Necromancer: Book Ten Of The Spellmonger Series

by Terry Mancour

  It didn’t take long. With a violent melee breaking out in the middle of their largest fortification, during a double-pronged attack, there was a general call for reserves that soon flooded the street with all manner of his servants, from mean little gurvani slavers to a troll who happened to be handy.

  That’s when Rondal’s next salvo was launched. Three more spheres were quickly fired into the mixed mass of species battling for survival in front of the tower. Instead of inspiring more random attacks of rage and violence, however, these balls merely rolled to a stop.

  Then Rondal activated them. Each one produced three constructs from hoxter pockets that energized immediately. Though all were slightly different, I could see, they were based on similar designs. They seemed to be weirwood tripods that could produce additional limbs with spinning blades or sharp spikes. Every now and again one of them would emit a gout of flame or a blast of acid or a cloud of noxious fumes to irritate and annoy the foe while the mindless arcane constructs indiscriminately stabbed and slashed. One even whirled a chain with a sharp blade at the end around its top in a deadly circle.

  “We really spared no thaumaturgical expense for these,” Tyndal declared, proudly. “Some of the most devious minds in warmagic helped conceive of them.”

  “They’re impressive,” I admitted, though I thought the boys’ improvised constructs during the Long March had been more durable. As it turned out, these didn’t need to be. They weren’t designed to survive. They were designed to get into position . . . and within five minutes of the unexpected attack, almost all of them had crawled their way to a line as close to the side of the building as possible.

  Then each of them burst, simultaneously, into a long line of flame that stretched along either side of it, consuming each other in the blast. The flames also shot upwards, coating the entire face of the building in sticky fire, as the constructs burnt themselves to cinders.

  But their sacrifice was worth it. In seconds, the first three stories of the Tower of Despair were on fire. Not enough to damage the structure, yet, but hundreds of furry gurvani who were caught in the blast were screaming and dying in the street. Human slaves ran for their lives and hobgoblins and draugen alike were cooked alive (or dead, depending) by the intense heat of the arcane explosion.

  “Part alchemical bomb, part fire spell,” Tyndal informed me, as I watched the chaos unfold. “We really milked the Stench Works for their best flammables for this one. The fire isn’t quite hot enough to ignite the stone, but anything less will be burnt to black. And that,” he said, with an air of satisfaction, “is how the Estasi Order creates a diversion.”

  “Well done!” I congratulated him, knowing he’d pass along my praise to Rondal and the others. “That should clear out the upper levels.”

  “Just in time for the second wave,” he nodded, as more spheres went flying into the chaos.

  This time they transformed into blocky four armed, four legged constructs with thick bronze shells and heavy falchions at the end of each arm. As each of them appeared, they began whirling and slashing indiscriminately at the gurvani desperately trying to form a bucket line to extinguish the unexpected blaze.

  “After going to all of the trouble to catch the thing on fire, we didn’t want them to put it out easily. Atopol figured that disrupting the fire brigades was the best way to escalate the crisis enough to involve whomever is guarding that ugly building,” he said, nodding toward Korbal’s fortress, a half-mile to the north.

  It took a little while for it to happen, but as it became increasingly clear from the smoke and the screams, the gurvani in the Tower of Despair weren’t getting the job done, the slaves working on the wall around the squat black pyramid were pressed into service by their draugen masters to begin toting water from someplace nearby to contain the flames. When it became clear why the gurvani were having such a hard time (four arcane constructs mindlessly hacking at them) the draugen themselves got involved.

  “The Cat is in position,” he announced, a moment later. “He thinks he’s on the floor with the Princess. He says he doesn’t see any guards. He thinks they’ve been called downstairs.”

  “What do you do, now?” I asked, genuinely curious about the lads’ plans.

  “As soon as Cat is in place, Rondal will escort His Grace and Sir Gydion to his position through the Ways – we gave Atopol a Waystone for the purpose – to affect the actual rescue.”

  “Rondal? I thought that kind of thing was your strength?”

  “I’m the reserves,” he said, proudly. “If they get into trouble during the relatively easy task of finding and liberating our prisoners from an unguarded cell block, then I will enter the fray with the others in the party,” he informed me. “Sire Landrik and Lady Noutha will be eager for the chance to ply their trade in such a challenging situation.”

  “I have no doubt,” I nodded.

  Landrik was a former Censor warmage who had developed and cultivated his destructive powers greatly since he took his oath as a High Mage. Noutha, the arrogant and talented daughter of the world’s foremost warmage (and my current Court Wizard) Loiko Vaneran, seemed to be permanently pissed-off about something.

  As she had worked indirectly for Korbal through the Enshadowed as a renegade warmage, under the romantic warname Lady Mask. She’d bested more than three hundred contestants at the Spellmonger’s Trial and fairly won her irionite. After we captured her.

  From what she’d told me in interrogation, she hadn’t enjoyed either the experience or the management, much, despite how well she profited from the association. Until we captured her. She’d proven her value in battle on both sides of the war. I had no doubt that once she entered the fray, she’d do well. Noutha couldn’t afford to be captured by her former employers. They were an unforgiving sort.

  The last of your team is through the Ways, Minalan, Pentandra reported to me, mind-to-mind, and then was gone before I could say anything.

  “Well, let me know when the guards around the pyramid palace or whatever we’re calling it—”

  “I’m voting for the ‘Tetrahedron . . . of Doom!” he said, ghoulishly. I must have made a face. “Yes, Ron and Cat were reluctant for that one.”

  “I think the Fortress of the Necromancer is quite adequate,” I considered. “Though ‘the temple of the demon god’ has some mythic character.”

  “I’ll bring your insights to the next meeting,” he promised. “In the meantime, you might want to prepare the Scholars, Master. Lady Pentandra just informed me that the guardians on the wall of the Fortress To Be Named Later have plunged into the flank of our poor constructs . . . where they will discover that destroying one activates a hoxter pocket and energetic appearance of two more,” he said, smugly. “Each newcomer has a different method of attack, and is governed by a different type of enneagram from the Grain of Pors. Some are girded with dragonskin, proof against most magic. It was incredibly expensive, but we figured the occasion called for it.”

  “That’s . . . evil!” I gasped.

  “Thank you,” he bowed. “We figured it would complicate their response, and keep them off-balance enough to require additional assistance. And you can thank Gareth for the concept – he has a twisted mind, sometimes,” he said, appreciatively.

  “I’ll do that,” I promised.

  Min! The Nemovorti at the complex have left to support the goblins at the tower. Now’s your chance!

  Thanks, Penny, I said, automatically, as I pulled on my helmet. I took a deep breath. “Good luck, Tyn,” I said, slapping him on the shoulder.

  “You, too, Master!” he said, returning the gesture. “Go get the Handmaiden. We’ll handle the Princess,” he assured. “Cat just told me he thinks he’s found her cell. It looks like we’re deployed, as well,” he said, eagerly, pulling off his cap and pulling on his own close-fitting helmet.

  I jumped down from our perch and found Azhguri and Sire Cei waiting for me. “I just got word,” I reported. “We have our opportunity. It’s time f
or the Scholars to deploy.”

  The desolation and ruin around us gave ample cover and plenty of shadows to hide within, as the Scholars snuck across the enemy’s cotyard. We had all sorts of clever spellwork keeping us from being noticed or spotted by anyone who wasn’t directly involved with the three separate crises erupting across that dismal isle.

  That didn’t leave much . . . the flames from the incendiary spells were engulfing the fourth floor, now, and climbing up to the fifth floor on the southern side of the tower. A pall of smoke angrily stained the sky, illuminated below by the growing gout of flame.

  There were thousands gathered to fight the blaze, but the constructs were complicating that tremendously. I paused for just a moment to assess the battle before we plunged into the darkness of the ruinous plain and witnessed one defeated spider-like construct collapse under the hammer of a troll . . . and then launch a fountain of berserker balls and concussion spheres into a circle around it, before producing another construct. This one appeared to be some kind of monstrous bear, with halberd blades for hands.

  As much as I wanted to admire the craft and handiwork of my lads, I had my own job to do.

  We crept through the wastes as gingerly as possible, avoiding any outlying sentries or stalled draugen but still taking the most expedient path to the gates of the fortress.

  It was a treacherous journey, across uncleared fields of rubble and the occasional path from one point to another. Bones abounded, the remains of drowned goblins or trolls, men or even Alka Alon, mixed with hundreds of slave corpses that had been left to feed the scavenging wyverns.

  There were other fell creatures abroad in the gloom, we noted, as we filed silently in a line across the plain – a quarter mile by bowshot, but our path was far more circuitous. Several times as we wound a path through the debris we detected scurrying things diving into cracks in the wreckage.

  There were strange web-building insects in shadowy pockets of the debris whose presence made Lord Aeratas glare darkly as we moved past them. Serpents abounded, from swift-moving four and six-footed amphibians to legless snakes who coiled in the shadows and seemed to dare us to disturb them.

  I don’t even want to mention the crawling insects. They seemed to be everywhere, including in the collar of my armor.

  Despite the challenges and inconvenience of the beasts, they didn’t seriously impede us as we quickly made our way toward the unfinished dark pyramid. There was a pile of construction stone near the massive gateway, higher than a man’s height, each a rough-cut brick culled from the ruins around us. We hid there while we inspected the incomplete gate and the defenders who were left to guard it.

  “Not more than a few hobgoblins, bearing the heraldry of the Necromancer, I’d guess,” Sire Cei said as he strained his limited ability with magesight to see through the gloom and smoke. “A black triangle on a putrid red field,” he pronounced with disgust. “There is some Alkan sigil inscribed within.”

  “That’s the symbol of the Enshadowed,” reported Onranion, troubled. “Surmounted by the symbol for sovereign mastery. He’s declared himself King of the Rebels. It is a sign that demands obedience or rebellion. It contends the mastery of the realm with the council.”

  “That’s disturbing,” Lord Aeratas said, darkly. “It is a dark sign from a dark time. Even in his worst revolts, Korbal never claimed such a title. It challenges the very order of the Alka Alon.”

  “It seems a quibble,” I pointed out.

  “Not for us,” Lilastien said, shaking her head. “During Korbal’s rise, many of the Enshadowed rejected his twisted cult due to his lack of such standing. He was merely a . . . a researcher who insisted on pursuing a forbidden field of study. Without embracing the political elements of his rebellion, there were those fanatics who would not lend their aid and strength to his cause. The Enshadowed felt entitled to control the entire realm, and Korbal wasn’t committed to that.”

  “It appears he has realized his mistake,” Aeratas nodded. “The Enshadowed always respected strength and power, the more grandiose the claim, the better it suited their purposes. That is a banner most could not ignore, I fear.”

  “I thought there were only a few Enshadowed,” Sandoval asked, curious.

  “Only few full clans,” nodded Onranion. “They were exiled, or removed themselves to secret strongholds, after that business. But the Enshadowed have attracted many Alka Alon to their teachings over the years. Far too many,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “They appeal to youthful idealism and their creed rationalizes their own sense of self-importance. They teach them in secret places, and sometimes return them to us to work subtly against us.”

  “As intriguing as this historical lesson is, my lords,” Mavone said, glancing around nervously, “might I suggest we assail the gateway, before the hobgoblins ask you to repeat the pertinent parts for their notes?”

  “There are only a half-dozen,” I pointed out. “Would you like to do the honors, gentlemen?”

  Sandoval grinned, and Mavone gave a curt nod. They conferred for a moment, then drew their mageblades and began to skulk through the shadows toward the great gate.

  The thing was forty feet high, and wide enough for three wagons to pass underneath, side by side. The two great doors of bronze-banded wood were already attached to hinges in the tall tree-like stone columns that flanked the road, but were propped opened to admit the construction crews working on the complex. Most of the work was abandoned, now, but the half-dozen hobgoblins at the gate had not quit their post.

  They were standing resolutely – or resignedly – on the road, steadfast in their immobility. They held their halberds and pikes listlessly, and it was clear they were uncomfortable in the heavy iron mail they wore under their blood-red tabards.

  Mavone started with a bright distraction cast on the other side of the road, causing most of the band to turn away from their attackers to inspect the flare. That’s when Sandy’s staff shot a blast of power in a plane that bisected the stocky eunuchs around their kidney level. Instantly they dropped their weapons and clutched at their middles, many of them falling to the ground and vomiting hardily. It didn’t look pleasant. A second blast, originating from Mavone’s mageblade, began ending their suffering with soft puffs of smoke.

  “Let us gain the road, my lords, and thence take the gate!” Sire Cei managed to whisper, as he led the way up the embankment to the rough-paved road.

  “He’s enthusiastic,” Lilastien said, as she hurried past in her white coat. It didn’t sound like a compliment.

  “Anyone see that?” I asked, to no one in particular.

  “I didn’t see any reaction from the southeast,” Onranion reported, as he climbed nimbly up the slope. “It’s deserted, except for vermin.”

  “Nothing from up the road, I think,” Azhguri said. “Hard to see my hand in front of my face, in this bloody gloom!”

  “Be glad your vision is spoilt, my friend,” Onranion assured him, as he helped the Karshak up. “The view would not be improved by more light. Fair Anthatiel is no more,” he said, mournfully.

  “It will rise again,” Lord Aeratas assured them both resolutely, as he mounted the reconstructed ruins of his home. “I vowed to cleanse and restore the City of Rainbows. I do not make such a vow lightly. Not even death could lift that vow. My vengeance begins this moment,” he growled through the bars of his helmet.

  “He’s bloody charming!” muttered the stonesinger, as he adjusted his hauberk on his shoulders.

  “Just think of the contract for rebuilding this place,” suggested Onranion. “And try to stay on his good side,” he added, warningly.

  “You people all chatter like this is an afternoon garden stroll!” complained Hanse, the master of shadows, as he leapt the bank unassisted. Me, I used magic from the Magosphere to lift me up. I’m lazy. “We are in the courtyard of an evil fortress,” he reminded us as it deposited my boots on the hard stone cobbles of the road. “Try to pretend not to attract attention to us, at le
ast!”

  “Bah!” snorted Azhguri. “Either the guards know we’re here, or they don’t. I expect we’ll learn ourselves in a moment which is the case. The time for stealth is over,” he declared, hefting his hammer. That earned an eye roll from the master thief.

  Mavone and Sandy had pushed the corpses of their victims over the embankment, while the Alka Alon crept through the wide gateway. Sire Cei had gone ahead as a vanguard, his wide shield and warhammer ready to accept any challenge. It took but a moment for one to arrive, in the form of a stumbling red-eyed draugen who seemed as surprised by the mage knight’s presence within the complex as he was by the hammer blow that shattered his brow.

  “It appears clear, my lords!” he called to us, after he’d dashed the creature’s brains across the wall, creating quite a racket. Hance snorted in disgust.

  The entrance to the actual fortress was situated directly behind the gate – a horrible defensive arrangement, I recognized critically. Siege warfare was not something the Alka Alon really conducted, even in their bloodiest period. But even common sense should tell you that you don’t make it that easy for your foes to gain the portal to your refuge.

  But that seemed to confirm the sense of arrogance I was getting from Korbal’s style, I reasoned. He was not building this place as a true fortress, but as a testament to his ego. I have an ego myself – none bigger – but I’m not stupid about it, usually. Korbal wasn’t planning to defend this place. He was planning on making it so foreboding as to deter anyone from daring to attack it out of fear for his power.

  Weakness comes in many forms. I was willing to take advantage of them all.

  Sire Cei gained the entrance without further challenge, a square, temple-like columned doorway of the same black basalt that faced the rest of the structure. The doors were smaller than the great gateway, but no less stoutly built . . . nor less open. It seemed deserted, and with an ominous feeling I bravely pushed myself into the shadows beyond the threshold.