Court Wizard: Book Eight Of The Spellmonger Series

by Terry Mancour

  “I’m sure that’s it,” Pentandra said, unconvincingly, as Alurra bid them both good night. “What the hells are you doing here, Min?”

  “I needed to talk,” her old friend admitted, sprawling in Arborn’s favorite chair by the bed. “Do you have any wine?”

  “I’ll get some . . . and some water,” she decided, heading for the buttery. “Don’t move.”

  When she returned she made Min drink the water first, and then sip the wine slowly. She could tell he was already three miles downriver from sobriety and headed into a tempest of drunkenness, if he wasn’t careful.

  “It’s Alya,” Pentandra stated. Minalan looked up and nodded at her, miserably.

  “You just don’t know, Pen,” he said, shaking his head. “The kids crawl into her lap, she doesn’t even feel them. I can kiss her . . . nothing. Say her name, tickle her feet, poke her in the ribs . . . nothing. She can crap and eat, and that’s about it. Her mind is . . . gone,” he admitted, with a sob of despair. “It belies the very gods, Pen. Briga, Ishi, even Herus took a look. They’ve done what they can to make her comfortable, but . . .” he trailed off, shaking his head.

  “Hells, how many gods have you been hanging around?”

  “They like me,” he shrugged. “I dunno why. Not that it helps. They still can’t fix her.”

  “Then we’ll find someone who can,” she promised. “There are powers on Callidore we’ve never even heard of, Min. Someone, somewhere, will be able to help.”

  That Pentandra had no idea who that might be didn’t bother her. She couldn’t bear to see Minalan suffer like this, and if giving him false hope was the only salve she had, she did not mind using it.

  “I’ve talked to the Alka Alon,” he said, dejected. “They’re sympathetic, but not even Onranion could reach her through songspells. There were murmurs about other techniques, but if Onranion can’t fix her . . .”

  “. . . then we will go to the Sea Folk. Or even Sheruel, if we have to. Min, somewhere the magic exists to put Alya whole. I just know it!” she said, a little more desperately than she intended.

  “Pen,” Minalan said, his eyes wild, “I can’t.”

  “You can’t . . . what?” she prompted.

  “I can’t . . . live. In a world without Alya. I just can’t,” he insisted, burying his shaggy head in his hands.

  Once Pentandra might have chided his friend over his shortsightedness -- after all, people got married all the time, fell in love all the time, took new lovers all the time. The idea that there was only one person intended for you by the gods and the fates was sheer lunacy.

  Yet now she understood how he felt in a way she never could have guessed. In a way that made her suddenly anxious about Arborn on the road, though there was no reason to. The thought of a life without her husband in it was . . . horrifying.

  She imagined what it would be like if he was returned to her without his mind, and shuddered involuntarily. Love, she realized, was a far more potent force than she’d given credit. It galled her to even think it, but perhaps Ishi was correct.

  But Alya was not gone, and Minalan had to realize that.

  “Min, she’s still alive,” she pointed out, taking his head in her lap. “There is hope. She’s still alive when by all rights she should be dead. Ishi saw to that. Your love for her literally preserved her life,” she reminded him, stroking his hair.

  “But she’s not really there,” he moaned.

  “She’s just lost,” she insisted. “She’s lost, and you’re the only one who can find her.”

  “How?” he demanded, weakly.

  “With determination, effort, guile and magic,” she proposed, boldly but sympathetically. “And we’ll make a bunch of shit up as we go along, like we always do.”

  “How can I when I feel so miserable?” he sobbed.

  She indulged him for a few moments, letting the tears roll out of him as the sobs shook his body. Pentandra’s empathy was inflamed, making her feel physically sick as she watched her friend in turmoil and grief.

  Human emotion was a powerful thing, she reminded herself. Perhaps it was a good thing that Min didn’t have a powerful witchsphere hanging around at the moment. That much unfiltered, raw emotion could have been devastating filtered through the medium of irionite. He carried a witchstone, of course, one of the Master’s Seven like her own, but it didn’t have as much capacity for random manifestations of internal emotional trauma as that damned witchsphere had been.

  As it was, she quietly reinforced the wards on her chamber. She didn’t want to be disturbed without warning, and more importantly she didn’t want Minalan to attract every mage in town, if he should experience a moment of magical flux.

  But Minalan didn’t seem like he was inclined to destroy the place . . . he was wallowing in grief and self-pity. It broke Pentandra’s heart to see him that way, but after all he had been through she decided that if anyone deserved a moment of weakness in the face of an outrageous fate, Minalan did. For the longest time she just sat there, his head in her lap, and stroked his hair while he sobbed.

  Eventually he fell asleep, and she carefully disentangled herself from the snoring mage as carefully as she could. She needn’t have bothered. Minalan was out cold. Just to be sure, she indulged in a good, solid sleeping spell to ensure that he got the rest he so clearly needed.

  Then she contacted Terleman, mind-to-mind, to let him know his old war buddy was passed out, distraught and drunk, in her chambers. He wisely skipped all of the obvious jokes and promised to come retrieve him and settle him into a guest room somewhere at the earliest convenient time.

  Then she contacted Dranus, Minalan’s own baronial court mage, and let him know where he was. Apparently everyone back in the Riverlands barony was concerned about the Spellmonger’s behavior since his lady wife fell at Greenflower. The entire land was grieving, he informed her gravely, and no one knew what to do. He was trying to keep things functioning as best he could until Sire Cei returned from that little territorial spat on Sevendor’s borders, but the place needed real leadership, soon.

  With a sigh, Pentandra closed the connection and went to find her apprentice.

  Alurra was in her tiny room, studying, of all things. Not that a passerby could have told that -- she appeared to just be sitting in a chair with her eyes closed. But a cursory inspection with magesight showed Pentandra that the blind girl was making a valiant attempt at building a second-order spell, one that combined elements of three runes to produce an effect.

  “Strengthen the jyrex rune in the predicate,” she advised, without announcement. “Remember, there’s a difference between desire and will. Desire is what you feel. Will is what you demand. You might want the rune to manifest terribly much, but if you don’t demand that it does, it won’t be powerful enough to provide support to the others.”

  “That’s . . . hard!” Alurra said, nervously.

  “It gets easier with practice,” Pentandra assured her. “Which you may stop, now -- and don’t forget to ground your power. I don’t need a grumpy apprentice sulking around the palace.”

  “Too late,” Alurra grumbled, allowing the spell to fall and returning the excess power to the magosphere. “I heard about Lady Alya. That’s terrible!”

  “How did you hear that?” Pentandra demanded.

  “There’s a mouse in your chambers,” Alurra said, shrugging. “I call him Little Arborn. He lets me know if you need anything,” she said, anticipating Pentandra’s objection.

  “You, uh, don’t linger in there, do you?”

  “To watch you and Lord Arborn spark? Not bloody likely!” she snorted.

  “Language, young lady. Good. It’s nice to know I at least have the illusion of privacy. So, little mouse, what can you tell me about . . . Lady Alya?”

  Alurra’s face instantly fell. “I’m . . . not supposed to say anything. But you knew that.”

  “I knew that,” Pentandra agreed. “But now I need to know what happens to Alya. She’s a close f
riend of mine, Alurra, and if there is any chance that she can be healed . . .”

  “There’s a chance,” the girl admitted, grudgingly. “That’s about all I know. But it’s not bloody-- it’s not very likely,” she amended.

  “A chance is all I need right now, little mouse,” she sighed. “Any chance. If the Spellmonger fails . . .”

  Alurra shuddered involuntarily at the thought. “Don’t even joke, Mistress! If you suspected how important the Spellmonger is--”

  “I do,” Pentandra agreed, calmly, “which is why I’m doing everything in my power to aid him! Right now he’s passed out in my chambers, drunk as a monk, wallowing in self pity and despair. He’s damn near suicidal, Alurra, because he has no hope. If I’m going to help him . . .”

  “You are helping him,” the girl stressed, grouchily. “But you have to be careful. Help him the wrong way, and it could be disaster.”

  “So help me help him the right way,” Pentandra encouraged, ignoring the surly attitude. “What do I need to do?”

  “He . . . you . . . oh, this is so frustrating!” she said, biting her lip anxiously. Then she took a deep breath and collected herself. “From what I understand, the Spellmonger needs to be miserable right now - no way to help that. It’s his despair that sets him to action.”

  “I understand that,” Pentandra agreed, patiently, “I just need to have a general idea of what direction that might be.”

  Alurra thought hard, and Pentandra was genuinely upset that she was putting the girl in this position. On the other hand, there was too much at stake to allow one thirteen-year-old-girl’s feelings to determine the course of the entire duchy’s destiny.

  “He will need to go face the Necromancer, in the City of Rainbows, Anthatiel,” she finally said, although it was a great effort of will. “That’s what the story Antimei told me says. There’s something in the city - under the city - that can help restore Lady Alya, I think. But . . .”

  “But what?” Pentandra asked impatiently.

  “I’ve said too much!” she said, blushing. “Really, I shouldn’t have said this much! The Spellmonger already possesses most of what he needs to restore her, but there is one thing that can only be found in the City of Rainbows. I don’t even know what that is,” she added, miserably.

  “I do,” confessed Pentandra. “It used to be a magnificent citadel of the Alka Alon, at the headwaters of the river Poros, in the Land of Scars. But two years ago the goblins sacked it, drove the Alka Alon away, and the place was a soggy ruin guarded by a brain-damaged dragon, the last time I heard.”

  “You’ve . . . been there?” Alurra asked, surprised. There was respect and a bit of awe in her voice.

  “No, I was busy thawing out an entire river. But the Spellmonger has, and so has Lord Arborn. Believe it or not, the life of a wizard isn’t as boring as most make it out to be,” Pentandra chuckled. “Minalan especially. But that brings me to the important question: what is this thing he needs to repair Alya?” she pressed.

  “I know not, Mistress,” Alurra said, miserably. “Antimei was very scant with those details. But they’re written down in her book,” she added in a low voice.

  “The book . . .” Pentandra said, realizing that whatever book this was, it was the thing the undead minions of the Necromancer were seeking so diligently. If it foretold of how Minalan prosecuted his war against them, it would be invaluable intelligence.

  But it was also prophecy, and this maddening conversation was one reason that prophecy was eschewed, as a rule, by the Imperial system of magic. It was just too fraught with potential disaster to mess around with.

  But here she was, seeking it out in her moment of need. And she knew that she was not the only one. Korbal the Necromancer evidently thought that Old Antimei’s secret book of secret prophecies was important, although how he knew about it when the old witch had apparently kept it so secret was a mystery.

  “Yes, it’s all there, she says,” Alurra agreed, miserably. Lucky preened her hair with his beak sympathetically. “All the important ones, at least. The ones that concern the Spellmonger. And you. And Duke Anguin.”

  “Anguin is referred to in the prophecies?” Pentandra asked, surprised. Alurra looked even more miserable that she had let slip another piece of information.

  “Yes,” she finally admitted. “He’s important. The Orphan Duke, the Grandmaster, the Necromancer, the Abomination, the Alka Alon, the Forsaken, King Rard, the--” she struggled to get out more, but her hands clamped over her mouth. Pentandra realized she’d pushed the girl too far.

  “What was that?” Pentandra said, instantly. “What was that about the Forsaken?”

  That term had attracted her interest more than any other. The Forsaken were the entire reason that her family had been part of the Order of the Secret Tower for so long - since the days of the Magocracy. They had a sacred duty concerning the Forsaken.

  Unfortunately, it had been so long and the records since the Narasi Conquest had been so fractured that the Order had very little idea who the Forsaken were, and just what their duty toward them entailed. But they definitely were supposed to do something about the Forsaken.

  Most in the Order were convinced that it was something to do with humanity’s ancestors who first came to Callidore. Others were equally convinced that it concerned the Alka Alon, or the gods themselves, or even the mysterious Sea Folk. Still others were not convinced that the Forsaken were anything more than a myth lost to the depths of time, eternally unfathomable.

  Pentandra had been on watch to glean whatever information on the subject she could, regardless of the source, for those most earnest about the Order of the Secret Tower’s true purpose. So hearing the term known previously only to initiates of the clandestine magical order come from the lips of an illiterate blind girl from a remote village in a rustic region was stunning to her. If this Old Antimei’s prophecies concerned the Forsaken, then regardless of anything else, they were important by definition.

  She only wished she knew why.

  “I can’t tell you! She didn’t tell me! I’ve only heard her mention them, compared to the others,” Alurra replied, unhappily. “I know that they’re important, though. I just don’t know how.”

  “No one does,” Pentandra sighed. “That’s why I need to learn about them.”

  “Well, you’ll just have to ask Antimei yourself, then,” Alurra said, sullenly.

  “Don’t think I won’t, if I ever meet the old witch,” Pentandra assured her. “She has made my life an order of magnitude more complicated. But if she can provide us some assistance, then perhaps I do need to track her down.”

  “Oh, you will,” Alurra assured. “Even though you don’t know where she lives.”

  “That’s . . . right,” Pentandra said, realized that she had no idea just how far Alurra had traveled, or from whence.

  All she knew was that it was a journey of at least two to three weeks, and that her village was situated somewhere beyond the eastern bank of the great river valley that roughly divided the Alshari Wilderlands, east and west. That meant it could be one of possibly hundreds of settlements, hamlets, and villages between the river and the forested foothills of the Pearwoods. “I have no idea how to find Antimei in the Wilderlands. So how do I manage that, if I don’t know where she lives?”

  “You do it because you come try to find me,” Alurra said, uneasily.

  “Find you? Why would I need to find you? You’re right here!”

  “Not for long,” the blonde apprentice sighed. “When you told me the Spellmonger had arrived unannounced, I knew. I’ll have to leave the palace shortly.”

  “Why?” Pentandra asked, confused. “What does Min have to do with anything?”

  “Oh, he doesn’t,” Alurra assured her. “I mean, not today. But it’s a sign.”

  “What kind of sign?” Pentandra asked, warily.

  “ ‘When the Spellmonger arrives asleep on his feet, the rats will awake and the knights will retreat,’” she
recited. “ ‘The palace invaded by dead men searching; Pentandra defiant, Alurra’s path diverging. A timely spell and a desperate prayer; Ishi’s wrath the great delayer.’ ”

  “That’s really bad poetry,” Pentandra criticized automatically, as she tried to understand the stanza. “Does Old Antimei write all of her prophecies in such ham-handed doggerel?”

  “No, sometimes it’s better,” Alurra admitted, after a moment’s thought. “But she certainly emphasizes expediency over artistry.” She paused and considered. “You know, I didn’t know either of those words when I got here.”

  “Some apprentices never learn them,” Pentandra quipped. “So Minalan’s arrival is the harbinger of a return of the undead? And the Rats? That’s not good news. I’ll have to notify the Constable. He has almost decommissioned the Woodsmen, the Rat Crew has been so quiet.”