Court Wizard (Spellmonger Series: Book 8)

by Terry Mancour

  “Do you think we’ll be attacked?” she asked Arborn, who now rode beside her on his big brown courser.

  “No,” he answered, simply and thoughtfully. She waited for him to elaborate. He didn’t.

  “Why not?” she prompted. Arborn was maddeningly laconic.

  “Because everyone is dead drunk and asleep, as they should be on Yule,” he replied, softly. “No one knows our plan, we were quite careful of that. And from what Count Salgo has informed me, there are few in this town who would raise a sword against anyone who vowed to replace Baron Edmarin.”

  That satisfied her, for the moment, and confirmed her own assessment. She trusted Arborn’s judgment, though he was not – technically – a military man. He was a ranger of the Kasari people, strange barbarian tribes who lived in enclaves across the Wilderlands. Arborn could smell an ambush the way she could tell if someone was preparing to do magic.

  “In fact, it is quite possible that you will be installed and at work in a day or so,” he added, hopefully. “We really won’t know until we see what kind of resistance the palace is ready to put up.” He smiled at her. He knew what this posting meant for her, and though it meant he would be consigned to town life for the foreseeable future, he was genuinely pleased with her new position.

  Pentandra had always dreamt of being a ducal Court Wizard, ever since she had come into her Talent and begun learning the family’s Art. Ducal Court Wizard was the highest position a mage could attain, in her youth, before Minalan upset the Bans on Magic, and it was still seen as a coveted and lucrative position with few pressing duties. Clearly her tenure with Anguin’s court would differ in a number of ways from her predecessors, now that the rules had changed. In this new age court wizards would be doing more than handing out aphrodisiacs to aging courtiers.

  This was the era of the High Mage. And Pentandra was among their elite.

  Taking full advantage of Minalan’s bold and foolhardy maneuverings against the Dead God, Pentandra not only acquired her own stone of the ultra-precious magical mineral, irionite, she’d attained nobility, power and position beyond her ambitious girlhood dreams once Minalan upset the Bans on Magic and took over its administration in the new kingdom.

  Much of that work he delegated to her. As the Steward of the Arcane Orders for the last three years Pentandra took a personal hand in restructuring how magic was done in the new kingdom, gaining a small fortune and immeasurable professional respect in the process. Her family even suggested that accepting a post as a mere Ducal Court Wizard seemed like a demotion, compared to her previous position.

  But it wasn’t. If the assumption of the position belied her girlhood fantasies of power, it was because, ultimately, she found the entire exercise of court politics underwhelming and unfulfilling. She had grown restless in Castabriel, the royal capital, in between periods of maddening activity. Being Steward of the Arcane Orders gave her unanticipated power, but Pentandra had quickly grown weary of responsibilities that always seemed more burdensome than the perquisites they accompanied.

  When it became clear to her that a future as Steward meant being locked in a room with thousands of sheaves of parchment for all of eternity, she started to question her goals.

  Then she’d met Arborn.

  As a student of the arcane and obscure (not to mention lurid) magic of sex, Pentandra had a highly discerning eye when it came to evaluating people, sexually. A casual glance at a man or woman told her volumes about that person’s sexuality, once you understood the arcane rules of human sexual attraction and interaction. It was far more than good looks and base attraction.

  Pentandra’s professional eye evaluated social context, age, bearing, charisma, and nuances of musculature that escaped everyone else. It was amazing what a casual glance could tell you about a person’s inner soul, if you knew how to read it. And that was before she added her magical perceptions into the equation.

  When she’d met Arborn, her assessment of the big Kasari ranger was perplexing. She’d never met a more perfect man – literally. He was physically appealing, of course – the traditional Tall, Dark, and Handsome, Strong and Silent, all in generous portion – but he was no mere muscular slab of man.

  He possessed a marvelous intelligence, had keen insights, and was surprisingly educated for a barbarian – far more than the average nobleman. His bravery was legendary, and his skill as a warrior was at least as great as any knight of the south. But he was far more than a mere warrior. He was literate, well-read, and had a sense of purpose and confidence that made him as much a scholar and a diplomat as a fighter. There was little she had found that he could not do, save for magic.

  She had finally found a man worthy of her.

  Pentandra had encountered plenty of men in her life who would have made adequate, even exceptional mates . . . objectively. But Arborn was the first man she’d met who approached her masculine ideal. The first to truly win her heart.

  Their courtship had been odd. She’d accompanied Minalan on his mad dash across the Wilderlands in the company of a few thousand Kasari children, and Arborn had been there every step of the great journey. The children were from the great Kasari settlements in the northern hills, and Arborn looked after his folk like a devoted sheepdog.

  He was constantly on watch for dangers, from goblin attack to poison ivy, and had commanded the other rangers escorting the children like a seasoned general. He enjoyed the universal respect of everyone in the march, using his quiet presence to quell quarrels or his booming voice to call the marchers to action. He never, ever made a mis-step.

  Pentandra got to know him slowly, in passing, at first, merely admiring him from afar. But she could not help herself in her attraction to the big, handsome ranger. Every time the great column had halted to encamp she had found some reason to seek him out, or at least be in his proximity, until he knew her face and voice as well as he knew the sun in the sky.

  But it was a frustrating endeavor. Despite her deep knowledge of feminine wiles and attraction, he hadn’t once tried to take advantage of her acquaintance, unlike so many other men she’d flirted with. Not so much as a stolen kiss, though she’d given him every opportunity.

  She had been subtle – she wasn’t prone to the kind of overt displays that a priestess of Ishi or some of her more flamboyant sisters would have indulged in. Yet he always responded to her subtlety with quiet amusement and a congenial acceptance that she found endearing. He was never cross with the children, nor unkind to an animal, and everyone he met seemed to strive to their utmost to aspire to be more like him.

  That alone would have reached her heart. Judging a man on what he said was foolish, on what he did was wise. But judging him on how others reacted to him gave her an insight to his character that convinced her that Arborn was perhaps the kind of man she could love.

  Once she’d given voice to her interest and received the faintest hint that it was returned, she had pursued the handsome Captain of Rangers diligently and with a single purpose: to wed him according to the rules of his own tribe.

  To that end she’d taken the Kasari Rites of Marriage in his homeland, Kasar, and undertook to learn what the odd barbarians considered essential for a Kasari wife to know. She had expected the lessons to revolve around the marriage bed, and on the peculiar Kasari customs and dress. They had a rich culture of song and story, one which her native competitors had grown up with.

  She found instead that the training and rites focused more on the domestic “arts”, chores and skills Pentandra had avoided her entire life. She had grown up in an estate with a multitude of servants who had cooked every meal and sewn every stitch she wore.

  Though she understood the principles of thread and needle, pot and kettle, when it came to practicing them in front of the judgmental Kasari matrons she had felt all thumbs. Worse, there was really no guarantee that the Council would approve her match to Arborn and that they would instead both be married off to those they decided would better compliment them.

 
; And still that wasn’t the worst of it. The Kasari’s idea of a marital sex life was largely concerned with bearing children, not sexual pleasure. That had been both professionally and personally disappointing, though she’d learned a remarkable amount about their customs in the process. As interesting as that had been academically it had soured her fantasies of unending nights of sensual pleasure.

  The Kasari ideal concerned quantity over quality, procreation above recreation, and both partners’ duties to the other in terms of provision and comfort. It was a supremely practical arrangement but barely made room for passion. Qualities like attractiveness, arousal, and pleasure were barely hinted at. Discussions of the Kasari approach to the ancient arts of love were less frequent and detailed than the art of making a one-kettle meal or decorative embroidery.

  Hence her fearfulness at the Council’s decision. They could have – quite easily – given Arborn over to some young lass with a face like a mud puddle with masterful culinary and crafting skills. There was much resistance to marrying off the cream of the Kasari crop to a foreign stranger, and she dreaded them doing just that, just to spite her.

  Thankfully, they had taken their mutual desire into consideration, and blessed the union once Pentandra had proven herself at least nominally proficient at being a Kasari wife. There had been plenty if discussion and doubt about her suitability among her fellow initiates in the rites. Particularly the younger, more nubile maidens who didn’t believe she didn’t deserve even a chance at a high-status mate like Arborn.

  When the Council’s approval had finally been granted, her elation at the news was accompanied by a feeling of triumph over the hopeful Kasari girls she’d beaten out. She suspected that Arborn’s high rank and her service to the Kasari on the march had more to do with it than the judgment of the Matron of Maidens, but she would never have admitted such a thing – not to them.

  That triumph had lasted only as long as their time in the beautiful forests of Kasar. The reality of what she had done – what they had done together – set in as soon as they had returned to more civilized lands.

  She was not just a bride, she was married. She didn’t just have a wedding, she had a husband. Pentandra was no fresh-faced Kasari maiden, she was a professional Remeran woman from a wealthy noble house who had a career and an important post. While Arborn was no stranger to city streets and townlands and their customs, his vocation involved the wilderness.

  After their dramatic, beautiful wedding at a sacred waterfall, Pentandra started to grow perplexed over just what to do with her new husband now that she had him.

  Pentandra looked at her husband, bundled up against the cold on his well-muscled Highlands courser in a thick bearskin cloak. Married for almost nine weeks, now, she still thrilled when she looked upon him. His broad shoulders, long legs, and powerful arms filled out the great shaggy hide, his beard nearly blending with the dark brown fur. He rode with the easy grace of long practice and many miles, but he had walked far more than he had ridden.

  Esteemed as adept in a culture that valued competence in all things, Arborn was a Raptor in rank, the highest rank a Kasari could earn. He had learned more before his twentieth year than most sages learned in a lifetime of study.

  He was the perfect man: broadly built and strong of limb, dark haired and steely eyed. He possessed a fascinating and discerning intelligence, yet had a friendly and humble nature. Arborn’s great humor had charmed her out of fits of rage she hadn’t thought capable of receding, and his quick wits had kept him alive and hale in the most harrowing of professional circumstances. Captain Arborn of Kasar, the Eagle of the Wilderlands.

  He had consented to marry her. And she had won that right.

  As challenging as the Kasari marriage rites had been for her, she had prevailed, proving her worthiness –without magic – until even the council had to agree she was a good mate for their most adept ranger. But though the competition had been fierce, and the thrill of that victory still sweet, there was a part of Pentandra that felt as if her wedding was not yet legitimate. Or at least real.

  It was legal enough. The Kasari woman who had seen them bound was a consecrated priestess of Trygg. The union had been duly registered at her temple. Pentandra and Arborn were legally bound as one, husband and wife, for the rest of their lives.

  Only it didn’t feel real, yet. The entire idea of getting married had seemed wonderful. The celebration of life and her love for Arborn, the celebration after so much effort and struggle, the victory she had won over the other women who paid Arborn court in the rites – that had been real. The exquisitely beautiful ceremony in front of the waterfall in the middle of the forest had been magical and meaningful. When Arborn had placed his kerchief around her neck and fastened it in the traditional Kasari ritual, claiming her as his bride, there had been no hint of doubt in her. She had enthusiastically and blissfully consented to wed him in front of the gods and Kasari animal spirits.

  But she was still getting used to the idea that she actually had a husband, now. Harder still was the notion that she was someone’s wife.

  Wife. The word felt strange in her mind and stranger on her tongue when she spoke it, now. She was Arborn’s wife, and he her husband. Despite the preparation the Kasari rites had given her (and her own professional interest in the whole idea of sexual and romantic love) Pentandra had never truly understood what it meant to be a wife. To have a husband. It wasn’t at all like the great romances foretold.

  Being Arborn’s wife meant that she was suddenly responsible for him in a way she had never been for another person before. She was getting used to being his responsibility in ways that she could never have foreseen as well . . . and found that it bothered her. She had lived quite long enough without someone asking if she was hungry or cold all the time. Now her . . . husband . . . asked her several times a day.

  It was confusing. Things that she used to do for herself she now had to take Arborn into consideration before doing. Her time was not quite her own, anymore. And she now had a permanent invasion of her personal privacy that she found disconcerting.

  The dramatic pace of their lives since their wedding had softened the transformation somewhat, she guessed. A few weeks in Sevendor for the Magical Fair, and then the late autumn trek to Gilmora to join the Duke in preparation for his restoration had kept the full affect of her wedding from her, but Pentandra knew that the honeymoon was drawing to a close.

  She had to find some way to learn to live with a man, not just love him.

  Beyond her fears and anxieties over the intricacies of her newly-minted marriage Pentandra had other worries. In marrying Arborn she had not just followed her heart, she had eschewed tradition.

  In the Remeran aristocracy in which she’d been raised a young woman not only did not marry for love, she did not marry without the express consent and counsel of her entire family, particularly her female relatives. In finding the perfect man Pentandra had committed the sin of marrying him without her mother’s knowledge, much less her approval or permission.

  That wasn’t a legal issue as much as it was a social matter. Young aristocratic Remeran ladies were expected to wed in their late teens, with a lot of parental involvement in the selection – that was how her older sister had fared. But because Pentandra developed rajira, the Talent to use magic, soon after menarche, she had been spared the indignity of an arranged marriage. To her mother, Amendra, she was a lost cause.

  While being a mage was a respected profession among the Remeran nobility, the Bans precluded most beneficial marriages for her anyway. Female magi were professional women, in Remeran society, unlikely to marry at all. Most went into practice as Resident Adepts (the traditional Remeran term for “spellmonger”) or went into public service. Or teaching. They were not particularly desirable as brides.

  Pentandra had compounded her problems by eschewing even that path and focusing on a career in magical research – and not just any research. In spite of her mother’s investment in social propriety,
Pentandra had chosen the thoroughly scandalous field of sexual magic to study – not the easiest thing to brag about at garden parties.

  While her older sister had gone on to be the perfect picture of her mother’s social ideals, marrying a handsome, rich young noble living in a small but elegant country estate, Pentandra had been publishing papers on arcane and outlandish subjects . . . and developing a somewhat unsavory reputation in the refined halls of Remere.

  Her sudden rise to prominence in the Arcane Orders had mollified Mother somewhat. Being so close to the centers of power almost made up for the lack of a beneficial match, to her mother’s mind . . . almost. The glorious memory of her sister’s summertime wedding continued to echo in her letters even as Pentandra was dining with dukes and even the King, himself.

  It seemed that no matter how well Pentandra did, professionally, she did not measure up to her idiot sister in her mother’s eyes because she was still without a husband, and near to twenty-five.

  Arborn should have repaired that . . . had he not been not just a commoner, but a barbarian. The fact that he was more literate than most of the nobility and more widely respected than any aristocrat she knew meant nothing to Remeran society, and therefore meant nothing to her mother. Without title, lands, or coin, his status as a penniless wanderer made him little more than a vagabond by that light. Marrying the Kasari ranger had been as scandalous, in its way, as taking up sex magic.

  Perhaps that’s why Pentandra had yet to write her mother about it. The news was out, of course – her cousin Planus had seen to that. He had hosted a magnificent wedding party in their honor back at Sevendor and had certainly told everyone back in Remere. Not even he could resist gossip that juicy.