High Mage: Book Five Of The Spellmonger Series (25 page)

To the magelords he was a minor culture hero.  Even Wenek, magelord of the half-wild tribes of the Pearwoods, was appreciative of this Riverlord’s boldness. 

Of the hundred-and thirty-odd High Magi on the rolls, almost seventy showed up for the Convocation, including almost the entire Order of Hesia, the order of militant magi dedicated to the defenses and supply of the war effort.  About half of the High Magi considered themselves magelords, and there was an unabashed sense that they should take whatever they could hold against their mundane neighbors. 

I was hardly the one to serve as champion for restraint.  I had won three domains for service and five through conquest, all within a few years.  I was a baron, now, the highest secular ranking of all the magi.  While I didn’t have a stomach for conquest the way some of my peers did, I knew that my future would likely involve dealing with my remaining regional enemies militarily.  I could promise to show restraint, myself, but once you are put in a position where you must fight to exist, promises such as those are easily forgotten.

In some places, the rule of magi had brought unrestrained prosperity, as it had with the people of Sevendor and the Bontal Vales.  Robinwing, in the central Riverlands, had prospered under its magelord, Forandal, as he had bought out the debt of his smallholders and reigned-in the power of the burghers in the town. 

But the Magelords, too, had some complaints, for all of their successes.  The Censorate, it seems, had taken an interest in Kingdom politics.  Their clandestine agents had been discovered assisting those who fought against magelords with coin, magic, and technical assistance.  What they hoped to gain, I knew not – but they were becoming a consistent feature of such wars.

Nor were their noble neighbors inclined to treat with them as peers, for all of their ennoblement.  Four hundred years of antimage culture was not swept away with the Censorate.  Too much of the nobility discovering Talent in a son or daughter was considered a curse, a waste of a good knight or future lady of the manor.

That was particularly true of the Great Houses, the counts and barons who ran their domains like royal dynasties and swore allegiance and paid tribute directly to the King.  A perfect example of this exclusion was Lord Dranus of Castal. 

Originally the oldest son to Ranus, Count of Moros, in northern Remere, Dranus was shipped off to Alar Academy when his rajira showed itself, with a stipend that evaporated upon his graduation – and a lecture never to return to Moros.  His younger half-brothers had split up the County, leaving Dranus to eke out a living as a professional mage with little hope of better.  That didn’t mean he wasn’t ambitious.

Dranus had bided his time as a Principal Adept and court wizard for two decades, until the Bans were lifted.  He had successfully petitioned for restoration of his nobility, and now he was a leading member of the Middle Magi’s council.  But he aspired to more – much more.  He was actively agitating for irionite, and rumor had it that he would do anything to get it.  Dranus haunted the High Magi’s convocation like a hungry dog, pouncing on anyone who left the chambers as an opportunity to press his suit.

Nor did he make any pretensions of what he wanted to do with it.  He had heard of Hanalif, Dunselen, and my own conquests, and he wanted to reclaim his birthright.  Only instead of a paltry few domains, he wanted the County his older brother possessed.

The current Count Moros was a lukewarm supporter of the Kingdom at best.  He had ruled his lands without much in the way of interference from the Duke of Remere, and he resented the presumptions of King Rard frequently and publically.  Loudly enough, in fact, so that several of his key regional allies had fallen to a range of mysterious accidents and ailments.  Count Moros shut up, it was said, but he was not happy.

Dranus was not particularly in favor of the Crown, either, but he hated his brother more.  An entire County represented political and temporal power matched only by the arcane power of irionite.  Giving in to Dranus and handing him the means of his vengeance would be tantamount to starting a civil war in Remere.  But it would also give me, personally, a powerful political ally, should Dranus prevail.  And installing a magelord into a position that important would strike in the craw of the Queen, which I saw as a reasonable counter-move to her recent machinations.

Dranus got his stone.  The Order got fifty thousand ounces of gold and the promise of a hundred more within the year.  He immediately hired four of his fellows, well-schooled in warmagic, for an eight-week term.  I considered letting Planus know that the region’s famous barley may be in short supply this harvest.

Dranus wasn’t the only one who got a stone.  I had brought ten percent of the Alka Alon’s bounty of witchstones with me to Castabriel for distribution.  Dranus was a strategic placement.  Ten more stones went directly to warmagi the Order of Horka recommended for priority.  The other nine . . . three went to the Order of Enchanters, three to the Order of Healers.  And the last three I gave to Middle Magi spellmongers who were popular, powerful, and men of good character.

There was a lot of disappointment at the announcements, of course, but also a lot of celebration.  The Horkan Order feted the new High Warmagi on the eve of their training and deployment by renting out the Sword And Staff and depleting its stocks of alcohol.

The smaller orders were just as jubilant, if not that raucous in their celebrations.  But when as fellow gets a shard of irionite, he deserves to celebrate.

I left the accounting to the expert coinbrothers the Order had hired, but I had just ensured a hefty haul.  As tradition demanded, a fee was paid or promised by the recipients of each witchstone, adjusted by discipline. 

The medical order’s money fees were waived in lieu of six months service at the front.  The enchanters’ fees were paid directly by the guild and later collected from the new High Mage.  The five new Horkan and Hesian warmagi would serve for six months before entering into a three-month annual term of service.  They were still expected to pay a money fee of fifty thousand ounces of gold in the next two years, or make other arrangements with the Order.  So far most had made their payments on time, enriching the institution substantially.

And myself.  As head of the order, I got a cut of each fee, to the tune of five thousand ounces of gold.  To give you some idea of the scale, that’s just over what it takes to run Sevendor domain for about a year.  Twenty witchstones meant roughly a hundred thousand ounces of gold in my personal treasury . . . extra.  And the fact that my treasury was made up of snowstone, literally more valuable than the gold it protected, gave me some perspective on just how wealthy I was.

Nor did that include bribes and gifts.  It seemed like every Magelord wanted to flaunt their wealth with an ostentatious gift to the Spellmonger, and some of them were pricy, like the sheaf of weirwood staves I got from Wenek, or the magnificent gilded set of rushes, a game I had missed dearly, which was a gift from Terleman (which meant it had likely been looted from some abandoned Gilmoran manor house, but I was glad to give the gorgeous set a home). 

I didn’t ask for the gifts, nor were specific favors requested at their giving . . . but that’s not how the game was played.  They would wait to impose on me for favors.  But that worked both ways, too.  To help secure their loyalty, I’d brought another couple of crates of snowstone to pass out, and considering the underground market price for the substance I would have been less popular if I’d been handing out gold nuggets. 

“Everything in my new castle works better with this stuff,” Wenek assured me, when I’d given him a fifty-pound sack of pure white gravel.  “If you position the stones just right, you can extend the field, too.  I’ve been doing some experiments with our defensive magics,” he bragged.  “A bit of this in the vicinity can make the nasty ones truly horrific.”

As much as I enjoyed the company of my professional peers, however, I ended up sneaking off to the more-subdued Low Magic convocation that night.  I suppose I was getting tired of the increasingly-posh pretensions of the High Magi, and while the drink was decidedly inferior in the lower chambers, the company was lively.  And I had an ulterior motive.

In the wee hours of that final night of the convocation I distributed over a hundred pounds of snowstone to the various footwizards and hedgewitches still lingering, drunkenly insisting that they tell no one I was handing away such fortunes.  While they were still marveling at the largesse of the Spellmonger, I took aside three of the most worthy of them – including the head witch of the Coven – and gave them small witchstones.

The gift of the Alka Alon had included many superior stones, but then there were plenty of lesser stones, too.  Even the smallest would boost a mage’s powers by increasing the magical energy he had access to.  But a warmage needs a big stone, as does an enchanter or healer.  In battle such small stones might be overcome, but in the hands of Talented magi they could do great works.

Perhaps it was a streak of professional rebellion or just sympathy for the plight of this underclass, but I didn’t see why just the Dranus and Planus and Dunselens of the world should have access to that level of magic.  There had to be balance.  A world full of just magelords would lead again to Magocracy.  By raising the Low to the High, I hoped to keep the powers steering the Kingdom and its affairs a little more honest.

I didn’t even tell Pentandra about it, until afterwards.  I felt a little guilty and expected her to chew me out, but she was surprisingly supportive.

“You’ve got a good feel for people, Min,” she told me the next morning when I broke the news.  “You’ve given a lot of stones to a lot of people, now, and nothing has blown up too badly.”

“Dunselen,” I pointed out.

“We’ll deal with Dunselen,” she promised.  “But in general your safeguards have been successful.  Although, meddling in kingdom-level politics like that is troublesome.”

“I know,” I admitted, “but the Queen started it.  And this doesn’t work against her agenda – Dranus is supportive of anyone who is supportive of him.  He’s a devious bastard, too, and persuasive as hell.  And I fear if I did not grant him a stone he would have ended up on the steps of the Dead God.”

“I appreciate the wisdom of your damned contest, now,” she said, referring to my annual Spellmonger’s Trial.  The winner of the complex magical trial was awarded a witchstone, no questions asked.  As long as they took my oath and were willing to be bound by it, I would let them walk away with one as a prize for their mastery.  This would be the third year of the trial, and the last two had produced some remarkable magi – my youngest apprentice included.  “It gives them hope to the ones who might consider seeking out tainted glass. If there was no other way.”

“The ambitious ones won’t be stopped by losing the trial,” I pointed out.  “There are plenty who would willingly slay their kin for such power.”

“I’m one of them,” Pentandra admitted.  “If you knew most of my kin, you’d sympathize.  My cousin Trinandra is getting married, Planus tells me, and that’s started the usual vicious bitchfest among the ladies of my house about my lack of matrimony.”

“Aren’t you wedded to your career?” I asked.  “I mean, what could a husband give you that you don’t already have?”

“Children,” she said, simply.  “That’s what it boils down to.  I’m wealthy, I’m self-sufficient, and I need no man’s protection.  But to not give my parents their heirs is an offense against the gods, according to them.  They want to arrange a marriage before I am . . . before I am too old,” she said, bitterly.  “There are plenty of adepts in my line who married and still had successful careers.  My mother can name twenty, off the top of her head.”

“Oh, Penny, that’s . . . what are you going to do?”

“They want to pair me up with a nice Remeran family, one of the old magical houses.  I’d even consider it, if there were more like Planus.  Most of them are idiots, though, glorified spellmongers who hide behind their clients and play politics like burghers.”

“Why couldn’t you marry Planus?” I asked.  That sort of consanguinity was frowned upon in Narasi families, but was regular practice in old Imperial families eager to preserve their bloodlines.  “You’re first cousins, but your kids would be adepts out of the womb!”

“Planus is like my brother,” she said, flatly.  “He’s a wonderful man, Min, don’t mistake me.  He’ll make some . . . normal girl a great husband and sire a roomful of brats.

“But me and Planus?  No.  Their alternative is that I whore myself out around the palace and pick up one of you whiteskin lords,” she offered.  “That holds some appeal – I’ve always liked you fair-skinned boys – but then they learn that I want to continue my research, and that scares them off.”

Since Pentandra’s field of expertise was sex magic, I could understand how that might intimidate a man.  It had certainly intimidated me, when she had sprung it on me.  Hells, I was still intimidated by it.  I tried to imagine Penny married to a castle-bound lord of any stature, and just couldn’t.

“What about love, Penny?”

“Love?” she snorted.  “Love is . . . well, it would be nice, Min, but it’s hardly consequential, when one is considering marriage.  Love would be nice,” she repeated.  “But a man who I could tolerate would be nicer.  A man who can tolerate me would be nicer still.  Honestly, Min, can you think of any man who could take me to wife and not end up dead in the process?”

“More wine?” I offered, helpfully.