The Spellmonger Series: Book 03 - Magelord Read online

  Magelord

  Book 3 Of The Spellmonger Series

  By Terry Mancour

  Copyright © 2013

  First Kindle Edition BETA

  The Spellmonger Series

  (In chronological order)

  Spellmonger

  “The River Mists of Talry”

  Warmage

  “Victory Soup

  “The Spellmonger’s Wedding”

  Magelord

  Table Of Contents

  The Domain Of Sevendor

  The Dismissal Of Sir Erantal

  Housekeeping

  Affairs of State

  In Which I Meet A Neighbor

  The Yeomanries Of Sevendor

  The Reconquest Of Brestal Vale

  The Emissary Of The Warbird

  Winter Court

  Breakfast With A Footwizard

  I Fight My First Duel Of Honor

  The Blizzard and the Birthing Chamber

  The Snow That Never Melted

  Sire Gimbal Pays A Call

  Olmeg the Green

  A Ransom In Poultry

  I Collect A Debt And Visit A Spellmonger

  The Robinwing Conclave

  The Arcane Orders

  The Legend Of The Forsaken

  The Bovali Migration

  Spring Homecoming

  The Many Wizards of Sevendor

  Chepstan Spring Fair

  The Censorate Of Magic

  Lunch With The Baron

  Sir Cei At The Lists

  Lady Estret Of Cargwenyn

  The Alliance Over Cargwenyn

  The Growth Of Sevendor

  Brother Mison

  High Summer In Sevendor

  Lady Pentandra of Fairoaks

  The Coronet Council

  The Coronation of Rard I

  The Kingdom of Castalshar

  Sevendor Under Siege

  My New Neighbors

  An Embassy From The Alka Alon

  The Wedding Of Sire Cei And Lady Estret

  The Sevendor Magic Fair

  The Spellmonger’s Trial

  The Siege of Castle Cambrian

  I Call The Banners

  The Great Transportation

  The Relief Of Castle Cambrian

  I Charge Bravely Into Battle

  Dragonfall

  The Dragonslayers

  The Joy Of Barrowbell, The Sorrow Of Gilmora

  King Rard Arrives At Barrowbell

  The Mageland of Sevendor

  Chapter One

  The Domain Of Sevendor

  “What a shithole,” my brother-in-law Sagal said, as he surveyed my new fief from horseback for the first time. “What an utterly destitute, deserted shithole. Begging your pardon, Min,” he added as an embarrassed afterthought.

  After all, this was my shithole now. My reward. My . . . happily ever after. And as much as I wanted to take issue with his statement, I couldn’t argue. Sevendor was a mess when we got there, with a pall of neglect as potent as any spell hanging over the entire domain. You could tell long before you rode into the main village.

  Now, I’m not the kind of spellmonger – or newly dubbed Knight Magi, or even a Magelord – who looks a gift horse in the mouth, but when His Grace, Duke Rard of Castal (and about half of Alshar) granted me an estate along with my knighthood and other honors to reward me for stopping (or at least slowing down) a goblin invasion, I had assumed it would be a picturesque feudal land with jolly peasants, green fields, a stout castle and a treasury full of coin.

  I suppose I could have found that, during my search of the available, vacant estates. It’s not that I chose my boon poorly – quite the contrary. I spent almost a week researching my options in the dusty corridors of Wilderhall, under the gimlet eye of Lady Arnet, the Mistress of Lands and Estates for the Duchy of Castal.

  The Duke had specified the exact level of landed fief from which I could choose – rated by some mysterious system the Ducal Court alone understood – and Lady Arnet had presented me with dozens of qualifying holdings on the Duchy’s books, each folio wrapped in leather and sealed with her official seal.

  After researching each one and then agonizing about my choice, I finally made what I thought was the best one for my purposes: a small domain in the northeastern Castali Riverlands, along the Bontal River, only four hundred miles away as the gull flies (and six hundred miles as the river barge sails) from Talry, the town of my birth. My new fief was situated in the northern foothills of the Uwarri range, near the frontier with Remere.

  As far away from the goblin hordes as I could safely get, in other words, and still be close enough to the war front to be of some use. And it had . . . other advantages. It had been one of the regions helpfully suggested by the Tree Folk, for one. I still wasn’t certain why, but I assumed they had a good reason. But I had been far more interested in other factors at the time I selected it. Sevendor was quite the prize estate . . . on parchment.

  According to the meticulously kept tax records, biannual reports and correspondence from the Ducal caretaker, the Domain of Sevendor was supposed to be a well-tended, prosperous little estate, snug in the charmingly-rugged foothills, with a sturdy little castle, a secondary tower fortress, a border tower, three prosperous villages and five hamlets within its limits. Sevendor had been developed for three hundred years, and was one of the former cadet estates of the famous House of Lensely.

  House of Lensely is one of the wealthiest families of the eastern Castali Riverlords. Once they ruled the entire Bontal in fief to the Duke, but despite the honor and prestige attached to the name their power peaked about a hundred years ago.

  There’re still plenty of Lenselys around of course, despite the House’s proclivity for killing each other off in spectacular dynastic duels. But while Lensely, was a rich and prosperous noble House (The Count of Lensely is the traditional head of the Riverlord’s League, and there are still a couple of powerful local Lensely barons still lingering around the Bontal) Sevendor hadn’t been under Lensely control for two generations, thanks to an inheritance dispute between rival branches.

  That was the reason the Duchy had taken control of it in the first place. It had been confiscated by the Coronet as a fine to one of the younger Lensely barons for killing someone he shouldn’t have at the wrong time and in the wrong place.

  Lady Arnet patiently tried to explain the history of Sevendor’s lords to me while my patent of nobility was being drawn up, but in truth I hadn’t paid much attention. I was the first wizard in four centuries who held land in service to a noble lord, breaking the Royal Bans on Magic. I was excited. I wasn’t interested in the history. I wanted to hurry up and get to the tiny little sliver of property she carefully removed from her dusty old books, not listen to a long droning recitation of the colorful history of the domain. Perhaps I should have. I might have been better prepared.

  Sevendor was never any great prize. While technically in the Riverlands, it was seventy miles south of the nearest navigable river, A hill-country fief that hugged the valleys of the small but respectable mountains to the south (hardly mountains at all, compared to the majestic Mindens or the grand and rugged Kulines).

  It was one of those odd slivers of territory that doesn’t quite fit neatly into a region, a marginal property unblessed by the bountiful croplands of the river valleys below. There was another parcel two hundred forty miles northwest I could have chosen, the Domain of Ormacar, and I had been sorely tempted. It was twice as large as Sevendor, half as fertile and had two castles and six villages. But I had my reasons for choosing Sevendor.

  The folio described the estate as a strip running east to w
est about six and a half miles long and three and a half miles wide at the widest point. It was a kind of double-blind vale, two valleys stretching to a common gap to the northeast, separated by a low ridge and a big mountain. I had studied the map included with the folio, required for proper tribute filing, until I felt I knew it by heart.

  The smaller eastern area, known as Brestal Vale, had the better croplands for grain, while the larger western vale, Sevendor Vale, boasted an itinerant stream through its midst and several hundred acres of timberlands. Neither lobe was particularly fertile, compared to domains closer to the river, but the peasants farmed corn, barley, wheat, beans, rye, millet, oats, garneth, goats, turkeys, and the occasional cow or sheep or llama. Both Brestal and Sevendor had a central village and a fortification for defense. And there were attendant hamlets and yeoman estates in each vale.

  About all the apocrypha I could recall from Lady Arnet’s briefing domain itself was that Sevendor once had a modest fame for horse breeding and there was a substantial nut grove, pecans in particular, within the domain. The cadet branch of the Lenselys who had ruled there exported a significant, though not substantial, amount of produce before they’d lost it. According to the lackluster historical record, in its prime, Sevendor produced over three-hundred bushels of corn for export, seventy bushels of nuts, and two-hundred turkeys, chicken, and assorted fowl.

  But yields weren’t what they used to be. Sevendor’s prime was over a century ago.

  The geography was what sold me on it, but not for the usual reasons. The stream wasn’t very large, certainly not navigable by anything bigger than a canoe. It ran cautiously through the center of the vale throughout most of the year and flooded spectacularly every spring, according to the dusty reports. The croplands were marginal, and wouldn’t support more than a few thousand people without importing grain. It abutted several larger domains, mostly local nobles of distinguished lineage and honorable repute – which didn’t impress me in the slightest.

  Militarily, there wasn’t much there. I knew that it had provided a modest twenty conscripts for the recent Farisian campaign. In its prime it had sent over three hundred militia to the disastrous Battle of Gommal, one of the innumerable frontier disputes between Castal and Remere. Three generations of the Lensely line of Sevendor had perished in that war; along with every man the vales had sent. Title had passed to a distant relative who had never visited the domain, and whose son lost it to the Coronet because of his hasty temper and quick sword.

  The little domain never really recovered from that. Besides the sudden lack of Lenselys, the drain on the people of Sevendor had been critical. Not one of the Castali at the Battle of Gommal survived, Lady Arnet told me, and that had left Sevendor sadly depopulated, with fewer and fewer peasants on the rolls every year. Or, at least up to six years ago, the last time any reports were received by her dusty office.

  I liked Sevendor partially because it was remote, and out of the way, naturally protected by mountains, yet but a quick two-day ride south from the river port of Sendaria-on-Bontal, should I feel like doing any trade or need to get back to more civilized parts in a hurry. That was important. The Bontal River was thick with river barges, and was the central highway of the Riverlands on this side of Castal. Go downriver a hundred miles south to the Vennlands, and you could ride to any of three other rivers within a day. That put Sevendor about a week to a week and a half from most of the Riverlands, if haste was needed.

  I liked Sevendor . . . on parchment. It wasn’t a large land, it was easily manageable, yet I believed it had great potential for development. I was also counting on its modest size and productivity to keep it from seeming too alluring to my neighbors. Property rights in a feudal society usually get settled with lances, in which I was poor, and I didn’t want to waste my entire surplus on keeping my neighbors at bay. It was too far from civilization to be considered more than a wardland, and its complete lack of strategic value left it unhampered by growth.

  It was an utterly average country knight’s estate. It had been governed from afar for generations, appended to various high lords’ titles as an afterthought, traded in dowries and weregilds, and administered by proxy once it came under the Coronet’s ownership. No sitting Lord of Sevendor had set foot on the property for over sixty years. And no Lord of Sevendor had been in residence there for a century and a quarter.

  It showed.

  The neglect was obvious, from the moment we crossed the unwarded, unguarded, overgrown frontier through the low pass, Sevendor’s “front door”. The country was pretty enough. Indeed, it was gorgeous – a tall protective ridge of mountains enclosing pleasantly-forested hills, the tallest of which, a giant fist of a mount directly in front of the low pass rising just under the height of the ridges, grew bald and rocky at its summit, and it was majestic to behold.

  But once the caravan crossed the point where the map included with my patent indicated we should be there, after gazing admiringly at the central mountain I started to realize that things were amiss.

  I pulled Traveler’s reigns to stop him, while Sir Cei and my brother-in-law Sagal both rode up beside me. I stared at the derelict, burned-out pile of rocks that was supposed to be the watch tower to my fief, noted the weeds growing thick within, and I started to get anxious.

  “What a shithole,” my brother-in-law Sagal said, as he surveyed my new fief from horseback for the first time. “What an utterly destitute, deserted shithole. Begging your pardon, Min,” he added as an afterthought.

  “This is Sevendor’s frontier,” I said, quietly. “That’s supposed to be a three-story stone tower known as . . . Hyer’s Tower,” I said, consulting the map.

  “Hyer really needs to do some maintenance,” quipped my brother-in-law, shaking his head sadly.

  “That tower was taken in battle,” Sir Cei’s experienced eye informed him. “Four, five years ago. Sire Minalan, I mislike this.”

  “You think you mislike this?” I asked, with a mirthless chuckle. “This is my reward for saving two duchies. I’m starting to wonder if it was worth the trouble.” There was a distinct scent of decaying vegetation that cut through the crisp winter air. I wondered if that was the smell of neglect.

  “Where to?” asked Cei. He glanced at the split in the road – and “road” is a generous term. It was a roughly-worn path overgrown with weeds and only occasionally flagged. But it split, the left road going south and the right fork heading west.

  “Sevendor Castle is south,” I nodded, as the rest of the caravan began coming into the vale. “East is Brestal Tower, the other estate. We’ll start at the main castle. It’s further, but I’d rather reach there by this afternoon, if possible. I only hope it’s in better repair than the outbuildings,” I said, as I nudged Traveler to the right, past the ruined tower.

  “May the gods grant it so,” Sir Cei said, automatically, and followed. He didn’t sound encouraged. But then Sir Cei rarely sounded encouraged about anything.

  The next indication that something was wrong was the boundary stone that indicated where one domain ended and the Sevendor began. Two hundred yards past the ruined tower the west road took a turn for the worse, with rampant weeds growing through the pavers indicating a lack of regular use. That’s where we found the stone, overgrown by weeds but noting the official location of the frontier.

  “This seems to be out of place,” I commented idly. “Remind me to move it back where it belongs later.”

  “Magelord Minalan, traditionally such stones are used—”

  “I know what they’re used for, Sir Cei, and I know what it probably means. But it’s getting late and I don’t like the look of that sky. Feels like snow.” He couldn’t argue with that – he was used to Bovali winters, which start much earlier than in the Riverlands and rage much harder. But there was no mistaking the smell of snow in the air.

  It was a good ten minutes on that rough road before we saw any sign of humanity. Peasants, of course, bundled up in homespun, threadbare cloaks of un
dyed wool and ratty furs against the chill, dutifully trudging about their business, herding goats or moving dirt or chopping wood.

  There weren’t very many of them, though, and they didn’t look very jolly. They wore uniform gray homespun, hemp or linen, and crudely woven straw hats. A few had cloaks of wool, leather or fur. No one waved or bowed. They didn’t look frightened of our party, or even curious. Growing up a commoner, I did more complaining about the nobility than cheering, but I also knew that a good Lord can make a land and its people prosper, and a poor one doom it to misery. These people had misery by the bucketful.

  “I’m glad we packed rations,” Sagal said, his eyes wide as we rode past a peasant woman hacking at the dry earth with a fire-hardened stick. She was as thin as a bare blade.

  “Don’t stare,” I chided. “It isn’t polite.” I nodded to the collection of huts on the north side of the road, enclosed with a low hedge and wooden fence, not even a proper stockade.

  The huts within were in two varieties, the more-common round hut half sunk into the earth, the walls of wattle-and-daub and a roof of thatch. There were a few proper longhouses of timber and stone; likely barns or the homes of wealthier peasants, but none were in good repair. A single, lonely-looking grain silo of stone stood in the center of the hamlet. There were a few scrawny, wide-eyed children playing in front of the huts, but they scattered and hid as soon as we approached.

  “This is the Magelord’s hamlet of Gurisham,” Sir Cei informed me, helpfully. “A bonded commune.” I didn’t need to be reminded; I’d studied the map for hours. But according to the reports there should be thirty to forty families here. If there were more than seven or eight then I’d forgotten how to count properly. We passed by the depressing little settlement without interacting with anyone – I wanted to get to the castle, proper.

  The road had evolved into a simple track through the brush only wide enough for a single horse or light wagon. The brush on the sides was browner than green, and the prevalent form of plant life seemed to be rocks. They grew everywhere. The few frozen cultivated fields we passed were full of them.