Court Wizard: Book Eight Of The Spellmonger Series

by Terry Mancour

  If the skeletal Raz-Ruziel’s visage was horrific, the Nemovort who had ransacked her office -- where Minalan was still passed out, if Terleman did not rescue him in time, she realized – looked like his homelier cousin.

  The body this one had stolen was large-framed and well-muscled, originally, and the traces of hair on its face suggested it had been a Wilderlord of some sort before its transformation.

  But where Raz-Ruziel’s enchantment seemed to consume the flesh it was bound to from within, it manifested on this newcomer in a kind of putrescence of boils and rot that were only made worse by the jagged burn scars or tattoos that decorated it. Instead of an iron staff, the brutish undead held a war axe crafted from the black metal. From the shoulders down, it was swathed in the same dark robe as its brother, and the cowl that covered its decomposing head was a mercy on the eyes.

  Time for a quip, or really anything to stall, Pentandra decided. She didn't know who she was stalling for, but she sincerely hoped help was on the way.

  “You came to my office without an appointment?” she gasped, urging Everkeen to redouble what defenses she had. The rod was clearly not a tool of warmagic, she was realizing. “And after hours?”

  “She jests, after she has taken our prey, Brother,” the putrid one observed.

  “She should be punished slowly, Brother,” Raz-Ruziel hissed, hefting his staff. “Though perhaps she would make a suitable vessel for our Master. She appears adequate at bearing the power, though she scarcely knows how to use it.”

  “She is a poor warmage,” agreed the other one. “But she may have her uses in Korbal’s other plans.”

  “In fact, I am not a warmage,” Pentandra declared, feeling a lot more confident now that she didn’t have Alurra to worry about. “My specialty is Sex Magic. And to be honest I’m a one-man-at-a-time woman, but if you’re going to be insistent . . .” she said, warningly.

  “These humani magi have magic for that?” asked the putrid one to his fellow, amused.

  “They are frivolous things,” Raz-Ruziel sneered. “Robust, but fragile in body. The draugen will degrade in only a few years. Left to their own devices, they pursue the most inane and trivial of interests, as befits an ephemeral race. Not much better than gurvani,” he added.

  “Now, boys, if you want to get anywhere, you’re going to have to learn how to flatter a girl,” she said, whipping her rod back and forth almost lazily . . . but directing Everkeen to hang spells and increase defenses as best it could in the face of the two dark sorcerers. “Speaking ill of her species and discussing her like she isn’t even there is poor form.”

  “Korbal will find this one entertaining, at least, Brother Kalbur,” Raz-Ruziel’ snickered, bringing his staff into a guard position. “Perhaps enough to forgive us for losing our prey.”

  “If she knows where the brat has fled, he will suck it from her mind,” Kalbur the Putrid agreed, hefting his axe. The human defenders had mostly fallen or fallen back from the draugen, who milled around the perimeter while their undead masters decided her fate.

  “I’m not . . . that kind . . . of girl!” Pentandra said through clenched teeth, as she prepared to defend herself.

  Suddenly a bolt of bright blue fire shot from above and one of the draugen exploded dramatically. Another was impaled when a man dropped from the gaping hole in the roof, a war cry on his lips.

  “Terleman!” Pentandra breathed in relief. She glanced at Raz-Ruziel, who turned to meet the new threat. “You wanted to face a real human warmage? Now is your chance!”

  “Hope you haven’t been too bored until I got here,” Terleman said boldly as he whipped his black mantle back from his arms.

  He bore a long staff of weirwood, nearly twice the length and thickness of Everkeen. Instead of silver, iron and steel bound the savage-looking weapon. “I had to stop by my quarters to put Min to bed. I ran along the rooftops because the corridors were crowded.”

  “What, you didn’t change your attire?” Pentandra japed, as she waited for the warmage to get into position.

  “Well, I had to grab my new stick. Meet Warmaster,” Terleman said, gripping the powerful weapon with both hands. “Master Cormoran gave it to me. Experimental. He wants me to field test it.”

  The dark staff pulsed with a far deadlier power than Everkeen had produced, and it rolled off of the device in waves. Everkeen was designed as a tool, whereas Warmaster, she could tell, was pure weapon from head to heel.

  “At last, a challenge,” Kalbur grunted, and moved to intercept. A blast of dark mist from Warmaster obscured and slowed him a moment, but he did not stop. Instead he began swinging his great axe in slow, relentless arcs. Terleman grinned infectiously through his beard and met the Nemovort amidst the debris, where they began circling each other. Terleman honestly looked like he was having a good time.

  As Kalbur’s axe moved in for the kill, the head enveloped in sorcerous energy that split through Terleman’s wards, the warmage did not try to counter with a spell or a redoubling of his defenses. Instead he stepped in, caught the axe on the shaft of his staff just behind the blade, and twisted his hips while taking an unexpected step around the monster. Though a powerful warrior, apparently Kalbur’s human host was not as adept at combat as Terleman. The axe twisted free of his hands under the pressure of the leverage, and went flying off into the darkness around them.

  Terleman wasn’t finished, however, and by adjusting his footing and reversing the grip on Warmaster, he brought the back end of the staff against the side of Kalbur’s left temple with a resounding force . . . augmented by some impressive warmagic Pentandra had never been privileged to witness before. The Nemovort went flying backwards like a limp doll, landing a dozen feet away in a heap.

  But Terleman couldn’t be satisfied with the resounding defeat of the fiend. He used the momentum from the recoil of the swing to reverse the direction of the staff, then shoved it resolutely into the chest of the nearest draugen. A hole the size of a chamberpot obligingly exploded through its torso so suddenly Pentandra could briefly see one of its fellows through the hole.

  “Now that is how it is done,” Terleman said, returning the heavy staff to a guard position with the grace of a dancer.

  “Fool!” Raz-Ruziel’ screamed, raising his staff aggressively at the unexpected attacker. “Do you think a mere toy will keep Korbal at bay?” A bolt of green fire formed a ball on the top of the iron shaft. “This shall be interesting, at least!”

  The two combatants closed, a tangle of energy emitting from both sides and enveloping the duel like a ball of eldritch twine. Pentandra was searching for an opportunity to intervene when she noticed the remaining draugen were reforming nearby, and slowly heading in her direction for lack of a better target.

  From what she had seen of their fighting, the draugen did not possess the same capacity for magic that the Nemovort did. They were doughty warriors, moving with deadly purpose and impressive strength, but they had displayed no ability to deal with magic. Of course, she also realized that most of the spells that she had prepared with Everkeen were designed against a living foe, not an undead one. Making them hurt, for example, was unlikely to stop a being that didn’t apparently feel pain or discomfort.

  As they closed in on her, Everkeen recognized them; that is, the baculus found their bodies familiar with something in its experience and brought it to Pentandra’s attention. Sure enough, the draugen in the lead of the pack was familiar, under the pale skin, dead eyes and arcane symbols burned into its flesh. She recognized him as one of the Rat Crew thugs she’d encountered on her spying missions in the Market ward. She couldn’t remember his name, but the pattern of scars near his left eye was unique.

  He had been a large, vital, brutal man ready to kill and maim on the Crew’s command. Yet as vile as he had been, Pentandra felt sorry for him in his current state. The man he had been before was gone, forever, and the body it had possessed was sustained on magic, alone.

  Raz-Ruziel was correct, she could s
ee. The draugen were, at best, temporary soldiers. Temporary and disposable. There was no sense of self-preservation in those smoldering red eyes, Pentandra could see. There wasn’t even pain. Whatever guided the late criminal’s footsteps was not even human.

  Regardless of whether or not it might be subject to magic, Pentandra reasoned, it was still probably subject to gravity. She commanded Everkeen to do her will, and a relatively simple spell lanced out of the silver acorn on the head of the rod. Instead of attacking the draugen rapidly closing with her, however, the paraclete sent a powerful wave of energy toward the wooden floor under their feet. It collapsed as the cellulose in the wood was convinced by magic to temporarily give up its cohesion. Four of the fiends dropped into the pit that opened under their feet.

  Pentandra herself was nearly caught in the spell, and had to take a step back to avoid falling in. Whatever storeroom or dungeon was below this hall would have to contain the monsters for now.

  Terleman, she saw as she spared a second to confirm, was holding his own against Raz-Ruziel. Iron staff met weirwood over and over, and the concussion from the two forces was echoing through the corridors. Terleman still didn’t look worried, she saw, thankfully; if anything, he looked even cockier as he used a combination of hand-to-hand combat and warmagics subtle and potent to duel Raz-Ruziel.

  That’s when she nearly collided with someone behind her . . . and whirled to face what she thought was a draugen. Instead, it was a familiar face, as unexpected as Terleman’s, but no less welcome: Sir Vemas, the Constable of Vorone, and he was leading reinforcements.

  “Lady Pentandra!” he called, surprised, as he lowered his sword a bit. “Not whom I expected in the midst of this ruckus. But I suppose I should have. Are you injured?”The officer had a two handed sword in hand, instead of his usual gentleman’s cavalry sword. There was a fresh squadron of guardsmen and 3rd Commando warriors filing in behind him, preparing themselves for combat in the chaotic scene.

  Brave men, all, she realized. And dead men, if they stood and fought the draugen.

  “No, but we are in a dire situation,” she reported. “Those invaders are undead, fast and resilient. The one facing Lord Terleman is also a sorcerer, an Alka Alon spirit embedded in the body of a Wilderlord, and armed with dark magic.”

  “Well, we’re fucked, then,” one of the guardsmen -- who turned out to be her old friend from the Woodsmen, Fen the Quick -- said, as he hefted a pike from the palace armory. “Why can’t it just be the bloody Rats?”

  “It is the bloody Rats!” Pentandra explained, as she turned back around to face the draugen moving around the new hole in the floor. “Korbal’s minions recruited them and infiltrated them, no doubt promising riches and power. Instead their spirits were driven from their bodies, and now they are enslaved by magic in living corpses. That’s their reward for dealing with the Demon God!”

  “Oh, that’s much better, then,” he quipped, stabbing at one of the draugen as it tried to attack.

  “This is what that last Crew cell was, then,” Sir Vemas reasoned as he blocked a blow from a sword and returned it with a grunt. “The collaborators. And the minions of the Umbra, spying on Vorone for the dark lords.”

  “They’ve been in Vorone for months, watching for Alurra,” she agreed. “Ironic that they were here searching for her while we were using her to seek out their own servants.”

  “Civil service is filled with such ironies, I’ve found,” Vemas nodded. “My lady, forgive me for saying this, but as valiant as Lord Terleman is fighting, if we do not retreat soon I fear that we will be overcome,” he said, as one of the draugen deftly blocked his strike at the last second. “We can defend, but they don’t bleed when they are cut, and we do. They do not tire, and we do,” he said, as he stood in front of her protectively.

  Behind the line of approaching undead, Pentandra saw, the crumpled form of Kalbur came back to consciousness, ruining her hope that Terleman’s blow had destroyed it. The impact had done its visage no favors, however. A black, bloody abrasion the size of a fist was torn out of Kalbur’s decomposing cheek and forehead.

  Though the fiend’s axe was safely on the other side of the hall from him, Kalbur was not powerless, Pentandra discovered. With a few passes of his hands and an alarmingly fast summoning of power, one by one he restored the dead bodies of the fallen defenders around the room to a semblance of life. The jerking zombies were nowhere near as adept at movement as the draugen or the Nemovorti, but they were armed, sometimes with weapons pulled from their own corpses. And there were a lot of them, she saw. More than the draugen within moments.

  “This is getting out of hand,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Can’t you use magic against these things?” Sir Vemas asked, between engagements. Terleman was whooping and playing a deadly game of tag with Raz-Ruziel’ in the background.

  “I am! I’ve tried! They’re really potent!” she insisted. “They aren’t as affected by traditional thaumaturgy as human beings. It has to do with the kind of energy they are animated with,” she tried to explain.

  “I’m certain that’s a fascinating lecture, my lady,” the constable said, politely, as he fought for his life against a new wave of undead. “And I do look forward to discussing it at length, preferably in company with a bottle of wine. However,” he said, his frustration with the fight starting to take a toll, “it saddens me that conversation will not take place if the Court Wizard cannot discover a way to rescue the gallant Constable from getting his arse chewed on by zombies!”

  A sudden thought occurred to her. There was one thing she could do, she realized. She hated to even consider such a thing, but with Minalan unconscious and Terleman already engaged, there was precious little else she could do about countering a threat powered by death magic.

  Except one thing. One thing she knew how to do better than anything else.

  “Forgive me,” she said, as she grabbed Sir Vemas’ shoulder.

  “Forgive you for what, my lady?” he asked, confused.

  “Not you,” she said, shaking her head. “Arborn,” she corrected. “And for this.” Then she kissed the surprised constable full on the lips, allowing every bit of pent-up desire for the handsome courtier she had suppressed all of those late nights working together out of Spellmonger’s Hall . . . every forbidden urge and secret fantasy, she tried to bring into that single, soulful kiss.

  For she knew Ishi sees all acts of love and pleasure. And if her unfulfilled desire for Sir Vemas was mixed, perhaps, with the desperate desire for the goddess to show up and save them all, Pentandra rationalized it as desire being desire, irrespective of its subject.

  It worked. There was a flash of light and the faint scent of roses suddenly mixed with the smell of dust, blood, and arcane ozone.

  “A party at the palace?” Lady Pleasure’s voice asked, seemingly from everywhere at once. “And you didn’t invite me? For shame!”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  A Hole In The Hall Of Heralds

  The Hall of Heralds was not looking well when Ishi made her divine presence known. Apart from the gaping twenty-foot hole in the roof above, there was also a matching pile of debris under it . . . where it hadn’t fallen through to the hole Pentandra had blown in the floor. The big statue of the Maiden of the Havens that had stood in the center of the hall for a century was completely covered with the debris. The comfortably-shabby stateliness of the place was entirely ruined. It was hardly a fit place for the goddess to tread.

  But there was a powerful need, and the goddess was acutely responsive to her worshippers’ needs -- even the reluctant ones, like Pentandra. When she manifested in the midst of the chaos of the Hall of Heralds, she was prepared, this time, to contest with a Nemovort. This time Ishi was arrayed for battle.

  She wore a gown of shimmering white, a tight-fitting hauberk strapped over the elegant dress, a broad silver belt across her slender waist, and a bright gem on her brow. Gems sparkled from her ears, her throat, her fingers and wr
ists. Her skin and hair glowed with divine energy, and she seemed much larger than Pentandra recalled. Her blonde hair writhed with subtle glory, half of its volume contained in an elaborate bun atop her head affixed with two silver rods.

  The undead - from the newly-minted, mindless corpses to the two powerful Nemovorti, halted in her presence. The wave of energy she emitted seemed to sap their volition, or at least reduce how robustly they defended themselves. Two of the draugen fell to Terleman’s warstaff as Raz-Ruziel sprawled as he tried to dodge out of range of the warmage’s terrible staff. Terleman didn’t realized Ishi was there until he realized his foes had stopped defending themselves.

  They were transfixed, for a brief moment, by the power that rolled off her in waves.

  “Now you’re in trouble!” Pentandra quipped, as they all stared at the goddess with their smoldering eyes. “She got out her good jewels!”

  “It’s her!” wheezed Raz-Ruziel, as he scrambled back to his feet with the help of his staff, fearing and fleeing the bright goddess. “The kahkard that Brother Ocajon spoke of!”