The Emperor's Mage

by Clark Bolton

  PFFFUTT!

  With a word, Ich-Mek sent his dark arcane-energy-bolt at Shu-Whet, only to watch it bounce off a hidden protection ward. As-Cheen was down now, and the monks were only just recovering, having dispersed what Ich-Mek guessed were elementals of snow. Again, Shu-Whet looked ready to attack him.

  PFFFUTT!

  Ich-Mek’s second bolt also failed to get through. With death staring at him, Ich-Mek did his best to strengthen his wards with his mind.

  POOF!

  Snow erupted in front of Shu-Whet, making Ich-Mek think it was some new attack forming, and so he dove to the side behind a snowdrift. He could see he was mistaken as now Buo had come into the battle, and somehow had interjected himself between the snow-master and his icy shield. With continuous hard dagger thrusts one after the other, Buo dug at Shu-Whet’s icy armor, forcing the elf to stagger backwards.

  Ich-Mek could see now that the monk was slowing and beginning to turn an icy-blue. The fierceness in Shu-Whet’s eyes told of worse to come. Then the freezing monk suddenly jammed the top of his bald head into the elf’s face and began thrashing like a dog shaking off water.

  She-Whet screamed as the tangle of tiny, sharp ornaments that adorned the thin ring of hair around Buo’s head cut at his already mangled face, and his last good eye. The scream echoed through the ravine and was answered by a low moan, then a growing rumble. Ich-Mek knew that sound.

  “Avalanche!” Ich-Mek screamed as he staggered his way through the deep snow toward the fallen As-Cheen.

  Ich-Mek couldn’t move at all, but this wasn’t his first experience of attack by snow. The snow-master had done this to him once before, though on a much smaller scale, he suspected. Nothing glowed as it had last time he had been buried, which was alongside Tass. Fortunately, he could move his hands enough to cast a spell he had prepared earlier.

  The flames around his hands quickly melted the snow yet did him no harm. With chilling water flooding over his robes, he was able now to determine which way was up. It was a struggle to get his hands above him as snow kept filling the void made by the flames. Most of the time, his face was covered in slush, making it impossible to see much.

  “Ahh.” He breathed in relief when he made it to the surface.

  His burning hands illuminated the white silent night all around him with help from the stars in the clear skies above. He could tell he was still in a ravine, but not much more than that. It was hard even to tell which way the pass lay as even the nearby checkpoint appeared to have been buried.

  He decided he wouldn’t call out blindly as this was the snow-master’s element. The last thing he was sure happened was that Shu-Whet had gone down from a vicious staff strike to the legs from Nugh, with a freezing Buo on top of him. He needed to find all of them, he realized, before they suffocated.

  Stumbling around in the deep snow yielded no clues as to where anyone was buried. Far off in the distance he could hear men calling now, but the echoes suggested they were very far away. In a near panic, he tried to find the place where he had emerged in hopes of working toward As-Cheen’s last know position from there.

  He gave up caution, and so cast a strong light spell to illuminate around him for hundreds of paces. “No Shu-Whet,” he muttered to himself as he began looking for something to make a detection ward out of.

  The tent was buried too deep to even find, he was sure, so he settled for branches he broke from small bushes at the side of the ravine. Scrambling back toward the center, he was surprised by a great puff of snow near him.

  He had brought the arcane-missile spell to mind by the time he realized it was As-Cheen emerging, and not Shu-Whet. Clamping his eyes shut, he forced the arcane-energy building around him to disperse harmlessly.

  “I can’t find the others!” he exclaimed as he helped her up.

  She was as confused as he was as to where to look. “Where is Shu-Wet?” she asked after searching around.

  “No idea,” he admitted.

  The both of them then scanned the ravine for signs of another imminent attack. When it didn’t come, Ich-Mek went back to his wards. “Do you have anything that belongs to the monks?” he asked urgently as he worked.

  “Yes,” she replied as she handed him a small, slim dagger.

  It was a viciously serrated blade for throwing, he suspected, making him wonder what kind of monks he had been set up with. Putting such a thought out of his mind, he completed the crude ward and so went about slowly walking through the snow. It took him only a few moments to find a spot where the dagger always pointed.

  He stood back and watched As-Cheen dig furiously with her hands. He wished now he had a spell ready to assist her, other than burning hands. In this situation he thought the spell too dangerous, so he got down on his knees to dig as she was. Her flair for digging in snow soon eclipsed his feeble attempts, and so he stood back. Then he thought to locate the others so she could dig them out.

  Xep they found first, and he climbed up through the tunnel As-Cheen had dug without assistance. Then they found Nugh and Buo buried together. The young monk seemed not too much the worse for wear, but Buo was unmoving, and cold. As-Cheen wasted no time in hugging the monk to her, then laying down in the snow with him on top. She had revived a frozen Tass this way once before.

  “Shu-Whet has escaped that way,” she whispered to a concerned Ich-Mek.

  Looking in the direction she indicated, they saw nothing but snow and an impossibly steep ravine wall. With a feeling of dread creeping over him, he watched as the stars above began to fade into clouds.

  They hauled the now breathing and warm Buo on a makeshift sled formed from two timbers and some donated clothing. It was snowing hard again already, and that made the decision not to help the other victims of the avalanche go down a little easier. Ich-Mek kept telling himself they were drawing the snow-master away, which was true, he was sure.

  After a time Ich-Mek made them stop so he could lighten the sled with runes, and this time the monks didn’t object at all to such magic. So by the time dawn threatened they had reached the next checkpoint, where three terrified guardsmen just waved them on after they confirmed there had been an avalanche.

  It was a race against the snow, they came to realize, and fortunately they had a snow-master’s apprentice with them. Seeing an advantage in the sled, As-Cheen had them rig up an even longer one from small trees they came across. With more levitation runes and spells from Ich-Mek, she was able to actually run at a jog across the deep snow as the others rode.

  Five or six checkpoints later, they found themselves on a bare road with snow threating. The road inclined down now, and with Buo the only one on the sled, they continued to make good time. Before noon they were in the warm valley of the Dap River.

  Glossary

  Apa-Ton – Mountain of the Mage

  Arn-Pie – third dragon-boy in Ich-Mek’s cycle at Key-Tar-Om School

  As-Cheen – elf

  Bose-Quaa –

  Bua-Nap – Seechen sequestered in lower-library, brother of Rau-Nap

  Buo – senior travel monk

  Chey – charcoal-colored mage buildings

  Chusey – eunuch friend, works for Me-Ta

  Cold-Daughters – lesser mountains surrounding mountain known as the Cold-Mother

  Dizzachz – dragon, controlled by the Regent

  Dtu-Ru – senior dragon-mage

  Es-Long – older boy in Ich-Mek’s form at Key-Tar-Om School

  Fla – Ich-Mek’s first master

  Forbidden-Gardens – restricted area of inner-city limited exclusively to women and eunuchs

  Gang – dragon-mage

  Gen-Su – monk that accompanies Yi-La to Shrindala Temple

  Hon-Chi – main peoples of Hon Province

  Hont – another word for dragon

  Huehan – dead dragon-mage that first gave Ich-Mek a ring

  Ibu-Jek – empire of Ibu-Jek, ruled by dracomon and home to Ich-Mek

  Ich-Mek –

 
Imin – one of nine provinces in Ibu-Jek

  Ing – master that teaches alchemy to Ich-Mek; confidant of the Regent

  Inner-city – refers to restricted area of Ibu-Jek’s capital

  Jo Pass – pass linking northern Wa province with northern Imin province

  Juel – master teaching Ich-Mek

  Key-Tar-Om –

  Lipa – betrothed to Op-Rish

  Lu-Pok – dracomon

  Me-Ta – Her Esteemed Ladyship – first consort of the Emperor

  Monos – god like figure, guardian of the halls of the dead

  Naralok potion – birth control

  Narween –

  Naun-Bu – past dragon-boy , close friend of Tang

  Neeq – wise monk of Shrindala Temple, confidante of Ich-Mek

  Net-Zu – sub-district mage in Imin province

  Nom-Whet - elf

  Nugh – third travel monk

  Obek – a recently dead dragon-mage, whose ring Ich-Mek now wears

  Ober-Toss – the Regent

  Ont – Pus-Don captain serving Regent Ober-Toss

  Op-Rish –

  Owesek –

  Pel – master teaching Bose

  Pen-Ot-Obey – hermaphrodite idol

  Pesnu-Jok – six-path leader of Seechen

  Pleiss-Yom – Bose’s abandoned wife

  Provinces – Imin (NE), Wa (E), Teng-Ju (W), Yuu (NW), Hon (E,SE), southern province (S)

  Puc – monk of Shrindala Temple

  Pun-Domt – name of Yi-La’s ring

  Pus-Don –

  Qing-Dut – barge-master

  R ua-Nap – Seechen sequestere d in lower-library, brother of B au-Nap

  Ren – Master of Records at Key-Tar-Om

  Rish – short for Op-Rish

  Rivers – Shu River (in Key-Tar-Om), Poss River (Teng-Ju, headwaters near Wa), Ju River (runs east through Wa), Dap River (runs east through Imin, then the Grand Canal connects to Ju River)

  Rooch – eunuch friend of Yi-La, works for Me-Ta

  Reshun – Lama of Shrindala Temple

  Scarm – legendary monsters that seek out Owesek mages having no Owesek ring

  Seechen – sixth-path graduates of Key-Tar-Om that serve the dragon-mages

  Sey-Laht – dragon-mage

  Shrindala Temple –

  Shu-Whet – snow-master, elf

  Skut – unwanted dracomon – mother dies at birth, which designates the dracomon as impure

  Tang –

  Teng-Ju – one of the nine provinces of Ibu-Jek

  Tres-Moda – ancient death rite performed by dragon-mages

  Tu-Dak-Po – Imperial-Chancellor, and eunuch dracomon – voice of the Emperor

  Uan- city in the southern province – a man lives there who can explain the monolith

  Valley of Steam – As-Cheen’s home valley, near the Cold-Mother

  Venfs – name of Ich-Mek’s ring

  Wed-Low – elf of the Cold-Mother

  Yellow-Guard – eunuch guards of the Forbidden-Gardens

  Xep – second travel monk

  Yellow-Guard – eunuch guards of the Forbidden-Gardens

  Yi-La –

  Yuu-Tessk – dracomon birthing castle in Yu province, known as The Rookery