The Spellmonger Series: Book 01 - Spellmonger

by Terry Mancour

  I dug out my own sphere and began disassembling them with care, shunting the excess power I drained from them into kabas which I could use later. I was especially careful – I had a classmate who blew two of his fingers off when he was carelessly disassembling an old wand he found in the research library.

  The spells were typical for a warwand, though cruder than I was used to. There were binding, holding, directing and projecting spells to channel the powerful forces available through the witchstone at the head. When I had safely disarmed them, the thing was no more dangerous than a walking stick. I was amazed that there weren’t any anti-tampering spells on it, but guessed that no ordinary gurvan would touch a shaman’s staff.

  I pried the head off with the blade of my dagger and held my breath as the irionite tumbled to the bench just like any old rock. It was, indeed, about three quarters of an inch thick, irregular, and had one fairly flat surface that lent credence to Zagor’s assertion that these stones were cut from a larger piece. I still didn’t know how that was significant, but I did know that it scared me. I didn’t dare touch it yet.

  Using a pair of wooden tongs I picked it up and gingerly set it into a wooden bowl. Then I set my sphere beside it and went and poured a cup of the strong wine I’d promised myself. The link banishing process should have taken an hour, according to Aronin of the Tree Folk. Just to be sure, I waited two hours before I went back and checked it.

  In the meantime I wandered down to the floor of the Inner Bailey and watched the Black Flag and the Crinroc tribesmen drilling for battle. I was pleasantly surprised to see my young apprentice sparring with one of Forondo’s troopers with wooden practice swords. He saw me and grinned, which was a mistake. His sparring partner took advantage of the break in his concentration and whacked him in the shins, then proceeded to lecture him about focus.

  I chuckled to myself and left, not wanting to be responsible for more bruises. Night was falling, and soon it would be too dark for them to practice anymore. The lesson reminded me of my first three weeks at War College, when Ancient Zym was daily screaming in our faces about how we held our blades like broomsticks.

  The Crinroc didn’t have the polish that the Black Flag had, of course, but those dumpy, shaggy little men made up for it with enthusiasm. Their “drills” looked an awful lot like a game between children, right up to the point where one of them was knocked unconscious. Furtak and Jordak were the leaders of the opposing sides, while their brother Posnak watched from the back of a wagon and gave advice in their guttural tongue. I climbed up the wagon and joined him.

  “I heard the horse-boys wiped out a company of goblins today, Minalan,” he grunted out in thickly accented Asinasa.

  “Yes, we took almost three hundred heads,” I remarked.

  “Solak! Keep your shield higher or – ouch, that must have hurt. Good work. Plenty more goblins are coming,” he said matter-of-factly. “Plenty more heads to take.”

  “You are right,” I agreed. “How are the men here treating your people?”

  Posnak shrugged. “Well enough, for horse-boys. They call us names, thinking we don’t understand, but they are happy to see us. We call them names, too. Food is good. Walls are thick. Just waiting for goblins.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  I took my leave of the barbarians and wandered to the Outer Bailey, using the excuse of checking on my horse to hide my true intentions: finding Alya, the girl I’d spotted this morning.

  The Outer Bailey had gotten a little more organized, but the stench was still prevalent. Militia men, bearing white arm bands and armed with cudgels, patrolled the interior and did their best to break up fights, settle disputes, and make certain that the tiny cook fires allowed were being burned safely – a fire could wipe out most of the population of the southern Boval Valley just as easily as the goblins could, and probably quicker, too. Fire protection spells only work so well in such a situation.

  I strolled around anonymously after checking the stables, saying hello to old clients and casting a few minor spells where needed. Along the way I made a few subtle inquiries about Alya’s whereabouts. I didn’t see her, so I finally gave up when it got too dark to see and went back to the lab.

  Tyndal was back, too, toweling off the significant amount of sweat that he had built up during his lesson. He shot me an excited grin before regaling me with tales of his prowess at the new-found art of swordplay. I listened patiently while I removed the now-purified lump of green amber from the bowl and put it in a small silk bag. I wish I knew the trick that Aronin had used for re-shaping it, but the shape and form didn’t matter much when it came to power. Or maybe it did; I just didn’t know.

  When my apprentice had wound down a bit, he started asking me about the raid. I told him as much as I could, sparing him the details like the groans of the mortally wounded gurvani that sounded almost exactly like the moans of a mortally wounded man, and the look of terror on the faces of our foes as they realized that they were the objective of a cavalry charge. I wanted him to keep his enthusiasm, as he would need it sorely in the coming days.

  “What did Ri-ken mean by the Great Ghost? Is it one of their gods?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. The mythology of the gurvani hasn’t been studied much, and this band seems to depart in many ways from the common, run-of-the-mill Mountain Folk. Their weapons, instance; they have far too many swords and shields and bows – man-tools. And this pure hatred they have of us, that is unusual. The gurvani I saw in the jungles of Farise were not overly fond of men, but they didn’t go out of their way to give us problems, either. The Great Ghost could be an avenging god, a lot like Reme was for the East Islanders.”

  Then I had to stop and explain how the inhabitants of the three small islands to the East of Vore, descendents of shipwreck victims who had become pirates, had fought the Empire for decades under the theocracy of Reme after their priest-king had been assassinated by Imperial spies. The Reme cult still practices today, I’m told, though without the fervor shown in centuries past.

  “So this Great Ghost, who is probably a god of vengeance, has some sort of physical form or an avatar who is leading this war,” he said, thinking. I had to admit, I was impressed. I had seen plenty of far more experienced warmagi take a while to come to the same sort of conclusion.

  “So it appears. The avatar is more likely. He’s probably a great general or tribal chieftain who is also a shaman who lucked into a hoard of irionite. That isn’t unknown – in fact, that’s sort of how the Magocracy was founded.”

  “Too bad we don’t have a priestess of Trygg here. It is said they can keep any evil at bay.”

  Again I shook my head and smiled at the naiveté of youth. “Not to dispute the teachings of Trygg, Tyndal, but a priest has no more or less power than any other man. Perhaps spiritual power – there are some temples who have magical orders in them. But a priest is just a man. Besides, who is to say the goblins are evil?”

  The question shocked him, and rocked him to the core. “But they attack us for no reason, they slaughter our people and burn our towns! How can they not be evil?” he asked, astonished.

  “To you, perhaps, they are. But by those standards your ancestors were just as evil. When they came to this valley they burned gurvani villages, slaughtered gurvani warriors, and drove the rest into the mountains where they had to fight the elements to survive. In their minds they are just taking back what is theirs – from us evil humans.”

  “That’s different,” Tyndal snapped. “The Duke of Alshar granted us this land. It was ours, not theirs.”

  “And who gave it to him? Not the poor gurvani who lived here. They’d never heard of Alshar, or the Duke. They lived here for thousands of years, and one day they get invaded by a bunch of men who have been told that they own their land. Of course they fought tooth and nail, just like we’re doing, to try to keep it out of the hands of ‘evil.’ ”

  “I don’t care,” Tyndal said, defiantly. “I’m not going to le
ave my home for a bunch of stinking, stupid goblins. We showed ‘em today, and we’ll show them again.”

  “Tyndal,” I said softly, “Don’t underestimate them. I learned as a warmage that you must respect your enemy in order to defeat them. To not give your foe the respect that he is due gives him an opening in your defenses that he can exploit. These gurvani are not only worthy of your respect, they will demand it. When I fought Ri-ken today the only advantage that I had over him was better training and quicker wits – and a hundred or so light cavalry. It could just as easily gone the other way.

  “So far, we’ve been lucky. The Great Ghost, or whoever is leading them, has just sent in scouting and raiding parties so far. The real armies will come all too soon, and when they do you’ll see why bravado and courage are two entirely different things.”

  That night I sat straight up (not recommended in a hammock), heart pounding and sweat breaking out on my face. I had a dream about Ri-ken, his face turned to me in defiant anger, his voice echoing in my head: He is coming!

  I didn’t know who He was, but I was so afraid of Him that I had wet myself.

  Chapter Eight

  Boval Castle Under Siege

  The brief thrill of our minor victory was completely gone three days later, when the siege began in earnest.

  It started when a cavalry patrol was ambushed not a mile from the castle doors, killing ten men, eight horses, and our jubilant mood. The survivors beat a hasty retreat back to Boval Castle, where our archers turned the gurvani back with volleys of arrows. That was the last time we were able to freely send our horsemen out. From that point on, we were under siege.

  The weather was not helping, of course. It was being magically manipulated by the goblins, keeping a thick cloud cover over the entire Valley, which made it seem like twilight even at noon. This was for their benefit, as it allowed them to put many, many more warriors on the field when the bright light of day was held in abeyance. It occasionally rained from the clouds, but mostly it was just dark and dreary all the time. It depressed our warriors and frightened our civilians. Night was almost a relief, except that was when the gurvani were most likely to try to scale our walls.

  In an effort to counter this dreariness, I started casting magelights in strategic locations.

  This is easier than it sounds. Nothing actually gets burnt, you see. Most people don’t realize that light is just a form of energy that can be produced from just about any matter. There is a whole host of technical terms in Imperial for the subject, but the upshot is if you cause a piece of matter to be charged with magical energy in just the right way, it will emit light. Hence, magelight. The more energy, the more light. If you alter the spell slightly and use a rune or two, you can pump an object full of energy and have it released slowly, over time. I plastered magelights all over the entire castle, gleeful at how easy it was with irionite. Plus it kept spirits up and kept stray goblins from hiding in the shadows.

  At first the bands that attacked us were the usual screaming, jabbering horde that would rush forward to the edge of the moat, hurl a few javelins and rocks over the walls before retreating a safe distance – usually carrying some wounded, as our little archer company was getting better with practice. Gradually, though, the black knot of gurvani who hovered just out of bowshot grew. By Day Four of the siege there were almost a thousand of them, and their sorties on the castle became more organized.

  Meanwhile, we prepared.

  For most that meant drilling and practicing with weapons. Our peasant militia had been so augmented by volunteers that we did not have enough trained warriors to lead them. Thanks to my shopping trip, however, they were all adequately armed, if not armored. They drilled constantly in the Inner Bailey, working on small unit tactics with the Black Flag and our mercenary infantry. This basically consisted of rushing forward in a mob and killing everything in sight – which sounds like poor military tactics, except that this was a siege and anything less than that level of viciousness could kill us all.

  For me, preparing involved casting complicated spells in anticipation of the inevitable arrival of more shamans.

  Magical warfare often comes down to various levels of attack and defense spells, and is quite straightforward in that way. If your offensive bolt is stronger than your enemy’s shields, he goes down. But there are thousands of subtle variations on this theme that make magewar a tricky and lethal business. Like any other style of warfare, to win you must assess your own strengths and weakness as well as your enemy’s, and then concentrate on their weak spots while protecting your own.

  Our weak spot: little hope for reinforcements and too few magi to begin with. Their weak spot: unsophisticated magic that concentrated a great deal of power in the hands of the individual.

  To help our case further, I had spent much of my waking time (and Tyndal’s) when we were not lighting up the place building a scale model of the castle and the surrounding countryside. This model was as accurate as I could make it, including elevations, types of material, and scale. While it looked like a child’s toy more than a sophisticated magical tool, it was a very good model for our situation, and it provided an excellent metaphor for the castle. It also took up a great deal of space in my workroom.

  But by using it as a kind of altar, I was able to do a lot more damage to our besiegers than I would otherwise. Mostly, I gathered intelligence. By marking out the area where the gurvani had set up their camps, I was able to see exactly how many and what kind of troops they were assembling without leaving my quarters.

  It wasn’t a pretty picture. On average four hundred or more gurvani were coming in every day. By the third day of the siege, I saw that they weren’t just the scouts that we’d seen up to now. Very large, almost man-sized gurvani warriors, complete with armor and swords and vicious attitudes, began marching into camp chanting aggressive-sounding war songs. They were given the best rations, the best accommodations, and seemed in charge of the situation. On Day Four, some sort of General showed up, flanked by two shamans and accompanied by wagons and an entourage of big ugly goblin bodyguards. It was the first time I had seen the gurvani employ oxen or other domesticated beasts, too. The wagons were filled with supplies, mostly dried roots and salted meat, and tools.

  Tools with which they could make siege engines. That was not good news.

  After bringing this information to the attention of Koucey, he doubled the fire watch and ordered me to do something about it. Well, ordered is a strong term. He requested that I make certain that as few siege engines as possible be deployed against his fortress, seeing as how it costs a literal fortune to build. So I did.

  The shamans who accompanied that column had learned from their predecessors’ mistakes, or perhaps they were just a better class of witchdoctor. Either way, my first few attempts to burn the wagons failed miserably. Luckily, I’m not a one-trick pony. As most of the tools involved were metal, I decided to alter my tactics and use water and not fire against them. I told Tyndal of my plan, explained the magical principals behind it, and together we cast a spell that caused the rapid oxidation of everything in those wagons. When I mean rapid, I mean that by the next morning nearly every axe head, adze, pick and shovel in that convoy was rusted nearly to uselessness. Blades had hidden flaws that made them snap when used. Shovels broke in two when any amount of pressure was put on them. Adzes had their edges rusted to the point where they were useless for serious work.

  In the mean time, Garkesku had been assigned the duty of making life as uncomfortable for the goblins as possible. You might think I was irked at this plum assignment being handed off to the competition, but I had to admit, when it came to being a professional pain in the ass, Garkesku was the obvious choice. On the more practical side, Garkesku did have years of experience with the every day types of spells a spellmonger sold, while I was a relative newcomer to the business.

  His work gave him an advantage. After all, if you can cast a spell to keep insects away, can it be that hard to cast a sp
ell to draw them closer? He did, and the gurvani camp was infested with irritating pests and stinging bugs for weeks. He threw spells to make their foods moldy and sour the bitter type of beer they drink for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He had spells that sent the odor of putrescence waft through their camp and spells that produced blood-curdling sounds during the day, making it difficult for them to sleep. I found he was especially good at diseases – as any good village spellmonger should be – and by Day Six of the siege one out of three gurvani was stricken with nasty diarrhea.

  Between the bad food, the rusted tools, the insects, the sleep deprivation, the stinks and the shits, those would-be invaders were getting further and further behind schedule for their mission, i.e., slaughtering all of us. I admit, I was impressed, and said so in front of Koucey, which helped my relations with Garkesku tremendously.

  Koucey was not idle during this slow-down, however. Twice he sent cavalry raiders out to harass teams of gurvani engineers who were trying to put together a catapult or somesuch. Our people were repelled each time, but we delayed their start for another week and took only light casualties.

  The fateful day came, however, when they were able to get one trebuchet kind of working, and we could see them having a really good time flinging rotten pumpkins over our walls. The trouble was, the machine couldn’t handle a missile heavier than that without falling apart. The peasants began making jokes about “pumpkin raids,” and a few of the more far-sighted among them dutifully cleaned up the exploded mess and planted the seeds in pots and barrels.

  Before another week past, the army outside had tripled in size and someone high up in the hairy hierarchy decided that they were being made fools of. That night (Day Ten of the siege, if my records are accurate) the goblins started making a mad dash for the moat, throwing in bundles of faggots, and then dashing away again. Our archers pegged plenty of them, but plenty more made it. After a few hours of this there was a swampy “bridge” of sticks that allowed a few of the little buggers to cross the moat – only to be shot at the base of the wall by snipers. That didn’t seem to deter them. They continued trying to back-fill the moat, and they continued dying.