“Good morning, Teres. Messages, today?”
“Magelord,” he began. “I have to know . . . what did you do with it?”
“What did I do with what?” I asked, confused.
“Rudy says it wasn’t you, but you’re the Spellmonger, aren’t you? So it has to be you. No one else could do that.”
“Do what?” I asked, growing frustrated.
“I don’t care what Rudy says,” he said, referring to Ruderal, my young apprentice. The two boys were friends, I knew. “I know you could do it, if you wanted to. But where did it go? That’s what I want to know!”
I took a deep breath. “What I want to know is what you are talking about.”
He looked at me as if I’d played a joke on him. Or was testing him. I was just confused as hell. “The mountain?”
“What mountain?” I asked, my sense of anxiety growing.
“The one that isn’t there anymore?” he said, as if reminding me of something obvious.
“Show me!” I demanded, at once, my eyes growing wide.
The lad led me outside into the inner bailey, and walked with me to the outer wall, near the Court Wizard’s tower. The moment I mounted the rise before the wall, my eye was drawn instantly to the deeply disturbing vision.
When you are used to something being there and it isn’t, your mind gets bruised, I’ve decided. But there was no denying the truth of what my eyes were seeing.
I just couldn’t believe it. One of my mountains was missing.
To say it was disconcerting is the greatest of understatements. Mountains tend to be fairly permanent fixtures on the horizon, and walking outside to the sight of one of them not there anymore disturbed me at a fundamental level.
The entire peak was gone, a slice of the ridge taken neatly away from its fellows like a slice of cake. I could see the smooth white cliffs of the peak on the other side. The depression where the mountain had once lay was at least eighty feet below the surface. From where I was standing I could just see across the void and into the land beyond. The resulting gap was almost a quarter mile wide. I could see the fertile lands of my vassal domain, Hosendor, through the new gap.
And there was something glittering in the afternoon sunshine at the bottom of the new gigantic white pit.
“Summon my wizards,” I ordered my page, my voice hoarse and shaking. “I have need of them.”
“Which ones, Magelord?” the boy asked. He was starting to realize that I wasn’t responsible for the missing mountain.
“All of them,” I said, in a near whisper, as my mind tried to accommodate the novelty of this new view. “I’m going to need them all!”
Sire Cei looked out across the vast smooth expanse of exposed bedrock below his head shaking in disbelief.
“Minalan,” he said, hoarsely, not using a title. That’s how shaken he was. “What did you do?”
“I . . . sold some snowstone,” I managed, my eyes trying to encompass the volume of stone the Sea Folk had purchased.
“So it appears,” Zagor nodded. “I do hope you received payment,” he said. Non-payment was a frequent complaint of spellmongers.
“Let’s go find out,” Banamor said, nodding toward the center of the . . . quarry, where there seemed to be some building or other. “Magesight says that is a big pile of glittery . . . something.”
“It could be anything,”
“It’s not dog shit. Dog shit doesn’t glitter,” Banamor grunted.
“It could be dangerous,” Zagor said.
“Just getting down there will be dangerous,” Olmeg pointed out. “Minalan, you realize what will happen in a few months, once we hit the rainy season, don’t you?”
“I get a new, really large moat,” I sighed. “So someone fetch a hundred feet of rope. Let’s go see what a mountain of snowstone is worth, these days.”
As it turned out, quite a lot.
I didn’t want to wait around for rope or the inevitably difficult climb down to the floor. That wasn’t greed or ambition speaking, or even an unquenchable quest for the unknown. In fact, I was panicking mightily about what had to have been a massive miscalculation.
When the Vundel’s seamage emissary offered to buy that much snowstone, I figured that it would be my people who harvested and delivered it over a period of years. It had seemed an outstanding deal, when I’d negotiated it.
But apparently the Sea Folk had other ideas. As soon as the agreement was concluded, they took delivery on the spot. Magically.
I had to get down to the center of the quarry first, and see if what I’d lost was worth what I’d gained.
We lowered a rope down to the smooth floor of the trench and one by one we climbed down. Master Loiko was already detailing soldiers to patrol the edge of the gap and keep back the curious and alarmed people of Sevendor. Sire Cei was assuring everyone that the Spellmonger was dealing with the matter. That seemed to soothe everyone on the lip of the cliff.
Except for me. I was going mad inside my head.
There was nothing moving down there, no hidden enemies, no obvious traps. Just two piles of . . . stuff.
The larger was a pyramid, the smaller a pile. When I slid to the floor of the pure white trench, the pyramid demanded my inspection first. It towered into the air almost three stories above me, a perfect tetrahedron . . . of spheres.
As I got closer I realized that the entire structure was made of spheres, each the size of a child’s head.
The bottom four levels were solid gold.
I stumbled and fell to my knees with the realization. The two levels above that were silver, and beyond that they changed color and texture with frequency as they diminished with each level. The top . . . I could not even see the top sphere, from this angle.
Just the four levels of gold, however – assuming that the levels were flat sheets, solid throughout – represented more gold, I was certain, than currently existed in the Kingdom.
I was quite literally the richest human being . . . anywhere.
While the magnitude of my fortune was still keeping my mouth moving with no sound coming out of it, the other wizards began to arrive. The scene that followed was a wild chorus of oaths and disbelief. Even quiet Olmeg was moved to profanity. Banamor . . . I don’t think I’ll record his reaction. There weren’t a lot of words involved, and honestly, I’m not sure the words exist to describe it.
“Sir Festaran,” I said, quietly. “How much? Just the gold, to start.”
I suppose it was unfair of me to throw the boy in the deep part of the river, but I needed answers, fast. I almost hoped those spheres were mere hollow shells. Past a certain point great wealth is as much of a curse as great poverty.
There was no hollow sound when Sire Cei rapped the lowest sphere with his knuckles and pronounced it solid. Solid gold.
Festaran got a far-away look in his eye, and for a moment I thought I’d broken the boy. But a few harried moments later, while Dara looked on, concerned, he returned an answer.
“Five hundred twenty-four ounces,” he finally sighed. “For each sphere. Approximately eighty-one hundred spheres on the first level alone. Which makes the first level worth . . . over four million ounces of gold. Over three million on the second.”
“Each of those spheres is worth enough to purchase a barony,” Banamor realized, his eyes glazed over.
“Do you want a barony?” Olmeg asked, surprised.
“Hells, no!” Banamor spat. “I work for a living. I just provided some context for value.”
“That means you could buy every barony in the Five Duchies, then,” Master Loiko offered.
“This . . . this is more gold than anyone should have,” I said, shaking my head.
“Not to mention the silver. And what are all of those . . . spheres in the upper level?”
“A fortune of fortunes,” Banamor nodded. “More than any man could spend in a hundred lifetimes. Worth enough gold to permanently destabilize the economy.”
“What’s this, over h
ere?” asked Ruderal, his voice filled with excitement and boyish curiosity. He was the only one not obsessed with the unimaginable fortune I’d just acquired. He’d wandered past the pyramid and over to a pile of debris on the other side. I joined him, curious what else the Vundel emissary had done to my land.
It proved to be a mound of crystals, a pile as wide as a house and as tall as my waist at its peak. I recalled the seamage (who Ruderal didn’t want me to pursue, for reasons he would not explain) agreeing that any crystals found during excavation shall be the property of the Spellmonger. The Vundel had adhered to the letter of the agreement. All of the hidden vesicles of crystals within my missing mountain were no doubt now piled up here. While that spared me years – perhaps lifetimes – of prospecting, it presented me with a far more pressing problem.
Indeed, this entire episode was a far more pressing problem. The implications of what had happened were echoing in my mind. Not merely the reaction of my neighbors, and my overlords, to this sudden change in geography, but the importance of what happened in interspecies politics.
I struggled to breathe. “Let’s start getting all of this cleaned up,” I said, hoarsely. “As quickly and as efficiently as possible. I’ll speak to the Karshak about helping,” I added, looking at the spheres of gold and silver that were far too heavy for a man to lug. Even with magic there would be some lugging to do. Spheres are not the most efficient shapes to deal with, on dry land. “Master Loiko, if you will cast some obscuring spells, and Sir Festaran, if you could go fetch some supply rods from the castle, I think we can probably get this cleaned up before anyone notices. And no one breathes a word of this to anyone – I need your assurances, as gentlemen of Sevendor.”
I looked around and made certain to receive a verbal assent from each of them – an attention that I hoped proved a measure of how serious I took this oath. I hope it worked.
The rest of the day was spent in a state of continuous crisis. Troops screened the people back from the site while we worked, far enough back so that they could not see our industry . . . but there was no disguising the sudden change in the skyline. You could peer through the gap clear into Hosendor, now, like a magnificent tapestry. Crowds assembled beyond the barricades to do just that . . . and speculate on what in nine hells the Spellmonger had done now.
I was asking that same question myself.
“Well, this was an unmitigated disaster,” Onranion remarked as he poured wine for us all in my study that evening. The treasure was now entombed deep within the recesses of my mountain castle, guarded by the Karshak. The crystals were stored in a chamber carved near to the Snowflake’s chamber, where it was hoped they wouldn’t do anything . . . unnatural. Once we got organized the work flowed smoothly, and the last of the valuable debris in the giant depression was removed by dusk.
That’s when the impromptu council erupted. I didn’t call it, it just sort of happened. People started showing up in my study and started pouring wine.
“It also made Minalan the richest man in the world,” grumbled Banamor.
“Jealous?” asked Sister Bemia, the castle chaplain. She’d been brought in to help soothe the jittery nerves of the population.
“It does take me out of the running,” Banamor grinned. He mostly had a good-natured approach to his avarice. After a lifetime of hard wandering, he enjoyed being a rich man. He didn’t need to be the richest.
“Min, why in the name of all the gods did you take the Sea Folk’s bargain?” asked Master Olmeg, shaking his head.
“They are not to be refused,” Zagor said, shaking his head. “Even the Fair Ones fear them, and rightly so.”
“Maybe if you were in a coastal fief,” snorted Banamor. “But we’re hundreds of miles from a seaport.”
“The Sea Folk’s reach can extend well beyond the coasts,” I explained. “They made a polite request, at market prices. I had thought that it would be a gradual process, using human labor and industry. A long-term project, not a market day purchase. But had I refused, the next offer was not likely to be as generous,” I sighed.
“That I cannot argue,” Onranion said, sympathetically. “And if you want to get technical, they dramatically overpaid for it. But what the Vundel want, the Vundel get. It was a disaster,” he repeated, “but unavoidable.”
“How in three hells did they even know about it?” asked Sister Bemia.
“Downstream,” Olmeg said, as he lit his long pipe. “The Ketta empties into the Bontal, and thence to the sea. The Sea Folk could taste the change in the outflow into the Shallow Sea, I expect.”
“You are,” I agreed. “That’s what the seamage told me.”
“I’m curious as to what they want with it,” Banamor said. “And if they want more.”
“They just bought about ten percent of my unique inventory,” I complained. “I don’t think I could afford to sell them more. I’ll run out of mountains, eventually.
“But let’s quit the speculation, as entertaining as it is, and focus on the immediate crisis.”
“I don’t see a crisis,” Banamor declared. “I see a two-day journey to Hosendor, Hosly and Kest suddenly cut to a half-day. That’s an opportunity.”
“Only if you can get across that gap, Lord Mayor,” Sire Cei pointed out. “That implies a bridge to be built. That gully will quickly fill, come the next rainy season. It does provide a spectacular defense, however,” he added, his military mind engaged. “Perhaps a wall built on the far side, with a tower protecting the bridge across it . . .”
“Yes, it will be a wonderful moat,” I dismissed, irritated. “And, by all means, let us make building a bridge and fortifying it a priority. Because in case it hasn’t escaped your attention, suddenly missing a mountain is going to attract a lot of other people’s attention. Particularly in the wake of the Magewar. If I’m the kind of mage who can lightly make mountains disappear, well, that makes folks nervous.”
Some of the potentially nervous folks were already here. I’d had to send apologies to the Ducal Envoys, while I dealt with the day’s crisis. I explained I was detained by construction matters. It wasn’t really a lie.
“You mean, the court?” Sire Cei asked.
“I mean Prince Tavard, in particular,” I nodded. “He’s already not an admirer of mine. He’s feeling complacent and powerful, with his little sister locked away. While this isn’t a direct threat to his rule, he’s going to feel compelled to do something if it becomes a problem. We have to prepare for that. Any suggestions?” I asked, a bit desperately.
We did a surprisingly good job hammering together a strategy that evening. The Karshak would immediately devote their resources to building a bridge and wall, while sketching up plans for a defensive emplacement to guard the new moat. It could be made passable by wagon within weeks, they assured me. The hard defenses would take much longer, but with Master Aeratas’ Tera Alon encamped just to the northeast of the gap, there was little danger in surprise attack.
That only left a thousand other majorly important details unaccounted for.
What would I do with that much gold, for instance? Or that much magical coral? What were those other spheres made from? And what would I do with that many unique crystals, touched by snowstone and bearing the possibility of new potencies?
It was enough to inspire a man to drink, which is just what I did that night. Two small bottles of local spirits. Ruderal finally poured me into the cot in my workshop, determining I was too far gone by that late hour to make it across the yard to my hall. The next morning, hung over and feeling wretched, the magnitude of my problems was still there.
It was enough to make a man doubt the efficiency of drink.
The next morning, I made meeting with the Ducal Envoy a top priority, inviting Sire Dasuos and his aid, Lord Ustal, at my personal hall, just outside of the castle. Putting him off even a day was problematic. But I figured an excellent breakfast on the balcony of my hall, overlooking my beautiful little vale, would be a good place to make up for th
e slight.
I wore a new outfit for the occasion, a long, knee-length tunic with wide sleeves in Sevendor Green, with a surcoat resembling the style the Riverlords favored. Only I had the collar cut in Remeran fashion, in a deep V, revealing the amulet in which I carried my loaner witchstone. There was an enchantment on the exterior that emitted a pale green glow, but that was merely for effect.
“Sire Dasuos! Wonderful to see you again!” I called to him as my valet, Staksid, let him up from the door. The young knight was dressed in a fine cotton surcoat over his expensive mail. He wore an irritated expression on his clean-shaven face, one mirrored by the smaller man behind him.
“Spellmonger!” he called, loudly, as he mounted the stairs. Indeed, Sire Dasuos said just about everything loudly. It was easily his most distinguishable characteristic. “What is the meaning of keeping us waiting an entire day after our arrival?”
“My apologies, my lord,” I said, soothingly. “I had urgent business to attend to – wizard business,” I added, without further elaboration. Hiding the sudden disappearance of a mountain just outside your door counts as “wizard business”. “I trust your journey was pleasant?”
“Enough,” he conceded. “And I cannot believe that the same vagabond mage who came to Wilderhall in borrowed clothes five years ago has produced all of this,” he added, grudgingly. “Truly, I underestimated you.”
“You would be neither the first nor the last, let us hope,” I said, as I ushered them to their chairs. Two Tal Alon maids, Sunflower and Tulip, served ale and food, respectively. Their small hands had been meticulously manicured, and the hair on their hands and wrists had been covered by a cloth sleeve. They even wore the Tal Alon equivalent of wimples, over their sturdy dresses.
Necromancer: Book Ten Of The Spellmonger Series Page 14