Shadowmage: Book Nine Of The Spellmonger Series

by Terry Mancour

  Rondal stared, speechless, as the two dying men on the stairs. Uzhas looked at him, and then back at his companions, and shrugged.

  “Them? I wasn’t emotionally attached to either of them. And I’d probably end up killing them both sooner or later anyway,” he rationalized. “It’s unfortunate, because one owed me money and I liked the other one. But if anyone is walking out of this slaughterhouse tonight, it’s going to be me.”

  “Master Uzhas, I admire your style,” Tyndal said, truthfully. “So here is our bargain: you go to your superiors in the Brotherhood and let them know that Pratt has led a vicious order of merciless knights magi to their doorstep. Tell them what you saw, here. Tell them how you narrowly escaped. Then you take passage on the most convenient ship in the bay and go elsewhere. Change your name and find a new trade,” he suggested.

  “And you’ll just . . . let me go?” he asked, surprised.

  “Oh, we’ll be able to find you, if we need to,” Rondal assured him as he stepped over the bodies on the stairs. His construct was creeping down them, under Lorcus’ control. “We are not like any magi you have ever met,” he promised, as the construct collapsed in his hand.

  “I see that,” the man nodded, clearly impressed by the magical display. “Gentlemen, you have my word. I shall see my commission fulfilled, if it secures my life. And when you do meet Pratt? Tell that picaroon Uzhas plights to have business with him in the Shipwrecker’s Halls, otherwhere!” he spat, solemnly. “Godsdamned amateur!”

  “You may leave, with our word,” Tyndal promised. “But we would appreciate your discretion, for the remainder of the evening.”

  Uzhas looked around at his former place of business. “Who would I tell? You just put more than a dozen of the grisliest thugs in Enultramar into the Shipwrecker’s twat. You think I’d send a couple of poor watchmen there? No, you fellows do your business. I’ll do mine. And,” he said, with a slight bow, as he stepped over the corpses of his former associates, “do have a pleasant evening. Just be careful walking home. Bad neighborhood,” he explained, walking out the door, not looking back.

  “Are you going to discuss politics with the locals all night?” asked Lorcus’ voice from upstairs. “Or do you want to come see what you just bought that man’s life for?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Solsaritsa Abbey

  “This is a real trove, gentlemen,” Lorcus said, eyeing the stacks of parchment with satisfaction under a magelight cast for the purpose. “And you made enough of a mess of the raid to throw the Rats into turmoil, I think.”

  “Why did we let him go, when they could have thought that it’s one of their other rivals who attacked?” Rondal asked, irritated, as he set his round shield into a chair in the upstairs chamber. He began organizing the accounts into one large stack. “That was their first impulse, in Solashaven.”

  “Well, there is a certain charm in throwing suspicion on an innocent party,” Lorcus agreed. “But that depends upon just what your eventual goal is. In this case, announcing your presence and enmity toward the Brotherhood is likely of more service. And more satisfying to take the credit,” he added, knowingly.

  “Our eventual goal is the overthrow of the Brotherhood,” Tyndal declared, as he finished cleaning his mageblade of blood before sheathing it. “Perhaps not the slaughter of every Rat, but . . .” he trailed off, as his eye caught a glimpse of something. “Oh, Atopol. You might as well come out and introduce yourself before Lorcus accidentally kills you.”

  The shadowmage obligingly emerged from the shadows of the hall, startling the Remeran – which Tyndal found oddly satisfying.

  “Bloody hells!” he said, freezing.

  “Lorcus, this is Atopol, the Cat of Shadows,” Rondal said, casually, “Shadowmage and master thief.”

  “Journeyman thief,” Tyndal corrected. “That is, if you did pass your master’s test?”

  “Why yes, I did,” he agreed, pleased. “I am my own man, now.”

  “A shadowmage?” Lorcus asked, surprised and pleased. “The one you mentioned? Not many of those around,” he nodded.

  “Lorcus is a warmage,” added Tyndal. “He’s assisting us on this mission.”

  “Sir Lorcus.” The black-clad youth gave an elegant bow.

  “Just Lorcus,” the Remeran insisted. “Never got knighted. Haven’t missed it. I work for a living. Glad to have you along, lad, if you’re helping out.”

  “I’m my own man,” repeated Atopol, as he took a seat at the Rat’s conference table. “Though I bring word from my master. He has discussed your situation with the rest of my family, and they have agreed to help. Quietly. As long as there is no connection made between your mission and my house, I can lend you aid.”

  “What can you do?” Lorcus asked, skeptically.

  “Sneak up on a high warmage or three, apparently” he shrugged.

  “Fair point,” Lorcus agreed. “All right, that brings us to the next question: where shall we go from here?”

  “There are a lot of potentially worthy targets,” Rondal considered, as he continued gathering the coded notes the Rats were using. “I think maybe one of their operations in Falas, or down along the Bay, someplace really important to them—”

  Tyndal’s eye caught on a word on a parchment on the table in front of him. He slapped his hand on the page, startling the other magi.

  “What’s that?” his partner asked, as Tyndal grabbed it, and stared at the name on the sheet. It was a list, of some sort. A list of names, in a table of all the aliases and code names, few stuck in his memory. But that name leapt out at him like a cavalry charge.

  “I think I know where we’re going, next. This lists the crew leaders of the territories in Enultramar and the Coastlands,” Tyndal reported, as his eyes kept re-reading the name. “According to this, the leader of the . . . it says Yadraymar Crew is . . . Rellin Pratt. Our old school chum, Kaffin.”

  The four of them did not linger in town more than a day, as they watched the aftermath of the slaughter from the comparative security of their monks’ habits. The town constable and his men arrived in the morning, and questioned everyone - including Lorcus, who was happy to give a horrifying but entirely unhelpful account that went far beyond the reality of the actual raid, and featured a gallery of unlikely cutthroats . . . with plenty of scriptural references and even a lengthy prayer for justice.

  “Anyone who hears that is going to think an entire army hit that hall,” he chuckled to the boys as they made their way back to the docks. “I told them there were at least eight, maybe ten, of the assailants. Huge men, in armor, all wearing masks,” he added.

  “We’ll be long gone, by the time one of the senior Rats shows up, but the heroic tale of our bloodthirsty quest for vengeance lives on.”

  “So where to next?” Rondal asked, as he pulled his bag over his shoulder. “Downriver, of course, but to where?”

  It took Tyndal a moment to realize that his partner was talking to him - that they were both awaiting his instructions.

  “What’s the next most important place on Gareth’s list?” he asked, innocently.

  “Ah, yes,” Atopol, in his own guise as a monk, agreed, sagely. “There’s a large regional headquarters listed in the scriptures,” he recalled, slipping into the role of piety effortlessly.

  “It’s at the mouth of the Mandros, in one of those out-of-the-way spots that criminals and cockroaches prefer. One of the older ones, if I recall correctly.”

  “You do,” agreed Rondal. “In fact, it’s in an old temple in Galvina, in the southern Oxbow Viscounties. It’s where six different crews report to, including Relin’s crew. It’s run by a captain named Kradets, Kradets the Jester,” he recalled.

  “I’ve heard of him,” nodded Atopol. “Not a nice man. Even for one of his brotherhood.”

  “Kradets the Jester, Nigzily the Noose, The Surgeon, The Nurse, The Chandler . . . why does the Brotherhood pick such odd names?”

  “Well, I’m no expert,” Lorcu
s replied, as they reached the docks, “but I would guess it serves a dual purpose: to disguise their true nature and to suggest fear in the hearts of their adversaries through the irony of their choice,” he reasoned. “Your friend Uzhas had a point. It’s hard to have a casual conversation in public speaking about ‘Kradets the Cold-Blooded Killer’ or ‘Omphrei the Savage Assassin,’” he added. “People would talk. But let’s go see this Jester,” he added. “I suddenly find this place depressing. I could use a laugh.”

  When they arrived at Galvina late the next day, the ancient abbey at the far end of the ancient town hardly seemed the sort of place where thieves and robbers might congregate.

  The town itself was modest, an ancient Sea Lord settlement, long conquered by the Coastlords and then forgotten, on the eastern bank of the mouth of the mighty Mandros River as it emptied into the bay. It was set high on a rocky promontory overlooking the small harbor below, the ships bobbing at the wharf sheltered behind a line of massive boulders from the fury of the dark blue Bay beyond. The smaller side of the sheltered docks was home to the fishermen who fed the town. The larger docks were for the ships which gave it purpose.

  Tyndal noted that the six ships berthed in the larger docks were all Farisi naval ships, by their banners. He was far from a mariner, but he was beginning to appreciate the differences in ships from his time here in Enultramar. The Farisi ships were much smaller than the great vessels of the Alshari fleet; he’d yet to see a Farisi-flagged ship in the great harbor more than forty feet long, whereas the largest of the Alshari were twice that.

  But the Farisi ships looked much faster, and the artillery pieces under oiled sailcloth tarpaulins on their decks looked both complex and efficient.

  The town itself was surrounded by a rough, unmortared wall of local stone, behind which the folk had constructed gardens to complement their seafood-laden diet. Within the confines of the wall, dozens of fruit trees imported from the Coastlands long ago made up precious little orchards and gardens in the poor, rocky, sandy soil. The tower that loomed over the town seemed to offer visible protection, but as Tyndal studied it he realized that for all of its imposing size, the place could have offered only token protection from attack and virtually no refuge in a siege.

  No doubt that was why the lord of the domain had nearly abandoned the tower in favor of a smaller, grander, and completely undefendable manor hall nearby. It seemed to Tyndal that the best defense against Galvina being conquered was the reality of Galvina, itself.

  The rest of the small town was laid out on three streets at the head of the stairway down to the docks. Nearly every building, whether barn or home, was made of the rocks that seemed to grow everywhere, and thatched with reeds from the estuary below, if the family was poor, or with green earthenware tiles if it was prosperous. There were few of the latter.

  If the town of Galvina was faded, the temple it claimed was far more so. Indeed, the humble old pile of rocks and driftwood looked barely adequate for a prayer service, much less a going criminal concern, to Tyndal’s eye. But the others seemed to think that it was the perfect sort of nondescript location necessary to avoid intrusion.

  It was a simple two-story structure, the bottom floor constructed of gray stones and the upper made from posts and beams. The entire thing showed its age, as hundreds of coats of whitewash over the years had done little to keep the place from deteriorating. It was the kind of temple that the local folk only visited for funerals or religious instruction . . . and its dedication to the Salt Crone, the psychopomp of Enultramar’s maritime religion, did little for its charm.

  “Welcome to the Abbey of Solsaritsa, famous for not one damn thing at all,” Lorcus said, enthusiastically, as they mounted the long flight of narrow steps leading from the docks to the quiet port town and the abbey came into view.

  Tyndal suppressed a sudden urge to abandon his life as a knight mage in favor of that of a mariner, and returned his attention to the abbey.

  “Are those real monks and nuns, there?” he asked, peering at the old hall.

  “Probably,” nodded Rondal. “Plenty of spare clergy around the harbor. They have to keep them somewhere.”

  “Then how do our foes escape attention?” Tyndal asked.

  “The same way we are,” Lorcus said, clapping him on the shoulder. “By wearing one of these charming robes. Now, let’s find an inn with more barmaids than bedbugs before nightfall,” he suggested, looking around the depressed-appearing town.

  Most of the inns closest the port were full of mariners who had paid for the winter. Already they were packing up and heading toward their ships in preparation for the spring raids. But there were more genteel quarters available farther inland, near the wall overlooking the small farms of the land. In their guise as rich pilgrims or an ecclesiastic junket, it only took a handful of silver pennies to secure a private room for the four of them.

  “I’m getting to like this,” Tyndal said, straightening his robe. “People respect the clergy!”

  “People fear the clergy,” corrected Lorcus, as he checked the two narrow windows in the second-floor chamber. “They make them feel guilty, or fear their powers, divine and mundane.”

  “I know!” Tyndal nodded. “I never realized that, really, until now. Boval Vale didn’t have any temples. Only a few priests who’d visit.”

  “I envy you your secular life,” snorted Atopol, whose fake priestly raiment was much plainer than the warmagi’s. “Mostly the clergy are a pain in the arse. And people ask you to do the damnedest things while you’re so attired. On the bright side, you can always claim a vow of silence, or some other bizarre religious rite, to keep them at bay. I learned that from real monks,” he chuckled.

  “If we raid a real abbey, is it blasphemy?” Tyndal asked, suddenly curious.

  “Probably,” shrugged Rondal. “Which puts you in familiar territory. It’s the Salt Crone, the one who takes the landborn to the halls of swampy death. Considering all the other divinities you’ve blasphemed over the years, she’s going to have to draw lots for the pleasure of her divine vengeance. I say we spend a day spying and scrying, then take them apart at the seams.”

  “I like the way you think, Sir Rondal,” Atopol nodded. “What my house knows about this place is limited, but might prove useful,” he said, settling into a padded chair while Rondal started a fire in the brazier with a cantrip. “It’s another central hub, this one for slaves. I—“

  “Slaves?” asked Rondal, aghast.

  Atopol looked surprised. “You didn’t know? That’s one of the reasons the spring raids are so important. If the fleets can bring back enough slaves to fill the fields by harvest, they stand to make a lot more than if they have to rent the labor. And they sell the surplus inland to the great plantations. It was proscribed, under Lenguin, but the rebels have permitted the trade again. As they have open piracy,” he added, darkly.

  “How is this place connected with the slave trade?” Lorcus asked, intrigued. “Those bastards raided the coast of Remere for centuries. Took entire villages into slavery!”

  “Didn’t the Remeran corsairs do much the same to Castal and Cormeer?” observed Atopol, who was more familiar with maritime history than Tyndal by far.

  “Well, yes, but it isn’t about the politics, it’s about the people,” Lorcus stressed.

  “The Brotherhood acts as the broker for the trade,” explained Atopol. “It’s not nearly as big as it once was, and they don’t hold their auctions in the open, but no one is trying to stop them anymore, either. The local crews take orders from the landowners, and then come here to place them. The actual auctions are elsewhere, but this abbey is where they control it from. No one pays heed to how many nuns and monks are going into and out of an abbey, and the Salt Crone’s cult is popular in some quarters of Enultramar. But this is where you tell them you want a slave, and this is one of the places you pay for it and then pick it up.”

  Tyndal considered that information. “And this is the captain that Pratt
reports to?”

  “Oh, assuredly,” Atopol nodded. “I looked into it, personally. “His crew does transportation, after the fleet returns. They cart their human bounty all over the bay, and often make deliveries. Assuming, that is, they survive the raiding season. Between the sudden storms off of the Depths and the other fleets on the water, the Shipwrecker could take him before high summer.”

  “I would hate for her to deny me the pleasure,” Rondal said, gravely. “If Pratt depends on this place for his orders, then let’s destroy it. Utterly.”

  Lorcus looked enthusiastic. “I am in favor of this motion, despite your callous use of the term ‘utterly’.”

  “I’d like to watch you fellows work, maybe learn a few things,” agreed Atopol.