Enchanter (Book 7) (9 page)

Over the last two years six magi had become the core of the Guild, the Fellows.  I learned that their mutual agreement pledged forty percent of their revenues from practicing magic to the Guild, in exchange for room, board, and a small monthly stipend.  As most of the research they were doing was fairly basic, the stipend was usually enough to cover their expenses.

Still, it’s hard to make ends meet, especially in Sevendor.  They had been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and dissolution for a year when Rael the Enchantress, fresh from her stint on the Kasari March through the Wilderlands, took up residence there.  Things had changed quickly since then.

Rael was the eldest daughter of Master Andalnam, a licensed spellmonger and competent enchanter from Sendaria Port I had commissioned many, many pieces from in the last few years.  When she had gotten her credentials as a journeywoman, and received a witchstone from me, she relocated to Sevendor permanently.  She was paid handsomely for her service to me during the march, and the specimens she collected along the way helped established new sources for certain commodities enchanters found useful for their works.  I knew she had been in long discussions with Banamor over supplying certain items to his shop.  She was crafting and selling things for her father’s booth at the fair, too.

But Rael had aspirations beyond mere commerce, and they involved the Enchanters’ Guild.  Using her newfound wealth she had purchased a Fellowship, taken rooms at the guildhouse and invested in the place in ways no one else had.  This year’s fete was by far the most generous and well-planned, and there was a real air of establishment about the hall when Alya and I arrived.

Rael was greeting guests at the door with two of her fellow guild members, each of them bearing a red sash with the guild’s badge embroidered upon it in white: an alembic surrounded by three mage stars. 

Rael was looking splendid – she’s not an unattractive girl, and she wore a richly-made sideless surcoat in scarlet over a new muslin gown.  She eschewed a wimple, as most of the town women wore, in favor of a new four-pointed cap in red, with the three white points sewn to it.  She wore her witchstone set in a simple snowstone disc as a pendant around her neck. 

Her father wasn’t as pleased with Rael’s rise in fortunes, however.  I found the man in one corner of the oddly-shaped hall, drinking spirits and looking around pensively. His younger daughters were enjoying themselves well enough – even the one with the unfortunate overbite was laughing and dancing – Rael  hired a few musicians to brighten the evening.

But Master Andalnam was troubled.  I asked him about it, after Alya and I made the rounds and greeted everyone, as expected. 

“She’s wasting her talents,” he admitted, when I asked him about his mood.  “She’s got more opportunity than any enchanter in the world, and she spends it . . . here?  Among footwizards and scoundrels?”

“She’s young,” I soothed.  “And she’s doing well for herself.  From what Banamor tells me, she made a small fortune from her expedition to Alshar.”

“Oh, aye, she’s gotten plenty of gold,” he agreed.  “And given good service, from what I understand.  And I don’t mind her being in Sevendor, where opportunities abound.  But she refuses to work in my shop, here or in Sendaria, and she barely speaks to her sisters anymore.  A man raises a girl with hopes of grandchildren, one day, and she looks no closer to that than she did a year ago.  This is no home to raise children in, and there is no sign of her courting!”

I refrained from mentioning the liaisons I was sure she’d had along the March – I was pretty sure she’d had an affair with Rondal, while they were working so closely together, and she’d been spotted with at least one Kasari ranger.  There were rumors of other arrangements.  But I was the father of a daughter myself, and I knew better than to call that to his attention.

“There are a lot of eligible young men in Sevendor,” I reminded him, instead.  “She’s just going through a wild period, enjoying her new freedom.  She’s been in your shadow so long, she just wants to make a place for herself.”

“But . . .
here?
  When I have good employment for her?”

“She’s her own woman,” I chuckled.  “And you have three others to care for.  I’ll keep an eye on her, I promise.  And she’s quite useful to me, too.  She was well-taught.”

He grunted a thanks for the compliment, and I moved on.  There are some things for which a man just isn’t going to be consoled. 

I spent a merry hour or two drinking, eating, and catching up with old friends from the lower orders of magi who were attracted to the party and the free food and drink.  Thanks to Rael’s contributions and the modest success of the guild, there was wine in abundance and even mead, spirits, and strong ale.  The function also served as the institution’s main recruiting tool.  The guild was technically for enchanters, but it welcomed magi of all specialties to join.  For a modest fee, it was revealed to me, an associate membership would allow lodging on the grounds during the Fair, and use of the facilities during the visit.

That was a popular offer for the itinerate footwizards who found Sevendor’s inns too pricy for their purse.  The five acre compound had plenty of room for tents and such, and I could see the attraction for the common mage.

Banamor provided the climax of the evening when he presented the awards for the Enchantment contest. 

The first prize went to the Plowing Rod, which used a lump of snowstone and a relatively simple enchantment to not just loosen the soil, but to comb it into the peaks and ruts that the peasantry were used to for planting.  Plowing was one of the most labor-intense elements of agrarian life.  Villeins’ service to the manor was based almost entirely on the number of days spent plowing the lord’s demesne.  Villages and hamlets were organized around use of the communal plow and oxen.  This one spell eliminated all of that.  In ten minutes a week of plowing could be accomplished without one drop of human sweat.

It was an elegant enchantment, I had to admit, and the young mage who had crafted it was a member of the guild.  His father had been a priest of Huin, I discovered, and he’d seen his simple but important work as a labor of devotion.

The other prizes went to devices just as ingenious, if not as revolutionary.  My friend Taren’s entry, a ball of snowglass that generated a cleansing light that killed disease as it floated in a well was given honors.  So was a wand that adhered horseshoes to the hoof without need for nails.  And the enchanter who had crafted a magical still that separated out the spirits from the must without need of heating or wasteful condensation was hailed as a hero. 

The fete was as much business conference as festival.  Packtraders and resident adepts from afar were eager to acquire the wonders from the contest.  The mage who created the Plow Rod alone took more than twenty orders for the device at a hundred ounces of gold each. 

But even those enchanters who did not win the contest found themselves inundated by offers for their devices.  I saw the old mage who had created the self-lighting pipe nearly wet himself when he received a purse in advance of ten pieces ordered by a Wenshari trader.

It was a very satisfying evening, professionally.  Until I was talking with a mage about the possibilities of pocketstones, and he stopped mid-sentence.  Someone was behind me.  He made an excuse and made a hasty retreat.

“Baron Minalan,” came a familiar voice that sent shivers up my spine.  “I was wondering when I would run into you,” Baroness Isily said in her lovely voice.

“Baroness!  Congratulations on your wedding!  Trygg’s blessings on your union,” I said, politely, as I turned to face her. 

“It must be in the air,” she smiled.  She was looking beautiful, wearing a long pale yellow gown and a circlet bearing Dunselen’s floral device in her dark hair.  “I hear that even Lady Pentandra was wed this summer.”

“Just a few weeks ago,” I agreed.  “That’s why you haven’t seen her much.  She married a Kasari ranger, and they’re enjoying an extended honeymoon at the Secret Tower mansion.”

“Trygg’s blessings upon her,” she said, without much expression. 

“I do trust that your marriage will allow you to provide a stabilizing influence on Dunselen,” I said, quietly.  “Last year he was ejected from the fair for belligerence.  And his conquests have received a lot of notice in the wrong quarters.”

“I think you will find my lord husband’s ambitions largely curtailed,” Isily agreed.  “Making them as a baron is far more difficult, politically, than doing so as a mere lord of the manor.”

“As I suspected.  Something else your lord husband mentioned to me was somewhat disturbing,” I continued, ensuring Alya was safely on the far side of the room.  “Your devotion to conserving the genetics of the magi.  Encouraging strong interbreeding between powerful lines, for instance.”

“It has been a custom dating to the Magocracy,” she reminded me.  “It seems only prudent to ensure the next generation of magi are at least as potent as this one.”

“Which means that you would favor such strong unions in defiance of simple social convention,” I asked, pointedly.

“When the future is at stake,” she replied, quietly, “there seems to be little point in bowing to mindless custom.”

“One has to wonder if this is a native belief, or one developed by . . . Family influences.”

“Both,” she said, understanding my reference instantly. 

“Ah,” I said, nodding.  She wasn’t an unwilling player, then.  “That explains a lot.”

Her pretty eyes narrowed.  “You
know!
” she whispered harshly.

I wasn’t expecting that.  At
all.
  My knowledge of her secret pregnancy with my child I had intended to hold secret, especially from Isily.  But the pretty shadowmage had seen through me.

“I like to keep up with my old war buddies,” I admitted.  “Make sure that they’re doing well.  Look after their children, if need be,” I added.

“It was . . . Minalan, I . . .” she stuttered, genuinely surprised. 

“Save it,” I ordered.  “This is neither the time nor the place.  Particularly with my wife and your husband in the same room.  Does Dunselen know?”

“No!” she said, a horrified look on her face.  “If he did there would have been no marriage!”

“Of course,” I realized.  Having a child out of wedlock happened in the nobility, of course, but it was always treated with the utmost of discretion, due to the brutal social penalties paid by the woman in question.  Dunselen could not have married Isily if her previous pregnancy was publically known.  Or even privately known, knowing the man.  “Then it looks like we have a discreet matter to discuss.  Are you free this evening?”

“My lord retires near to midnight,” she said, glancing over at the old coot.  “Where and when?”

“My tower, in the castle,” I decided.  “I’m going to be having other meetings there, tonight.  The fair is a busy time for me.  Working in one more meeting shouldn’t be a problem.  It’s the most secure building in the kingdom, and the people there I can trust with anything.”

“Do not be so sure,” Isily said.  “There are spies
everywhere
,” the pretty spy assured me.

Chapter Five

Whispers Of Truth

ORGANON

“It is truth that an enchanter, save certain Wildlings, cannot discover the means and methods of the Great Art of Mirablia without recourse to the work of those who have gone before.  The Organon of Mirablia, the technical elements of our noble art, thankfully, have been kept clear of ambiguities and secrets in an effort to ensure a clear and beneficial transition to the philonoist in gramary.  For it has been demonstrated, time and again since our race came from the Void, that maintaining secrets within the Organon lead the philonoist astray, chasing his own rationalizations.  Only by rigorous dedication to the Truth can the Organon thus be kept pure.”

The Florilegum of Basic Thaumaturgy

That night I left Alya reading quietly by the fire in our new hall after helping her tuck in the children.  It had been an eventful evening, and it was far from over.  I kissed her sweetly before I walked across the yard to the castle, and through the Great Hall that was still filled with attendants, dependents, revelers, and staff, even at this late hour.  I could hear singing and laughter from the fairgrounds even over the wall and across the fields.  I stopped long enough to confer with the sergeant on duty and instructed him who I was waiting for and what times to expect them.

I conducted the interviews in my old bedroom, the lower chamber of the tower that had been re-fitted as a more comfortable office, study, and library.  A small table and a couple of comfortable chairs had replaced the bed, and a trio of magelights hovering overhead bathed the white room in a warm, comfortable glow.  The servants had stocked the cabinets with plenty of victuals and beverages at my direction, and a small fire burned on the hearth, more for comfort than the need for heat. 

Lesana was waiting for me, dressed modestly but attractively in a linen gown that suggested the demure lines of a clerical robe without managing to hide her figure.  Lesana had enjoyed a few years of peaceful living since she had come to Sevendor.  I had given her a small cottage and holding on the northwestern ridge, far from neighbors and others who would disturb her.  She came to market once a week, wearing her protective charm to avoid trouble, and made occasional trips to temple, but other than that she kept to herself out of long practice.