed the sin of marrying him without her mother’s knowledge, much less her approval or permission.

  That wasn’t a legal issue as much as it was a social matter. Young aristocratic Remeran ladies were expected to wed in their late teens, with a lot of parental involvement in the selection – that was how her older sister had fared. But because Pentandra developed rajira, the Talent to use magic, soon after menarche, she had been spared the indignity of an arranged marriage.

  To her mother, Amendra, she Pentandra was a lost cause. She felt the weight of her disappointment, particularly on the anniversary of her youngest sister’s death. No matter what she did, Pentandra would forever be a disappointment to Amendra anna Benurvial.

  While being a mage was a respected profession among the Remeran nobility, the Bans precluded most beneficial marriages for her anyway. Female magi were professional women, in Remeran society, unlikely to marry at all. Most went into practice as Resident Adepts (the traditional Remeran term for “spellmonger”) or went into public service. Or teaching. They were not particularly desirable as brides.

  Pentandra had compounded her problems by eschewing the respectability of even that path and focusing on a career in magical research – and not just any research. In spite of her mother’s investment in social propriety, Pentandra had chosen the thoroughly scandalous field of sexual magic to study – not the easiest thing to brag about at garden parties. Perhaps, Pentandra often reflected, one of the reasons she’d pursued her studies so aggressively.

  While her older sister had gone on to be the perfect picture of her mother’s social ideals, marrying a handsome, rich young noble living in a small but elegant country estate, Pentandra had been publishing papers and giving lectures on arcane and outlandish subjects . . . and developing a somewhat unsavory reputation in the refined halls of Remere.

  Her sudden rise to prominence in the Arcane Orders had mollified Mother somewhat. Being so close to the centers of power almost made up for the lack of a beneficial match, in her mother’s mind . . . almost. The glorious memory of her sister’s summertime wedding continued to echo in her letters even as Pentandra was dining with dukes and even the King, himself.

  It seemed that no matter how well Pentandra did, professionally, she did not measure up to her idiot sister in her mother’s eyes because she was still without a husband, and near to twenty-five.

  Arborn should have repaired that . . . had he not been not just a foreigner and a commoner, but a barbarian tribesman whose people worshipped animal spirits as much as gods.

  The fact that Arborn was more literate than most of the nobility and more widely respected than any aristocrat she knew meant nothing to Remeran society, and therefore meant nothing to her mother. Without title, lands, or coin, his status as a penniless wanderer made him little more than a vagabond.

  Marrying the incredible Kasari ranger had been as scandalous, in its way, as taking up sex magic.

  Perhaps that’s why Pentandra had yet to write her mother about it. The news was out, of course – her cousin Planus was a horrible gossip, and had seen to that. That was half the reason he’d hosted a magnificent wedding party in their honor back at Sevendor . . . the details of which he’d certainly told everyone back in Remere. Planus could resist gossip that juicy, even if it was about his favorite cousin. He enjoyed the scandal.

  It was a good one, too. With her unanticipated wedding to a barbarian she’d lost much of her family’s good opinion of her. Remerans of Imperial descent just did not see much worth in a man such as Arborn. Planus had filled her in on the reactions, back home. Her mother was mortified at the news. Her sister was gleeful at Pentandra’s socially embarrassing choice.

  Pentandra was supposed to marry a fellow mage, or at least an intelligent nobleman who would add to the family’s prestige, if not its estates. Arborn was neither of those things. He was ghastly poor, as her family measured things. A penniless ranger from the wild – the news had shaken her mother’s social circle and enlivened her sister’s. Arborn was scandalously unacceptable to her family. Which was one of the many reasons Pentandra had been attracted to him.

  Pentandra was not eager to face her mother over the marriage. She did not fear her rejection of Arborn (no one would ever be good enough for her disappointment of a daughter, she knew; Amendra made no secret of the fact that she had never thought Pentandra would wed at all). She feared the judgment Amendra would cast over making such a permanent decision without her counsel and advice.

  Which was precisely why Pentandra made the choice to marry Arborn without her mother’s counsel and advice. Mother would be beside herself, Pentandra knew. The temerity at thinking she was wise enough to marry a man without her mother’s help would be just too much for her to bear.

  It wasn’t mere spite, she knew, as much as she could claim that. It was wisdom. She had felt so blissfully wonderful when she and Arborn had finally consummated their love for each other. But she also knew all too well that there was more to marriage than blissful repose, and if she had any aspirations to a happy life Amendra anna Benurvial was not someone whose counsel and advise she valued. Her parents were miserable when they were together, and never stopped complaining about each other.

  Now that she had achieved the man she’d coveted, she needed to figure out how to incorporate him into her life, and she into his. She had to learn how to live here in Vorone with her husband, somehow, and if her mother was anywhere nearby, that would be nearly impossible . . . without recourse to matricide. Compared to that challenge, the idea of rebuilding a broken duchy from the ashes of invasion, usurpation and neglect seemed elementary.

  Minalan offered Pentandra her new post as a compromise: good, honest magical work and an important title, yet near to the forests of her husband’s Wilderlands home. But he hadn’t coated the offer in honey – Minalan had given her a starkly realistic idea of the task ahead of her. This would not be a cushy position, with servants and a nominal stipend. Her new title would have to mollify her family. That would, at least, keep one of her parent’s happy.

  Her father, Orisorio, was a professional mage himself, and he respected his daughter as a brilliant theoretician. Orisorio had been skeptical of her appointment, considering it a demotion, but he had not given her trouble about her new husband.

  He was more disappointed that Arborn wasn’t gifted with rajira than he would be in his social class or cultural associations. He had been even less hopeful about Pentandra’s nuptial chances than her mother, but he’d also been less concerned. A good mage could support herself, he’d always told her. She didn’t need a husband to survive.

  Even in Gilmora she’d been too preoccupied with planning and preparing for her new position to fret overmuch about her new marriage. She’d spent her days discussing the arcane situation in Vorone and helping Father Amus with political strategy while Arborn had consulted with Count Sal
go on the tactical situation in and around Vorone. There just hadn’t been enough time to get used to each other.

  Their nights had been as cozy and passionate as she could ask – Arborn had proven to be a lusty and enthusiastic lover, if not terribly sophisticated – but they’d already shared some awkward mornings. She’d been worried how things would work for them for a while now, but other events had kept them occupied. Now that they were headed toward the final destination on their journey, the gritty reality of her situation was starting to bear down on her harder than it ever had before.

  She was married.

  That was the real, secret reason she was now skulking through the frozen, filthy streets of a scruffy town in the Wilderlands with a band of mercenaries and adventurers on the eve of Yule, she knew . . . when she should have been basking in the sumptuous feast and stuttering over the difficult questions her family in Remere was certain to have prepared for her this year.

  The truth was, Pentandra was running. And hiding. Taking on an impossible task, just to avoid judgment.

  From her mother.

  She forced herself away from wallowing in that pit of fear and anxiety, and focus instead on the daunting task ahead. That was something she could actually do something about.

  The demands of the post would require far more than elegant spellwork and adept administration, she knew. Serving the Orphan Duke in the capacity of court wizard promised to challenge her in ways she could not expect. It was as much a study in crisis management as it was in magical opportunity. Indeed, that was one reason Minalan had chosen her and promoted her for the position, because of her abilities beyond the arcane.

  Politically, the situation was fluid. Vorone was a Ducal city, technically, but unlike Rouen, Falas, Castabriel, or even Wilderhall it had little purpose other than entertaining the court nobles in hunting, horse racing, hawking, whoring, and providing the ducal family with relief from the south’s heat and bad weather. Vorone was the summer capital of the Duchy of Alshar, but it had lain dormant in function since the assassination of Duchess Enora here, just days after her husband had died of wounds sustained at the Battle of Timberwatch, four years ago.

  That had been an important battle. Pentandra had been there herself, and it was terrifying in her memory still. Two dukes had joined their armies together to fight the common foe, and had stopped – mostly - the gurvani invasion from the Mindens from entering the populous Riverlands. A victory.

  That Lenguin, the Duke of Alshar, had some assistance in claiming his final reward from Duin in the afterlife for his puissance was not widely known. In fact, it was a closely-held secret of the Arcane Orders that Duchess Grendine of Castal (now Queen Grendine I) had ordered her magical assassin, Isily of Bronwyn, to give the indecisive Duke Lenguin a helpful push into the afterlife.

  But while it was also strongly suspected that the Queen’s agents were likely behind the subsequent assassination of Duchess Enora, particularly amongst the highly suspicious Alshari, there was no definite proof – nor did the Orders want to upset the new regime with accusations. The Duke of Castal had used the resulting power vacuum in Alshar and the subsequent possession of the heir to elevate himself to kingship. In doing so, he protected the Arcane Orders. And he’d used his military position to take wardenship of Duke Lenguin’s minor heirs, especially the only son, Anguin, and forced him to support the new Kingdom of Castalshar.

  Not everyone had been eager to see the union of Remere, Castal, and Alshar under one crown. There was a historical distrust of the realm from both of the other duchies, a history and tradition of enmity only to be expected after centuries of intermittent feudal warfare.

  The Alshari duke had been coerced. Remere was willing to be bribed. Farise had been conquered. But there were plenty who were unwilling to support the kingdom or the Castali ducal family. The anti-Castali parties in Alshar fled south to the rich coastal valleys and vibrant seaports where a coven of rebel barons and viscounts led by the Count of Rhemes denied King Rard his position.

  They’d also taken control of the wealthiest most densely populated portion of the Duchy and the massive Alshari Navy in the process. And closed the gate behind them.

  What was left under royal control (and therefore under Duke Anguin’s control, as the king’s sworn vassal) was a slice of thinly populated, largely undeveloped land between the nearly-impassable Land of Scars to the south and the unremitting danger of the gurvani Penumbra in the north.

  Hardly a third of the original duchy remained to Anguin. But that fragment was enough for King Rard and Queen Grendine to have enough of a pretext to build a throne upon. They had the Orphan Duke, they had the Duke of Remere, and they had the Duchy of Castal.

  Whether or not they could build an actual functioning kingdom was another matter.

  It was a deft piece of political maneuvering, Pentandra had to admit – it had all the style of the traditional Remeran politics she’d grown up with, with a dash of Alshari ruthlessness and Castali pragmatism. But the fact that Pentandra and her cherished profession had directly benefitted from the double assassination left a bad taste in her mouth.

  The Orphan Duke was an orphan for no better reason than because his indecisive father and idiot mother had gotten in the way of his vicious aunt’s ambitions. To that end Rard and Grendine had supported the banishment of the Censorate of Magic and appointed Minalan the Spellmonger and his cronies to oversee matters arcane in the new kingdom of Castalshar.

  As a result, both she and Minalan felt an obligation to the boy duke to try to make up for that. That was part of the reason she was here.

  But Pentandra was also here to represent the substantial interests of the Order and her profession in the Alshari Wilderlands, she knew. She’d taken the post partly as a way to safeguard the political truce that the Magi and the nobility had come to in the last few years, a truce that had greatly liberalized the practice of magic – including allowing magi to hold lands and titles.

  But she and Minalan had agreed that depending on one political alliance for the Order’s survival was foolhardy. Rebuilding the Duchy of Alshar – what was left of it – and restoring the Orphan Duke to power here in fact, and not just in name, was her actual mission.

  That would require magic. And luck. And the help of the gods.

  Despite his title, the actual holdings the Duke would have left under his control were pitiful, war-torn, and fractured. Nothing had been the same in the Alshari Wilderlands since the goblin invasion. Much of the local nobility, the knights and landed gentry of the region which were the heart of the Alshari military, had been all but wiped out when they’d tried to drive the gurvani back to the mountains.

  They had largely failed, and died in battle, leaving their people leaderless and without protection, homeless refugees fleeing for their lives – and those were the lucky ones. Much of the Wilderlands population had been slain or enslaved or both. The already loose social and cultural institutions of the feudal system that bound together the far-flung settlements of this robust and undeveloped land had been ripped away by the invasion. What was left was struggling just to survive the aftermath.

  There was Tudry, in the north – once a rustic walled town depending on mining and forestry for its survival. It was the farthest thing north that could rightly be called a town, once a center of mining and timber.

  Tudry was now an army town on the edge of the Penumbra, ruled by her friend Astyral, a Gilmoran magelord of some repute, sheltering around twenty thousand brave souls behind its walls. Its biggest reason to exist was to provide opposition to the goblins of the Penumbra. If it wasn’t for the subsidy that the Kingdom sent every six months to pay the garrison there, and the tribute it collected from the region, the place would be long deserted and occupied. It was holding on by magic, spite, and government subsidy.

  A few independent lords had managed to hang on to their holdings around Tudry, especially to the east, and there were even a few barony-sized institutions in places. There were
a few smaller but fully-functioning baronial towns south of here, in the gentler, more developed region of Wilderlands and the last bit of the Alshari Riverlands not taken over by Castal a half-century before.

  Vorone was the last actual city of any size in the Wilderlands worth ruling. Its relatively central location, large population, and traditional seat as a ducal city made it the natural political site of the restoration. Dukes needed courts, courts needed capitals, and Vorone was a capital.

  And it was a bloody mess.

  The summer capital was poorly situated for defense, and the flood of refugees from the Penumbralands swelled its population far beyond its meager capacities. There was a ring of camps around the town, in abbeys and abandoned estates, now, where nobles once hunted, hawked, and fished. After four years the common folk within the camps had built them into near-suburbs of the town. They survived on alms, a meager relief from the new Crown, day labor at the few honest manors in the area, and whatever else they could find to keep from starving. That mostly meant the most unsavory of economies.

  There was a garrison here established by King Rard, but it was poorly maintained, shoddily equipped and abysmally led, by all accounts. The soldiers were suitable for little more than quelling the frequent food riots and protecting the palace.

  That was largely the fault of the current ruler in Vorone. After taking possession of the ducal heirs, King Rard installed a local pro-Castali baron, Edmarin, as his Steward of the Realm in Vorone. He was ostensibly in charge of both the summer capital and the lands beyond, but his actual power was as weak as his ambition to do more than collect his own royal stipend and live like a Duke at the palace.

  But without a Duke in that palace, Pentandra knew with certainty, there wasn’t really any real reason for the town to exist at all.