High Mage: Book Five Of The Spellmonger Series (5 page)

After court adjourned I took my luncheon in my workshop with my wife, my dog deciding to join us.  She had grown significantly since I’d acquired her at Yule (my dog, not my wife) but she still had a puppy’s insecurity.  I let her tag along with us at lunch, which I was also looking forward to.  I was going to be gone a lot, soon, and I figured she deserved as much of my attention as I could give her before I left.  My wife, not my dog.

Alya rarely came up to my workshop, but when she did she sat in a cunningly-woven wicker chair that was eternally reserved for her – a war prize retrieved from the sunny hills of Gilmora.  A few minutes after Teres delivered a basket of ham, eggs, bread and cheese from the kitchen with a bottle of cider, my lady wife settled into the creaking, oversized monstrosity after kissing me hello.  She smelled of breast milk and lavender.  Her belly was continuing to grow daily.

“What’s that?” she asked, eyeing the board I was toying with.  She was hesitant to ask, I knew, but always curious about my work.  I didn’t mind the curiosity, I admired it.  Her ignorance in my craft required a lot of remedial explanation, but I had come to value the lessons
as I taught my apprentices and tried to overcome the challenges of doing magic in a rural, drafty old castle. 

I picked up a green stone and showed it to her.  “That’s irionite.  Not really,” I corrected, “that’s just a representation of a piece of irionite.  A piece I’ve taken someone’s oath over.  There are,” I continued, gesturing toward the board on the table, “a hundred and thirty-six High Magi in the kingdom – or just outside of it.  This is what I’m going to use to keep track of them.”

“Magically?”

“Conceptually.  I got the idea from a creepy old lady who kills people and keeps records of it.  I could try to do it magically, and perhaps someday I will, but right now it’s more important that I have an accurate system of representation for them.  Each of these marbles represents one stone in play.  And there are plenty more to come – just how many will depend upon the generosity of the Alka Alon but I’m going to have more high magi to regulate, not less.”

The nearly-immortal non-humans were reclusive, living mostly in elaborate tree houses or quaint little mystical groves far from human habitations, but their lords tended to live in tree cities inside dense woodlands, or in stately settlements in hidden locations selected for their magnificence and beauty, not their proximity to good grain lands.  Their very greatest lords lived in fabulous cities built underground, or in hidden valleys, or in great towers of surpassing elegance among remote peaks built millennia ago during their race’s ascendancy. 

Those were the Alka Alon to whom the white stone of which my castle and the surrounding mountains was of such interest, not the rustic arboreal sort.  Snowstone was unique and interesting, and to the immortal masters of magic, it was very intriguing.  I had let it be known to their emissaries that I would be willing to trade some quantity for it, if the payment was made in irionite.  The Alka Alon lords did not trade, the way humans do, they give each other gifts.  But irionite was a gift we sorely needed in order to fight the war with Shereul and have any hope of success.  And the Alka Alon were the only ones beside Shereul who had a supply.

“So how do you tell them apart?  Magic?”

“I had their names painted on them.  Dara did it.  She has a neat hand with a brush.”

“But no magic.”

“Excepting that everything she does is part of her over-all magical training, no.  I can’t spell my way out of this mess.  This is a bureaucratic problem, not an arcane one.  I have to know where these people are, who they are, and what they are doing, if I’m going to police them properly.  So each one of these marbles corresponds to a scroll in my archives, detailing each high mage.”

“What about the blue marbles?” she asked, curiously, as she broke off a crust of bread.

“Those are powerful low magi who either have potential to be raised, or who might want to oppose the new order.  The yellow are for specialist magi who the Order wants to recruit.  The red are for the low magi of the Censorate.”

“What about the pretty black ones?”

“Those are hematite.  They represent the human magi who have gone to work for Shereul.”

She swallowed reflexively at the Dead God’s name.  I hadn’t spoken much to her about the field reports I was getting, but it was clear by now that some magi were so ambitious or impatient to procure a witchstone that they did not care to whom they swore an oath.  At least half a dozen had been identified, from bloodthirsty mercenary warmagi who did not mind fighting against their own kind to lickspittle spellmongers who had betrayed their humanity for the promise of power. 

“So how does the board work?”

“You’re asking a lot of questions,” I observed.  “Just what are you hiding from this time?”  She stopped eating and looked guilty.

“Lady Estret is instructing in needlework this morning,” she explained, casually, as she poured a glass of cider from the bottle, “and I decided that my time would be better spent consulting the Lord on the business of the domain.”

“You really hate needlework
that
much?” I asked, skeptically.  “Then the lord of the domain has good news.  I know you were given the task of clothing the men of the garrison for the winter.  I just procured enough wool so that you can avoid that chore, at least.”  Alya hated carding wool. 

“I can tolerate the needlework,” she sighed, “but the gossip . . . Trygg save us from the gossip!”

I felt for her – the official “ladies of the castle” had a habit of discussing matters of concern both great and small during their morning sessions spinning, carding, weaving, and sewing the clothes the castle folk constantly needed. 

Technically, Alya was in charge of that enterprise, but her other duties and dislike of the work encouraged the Lady of Sevendor to delegate the important responsibility to the castellan’s wife.  Lady Estret was well-suited to the task. But she couldn’t stop the gossip.

“That’s likely the wrong divinity to invoke,” I pointed out.  Trygg was the mother goddess and goddess of marriage.  Gossip was well within her divine purview.  “But since you asked, it works like this: the heads of the major orders and their staffs are put into these holes at the center.  Subordinates are placed behind them.  Independent magelords are placed in this next row, and then . . . other parties are organized around the edges, associated with various affiliations as events warrant.”

“What kind of events?”

“Well, if someone starts presenting a danger to the realm, and should be watched, then their marble gets placed in the Circle of Observation,” I said, indicating a sketched-out portion of the board.  “If they require actual intervention, they go in this small area: the Circle of Regulation.  I’m still working on the others,” I admitted.  “I honestly don’t know what kind of associations that I’ll need.”

“You do realize that it looks like you’re just a big kid with a bag of marbles, don’t you?” she teased.

“I just tell everyone I’m doing magic and they’ll leave me alone,” I dismissed.  “But without this kind of understanding of the dynamics at play, I’ll lose track of everyone and tragedy could result.  This way I have a chance, at least, to understand the elements I’m contending with.”

“So where’s the big, gaudy, ornate marble in the center, representing you?” she asked, smiling.  It was kind of insulting for her to cite any apparent need on my part to aggrandize my own ego.  Yes, I was planning on building a sturdy spire to overlook the land, one that would eventually be visible from the heart of Sevendor all the way to the Bontal river, and I had plastered my heraldic device on everything I was now responsible for, but that didn’t automatically need a big gaudy marble to represent myself.

But of course that’s just what I’d done.  “It’s been ordered,” I grunted.  “Master Guri is doing it himself.”

“And Pentandra?”

“A green stone with a gold band around it,” I sighed.  “She needs to stand out.”

“She always does,” she jibed.  “What distinguishes warmagi and knights magi from civilians?”

“Uh . . . I’m still working on that,” I admitted.

“And the specialist magi from the general practitioners?  The magelords from the spellmongers?  The enchanters from the alchemists?”

“I don’t know yet!” I said, defensively.  “It’s a work in progress.  But I need to have it done and in use before this summer’s conclave.  Or this summer’s war.”  The goblins had halted their advance into Gilmora after their defeat at Castle Cambrian, but there were still tens of thousands roaming the countryside there.  I fully expected their advance to resume as soon as the snows melted off of the roads enough to permit it.

“Isn’t the war more important?”

“Yes, but if I cannot keep the high magi in line, then the war effort will falter.  I’m supposed to do a tour of the forward lines, up in Tudry and the Penumbra for a week this spring, and there are warmagi lurking around there who I barely remember giving their stones.  I’m still catching up.  But this one, for instance, represents Master Dunselen, former Ducal Court Mage of Castal,” I said, setting his coded marble down within the Circle of Observation.  “He has become a problem to his neighbors.  He’s taken five neighboring domains in a year’s time, and word comes he aspires to more.”

“Uh, my lord husband, did you not also conquer five domains in a year’s time?” she pointed out.

“Yes, but that’s different,” I dismissed.  “I accidently conquered mine.  Dunselen is going out looking for conquest.  Nor is he the only one.  You remember a young warmage I raised last year, Margil?”

“The one with the lantern jaw?  And the poor attitude?”

“He was actually fairly typical of warmagi,” I said.  “Well, he is now Sir Margil, knighted on the battlefield in Gilmora a few months ago, and when he returned to claim his patrimony, he slew two half-brothers to take control of his father’s domain.  Then he conquered his family’s traditional enemy’s domain, and then one beyond that, all before Yule.  Even the Magelord of Robinwing, Sire Forondal, is getting into the business of conquest.  He apparently persuaded one of his neighbors to part with a number of productive manors – with a wand at his neck.”

“So how is that any different than how the nobility usually conducts its affairs?” she asked.  She had been born common, as I had, and was new to the aristocratic life.  She still usually thought like a peasant.  One of the reasons I loved her.

“It’s faster, it’s more efficient, and it’s less prone to debate.  It also creates enemies.”

“Like you have done, with Sire Gimbal?” she asked, amused.

“I was gracious and magnanimous with the Warbird!” I protested.  “I even got him a post, after I took his lands.  A paid post on the other side of the kingdom.”

“Don’t think for an instant that his gratitude will eventually outweigh his hatred for you,” she reminded me.

“I won’t,” I assured her as I placed a pebble.  “No more than I’m going to think that the Censorate will nominate me for Wizard of the Year.  Or the Brotherhood of the Rat will keep from interfering with royal politics.  Or that Shereul will change his mind and not slaughter all of humanity on the sacrificial stone.  That’s the problem with enemies.  They accumulate.”

“Surely you have as many allies or more than you have enemies.”

I snorted.  “Plenty of allies.  Half the time they’re even more problem than my enemies.  The only way I can keep them as allies is to support and uphold their privilege, and most have agendas or ambitions of their own.  Astyral has made Tudry his personal enterprise, for instance, and Azar has conquered territory both inside the Penumbra and out, to add to his holdings.  Even good ol’ Wenek the Portly is raising alarm by arming the hill folk of the Pearwoods.”

“Wenek?  I don’t recall meeting him.”

“You haven’t, and that’s just as well.  He’s an outstandingly devious warmage, no one better at hurting people and breaking things.  But he’s not the most savory of fellows.  He runs the clans of the Pearwoods, now.  He’s right on the edge of the warzone, so I can’t really object to it, but the big advantage the Wilderlands lords had over the Pearwoods clans was the fact that they were poorly organized and even more poorly armed.  Now they’re all carrying steel and Wenek is buying them real armor.  He says it’s for the war effort, but the Pearwoods makes raiding on their southern neighbors a seasonal affair.  They’ve already started grumbling about it at the ducal level.  But if I interfere, I risk alienating one of my biggest allies.”

“It sounds like you’ve got a lot to work with,” she said, approvingly as she stood.  “I’ll let you get back to it.  I’m going to go inspect the kitchens, then spend the afternoon with the baby In the outer bailey – it’s really the only place in the castle to get any peace with all the construction going on,” she grumbled, good-naturedly.  “The dust and the noise keep him from his nap.”

“And that will keep you away from tea with the ladies of the keep and their evil needles,” I nodded.  “See you tonight at dinner?”

She kissed me.  “I’ll let you know after I inspect the kitchens and see what’s for dinner,” she chuckled.  “But I would count on it.”

I went back to work after she left, moving marbles around the board as I introduced each new element.  I found myself gripping one in particular as I placed the others, and it took a moment for me to realize why.