Court Wizard (Spellmonger Series: Book 8)

by Terry Mancour

  She was asleep the moment her eyelids closed.

  *

  *

  *

  When she finally awoke, several hours later, darkness was already beginning to set. Pentandra’s heart started racing as she remembered the attack, and she nearly flew downstairs to see what had transpired while she napped.

  “Things have been quiet,” Terleman told her, tiredly. “After you went to sleep, it was mostly coordinating troops to interpose themselves between vulnerable villages and the goblins. The undead were cleared from Traveler’s Tower, and the Duke is leading a relief expedition to Salik Tower.”

  “Is Carmella in danger?” she asked, concerned. Terleman chuckled in response.

  “No, actually, the gurvani haven’t breeched the walls. She’s using the opportunity to test out some of her crew’s siege engines, though,” he explained. “Whatever goblin captain is in charge of the attack is tenacious, I’ll hand them that. From the dispatches it sounds like every time he gets within a hundred feet of her walls, he retreats with another dozen casualties. But they are getting annoying, so Anguin is riding to relieve them.”

  “What about Salgo?”

  “Leading three hundred 3rd Commandos up the road toward Tudry, as of noon,” he supplied. “Along the way they’re planning on relieving an Iron Band depot under siege.”

  Pentandra considered. “So, in your professional opinion, what was their goal?”

  Terleman looked thoughtful. Of all of the warmagi she knew, he was the one who approached his art with the passion and dedication that she devoted to her own studies. She respected his opinion about warmagic and warfare more than even Minalan’s.

  “Honestly? I haven’t the faintest idea. It makes no sense, strategically speaking, and not much sense tactically speaking. Look at the places they’ve attacked: Reeveshaven, Miller’s Mount, Foranz, Ostel, Yellin – apart from the pele towers, they haven’t attacked anything worth having,” he said, disgustedly. “If I had to guess, I’d say this was merely a terror raid. The gurvani letting off steam, like the Pearwoods tribes do when they raid lowlanders. Unless there is some deeper purpose to this that I can’t see, that seems to be the best explanation.”

  Pentandra sighed. That was both good news and bad news. Good news that Alshar wasn’t being overwhelmed by the gurvani, bad news that their effort seemed to make no sense. “Blowing off steam?”

  “Well, we just don’t know enough about gurvani internal politics,” conceded the warmage, “but if I had to guess I’d say that the new influence of Korbal is having a transformational effect on the goblins. This may have been a way of working out some of the friction that results, kind of like when Castal and Remere went to war twenty years ago to keep a couple of counties from getting too cozy. Which means this war is spoiled, now,” he said, with good-natured disgust. That took Pentandra by surprise.

  “Spoiled? How?”

  “Because when it started, it was an invasion, purely genocidal war. Very straight-forward. Delightfully free of politics. Now we not only have politics on this side of the battle, but we have it on theirs. And politics always screws up war. That’s why Luin and Duin don’t get along,” he added, philosophically.

  Pentandra was tempted to explain, upon the strength of her recent experience, a multitude of other reasons why the god of War and Battle might not be congenial with the god of Law and Reason, but she held her tongue. If the other gods were anything like Ishi, she didn’t want to invoke them just on the off chance they might manifest.

  “That’s a fascinating perspective,” she nodded. “I suppose war without politics does sound like a good thing to a warrior—”

  “It would be a bloody paradise,” Terleman assured.

  “But the fact is, war is the alternative to politics,” she lectured. “It’s just politics with swords.”

  “But ever so much more satisfying,” he mused. “Say, do you think Anguin would have a position open for an advisor?” he asked, suddenly. “Not that I want to take your spot, of course –I’d rather have a tooth pulled – but I’m sort of between postings right now,” he admitted, gloomily.

  “Are you broke?” she asked, surprised.

  “Me? Good gods, no!” Terleman laughed. “I’ve got more money than I could spend in two lifetimes. I’m just bored. I bought a little estate in Gilmora, and figured I’d be happy puttering around there, but . . . well, let’s just say I wasn’t designed by the gods for estate administration,” he said, blushing a little.

  “I can’t promise anything, but Anguin is making a point to reach out and recruit new warmagi to settle the eastern reaches,” she volunteered. “We’ve been kicking around the idea of building a real fortress out there, something that could distract any further incursions from the Penumbra. If last night taught me anything,” she decided, “it’s the merits of that argument. The gurvani wouldn’t have come near the pele towers if there were a few cavalry regiments in a castle on the other side of the hills,” she proposed.

  “Would Carmella be involved in that?”

  “She is one of the leading warmagi of the region,” Pentandra answered, dryly. “And the head of the Hesian Order.”

  “Then count me in!” Terleman said, enthusiastically. “It’s either that or go play mercenary in Castali or Remeran dynastic wars. Talk about boring . . . ”

  “That certainly sounds more lucrative,” Pentandra pointed out.

  “Yeah, but money isn’t the problem,” Terleman replied. “There are too many rules. Kill that guy. Don’t kill this guy. Kill that guy’s family, but not that brother. It gets confusing. It’s easier when everything small, black and furry is a target. Less room for complications.”

  “What about undead?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve faced them before. The Mad Mage used them abundantly, in the last days before the assault on his palace,” he reminded her. “Min and Sandy and I used to have to hack our way through them just getting home from patrol. They’re tough, but they’re slow and stupid. Like fighting a really determined cow. They don’t scare me.”

  Pentandra considered. She really wanted to share the news of the Nemovorti with Terleman, but she worried he would share it with Minalan – and the Spellmonger had enough on his plate as it was. She didn’t know the warmage well, but Terleman was universally respected among his colleagues, and had a reputation for reliability and trustworthiness she wanted to take advantage of.

  “If I make a recommendation to Anguin about you, can I invoke your discretion about something?”

  That caught his attention. “Uh, sure! What’s on your mind?”

  “There have been some recent incursions of undead into Alshar,” she explained, slowly. “Not the simple and stupid variety, either. One of Korbal’s lieutenants – his herald, if he is to be believed – infiltrated Vorone a few weeks ago. Arborn and I and . . . some other agents managed to drive it off, but before it went we learned that we’ll likely be facing a lot more of these undead – they call themselves Nemovorti – before long.”

  “Undead? Smart undead?” The big warmage looked worried, as he stroked his clean-shaven chin.

  “Well, smart enough to talk. And use magic,” she added.

  Terleman frowned. “Magic? Oh, that’s not good. That’s not good at all! It’s bad enough when they’re slow and stupid . . .”

  “Well, these aren’t. Nor are they merely human corpses raised and commanded. They are autonomous, and they have tremendous power.”

  “Where the hells did they come from? It sounds like Sheruel is getting creative.”

  “Not really – they’re allies, not vassals, apparently. Minions of Korbal the Demon God. They appear to be ancient Alka Alon souls whose spirits were captured by Korbal, before he was entombed, and they shared his fate. And they appear to have some living Alka Alon assistance, too,” she added. “If they are giving aid to the gurvani, we have a problem. If they’re leading the gurvani, we have a huge problem. They aren’t easy to kill, either. It took A
rborn and an entire squad of Kasari to decapitate one of them. And it took a goddess getting really pissed off to banish another.”

  “A . . . goddess?” Terleman asked, skeptically. “Ishi’s tits, Pen, what the hells have you been doing here?”

  “Long story,” she said, shaking her head. “But at the end of it, we’re going to be playing a much tighter game up here in Alshar, now. This raid has clinched it. This Nemovorti is subtle, devious and powerful. He’s also in the body of an incredibly muscular Wilderlord, minus the mustache, and can pass at a distance as human. He and his kin were tracking something – someone – here to Vorone, but didn’t find them. I doubt they’ve stopped looking. If what the abomination said was true, then there are going to be a lot more of the active on the field, too.

  “But for a variety of reasons, I don’t want to alarm Minalan about that, yet. He’s got a lot on his mind.”

  “You’re telling me!” Terleman snorted. “For the last year he’s been like a mopey boy, boy, not the half-decent warmage I knew I Farise. I thought it was just marriage and property getting to him, but when I saw him at the Conclave, I knew there was more to it than that.”

  “There’s a lot going on with him right now,” she agreed. “I’d rather not make this his problem until we need to.”

  “Agreed. But at what point do you think he should know?”

  “When we have to tell him,” she shrugged. “To quote the Spellmonger, ‘I don’t know, I’m making this up as I go along!’.”

  “Well, it’s not like we’re not watching out for them, now. If we need him, we can call him. Hells, we can call any of the High Magi who have Seven Stones, now, and that’s a lot of powerful friends to have. Besides, there isn’t much more Minalan could do about it than the rest of us could. Don’t worry, I can keep it quiet. Especially if it’s part of my job,” he added with a wink.

  Pentandra felt relief at securing the big man’s concession. The last thing she needed was Minalan thinking he needed to come to Alshar to save her. With Terleman on her side here, Min wouldn’t have any reason to think she needed help. And she had no compunctions about recommending him for a post to the Duke. He had taken over her responsibilities as head of the military Magical Corps better than she ever could.

  “Oh, I meant to mention,” he added, “while you were asleep some non-military messages came through the Mirror array. I saw one that might interest you. Your old friend Isily and her dotard husband are apparently delivered of a baby boy. Mother and child are doing fine at home in Greenflower.”

  Suddenly so much made sense about Minalan and his moods that she felt her world wobble a little as all the details clicked into place.

  Of course she’d heard about Isily’s pregnancy. That was the sort of mundane gossip about the nobility that everyone was interested in. But despite the novelty of a magelord and lady producing an heir to a mageland, there wasn’t much else of interest in it.

  Except when Pentandra’s mind went to work on the problem, everything made perfect sense . . . if you assumed that Minalan, not Dunselen, was the father of Isily’s child. If you postulated that, then everything – his attitude, his fearful demeanor, his melancholia – all of it made sense in that perspective. It explained his reluctance to cause political waves, his insular attitude of late, and even his nervousness at the Conclave.

  Pentandra was already aware of the first child – a daughter – that Isily had contrived to have from Minalan. To compound her betrayal by forcing him to sire a second child, when he was well-established and she was newlywed, not only made Pentandra’s soul burn in bright disgust for her former friend, it gave her new sympathy for Minalan.

  She started to do the math in her head. That would place it around last autumn . . . about the same time as the Magic Fair in Sevendor. Pentandra had been too busy with the novelty of her new husband and the prospect of changing positions that she hadn’t really been paying much attention, but of course she remembered seeing Isily there. And Minalan.

  And that’s about when Minalan’s melancholy began.

  The more she thought about it, the more astute guesses she could make. Such as Ishi’s involvement – how could the sex goddess fail to notice such an important infidelity? Despite her claim to being a goddess of “love”, Ishi’s dedication was to the erotic moment, not the long-term consequences of the act. Or to commitment. Hells, Ishi hated commitment. That was Trygg’s domain. Ishi was all about passion and immediacy.

  Suddenly Pentandra became that much more pissed off with her goddess. Regardless of her sphere, to brazenly manipulate her friend like that . . . that violated nearly every rule of sophisticated sexual ethics. She could just imagine Ishi hovering to the side, cheering on Minalan as he betrayed his wife with his former mistress.

  Bitch!

  “That . . . oh, gods,” she shuddered. “That explains a lot. Hells, that explains everything!”

  Terleman didn’t understand. Of course, she didn’t expect him to.

  “What does? What the hells are you talking about, Penny?” he demanded.

  “Just putting the pieces together,” she admitted. “Be happy you hate politics, my friend. Even those of us who do play that horrific game have a hard time facing the results. Minalan is going to need us – need us all – before long, I fear, and depending on what he does, it may make this unfortunate raid look like a children’s picnic in comparison!”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The Magewar

  The palace was surprisingly quiet when she finally used the Alkan Ways to arrive back in the crypt, despite its horrific associations, long past midnight. She hurried through the town as quickly as she could, thankful she did not meet any of Vorone’s indigent nightlife. Even though she had Everkeen with her, ready to strike at need, she did not have the time. The Wilderlands were burning, and she had to see to their defense. By the time she came to alert guards at the palace gate, her cloth slippers were nearly destroyed and she was out of breath.

  Most of the court was asleep, blissfully unaware of the scattered attacks on settlements throughout the Wilderlands. Only her office and Count Salgo’s seemed to have any measure of activity around them, with magelights beaming from the former and tapers flickering from the latter. But there was little activity elsewhere at this hour.

  Terleman was already sitting in the examination room, his witchstone on the table among dozens of slips of parchment as he was trying to construct what was happening on an old map of the region Pentandra had found in her office when she moved in. Three other warmagi were also assisting, she saw, two by scrying and scribbling down their results, one by contacting High Magi mind-to-mind to coordinate a strong defense. As all four men were contributing information, they had selected a parchment model to a magemap.

  She glanced at the thing as she came in, long enough to notice the widespread nature of the attack against various points in the north . . . and, perhaps more telling, the points which were not being attacked.

  When Pentandra summoned Everkeen to assist, she was amazed as the baculus took her desire to understand the attack and manifested an impressive magemap filled with the positions on the parchment map on the table. Both knots of known enemies and concentrations of allies were displayed on the magical representation, and as she viewed the result with magesight she noted something else: no settlement large enough to mount an effective response was attacked.

  Tudry, Megelin, some of the other baronial castles left in the north had all been spared the raid. Plenty of large villages or small towns had been hit, as had several pele towers and older manors now held by the Iron Band, but nothing that would change their strategic disposition in the north.

  When Everkeen had provided as comprehensive assessment of the situation as it could, it surprised Pentandra even further when it began making suggestions about how to respond to the incursions.

  In moments she began suggesting troop dispositions to Terleman as she figured out which points were actually in danger, and whic
h were being used as feints. Sending a platoon of Tudry infantry to the village of Gael, for instance, or a contingent of mounted Iron Band troopers against a squadron of Fell Hound-mounted gurvani who were holding a ford against them.

  But just as soon as she’d determined one solution to a problem, new information would arrive that forced her to change her plans. Goblin units appeared and disappeared across the map, seemingly by magic . . . when usually it was an error in observation at fault. Using the adepts’ scrying reports and cross-referencing them with eye-witness accounts being forwarded by High Magi across the Wilderlands kept her from sending their limited forces chasing shadows.

  And Everkeen helped her keep up with the diverse field reports and troop dispositions better than any map. At one point she went down to the Mirror array herself to send explicit instructions to Tudry, when all the High Magi there had been deployed. But her quick action led to a decisive victory at a nearby village that Everkeen suggested was the real target of the goblins. That was but one of many close calls that evening.

  By dawn’s twilight it was clear that the goblins had predicated their attacks on the idea that the High Magi would be gone. If they were merely testing defenses, Terleman reasoned, then they’d learned a valuable lesson: Alshari magi were not to be trifled with.

  The field report of Azar’s skirmish with a legion of hobgoblins bore this out when he determined that not one in a hundred had escaped his arcane wrath. It helped that his old comrade Baron Wenek, one of the warmagi who specialized in destructive combat magic, was riding with him and was able to unleash some spectacularly deadly spells; but even when the relatively restrained warmagi, like Bendonal the Outlaw or Sandoval, encountered the foe they were likewise victorious.

  “It was like they were trying to lose on purpose,” Pentandra said, an hour into the new day, wiping the sleep from her eyes. She was about to ask Alurra for another cup of strong tea, but she saw her exhausted apprentice was asleep in a corner, huddled against her maid, her crow between them with its beak under its wing. A dog she didn’t recognize was sprawled under their skirts.