Thinblade (Sovereign of the Seven Isles: Book One)
Page 34
Chapter 33
Jataan P’Tal stepped off the gangplank onto the solid, unmoving boards of the Southport dock and breathed a sigh of relief. He hated the ocean. He believed that men should have firm ground underfoot. The solidity of it was reliable and predictable. When the very ground beneath your feet shifted and moved, you couldn’t find firm footing and firm footing was the first part of being effective in battle.
Jataan P’Tal was a battle mage.
He was quite possibly the most deadly man alive in all the Seven Isles in any contest of blade or steel. He wasn’t invincible, a fact he was all too aware of. He was just that good in a fight, another fact he was well aware of.
Battle wizards were rare. They had a unique connection to the firmament. Their power didn’t flow from active visualization and concentrated will like most other wizards but instead was guided at a more basic, instinctual, and intrinsic level. A battle wizard’s magic manifested in the moment of the fight. In that moment he moved with otherworldly speed and struck with inhuman force. In the moment of the fight a battle wizard saw time differently. His surroundings appeared to slow down. His perception and senses accelerated.
He had a different relationship with weapons as well. A battle wizard could hold a weapon and discern its strengths and weaknesses. He could know with a touch if an arrow would fly straight or if the haft of a spear was imperceptibly cracked or if a blade was made true. A powerful battle wizard could use his magic to repair a weapon or even make a flawed weapon straight. And in the moment of the fight, a battle wizard’s magic flowed into his weapon and lent it a strength and sharpness uncommon to other blades.
In the last thousand years, Jataan P’Tal was the only battle wizard to rise to the level of mage. Jataan P’Tal was a very dangerous man. He had a calling and he was devoted to it with all his heart and soul. He was the General Commander of the Reishi Protectorate. His duty in life was to preserve the Reishi line. He had been raised from childhood to fulfill his duty to the Reishi. Now that he actually had a charge to protect, he felt a sense of exhilaration at his purpose taking on substance, mixed with a bit of apprehension at exactly the form his purpose had chosen to take.
He’d been taught every day of his life that the Reishi were responsible for creating the Old Law. They had brought the Seven Isles together and presided over a period of nearly two thousand years of peace, prosperity, and security. They had ushered in the greatest civilization ever known in the recorded history of the Seven Isles. And then they had been betrayed. Their secret had been stolen and released on an unsuspecting world. A world that had been ravaged by war and netherworld horrors until all was lost except for the sole surviving member of the Reishi Line: Prince Phane.
Jataan P’Tal had imagined living through this time since he was a child. He had stood guard over Phane’s obelisk for hours hoping for a sign, hoping for the opportunity to help the Reishi rise again to tame a now broken and corrupt world. He wanted to be a part of that. He wanted to serve the noble cause of bringing the Old Law and the rightful and benevolent rule of the Reishi back to the world.
What he hadn’t imagined was Phane. The man was not quite right. He had unseemly appetites. He called on creatures from the netherworld to do his bidding. Jataan P’Tal told himself that he was a soldier and Phane was a prince and the rightful heir to the Sovereign’s throne, but still, he was troubled.
He took a deep breath of the ocean air that mingled with the smell of fish and livestock. The docks were busy. Jataan P’Tal stepped up on a crate to see over the crowd. He was a little man, standing only five and a half feet tall but stocky with just a slight paunch. His skin was swarthy, his close-cropped hair was jet black, and the irises of his eyes were black as night. He wore black pants and a black shirt of coarse cloth. His belt was cinched tight under his belly and he wore a black, fur-lined cloak over his shoulders. He didn’t appear to be armed and he carried only a sack over his shoulder.
After just a moment on the crate, he saw his Second and marked his position in the crowd. Boaberous Grudge was a hard man to miss. As much as Jataan looked deceptively nonthreatening, Grudge looked dangerous and menacing. Men of courage gave him a wide berth and averted their eyes to avoid any hint of a challenge.
Boaberous Grudge stood over seven feet tall, weighed almost four hundred pounds, and was completely bald. By all accounts he was a giant. Jataan often wondered about the man’s lineage. Despite his size, he was quick on his feet and agile as well. He was as strong as any three men together and had absolutely no fear of any man alive with the sole exception of Jataan P’Tal. He wore a large pack on his back, a huge breastplate, bracers and greaves. On his back, beside his pack, was an oversized quiver filled with a dozen javelins. Resting on his shoulder was a huge war hammer with a haft that was easily six feet long.
Boaberous was scanning around the crowd until he saw Jataan coming his way. They joined up without a word and set out into the streets of Southport. The blacksmith was Reishi Protectorate. That would be their first stop. They needed information, horses, and perhaps a few men to assist in their task.
The Rebel Mage had sent an assassin through the millennia to bring the Reishi line to an end for all time. Jataan P’Tal had a sacred duty to prevent Mage Cedric’s assassin from succeeding. He’d always understood that the best defense was a good offense. He had come to kill Alexander Valentine before he had the chance to deliver Mage Cedric’s final blow to civilization.