Enchanter (Book 7) (89 page)

“What did it do?” I asked, morbidly curious.  As I got closer I noted just how intense the blue coloration of his teeth and the whites of his eyes were.  And how haunted his eyes looked.

“You don’t know?  You don’t
feel
it?” he asked, looking up at nothing that I could see.  His visage was haunted by terrors and fears we could not see.

“He’s mad!” Lorcus muttered. 

“But not uncommunicative,” Tyndal shot back.  “What does the blue stone do, Master Dunselen?” he asked in a somewhat obsequious tone.

“It bridges the space between our world and the Otherworld,” the old scholar explained.  “This place exists simultaneously in
both
places.  The thaumaturgical field influences events both ways.  What happens in its presence can effect both worlds.  Of course, I’m still investigating the secondary and tertiary effects on various crystalline samples, but . . .”

“That . . . is truly frightening,” Lorcus admitted after a pause to reflect on the idea.  “Do you realized—”

“Yes!” the old wizard shouted bitterly.  “How could I not?  I was there!  I was
affected!
  Now I see the Otherworld every day, every moment, awake and asleep!  I hear the voices of the dead!  I have striven with my sires back three generations, all hounding me for my failures!  I see the nightmares of my servants manifested in these halls . . . and my own have turned every night of slumber hellish!  There are
things
out there that you do not know about,” he warned, manically.  “
Evil
things, of great age and power . . .  very bad things,” he said, as he settled into his chair.

“Secure him,” I ordered.  “He appears to be no threat.  I imagine that Isily used psychomantics on him liberally.  His work was his only solace, no doubt, and the last place where he was useful.  “Where is she now?”

“The Baroness of Greenflower is in her garden, on the roof,” Dunselen said, his eyes cutting to me suddenly.  “Awaiting her lover, Minalan.  I was assured that her pursuit of you was purely in the interest of academics, but I’m starting to suspect that my lady wife has developed feelings for her subject,” he said, sadly, as Tyndal tied him to his battered throne.

“The husband is always the last to know,” Lorcus quipped, shaking his head.  “We’re in the Otherworld right now, Min?  That’s scary as hell!”

“Then let’s finish this and leave,” I proposed.  “I don’t want a tour.  But I do want these records secured and transferred to Sevendor.  We can see what they were working on, if nothing else.” 

I led Tyndal and Lorcus upstairs while Lanse and Bendonal watched the lower chamber.  The upper, by contrast, was neatly kept and well-appointed.  Paintings and rich tapestries decorated the walls, mostly with scenes of Trygg and Briga and other goddesses in childbearing and rearing roles.  But then there was a dark tapestry depicting the symbolic representation of the god of night that was just plain creepy, by context.

The bedchamber was empty, but had seen a lot of use.  While it was well-kept, it had a strong air of medicinal herbs still lingering about it.  A bassinet near to the bed proved to have a baby in it.  My son.

He wasn’t alone.  A little girl with dark hair was cowered behind a wardrobe in one part of the chamber.  She was only about four years old, and looked terrified.  I realized as her eyes stared at mine where I’d seen them before – on my son, Minalan. 

This was my daughter.  Ismina.

“Hello, Pumpkin,” I said, in my best paternal voice.  “You need to go downstairs, now, with your baby brother.”

She looked up at me, clearly frightened, and solemnly nodded.

I sighed and closed my eyes. 
Rondal, we’ve secured up to the second chamber.  Bring Alya in, but slowly.  Dunselen isn’t a factor and has been captured.  Isily is on the roof.  There are two non-combatants, including a newborn, in this chamber.  When you come forward, get them both out as quickly as you can.  Take them back to the outer hall, understood?

As you wish, Master,
Rondal replied dutifully.

“Min, she’s been doing stuff,” Lorcas said, accusingly, as he searched the chamber.  “Look at this!”

It was a board laminated with weirwood.  There were several different types of magical stones on it. Snowstone, various corals, crystals, and other stones. Some were tinted light blue.  Some I didn’t recognize, but others I did.  There were other places where stones had been until recently. 

“That’s some powerful enchantment,” Lanse noted.  “She’s upstairs?  She’s got some power with her,” he warned.  He studied the board again, and looked up even more concerned.  “A
lot
of power, Min!”

“We suspected as much.  Let’s set up our countermeasure.”

I closed my eyes and reached out to Dranus who was still in Sevendor with the rest of my non-combatant magical corps. 

All right, Dranus.  We’re ready to begin.  We’ve taken the tower, everything save Isily.  But she’s got some strong defenses based on what we’ve found here.  Be prepared to send as much as you can.

Understood, Excellency.  Good luck, Minalan
, he added.

I held Blizzard between my gauntleted hands and waited for the connection to get established through its auspices.  Back in Sevendor, my reserve team was positioning half of a sympathy stone, the first half of which was in my warstaff. 

In a few moments, a tiny snowflake appeared in the air in front of me, brilliant in spectacle, twinkling like a star as it grew and transformed.

I contacted Dranus again
.  I have it,
I reported. 
Just like in the test.  I do hope this works.

As do I, Excellency,
he agreed. 
We’ll start adding power to it immediately.  Draw what you require.

I took a deep breath and exhaled as the snowflake in front of me grew four inches while I watched.  That should be sufficient for my purposes, I figured. 

It was time to face my ex.

*

*

The tower top was cleared of most of the gear of war one expects in anticipation of a siege.  Instead the wide expanse of timbered floor was barren, save for a plinth of stone that was set there.  Isily was standing behind it. 

She didn’t look well.

She was livelier than her husband, I’d give her that.  She was standing defiantly behind her plinth, an array of arcane equipment in front of her.  Her dark hair was streaked with white and greasy.  Her eyes and teeth had the same bluish coloration that Dunselen’s had, only darker and more pronounced.  Her nails, too, had adopted some bluish tint.  Her face was long and worn, as if she had been through a great hardship, but she’d tied her hair back with a diadem that lent her a certain horrid majesty as it flickered with moonlight and magelight.

“I was wondering when you would come see me, my love,” she said, smiling madly.  “I can only guess by the staff in your hand and your panoply that you discovered my little deception sooner than I had planned,” she said, as if she’d fibbed about her age, not attempted to compel my will.

“Isily, I’m here to demand your stone,” I said, bringing the snowflake up to shoulder height.  “I call you in violation of your oath to me.”

“You want my
witchstone?”
she laughed, with hoarse derision.  “Which one? I have a
collection,
now,” she said, revealing her spell.  It was a platform of weirwood, as the one below, only more richly decorate and more purposefully enchanted. 

Upon it were five shards of irionite, glowing and pulsing as one and glinting off of her diadem.  In their center was a small yellowish sphere – a covenstone.  I had a larger one that was being used in the Denehole, back home.  They allowed the gathering of multiple streams of magical force into one usable channel.  There were other elements to the board, gems and crystals and corals, but the irionite was what captured my attention. 

Isily had more raw power than I’d had when I’d held the witchsphere.

She knew how to use it, too.  With a wave of her hand over the construct she was enveloped in dark violet fields of force centering on her and extending out into the air around her.  Together they resembled the petals of a flower of fell shape with herself as the sinister stamen.

“When I married that dolt I inherited a lot of things, but among the best was the name of his house.  It so
well
describes my vision of the world.  A dark green flower to cover the world, beneficial to all.  A world led by a dynasty of magi who would end the petty bickering of the nobility and senseless politics of the moment.  Is that not a dream worth fighting for, Minalan?”

The petals shimmered around her as tendrils of force began to emit from the center and snake toward me.

“Not worth killing my family over,” I observed, coldly.

“
That was not my doing!
” she insisted.  “Mask went against my orders, and against my wishes.  I could never harm your children, Minalan.  Each one is truly precious to me.”

“What about me?” Alya’s voice asked, from behind me – and my blood went cold. 

She was supposed to be downstairs, safe.  Rondal, Tyndal, Lorcus Bendonal and Lanse filed up behind her.  I realized that none of them were able to withstand her direct order if she should chance to use Blue Magic.  But Alya ignored her peril and closed with the sorceress, angrily.  “It was my life that was threatened, and my husband you seduced.  You must answer to me, for that!  If that means I have to give you hamsoken and beat you in your own home, so be it!”

“Go away, little peasant girl!” sneered Isily, flinging a tendril of force at my wife.  “You are unworthy of the man the gods have given you.  Your wishes mean
nothing,
compared to the fate of humanity.  Don’t you see that he is destined to be Archmage, someday?  And that you are not the woman worthy to be his consort?”

“Isily, surrender now, and we’ll discuss this!’ I said, as calmly as I coild manage.  “But this is your last chance.  I will take your power from you!”

“But not my life – for I am your children’s mother!” she laughed.  “Minalan, you are powerful, but you are a fool!  Do you not realize that you are attacking me in my keep?  And that my keep is no longer entirely of this world?  Already dark spirits of the Otherworld come to my summons, to do my bidding!  They have real power here in our castle of bluestone!”

As if to answer her summons, dark shadows began to coalesce in the boundaries of the tower top.  Lines of magical power spread out from her dark flower and fed them, and they grew.

“This is your last warning,” I said.  “Isily of Greenflower, surrender your stones or face the consequences!”

“Come and take them, darling!” she invited, wickedly.  I could feel Alya rage at the familiarity.  But I didn’t have time to react.  Suddenly those dark shapes were coming toward us, and Isily was lobbing globes of magical burning fire with both hands.

“I thought you said she’d be weak, this soon after birth?” Tyndal demanded, as he used his blade to stop a ball of fire. 

“She’s a strong woman,” Lorcas called, as he fired a powerful bolt of energy at the greenflower.  The dark petals of eldritch power absorbed it without effect.  “This could be going better,” he muttered changing his tactics.  He looked meaningfully at me, and I realized that I was standing there, not doing much in particular.

So I began really using the Snowflake for the first time.  The projection of its power through Blizzard was tenuous, at this point, but Dranus and his team were pouring energy into it.  My own covenstone was sitting in front of the thing as nearly a dozen magi donated their collective power to the effort. 

Even though we had made hundreds, if not thousands of arcane connections between the paraclete and the arcane architecture of the Snowflake, the enneagrammatic pattern within had not “awakened” yet.  But it did respond to power.  The more we gave it, the more effective it became in projecting that power back.

It was a little like fighting someone by standing behind a man who’s passed-out drunk and using their lifeless arms to flail about.  Arcanely speaking, that’s what I was doing with the Snowflake.

Isily was shrugging off the blasts of simple destructive power that my lads were dispensing so liberally, and every opportunity for one of them to close with the sorceress saw them pushed back or knocked back.  That didn’t tend to stop them, but it was slowing them down a lot.

I decided it was time to give her everything the snowflake could produce.  As more balls of fire and dark tendrils probed across the moonlit and magelit roof, I answered by summoning a powerful blast of electricity in her direction through the artifact.  The result was more spectacular than I anticipated, and Isily’s defenses were challenged for the first time.

She could be hurt.  That was hopeful.

I pressed forward, producing sparkling balls of whirling force and bolts of energy, spells to weaken her resolve and spells to weaken the floor under her feet.  I was using whatever tools I could matching them with the arcane potentials of the Snowflake.

The green flower that covered the blue woman was starting to wilt.  Isily could feel it, I saw, and redoubled her efforts.  At first she fired bolt after bolt of punishing force at me, but the snowflake intervened of its own accord.  Frustrated, she began hammering away at my defenses, to no avail.