The Kingdom of Eternal Sorrow (The Golden Mage Book 1) (21 page)

“She what!”
Roderick exclaimed in disbelief after his spy had
reported all the recent events occurring in Lamia, nearly causing the spy to
lose contact with him.

His mind-voice laced with fear, the Observer repeated,
“The Golden
Mage has warned them of your intentions to eliminate Idona. She just suddenly
had a—fit of some sort and started raving like a woman possessed. The
Mage-general managed to extract what she’d Foreseen from her mind, and now, as
we speak, Diryan is preparing to send troops to Idona by portal.”

“Damn it! I thought you said she was untrained!”
Roderick boomed
furiously.

“S-She is,”
the Observer sent, mind-voice sounding small and
cowed.

“Then pray tell me how she managed to Foresee something that I have
kept blocked from even the most powerful of the Providencen Seers,”
Roderick demanded.

Fools—they are all fools!

“The Lamians are as baffled as we,”
his spy said defensively.
“Apparently,
not even Aidric knows quite how she did it, and if I understand correctly,
Aidric had shielded her from having the power to use her abilities. She was
not
supposed to’ve been able to use her Foresight under those restraints.”

Roderick’s temper quickly simmered at this newest revelation.
Well,
well, not even His Mightiness can keep a leash on her power
, he thought
smugly, not being able to resist feeling a great deal of satisfaction that
someone—even if that someone had not been him—had finally proved more powerful
than the bloody bastard.

Roderick ran his fingers through his hair and frowned as a
very troubling thought suddenly occurred to him. If Aidric, who—he admitted
grudgingly—was more powerful than he, could not hold her powers at bay, then
what chance had he?
He
was no fool. He knew his magical powers had their
limitations.

Yet—no one is infallible
, Roderick reminded himself.
Certainly
even a legendary mage has her weaknesses. I must find out what they are.

“I have a new task for you,”
he sent.
“You must trail the
Golden Mage and learn all you possibly can about her—her loves, her darkest
fears, and more importantly, her closest friends.”

“But the palace guards keep the strictest eye on her,”
the
Observer protested weakly,
“not to mention the Mage-general, himself. Under
that much attention, I couldn’t possibly—”

“I don’t wish to hear your pathetic excuses!”
Roderick “snapped”
impatiently
. “You’ll do as I bid! If you cannot get near her, then invade
her mind and steal the information I require.”

“But, Aidric—”

“You damned fool! You have been
bespeaking me without detection for moons! Surely the task of probing one
girl’s mind while escaping detection is within your power, and if it isn’t,
then you damned well better make it within your power! You know the penalty for
failure…”

Roderick smiled sadistically as he “felt” all the blood leave his spy’s
face. The last spy that had failed to deliver was now encased behind a
walled-up dungeon cell suffering the agonies of starvation and suffocation but
unable to die since Roderick had used the Dark Powers to keep him alive for as
long as it amused him. It was a trick only a dark-mage of Arioch knew. At
night, his screams could be heard quite distinctly throughout the servant
quarters.

“Yes, milord,”
the Observer sent, the spy’s mind-voice betraying
fear, though the spy tried hard to cover it.

“You may go,”
Roderick said absently, his mind already forming
an alternative plan for Idona as he quickly turned his attention to
thought-speaking the mage he had sent to Idona.
“Kion, hear me.”

“I’m here, ‘Highness,”
Kion’s raspy mind-voice replied in the
same thought, startling Roderick, to his annoyance. He didn’t like to be
reminded of how many of his subjects had stronger thought-speaking abilities
than he possessed. Damn fate and its vices!

“There’s to be a change in the initial plan,”
Roderick sent.
“Lamia
has inconveniently become aware of my plan to attack Idona, and they are
preparing to transport an army to aid the Na’arans. You will release the
dyani
onto the village now, and when Diryan’s army appears, turn the slaughter onto
them as well. The mages, however, are to be captured and brought to me alive as
planned.”

“And what of Aidric, milord, should he be amongst them?”
Kion
asked passively.

Aidric, Aidric, Aidric. Roderick was growing increasingly weary of that
name, more so in just the past sand-mark.

“I want Aidric captured especially,”
Roderick replied firmly.
“Abandon
your attack on Idona and send the
dyani
at him alone if you must. After
all, this little attack on Idona was only meant to send Diryan a message. Since
Diryan has already received my message even before it was sent, we’ll
concentrate our efforts on the second part of my plan. I would rather the
Mage-general of Lamia captured and under my power, but if it’s not to be so,
then I want him destroyed.”

“As you command, ‘Highness,”
Kion replied firmly, taking
Roderick’s following silence as a dismissal.

Roderick turned in his chair to face the window where he had a clear
view of some of his troops training below. He watched them critically for a few
moments and then scowled at what he saw.
Fools, all of them
, he thought
again with disgust as the men and youngsters continued to spar in their mock
battles while others cheered or laughed at their efforts.
They believe this
to be nothing more than sport. Perhaps it’s time I make another example of just
how high the stakes are for me.

Chuckling to himself, Roderick rose lazily from his chair
and slowly made his way down the narrow, dark corridors of his palace,
suppressing a grin every time he passed a servant and saw the flash of absolute
terror on their face. Every servant knew that when he walked the halls of his
palace with such leisure, someone would die that day. He enjoyed watching them
struggle to make themselves as invisible as possible.

After he had rounded a few corners, he wasn’t surprised to find the
corridors devoid of servants. No doubt they suddenly remembered that they were
needed elsewhere when they heard his slow, calculated footsteps approaching.

When he finally reached the training grounds, Roderick merely stood at
the end of the path that opened onto the field and stared out onto the field,
purposely waiting for someone to notice his presence. He allowed his
displeasure to be visible on his carefully calculated expression.

When one of the younger boys, a farm boy of about seventeen, finally
spotted him and noticed his expression, his face suddenly drained of all its
color. He dropped his sword, thus earning himself a hard rap on the side of his
head by his opponent while a few snickered around him. A few of the men
sparring around the downed boy stopped their sword-dancing and began to
listlessly poke the boy with the points of their practice blades, laughing as
the boy squirmed uncomfortably under their taunting and desperately gestured
over to where Roderick stood.

“So boy, catch an eyeful of a wench o’er yonder did ye?” Roderick heard
one of them sneer. “Let’s just see who’t be there hidin’ in the bushes.”

The laughter abruptly stopped as several eyes turned in Roderick’s
direction and froze in shock. The silence that followed was so profound that a
dropped pin could have been heard striking the ground.

Containing his amusement with some effort, Roderick strode dramatically
into the practice grounds, every slow, deliberate step an agony to those who
stared back at him in fear. He headed straight for the boy, whom he had
instantly decided would be the object of his example. The boy was clumsy and
distracted far too easily to be of any use to him in his army. Had he have been
a mere twelve summers old, then the character flaw could have possibly been
beaten out of him, but at around seventeen, Roderick believed that it was
virtually too late to change him.

“Get up!” Roderick commanded menacingly to the frightened boy.

In his haste to obey, the boy tripped over his own legs, and with a
wail of anguish, he fell flat onto his face before he could stop himself. Roderick
reached down angrily and grabbed the boy roughly by his tunic, yanking him to
his feet. The boy was trembling badly in his fear, and from the way he bit his
lip and the pinched look of his face, it was painfully clear that he was
struggling not to cry. This only made Roderick cast the boy away from him in
disgust, and even before he hit the ground, his body was suddenly engulfed in a
burst of green mage-flames.

The boy released a shriek that was almost inhuman and flailed his body
wildly in a futile attempt to douse the flames that slowly ate away at his body
as if he was merely a piece of timber. Within a few depths, his screams died
down, and when the flames finally vanished, all that was left of the boy was a
small smear of blackened ashes.

Roderick then glared out onto the group of fighters and said in a
completely calm voice that made them wince, “Should anyone else displease me
again, then your fate will be worse a hundred fold than the boy’s. Mark my
words, when I’m done with you, you’ll wish I
had
cast the mage-flames
upon you instead.”

Satisfied that his point had been made, Roderick turned on his heel and
arrogantly walked back to his palace that seemed, not surprisingly, as empty as
it had when he had left it.

***

The stench of blood and burning bodies made Aidric wrinkle his nose in
disgust as the acrid smell reached his nostrils, a constant reminder of the
horrors before him and the horrors that surely were still to come. What seemed
like a sea of bodies littered the ground before him—Lamian, Na’aran, and Mihran
soldiers in equal numbers, lost to either the
dyani’s
razor sharp fangs,
magical attacks, or the end of an enemy blade.

Aidric clenched his jaw in both despair and anger as he wearily
channeled the power of the Mage-field through his body to fuel the wind storm
he had called up to dispel the
dyani
swarm. No matter how quickly he
eliminated the hellish creatures, sending them back to the first hell from
which they had been Summoned, twice as many seemed to immediately replace those
that had fallen.

Where in the six hells is that damned mage finding so many
dyani
?
he thought frantically as he became more aware of his tiring body with every
passing depth.
There could not possibly be this many even in Ter-ob!

For the hundredth time that night, he wished that Na’ar had a
Mage-field. The strain that his mind was under in drawing the power from the
Lamian Mage-field over hundreds of spans to himself and then channeling the
power through his body was beginning to take its toll on him. He knew that he
wouldn’t be able to hold off the swarm for much longer—two sand-marks at the
maximum if he was lucky.

However, during the last few sand-marks, it seemed to him that most of
the swarm was concentrated at him personally than on Idona, itself. The more he
thought about it, the more the Mihran soldiers appeared to be merely an
annoying distraction to something that he was sure was yet to come.

The twins fought with the Lamian army, weaving their magic into a
musical barrier that kept the
dyani
at bay while several mages
concentrated on destroying them. He needed their assistance desperately, but he
dared not tear them away from their current task. Without that musical barrier,
the other mages would soon be overwhelmed by the swarm. No—somehow he had to
come up with a way to eliminate the mage controlling them. However, Roderick’s
mage was giving him no opportunity to do just that by bombarding him with an
ungodly amount of those hellspawn.

This is a trap
, his mind screamed to him.
Somehow Roderick
knew we had discovered his plans. His attempt to take Idona is at most,
half-hearted. That isn’t like him. He wanted us here.

The longer he chewed on those thoughts, the more he was certain they
had indeed fallen prey to one of Roderick’s traps. The dark-mage wanted them to
come here, and he had a pretty good idea why.

He’s after me specifically
, Aidric thought flatly.
The
bastard’s making good on his last threat to me. He knew I would come. How could
I not? The bloody demon hasn’t even the courage to face me himself. Instead, he
sends his minions to murder the innocent just to draw my attention!

Aidric could feel the anger building within him, fueling his hatred for
Lamia’s long-time enemy. He could feel the power within him increasing with his
rising fury until he shook with the intensity of it. His body began to glow
more brilliantly with the added energy of his anger until he was nothing more
than a being of pulsating light.

The
dyani
swarm immediately stopped their attack, and they edged
back, swirling amongst each other in chaotic patterns that reflected their
agitation. The
dyani
swarm that had been attacking the village quickly
lost interest in their human targets when they caught sight of Aidric’s glowing
form. They immediately joined the swarm that cautiously circled Aidric, hungry
for the power of hate that emanated from him but not able to approach because
of his shields and the light of the Mage-field’s energy.

Enveloped with more power than he usually could channel safely, Aidric
knew that he had to cast the power away quickly or the magical energies would
soon consume him. He was already beginning to feel transparent, as if he was
indeed a being of light and air.