The Complete Rhenwars Saga: An Epic Fantasy Pentalogy

by M. L. Spencer

  She placed the pitcher on a table, picking up a cup of tea she had brewed using petrified herbs she’d found in the mage’s unserviceable kitchen. She offered the cup to him.

  “Drink this,” she commanded without the slightest trace of compassion in her tone.

  The wet and bedraggled mage propped himself up on an elbow as he accepted the offered cup. He stared blearily into her eyes, a flustered expression on his face. He raised the tea to his lips and took a sip.

  Immediately he winced, grimacing as if in pain, and waved the tea away from him. “If Xerys himself ever pissed into a cup, it would hardly taste as noxious a brew.”

  “Drink it,” Merris insisted, handing the cup back to him. “I need you sober.”

  He shook his head, setting the tea firmly down. “I’ve managed to successfully refrain from sobriety for the past nine years,” he explained in a lecturing tone. “Doesn’t agree with my constitution, you see. If temperance is truly what you value, then I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong mage.”

  The smell of his breath was repugnant. Merris blinked, turning her face away with a scowl. “It had better start agreeing with your constitution,” she warned him sincerely. “I need your mind sound.”

  The man wriggled up into a reclining position on a stack of pillows. From somewhere in the bedding he produced a folded handkerchief and used it to dab at the water beading on his brow. He gazed up at her for a moment with reddened eyes before inquiring, “And whom, exactly, am I addressing? I regret that our previous introduction seems to have slipped my mind.”

  She drew herself up before him formally. “My name is Merris Bryar, acolyte of Aerysius,” she said as she offered him the slightest curtsey. “Former acolyte, that is. At your service.”

  Quinlan Reis blinked. “Former acolyte of Aerysius?” he pressed, cocking his head to the side. “How interesting. The plot thickens relentlessly.”

  Merris ignored him and continued, raising a scroll in her hand. “I have a letter here for you from your brother, Ambassador Braden—”

  He frowned at her as if disappointed. “You could have just delivered it and spared me the intrigue. By all means, hand it over, dear.” He extended his hand toward it.

  Merris snatched the scroll back out of his reach. “Not so fast. Swear you’ll take me under your protection.”

  The look offered her by Quinlan Reis was one of profound skepticism. “And why, exactly, would I want to do that?”

  Merris allowed herself the smug rudiments of a smile. “Because if you don’t, I’ll torch this letter right here in front of you. Then I’ll march into Prime Warden Renquist’s office and offer him proof that your brother, Braden Reis, is a traitor to Caladorn.”

  The mage sat straight up with a frown as his saucy countenance faltered. “What evidence do you have against my brother?” His words were suddenly, threateningly, direct.

  Merris remained undaunted. She continued confidently, “I can personally bear witness that Ambassador Braden Reis is the secret lover of Master Sephana Clemley, First Minister of the Assembly of the Hall.”

  The mage raised his eyebrows as the implications of her words slowly penetrated his liquor-induced fog. He sucked in a mouthful of air, allowing his cheeks to expand, before blowing it back out again with an exasperated sigh. He sank back against his pillows, eyes wandering sightlessly upward.

  Staring up at the ceiling, he muttered quietly, “Well, isn’t that just a honey of a pickle.”

  Merris nodded her agreement, feeling confident in her victory.

  “Such news would hardly go over well with the Lyceum, I’m afraid,” he continued without looking at her. “If this news is truly as factual as you say it is.”

  “Oh, it’s factual, all right,” Merris assured him. “Now swear.”

  His eyes squinted in her direction with obvious confusion. “Swear?”

  “Swear you’ll take me under your protection,” she reminded him, leaning forward with arms crossed, her posture overbearing.

  The mage appeared to be considering. Frowning, he wondered, “And what, exactly, do I gain from this arrangement?”

  Merris chortled. “Well, I’m certainly not going to sleep with you, if that’s what you’re asking!” She flung her hands out in exasperation.

  The man just shrugged. “We don’t have to sleep, darling. Sex is all I really had in mind.”

  Merris’ mouth dropped open. She glanced helplessly across the room to Cael, shaking her head in astonishment. “This is impossible,” she confessed to the guardsman, eyes imploring.

  Cael contemplated her for a long moment, face utterly impassive. Then he trudged around the bed toward her. Without a word he reached up and plucked the scroll she was holding out of her hand and offered it across to Quinlan Reis. Before she could stop him, the mage snatched it up with a look of affronted gratitude.

  “What are you doing?” Merris gasped at Cael, appalled.

  When he glared her into silence, all she could do was stand there and helplessly watch as the mage’s eyes scanned the letter written to him by his brother. He lay there for minutes, eyes tracing back and forth across the scroll as he read, then reread, the words it contained. Merris realized with a sinking feeling that she had no idea what the letter even said.

  The mage lowered the scroll, allowing it to curl back up as he set the parchment down at his side. His eyes wandered up once again in grim contemplation of the ceiling. “Yes, indeed. A honey of a pickle,” he sighed. “What time is it, love?”

  “Sunrise,” Merris heard herself responding automatically, the will to argue with him evaporated.

  “You’d better give me that other letter, then.” He didn’t look at her as he stated the request. Instead, his attention remained focused on the roof above his bed, eyes vacant in thought.

  Merris didn’t move. She clutched the last letter Braden had given her protectively against her chest.

  Quinlan Reis grimaced. “Oh, do calm down,” he insisted. “Of course I will extend my protection to you. For whatever it is worth—which is not much, I assure you.”

  “Good,” Cael announced, promptly turning away from his position beside Merris. “Then I guess I’m not needed anymore.” Without another word, the guardsman made his way briskly toward the door.

  “You’re right,” Quinlan Reis agreed to Cael’s retreating back. “You’re not.”

  His eyes narrowed slightly.

  The guardsman faltered in mid-stride. His hands came up, flailing for a second in the air. Then he slumped quietly forward.

  Merris gaped in shock even as she bolted toward him. She reached Cael before he made it all the way to the ground, but it was already too late. As she caught his head in her hands, she found his mouth hanging slack, eyes wide open and staring up at her. The skin of his face was completely devoid of color.

  “You killed him!” she accused as she turned to stare in shock at the man still reclined upon the cushions.

  “Oh, dear. Why, I suppose I did,” Quin admitted in a voice suffused with exaggerated dismay. “How unseemly of me.”

  “Why?” Merris demanded, her expression utterly bewildered.

  Before her disbelieving eyes the mage rose naked from his bed and stalked forward to kneel in front of her on the other side of the corpse. His face scant inches away, his gaze shot up and locked on Merris’ with rigid intensity.

  “You shouldn’t have called my brother a traitor in front of him.”

  4

  Already Damned

  Sephana let the magelight go entirely, allowing the shadows to reclaim the chamber. The Well of Tears was consumed by darkness, its terrible features obscured from sight. Which was better. The Well was appalling on such a primal level; the sight of it filled her with an urgent sense of dread. She wanted away from it, as far away from it as she could get.

  She took a step backward in the darkness.

  “This way.”

  It was Braden’s voice, disembodied and lost in shadow. She felt h
im take her hand firmly, guiding her forward through absolute darkness. Her slippered feet splashed through stagnant pools of water mixed with blood as he hurried her out of the chamber, one hand entwined with her own, compelling her forward with urgent pressure.

  The thrumming sounds from below were growing louder, motivating her stride.

  “They’re almost here,” she whispered, caught off-guard by the panicked sound of her own voice. “We can’t outrun them.”

  “No, we can’t,” Braden responded simply.

  She wished she could see his features in the darkness. The pressure of his hand eased as he brought them both to a halt. She had no idea where they even were in the warren of passages below Aerysius. A cold stirring of breeze rose up from the depths, the only telltale sign that the corridor they traversed actually went somewhere and didn’t just lead to a dead end.

  She glanced around, both forward and behind, eyes scouring the shadows. She could make out nothing in the darkness. Nothing except Braden.

  Sephana winced, recoiling from the sight of her lover silhouetted by a golden aura of energies that rippled over his body like lustrous ribbons, diffusing into the air around him. Braden had saturated himself with the magic field, letting its power completely suffuse him, filling him, the way Battlemages were trained to do in preparation for a strike.

  Sephana felt ire flush her cheeks as she realized what the sight of those energies implied. She found herself standing in the center of the dark and eerie passage, warily reassessing the man next to her.

  “Are you sure you’re a Chancellor?” she asked him slowly, guardedly. Her words were so soft that they were almost inaudible. “Because, in Aerysius at least, saturation with the field is a technique taught only to Battlemages.”

  Instantly, Braden released his grip on the field. She could feel the powerful energies draining out of him, dispelling back into the air. The darkness returned again quickly; she could no longer make out his features in the absence of light.

  She heard Braden explain in a weary, leaden voice, “In the Lyceum, the orders aren’t quite as cut-and-dried as they are in the Rhen. Once we become full Masters, we are allowed to choose a minor course of study. I am a Chancellor, Sephana. I didn’t lie to you about that. But I am also Battlemage-trained.”

  “To what purpose?” she demanded, the angry heat of betrayal rising to her cheeks. “Why would a Chancellor with purely political ambitions have need for that kind of study?”

  She was suddenly glad that she couldn’t see his face.

  “Sephana,” he began. There was sadness in his voice.

  That was all he said; Braden didn’t get a chance to finish.

  The air in the passage turned suddenly, atrociously cold. As it did, Sephana was filled with an appalling sense of dread.

  Desperate, her mind groped for the magic field and found nothing there.

  “Don’t let them touch you!” Braden gasped.

  She turned and fled.

  Groping ahead, Sephana made her way as fast as she could manage through the darkness. She felt along the walls of the passage with her hands, turning always to the right at every doorway she encountered. Filled with a mind-numbing terror that knew nothing of reason, Sephana had no idea what was following her through the darkness.

  She turned a corner and found herself in the passageway lit by torches. She gasped at the disorientation that came to her with the sudden return of vision. Behind, she could hear the ringing sounds of metal against metal. Ahead, the way they had come lay open before her.

  Almost, she turned back for Braden. She actually paused. She closed her eyes and argued silently with herself. In the end, it was not distrust of the man she loved that turned Sephana away from him. It was fear.

  Fear inspired by the pair of necrators that melted up from the ground six paces away.

  The necrators were vaguely human in shape, but utterly featureless. Like twin, twisted figures of charred mist. Sephana’s eyes widened as her throat spasmed in terror. She tried to breathe, but all she could produce was a choking whimper. She took a fumbling step backward.

  The touch of a necrator was not death; it was something much, much worse.

  She tried one last time to reach for the comfort of the magic field, but it was gone. In its place was only emptiness.

  “Turn around slowly.”

  Sephana almost screamed at the sound of Braden’s voice. Somehow, he was behind her. Though her nerves shrieked in panic, she obeyed him, turning her back on the appalling pair of shadows.

  He brought his hand up to her cheek, his touch a gentle caress that directed her attention fully into his eyes. He was saturated with the field again, amber ribbons of energy roving like a glorious web over his body. The look in his eyes was dark and dangerously intense.

  “Get behind me. When I say so, I want you to close your eyes and run as fast as you can.” His voice was absolutely calm and suffused with authority. “Back the way we came. Don’t stop. No matter what. Don’t turn around. Stop only when you reach the Hall of the Watchers.”

  Some reflex within her wanted to argue with him. But her will was silenced by the awful influence of the necrators. She stepped behind him.

  He grabbed her arm in a vise-like grip, forcing her backward with him. Two more necrators rose up from the ground to join the others. There were now four of them, dark and featureless shadows moving inexorably toward them.

  A man and a woman entered the corridor wearing the same indigo robes as Braden. Sephana gasped at the sight of them. The pair strode confidently forward through their escort of necrators, unaffected by their demonic influence.

  “Careful,” Sephana heard the man whisper to his companion. “He’s still holding the field.”

  Sephana’s eyes went wide as she realized exactly what that meant. She gawked at Braden, appalled to find the golden aura still surrounding him despite the presence of the necrators.

  She felt Braden’s hand upon her back, his touch a lingering caress. “It’s time,” he told her calmly. “Remember what I told you. Close your eyes. Now, run!”

  She didn’t obey him fast enough. Her eyes were still open when a brilliant glare exploded in the passage, completely overwhelming her vision. But Sephana didn’t need to see; her mind had already mapped out the path of the corridor behind her. Her vision blinded, she ran back the way they had come.

  Behind her, she could hear frantic sounds of struggle. She ignored the noises, her fingers trailing along the rough walls of the passage as her feet propelled her forward. She couldn’t see anything. Her foot smacked hard against stone and she tripped, falling to her knees.

  The pain was intense, but she forced herself to stand anyway. Shaking, overcome by fear, she felt around in the space ahead of her and realized she had come to the stairs. Tears streaked her face, falling like rain from her light-blistered eyes.

  Limping, she staggered up the steps until she came to a landing. There, she stopped, scrubbing at her eyes with the palms of her hands, trying in vain to clear her vision. Sephana let out a gasping cry of frustration. She needed healing badly. She needed the magic field.

  But the cadence of the field was still just the dimmest echo in her memory, chased away by the influence of the necrators. Choking on fear, Sephana brought her hands up again to grope at her eyes.

  “It’s really quite a shame,” uttered a voice right beside her.

  Sephana flinched backward with a cry.

  The first thing Braden felt was pain. His head throbbed with each pulse of his heartbeat, his body aching at every joint. He closed his eyes with a groan, bringing his hands up to his temples.

  “I know it hurts,” a soft, feminine voice whispered in his ear. “Go back to sleep. It will pass soon.”

  The sound of that voice was vaguely familiar, like the dimmest recollection of a dream. Braden tried to open his eyes again, but the throbbing ache in his head prevented him. Instead, he found himself doing exactly what the voice suggested. He lowered his h
ands back to his sides and relaxed, letting sleep deliver him from the pain.

  When he opened his eyes again, his head felt better. He was still far from hale, but the improvement was vast. He tried to sit up but couldn’t. It took him a moment to realize that they had him tightly bound.

  He started to reach for the magic field.

  “Don’t,” a man’s voice commanded severely. “Shield yourself; you are deep within a vortex.”

  Braden closed his eyes against a surge of panic that was almost overwhelming. Never before in his life had he come so unwittingly close to death. Instantly, he threw up a shield between his mind and the dangerous flux of power that surrounded him, balling his fists in rage and fear.

  Whoever these people were, they had come damned close to killing him.

  A vortex was a place of power where the lines of the magic field swirled and converged with hurricane force, like a great cyclone of energy. No Master could tame such a torrent of raw power; merely touching the magic field here would liquefy his brain.

  Within the energies of a vortex, he was utterly powerless. Which was probably why they had brought him here. Braden tested his strength against the bonds that held him, finding them secure.

  The room they had him in was cold, cold enough for his breath to form a mist before his face. He glanced around, trying to get a sense of the nature of his surroundings. The walls were grayish blue and glistening, crystalline-solid. He was in some kind of cell made completely of ice.

  Vintgar.

  The realization that they had moved him to northern Caladorn was startling.

  He turned to glance at the man standing beside him, the same man who had bested him in the warren beneath Aerysius. Nashir Arman was a mage Braden had grown up with, studied with, had worked with all his life. Nashir was neither friend nor foe; rather, more of a rival than anything else. Nashir was second-in-command of the Order of Battlemages. He was also one of the most powerful Grand Masters the Lyceum had in its arsenal.