“Penny, no!” Arborn shouted at her. She was about to ignore him and try to trace where the goblin had escaped to. But a sharp wave of sudden force sent her baculus skittering back into dormancy.
“Enough, Daughter!” snapped Ishi, irritated. “You’ve slain your foe and driven the others off. Your apprentice is safe from pursuit, for the moment. And you are utterly exhausted, both physically and magically,” she pointed out. “Go home and get some sleep before you fall over.”
“But . . . but Everkeen can track him! I can see where he’s going!” she said as she hurriedly cast a magelight above them.
“We know where he’s going,” Ishi insisted. “The lost citadel of Anthatiel, the cursed City of Rainbows. Now the city of cruddy ice and dirty slush, enfiefed to Korbal by Sheruel,” she said, rolling her eyes, “and absolutely crawling with all manner of foul folk. Not the sort of party to which one arrives unprepared. While you and your pretty stick might be able to trace him, should you even discover how to follow him, you would be dead within moments.”
“So what are we supposed to do now?” Pentandra asked, despairingly.
“Get some sleep!” ordered the goddess. “Have you not had enough excitement for a while? You have done your part, and I mine, in slaying this abomination and protecting Vorone. Sleep, mortals, and know the town is safe . . . for now. In fact,” she said, listening for something Pentandra could not hear, “I believe I must prepare for today’s meeting, in just a few short hours.”
“Meeting?” Arborn asked, curiously. “With the priestesses of Ishi?”
“Those boring old sluts?” dismissed the goddess. “No, no, this will be much more exciting. I’ve invited all of the other managers on the streets of Perfume, Glassblowers, and Jewelers to my hall to discuss a cooperative association,” she said, smugly. “What they don’t know is that the House of Flowers has been doing so well that I’ve managed - with the help of a few stalwart admirers of more than modest means - to buy up the debt of each house.”
“Managers?” Arborn asked, confused.
“The other madams and whoremasters,” Pentandra explained to her naïve husband. “You bought out their debt? You plan on shutting them down? That would give you a monopoly on . . . lust,” she said, choosing her words wisely.
Ishi looked horrified. “Of course not! Are you mad? No, I merely want to better coordinate our efforts. Ensure all of our employees are treated well, keep our pricing fair and reasonable, establish certain professional boundaries . . .”
“Ishi’s tits!” Pentandra said, automatically, as she realized what Lady Pleasure intended. “You don’t want a monopoly . . . you want a cartel!”
“I like to think of it more as a guild,” Ishi said, demurely. “Indeed, your work at the Arcane Orders was an inspiration. After all, if the magi could manage to make a pretense at organization, why cannot whores do the same?”
“Won’t that . . . anger some of the managers?” Arborn asked, diplomatically. While he was not nearly as familiar with Vorone’s nightlife as Pentandra, he’d seen enough of the worst of the violence and degradation of the slums around the nicer quarters in town, and knew that most pimps were not nearly as reasonable about their businesses as Lady Pleasure.
“Let them be angry,” Ishi said, with a sneer in her voice. “No man should have a right to the trade between a woman’s legs - it’s indecent. All of the male pimps will be turned out of the business by the time we’re done,” she vowed, proudly. “Any who are reluctant . . . well, they shall face some consequences,” she said, batting her eyelashes in an exaggerated fashion.
“What kind of consequences?” Arborn asked, innocently.
Before Ishi could replay - and likely scandalize her husband into impotence for months - Pentandra intervened.
“Let the nice goddess play with her toys, Arborn,” she said, with a yawn. “Besides, after a few days of spontaneous orgies, somehow I think that trade will see a downturn for a while. With the Rats mostly gone, there shouldn’t be too many ‘managers’ left to cause a problem. Now,” she said, repeating her yawn as she tossed her sword and baculus into pockets in her ring, “take me home and put me to bed and don’t touch me for a week . . . or there will also be consequences!”
Chapter Thirty-Four
The Conclave
Pentandra was almost unnerved by the quiet that broke out in Vorone after the confrontation between Ishi and the Nemovorti Ocajon. But in the days that followed Ishi’s Night, Everkeen detected no signs of the undead anywhere near the environs of Vorone.
Whatever Ishi had done to ward the town with her unorthodox magic had driven away the vile monster and its companions . . . though their matter-of-fact use of the Alkan Ways was disturbing to Pentandra. She shuddered to think what might have happened had the vile beast unleashed its powers on the unsuspecting citizens of Vorone before it left. Considering their collective state at the time, it would have been pure carnage.
The town barely knew the danger it had been in. It was dealing with a municipal hangover of legendary proportions.
Four straight days of revels culminating in orgies all over town had dealt a powerful blow to all involved. As memories were hazy, at best, over the experience, much was denied or forgotten.
But the lasting consequences of the event – known ever afterwards as Ishi’s Night, though it lasted four days – haunted hundreds of Voroni. Pregnancies, infidelities, and erotic transgressions of all sorts caused widespread domestic strife. The Town Watch was too busy just keeping jilted lovers and distressed spouses from each other’s’ throats to have responded in force to an attack of undead.
Father Amus ordered the ecclesiastic courts, which heard cases involving moral issues, to devote a week to untying the complicated knots the divine visitation had created. He also convened a quick ecclesiastic council to verify and announce that it had, indeed, been a divine event, citing Ishi as the likely divinity involved.
No one argued. Indeed, that seemed to be the only rational explanation for the irrational behavior. But that also made it possible for the ecclesiastic courts to hand out writs of forgiveness and exemptions to religious students under vows of celibacy and the like, grant divorces in some cases and marriages in others, and otherwise contend with the aftermath. While that didn’t eliminate the consequences, it did mitigate them.
In a week the event was like a dim memory, and in a month it was a legend. Everyone had a story or three from that fateful period. And some had a bit more as a result. In a month the natural consequences of the excesses of Ishi’s Night began to appear as unexpected pregnancies took root. A lot of pregnancies, in a lot of unexpected quarters.
Not everyone was upset by Ishi’s Night. The Duke, at least, seemed quite pleased that the goddess had blessed his reign so rigorously. He was strutting through the palace like a cockerel, now, far less hesitant and far more confident than he had been when he first arrived in Vorone. He was agreeable to all sorts of accommodations resulting from the affair and liberal in granting exemptions and pardons in court.
The one bit of frustration that remained for Pentandra was how stoically Alurra took the entire thing. She was focused neither on the carnal excesses of the event or the storm of gossip that followed. She wasn’t even particularly perturbed at the news that she was being hunted by undead. In fact, the girl seemed far more interested in her lessons than anything else.
When questioned about the events of that faithful night, she had answered readily enough . . . but there was a hesitation that told Pentandra she was holding back information.
“So, you knew that you were being pursued by these undead?” she asked Alurra at breakfast, a few days later. “Is that why you left home?”
“Old Antimei said it was the only way to protect the village,” Alurra said, sipping her watered beer. “It was after me, for some reason, and if I left then it would leave everyone else alone . . . for now,” she added, thoughtfully. “I was ahead of it by three or four days the entire way,�
�� she boasted. “My friends kept us in front of it. It doesn’t travel well during the day,” she reported.
“And it didn’t occur to you to mention you were being followed when you arrived?”
“Antimei said not to,” Alurra said, shrugging. “She also said not to breathe a word of it to the Spellmonger, else he’d drop everything and come here, and that could be disastrous.”
That was the end of it. No amount of prying could persuade Alurra to reveal information once Old Antimei told her to keep it confidential. It was frustrating, but it also told her that the girl could be trusted with information of import. The dictate not to inform Minalan had her worried, however. Not because she was afraid she would need his help and not get it, but because it suggested that there was far more going on with the Spellmonger than her friend was telling her.
But he did confirm, mind-to-mind, that the spell on Alya had been broken . . . but only when Sevendor enjoyed an abbreviated version of Ishi’s Night itself. Even in lending assistance, the wild goddess could not be content with anything less than riotous excess.
Within a week, the court had resumed business more or less as usual, and Pentandra found herself catapulted from the exciting life of a protecting enchantress to the far more mundane – and boring – life of a professional court wizard. There were meetings to be held. Examinations to be scored. The Mirror array to be overseen. Discussions with the Spellwarden of Vorone about a better magical defense against future incursions of undead and gurvani were put on the agenda for consideration. And the Duke had to be informed, discretely, about the new threat to his realm and his capital city.
Arborn, thankfully, was not seriously injured from his battle in the crypt, though he had sustained a number of serious bruises and minor injuries from Ocajon’s iron staff, including three broken ribs. The Duke allowed him to postpone his planned excursions into the northern woodlands, once Pentandra explained the danger he had saved the town from and begged the boon during a personal meeting with the lad in the Game Room.
Anguin was impressed with the tale of their struggle in the crypt (she wisely omitted Ishi’s role, as explaining Lady Pleasure’s dual nature could complicate things, she could see) and it really didn’t matter to him if the ranger took a few days’ rest before he continued his duties.
Duke Anguin was too full of Spring and a young man’s attitude to worry about schedules and such, anyway. His mind was elsewhere.
“I was talking to Count Salgo about the 3rd Commando,” he said, changing the subject during their discussion toward one he was more interested in. “After discussing things with the Spellmonger, I think we’re going to invite them to Alshar.”
“We’re hiring them?” she asked, surprised.
“More like inviting them to take our allegiance,” Anguin said, thoughtfully. “We can’t afford to hire them outright, so the plan is to ennoble their leadership and divide the men among them, for the time being, to shore up a couple of different weak points in our defenses. After a year of faithful service, the non-commissioned officers will be granted estates and the men will be granted the right to freehold with Ducal support.”
That was an important right, she had learned. The scantly-populated Wilderlands had always suffered a large population of squatters who settled any piece of land they could get away with. Sometimes the local lord, seeing a well-managed settlement would grant them freehold status in return for taxes or rents; other times they were evicted and their holds were taken by the legal lords of the lands. In either case the potential for hostilities was strong. There were several small-scale feuds that had erupted over the years due to squatting.
But the Duke could give any man a Writ of Freehold, that allowed settlement on any unclaimed or undefended property in his realm. If a man could maintain a freehold for five years or more, he was entitled to status as a yeoman, under the law of the Wilderlands. Unlike the Riverlands, where communal agriculture encouraged cooperation, the far-flung freeholds of Alshar saw the greatest prosperity when individual families or households focused their efforts to develop an estate.
There were few villeins in the Wilderlands; yeomen were seen as much higher status than the average Wilderlands peasant, serving in lords in all but name in the hinterlands. Freeholders also attracted itinerant warriors as their holdings and families grew. There were some prosperous settlements which could field as many men as a formal domain. Providing writs to the two thousand men of the 3rd Commando would be as good as seeding the Wilderlands with a future army.
“It’s not like we don’t have the land,” he sighed. “And some of the Royalist Gilmoran barons are starting to discuss forming an army to drive them out, anyway. Salgo hand-picked many of them, so they’re good warriors. Too good to become bandits. So if we provide them a place to come, free land, and . . . other things,” he grinned.
“Ah, you heard my plan to offer our surplus whore population as wives?” Pentandra grinned. That would put a dent in Ishi’s aspirations, she knew.
“Whether wives or sport, fair Vorone definitely does offer a man a treasury of femininity,” Anguin sighed, happily.
“Then let us spend that treasury quickly, before it depreciates,” Pentandra said, warily. “If young wives and free land get us an army, then that’s a boon. But that does beg the question what your dear cousin will say about the development.”
“I’m certain it will irritate Duke Tavard to no end,” Anguin said. He wasn’t just unconcerned, Pentandra realized, he seemed genuinely pleased. “For Alshar to go from helpless to having one of the finest corps Salgo has ever trained will be a blow to the honor of Castal, I have no doubt.”
“And a threat to his power. But what will he do about it?”
“What can he do about it?” Anguin chuckled. “He can’t very well get the 3rd to stay – his vassals are angry about them, and they aren’t particularly well disposed to the Castali ducal house right now. But then my royal relatives aren’t going to be happy to have the 3rd under Alshari banners, either.”
“Would Tavard respond, if the 3rd Commando suddenly pulled out of Gilmora?”
“He would have no legal right to do so, though that might not deter him,” Anguin explained. “Just to be safe, I’ve ordered Salgo to suggest that they send their men out a few hundred at a time, to avoid attracting too much notice.”
“Your Grace, my encounter with this Nemovort convinced me that we need to be prepared for some serious strike in the near future. The gurvani were enough of a threat, but if what I suspect is true, these . . . undead Alka Alon, commanded by the necromancer Korbal, are currently working with the renegade mage known as Mask . . . and we know for a fact that they are working with the gurvani to improve their war against us. All of my intelligence in the matter points toward an attack, soon.”
“That is worrisome,” agreed Anguin. “You think the 3rd Commando will be insufficient?”
“I think Duin the Destroyer would be insufficient,” confessed Pentandra. “From what we learned from the Nemovort and his gurvani ally, Korbal has plans to raise many, many more of these Nemovorti. Possibly other kinds of undead, too. Kinds that have only been seen in legend.”
“I leave that for the warmagi to deal with,” Anguin decided, shaking his head. “I have no real choice in that, I suppose, but the warning is appreciated. The news is not all dire,” he continued, searching for some optimism. “In addition to the 3rd Commando, Salgo told me that over fifteen hundred bows were produced at the festival’s weapontake. Those are fifteen hundred archers we can call upon, at need. He suggested we hold regional weapontakes around Tudry, in the south, and up in the eastern reaches, too.”
“The arms are helpful,” she conceded. “And it would be a good way to pump some money into the economy, and encourage the people to prepare for an attack,” Pentandra reasoned. “Can we afford that much silver, though? To pay for weapons that people already own? I’m certain Count Salgo was uneasy about that. And Viscountess Threanas.”
&nbs
p; “It was worth it,” Anguin said, shaking his head. “To see how everyone looked at the archery contests, to see how eager they were to compete . . . better to get them used to a bow in their hands in front of the butts than when the foe is at the wall, as my father used to say.”
As it turned out, the Wildflower Festival had been a financial success as well. Sister Saltia told her how the receipts from the vendors and the admission to the many simple contests had made the entire event profitable, much to her surprise. Though the accounting became ragged, as Ishi’s Night stretched into its third and fourth day, enough coin had changed hands before then to more than pay for the festival. Indeed, Saltia had bragged, the duchy was running ahead by a few hundred ounces of silver this month.
Then she started talking about how Lady Pleasure was an economic savior, and that’s when Pentandra had to excuse herself . . . before she threw up.
Despite the success of their unconventional partnership, Pentandra still could not stand Lady Pleasure . . . and she was having misgivings about Ishi, herself. She made a point of avoiding any occasion where the whoremistress might appear.
Thankfully, the stress of the festival had worn out her entire corps, so the doors to the House of Flowers were closed, and Lady Pleasure was taking some time to rest and recuperate.
That suited Pentandra just fine. She’d had enough sex-goddess fueled excitement for a while. Enough for fodder for four or five academic papers on Sex Magic, if she felt so inclined to study them.
Pentandra did not. She had real work to do. Devoting her time, energy and attention to the phenomenon, however fascinating, to produce a work that would be read by few and understood by even fewer just did not seem like a productive use of her time, anymore. There had been a day when she would have leapt upon the opportunity to demonstrate her professional prowess to the magical world, but now . . . now she just wanted sleep. In better quarters than she had. Without undead or goddesses or troublesome apprentices complicating what was supposed to be a cushy job.
Court Wizard: Book Eight Of The Spellmonger Series Page 72
