Court Wizard: Book Eight Of The Spellmonger Series

by Terry Mancour

  It gave Pentandra a new appreciation of the power of magic, now that the Spellmonger had overturned the old order.

  “I did propose that we make up for the shortfall with a lottery,” the nun proposed, quietly. “Threanas did not seem to enthused by the idea,” she added.

  “She’s from Enultramar, or near enough,” Pentandra pointed out. “Even if she worships the Narasi gods, she’s familiar with the culture of the Sea Lords. They do not look kindly on gambling,” she explained, which made the nun’s eyes grow wide.

  “But . . . but randomness and probability are the basis of all life!” Saltia said, scandalized.

  “Perhaps,” conceded Pentandra, who found the spiritual point highly debatable but kept silent, “but to the Sea Lords dice and other games are the tool of the Shipwrecker. She’s the daughter of the Storm King responsible for those who die at sea. Indeed, ‘dicing with the Shipwrecker’ has been a saying among the Sea Lords regarding any risky proposition for centuries.”

  “They don’t . . . don’t gamble?” Saltia asked, scandalized by the idea.

  “Not as a rule,” Pentandra affirmed.

  “Then what do they do for fun?”

  “They drink wine, brag a lot about their pretended accomplishments, tell the tales of their illustrious ancestors, and screw their wives and mistresses. And conquer people, when they get the chance. Oh, there are plenty of exceptions, and some Sea Lords are even celebrated for their willingness to go against probability . . . but then, would you want the captain of your ship depending upon the whims of chance, rather than his experience and wisdom?”

  It was clear to Pentandra that Saltia would prefer just that – the nun was a firm believer in her notoriously capricious goddess’ nature. For Saltia there was only good luck, in greater or lesser amounts.

  Pentandra was a mage, and less inclined to invest in that philosophy. When one could view the inner workings of nature with magesight, the random nature of events became less important. The magi saw their perspective as a matter of scale, with chaos and order part and parcel of the same thing, not an impersonal force to be struggled with or embraced.

  Yet she did not fault the nun for her beliefs. She was a work horse in an environment that needed them, if it didn’t always reward them. Her perspective on randomness might even assist her in balancing the ledgers of the duchy, she supposed. Nor did she feel unreasonably superior about the difference of opinion. There were plenty of magi who just didn’t know what the hell they were talking about.

  Later that day Pentandra was headed to inspect the Mirror array station they’d installed when she ran into a Show Horse of the highest order.

  The man was in his early thirties, dressed in an impeccable doublet in dark gold in the southern style, a thick golden chain bearing a pendant seal around his neck, and a courtier’s half-cloak thrown jauntily over one shoulder. He was clean-shaven, another style popular in Enultramar but not in Vorone.

  “You are the Court Mage, correct?” the man said to her, when he encountered her entering the main palace from the garden.

  “Lady Pentandra,” she agreed, nodding. “I don’t believe we have met.”

  “Just arrived,” the courtier said, with amused tolerance. It was as if he was shocked that his arrival hadn’t been the subject of gossip. “I need to talk to you about some things I require,” he said, matter-of-factly.

  “That will depend entirely upon what they are, my lord,” Pentandra assured him, “and entirely upon who you are.”

  “What?” he asked, sharply.

  “I don’t think we’ve been introduced,” Pentandra said, flatly. “I don’t even know your name, much less your rank and office.” It was a polite enough statement, but it challenged the man’s sense of his own power.

  “Really?” he asked, affecting surprise and scorn. “Well, I happen to be Sire Grenvaden of Inmar!” he announced, as if that would bring enough of an explanation to satisfy anyone.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Sire Grenvaden,” Pentandra said, unenthusiastically. “Are you visiting court? Or have you achieved an appointment?”

  That seemed to irritate the lord even more. “Why, I am none other than the Lord Avener to the Duke!” he declared. “I was named when His Grace elevated Sir Daranal to the peerage, and he needed a trusted and reliable replacement. It’s one of the most important offices in the court!”

  The fact that Pentandra could think of literally dozens of other offices of far more importance than the procurer of hay for the duke’s stables, she was diplomatic enough not to name them.

  “Ah, yes,” Pentandra said, her eyes narrowing. “What can I do for you, Sire?”

  “Well,” the man said, clearly upset about not being identified, “it seems that my office is deplorably lacking,” he explained. “The facilities are poor enough, for the post, but the tasks the duke has set me are vexing.”

  “In what way, vexing, Sire?”

  “Why, he expects me to secure silage for the entire stable!” he declared.

  Pentandra blinked. “Isn’t that what an avaner does, Sire?”

  “Well, of course!” the man said, as if she were an idiot. “But do you have any idea just how many horses reside in the stable?” he asked, mystified.

  “I would expect a gracious plenty, Sire,” Pentandra agreed.

  “You would be correct, my lady,” Sire Grenvaden agreed. “Of course, the cost associated with such purchases are great, even in this rustic retreat,” he said, looking around at the palace disdainfully. “I figured my charge would extend to seventy or eighty horses . . . and now I find there are nearly a thousand in the Duke’s stables, alone!”

  “That does seem like a secure position, Sire,” Pentandra pointed out. “But what can I do for you?”

  “Secure?” the man said, ignoring her question. “It’s impossible! I will have to travel to several estates – several! And purchase last year’s silage. From peasants,” he added, with a pronounced sneer.

  “They are, it is said, the ones who actually do the mowing,” Pentandra pointed out.

  “So they say,” Grenvaden agreed, though his tone indicated he was suspicious of the claim. From what Pentandra could see, the useless nobleman would have been suspicious of anything a peasant said. Or anyone else not of his rank. “Yet the idea that I have to visit their damnable villages and inspect this silage for myself is . . . is . . . unacceptable,” he finally said, with the utmost of gravity. “I was not raised and schooled so that I could bandy the price of hay in pennies with illiterate villeins!”

  “The folk of the Wilderlands are not villeins,” Pentandra tried to explain. “They’re free peasants. Yeoman farmers and freeholders.”

  “Yet they do not seem to know their proper place!” the man nearly screeched. “I set a price, they try to dissuade me from it. It’s disrespectful!”

  “That, my lord, is bargaining,” Pentandra explained, patiently. “Hay is a commodity which sells at a fluctuating price, just as any. It is dependent upon how much hay is available, how far it must be moved and the cost of that transport, and how much hay is needed by the market.”

  “But I was nowhere near the market!” Grenvaden insisted. “They wanted nearly six pence a stack, and claimed they could fetch as much from market! But we weren’t at market!” he said, testily.

  “If that is the price at market, Sire, then I can see their point,” Pentandra pointed out. “Why sell it to you, for five pence, when they can wait until market day to sell it for six? Or more, if the demand is high enough?”

  “Because I am the Duke’s Avener,” Grenvaden said, proudly, holding out the golden seal around his neck. “They should be honored to sell their wares to the Duke!”

  “They aren’t,” she pointed out, impatiently. “They’re selling it to the Duke’s Avener. If they were selling it directly to the duke, that might be something else, but . . .”

  “But they have an obligation to supply the palace adequately!”

  “Actua
lly,” Pentandra said, knowing the man was not going to like the answer, “they are under no legal obligation to do so. The duke has estates for that purpose . . . and if they are falling into ruin, that is his problem, not theirs.”

  “But how can they be permitted to sell what the palace needs to someone else?” he asked, clearly not understanding the idea she was trying to explain.

  “Because it’s their hay!” Pentandra shot back. “They grew it, they harvested it, they need to sell it to make their money.”

  “It’s just grass!” dismissed Grenvaden. “Why does it have to be so expensive? If I pay that much, why, I’ll have very little left over to run my office!”

  Pentandra didn’t know much more about hay as a commodity than she did iron ore or timber or wheat . . . but she’d seen the brutal, back-breaking labor of mowers making hay in the late summer often enough to know how demanding it was.

  “If your job is to provide hay, my lord, I would suggest you do what is necessary to provide hay,” she said, simply. “Why do you need my help? Indeed, how does magic enter into the avaner’s office at all?”

  “I was told you were powerful,” he said, clearly skeptical of the claim. “I thought it might be possible for you to whip up a little charm or spell that would help me convince these villeins the merit of offering the Ducal Avener a special price.”

  “An amulet . . . that would make you convincing?” she asked, surprised.

  “Perhaps,” he shrugged. “I just don’t want to pay for the hay. If you can arrange for a spell to keep their prices low, I think it would be a genuine service to the duchy,” he declared.

  “So,” Pentandra said, slowly and carefully, “when the time comes for those peasants to pay off their tribute to their lords and their share to their commons, what would you have them pay their taxes with, if they have not received fair value for their labor?”

  “I don’t know!” fumed the courtier. “I just know that it’s not my responsibility to ensure that they can! I’m supposed to be buying hay!”

  “Then pay a fair price for it,” suggested Pentandra, coolly.

  “I rather like that amulet idea,” Sire Grenvaden said. “If you could make me one of those – say, one which would have them give me the hay for free, or for a single penny, that would be a positive boon for the duke!”

  “I will study the matter and get back to you,” Pentandra said, unconvincingly. But the courtier did not pick up on the subtlety . . . at all.

  “Would you?” he asked, pleadingly. “It’s just criminal to see the lower classes taking advantage of us like that,” he said, sourly. “I plan on proposing to the duke that he set a standard price for all future hay sales,” he declared. “One price, for every stack. Non-negotiable,” he added, resolutely.

  “If he does that,” Pentandra ventured, “just what does he need an avaner for?”

  The courtier had no clear answer for her, which she expected.

  Most of the nobility at the palace were genuinely committed to the success of the Restoration, and many more were at least enthusiastic about the idea. But from the number of noble parasites cluttering up the great halls and wasting livery, she was concerned that Sister Saltia’s calculations did not take into account these show horses utterly ruining their offices with this kind of manure. Selecting ministers who actually knew something about the office they were administering would be helpful.

  But Pentandra also knew she was contending with a nearly four-hundred year Narasi tradition that rewarded client nobles with stipends, livery, honor and titles of court, while depending upon the civil servants below them to actually do the work. That was a tradition that the new court could literally not afford, and she knew she would be speaking with Count Angrial about it.

  There was enough going against the duchy without importing idiots of their own.

  ChapterTwelve

  The Woodsmen Of Vorone

  Vorone was blessed by a few sunny, warm days of a false spring before midwinter officially marked the waning season, allowing the piles of filthy slush in the streets to finally release weeks’ worth of ordure into the sewers and eventually the rivers. When Pentandra returned to the town, there were even a few disoriented daffodils that had been fooled by the thaw, peeking their shoots out of the snow.

  The warmth was a mixed blessing, for a variety of reasons. Commerce flourished as folk actually came outside for a few days to do more than get firewood or water from the well. The markets were full of townspeople as they stocked up on supplies and enjoyed a few days’ sunshine before the inevitable late-season blizzard the weatherwise had foretold buried them once again. Coin changed hands. The roads opened up a bit, and some of the nearby estates that had been snow-locked since before Yule sent people to market.

  But the same roads that brought honest folk to Vorone also brought the desperate from the camps. Hundreds of vagabonds and urchins poured into Vorone in the sunshine, begging and stealing anything they could get their hands on despite the vigilance of the town watch. Pentandra saw the desperate faces with prominent cheekbones from hunger and malnutrition on her way to and from the palace every morning. If the winter had been harsh for the town; it had been unbearable in the camps that surrounded it.

  The business of the court since the Restoration had grown beyond mere assessment and repair, as new officers began their duties and old officers proceeded with new guidance and fresh resources.

  The new Master of Works, Sir Masten, had been charged with a half-dozen emergency projects to help secure the city, and the new Master of Hall, Sir Dovei had been tasked with cleansing, repairing and provisioning the palace and its stream of new arrivals. Both men set their staffs to work on their mandates with purpose. The exterior of the palace crawled with workmen, now, sometimes shoveling snow away from the palace to reach their repairs.

  The Restorationists supporters from Gilmora finished arriving, and between the newcomers and the Orphan’s Band, the place was bursting at its decorative seams. Pentandra’s official office was now a barracks for useless but important aristocrats, until they could secure quarters in the crowded city or be given estates. She had ensured that the offices archives and the treasury, such as it was, was secure and spellbound, but apart from that there was little she could do about the situation.

  Without an office, staff, or access to records much of what she could do in her official capacity was limited. She kept in contact with the important magi in the area, mind-to-mind, to pass along news and messages. With the Wilderlands roads snowed under and impassable, communication between scattered settlements was sparse – if it wasn’t for magic.

  That was something else added to her list of new duties: establishing a working Mirror node here in Vorone. The operations she had seen in Castabriel and Sevendor had been impressive. Messages were communicated through pools of water and carefully-contrived spells from one node to the other – for a small fee. They were run by the Arcane Orders, and as Vorone had no real chapterhouse here, as Court Wizard she was the wizard responsible for developing the Mirror array by default.

  That meant hiring more wizards, finding a place to house the node, and securing the enchantments she needed from Minalan and magical craftsmen. Pentandra could probably have figured out how to do it herself, but while she was technically a thaumaturge, Minalan had an entire manufactory of enchanters working on such things. That wasn’t really her area of interest. And without a secure area dedicated to the task, establishing a Mirror node would have to wait until she had an office. And assistants.

  Until then, her business with the court involved less savory pursuits, as she was reminded a few days after she returned from Preshar.

  The melting snow brought other revelations to light as corpses found their way to the surface of the snowbank that had concealed them for weeks, possibly. Dozens of bodies were found across Vorone. Many were poor unfortunates who had no better place to take shelter, and who died in a tomb of snow. Others, mostly in the proximity of taverns a
nd inns, had slit throats or bashed heads. And still others had a single drop of blood frozen in their left ear, and no other wound.

  Those were the ones who found their afterlife beginning in Pentandra’s cellar, the day after she returned to Vorone from her errand to Count Marcadine.

  “Why are there six corpses in my cellar?” she asked Constable Vemas, that morning, over tea.

  “They were the six definitely slain with a Rat’s Tail,” he explained, merrily, as he poured the hot water for her. “Six corpses who crossed paths with our villains.”

  “And they are in my cellar . . . why?”

  “Well. It would have been rude to store them in your bedchamber, my lady. I thought that would be the best place for you to work on them,” he pointed out, as he offered her honey.

  “Me, work on them? How?” It was far too early in the morning for this.

  “Magically,” he explained. “If you, my dear wizard, can use your eldritch powers to determine who these men were and why they were targeted, that gives us valuable insight on the Crew’s present operations. And perhaps clues to their various cells.”

  “How so?”

  “All of these men were slain and concealed since Yule. Normally, as I understand things, most criminal operations are put on hold during such periods of heavy weather. Thieves and thugs cannot get to work if everyone else is home. So these men,” he said, gesturing to the six burlap-wrapped packages in the cellar below, “have had to been particularly naughty to stir the Crew to send such a message during a fallow period.”

  “You are assuming that the ‘official’ method of execution would be reserved only for those who they thought needed to be made a message of,” she concluded.