She nodded, and thankfully my argumentative sister didn’t argue for once. She got the kids out efficiently, making them link hands, wave good-bye to the snowflake and Alya, and she got the hells out. I guess I just had to be a baron and the foremost wizard of my age to get her to listen to me.
When they were all safely down the hall, and it was just me and Master Ulin, I studied both my enrapt wife and my obsessed magical artefact. Insight gave me a much better understanding of what was going on . . . not that it soothed my anxiety much. Alya was essentially exploring the Snowflake, her consciousness sent deep within its recesses.
The Magolith, on the other hand, was studiously ignoring my commands. The Handmaiden, within, was examining the Snowflake and – presumably – its enneagram.
I tried to contact the ancient paraclete inside my magical sphere and was surprised to find myself rebuffed and ignored. A second attempt at last got the Handmaiden’s attention, at least a little of it. But not enough to command her. Indeed, she sent me a query, instead. Not words, or even emotions, but a simple request to confirm her findings.
Before I could find some way to respond to her, the Handmaiden reached out a tendril of control and seized control of Insight for a few moments, much to my surprise. I’m not used to my arcane tools using each other like that. For a brief moment there was a kind of arcane struggle, but the Handmaiden was victorious. It used Insight’s powerful thaumaturgical spells to answer her own question, before returning it to my control.
“Uh oh,” I whispered, when I realized what just happened. The Handmaiden had recognized the shade of the Celestial Mother inside the Snowflake.
The one creature it was designed to serve above all others.
Before I could say another word or utter a spell, the Magolith embedded itself into the center of the Snowflake. There was a profound flash that send a wave of raw power in every direction, making the mountain itself throb. When the union was complete, there was a new pattern of complexity being expressed in the structure of the Snowflake’s constant transformation, emanating from the green-globed center of the artefact.
The Centerpoint and the Snowflake were one, again. The Handmaiden could once again tend to her Celestial Mother.
And my wife was caught in the middle of all of that.
Almost immediately after the Magolith left my control and the Handmaiden took over, a powerful stream of arcane power began flowing from it . . . and into Alya.
“Oh shit!” I moaned, helpless to intervene. Master Ulin looked stricken.
“What’s happening?” the master enchanter asked.
“I have no idea! I was just . . . and then she just . . . and then . . . I have no idea!” I repeated, frustrated. Insight was little help – apart from telling me that the stream was a highly focused thaumaturgical working, and giving me some lovely figures about the rate of transformation and the intensity of the etheric wave, it could tell me nothing.
Alya, at least, did not seem to be suffering. Insight told me that she was healthy, hale, and surprisingly calm. Her mind was deeply settled. I had no idea how that was happening. Alya shouldn’t have been able to contend with thaumaturgic forces of that magnitude, not without rajira. Regardless of the spectra of energy, it should have fried her brain out on the spot.
She didn’t even blink. Indeed, her eyes stared at the Snowflake and the Magolith unblinking as the power poured through her every pore. She continued to breathe, her heart continued to beat, and her brain was . . . well, it wasn’t fried.
I just had no idea how that was.
“Don’t interfere!” Master Ulin insisted, putting a restraining hand on my shoulder when I started to examine how to detach the two. “I know you want to, Minalan, but . . . well, I’ve been working around this thing day and night. It means no harm. And in her current state, breaking the connection could be deadly. Ishi’s tits, I’ve never seen anyone bear that much power! Even you! And you’re one sick son-of-a bitch!” he said, admiringly.
“I’m going to summon Lilastien,” I decided, after studying the matter for five or ten minutes without learning anything more useful. “She can monitor Alya. She’s been using the Handmaiden to re-model Alya’s enneagram. She’ll know better than I what is dangerous.
“You summon Onranion,” I ordered Ulin. “I want him to monitor the . . . whatever this is,” I said, referring to the Snowflake. It was changing a lot faster, now, and the centerpoint at the congress of its six sides was pulsing and . . . transforming the giant crystal in some subtle and more complex ways. Not any way I can describe. It was still constantly changing. It was just . . . changing differently, now.
“Master,” Ruderal said, quietly, “you cannot stay here all night. You’re tired, inside and out. Whatever is happening to Alya, it isn’t . . . it isn’t hurting her,” he said, finally settling on a word. “I’ll watch her, I promise. Inside and out. You go get some rest before you fall over again,” he suggested, gently.
“The lad’s right, Min,” UIin nodded. “The dragon is dead, your wife is alive, and the castle will be here another day. Time for the Spellmonger to get some rest.”
I tried to argue, but couldn’t. The yawn got in the way.
“You win,” I sighed, defeated. “I’ll go lay down. But not until I make sure everything is well in hand.”
“If it isn’t, then you don’t know your own folk,” Ulin chuckled. “Don’t worry, Min. If you killed the dragon, then the rest of us can manage to clean up.”
The next few days passed like a blur.
For three days Lilastien, Ulin, Onranion and Ruderal took turns watching Alya. Her bodily functions had slowed to a crawl, but Lilastien assured me she was still perfectly healthy.
The consensus between the four seemed to be that the Handmaiden was repairing both the Celestial Mother of the Snowflake and Alya, at the same time. No one was certain how or why it was doing it, but they were pretty sure it would be a Very Bad Thing to interfere with the process.
Of course that didn’t make me worry one bit. Really.
Thankfully, I had other challenges to occupy my time. The Magical Fair, interrupted by sudden dragon attack, was closed up prematurely. Instead of running the Spellmonger’s Trial as planned, I held a brief court and awarded three shards of irionite to wizards who’d displayed great courage, selflessness, and heroics during the attack and its aftermath.
No one complained. A dragon and a few score wyverns were far more challenging than whatever spells I could come up with. No feast of champions, no grand fetes by the various magical orders.
But with all the funerals we had to attend, there really wasn’t much time. More than three hundred people died during the attack. Some were burned alive, some were killed by wyverns or other hazards in the battle. A few had perished fighting the Nemovorti directly. The clergy of the town held a mass ceremony, and Briga honored their sacrifice by extending the Everfire more than sixty feet high during the rite. Some bodies were loaded on the carts of the Silent Brothers, those monks who specialized in transporting the dead. More were buried in the common temple plots.
Part of my job as Baron and host of the Fair meant consoling (and compensating) the survivors and their loved ones. I had to meet with families, friends, and business partners of the deceased. As the responsible party at the fair, I had certain legal and moral obligations to those who died there.
Likewise, I had a debt to my vassals. They hadn’t done anything to warrant a dragon attack. They’d taken up arms and defended the domain valiantly. And they had suffered egregiously. Many parts of Sevendor had, as well.
Brestal was hit particularly badly in the attack. The village was a smoking ruin, now, with but one home in three still standing intact. The fields had scorched just days before the final harvest, and the young fruit and nut trees we’d planted just a few years before were blackened sticks, now.
Brestal Tower was no more. The roof and the top story was burnt and melted to the point where even the basalt rock behind
the tower was blasted.
Nearby Hollyburrow lost two satellite burrows, twelve dead in all, who perished when a stray blast of fire torched the woven wooden balls they lived in. Olmeg the Green was beside himself, both for the trees and the loss of his Tal Alon subjects.
The Diketower was damaged, as were parts of Boval Village, across the road from the gateway fortress. Boval Hall, the inn, and two large houses had seen both collateral fire damage and the insult of wyverns landing and attacking the people. The people defended themselves fiercely, and with the help of Zagor and a couple of visiting enchanters staying at the inn, they put an end to them and their gruesome riders. Sire Cei’s yeoman, Rollo, had grabbed an axe off the wall of the hall and rushed out to fight a wyvern, cleaving its neck in two with one mighty blow.
His neighbor, Yeoman Vano of Brestal, was just as valiant, leading a band of his villagers through the burning village against a mounted wyvern and its Nemovort. Nine Brestali perished in the battle, and Vano took a nasty wound, but when they were done they’d pulled the fell rider off his scaly mount and beaten him back to the Necromancer’s halls. The Nemovort may have been looking for magi, but he found the blunt end of a Sevendori mallet.
There was other damage. Lesgaethael would have to be almost entirely rebuilt, Master Guri reported, as the foundations had been heated so hot he could not guarantee their stability. But the Waypoint there was now sealed off, and guarded by both Alkan magic and warmagi. Lady Varen and her staff moved to the Tera Alon encampment in Hosendor until work could be complete.
Sevendor Town, thankfully, had only taken light damage. The tiled roof of the bouleuterion’s workshop was burnt, though spells kept the rest of the structure from igniting. A few of the spires atop residences of prominent wizards in town had sheared off in the fight, smashed by flailing wings or the odd spell. A couple of fires on residential rooftops were far more damaging. Wyvern attacks had occurred all over town, requiring the town watch, fairgoers, and townsmen to see to their defense. Dozens had perished in the battles.
Then there was the former millhouse and bathhouse on the edge of the millpond – now both destroyed by the flailing beast. As well as the fifty-tons of iced dragon in the middle of our water supply. And the score of dead giant wyvern corpses, as well as a few rotting Nemovorti bodies. Someone had to clean that up.
Part of my job was to congratulate the living. Dara’s Sky Riders had performed magnificently, after their terrible defeat at Olum Seheri. I lavished them with praise, rewards, and acclaim, and (at least partially) redeemed myself in Dara’s eyes.
I gave a rousing speech praising the valor of the brave warmagi visiting the fair who’d pitched in with the defense, and praised even more the common folk who’d come to Sevendor’s defense in her need. It’s one thing to leap on the back of a wyvern to slash its throat when you’re armored, armed, and used to that sort of thing. It’s quite another when you’re a barber or an out-of-work plowman.
The Riverlords, the militia, the town guards and fairwardens who’d acted to evacuate the fairgrounds when the first sign of trouble appeared, all were praised and rewarded. I gave away silver like it was water, and never regretted a coin. My people performed admirably. They saved lives even as they risked their own.
Banamor got a lot of credit, both from me and from the people at large. He’d kept his fairwardens organized and orderly when it was clear people were in danger. Despite his reputation for loving gold, he’d sacrificed plenty when he put the welfare of the fair folk in front of his own fortune.
Our neighbors were graciously helpful. Baron Arathanial sent monks and bandages, as did my vassals and my friend Sire Sigalan. Trestendor faithfully came to our aid with carts and horses to help move the wounded, and work-crews to help clear away the burnt timbers and ashes. The baronial domains around Sevendor were likewise quick to respond to the aftermath of the crisis. Wagons rolled through all three entryways to the domain for days.
I was proudest of my own household. Apart from Dara, Ruderal and Sire Cei each won acclaim, the former for his work with the water elemental and the latter for dueling a Nemovort who was determined to interrupt the bouleuterion – no doubt to collect the enchanters within for use as hosts.
Sire Cei was coming from the castle on his charger, then, and tarried to butcher both reptile and rider in a heroic display of arcane chivalry. The enchanters, for their part, had taken up station on the roof of the ramshackle Enchanters Guild and cast spells against fire, as well as discharging wands and staves they were working on. You don’t have to be a warmage to mumble a mnemonic and unleash arcane death. Not if you were the wizard who placed the spell in the first place.
The clergy had been as valiant in the aftermath and recovery as the defenders had been during the attack. Holy Hill sent a score of nurses to assist the wounded, and every temple on the Street of Temples contributed space as make-shift hospitals. Some of the monks and nuns eschewed services entirely until the emergency was past.
I made a point of visiting each of them and praising their efforts, as well as dropping generous donations into the hands of the high clergy. Nothing says “thank you” like an unexpected budgetary surplus.
I was involved with all of it. But my mind was rarely on what I was doing, even when I was embracing a sobbing widow upon news of her husband’s death, or a sole daughter who found out one of the hopelessly charred corpses in the Temple of Trygg was her father.
My mind was in the mountain, thinking of Alya, and whatever the Handmaiden was doing with her.
If there is one constant distraction in the feudal universe, however, it’s politics. Sevendor had been only lightly damaged, compared to the pounding the capital took that day.
Where we lost but three hundred, Castabriel lost over seven thousand – including the core of the ducal government, when the Spire of Donrard fell. The court had just officially returned from its usual summer sojourn in Wilderhall, and while Count Moran and a few other officials were at the Curia, the rest of the government was settling in for the autumn seasonal business.
They were all dead, now. Those few who’d enjoyed the fortune of errands outside of the palace during the attack were now running what little government there was in Castal. The city was under military law, with Count Moran and Viscount Poromar, the acting Minister of War, attempting to maintain order while the city recovered from the disaster. Their Highnesses had withdrawn in grief back to Wilderhall, after the funeral.
That had been a somber affair, by report. The clergy of the city had tried to bring solace to the people . . . but when Prince Tavard spoke, he thundered against the darkness in the west until he had the vast crowd screaming in defiance and anger. A population that had suffered so grievously was fertile ground for such rage.
Entire blocks had burned under the dragon’s fire. The conflagration had quickly spread across the closely-packed rooftops of the city until wards blocks away from the attack were ablaze. And the fire spread quickly. Hundreds of homes had burned, and scores more had been devastated by the dragon. That was in addition to the great Donrard’s Spire falling, its flaming expanse crushing the sprawling palace below. The noble’s quarter around it was quickly engulfed, too. Castabriel, apparently, isn’t as rigorous about fire regulation spells as Sevendor.
The ground attack by the undead wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. Korbal hadn’t done his homework well, for one thing; Castabriel has nearly a half-million people in it, and probably three hundred magi at any one time. Sending a few Nemovorti and some draugen to fight their way through that was just foolish. Between the city guards and Dranus’ warmagi, the last of the undead were destroyed before the last fire was extinguished.
The combination of the two assaults had damaged the spirit of the City of Ten Thousand Lights. When the living dead roam your streets and the town is on fire, it has an effect on the psyche of the population. It was compounded by the loss in the Royal Family. The death of the infant Prince Heir had devastated the town that had celeb
rated his birth and name-day so recently. What was left of the court was officially and unofficially in mourning. While the Princess managed to hang on to her pregnancy, she took to her bed, nearly catatonic over her loss, for a week before she was moved to Wilderhall.
Tavard, meanwhile, stalked around the charred ruins of his palace and screamed orders, his anger and rage and hopeless desire to re-establish control of his world making him more and more abusive. Rumor was that he screamed at Count Moran for three hours about the attack, in closed chambers. He swore he’d execute his Minister of War – a man already in political trouble, after the disastrous Maidenspool Adventure – if the man hadn’t been in the spire when it toppled. His haggard deputy, Viscount Poromar, was now the unfortunate object of Tavard’s ire.
But only because I wasn’t around.
I don’t know how or why, but Tavard really did blame me for his misfortunes. Despite all argument and evidence to the contrary, apparently, he saw the dragon attack and the assault on the royal palace as being instigated by me. Though he was my liege, he did not address his concerns to me directly, he bellowed them during his small court sessions and screamed them at night in drunken rages. His wishes and comportment came back to me in a dozen quiet ways. I made a point to give Tavard a wide berth for a while.
Anguin, on the other hand, had gained considerable esteem among the upper nobility, both for his brave confrontation of Korbal’s emissary, and for his insistence on leading the Curia and passing the King’s proposal in emergency session, after the attack.
Though more than a dozen counts were missing, the rest of the upper nobility now saw the reason behind a more unified defense. They were galvanized by the attack. No one who’d seen the glowing red eyes of the draugen, or witnessed the assault on Castabriel from afar, could deny the Kingdom was now at war. If the King needed coin for defense, those whose office was charged with that duty would eagerly comply.
King Rard, himself, was nearly as grief-stricken over the loss of his grandson as Tavard and Armandra were. Queen Grendine seemed to age ten years overnight. I attended the funeral – it was a state event. As a member of the Royal Court I was obligated to go. But neither Rard nor Tavard approached me at the ceremony or the reception after, so I left it alone.
Necromancer: Book Ten Of The Spellmonger Series Page 112