Journeymage: Book Six Of The Spellmonger Series Read online

  Journeymage

  Book Six Of The Spellmonger Series

  By Terry Mancour

  Copyright © March, 2015

  Dedication

  To my father, Irving Leslie Mancour,

  Who always kept me on the trail.

  Also to Clyde Thompson, Larry Strickland, Clarence Hilliard

  Bill Kirby, and the venerable Mr. Elsworth

  For their guidance and inspiration.

  The Spellmonger Series

  Spellmonger

  Warmage

  The Spellmonger’s Wedding: An Anthology

  The Spellmonger’s Honeymoon: A Novella

  Magelord

  Knights Magi

  High Mage

  Journeymage

  Enchanter (forthcoming)

  The Spellmonger Cadet Series

  Hawkmaiden

  Hawklady (forthcoming)

  Table Of Contents

  Part One: “Byddwch yn Barod!”

  Chapter One: Occasions Of State

  Chapter Two: The Orphan Duke

  Chapter Three: Planning and Plotting

  Chapter Four: Scouting The Penumbra

  Chapter Five: Logistics & Supply

  Chapter Six: Bransei Mountain

  Chapter Seven: Preparing My Staff

  Chapter Eight: The Grain of Pors

  Part Two: “Gwnewch Eich Gorau!”

  Chapter Nine: The March Begins

  Chapter Ten: The Redwoods Of Bransei

  Chapter Eleven: Otter’s Point

  Chapter Twelve: A Quick Trip Home

  Chapter Thirteen: Rognar Tower

  Chapter Fourteen: Mask

  Chapter Fifteen: The Legacy of Pors

  Chapter Sixteen: An Audience With The King

  Part Three:“Gweithredoedd Da”

  Chapter Seventeen: Midsummer

  Chapter Eighteen: The Wilderlands Refugees

  Chapter Nineteen: The March To Tudry

  Chapter Twenty: The Origins Of The Kasari

  Chapter Twenty-One: A Summons To Wilderhall

  Chapter Twenty-Two: The Orphans Of Vorone

  Chapter Twenty-Three: The Crystal Snowflake

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Recovery

  Chapter Twenty-Five: The Frontier Of Castal

  Chapter Twenty-Six: The End Of The Trail

  Part One: “Byddwch yn Barod!”

  Chapter One

  Occasions Of State

  The novelty of state occasions had worn off.

  Call it an axiom of power, but the first really large state ceremony you attend, like the first time you have sex, fills you with awe at the grandeur and pageantry. You are so impressed by the spectacle – which are designed to impress – and the importance of the occasion that you are blind to the bored-looking people in the fancy robes standing around the head of the ceremony. You naturally feel that they are as invested in the importance of the occasion as you are, if not much more so, as they are important and this is an important occasion.

  Truth is, most of them are bored as hell. Having been one of the important people in fancy robes standing on the dais, if the particular occasion did not directly concern your interests I can assure you that despite the sublime smile I learned to plaster on my face, I was there merely to be important, in my fancy clothes, and lend my importance to that of the ceremony. I could have sent a stand-in and no one in the audience would have had the slightest idea.

  This particular occasion had little to do with me or my interest: the marriage of the young prince to his beautiful, but utterly vapid Remeran bride.

  The Great Hall of the royal castle was packed, sweaty bodies in silken robes as far as the eye could see. The High Priestess of Trygg was droning on about the sanctity of marriage to the smart-looking young couple in the majestic light of the great stained glass window overhead, and I was bored near to tears.

  Thankfully, I wasn’t resigned to hearing a husband’s sacred duties to his wife under the auspices of the Holy Mother spelled out yet-again, as I was lucky enough to be a mage, and magi have spells to avoid that sort of thing. I used one to reach out mind-to-mind to Lady Pentandra, who was only six rows away from the stage, packed in with a bunch of barons and abbots. I could barely see her from where I was, but with magic I could speak to her across the crowded room as easily as whispering in her ear. It wasn’t just idle chatter. Something had caught my otherwise-useless attention.

  Penny, who is that?

  Min, there are a thousand people in this hall. You’re going to have to be more specific.

  Sorry. Third row back, on the left. Young man, about fifteen, black hair, blue velvet tunic. He’s standing next to that old priest. He looks familiar. He keeps glaring at the groom, looking sad and angry.

  Oh. That’s . . . Min, you don’t know?

  I’ve been . . . no, I don’t know.

  Min, that’s Anguin. Heir to what’s left of Alshar.

  Duke Lenguin’s son? I thought his name was ‘Enguin’.

  That’s your funny Riverlands’ accent hearing the funny Alshari accent incorrectly. And they’re kind of touchy about how you pronounce it. Enguin was actually his great-grandfather. A bit of a tyrant. They called him the Black Duke, for all the seven years he reigned. One reason why they probably named him Anguin was to keep him from being associated with the ancestor who had half of his family killed. Particularly considering he’s missing most of his family himself. They call him the Orphan Duke, now.

  Oh. No wonder he looks bitter.

  That was an understatement.

  Three years ago, when the lad was just a boy, he had been raised in the lap of luxury as sole male heir to one of the great political dynasties that ruled the Five Duchies. Then war had broken out against the goblins in the farthest reaches of his lands, and his father had been assassinated (“died as a result of wounds suffered in battle” was the official explanation) by his brother-in-law, his mother had been assassinated in her palace by agents of his aunt, and his duchy was wracked by rebellion in the wealthy south. Worse – for him – was the fact that his aunt and uncle had then taken him virtual prisoner “for his own safety” before crowning themselves king and queen of their combined realm.

  Since those eventful days, he had been living in exile in a well-appointed monastic estate somewhere in Castal where he had been kept as a hostage or a political piece or both.

  Luckily for him, his aunt, Queen Grendine, wasn’t more bloodthirsty than she had to be. The tacit understanding was that as soon as her son was safely wed, and an heir to the heir was firmly implanted in his bride’s tummy, Queen Grendine would see the danger of him stirring up rebellion – or worse, his being used by the lords already in rebellion as a puppet – as largely passed. As long as he remained her loyal puppet, he would be free to return to what was left of loyal Alshar.

  That wasn’t much. While the Alshari Wilderlands are expansive, they’re also very lightly populated. What people were there were mostly either prisoners, soldiers or refugees, as that was where the stagnant front line against the nonhuman gurvani had settled: the occupied and contested Penumbralands now took up a goodly portion of northern and western Alshar.

  The seat of the Duchy’s power lay in its strong mercantile southlands, a stretch of coastline and coastal valleys that had been the basis of Alshari economic strength and political power for centuries. In fact the Alshari Wilderlands were barely accounted part of the realm, in terms of relative importance to the south. That entire region had refused to accept the Duke of Castal as their king, and the counties there had thrown out King Rard’s representatives . . . some without their heads.

&nb
sp; That didn’t leave much of Alshar left for the Orphan Duke. Once his political importance declined, after this wedding, he was heir to a couple of baronies of rugged farmland, a whole lot of timber, and tens of thousands of starving refugees.

  I’d be pissed, too.

  So who is that priest who keeps whispering to him?

  That’s Landfather Amus. High Priest of Huin, and traditional chaplain to the Alshari Ducal family. He joined the lad in exile, when he could. He’s very devoted to the Ducal house, but he’s personally devoted to Anguin and his sisters. Why?

  Just trying to see who the players are at court. Like you advised me.

  He’s hardly a player. He’s a piece. And one that’s about to become useless.

  To the royal family, perhaps. But not necessarily to us.

  Min, after this ceremony he’s going to inherit a broken duchy in deepest turmoil. One with no tax revenue for the last three years, no infrastructure, and no resources outside of trees and rocks. He’s absolutely screwed. I pity him, but he’s in no position to be a help to us.

  I was thinking perhaps we could be of help to him.

  I could hear her mental groan. Min, why? Don’t we have enough on our table as it is?

  Pen, when you have too many problems the path of wisdom dictates that you use them to solve each other. I’m going to have to meet with Their Majesties after this party and explain why I appropriated a goodly portion of the Kingdom’s magical assets and embarked on a private mission with no immediate value to the security of the Kingdom.

  Min! You defeated a hundred thousand goblins that would have terrorized all of the west!

  I know that, and that’s how I’ll explain it to them, but we both know how that will go. Even Count Salgo is getting chewed out for his role in this. There are those who want to see him booted from the cabinet and replaced with a more docile warlord.

  I’m sure you’ll muddle through, and so will Salgo. You managed to arrange for the Prince Heir to lead a victorious battle over our foes and secure his position as a great leader of men.

  I tried my best not to let my true feelings be seen on my face. People were watching.

  Prince Tavard had, indeed, led an army against our foes and gloriously fought them until they pressed for terms on the battlefield. The fact that they were already in retreat, that they were reserves, and that they were by far the smallest army fighting against the kingdom that day were conveniently left out of the popular accounts. The Prince had saved the Kingdom. He was a most puissant and valiant knight. He would make a noble, wise and just monarch, when he eventually came to the throne. The minstrels said so.

  I didn’t like the arrogant, narcissistic little prick. The fact that he looked far more like his murdering bitch of a mother than his insanely ambitious father may have had something to do with it. He wasn’t stupid, but he did have a far too high opinion of himself. Marrying the beautiful daughter of one of the leading Remeran mercantile trading houses (the Remeran nobility don’t have the same disdain for mere commerce that the Castali and Alshari have – most Remeran great houses had substantial commercial interests) certainly didn’t slow down his ego. Princess Arduina was already showing signs of the new heir in her belly.

  I don’t foresee rosy relations between the Arcane Orders and the current regime, I answered, diplomatically. Remeran commercial interests are waxing in importance at court. The fortunes of heroic warmagi are in decline, now that the war is at a standstill.

  We have a treaty, she reminded me.

  We have a treaty, I repeated, sardonically.

  That had become a kind of code between the High Magi – at least the ones in the inner circle of the Arcane Orders. The fact was, the “treaty” that the Prince Heir forced on the goblins and their human confederates at sword point extracted no real concessions, it wasn’t enforceable, and it in no way would keep the goblin hordes from pursuing war with humanity – and every High Mage knew it. It was a hollow treaty that had put the goblins at an advantage. Now they weren’t mere invaders, they were a political entity with representation at court. They stuck a crown on a goblin and pretended like he was a real king. There was even talk of an embassy.

  We had a treaty.

  That wouldn’t stop the genocidal hordes or their dark master. We could play diplomacy all we liked, but the ruthless ambition of the undead goblin who really ruled the gurvani was to see every human on Callidore wiped out. Waving a treaty under his unseeing eyes wasn’t going to deter him.

  It did, however, bring a lot of security to a troubled kingdom, and I couldn’t argue against the utility of that. We had battled the goblins to a standstill. And thanks to a massive effort, some unlikely allies, and some really classy magic we had eliminated the largest portion of their great army. Though it was a hollow victory, compared to the cost, it had been a dramatic setback for the goblins. Losing his finest troops in one stroke had seriously curtailed Shereul’s war plans, and we could – perhaps – take advantage of that to rebuild our own strength.

  If the King wanted to pretend this was peacetime, I was willing to play along with that. For now.

  But it wasn’t peacetime, it was merely another portion of the game. As badly as I wanted to see the threat of the gurvani abated, I was a good enough strategist to understand that when the game gives you a gift of time, you capitalize on it with everything you’ve got.

  That would also inevitably put me at odds with the royal family. King Rard and Queen Grendine were still stitching together the institutions of a kingdom and consolidating their power. That’s what this ridiculous occasion was really about: establishing their rule in the minds of everyone. The greater nobility, the lesser nobility, the clergy, the mercantile interests, and of course the commoners upon whom everything depended. With their affairs in such a precarious state, they would not look favorably on a Spellmonger mucking around with politics and such.

  So I needed allies. I had a few, already, within the kingdom. Magelords had begun to prosper, now that magi could legally own lands and titles. I’d done my best to cultivate loyalty among them, as well as the rank-and-file common magi. But that was a minor power bloc, at best, in the political landscape of the former Five Duchies.

  Beyond that I had a few mercenary allies, Count Salgo (whose fortunes were declining at court with the treaty) and some regional allies back home in Sevendor. The Arcane Orders had been of use to the royal house, but now that we weren’t needed any more we were destined to become a problem, as Penny had explained to me over and over again. Our best bet was to lay low, practice our arts quietly, and wait until conditions were more favorable. Allow our own institutions to mature, as she said, not make trouble for larger powers. That’s what the game dictated.

  I was content with that, for now. I really did have my hands full. But I also had started to develop a sensitivity to political matters – not a bad thing in a landed baron – and I knew that in this game developing allies when you are in a position of strength could pay serious dividends down the river. The Royal House was just the Ducal house of Castal, the heart of the new kingdom of Castalshar. If Rard was developing allies amongst the Remerans, then the Alshari made a logical counterpoint.

  Yes, they were weak, disorganized, and fractured. But that looked like an opportunity, to me.

  Pen, I want you to do something, I decided. I want you to get to know the Alshari Duke.

  Get to know him? Seduce him? she asked, curious.

  No! Well, not if you can help it.

  Good!

  That gave me pause. The relief in her mental “voice” was significant. The day that Penny turned down an opportunity to add a seated duke to her list of sexual conquests was the day that there was something seriously wrong with Lady Pentandra of Fairoaks.

  And there was something wrong with Lady Pentandra of Fairoaks. Despite the fact that she was the leading authority on sex magic (a highly controversial and obscure topic, even among magi) and a confirmed libertine, Pentandra was in love. My c
ool, calculating friend who had prided herself on her explorations of her chosen topic had fallen as hard as an adolescent schoolgirl. No mere duke, however young and promising, was tempting her libidinous nature.

  The poor bastard’s name was Arborn. He was the Captain of the Kasari Rangers, a Wilderland culture that was as rustic as Pentandra’s Remeran forebears were decadently sophisticated. I couldn’t fault her choice – during last year’s war, Arborn had proven himself an adept leader of men, and his thousand-strong force of Kasari Rangers had been instrumental in how the battle had unfolded. They had followed me deep into enemy territory, into the heart of the dark evil that infected the far-off Mindens, and they had fought valiantly – Arborn most courageously of them all.

  He was the kind of man that makes every man in the room wants to aspire to be. Arborn was the kind of man who is utterly competent at everything he does, always in control, always acting with absolute certainty. It was disconcerting, sometimes, to see how effortlessly he adapted to any situation. He was a ferocious warrior, but he did not make war for a living. He was a masterful leader who had no ambitions of power.

  Unencumbered by title or lands, he nonetheless commanded universal respect among his own people. Unfortunately, in Pentandra’s world that made him a pauper . . . which was one reason why Penny was so damn smitten with him. Money meant nothing to him. He wanted no lands to rule. He had no use for meaningless titles. His status derived from his complete competence alone. He was a real man in a world full of base pretenders – myself included – and in the face of that kind of raw masculinity Pentandra’s pretensions to sophistication went into the creek. She wanted Arborn bad.

  The problem was that according to Arborn’s unique culture, he couldn’t even consider her as a mate until she undertook a series of obscure rites deep in the Castali Wilderlands. While Pentandra was intrigued from a professional standpoint, she was also hesitant about the idea.

  But her reaction to the prospect of seducing a young, potentially powerful duke told me volumes. Penny was attracted to Arborn beyond reasonable limits. This had to be love.