Court Wizard: Book Eight Of The Spellmonger Series

by Terry Mancour

  But before the remote hillside could be transformed, there was much left to do, she knew. And now that the palace at Vorone was an ashen ruin, it was all the more pressing that a suitable stronghold be prepared. Visiting the site undetected would become very difficult, presently. But Pentandra needed answers now, and this was the one place she could find them.

  It took a while for her to find the path up to the croft – Antimei’s original wards of obfuscation were still intact, and she required Everkeen’s help to locate the correct path. She was gratified to find her spellbinding undisturbed. No one had entered the croft since she’d sealed it.

  Once inside, she lit a magelight and looked around at the room that had been the home of the greatest witch in the Alshari Wilderlands for thirty years. It was humble and practical, with just a splash of decoration to keep it from being oppressive. The shelves and rafters were still stuffed with herbs and roots valuable to her trade . . . but the witch who had practiced it was never returning here.

  This was Pentandra’s legacy, now.

  She did not come for simple herbs, though. She was here for answers. Answers the Prophecy Stone did not offer her.

  Three prophecies had come out of it now, since the dragon attack on the palace. She’d delivered or acted on every one, but while useful, in some way, the verses the stone offered her were tantalizingly vague and incomplete. Pentandra needed more, especially now.

  She debated with herself for a few moments before realizing that if she was not intending to do this, she wouldn’t have started out on the journey to begin with. She was committed, like it or not, and she alone would suffer the consequences of her folly.

  Pentandra crossed the room to study Antimei’s uncomfortable chair. The old witch had sat in it religiously, like a throne, Pentandra had learned from her apprentice. She rarely left it unless she was out gathering herbs or seeing the rare client. Pentandra sat there herself, while she was debating with the Nemovort. It was hard on her back and rump, and the thought of sitting there now, with three tiny babies in her womb already pressing for space, sounded masochistic at best.

  Instead, Pentandra removed the three layers of blankets and quilts that lay over the chair. Once gone, it was a simple matter to lift the rough plank of wood on the seat and reveal the thick book of parchment concealed below.

  It had to be the chair, Pentandra had realized, months ago. It was the only place in the croft she’d not searched thoroughly. When she sat there, astonished at how uncomfortable it was, she’d puzzled out both the reason and the location of the Book of Antimei.

  With one final deep breath, she was about to open the book when she heard a voice clearing itself behind her.

  “Are you certain you want to do that, Daughter?” asked Trygg the Mother Goddess.

  “I thought you had banished yourself, after helping Antimei, Mother,” chided Pentandra, not looking up from the book.

  “I nearly have,” the All-Mother conceded. “But somehow I figured that one of my children was getting into mischief. Call it a mother’s intuition,” she added with a chuckle.

  “I need this book, Trygg,” Pentandra insisted. “Even with all the dangers implied, it was brought to me for a purpose. I cannot ignore that.”

  “So what is so pressing about the future that you must see it revealed before its full time?” the goddess asked.

  “Do you need a list?” demanded the court wizard. “Have you not been paying attention?”

  “Oh, I’m aware of the need,” the goddess nodded. “I was curious why you felt compelled to violate all you know about prophecy and fate.”

  “Because I’m about to be a mother . . . thanks to you!” Pentandra accused, putting a hand over her abdomen.

  “Actually, Arborn had far more to do with it,” Trygg laughed. “But I’m sure being in proximity to me played a role.”

  “Which I can appreciate,” Pentandra nodded, evenly. “But – goddess! – triplets? Did you have to bless me so damn much?”

  “Believe it or not, that wasn’t me,” Trygg confessed. “Oh, I’m responsible for the conception, no doubt about it. I always am. But such a thing as triplets . . . unless you are of the Valley Folk, that is a rarity beyond me. Highly improbable,” she supplied.

  “Highly . . . improbable,” Pentandra repeated, her mind retracing her steps. “Damn . . . her!” she burst out, a moment later. “Sister Saltia gave me a blessing before I left to pursue Alurra,” she spat. “A blessing . . . from Ifnia! As if I didn’t have enough divine attention in my life!”

  “That would make sense,” Trygg nodded. “Identical triplet girls are highly improbable. Only a strong dose of luck makes them happen.”

  “Well, Arborn is thrilled,” Pentandra said, sourly, “though he will have to suffer with a wife as big as a barn for most of the next year. He’s already sewing their first little Kasari neck cloths. He doesn’t have to pass three babies out of his vagina, so he’s enjoying the process,” she said, darkly.

  “He’s happy,” Trygg agreed. “As are you, Daughter. Whether you want to admit it or not.”

  “Well, having Mother go back home after she found out I was pregnant was nice,” she conceded, “and having Ishi give me a rest . . . but my best friends are a vegetable and morosely depressed, respectively, and a dragon kind of burned my home to the ground. But apart from that, yeah, I’m deliriously happy.”

  “Sometimes it takes perspective to appreciate, properly,” Trygg agreed. “Despite the tragedy at the palace, you live, as does your husband. And soon you will have a family of your own to worry about.”

  “I’m already worried,” Pentandra assured her. “I’m certain you’re aware of the . . . I hesitate to call it prophecy, but the counsel I received from a certain oracular nun in the Castali Wilderlands a year or so ago?”

  “Yes, I am aware of it,” sighed Trygg. “I thought you might be dwelling on that.”

  “How could I not?” snapped Pentandra. “Trygg, you of all the gods know I have devoted my life to my Art, my work, and my studies. I have sought high office and successfully changed the course of history. I am the second most powerful mage in the Kingdom, and perhaps the first powerful, until Min’s sphere is repaired.

  “Yet when the gods had the chance to give me direction . . .”

  “You were not compelled to ask, Daughter,” reminded Trygg, quickly.

  “How could I not? How could I resist the temptation? Any more than I could resist the temptation of this book?” she demanded.

  “Did you find her words that disturbing?” the goddess asked, curious. “Most would have cherished them for their power and simplicity.”

  “No doubt,” Pentandra grumbled. “But ‘most’ is not ‘me’.”

  Trygg looked at her sympathetically. “Daughter, is it so awful, what she said?”

  Pentandra snorted. “I’m sure you overheard it,” she ventured. “And if not awful, it was at least . . . insulting. ‘Great power and authority, position and title, wealth as you require/yet spells and gold do not hold the gifts that you truly desire/Greatest of wizards, your wisdom is vast, mighty the city you’ll build/But motherhood alone, not the rebirth of Vorone, is where you shall be most fulfilled.’”

  “So what’s wrong with that?” asked the goddess of motherhood.

  “I’ve spent my entire life building a career in academic magic, restoring a duchy, and changing the face of history . . . but you think being a mother is somehow more important?”

  “Well, I am biased,” agreed Trygg with a matronly chuckle. “But looking beyond that, why do you find that insulting?”

  “Because I am more than a mere mother,” Pentandra said proudly.

  “You are not a mother yet,” warned the goddess. “And when you are, at last, I think you will discover that your attitude is . . . misplaced.”

  “You think I’m going to find personal fulfillment in wet nappies and chewed nipples?” Pentandra asked, incredulously.

  “I think you’re going t
o find fulfillment in creating three new, unique human beings who are destined to change the world as much, or more, than their mother,” countered the goddess. “It is your greatest challenge and greatest responsibility, as a woman. There is no higher calling.”

  “We shall see,” Pentandra said, guardedly. “But I am tending toward skepticism on this one.”

  “I’m rarely wrong,” the goddess observed. “I’m a mom.”

  “I don’t care,” Pentandra snapped. “This was not how I planned things to work out!”

  “I think you’re familiar with the old saying about the plans of men and the designs of the gods? Sorry, your womb is your destiny. One of them. But your most important one, I think.”

  “So all that I am, and all that I have built – will build – means nothing, compared to being a mother?”

  “From your perspective . . . yes,” she agreed. “You may save thousands of children – millions – but the time and energy you invest in your own children will be among your most cherished moments in this life. When put in the balance against all you think you hold dear, you will find yourself willfully willing to reject all that you think you are in favor of being the mother you know you are.”

  “That sounds like a depressing bit of prophecy,” she said, sourly.

  “That’s the reality of motherhood,” Trygg shrugged. “No one said it wasn’t problematic.”

  “I’m really starting to get tired of prophecy,” she lamented, not for the first time.

  “Then put that book away, and go live your life without it,” suggested Trygg. “That is what Antimei did. She’s much happier, now.”

  “That’s not in my nature,” Pentandra finally admitted. “I have the capacity. I think I can read this and not let it affect me.”

  “I think you are completely deluding yourself,” Trygg replied, smiling. “But do it – or not – as you wish. In the end, it does not change the facts. You are going to find motherhood far more rewarding – and challenging – than you ever did mere politics or magic.”

  Pentandra looked at the cover of the book, and then looked up at the goddess . . . only to find her vanished.

  So, she’ll leave the decision up to me, whether or not I open the book . . . and bind myself to the fates. Without so much as a word of advice. Bitch.

  With a deep sigh, and a comfortable pat on her growing tummy, Pentandra opened the great leather-bound volume and began to study the mysteries therein.

  It may not have been the wisest course of action, she knew, but it was her nature.

  The End

  Look for the exciting continuation of the Spellmonger Series

  in Book 9: Shadowmage

  You may always contact the author at tmancour@gmail.com

  Excerpt from the upcoming Hawklady

  Chapter One

  Magic Lessons

  “You must learn to think in metaphors,” Lady Pentandra explained, as she paced gently back and forth in front of Dara, as they sat on the top of Magelord Minalan’s personal tower, in the autumn sunshine. Pentandra stopped, suddenly. “You do understand what a metaphor is, don’t you?”

  “When you say something is something else,” Dara replied, recalling an earlier discussion. “Not comparing it, exactly, but saying one thing is another thing.”

  “That is correct -- more or less,” the wizard agreed. “We call a direct comparison a ‘simile’. Those can be useful. But for magic, metaphor is what is useful, for all magic is metaphor . . . and within each metaphor is the seed of magic.”

  “That’s the part I don’t understand,” confessed Dara, guiltily. She’d been trying for days, now, since the excitement that had suddenly elevated her among the great and powerful in the domain. Thanks to her shrewd and skillful falconry (and no little bit of natural magic talent) she’d steered her falcon, Frightful, in a contest at the First Magical Fair, ever, and ended up winning almost by accident.

  The contest was open to all wizards and magi, anyone with magical ability - rajira, she’d learned it was called. While very, very few people had it, fewer still had the Talent in sufficient quantity to actually use magic like a true magi.

  But Lenodara of Westwood did. The power she’d discovered over the summer, the ability to slip her mind behind the eyes of her falcon and see the world through the eyes of the bird as she flew, was just part of her capabilities. Lady Pentandra tested her for hours to determine her degree of rajira and pronounced her Talented enough to learn the ancient, secretive art of magic.

  She’d also mentioned that she thought Lenodara intelligent enough, which both pleased and irritated the thirteen-year old girl.

  But Pentandra pronounced her fit to learn, and to avoid a scuffle with the very, very large warrior-magi who lost the contest to a wisp of a girl Magelord Minalan, himself, took her as apprentice. As such she was protected from the violence (particularly after Minalan, in his wisdom, granted a second, more powerful witchstone to the runner-up in the contest. But that also meant that her future was suddenly spelled out for her as evenly as lines across the page of a book . . . an art she’d yet to fully master.

  Her father and uncle were both proud and anxious about the appointment. By winning a witchstone - a magical piece of amber that granted a wizard tremendous power - she’d proven herself clever, quick, and foresightful, a credit to her folk in the Westwood. But the attention she’d called to herself and her kin was troubling. In these changing and turbulent times, it was dangerous for a commoner to be so close to the nobility. But it was also a splendid opportunity. The Spellmonger (as everyone called the Magelord, with pride) was an extremely important man, and being allied to him meant opportunities. Not just for herself, but her entire estate.

  Since the few days after the Magical Fair broke up, Lady Pentandra instructed Lenodara (or Dara, to nearly everyone) to come to Sevendor Castle in the morning, before breakfast, and study reading in the morning before she or Master Minalan (as the Magelord insisted she call him) gave her a few hours’ worth of lessons in the afternoons.

  The reading was the hard part. Lenodara mastered the Narasi alphabet simply enough in a day, and understood the letters and the sounds they stood for. In the last few days she’d been stringing the letters together and understanding the sounds as words, and today she’d recognized (successfully) the entire first sentence in the primer: “When humankind first came to Callidore on the horizon, they found a beautiful green and blue world awaiting them.”

  It was an odd sentence in many ways, but Master Minalan insisted it was the real history of human beings here, on the world she lived in. She had dozens of questions about where humans came from, and how they got here on Callidore, but there was much about the world and the past even the great Spellmonger did not know.

  While Lenodara found that disappointing, on the basis that adults were supposed to know everything, she tried to put that aside as she tackled the difficult lessons. There was so much to learn, Lady Pentandra assured her, that she could spend years in study and still not master all known magic.

  Dara found that a little intimidating, but Lady Pentandra was very gentle in her explanations of how magic worked . . . an art she’d made Dara know as “thaumaturgy”, which simply meant “the study of magic”.

  There were many more concepts and ideas she needed to learn beyond simple reading, she was discovering, but considering how many new words magi had for things, she could see why being able to store them up in books made sense. And Lady Pentandra was very patient in explaining them to her.

  “Metaphors are essential to magic because symbols are the key to bridging the gap between our magical minds - our rajira exta, the Archmagi called it -- and the greater Magosphere. You see, although our minds can perceive and even manipulate those energies in raw form, they are not designed to do it.”

  “Why not?” Dara asked, innocently enough.

  “Because we were not born here, originally, say some-”

  “I was born right over there,” Dara objec
ted, pointing at the top of Westwood Hall, in the distance.

  “Not you, personally, Dara; all of humanity. As that first sentence of the primer told you, humanity did not originate on this world, we came here. And adapted to it. Our original world . . . well, it is theorized by some scholars that it possessed little or no magic, based on the confusion with which our ancestors greeted the ability by the Alka Alon—”

  “Those are the Tree Folk, right?” prompted Dara.

  “Yes, and thank you for interrupting. The magic of the Tree Folk – the Alka Alon – and the other races of the Alon we found here was strange to our ancestors. From what we think, it was generations after our arrival that the first traces of rajira arose in us.

  “But the Tree Folk – the Alka Alon -- taught our ancestors how to deal with their emerging powers. At first they tried to teach complicated Alka Alon magic to us, but few are equipped and talented enough to master even basic songspells.

  “So the Alka Alon contrived the Imperial Runes,” she continued, opening a book to a page filled with broad, strongly-drawn characters. “Each rune is a . . . metaphor.”

  Dara frowned. “How so? They just look like wiggly lines. Or straight lines.”

  “So did the letters of the alphabet, when you first saw them, but each stood for a sound,” Pentandra reminded her, gently. “The principal is the same, here, only instead of sounds, each rune is a metaphor for a particular thing. Or group of things. Or class of things. But each one uniquely encapsulates the idea of a metaphor for something else.”

  “I am totally lost in the woods, Lady Pentandra,” Dara admitted, uncomfortably. “How can a wiggly line be something else?”