High Mage: Book Five Of The Spellmonger Series

by Terry Mancour

* * *

  Other than the sudden appearance of large, goat-eating falcons in the skies, things had been quiet in Sevendor in the three weeks I’d been away. The crops were growing, the folk were resting and preparing for harvest, and already the booths and tents for the Magic Fair, almost two months away, were already being erected on the commons.

  I spent a full day alone with Alya, making up for lost time. Despite my brushes with infidelity, once I was safely back in her arms there was no doubt or consideration. I took the healer’s words to heart and did the best I could. If Alya detected any reluctance or hesitation on my part, she had the good grace not to call it to my attention. It was a happy reunion.

  But business had not halted while I’d been absent, merely stockpiled. I had a pile of correspondence to get through. Most had been delivered in the traditional way, by messenger, including a few missives from vassals or vassals of vassals, invitations to balls and tournaments, and a few personal letters.

  Of interest was the pile in my workshop labeled ‘Mirror messages’ by Dara. There were three or four of compelling interest, as they pertained to Order business (particularly Magelord Dranus’ successful duel with his younger half-brother). But then there were nearly two dozen of more dubious value.

  “Dara,” I asked, patiently, as she puttered around the workshop while I worked, “why do I have nineteen messages from Castabriel declaring that it’s noon?”

  “Oh,” she said, struggling to remember, “that’s because someone thought it would be a good idea to start telling the other mirrors when it was noon in Castabriel, to help coordinate the watches. So every day, right at noon, the Castabriel watchman announces that to each Mirror in turn. Since every message is to be written down without fail,” she reminded me, “that means that every tower writes down that it’s noon every day.”

  “And I end up with a pile of messages telling me that it’s noon,” I pointed out. “While I suppose that’s helpful, mostly it’s . . . not.”

  “We’re still working on the details of the scheme,” she supplied, smoothly. “I’ll keep those in a separate pile in the future.”

  Other matters were less prosaic. Terleman had taken to dictating his general dispatches over the Mirror in Barrowbell, closest to the Gilmoran front. His latest was a decided plea for more assistance in preparing the Gilmoran lands for battle. In particular he was requesting more High Magi to probe and investigate the contested halls of Gilmora.

  I contacted him mind-to-mind to see just how serious he was. Turns out, he was very serious.

  I’ve got plenty of High Magi who can keep castles from crumbling, he told me, when I got a hold of him. I’ve got warmagi who can lead a charge or run a siege. But I don’t have anyone who can be sneaky enough to keep from getting killed long enough to tell us about what’s really going on in Gilmora.

  I’ve spoken to Rard about scouts, I told him, helpfully. I suggested he hire the Kasari.

  That’s a good plan, if he can get them to come, he admitted. But we need people with a background in magic.

  I thought for a moment. What if I offered you one of my apprentices?

  Which one?

  Which one do you want?

  This mission will require some strength, some stealth, and a lot of nerve. I want to start infiltrating behind their lines with small groups. No more than twenty, thirty men at a time. We’re afraid that more than that might attract attention. But once we get them inserted into Gilmora, they can tell us what the gurvani are really up to. They’ve been very secretive about what has been coming down the road in the last few weeks.

  I wondered how much of that was due to my efforts. While Azar’s raid on Gillain Manor had been exploratory, there was no denying that we’d gotten away with some damning evidence. I told Terleman about the raid and the rescue, and my encounter with the nightsail. He had read a dispatch from Azar about it but appreciated the first-hand account. When he heard about the great goblin corpse we’d captured, he understood at once what it foretold.

  Height, strength, endurance, horses, they’ll be almost a match for us. You’re right. That may have accelerated their timetable, if you tipped their hand.

  Azar tipped it. I merely came along as an observer.

  You’re full of shit. Azar’s dispatch said differently. Min, what are we going to do? If we have to face a half a million of these great goblins coming down the road . . .

  The good news is that we’ll see them coming. They can’t prepare a force of any size without us having weeks of notice. We’ve already got troops headed for Gilmora. We’ve got more warmagi in the field than we ever could have hoped for. Alka Alon assistance. And I still have a few tricks in reserve, I bluffed. If the gurvani haven’t started a muster to invade by now, they won’t do so before autumn. That would put their force on the road during the worst of the rainy season.

  Do you think that will matter? He reminded me. With magic they can keep that road clear. We have to stop thinking in human terms of warfare with them. The gurvani don’t carry huge wagon trains full of supplies and artillery. It wouldn’t take much to get them down the road.

  We’re vigilant, I repeated. But your point is well-taken. And we can’t hold that road. Nor even guard it sufficiently against an advance. But perhaps if we fortified the choke-points . . . particularly the bridges.

  The gurvani aren’t fond of water, he agreed. If a column did stick to the road, those bridges would be vital. And there are only a few of them.

  The Riverlords of Gilmora were jealous of their feudal privileges, and a juicy toll over a stout bridge – and the opportunity to feed and supply travelers – was a lucrative one. That kept the right to build and maintain bridges in a region a carefully-guarded prerogative. We could fortify those regions, at least. Slow them down until our defenses were in place.

  You’re an optimist, he accused. But that’s better than standing by the road and watching them march by. That’s one reason why I wanted to borrow one of your apprentices. Rondal, I think. I received outstanding reports from War College, both in the mysteries and in warmagic. He has a lot of leadership potential.

  What did you have in mind?

  As I said, I need to establish a greater presence in the occupied territories. If not large enough a force to dispute their rule, at least enough to contest it – and gather intelligence. Count Salgo wants to seed the area with Royal Commandos and small, fast mobile units. He also wants clandestine installations, stations and bases from which a real insurgency could be launched, when they arrive in force.

  I know. I suggested it to him. The idea has merit. You want Rondal to be part of this? The boy was ready, I figured.

  I want him to command the pilot squad and prepare the first station, Terleman supplied. He’s got the thaumaturgic and practical knowledge to interpret good field observations.

  Rondal? In command?

  I’ve been assured he can handle the mission.

  If he’s got sufficient motivation, I agreed. How about you take both of them?

  Both? Tyndal, too?

  Yes. He’s not as scattered as he lets on, and to be honest they keep each other out of trouble. Besides, it will be good for him to be Rondal’s second-in-command for a change.

  I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to have a spare apprentice around. And it would just be for a few weeks, until we can get the Royal Commando units established. But I want magi eyes on the place in detail before those brutes go smashing everything in sight.

  So noted. I’ll inform them. It will be a rude trial, after the cushy errantry they’ve been on, but it’s time they got back to the war. I’ll inform them at once. Besides, I noted, summer is almost over, anyway.

  * * *

  The Alka Alon were less impressed by the strange new goblin corpse I’d brought along. I had it taken to my workshop by a squad of Tal from Hollyburrow, well-wrapped against discovery, and a few days after I arrived I had the three emissaries examine it in detail. The results were depressing.

&nbs
p; “This is not good at all, Magelord,” Lady Varen said, as she straightened from her examination. “I have never seen one of these, myself, but—”

  “Wait, you’ve heard of these before?” I asked. “I thought this was something new!”

  “No, sadly enough. Once during the Alka Alon’s wars there were those who took our servants and made them into soldiers through enchantment. Their inner nature is largely unchanged, but how it is expressed is . . . far more vicious.”

  “But . . . why?”

  “When certain unpopular factions could not recruit sufficient soldiery among the Alka Alon, they turned to other means. Gurvani proved highly effective, in these forms. Some among the Dradrien and the Karshak Alon were subjected to such violent forms. At the conclusion of the wars, such enchantments were prescribed. “

  “But clearly the knowledge has not been lost,” Lady Fallawen observed. “Those were dark days. To think that the Abomination would raise such . . . deviations from the past is unthinkable. This, Magelord, more than any other clue points to the Abomination receiving Alka Alon assistance. Only the Alka Alon – and certain lines and families – could possibly have knowledge of such enchantments.”

  “Such a thing would require much power,” Lady Ithalia agreed. “Nor would it be a simple task. But once done . . . the enchanted gurvani would breed true. All of the warrior-forms of the Alon were more aggressive,” she added. “Just as these human forms give us the perspectives of your race, so did these dark forms infect the minds of their victims.”

  “You can see why transgenic enchantment was such a controversial subject,” Lady Varen continued. “A simple transformation – changing an Alkan to a human-analog, or changing the scale of a falcon – these are simple enough things. But when the spellsinger begins shaping the subtleties of the lifeforce to their whim, perversions abound. “

  “This savage species once stormed citadels millennia old,” Fallawen said, distastefully. “Under the direction of fanatics too extreme to attract a following of their own. Deadly, loyal . . . disposable. “

  “Could this development, then, convince your council to intervene in this affair?” I asked, pointedly.

  “Magelord, if the Abomination is raising dragons and enchanting gurvani in this way, it may prove beyond the council’s ability to contend with. These are relics of dark ages past,” Fallawen said with a shiver. “We thought the power to create them was long past. So might be the power to defeat them.”

  * * *

  I was musing on the possibility of secret weapons in my workshop a few days later when I received a

  visit from my two nonhuman magical specialists, Stonesinger Azhguri and Master Onranion, an adept in Alkan songspells.

  Master Azhguri was ancient, born during the last days of the Magocracy, from what his grandson, Master Guri had told me. He was kind of the patriarch over the Karshak lodge, and was solemnly accounted one of the best stonesingers of the age. He had certainly impressed me when he first sang the mountain. It had been he who had discovered the deposits of crystals and other minerals that had been affected by the Snow That Never Melted. The waystones had been the easiest to identify, and the most immediately useful. But he had been studying the rest of my exotic rock collection for months, now.

  Onranion, for his part, had taken a passionate interest in the unique minerals. He had brought over a thousand years of specialized understanding through the vehicle of Alka Alon magic practiced as a high art. Onranion was adept at the intricacies of the thaumaturgically exotic. I figured that their overlapping and complementary disciplines would prove helpful, and I wasn’t wrong. They looked positively triumphant. After reviewing Dara’s unexpected avian experiment, I was a little leery of experimental thaumaturgy . . . but I had an expert in the field in Master Onranion. He and old Azhguri had been consulting with each other about the various stones in my vault, and they had something to show me.

  They also looked half-drunk – Onranion was developing a fine appreciation for wine. They were excited about something having to do with the stones.

  “This,” Azhguri said, in his gravelly voice as he set the first of the small crystals in front of me in my workshop, “is an amazing find.” With a twinkle in his eye he chanted a chorus of something in his own language . . . and the hammer on the table disappeared. He held out his hand and said another word, and it reappeared.

  “I think it establishes a smaller, separate dimension,” Onranion theorized. “When I examined it in the ranahrar scale, I noticed that when empowered it had the capacity for inflating saras between the felsarai.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, honestly.

  “Think of reality as resting on a framework,” he said, after a moment’s pause. “Like the framework of a house. This stone allows one who knows its operation to inflate the framework, insert a little extra room between the beams, so to speak.”

  “It’s more like establishing a new dig in a mine,” countered Azhguri. “You’re just hollowing out a little extra space.”

  “How much extra space?”

  “How much do you need?” asked Azhguri. “Theoretically, it would only depend upon the amount of power you provided during the inception of the space.”

  “A cubic foot? A mile?”

  “How much power do you want to spend?” smirked Onranion. “That’s the only limitation. It could be large enough to house a city, theoretically. There are many variables that must be established upon inception, but once that is done, the effect seems to be permanent. Access is the tricky part, although Master Azhguri has formulated equations that would make such things possible.”

  “What sort of things? Practical uses, gentlemen,” I encouraged. This was fascinating!

  “Oh, need a place to stash your tools? You got your own tool bag here. Want to take all your crops to market in your pocket? You can do it without a wain. Want to collect seashells? Put them in your magical pocket until it can’t hold anymore.”

  “So how do you get them in and out?”

  “Simple runic key,” shrugged the Karshak. “Mnemonic device, key the artifact, open it by just about anything – song, word, sound, sneeze, interpretive dance, just about anything. But just be careful about how you build it,” he cautioned. “There’s no telling exactly how the thing works.”

  “But it works?”

  The hammer in his hand disappeared, and then appeared in his other hand. “Oh, aye,” he assured me, a twinkle in his eye. “It works.”

  “And how many of these stones do we have?”

  “Just the three,” Azhguri said with a nod. “Some lesser ones might do it, if you played with them. But these three are the special ones. I call them pocketstones, although that insufferable Alkan is trying to come up with something grander.”

  “That’s nothing compared to what this beauty does,” Onranion said, digging out another one from the box he’d brought. “This is the truly unique one. Only one like it, in the entire collection.”

  “So what does it do?”

  “From what I can tell, it allows temporary thaumaturgic ennegrams to become permanent,” Onranion said, authoritatively.

  “I almost understood that part.”

  “You should, it’s simple. When you establish a rudimentary symbolic ennegramic array, like you do to conjure a simple water elemental, the effect degrades after a while, correct?”

  “Yes, depending on just how complex it is and how much energy you put into the system.”

  “Just so. Eventually the template used to model the system – yours – degrades as attention and intent fails. Once it can no longer sustain thaumaturgic cohesion, it fades back into the chaos of its creation. This little gem allows you to establish that pattern . . . permanently.”

  “You mean, create a permanent water elemental?”

  “Oh, my dear boy, elementals are just the beginning. There are all manner of such ennegramatic patterns that fail, due to static forces. This would allow them to be
come self-sustaining. Or at least maintain their coherency long enough to find a means of sustenance. Theoretically, of course. We’ll have to do some experiments, naturally.”

  “Well, naturally I want you to keep them quiet. Could this be used as a weapon?”

  “Oh, my, yes,” the old Alkan said, scratching his chin. “You could cause all sorts of mischief with this. Unseen assassins, unkillable golems, you could even sustain a living enneagram after death.”

  “I could make undead with this?”

  “Anyone can do it temporarily,” he mused, “once you understand the basic necromantic principals. But only at a basic level. This could be used to affix a being’s core enneagram, maintain its existence intact after biology has failed. It would require power. A lot of power. But that is essentially what the Abomination is. Only this stone – theoretically – can do the same thing without a block of irionite.”

  “That sounds a little horrific,” I said, swallowing involuntarily.

  “Oh, it would be frightful,” he agreed, cheerfully. “Locked inside a body that no longer truly functioned – a living death of endless torment. But from a more practical standpoint, this stone allows such enchantments to be made permanent.”

  That opened up all sorts of possibilities, and we spent the rest of the afternoon and three more bottles of wine exploring them in my workshop. Hangovers, I hear, are very inspirational.

  We spent hours experimenting after that. For two days I ignored almost everything but those two stones, until I thought I had the beginnings of understanding them. Azhguri was particularly helpful in mastering the intricacies of the magretheite, as he called the three pocketstones. Under his guidance we established a protocol for creating openings and attaching them to physical objects as activation mnemonics.

  I was able to create a space that could call my mageblade, Twilight, into and out of existence, for example, which I found handy. I tied it to a thick gold seal ring I’d had made in preparation for my investiture celebration, bearing the arms of Sevendor. Now, when I wore the ring and activated the command, the sword would appear in my palm, and then disappear at another command, just a short dimension away.