A PLAGUE OF WIZARDS
By Wesley Allison
Smashwords Edition
A Plague of Wizards
Copyright © 2016 by Wesley Allison
Revision 11-2-16
All Rights Reserved. This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If sold, shared, or given away it is a violation of the copyright of this work. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual people, living or dead is purely coincidental.
Cover design by Wesley Allison
Cover Image Copyright © Armin Burkhardt | Dreamstime.com
ISBN: 9781370495429
For Vicki, Becky, & John
Senta and the Steel Dragon
A Plague of Wizards
By Wesley Allison
Chapter One: Vesterdein
The first thing that Senta noticed was that she had a headache. A second after that came the realization that her jaw hurt and the understanding of just why it hurt. There was something stuffed in her mouth, forcing it open. She felt the foreign object with her tongue. It felt like a rubber ball. There was no forcing it out either. A strap around her head was holding it in place. Then her tongue found something else. There was a large sore on the inside of her cheek—hard, with a painful dimple on the top, like a bee sting. She slowly opened her eyes.
She was in a small dark room. The walls were metal, with long streaks of rust running from the ceiling down the sides. A metal door was directly in front of her. She was seated on a chair, also metal, her hands fastened with steel manacles to rings on the sides. The entire room suddenly pitched to one side. She was aboard a ship. She tried shifting her weight and felt a sharp pain in the small of her back. She must have been seated for a good long while. The chair didn’t move however, and glancing down to her side, she saw that it was bolted to the floor.
“Back among the living, are we luv?”
She turned her head both directions but couldn’t see the owner of the voice somewhere behind her.
“Not to worry. One of them two will be down directly. I’d give you a little splash of water if I could, but theys said not to take your gag out under no circumwhences.”
Senta suddenly realized how thirsty she was.
“Yes, one of them two will be down soon. Theys never gone from you for more than haft a moment. You gots tem all jittery, that you do luv. And them’s two high magical mucketies. You must be all that, to get thems in such a state.”
The door suddenly opened and a tall, thin man stepped inside the room, closing the door behind him. He wore a brown suit with a bowler hat and spectacles, and had long, pointed chin whiskers. Senta winced at the brightness coming off of him, though it wasn’t a light that anyone else would have seen. It was the magic that clung to him.
“I told you to contact me as soon as she was awake,” he snarled.
“What’s to bother, guv. Yous down here all ta same, ain’t cha?”
“Hello, Miss Bly,” said the man turning his attentions to his prisoner. “My name is Wizard Durham. I’m sure you’ve heard of me.”
Senta didn’t nod or shake her head. She simply glared at him.
“I understand. You’re not only angry, but embarrassed as well. How did someone of your power come to this? Well, you needn’t feel that way. Your magical wards were unassailable, even better than mine. I’ll go ahead and admit it, and I’m a fourth level master. No one could have harmed you with either physical force or magic. But you see, there was one vulnerability.” He leaned down and smiled into her face. “Yes, you know now, don’t you? The idea came from our naturalists. Did you know that ants are at eternal war with termites? It’s true. But the ants can’t kill the termites, because they are protected by their armor. So what are the ants to do? They hold open the termite’s jaws and sting them inside their mouths. That’s what we did. You were shot with a tranquilizer dart, right inside your pretty mouth. And so, like the lowly termite, was the Drache Girl, the world’s most powerful sorceress, brought down.”
“That’s herself then?” asked the voice from the back. “That’s who she be? You shoulda told us what then. We deserve ‘azard pay in such cases, eh?”
“Oh, there’s no hazard here,” said Wizard Durham. “I’ve so many magical protections on me that a dozen wizards couldn’t cause me harm. I’m sure I’m even protected from Miss Bly’s most devastating art. What do you call it? Epic pestilence, I believe.”
“Oi, fine for yous and the other himself. What about little old Dick then? What happens to me? I ain’t gots no magical protections.”
“Oh, you have nothing to worry about.” The wizard leaned back and rubbed his palms together as an oily smile took charge of his face. “As long as she’s gagged she can’t speak, and as long as she can’t speak, she has no power. Isn’t that right, Miss Bly? If you had your mouth, you might give us ten or twenty arcane words and bring about the most furious devastation, or call forth God-only-knows-what to do your bidding. But you can’t. I know how badly you want to utter those four little syllables. Those four syllables give us all our power, but without them, no magic… no magic at all, no matter how gifted we think ourselves.”
“Is that so?” thought Senta. “Let’s test that hypothesis. That and your magical wards.”
Durham leaned over at the waist and looked into her eyes.
“Uuthanum,” thought Senta, concentrating with all her might on his face—his obnoxious gloating face. “Uuthanum, uuthanum, uuthanum, uuthanum. Uuthanum, uuthanum, uuthanum!”
Wizard Durham stood up straight. For a split second, a look of surprise overtook him. And then his head exploded, sending blood and brains in every direction, coating the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and everything else in the room. Tiny little bits of brain hung in the air like pink snowflakes.
The sorceress closed her eyes, both in satisfaction, and because a bit of the wizard’s grey matter was dripping from her forehead down onto her cheek. A giggle, unable to make its way past her gag, escaped through her nose. Then something hit her on the side of the head, hard, and everything went black.
* * * * *
When consciousness returned, Senta found that a burlap sack covered her head. A small amount of weak light passed through, and she could hear well enough, but try as she might, she couldn’t remove it. And no one else removed it either. She was given no food and no water. With her mouth still gagged, she was unable to ask for either.
Days passed. She could hear voices somewhere around her, but she could identify none of them. She became weaker and weaker, her mental faculties diminishing until she seemed to exist only in some horrid nightmare state where she was deprived of nourishment and light, destined to wither away in semi-darkness. She was hardly aware enough to notice when she was finally unshackled and dragged from the room and off the ship. Blinding light stabbed at her brain, as her hood was removed. Only half conscious, she could barely make out the crowd of men surrounding her. But she could feel the cold wind whipping about.
“Remove her gag. Kafira, she’s half dead.”
“Maybe we should keep her gagged. She killed Wizard Durham without even uttering the word.”
“So what you’re saying is, it doesn’t matter if she’s gagged or not. Right? It doesn’t matter here anyway. Where are we putting her?”
“Room 13J is prepared, Doctor.”
“Good. She needs water and nourishment.
Senta felt herself being lifted and then carried. She closed her eyes and felt the darkness return.
* * * * *
“Lift her legs up, please.”
Senta felt her ankles being grabbed by rough hands and her legs being lifted up. She opened her eyes to find herself on a cot in a spartan white room. Two
men had hold of her, while a woman stood close by. They were all dressed in white. The woman had a nurse’s cap on her short black hair.
“What… what’s going on?”
“Nothing to worry about. The doctor’s ordered an enema because you are so dehydrated. Just hold still.”
“Like hell,” she growled, kicking her legs. “Uuthanum.”
“Hold her. You’ll want to remain still. You wouldn’t want this nozzle to break off in your bum.”
Her legs held firmly, the sorceress felt the cold glass nozzle of the enema tube forced between the cheeks of her buttocks.
“Ariana uuthanum sembor!”
Nothing happened.
“Erros uuthanum tijiia!”
No magic appeared to save her. Tears filled her eyes as she felt warm liquid fill her bowels. The men unceremoniously dropped her legs.
“Now you just hold that for a while,” said the nurse. “It’s not so much that you’ll feel the need to immediately expel.”
“Where am I? What is this place?”
“Doctor Sykes will tell you everything you need to know.”
An hour later, after Senta had drunk three large glasses of water and expelled the enema into a bedpan, a clean-shaven man with thick glasses entered her room. He wore a white lab coat and black trousers.
“Happy to see you awake, Miss Bly,” he said, giving her a smile that was more of a wince. “I’m Dr. Montgomery Q. Sykes.”
“Where am I?”
“Where do you think you are?”
“Schwarztogrube?”
“I can see why you would think so. Nurse Pyle told me that you tried to use your magic. Obviously you couldn’t. We have discovered that the distribution of magic throughout the world is very uneven. It’s particularly thick in Birmisia. No one is really sure why.”
“It’s because of the abundance of life there,” said Senta, almost to herself.
Sykes scrunched up his nose in annoyance. “No one really knows why,” he repeated. “In any case, this is Vesterdein, an island in the Bitter Sea. It, like Schwarztogrube, is completely free of magic. There will be no more ridiculous incidents like the one on the ship. But this is not Schwarztogrube. It’s not a prison at all. It’s a hospital. You’re here so that we can cure you, Miss Bly.”
“Cure me of what?”
“Why, the curse of magic, of course.”
* * * * *
“You’ve recovered enough that the doctor thinks you can begin your treatment,” said Nurse Pyle.
“I don’t want any treatment,” hissed Senta sliding as far back on her cot as her bound wrists would allow.
“Now don’t be difficult.”
The nurse snapped her fingers and the pair of burly men in white scrubs stepped into the room. Each grabbed one of the sorceress’s arms and, unfastening her from the bed frame, dragged her up and toward the door. Planting her feet for a split second, Senta pulled her right arm from the grasp of the orderly. Pointing her finger at his face, she snarled “Uuthanum!” Nothing happened. Nurse Pyle stepped in front of her as the orderly regained his grip, and slapped her across the face.
“We’ll have none of that!”
Still struggling, she was dragged down the length of a long white corridor and into a room just as white and sterile as the one with her bed, but not nearly so empty. In addition to another cot, this one higher than the one to which she had been confined, this room held several large machines along the far wall.
The two orderlies lifted her up off the ground by her shoulders and slammed her down on the new cot, and quickly strapped her down with leather cuffs around her wrists and a leather belt across her middle. Dr. Sykes and Nurse Pyle entered the room and took positions on either side of Senta.
“Now, Miss Bly, if you will quit your histrionics and cooperate, everything can be nice and easy.”
“It’s not going to be nice or easy, you bloody twat!” screamed the sorceress.
“Oh dear,” he said, and then nodded toward the orderlies.
One of the two men grabbed Senta at the forehead and the jaw, forcing her mouth open, while the other stuffed a gag into it. Just like on the ship that had brought her, it was a round rubber ball with a strap around her head to hold it in place. The nurse reached up and fastened something to either side of Senta’s head. She couldn’t see what they were, but she could tell that the pads had wires leading from them. With a sudden emptiness in the pit of her stomach, she realized that they must be connected to the machinery behind her.
“You see, Miss Bly,” said Sykes. “There is a proper way to use the magical energy found in our world. With extensive training, wizards can manipulate that energy for the good of mankind. Your unnatural affinity for magic is an aberration. It is a malady of the brain. We have found that by running electricity through your cerebral cortex, we can short out that ability. We have managed to successfully do so with two sorcerers, though neither of their brains was as abnormal as yours.
Senta struggled, trying to pull her hands free, and then trying to shake off the connections at her temples. Then suddenly, pain, the likes of which she had never felt, before shot through her head. She felt her body convulse and then the world went all white.
* * * * *
The light slowly faded into sunshine. Colors returned. Green came first—the long thin stalks of plants and narrow blade-like leaves. Then came purple, the closed buds of something like a tulip at the top of each flower stalk. Each foot tall flower leaned this way and that in the gentle breeze of a sunny day. Then, one by one, they began to open. In the center of each blossoming flower, was a very human looking eyeball. Senta could feel the light of the sun on her naked body. She wrapped her arms around herself in a hug. And then she saw her. Twenty feet away, stood a female form, naked, but surrounded by a cloud of golden blond hair.”
“Kafira. I’ve died and gone to hell.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” said the other woman.
“I know where I am,” said Senta, “and I know who you are.”
The where was another plane of existence, some unknown level of hell, usually only accessible by those stupid enough or addicted enough to rub the see-spice White Opthalium into their eyes. And the who was Pantagria, the beautiful but evil demon who reigned in the otherworldly realm.
“Where are your wings, demon?”
“Hmm? I must have left them somewhere.” Pantagria looked around, revealing her back, where two jagged scars indicated where beautiful expansive white wings had once been attached. “It’s a bloody pain walking everywhere, you know.”
“What am I doing here?” asked Senta.
“You don’t know? Well, it was none of my doing, I can tell you that. You’re about the last person I ever wanted to see again. Do you have any idea how painful it is to be burned alive?”
“I hope it was very painful,” said Senta, remembering their last encounter when she had launched a fireball at the demon.
“A lot like having your brain fried with electricity, I’ll wager.”
The endless field of purple flowers and the sky and Pantagria began to fade back into white. The white slowly receded until the doorframe, the doorknob, and a clipboard hanging on a nail appeared in the otherwise white room.
“How do you feel?” asked Nurse Pyle.
“Like I have a railroad spike driven through my head, you bitch.”
“You can keep fighting, but you’re only hurting yourself. Your treatment will continue in any case. Relax and soon it will be over. You can rejoin society. You’re attractive enough in a tall sort of way. You could do quite well. I’m sure there are any number of men who would want you as their wife.”
* * * * *
The cold biting air clawed its way through Senta’s robe and hospital gown, gnawed at her ankles, and bit her bare cheeks and ears. Behind her was the hospital, a three-story brick building of some forty rooms. On the other side of it was the boat dock. Arrayed around the small yard where the sorceress sat were
a half a dozen small outbuildings. Beyond them, fifty yards of rocky land and then the sea. The entire island was smaller than a football pitch.
“It be a good while since I seen ya, luv.” An oily voice brought Senta’s thoughts from wherever they had been back to where she was. “Seems thems got you all tamed up now, eh?”
“I know your voice,” she said, looking up.
A gnarled rat-faced man stood nearby.
“That you might. That you might. It’s been a while since little old Dick has seen you. I just gots in, bringing another what-for. This one weren’t so feisty as yourself.”
“How long?”
“Been ‘ere, ya mean? Oi, it musta be on four, five months now—way backt in Pentuary.” He sat down on the bench next to her, beneath the gnarled leafless tree that, save a few bits of lichen, was the only flora on the island. He ran his hand over her knee, pushing back the hem of her robe. “Much calmed down, eh? No heads be set to explodin’. I reckon you got to be a bit lonely though, eh?”
Senta leaned over and put her mouth close to his ear. When she spoke, he shivered. “Can I tell you a secret, Dick?”
“What is it, luv?”
“I’m going to rip the guts out of the orderlies, and I’m going to physically shove Syke’s head up that bitch’s twat. Then I’m going to turn this place into a fiery hell. People will write songs about the destruction I’m going to bring.”
“You can’t do any such.” He leaned back and shivered again. “They’s none of that magic about.”
“You sure, Dick?”
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