The Bard of Sorcery

by Gerard Houarner

  THE BARD OF SORCERY

  By Gerard Houarner

  A Mystique Press Production

  Mystique Press is an imprint of Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition Copyright 2011 Gerard Houarner

  Copy-Edited by Kurt Criscione

  Cover art courtesy of:

  ashensorrow.deviantart.com

  fantasystock.deviantart.com

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  Gerard Houarner fell to Earth in the fifties and is a product of the NYC school system and the City College of New York, where he studied writing under Joseph Heller and Joel Oppenheimer and crashed hallucinogenic William Burroughs seminars back in the day. He went on to earn a couple of master’s degrees in psychology from Columbia University so he could earn a living. He’s worked in Hell’s Kitchen, on the Lower East Side at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, and in the Bronx at the start of the crack epidemic before settling into a quiet, contemplative and genteel career as an uncivil servant at a psychiatric hospital.

  His publishing career includes four novels – a three book series about Max, a supernatural assassin, and a fantasy – and over 280 short stories, with over 50 earning Honorable Mentions in various editions of St. Martin’s Press’ Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and Best Horror of the Year anthologies, with dozens gathered into four collections.

  He has edited and co-edited three anthologies, and serves as Fiction Editor for Space and Time Magazine.

  For the latest news, visit www.gerardhouarner.com or www.facebook.com/gerardhouarner.

  He continues to write whenever he can, mostly at night, about the dark.

  Book List

  Novels and Novellas

  In the Country of Dreaming Caravans

  Inside the Works (with Tom Piccirilli and Edward Lee)

  The Bard of Sorcery

  The Max Series

  A Blood of Killers

  Waiting for Mister Cool

  The Beast That Was Max (Resurrection Cycle, Book 1)

  Road to Hell (Resurrection Cycle, Book 2)

  Road From Hell (Resurrection Cycle, Book 3)

  Short Story Collections

  Black Orchids from Aum

  I Love You and There Is Nothing You Can Do About It

  Painfreak

  The Oz Suite

  Visions Through a Shattered Lens

  DISCOVER CROSSROAD PRESS

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  Chapter 1

  Tralane lay among the tall grasses of the Ousho Plains, staring up at the cloudless sky. The bright yellow sun lay low on the eastern horizon. From the newborn sun ran the breath of a breeze that made the plain's grass undulate like a sea of green. Tralane felt the coolness of the morning air on his naked chest as he gazed up at the clean blue slate that had so recently borne the passage of two moons—the Wanderer, and the smaller, swifter Star Speaker—savoring the freedom of the moment and indulging himself in the luxury of a lack of responsibilities. He had been running for almost two months, having left the company of his most recent acquaintances for dead on a hopelessly lost battlefield. He was content to remain where he was, resting and contemplating nothingness.

  His confidence was shaken, however, when a shadow fell across him. His sense of security and peace of mind were irrevocably shattered by a rush of fear when a lance point pricked his throat.

  "Who are you?" asked the armored figure astride the heavy, gray-and blue-scaled kruushka suddenly filling his view. The voice was even and emotionless, and there was a hollow ring to it. The warrior was completely covered with mail and plating, his face hidden behind his helmet's lowered visor. It was the armor of the warriors Tralane had been watching and avoiding during his flight across the Ousho Plains, the armor of the warriors who had broken two battling armies further north.

  "My name is Tralane," he answered, recovering from his initial shock and trying to sound amiable, "a bard and former archer in the service of King Peayn's army, until he so incompetently defended the pass through the Rechochoake Mountains and thus lost his petty kingdom." Tralane paused, watching how well his feigned ignorance of affairs in the north was being accepted. He assumed a casual air and was careful to modulate his voice to appear more self-confident than he felt. "And you, good sir?"

  The armored figure was silent and still, considering Tralane's words. The bard found it difficult to remain comfortable lying on the ground with a weapon at his throat, but he did not dare move.

  "I know of no king named Peayn," the mysterious warrior snapped suddenly. “But there was a fight in the north. What was the land he ruled?"

  "Why, it was Gynnuland that Peayn ruled," Tralane asserted. "It was situated near Harthror, a country of oafs led by that usurious clown of a king, Uthreten. But Gynnuland is now a part of Harthror, if I know my kings well enough." And, if he knew the ways of battle well enough, Tralane was certain neither kings nor their domains remained intact.

  The armored warriors had sliced through the opposing armies and slaughtered everyone before them. They had appeared suddenly and had seemed invulnerable to sword edge and arrow point. It was then that Tralane had decided he’d had enough of the north and had staged a one-man retreat to the south, to where he had supposed he might find safety and a modest income as storyteller in some small colony.

  But all he had found were bands of armored warriors. He had tried to evade them, heading further east where their number seemed to diminish. But he had never gone more than two days without at least hearing their mounts' pounding hoof-beats in the earth. And now they—whoever they were and, even worse, whomever they served—had found him.

  "All that mess lies many days' ride to the northwest," he said quickly, dismissing the lands of his birth as casually as he had left them, hoping to win favor in the warrior's eyes by his lack of allegiance. "Which reminds me, if you wouldn't mind telling me, what is the name of this land? Who rules? And what is the general disposition towards strangers?"

  The armored figure did not answer. Tralane coughed and wondered at the strength of the warrior's arm. The lance had remained steady against his throat for all the time they had been talking. He wondered also over the enigma of the warrior's identity, his alleg
iances, his presence, and the presence of his comrades throughout the Ousho Plains. He had considered these mysteries ever since sighting the warriors at the battle, as it had been a simple way to pass the time. Up until now, he had not deemed these mysteries profitable or safe to solve.

  Aside from the simple farming colonies from the northern kingdoms and the nomadic Tribe Nations, there were no other known inhabitants of the plain country below the Rechochoake Mountains, unless one considered the stories that had been cropping up in the taverns of Gynnuland over the six months prior to the final battle between that country and its archrival Harthror. The tales had too often been told by drunken traders and trappers and were entirely too fanciful for the locals to take seriously. Tralane, who had not forgotten the sights of his childhood in the care of a sorcerer, had listened more carefully, but had not been able to make any sense of tales of a new and mighty kingdom forming somewhere on the Ousho Plains. Rumors of a powerful new lord from the south, a sorcerer, had also been racing through King Peayn's court. But Tralane had dismissed these as an attempt by Harthror's spies to dissuade King Peayn from moving against their kingdom.

  After all, nations did not suddenly spring into being overnight, especially in sparsely peopled territories, any more than great sorcerers were formed after only a few years of trial. Logic dictated that, as surely and truly as Mathi, the sorcerer-guardian who had raised Tralane and tried to make a magician of him, had lectured on the subject. And since no large migration of people had been observed heading south, nor had any stories circulated concerning a new and powerful wizard having broken from the tutelage of one of the wise and largely benign old sorcerers from the north, Tralane had not found it difficult to dismiss the stories and rumors with a laugh and a swig of strong liquor.

  King Peayn and King Uthreten had probably followed the same dictates of logic; Tralane began to perspire when he started thinking too deeply of what had befallen them.

  The kruushka suddenly shuddered and backed off, and the lance was withdrawn. Tralane sat up and waited a few moments for some command from the warrior. Testing the limits of the warrior's mercy, he donned his shirt and tied the thongs across his stomach and chest. Then he gathered the rest of his belongings—a shoulder pouch made from the same leather as his shirt, a bow and quiver of arrows, and a netting pack lumpy with water bags and the sun-dried, meaty remains of rodents. He had slept in his torn, blue pantaloons, tucked into the calf-length boots he had also disdained to remove.

  "Where to now, warrior?" he asked as he stood. "To your captain, or do you plan to skewer me on the spot?" He was prepared to bolt into the cover of the surrounding grass if the answer leaned towards the latter.

  "Follow," the armored figure ordered, ignoring Tralane's brazenness. The kruushka wheeled about slowly and began walking towards the rising sun. Tralane looked back for a moment to see the pale, fading image of the Wanderer hovering over the horizon. "Beware the moon-less hours," went the old saying that rang through Tralane's mind, "when the sun and stars rule unchecked."

  It was a piece of wisdom from Mathi the wizard, imparted after Tralane had tried to work a spell without considering the cosmic influences that would affect his magic. He had precociously opened the door to the House of the Dead, hoping to find some clue to his parents' identities. But there had been miscalculations and a demon unbound. The price of his experience was the scar on his right shoulder, and his abandonment of Mathi and his teachings. However, the occasional pain from the wound had helped to etch Mathi's words on that occasion in his memory, if not their meaning.

  Tralane's resentment towards Mathi for the detached manner and aloof attention the wizard had treated him with during his childhood and for the wizard's steadfast refusal to reveal the identities of his true parents surged into his awareness following his brief recollection. His heart raced with anger, and a tremor took hold of his hand. He fought against the full surfacing from the pool of memory of this first and most painful injustice done to him. He needed calm nerves and a clear head to cope with the current situation. He breathed deeply and followed the trail the mounted warrior blazed through the grass. He hoped nothing too drastic would happen before he was once more under the moons' protection.

  Relieved of the last meager task of guiding himself to safety and assured that he was in no immediate danger, Tralane occupied himself by watching his shadow diminish as the sun rose and reviling his predicament. He did not notice the camp until he had passed the first outlying tents and was startled when the grass cleared and a field of tents stretched before him.

  The camp was alive and bustling with warriors and women setting up tents, leading kruushkas and the lighter, swifter thorts to pens, feeding the grunting, thick-skinned camutels and the milk-giving herrenas, and moving supply wagons into defensive formations around siege machines. The men were stout and strong-limbed, but they did not appear, by their preference for as little clothing as possible, to be the types to be completely covered in armor during battle or the reconnaissance of the Ousho Plains. There were children underfoot, the smaller ones running in packs through the lanes between tents, while the older children helped with the chores. Banners bearing fearsome portraits of heroes and monsters fluttered in the breeze. The smell of smoke from the first cooking fires fought the smell of animals for ascendance.

  The uncommunicative warrior led Tralane to a shimmering green pavilion in the heart of the camp. Then he dismounted and stood, unnaturally rigid, by his mount and faced the tent. Attendants came out and took his lance and mount. Shortly after they left, Tralane hesitantly approached the figure from behind, ready to dart out of the way of any sudden blow. Tralane was a little awed by the warrior's discipline. Even the High Captains of the Karthasian Empire, who had occasionally visited King Peayn's court to pay homage to the Empire's mighty southern ally and secretly snigger at Gynnuland's primitive forces, had not displayed such self-control. There was something inhuman in the warrior's attitude. As he walked around the warrior and aligned himself with his escort in facing the pavilion, Tralane decided he disliked his discoverer.

  A man in his middle years, with a long, gaunt face and eyes like circles of night, emerged from a flap in the smooth, almost seamless material of the pavilion. His white hair was thin and short, revealing a bald spot above his brow on which runes had been tattooed. He wore a black-trimmed and rune-decorated scarlet robe.

  "Greetings, young one," the man said smoothly. "I believe your name is Tralane?"

  Tralane smiled his most charming smile while trying not to squirm beneath the man's penetrating gaze. He wondered how his name had become known without anyone having asked the warrior. "Quite right, sir. And may I inquire as to your name?"

  "Agathom." Then, in a tone that suggested that the words were meaningless, he continued, "Sorcerer King of Eiring-Cor."

  "I am honored," Tralane said, dumping his net pack on the ground, "though I shame myself by admitting that I, a bard and knowledgeable traveler, have never heard of you or your land."

  "Ah yes, you are the bard my knight found earlier this morning. This is a piece of good fortune. I have but recently come to this part of the world and I have a desperate need for a guide."

  Tralane maintained his smile in the face of the Sorcerer King's gentle avoidance of explaining his origins. He refrained from pressing the matter. Whatever and where ever Eiring-Cor was, Tralane had no doubts he would eventually hear about it from the more talkative members of the King's following. This time, he promised himself, he would listen with less disbelief to the rumors and tales he heard.

  He silently appraised the Sorcerer King while pretending to consider Agathom's open-ended offer. At a superficial glance, Agathom appeared to be no different from many of the sorcerers Tralane had seen at the various courts he had served in. Nor did the mixture of artfully deceptive mannerisms designed to put others at ease and the hint of cruelty in the upturned corners of his mouth and lines of his face set him apart from the host of ambitiously scheming lor
ds, princes, captains, and courtiers it had been Tralane's privilege to observe and occasionally suffer from. Yet something in the combination warned him that Agathom was even less worthy of trust than most other rulers. His experience with the art of sorcery made him sensitive to Agathom's awesome power, but as Mathi and the few great wizards of power who had occasionally visited Mathi's tower had shown him, great power in magic was earned by study and practice. There was little room for ambition and politics among men when one played with gods and demons for knowledge and power. That a sorcerer of Agathom's stature would place himself at the head of an army for mere physical gains—unless he misread the intentions of the host around him—was an incongruity which Tralane could not resolve. And there was nothing in the rumors he had heard in Gynnuland to help him, other than whispers of grave, world-ending danger that he had treated as the spice in a drunken storyteller's art.

  "I would be honored if you would have me," Tralane said finally.

  "Done! I'm glad our paths have crossed." Agathom raised one hand and a servant bounded out of the pavilion and scuttled to his side. "This one will take you to a suitable tent. Settle yourself and I will call for you later on in the day."

  Tralane thanked him and followed the servant to a drab tent not far from the sorcerer's headquarters. On the way Tralane attempted to engage the servant in conversation, asking him about himself and the place of his birth. But the servant walked ahead with an ungainly gait, like a street-player's wooden puppet, immune to Tralane's friendly probing. The lack of response troubled him, since he had seldom met a servitor doomed to following orders and performing menial tasks who did not jump to the opportunity of gossiping about the master. Their brief and unrewarding time together only enhanced Agathom's aura of unnaturalness.

  Tralane entered the tent, pausing to look back at the awkward creature shuffling back to his lord. A husky shout called his attention back to the quarters he was about to claim as his own.