Shadowmage: Book Nine Of The Spellmonger Series

by Terry Mancour

  “Then we will have to draw him out of his web,” Rondal insisted. “And as for impossible . . . we’re knights magi. Impossible is just another day at work.”

  The rampage continued, that evening, as first the casino and then the brothel were targets of the lads’ magical assaults. Taking great care not to harm civilians, the two of them destroyed the Brotherhood’s enterprises utterly, treating any survivors to the rat-faced mage marks.

  They operated with impunity to local authority. Only once were they approached by any kind of civil authority, when a corporal of the Ruori Town Watch approached them in the light of the burning brothel and politely asked them to justify their violence.

  He was a young man, and clearly afraid of the consequences of a confrontation with two such fearsome warriors, but Rondal admired his devotion to duty. Approaching two rampaging knights in a vengeful mood demonstrated tremendous bravery, to his mind, and he felt such bravery should be rewarded.

  He indulged the man by taking him aside (while Tyndal distributed the proceeds from the casino raid to the mistreated – and terribly grateful – young whores) and explaining that their actions were, indeed, under authority. To prove it he showed him the parchment with his warrant . . . signed and sealed by the lawful Duke of Alshar, only weeks before.

  “So, Corporal Aron,” Rondal explained to the suddenly wide-eyed young watchman as Tyndal was getting thanked by the whores in an alley, “you can approach this matter one of three ways: you can deny the authenticity of the seal and signature, which would be well within your rights but – alas! – not terribly productive, considering forging the Duke’s seal is punishable by death, and I’m just not that enterprising. You can accept the seal but deny the legitimacy of the Duke, for which I would applaud your commitment to your politics, even as I would be forced, as a loyal gentleman of Alshar, to cut you down for your rebellion.”

  “And what is the third option, my lord?” the watchmen asked. He was only a year younger than Rondal, he realized.

  “The third option is the best option: you accept the legitimacy of the seal, the legitimacy of the Duke who placed it there and is your rightful, lawful sovereign, and the legitimacy of this golden sandolar I am gifting you for the purpose of toasting good Duke Anguin’s health, as a loyal Alshari man should, while conveniently forgetting that you ever saw this warrant.” A young corporal of the watch made perhaps six pennies a week for his service, plus livery. An ounce of gold was more than he would make in years.

  “Long live Duke Anguin!”

  “I thought you’d see it my way,” Rondal concluded, handing the man a second sandolar to reinforce the sentiment. “Now, keep folk away from the fire. And I think that little dark-haired whore is making eyes at you. Why don’t you go share your new good fortune?”

  Despite his profession, Rondal did not consider himself a violent man. Yet he found himself increasingly looking forward to the nightly assaults, and sharing in his partner’s apparently glee in the destruction, despite himself. In three nights they hit and destroyed eight of the Brotherhood’s businesses, slew dozens, magemarked hundreds, and left eight craters, piles of rubble, or holes in the ground in their wake.

  Part of that anticipation was pure righteous vengeance. The Brotherhood deserved to be destroyed, not just for Estasia but for the thousands of souls they’d tormented over the centuries. They were a blight on the economic and social fabric of Alshar, and from his Wilderlands perspective, a cancer on the Alshari society.

  But part of his eagerness was because when he was fighting the Rats, he wasn’t thinking about that awful night at Castle Salaisus in the Magewar. The night Alya fell.

  Neither he nor Tyndal felt comfortable discussing their feelings about that yet. Alya’s body might be alive, but their friend (and nominal liege) was gone, and their master so distraught about it that his friends in Sevendor were worried.

  Rondal was confident Minalan would find a way to restore Alya’s mind to her body. He had no concrete reason to feel that way, no shred of evidence to support the idea, but he embraced it as a matter of faith, a faith shared by Tyndal: Minalan would find a way. He always did. He was the Spellmonger.

  Still, that did not detract from the rage and anguish he felt as he was fighting the Brotherhood. Frustrated by his inability to do the job of healing his friend, Rondal redoubled his efforts on the job for which he was trained: hitting people with swords and spells.

  So he hit people with swords and spells. Really, really hard. It made him feel better.

  The feeling of power was heady – and dangerous, he realized. Even facing vastly superior numbers, Rondal and Tyndal always had the advantage. Their armor protected them, their magic gave them enormous leverage, and their ferocity had not waned in the slightest in battle.

  By the fourth night the two had worked their way down the river past Roen, to the town of Arada, in the southern Great Vale. And their southerly route had been noted. Atopol reported the great lengths the Brotherhood was going to in order to intercept the two of them between attacks. The river was full of their agents, now, and they’d activated alliances with gangs of river pirates and local bandits to try to find them as they travelled. Every inn and tavern in their path was crawling with thugs seeking them. The unfortunate assassin at dinner had just been opportunistic.

  Apparently there was a price on each of their heads now, Atopol informed them. Five hundred ounces of gold each.

  It was all wasted effort, of course. The two capped off every nightly attack by retiring back to the Rat Trap, back in the Castali Riverlands, to sleep in peace and security while the Brotherhood was spending gold like a drunken mariner to patrol the roads and rivers of Alshar. Their ability to use the Ways, along with the mind-to-mind and Mirror communication, gave the knights magi as much advantage over the Brotherhood in organization as their magic did against the Rats in battle. Particularly since it was a capability the Brotherhood was unaware they had. They were careful to keep it that way.

  They were also careful to avoid the long-term effects of using the Ways. Minalan had nearly died the previous summer, thanks to the residual effects of having his brain sloshed around in his skull every time he went through the Alkan portals. But Gareth had discovered that some of the warmagic spells used as a defense against concussion blasts on the battlefield were also useful for cushioning a body from the effects of the spell.

  That didn’t mean that they weren’t feeling the effects of the Ways. A kind of lingering disorientation set in, after the third day, which made both lads a little woozy. But that also didn’t detract from the fervor with which they attacked the next round of Rats.

  In fact, the Brotherhood was kind enough to meet them with a small army the fourth night.

  The place was a town called Arada, on the west bank of the river, in the southern end of the Great Vale. There was nothing particularly special about the town or the Brotherhood’s operation there – it didn’t specialize in anything in particular. But that’s where the Brotherhood managed to finally meet the two rampaging knights magi in force, prepared to deal with them once and for all.

  The dingy warehouse they used as a headquarters, locally, was packed with more than a score of tough, gritty street-wise Rats who had been instructed to eliminate the magi at all costs. Some even wore armor, thick leather hauberks or vests of mail, and all bore swords. When the two knights materialized around the corner, behind a well where Iyugi had planted the Waystone, they were surprised at the reception.

  A dozen Rats were defiantly standing around the exterior of the warehouse, and there were two on the roof with arbalests, invisible to normal eyes in the darkness, but clearly visible with magesight.

  Rondal and Tyndal walked slowly to within fifty feet of the crowd, the slivered moon giving just enough light to the scene to show the menace lurking in the shadows.

  “That’s far enough!” shouted a shrill, nervous-sounding voice. “You fellows have caused enough trouble!”

  “We w
ant our stones!” Tyndal bellowed, as he had at each attack.

  “Iyugi and Gareth! We want them! We’ll keep doing this until we get them!”

  “We know!” shouted the Rat, irritated and afraid. “We don’t fucking have them! Leave us be!”

  “The Brotherhood has them, somewhere,” Tyndal shrugged, as the man was pushed forward by his mate to negotiate. “Until we get them back, we’re content to destroy as many crews as possible.”

  “It’s good practice,” Rondal agreed. “Keeps us limber between wars.”

  “Why are you doing this to us?” demanded the little man with despair in his voice, who seemed to be taking the entire episode personally. “What did we ever do to you?”

  “Engaged in acts of crime against the laws of the duchy,” Tyndal pointed out.

  “Participated in the forbidden slave trade, smuggling, and piracy,” Rondal added.

  “Kidnapping, extortion, murder,” Tyndal continued.

  “Oh, and they pushed a friend of ours off a roof,” Rondal reminded him, unnecessarily.

  “Ah, yes,” Tyndal said, his expression hardening. “That.”

  “So it sounds to me as if we have sufficient cause to destroy this place.”

  “And kill everyone in it,” Tyndal added, lightly.

  “Look, fellows, I don’t know what happened to you, and I’m terribly sorry about it . . . but I built this crew up from nothing, over ten years, and that was hard. I can’t just let you destroy it,” he pleaded, as one of his lieutenants joined him.

  “Well, at least you aren’t being taken by surprise, like your comrades upstream,” Rondal consoled, looking around at the nervous Rats. “They had no idea what was coming. No time to prepare a proper defense.”

  “Yes, you’re actually quite lucky,” agreed Tyndal. “You must have at least twenty, twenty-five men here?”

  “There’s another dozen inside,” the Rat captain confided. “Sent up from Falas. The fellows upstairs are not happy with your . . .”

  “Mission,” supplied Tyndal. “We’re knights. We’re on a mission of errantry.”

  “A bloody mission of carnage and death,” Rondal added, lightly. “We’re legally authorized to pursue this course without retribution from civil authority. We want our stolen stones back. And we don’t care much who gets in our way.”

  “Fellows! Be reasonable!” pleaded the Rat captain. “I’m just a businessman, who has no idea about your stones, or these two thieves, or anything but doing my business!”

  “You are no mere cobbler, Goodman Rat,” Rondal pointed out. “You beat your customers and threaten their families. And it isn’t shoes you’re selling. It’s the bodies of little girls, the savings of those you enslave with poppy gum, and the hopes of those you steal at your fixed games of chance.”

  “Well, no, of course it’s a rough job,” admitted the man. “But someone has to do it. I try not to be too rough . . .”

  “Your professional consideration is appreciated,” Tyndal said, loftily. “But your association is, alas, in a bit of a state. So either each of you present yourselves, unarmed, to be marked with the badge of shame your fellows upstream bear, or prepare to face us in combat.”

  “That’s really not an option,” the Rat captain squirmed, as his lieutenant studied the two of them silently. “I can’t just surrender my crew to you – the fellows upstairs would have my head!”

  “I’m thinking that they’re going to get it, one way or another,” Tyndal observed. “But your choice is simple: either deal with us, now, and hope that the rest of the Brotherhood will overlook your betrayal, or fight us and have your head presented to the fellows upstairs as a gift.”

  “You have to understand,” the man pleaded. “I’ve spent ten whole years building—”

  The man stopped his begging, his eyes wide. It was hard to see what exactly happened in the darkness, but as the Rat captain fell to his knees, his lieutenant was cleaning a long dagger on the shoulder of his captain’s mantle.

  “Sorry,” he said, gruffly. “I liked him, but orders are orders. We take you down, now.”

  “I’m almost appreciative,” Tyndal said, as he watched the man fall face-first into the dirt. “His begging was starting to get annoying. So are we doing this?”

  The lieutenant looked up. “Oh, yes. Orders were clear: this is where you die, or this is where we die. One way or another.”

  “That does clear things up,” Rondal nodded. “Thank you.”

  “If you two are wise, you’ll head back the way you came,” the lieutenant added. “We really do have that many men. If you attack, there is no way you can survive.”

  Rondal considered. “Do you mind if my colleague and I discuss the matter for a moment?” he asked, politely. “I would prefer to make an informed decision.”

  The lieutenant – now captain – shrugged. “We’ll be here all night.”

  The two of them walked a few feet away from the man and the dying body of his former boss, and considered the matter.

  “There are a lot of them,” Rondal observed, glancing back at where the Rats were milling around, nervously. “This might be tough.”

  “Do you really think so?” Tyndal asked, glancing around.

  Rondal considered. They had yet to use many of the spells and enchantments they’d prepared, and there were some powerful ones still in their arsenal. “No, not really,” he sighed. “But it will get bloody.”

  “That can’t be avoided,” Tyndal nodded.

  “Probably not,” he said, tightening the strap on his helmet. He looked up to the new Rat captain, who seemed to be patient enough. “We’re going to fight, just give us a moment to prepare,” he called. That seemed to frighten some of the Rats, but steel some others. It really didn’t make much difference to Rondal. If the men knew what was about to happen, they would have taken to their heels.

  The new captain nodded. “Take your time!” he called. “We aren’t going anywhere!” To prove the point, he drew his own blade – a long, leaf-shaped cavalry sword, and stood at the ready.

  “Let’s make it quick, though,” Tyndal said as he drew his own mageblade. “I don’t want to be puttering around here all night.”

  “Agreed,” Rondal nodded, as he summoned Bulwark to his hand. “I’ll take the building, you take the men?”

  “Delighted,” Tyndal agreed, as the edge of the blade began to grow. “This should be quite the sparring session!”

  “Estasia!” Rondal cried boldltas he summoned arcane force from his stone and began to weave it into a net around the warehouse. It was twice the size of Arrunatus House, and made almost entirely of timber. Locking a hemisphere of force around it was no great feat, not with Bulwark directing his intent.

  Tyndal plowed into the new captain of the Crew and made his reign the shortest in Brotherhood history when he neatly beat the shocked-looking man’s blade out of the way and impaled him through the chest. The tall knight did not even wait for his first victim to hit the ground before he was striding toward the others with purpose.

  It was about then that Rondal’s spell was set and hung. He pronounced the mnemonic associated with it and watched the invisible arcane field he’d built fill with magical energy . . . and an overabundance of oxygen.

  The spell was set. In a few moments it would activate, as the building filled with too much of the rich gas, and the inevitable flames inside would ignite. Satisfied, Rondal turned his attention to the ring of defenders gamely trying to impede Tyndal’s progress. As he stepped over the bodies in his wake to join him, he tossed a few distraction-and-display spells over their heads. The bright flashes, sudden pops and stuttering magelights turned the chaotic scene into a bizarre dance of steel and shadow.

  Tyndal took full advantage of the sudden display, and the moment his opponents were distracted he put an end to them in bloody-handed fashion. As another contingent ran to support their brothers, Rondal focused on the lead ruffian and used the spell they’d designed for battering down
thick castle doors.

  The resulting concussion wave shattered the man, tearing him limb-from-limb and knocking down those behind him in the blast, splattering them with his exploded viscera and blood. Rondal pushed Bulwark back into his ring and drew his blade. It was time for steel, now.

  Tyndal didn’t really need much assistance, he saw. His partner was using warmagic lavishly, but in spurts. His augmented steps allowed him to cross the distance between foes and strike before they knew what hit them. Slashes expected to cleave him in twain were easily blocked or avoided, and more than one Rat was now clutching a stump on the ground, their blood pooling around them, from getting in Tyndal’s way. That long cavalry-style blade was not only heavier than their swords, but he used it with great familiarity and skill.

  Rondal supported him anyway, shouting his position as he took a man on Tyndal’s left flank who was charging in hopes to knock the knight down. Rondal gave him a four-inch deep slice across both hamstrings as he ran past him, sending him sprawling into the dust and shadow. The man behind him slowed and faced Rondal, more cautious than his mate. There was a short sword in one hand and a Rat’s Tail in the other, he saw with magesight.

  Rondal had many magical responses he could use, but he felt like hitting something, now, and this man seemed eager for the play. Taking a quick step into his reach, Rondal smashed the steel edge of his shield against the man’s right arm, while his blade came down on the sword with especial force.

  He’s never faced a shieldman before, Rondal realized, as he pivoted to his left . . . while keeping his shield in front of the man’s face. The Rat blindly scrambled with his right arm, waving the sharp spike of iron around where he thought Rondal’s face would be, but found only thin air.

  Rondal, for his part, set up his footwork while his opponent struggled . . . and the moment the man had the foresight to take a step back to improve his vantage, Rondal snapped his knees around, swung his shield, and caught the back of the man’s head with the hard, sharp steel rim as he completed the move. A quick thrust with his blade and he was on to the next opponent.