Court Wizard (Spellmonger Series: Book 8)

by Terry Mancour

  “Do you?” asked the girl, taking her accustomed seat on a stool.

  “Oh, Luin’s Staff, no!” cackled the old woman, absently petting the old gray cat who shared her croft, Widdy, as it wandered by. “Nor do I have the power to affect great change. No, I have spent more than thirty years in the Wilderlands constantly foreseeing what will come to pass . . . and telling no one.”

  Alurra frowned. “What’s the point of that? Why bother, if no one knows?”

  “It’s not that no one knows, Sweeting, it’s that no one knows . . . yet. Unlike most oracles cursed as I am, I knew what had befallen me, and did not seek to aggrandize myself through the power of prophecy, as so many of the ignorant do. My Talent was proscribed. I kept it to myself. Every vision, every prescient dream. I kept quiet about it and thought about it until I thought I understood it. Then I wrote it down.”

  “You did?” Alurra asked, intrigued. She had a fascination with the power of reading, and often fingered the pages in the seventeen volumes in Antimei’s precious library with longing. “That explains all those hours beating parchment reeds I did this autumn. Where?”

  “Oh, I was quite careful,” confided the old woman, smiling wickedly. “I wrote in verse, one leaf at a time. I hid it betwixt the pages of that book of Alka Alan poetry, so that it looked like a translation, not a prediction. When I had the page complete, front and back, I hid it away in a . . . secret place and started the next one. When I had a hundred, I bound them and hid them in a yet more secure place. No one but myself knows its location,” she said, patting the arm of the chair smugly “I’ve seen every night of my life for thirty-two years. Like an endless tapestry woven one thread a night. Yet I cannot recall every inch of every strand,” she admitted.

  “But you wrote it down,” Alurra prompted. “If you wrote it down, shouldn’t you be able to remember?”

  “Imagine it raining, with every drop a prophecy: a face I may know, may come to know, or may never meet, going through their journey unaware of my witness. Sometimes I see strangers at the most mundane of tasks. Sometimes great nobles, kings even, or powerful magi, doing things and saying things in a jumble. Each raindrop is like a moment of someone else’s life . . . and my book is the bucket I’ve collected them in, after distilling them down to what I think is the truth of the matter. That does not mean that my perspective is correct. Prophecy is a . . . devilish Gift.”

  “I . . . I’m not sure I understand,” confessed Alurra, as Widdy jumped into her lap. The old cat claimed the spot as if it was his by divine right and settled into a ball. Alurra began petting him automatically. To do otherwise was to risk his displeasure and his claws.

  “I wrote down very select incidents, in as helpful a context as I could, while disguising it in verse from the eyes of the ignorant,” Antimei conceded.

  “So who is supposed to read them? Have you seen that?”

  “Of course. Indeed, the day draws near when I will turn over my entire life’s work and count my vocation fulfilled.”

  “When will that be?” asked her apprentice uneasily.

  “Not until the end of this story,” promised the witch. “Make the tea?”

  “What story?” asked the girl as she unceremoniously dumped Widdy to the floor. He landed indignantly, and immediately began cleaning himself in front of the fire as if that had been his plan all along.

  “The story we are both in, Sweeting. We and a great many others.”

  “I do like stories,” said Alurra carefully, as she used a rag to grab the handle of the copper kettle. “When they have happy endings,” she added.

  “All good stories do,” agreed Antimei with a sigh.

  Her own story had not been as happy as she’d have wished, but then again it had not been entirely unhappy, either. “And no good story ever comes to an end. Not really. There is always some before, and a great deal afterward that happens. Those become their own stories, with their own endings.

  “But this story that we’re in, Sweeting. I’ve foreseen it since before you were born. I haven’t always understood it, until recently, but I think I’m finally beginning to, here at the end of my life.”

  “What happens?” demanded the girl as she added leaves to the pot and set it down to steep. She hated it when Antimei talked about her own death so matter-of-factly, but the girl had to get used the idea. “And what are you talking about? You look plenty hale!”

  “A great many things will happen: death, betrayal, victory over great odds, bravery, cowardice, treachery—”

  “Love?” interrupted the girl eagerly.

  Antimei smiled fondly. She remembered what it was like to be a maiden, all those years ago.

  “Love? More love than you can possibly imagine, in more ways than you can conceive. The story is all about love: love of the land, love of a man, love of every sort. Good love, bad love, love in all of its confusing aspects. An embarrassment of love.”

  “That sounds unwieldy,” frowned the girl.

  “Love is never neat and tidy,” she chuckled. “That’s what I tried to explain to an initiate of Ishi, once, long ago. Love is messy, sticky, and ugly as it is joyous, enriching, and sublime. Love makes strong men weak and weak women suffer. Love always dices with death and despair.”

  “Well gosh, you make it sound so appealing!” Alurra said, irritated.

  “Love, you silly girl, is a beautiful thread that can bring warmth and strength when woven into the tapestry in the proper proportions . . . but in great wadding hunks it becomes as oppressive and bulky as a bale of wool in the woof. Love . . . love is a very complicated thing,” she finished.

  She felt a hypocrite, speaking of love – she, who had abandoned her beloved husband and cherished children over thirty years before, to seek peace and solitude – and safety - in the wilderness.

  Yet not a day passed when she did not long for them with an aching heart.

  Once Antimei had been in love. And her name had not been Antimei. She was once happily in love, and married to a good man who was devoted to her with all of his heart.

  That love had produced three children in the precious years after their wedding. They both had successful practices in Inmar, a prosperous town in southern Alshar. They lived in a sprawling townhome in the artisans’ quarter, and attended temple services with their neighbors. Their children were born strong and healthy. Everything had been going well for her when the first bout of compelling prophecies began invading her dreams.

  She’d shed a river of tears over the decades she’d been away from them. She had loved . . . but she had not known love in over thirty years. Kindness, generosity, friendship, these things the Wilderlands folk had for her in abundance. But love she was denied, the price she paid for her terrible Gift.

  When the visions began, she had toyed with the idea of simply hiding them away . . . but they were too compelling. Soon her clients were seeking her out for her ability to foresee their fates, not to hire her for her ability to intervene in their lives with magic. Young women sought her out to find out who they might marry, how many children they might have, what the goddesses may have in store for their hopeful lives. Too often she had told them the truths they didn’t want to hear: a future of abuse, poverty, neglect, illness and death.

  One young client in particular had inspired her to run away from her comfortable, beautiful life.

  Antimei met with her at a park outside of the convent school at which she was studying, one morning, and agreed (for a substantial fee in silver) to look into the pretty Wilderlands girl’s future for her. Though she had little control over her abilities, then, she had learned at least how to invoke them in regards to a client’s future.

  What she saw in store for the shapely maiden stunned her. Their fates, she saw, were intertwined in ways she never would have suspected. And the very act of meeting her had set events in motion that would take decades to come to fruition. As the visions poured into her mind, the fretful young ingénue sitting next to her started to f
idget impatiently.

  Antimei’s mouth took over. She told the girl what she saw: a marriage to a titled baron, bearing a son to a Duke, tournaments, parties, an introduction to court . . . the fulfillment of every girlish dream the foolish tart thought was important.

  What she didn’t tell her was how her vacuous life would come to affect the entire Wilderlands . . . and the fate of the Duchy of Alshar itself. Nor did she mention the entanglements with the divine she foresaw. Or how they drove Antimei herself away from the life she had so painstakingly built for a much different fate. But at the conclusion of the interview, Antimei went home, packed her things, gathered a purse adequate for travel, and left without even saying goodbye to her beloved husband and her children. She’d taken a coach north, tarried a month in Gilmora, then made her way still farther, into the Wilderlands. Another few weeks at Vorone, where she did some research at the palace and contrived to select a new name – “Antimei” was a pretty one, she decided, and was Wilderlands enough to excuse her funny accent – before she ventured still farther north. She found a hamlet with an established hedgewitch, and in return for service that winter she learned the simple magics that the common folk needed, so different from the high magic she had practiced in Inmar. When the snows melted she said her farewells and took to the road, north.

  She did not stop until she saw the place in her visions. Beyond the remotest village she could find, hidden from any who did not know it was there, she found the outcropping and the hollow in the hills that she was destined to make her home in rustic exile. It was deep in the wilderness, and though fertile and wild the place was uninhabited.

  Enlisting the aid of a few lads from the nearest village, Antimei had constructed a croft out of the hollow, roofing the depression in the hill with stout beams of oak and linden before covering them with a layer of sod. Another year went by, which saw her take a door as a fee for her service as a witch, and as her fame began to spread. She developed good relationships with the people of the three settlements nearby, particularly the largest. For twenty years, Antimei performed as midwife, physician, herbalist and spellmonger for the folk of Tolindir village and the smaller hamlets in the highlands.

  She did everything a countryside hedgewitch was expected to do to support the lives and livelihoods of the folk within their sphere. She did everything . . . but prosephy.

  Through it all, she did her best to forget her former life while she learned the practice. Yet every night she did her best to recall the faces of her children, the feel of her husband’s arms around her. It was a great sacrifice that she had made, but it had to be done, and none but her could do it, she knew with certainty. Now the time was approaching when it would be coming to fruition. That was the reason she addressed Alurra this morning.

  “Before the story properly begins,” she said, as her apprentice settled in, “there is part of it you must know. A tale of loss and despair that leads to determination and hope. A story of awful circumstances overcome with the keen intelligence of a woman and the grace of the gods themselves.”

  “Well, that sounds good!” Alurra said, cheerfully. Thankfully her apprentice still had a childlike indulgence when it came to stories.

  “It begins only a few days from now,” she announced, indicating to Alurra that this was one of her “special” stories – not the ones that taught lessons or demonstrated morals, or even entertained. This was one of Antimei’s visions, and it was, therefore, between them alone. Antimei had never come out and told her apprentice about her gift openly, but the girl was intuitive enough to realize when her mistress was uncomfortable with something. “It begins when one woman looks out at her town and decides to do something to alleviate the suffering there.”

  “She sounds like a nun,” reflected Alurra, who had never met a member of the clergy.

  “She might have been, once,” chuckled Antimei. “Though not a serene sister of Trygg or even one of the priestesses of Briga. No, she was very pretty, once, and was devoted in her heart and soul to the goddess of Love and Beauty, Ishi.”

  “Oh, no!” Alurra said, her face twisted in disgust. “Kissing!”

  “Not yet,” promised Antimei. “Though there may come a time when you do not recoil from that thought. No, Ishi is in charge of kissing, but in this story her interest is much deeper. It concerns not a woman’s love for any man, but a woman’s love for the divine manifestation of sexuality. It is a story born of disappointment, fear, and frustration,” she said, dramatically.

  “So where does it start?” asked Alurra impatiently. She might not have liked kissing, yet, but she loved stories. Particularly Antimei’s stories, the ones she knew would someday come true.

  “It all begins when a woman named Amandice – Baroness Amandice – decides she has had quite enough,” the old witch related. “And from such small beginnings, much turmoil results . . .”

  “Is she our heroine, then, Antimei? Baroness Amandice? What a grand name . . .”

  “One of them,” the old witch nodded. “But not every story is divided into heroes and villains, Sweeting. Real life is more complex than folktales. Even the valiant face challenges when the gods deign to get involved in human affairs.”

  “The . . . gods?” Alurra asked in a hushed voice. She had a peasant’s understanding of such things, not a trained mage’s . . . but when it came to knowledge of the nature of humanity’s divine protectors, Antimei doubted there was much actual difference. Theurgy was not her specialty, not by a stretch, but even experts in the field historically had little but speculation and theory.

  But there was no mistaking the visions. When the gods did manifest, they left a distinctive thread in the tapestry of fate. And the gods had taken a special interest in the Wilderlands since the troubles had started. She’d seen in her visions how they had helped the Kasari escape over the summer, for instance, and how they had affected the course of the powerful and mighty. The ripples they made in the fabric of the tapestry of fate were everywhere, now. The gods were afoot, here in the Wilderlands. And one in particular would be taking up residence, for a while.

  “The gods, my dear,” she agreed. “The rise of the Dead God has set many paths in motion, and even the gods are bound by their ancient natures. When humanity is in danger or distressed, we reach forth and summon them to our aid. Magic of all sorts now abounds in the Wilderlands, thanks to the goblins. Including divine magic. Other forces will soon be at play: the Spellmonger even now is doing things that will cause the tapestry of fate to change for years to come. The Necromancer is rising, and is sure to raise an army of the dead against him, eventually. But first the Goddess must do her part.”

  “The goddess? Which goddess?”Alurra asked, anxiously. In many ways, she was the perfect audience.

  “One who feels she has something to prove. A goddess who feels she owes a debt, and desires to repay it in splendid fashion. Not just repay it, but to prove her worth in the process.

  “But before she comes, like all divine manifestations, she must be invoked. Thankfully, by her acts she will bring the Wilderlands to the brink of destruction . . . and salvation.”

  “That sounds . . . interesting,” Alurra frowned.

  “Interesting? Indeed. For never has Ishi the Beautiful manifested in just such a way before. Never has her power been stronger . . . or her motivations more clouded. Heroine or villain, she has already set her sights on playing a more robust role in humanity’s fate.”

  “Does she not always play such a role?” asked the young woman, carefully. Ishi was a touchy subject for one so new to womanhood.

  “From what her priestesses tell us, yes,” chuckled Antimei, recalling the painted priestesses of the Scarlet Temple of her girlhood home. “Yet she has decided recently to take a more direct role. She is in love, you see, enchanted – literally – by the Spellmonger.”

  “The Spellmonger?” Alurra asked, her eyes wide.

  Everyone had heard of the humble peasant mage who had shaken the halls of power, a
nd – some said – preserved the Riverlands from invasion by stopping the gurvani at Timberwatch. He had led the Kasari children through the Penumbra and on to safety last year, leaving a trail of magically-constructed forts in his wake. He had challenged the Censorate and overthrown their oppressive oversight. Minalan the Spellmonger was a legend in the Wilderlands.

  “Aye, the Spellmonger. Baron Minalan, who has begun to craft wonders the likes of which have never been seen in his faraway mageland. A mage powerful enough, wise enough, and human enough to win the respect of even the Alka Alon. A wizard whose spells and enchantments tempt the gods themselves into bargains.”

  “So what happened? What will happen? You know what I mean!” the blind girl said, anxiously. She did so love a good story.

  “The Spellmonger was – a few days ago – attacked in his lair. Only the object of this attack was not his life, but his seed.”

  “No!” Alurra said, blushing at the insinuation – and the scandal. “Is he not wed?”

  “Aye, to a brave and true Wilderlands lass like yourself,” agreed Antimei, enjoying the girl’s interest. “Baroness Alya, the Lady of Sevendor. Beloved by her folk and by thousands in the Wilderlands by reputation alone. The Spellmonger was not willing, dear. He was taken by surprised and ravished.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “Yet that vile deed was enough to invoke Ishi, who manifested to him and proposed a bargain. He gave her power, and she . . . she helped him, somehow. And she promised to help him more. You see, she was enchanted by more than his arcane powers, she was enthralled by the man.”

  “Ishi? In love with a mortal?”

  “Love is love, in the heart of a maiden . . . and Ishi is forever a maiden, so it is said. She felt something for the Spellmonger, in her bargaining. Perhaps because he rejected her, as much as he could, because he truly loves Lady Alya. But she felt infatuation for this man, and like a love-sick village maiden she seeks to impress him.”