The Wizards’ War
by Angela Holder
Deore Press
Houston, Texas
For my son, Gareth.
One
Tenorran took a deep breath and opened the door of Captain Noshorre’s office. “You sent for me, sir?”
The captain didn’t look up from his desk. “Ah, yes, Lieutenant. Come in.”
Tenorran crushed his fear and ducked his head to enter the tiny room, one of the largest on the ship. After years at sea he was used to the cramped quarters, but at times like this the sense of confinement struck him again.
His pulse pounded in his ears. No matter how he searched his memory of the last few days, he couldn’t find any transgression for which the captain would need to reprimand him. But he couldn’t think of any other reason for the summons, either.
They couldn’t have discovered his shameful secret. He’d never let even the tiniest hint slip. The consequences if he ever did were too horrible to contemplate.
But if he wasn’t about to face the exposure and punishment he dreaded, why was he here? He stood at attention before the captain’s desk, eyes straight forward, carefully not looking at the papers Noshorre was working on.
After a few moments during which the scratching of the captain’s quill was the only sound, Noshorre set down the pen and leaned back. “At ease, Lieutenant Fovarre. You’re not in trouble. Quite the opposite.”
Tenorran forced his muscles to relax. “Sir?”
Noshorre’s seamed face crinkled into a smile. “Commander Kesolla has been observing you, and he’s satisfied with what he’s seen. He and I have discussed the matter, and I concur with his judgement. He would like to offer you a place in the Secrets Division.”
Tenorran sucked in his breath as shock overrode his relief. “I—I’m honored, sir.”
Captain Noshorre looked at him sharply. “What’s the problem, Lieutenant?”
The offer must be a result of the second factor that set him apart from every other officer in the Armada. This one was no secret, though Tenorran often wished it was. “Sir, I want to advance in my career because of my own merit. Not because—not for reasons that have nothing to do with what best serves the interests of the Armada.”
“An honorable sentiment, Lieutenant Fovarre. I can assure you that your name and parentage haven’t influenced Kesolla’s decision. In fact, he considered this appointment much longer than he would have for one of lower birth. But your record is impeccable. You display a commitment to hard work that would be admirable in a man twice your age. And your discretion is unquestionable. That last, of course, is the most important factor.”
Tenorran nodded. He’d had plenty of practice keeping secrets. Far more than the captain or commander knew.
He’d dreamed, as all young Armada officers did, of someday earning a place in the most prestigious branch of Ramunna’s military, but he’d never expected to be chosen this soon. Most Secrets officers were seasoned veterans. When a young officer was chosen, it was because he was being groomed for a leadership role. Despite Noshorre’s reassurance, Tenorran found it hard to believe that his mother’s influence had nothing to do with this turn of events.
Captain Noshorre shuffled through the papers on his desk and produced a closely written document. “Read this, son. If you’re willing to be bound by what it requires, sign it. If you don’t feel you’re ready to be trusted with this responsibility, give it back to me unsigned and we won’t speak of this again. I promise it won’t count against you. Knowing your limits is a mark of maturity.”
Tenorran accepted the document and read the small, neat letters as the captain went back to his paperwork. It was pretty much what he’d expected from the rumors he’d heard of the Secrets oath, but the sheer ruthlessness startled him. The slightest slip of the tongue was grounds for capital punishment. If even a hint of privileged information escaped, a whole ship’s complement of Secrets officers could be executed. If a Secrets officer betrayed Ramunna and went over to Marvanna or another of their enemies, the Matriarch would order his whole family exterminated.
Tenorran made a face. Somehow he doubted his mother would order her own execution. His only other family, his father, had been captain of an Armada ship lost with all hands during a minor but costly skirmish with Marvanna three years earlier.
He went back to reading. Most of the strictures would be easy to follow. He’d never had difficulty keeping quiet about details of the ship’s next posting, unlike some of his fellow lieutenants. He never got drunk and bragged to a dockside whore about their most recent exploits. He never whispered a juicy tidbit to a close friend, or listened if anyone tried to pass one to him.
The requirement in the event of capture gave him a moment’s pause. He would be expected to end his own life rather than fall into enemy hands. He’d never realized the true significance of the Secrets emblem before.
He swallowed. Death was preferable to torture or rotting in a Marvannan prison. If suicide was required, it would be an honorable fulfillment of his duty, not a cowardly escape.
He reached the end of the document and stared at the blank space at the bottom. Was he ready for this responsibility? He was only twenty-four. Although sometimes it seemed he’d been at sea his whole life, it had only been six years. He’d learned an immense amount about self-discipline in that time, but he had a long way to go before he would have the steadfast courage and commitment to duty he admired so much in Captain Noshorre.
If he refused, though, it would affect his career, no matter what the captain promised. He might remain on the standard command path, but he couldn’t count on this offer coming again. While if he accepted, he’d be on track to become one of the highest ranking officers in the Armada. Admirals were drawn from the ranks of Secrets officers. They had to be, because only a man who understood the workings of the Armada’s secret weapon could devise strategies that effectively exploited its capabilities.
This had to be because of his mother. If not a result of her influence, an attempt to win her favor. Commander Kesolla would anticipate good things as the officer who’d chosen Verinna Fovarre’s only child for rapid advancement.
For a moment the old injustice caught at the back of his throat. He squashed it before it could blossom into bitterness. In every aspect of Ramunnan society save one, being male was a huge advantage. Men made up the military, and the aristocracy, and held every other position worth aspiring to. He could dream of achieving any height he desired—except the one that should have been his birthright.
A thousand years ago, when the ancient wizards had ruled an empire that encompassed all Ravanetha, pairs of Oligarchs, one male, one female, always a married couple, held power. The last female Oligarch, Tharanirre Fovarre, lost two husbands and fellow Oligarchs before marrying her third. The Holy Yashonna had been much younger than his wife and devoted to religion, not politics, so for many years she’d ruled alone in all but name. Upon Tharanirre’s death, in the chaos that accompanied the fall of the Marvannan Empire, their daughter had fled to Ramunna and declared herself Matriarch on the strength of her mother’s reputation. For all the centuries since, the Matriarchy had passed from mother to daughter. Occasionally a Matriarch had died without a female child, and the office had passed to her sister or niece. But never in all the history of Ramunna had a son, or even the daughter of a son, inherited the Matriarch’s power.
If Tenorran had been a girl, he would have been prepared from birth to succeed his mother. Today he would be involved in every decision she made. She might even have begun transferring some of her responsibilities to her heir. The succession would be secure, and everyone in Ramunna would look forward to an orderly transition when in due time Verinna grew old and returned to the Moth
er.
Instead, the question of who would succeed the current Matriarch was a huge controversy. The upheaval Ramunna was experiencing, including their current military mission, was entirely due to his mother’s lack of a suitable heir. After his birth she’d suffered loss after loss, never again giving birth to a child that lived more than a few days. If she died daughterless, her cousin Malka would inherit the Matriarchy. And Malka was a devotee of the Purifiers, a strict and ascetic sect that held sway in Marvanna, although it remained a minority in Ramunna. If she became Matriarch, she’d made it clear she would declare the Purifiers Ramunna’s official religion and seek political unification with Marvanna. The things that made Ramunna great—the profitable trade conducted largely by the heretical Dualists, the University whose investigations into the natural world were viewed by the Purifiers as sacrilege against the Mother, the Armada that ruled the seas in unchallenged might—would be lost forever.
In desperation, his mother had chased a legend, and impossibly, caught it. Tenorran had never believed the stories that a handful of the ancient wizards had retained their powers and fled across the ocean. But the ship Verinna had sent into the Eastern Sea to seek them had returned with confirmation of their existence. Before a year had passed, two of those wizards had arrived in Ramunna and turned their healing powers to helping Verinna conceive and bear a daughter.
What had followed was a matter for wild gossip and speculation. The official account, which had accompanied the orders which sent Tenorran’s ship and many others on their mission, stated that the wizards had succeeded and Verinna had become pregnant with a healthy girl. However, they’d proven to be Marvannan agents when they tricked Verinna into believing her child was a boy. On the basis of that lie she had ended the pregnancy. But rumor suggested she’d been deceived by the wizards’ foes, and the aborted child had indeed been male.
The pain that had hit Tenorran when he first heard the news stabbed him again. Whatever the truth of the child’s sex, his mother had believed it to be a boy, and she’d valued her son so little she’d discarded him. She’d viewed him as nothing but an obstacle on the path to the daughter she wanted. The child who might have been Tenorran’s little brother was dead. She’d sacrificed him for the sake of his still-nonexistent sister.
Just as she’d done with Tenorran.
Even while she’d been married to his father, he’d seen his mother only rarely. She’d turned him over to nurses and nannies to raise. That was typical of aristocratic Ramunnan families—most of his friends and fellow officers had been raised the same way. But at least they’d known they were valued. He’d become aware very early that to his mother he was less than nothing. Between her rule of Ramunna and her obsession with bearing a daughter, there was no room in her life for her one living child. When she’d thrown his father out in the hope that some other man could give her the daughter she craved, she’d taken it for granted Shorren would take their son with him.
So if Commander Kesolla thought he could curry favor with the Matriarch by favoring Tenorran, he was sadly mistaken. She’d never notice. If someone called it to her attention, she wouldn’t care. He doubted she knew which ship he served on, or was aware that the Sinvanna was one of those she’d sent to wreak vengeance on the wizards of Tevenar.
He read the final line of the document, written in letters twice as big as the rest. I swear before the Mother to be bound by these covenants. If I break them, may she cast my soul from her presence to wander homeless forever.
All right, then. Tenorran slapped the paper onto the desk and picked up the waiting quill. This opportunity was far too good to pass up. He would seize it, and he would meet and exceed Commander Kesolla’s expectations. He would keep the Armada’s secret as well as he kept his own. He would devote himself to learning everything they taught him, and rise through the ranks as quickly as they could promote him. If the Mother willed it, someday he would earn a post as admiral. He would win power and authority by his own efforts, not as a gift from his mother.
He dipped the pen in the inkwell and inscribed his name in big, bold, letters. He looked up to find Captain Noshorre watching with a pleased expression. Tenorran nodded sharply to his superior, and the captain gave an answering nod.
Noshorre rose and went to the door. Opening it, he called, “Kesolla, you have a new protégé.”
Commander Kesolla must have been waiting in the next cabin, because he appeared immediately. He was in his sixties, grizzled and weather-beaten, face and hands marked by scattered burn scars. He nodded approvingly at Tenorran. “Lieutenant Fovarre. Welcome to Secrets. I’m ready to begin your initiation.”
Tenorran looked to Captain Noshorre. “I’m due to stand watch in an hour.”
Noshorre waved that off. “Commander Kesolla wants you for the rest of the day. I’ll take care of changing the roster. You’ll continue with your normal duties, but from now on Secrets training will be included in your schedule. Your first responsibility is to Commander Kesolla. If his orders interfere with your other assignments, send word to me or the duty officer and we’ll take care of it.”
Commander Kesolla said, “First things first. Hold out your arm, Lieutenant. Since you’re left-handed, this will go on your right.”
Tenorran obediently extended his right arm. Kesolla pushed up Tenorran’s sleeve and buckled a leather sheath around his forearm. The small dagger it held rested on the back of Tenorran’s wrist, where the pommel with its single diamond protruded slightly from the sleeve Kesolla pulled down over it. That subtle symbol was the only insignia Secrets officers wore.
Kesolla met his eyes gravely. “Lieutenant Fovarre, this is the sign of our brotherhood. Never take it off. Wear it day and night, waking and sleeping, when you bathe and when you piss and when you make love. When you die, you’ll be buried with it on your arm. Once each day draw the dagger, inspect it to make sure it remains clean and sharp, tend it as necessary, and return it to its sheath. The only other reason you may draw it is to carry out your final duty.” He touched two fingers to the hilt of his own dagger.
Tenorran copied the solemn gesture. “I understand, sir.”
Kesolla saluted Captain Noshorre and turned to leave. Tenorran saluted in turn and followed him from the office. He flexed his wrist. The sheath was well designed; it didn’t hamper his movement at all. He could almost forget it was there, and the deadly vow it represented.
Instead of going forward as Tenorran had expected, Kesolla led him back and down. He obtained a lantern from a storeroom, lit it, and continued to a dark corridor deep in the stern of the ship, stopping before a locked door.
Kesolla turned to Tenorran and eyed him critically. “Curious?”
“No, sir,” Tenorran answered, although he was burning with curiosity.
Kesolla snorted. “You’re a pretty good liar, son.” He gestured toward the door. “Our first secret. Most people believe that the heart of the mystery we guard lies in the Secrets room in the bow. That’s on purpose. The weapon is located there, but it’s not where we keep the true Secret. That lies here. The rest is only metal, something any smith could forge.”
He handed the lantern to Tenorran, then pulled a ring of identical looking keys from his belt, selected one, inserted it into the lowest of three keyholes, and turned it. He repeated the process for the topmost keyhole, then the middle. “Insert the wrong key, or in the wrong order, and the mechanism triggers. You’ve got ten minutes to repeat the process correctly. After that time, or after five wrong attempts, a device inside strikes a spark.” He raised an eyebrow at Tenorran and pushed the door open a crack. “It’s been twenty years since we lost a ship to a Secrets officer’s error. In that time, this arrangement has kept the Secret out of Marvannan hands more than a dozen times. Most recently three years ago.” He gave Tenorran a significant look.
Tenorran gulped and nodded. So that’s what had happened to Father’s ship. He’d always wondered why the Marvannans had sunk it instead of capturing it and trying
to discover the Secret. Now it was clear they’d tried and failed.
He knew, as did everyone who’d seen it used, that the Secret produced violent explosions. But he’d never seen the Secret itself, and had no idea what form it might take.
Kesolla waved casually at the walls. “There are similar devices embedded in the walls, ceiling, and floor, in case enemies try to cut through.” He took the lantern back and adjusted it until only a few tiny openings admitted faint beams of light. “Do these precautions strike you as extreme?”
Tenorran knew better than to try to dissemble again. “Yes, sir.”
A smile answered his honesty, but it quickly faded. “This is the first thing a Secrets officer must learn. The Secret is more important than anything. The Armada only retains its supremacy while no other country possesses this weapon. We sacrifice anything to protect it. Our lives, the ship, a battle, even a war. If Ramunna itself falls, we destroy all traces the Secret ever existed.”
“I understand, sir.” Tenorran forced the words past a dry throat.
Kesolla pushed the door open. He stepped inside, Tenorran close at his heels.
The small room was packed floor to ceiling with hundreds of barrels. Kesolla carefully shut the door behind them, relocked it, and hung the lantern on a hook in the center of the ceiling. He turned to a worktable beside the door, beckoning Tenorran to stand beside him. “This is where we store the Secret and prepare it for use. You’ll learn how to perform all the steps in time, but for now, watch.”
Kesolla took a square piece of linen cloth from a bin and spread it flat. He turned to a barrel beside the workbench and released the clamps that held its lid in place. After lifting off the lid and setting it aside, he selected a long-handled wooden scoop from a selection of tools hanging from hooks on the wall. Tenorran thought it looked like something a baker would use to measure flour.
With a conspiratorial glance at Tenorran, Kesolla dipped the scoop into the barrel. When he drew it out, it was full of a dark, grainy powder. Kesolla chose a wooden tool shaped like a flat-bladed knife and used it to scrape the excess powder back into the barrel so the scoopful was perfectly level. With measured, certain movements he poured the powder into a neat pile in the center of the linen square.
The Wizards' War Page 1