Court Wizard: Book Eight Of The Spellmonger Series

by Terry Mancour

  “Well, Duin would be a good start,” Arborn whispered, as they came to the bottom level of the crypt. “I’m feeling a little inadequate, with this thing,” he said, waving the short infantry sword around.

  “He’d be worse than Ifnia,” snorted Pentandra. “He’s not exactly the subtle type, from what the myths say.”

  “The myths grossly overestimate his grasp of subtlety,” Ishi agreed. “My belligerent brother is as dumb as the axe he carries. His horse is fairly smart,” she conceded, cocking her head. “But Duin? Idiot.”

  “Is there a divinity we could summon that specializes in eradicating undead?” Pentandra asked in a whisper, as they heard noises in the darkness ahead. “Because that would be handy, at the moment.”

  “Just my sweet little tush,” Ishi said, rolling Lady Pleasure’s buttocks around invitingly. “The Narasi didn’t even encounter undead until they took Vore, so they didn’t really have a mythological response, apart from my dull uncle Murvos. But this shouldn’t be as hard as you think,” the goddess lectured, quietly. “The two in that chamber are awaiting a third party, someone they want to rescue from Vorone. Let us find some cover and observe, before we go charging in, shall we?”

  “Who do they know in Vorone?” Arborn asked, surprised.

  “The Brotherhood of the Rat,” Ishi answered. “Haven’t you understood anything, Pentandra? The Crew was acting as an advanced force for Korbal, and they didn’t even know it. That was what the fifth crew of the brotherhood was for: infiltrating the human gang.”

  “They were?

  “Something they’ve been doing for over a year, in southern Alshar. That’s how they managed to free Korbal in the first place, by using gurvani and human confederates. Then the Rat Crew were manipulated by Korbal’s undead lieutenants to prepare this place for them. And now that the purpose of the Crew in Vorone has been fulfilled, they wish to take their stalwart allies home for their reward. Yes, this should be close enough,” she said, nodding at a spot in the great vaults.

  “For their reward?” Pentandra asked, intrigued, as they took cover behind a wall of crypts from ancient days. The bays ran from floor to ceiling of the dark, cramped catacomb, housing the dead of Vorone’s glorious past. They were close enough to witness the

  “The usual: immense power, great wealth, slaves, palaces, that sort of thing. That’s what they’re being told,” smirked Ishi. “Their actual ‘reward’ will be great power. And virtual immortality. Of course,” she continued with a smirk, “it will only be their bodies which enjoy that. As Korbal inserts the enneagrams of his creations into their bodies, their minds will be utterly destroyed in the process. They have been promised immortality, but they have not been told the form in which that gift shall be disposed. When Korbal has his willing sacrifices I would wager that all of them will emerge from the rite bearing the mind of one of his long-lost fellow wraiths, not an illiterate bookmaker from the docks of Vorone.”

  Pentandra shuddered, imagining what it would be like to have her self-awareness stripped from her mind magically . . . and then replaced with the inhuman (and possibly invertebrate) enneagram from something whose entire species had gone extinct millions of years before humanity arrived at Callidore on the horizon. “That is not a particularly good reward,” she finally managed.

  “They aren’t particularly good thugs,” Ishi replied. “But they have reasonably intelligent minds, nimble fingers, decent fighting skills, and they can likely pass for human after they’ve been transformed. That’s all that Korbal really needs.”

  “To what end?” Arborn asked.

  “Infiltration,” answered Pentandra.

  Ishi nodded. “Sabotage. Assassination. Espionage. Rebellion. Take your pick. With his deviant Alka able to walk amongst humanity, Korbal can extend his power to a far greater distance, and to much greater effect, than Sheruel ever did. Shhh! Someone is coming!” the goddess whispered, taking refuge behind a thick stone pillar holding up the temple overhead.

  The arrivals proved to be the Rats Ishi had spoken of . . . and Pentandra’s long acquaintance with their dossiers, complete with sketches of each face by Ancient Andolos’ neat hand, told her exactly who they were: the remaining bosses of the Crew and their most trusted thugs. She recognized Harl the Huntsman who controlled the refugee camps, and Jarek Blackcloak, the leader of the gang that had once controlled access to the ducal palace. A half-dozen of their lieutenants accompanied them, looking nervous and resigned.

  Then she noted the distinctive form of Master Luthar, the Crew’s king rat in Vorone. The last time Pentandra had seen him was weeks ago, when he’d been arrested (and framed) for being behind an abortive palace uprising. From what she knew, he’d been in the dungeon under the palace ever since.

  He looked like it, a bit, too, she decided as she watched the man nervously greet his undead savior. His pale face and thinning flesh had a deathly pallor not too far removed from his master’s, Pentandra saw. Apparently the Crew (and their arcane allies) had affected a raid and rescue on the palace dungeons for the purpose of rescuing him.

  Before they could do anything to stop the distant conversation, the Nemovort Ocajon swiftly pushed them out of existence as he sent them through the Alkan Waypoint in the crypt.

  “My tits!” Ishi swore. “I was hoping to take out those vile men before they got away,” she sighed.

  “I’d rather they go on to their ‘reward’,” Pentandra countered, in a whisper. “This way they won’t be around to torment the people for the rest of the summer. I wanted to get rid of all the Rats,” she pointed out. “And now he’s getting rid of all the Rats.”

  “The senior Rats,” corrected Ishi. “There are still plenty of thugs around.”

  “I’ll take what I can,” shrugged Pentandra, knowing that the folk of the camps would be in much better shape without the “protections” the Crew demanded they pay for. If they, indeed, were going to be “rewarded” by having their souls ripped out and replaced, Pentandra couldn’t think of a more suitable punishment for such vile criminals. “Are we going to let the undead escape, as well?”

  “Oh, hells, no!” Ishi assured her. “That is an abomination unto me. And I’m in the mood for a smiting. But that clumsy sword will not be sufficient for this task, I’m afraid. If you want a good smiting, you need the right tools.” The goddess looked around a bit, and then slid open a sealed stone crypt like she was opening a hat box.

  From within she withdrew a short spear, a votive weapon about five feet long, with a rusty steel head that was still serviceable. The Narasi frequently buried their warriors with ornate weaponry to impress the girls in the afterlife, Pentandra knew. Ishi looked at the weapon critically for a moment, then touched it deliberately and spoke a few words. The rust fell away from the point, revealing a shining blade, and the entire shaft glowed with Ishi’s divine magic for a moment.

  She handed the weapon to Arborn. “Your sword is mere iron,” she explained. “This spear was pre-enchanted, forged from meteoric iron by some enterprising warmage in the mists of time. A treasured heirloom from the armory of an ancient house of valiant Wilderlords no one remembers anymore. I just . . . dusted it off and sharpened it up, so to speak. When we attack you’re going to need more of a weapon than that paring knife to take on that abomination.”

  Arborn nodded as Ishi turned her attention to Pentandra. “As long as he’s got that annulment device, you are powerless,” she said, stating the obvious. “Completely useless, in other words. While Arborn and I contend with the Nemovort, you get that artifact the hell away from that goblin and deactivate it,” she warned. “It’s even discomfiting my power. Once you have your powers back, I’m certain you’ll be able to plan your next move.”

  “I’m ready,” Arborn reported from behind them, grasping his spear in front of him.

  “I’m not!” Pentandra protested. “Arborn gets a spear? What do I get? I am not completely useless!” she declared, irately.

  Ishi looked irritated. �
�I suppose you won’t be content to just stand there and look pretty?”

  “No, I really wouldn’t,” assured Pentandra, coolly.

  “Fine! Here, let me see,” she said, opening a second crypt drawer, and then a third until she found what she sought.

  “Here, you lucky girl, a gift from a dead admirer - Lord Fismar of Prin’s Landing, killed in Vorone during a friendly joust about two decades before you were born. And it’s just in your size,” she said, removing a steel short sword from inside the tomb and drawing it from its dusty scabbard. “If you aren’t willing to slum it out with that piece of scrap on your husband’s hip, then perhaps this might be an acceptable alternative.” She handed the small sword to Pentandra with a bit of ceremony.

  The blade was around twenty-five inches long, Pentandra saw, and slightly curved to a sharp point: a Sea Lord’s blade. The edge was still sharp after all of these years, but the blade itself was heavy enough to hurt with its dull side at need on its own: the perfect tool for gutting a boarding party or hacking through rope and sailcloth. The bronze bell guard was in the shape of a scallop shell and swept back to the pommel, gilded in silver. Despite how heavily ornate it looked, the sword – scimitar, she corrected herself – was well-balanced and surprisingly light in her hand.

  Pentandra did a few cautious sweeps through the air of the crypt, then practiced her stance for a few moments while Arborn offered suggestions. She was familiar with swordplay, though she hadn’t studied it, as such. She wasn’t a warmage nor was she from a house of noble cavalrymen. Her people preferred wands or daggers to settle their differences. Swords were for the guards.

  But Pentandra had been on her own for years, now, and throughout her adventures she had occasionally picked up important points of lore from other disciplines. She’d fenced with Minalan or his apprentices more than once, and she and Arborn had even traded blows with practice weapons in Sevendor, after their wedding. The principle seemed simple enough: stab them with the point, slash them with the edge. Everything else seemed superfluous.

  “And this will kill the Nemovort?” she asked, curious, as she studied the blade.

  “If he doesn’t die of old age first, waiting on you to figure out which end the hilt is on,” chided Ishi. “Are you ready or not?”

  Pentandra gave one final sweep of the blade. “Ready!”

  “Let’s go,” Arborn said, as they watched the last of the Rats disappear through the Waypoint, headed toward an uncertain (but probably dire) future.

  A guttural war cry erupting violently from his throat, Arborn sprang on top of the sea of crypts between the stairs and the Waypoint, startling both undead and goblin. Ishi stood and followed behind the ranger at a slower, more stately pace, a grim expression on her lips as she walked purposefully toward their foe.

  “They live!” cried the goblin, grabbing a variety of sacks and packages stacked on a nearby crypt. “You must get me away, quickly!”

  “Bide,” Pentandra heard the undead monster breath, as he turned to face Arborn’s oncoming assault. As the big man wound up to strike, instead of dodging the blow Ocajon calmly raised his hand . . . and took almost a foot of sharp, rusty steel in the center of his palm for his troubles.

  As soon as the point stopped its progress, Ocajon turned to the goblin. “Go now!” he ordered. “Summon my brothers to avenge me.” Then he turned back around, just in time to see Arborn drop the spear, still embedded in his palm, and draw his sword.

  The fight that resulted was impressive, but Pentandra had other duties. As soon as she saw Ocajon turn away from his ally, she slunk quickly up the shadowed rows of stone crypts until she was near the fight. Ishi was standing behind Arborn, she saw, muttering words of encouragement as the ranger dueled the Nemovort, spear impaling his left hand, sword on iron staff.

  “You really don’t know when to give up, do you?” the undead creature remarked, impressed, as the Kasari warrior tried a furious combination of blows that clanged against his iron staff. “Don’t you realize? I cannot be killed,” it boasted. “Slay me, and my master will merely call me forth again and see me in a better body.”

  “Slay me,” Arborn said, through gritted teeth as he tried desperately to avoid the strikes the undead monster returned, “and my wife will gut you like a river fish!” he replied.

  “Your wife?” chuckled Ocajon. “How quaint. Was that the girl upstairs?” he asked, spinning with his staff in an attempt to strike Arborn in the chest. The ranger found his blade just barely stopping the powerful strike. “Pity she had to die like that. Pretty girl, I suppose . . . for a humani.”

  Pentandra wasn’t quite ready to strike from her position, but she could not allow such an insult to stand. Instead of attacking Prikiven as she’d planned, she contented herself with a wild, well-placed slash that separated his hand mid-way between elbow and wrist with a bright spray of blood. The heavy-bladed scimitar sliced through sleeve, fur, meat and bone without effort. The Annulment device fell to the floor with his hand, followed quickly by Prikiven, who screamed and clutched at his stub of a wrist.

  Instead of picking up the sphere and deactivating it, as she’d intended, she overheard the snide way Ocajon addressed her husband about her death and vowed to respond. She slipped up near to the undead’s back, took careful aim . . . and when Arborn brought the Nemovort around, without thinking about it, her mind saw an opening and she struck.

  With one decisive thrust she quickly stabbed her new curved blade directly through Ocajon’s head, impaling his brain temple to temple with the sharp point of the scimitar. She struck hard enough to bury the tip of the blade in the top wooden crypt door, pinning the monster to the tomb.

  Whatever dweomer Ishi had laid upon the ancient sword discharged into the creature, igniting a smoldering burn in response to the blade’s touch in its flesh. An eruption of evil-smelling fluid - it was too thin and too blackish to be blood – erupted from the wound, making the bile rise in the wizard’s throat.

  But Pentandra could not spare the effort to vomit. She was being dramatic.

  “No,” Pentandra answered, quietly, as she watched the life – undeath? – leech from Ocajon’s dead human body. “I’m a pretty girl for any species,” she said, her chest heaving slightly from the exertion of her sudden blow. “And you really, really shouldn’t . . . piss me off,” she sighed, and nearly collapsed, though she never let loose the hilt of her blade.

  The Nemovort quivered and jerked as the blade that transfixed its dead brain twisted what remained into a putrid pudding. It even tried to get out a few words, but Pentandra was too tired to listen. With a twist of her wrist she wrenched the long-unused sword to the right and left, doing as much damage as possible, before she pulled her blade free and watched the former human/Alkan hybrid fumble to the ground.

  “That was nicely done,” Arborn said, picking up the iron staff from the floor.

  “I thought you said . . . they were . . . hard to kill,” Pentandra panted, her head swimming.

  “I guess you got the runt of the litter,” he ventured as he pulled his ancient spear from the corpse’s hand.

  “What about the goblin?” Ishi asked, pointing to the wounded gurvan, who was clutching his wrist painfully and watching his powerful patron expire.

  “Let’s find out what he knows,” Pentandra said, picking up the Annulment sphere and deactivating it. She felt her arcane power return to her in an overwhelming wave, and Everkeen quivered as it “awakened” and flew obligingly to her hand. “I’ll just cast a truthtell . . .”

  “I regret I cannot allow that, my lady,” Prikiven gasped between clenched teeth.

  “I really don’t see how you can stop it,” Pentandra said, preparing the spell.

  “I couldn’t have,” the goblin agreed, “until you turned off that sphere . . .”

  Too late, Pentandra realized what she’d done. While the sphere was active, neither she nor the gurvani shaman had access to their powers – Ocajon likely used his Death Force, perhaps
channeled through the iron staff, to power the Waypoint spell, just as Ishi had used the Life Force to destroy him. Once dead, his gurvani confederate was trapped without power . . . until she’d deactivated the sphere that bound them both.

  The gurvan turned his face away from her, his eyes scrunched closed, and muttered something before Pentandra or Arborn could stop him. Her husband tried valiantly -- Arborn threw his spear quickly and with great force . . . but Prikiven was already fading into the Waypoint spell he’d cast. The weapon clattered harmlessly against the flags of the crypt’s floor, the gurvan nowhere to be seen.

  “I think I can follow him!” Pentandra insisted. “I can use Everkeen!”