Hawklady: A Spellmonger Cadet Novel Read online

  She might have felt miffed, had it been any other situation. But the Magelord was responsible for far more than just the domain of Sevendor; he was apparently helping the King, himself, against the goblins who were attacking the distant west.

  Dara shuddered when she thought about them. There were tales amongst the Bovali, the poor refugees who had narrowly escaped from the valley the goblins invaded first, Boval Vale, and they were not pleasant to hear. The goblins were possessed of a great hatred of humankind, Lady Pentandra explained to her once, and their armies wanted to push the humans off of their lands and sacrifice them to their Dead God. They were willing to do all sorts of horrible things to do it, too. She tried to stop hearing the stories, after the first few scared her, but it seemed nearly every Bovali refugee who’d settled in Sevendor had at least three horrific tales about the goblins.

  But now the invasion from the northlands was pushing into the south, from what she understood. That was causing all sorts of problems, and when the Duke had problems he called upon his best wizard to help. That was Magelord Minalan, the Hero of the Wilderlands. Her new master.

  Dara descended the stairs through Master Minalan’s laboratory and through his bedchamber until she exited to the grand Great Hall of Sevendor Castle. She never thought she’d get used to the sight, so much larger and more lordly than the Westwood Hall manor where she lived. Though the castle was over a hundred years old, the stone gleamed bright white – the accidental result of a spell Master Minalan cast last winter during a snowstorm, to save his wife and baby in childbirth.

  The spell had splashed out all over the vale that fateful night, and many who never suspected that they had a store of rajira discovered that they were suddenly sensitive to magical energies. Including Dara. Indeed, she’d learned, the gleaming white snowstone that spread out nearly two miles in every direction from the castle apparently reduced the natural resistance to magic that most places had. Now Sevendor was the easiest place in the world to do magic.

  If you knew how to do it in the first place, that was.

  The Great Hall of Sevendor Castle was far nicer now than when she’d first seen it, a few years ago, when the disreputable Sir Erantal was in charge of the domain. Then it had been dingy, dusty, dirty, and dark.

  Now, under Minalan and Alya, the snow–white stone was gleaming, and magelights hovered permanently over the hall. The great stone fireplace at the head was crackling with a constant flame that reminded her of home, and the banners that hung from the rafters now were recent and free from cobwebs.

  The entire place made her feel safe and protected, and she valued that. Compared to how the Sevendori viewed the castle under its previous management, that was a major change. The folk of the vale now looked at the fortress with hope and security, not dread and despair. That, if nothing else, was worth all of the other changes the Spellmonger brought to Sevendor.

  The hall was starting to get busy as it prepared for the evening meal. Guards and grooms, laborers and staff were beginning wash themselves at the great basin at the door of the hall, while drudges began to set up trestle tables and the servants began to set the stone high table in front of the fireplace.

  Dara would always have a fond place in her heart for the Great Hall. It was where she was hailed as the winner of the Spellmonger’s Trial, made Master Minalan’s apprentice, and celebrated in front of the entire domain. That night marked a dramatic change in her life, from when she’d gone from being just Dara of Westwood, youngest daughter of the Master of the Wood and nascent self–taught falconer, to Apprentice Dara, the Hawkmaiden of Sevendor. That night would always be one of the most special in her heart.

  There were far more people at the castle than usual, and more servants than usual preparing for the additional guests. The Magical Fair just ended, and the disturbing news from the west quickly overtook her dramatic victory at the Trial. Many of Master Minalan’s friends and allies who’d attended were anxious about the sudden attack, and looked to her master for guidance. There were also merchants and tradesmen from the fair who still had business in Sevendor, or who tarried merely out of curiosity or the opportunity for bargains after the fair.

  “Dara!” called a familiar voice – Gareth, she realized, already sitting at the first line of tables in the hall. The mage was hardly an imposing figure. He’d come to Sevendor early in Minalan’s tenure to audition for a witchstone as a warmage, but he’d failed the Spellmonger’s rigorous tests. He was just not physically large and strong enough, he was a bit clumsy, and he was just not belligerent enough to warrant a warmage’s witchstone. Indeed, he was nothing like the proud, strong, tough warmagi Dara had met at the Trials.

  Yet he’d stayed in Sevendor as Minalan’s loyal man after his rejection, instead of resenting it, and learned as much as he could from the Spellmonger and his friends. Gareth ended up serving Master Minalan in many capacities, she’d learned, not the least of which was organizing and running much of the Magic Fair. Dara was glad to at least see a friendly face amongst all of the strangers in the hall, and she decided to wait for dinner with him.

  “Magic lessons?” he asked, as she sat down at the bench.

  “Lady Pentandra,” Dara nodded. “The first set of runes. Magic as metaphor,” she said, with more exasperation in her voice than she’d intended.

  “Oh, that’s a good one,” the wizard smiled, fondly. “One of the basics, upon which all other magic depends. You’ll probably have an easier time, one–on–one with Lady Pentandra than I did at the academy with a room full of other students, trying to keep up with the lecture... but it does explain why so many of the Archmagi were also poets and writers,” he concluded.

  Dara couldn’t imagine writing anything for fun. It was hard enough just reading.

  “I understand metaphor,” she insisted. “When I’m riding behind Frightful’s eyes, it’s not like being a falcon, it is being a falcon. I just have a hard time seeing a couple of squiggly lines as the same as being a tree, or something,” she said, frustrated.

  “It is harder transferring the concept to inanimate objects or abstract symbols,” he nodded, sympathetically. “But it’s also essential. Until you can make the mental commitment to the metaphor and really mean it, your spells won’t work. And the first sets of runes are all the easy ones, the Statics and the Ordinals. When you get to the Mutables, the Ephemerals, and the Actives, that’s when you can really start to go mad. We won’t even speak of the dreaded Cardinals, Transits and Scalar runes,” he said, with foreboding.

  “By the Flame!” Dara said, her eyes wide. “How many runes are there?”

  “In the basic Imperial system?” Gareth asked, pleased to be her resource. “Hundreds. But don’t worry, you’ll only use a few dozen, most of the time. But you have to know as many as possible. And then there are hundreds more in the apocryphal systems, the specialties, and when you get into advanced thaumaturgy, it’s like each spell has its own new set of supplementary runes.”

  Dara felt ill. She’d learned only a handful of the very first set of the most basic runes, and she’d yet to actually learn how to use them. The task before her as an apprentice seemed daunting, at best, and impossible at worst.

  “Don’t worry!” Gareth laughed, kindly, when he saw her expression. “You’ve been at it a few days, at best, and it takes years to learn. Once you master the basic concepts, you’ll be picking up a few a day, after a while. And eventually, you’ll do what the masters do: you’ll look it up in some reference when you actually need it.”

  “It just seems like... a lot,” she said, trying to conceal her anxiety.

  “It is,” Gareth conceded, “but it’s very worthwhile. And it’s just part of your education as a student of Imperial magic. But it’s an essential one. The whole foundation of Imperial magic is that we all learn the same runes and symbols so that we can work together. Once you learn the runes by rote, you’ll have to learn thaumaturgical construction to put them together to actually make stuff happen.”
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  “That’s how Lady Pentandra explained it,” Dara sighed. “You put the runes together like letters in a word.”

  “Exactly!” Gareth agreed, pleased.

  “. . . only I have a really, really hard time putting letters together in a word,” Dara said, despairingly. Gareth blinked at the admission.

  “Oh, compared to actually doing magic, reading is easy,” he insisted. “You’ll pick that up in no time. You’ll have to,” he emphasized. “You won’t be able to do much as a student until you do.”

  Dara resisted the urge to put her forehead down on the cool wood of the smooth oaken trestle table. Terribly hard.

  “I suppose it can’t be as hard as training a bird,” she sighed, calling mentally to Frightful. Even when she was not in rapport with the bird, she and her falcon shared a connection, and it only took a tug at Frightful’s mental jesses to summon her, now.

  “No, but it involves butchering fewer rabbits,” Gareth offered.

  “A point,” she conceded. There were many beautiful things about a falconer’s job. Butchering the kills and the meat for her bird was not among them. “But I’m still kind of confused about my duties as an apprentice,” she confessed, quietly. “I keep expecting someone to explain, but everyone’s been kind of occupied by the news from the west.”

  Gareth’s face changed immediately. “Yes, the Gilmoran invasion. That’s the heart of the western Riverlands. There are hundreds of thousands of people there.”

  “That’s what I understand. But since Master Minalan and even his other apprentices have been busy, they haven’t...”

  “. . . had the time to give the new girl her orientation,” Gareth finished. “Well, I suppose I can help, though I learned in the Academy, not from a single master, but the basics are well–known.”

  “Teach me, oh master!” Dara said, with exaggerated adoration.

  “It’s pretty simple, actually,” Gareth said, as one of the cooks placed a trencher of stale bread in front of each of them. “You are supposed to do pretty much whatever your master needs you to do. In return, you slave away at ridiculously hard lessons until you face the mind–twisting horror of the journeyman’s exam.” He considered thoughtfully. “Oh, your master is required to feed you one meal a day, provide you a place to sleep, and give you one new suit of clothes a year at Yule.”

  Dara stared at the wizard. “Is that it?”

  “It’s indentured servitude, near to slavery, for some,” Gareth considered. “It really depends on the master. Some are horrible,” he said, in hushed tones. “Rondal’s former master, for instance, was particularly poor. He’s the only apprentice out of three who survived the Siege of Boval Castle, from what people say... largely because of how horrible their master was.

  “But Master Minalan is academy trained, like me and Lady Pentandra,” Gareth assured. “His expectations are likely going to be much, much different than a traditional master. That doesn’t mean lower,” he emphasized. “Master Minalan is a Magelord. He has duties to the duke and the entire land. The gods alone know what he might ask of you, at the moment,” he said, philosophically. “Indeed, if my suspicions are correct, he might not be able to spare the time to instruct you for a while. The war in Gilmora,” he reminded her. “If I know the Spellmonger, he will find some way to go. He will insist on it. The magelord who is in need is an old war comrade of his, and the Spellmonger is passing loyal.”

  “So, he would just... leave?” she asked, suddenly worried. She knew the situation was dire, but the war was hundreds of leagues from Sevendor. Indeed, Sevendor was still recovering from its own small war, one in which she’d played no small part. The idea that her new master would feel compelled to go somewhere else to fight when he’d just won back his own domain frightened Dara.

  “If he felt he needed to... and if I know the man, by the look in his eyes that need is growing. I figure he could make the journey within two weeks, if he hurried downriver soon. But now he’s gotten the Tree Folk involved,” he added, with thoughtful gravity. “They have magic beyond what we can do, even with witchstones. Even with Minalan’s Witchsphere.”

  Dara had been introduced to the elegant non–human folk at the Magic Fair, and she found the Alka Alon as mysterious and breathtaking as everyone else. If they were involved, then just about anything was possible. “But shouldn’t he stay here and tend to affairs in Sevendor?” she asked, confused. “He’s lord of this domain.”

  “If he goes to Gilmora, he might never return, Dara,” Gareth explained, quietly. “He is a magelord, but he is also a warmage. He was a warmage long before he was even a spellmonger,” he reminded her. “He feels he has a duty to protect the entire Five Duchies from the goblins. If they have penetrated as far as Gilmora, then everyone is in danger. Even here, in Sevendor.”

  “Then he should be preparing Sevendor for defense, not worrying with some other place!” Dara said, exasperated.

  “Would you rather fight goblins in some far–away place, or on your doorstep, with no room for error?” Gareth proposed. “Master Minalan is trying to do both. Do you think he’s not torn about it? But he has a duty. Just as you have a duty as his apprentice to support him... even if you don’t agree with his decisions. If Minalan decides to go help in the war, then you must let him. And if he does not return from the war, then... well, then you will have to accept that, as well,” he said, gravely.

  “Why wouldn’t he return from the war?” Dara demanded, as she raised her fist. “He’s fought goblins plenty of times. And he’s even more powerful now,” she bragged. She didn’t think anything could defeat her new master, and from what many of the folk of Sevendor believed, they didn’t, either.

  “Goblins are one thing,” Gareth said, keeping his voice low as the screeching of servant girls erupted behind him. “In Gilmora, they’ve sighted... a dragon.”

  “A... what?” Dara asked, her jaw dropping as Frightful finally landed on her gloved fist.

  “A dragon,” Gareth repeated, his eyes downcast. “No one has ever slain one before.”

  “The goblins... have a dragon?” Dara whispered, incredulously.

  “Yes!” Gareth agreed in a hiss. “More than one, actually. And they–”

  He was interrupted by a commotion at the head of the hall, as the Spellmonger entered, followed by Lady Pentandra, Sire Cei, Baron Arathanial, and other important folk. Dara stood with everyone else in respect, though it upset Frightful enough to send her flapping.

  There was a hushed quiet as all eyes in the room went to the worn face of Master Minalan. The expectation in the air was as thick as porridge.

  “Thank you for your attention,” the Magelord announced to the hall. “The last few days since the news from Gilmora broke have been tense. The situation there grows dire, and it is increasingly clear that without relief Castle Cambrian will fall... and with it the defense of northern Gilmora. If the invasion is not blunted now, there, then there is no telling how bad it could become.

  “But there is no large enough force within days’ travel to counter the siege that is forming. Nor is Cambrian a terribly stout fortress... and certainly not proof against dragons,” he pronounced, causing a chorus of gasps and murmurs from the hall.

  “So I have volunteered my services to do what must be done to save the castle, and with it our hopes of a peaceful future. If no army is near enough to relieve the castle, then I must produce one. Luckily, I have one at hand, though it’s on the other side of the duchy. It is the only one that might prevail. I have a large number of warmagi and the remnants of two armies, here in Sevendor, armed and armored. And I have my own troops,” he added, making Dara’s heart catch in her throat. Among his troops were her father, uncles, brothers and cousins.

  “As lord of Sevendor, I call my banners and summon my warriors. We will ride to war in Gilmora.”

  Chapter Two

  Duty

  Sevendor Castle seemed to explode with activity after word arrived about the horrible invasion of Gil
mora. Dara had only recently become aware of the distant land, but she soon learned that it was to the west, part of the Duchy of Castal. A rich and prosperous country of cotton fields and stately castles. But it was under attack, and the Spellmonger – Master Minalan, she corrected herself in her mind – was involved.

  The men of the castle were preparing arms and armor, now. The remnants of the defeated armies of West Fleria, and the mercenaries who lingered after the brief local war for the Magic Fair were coming to the castle eagerly, now. Baron Arathanial and his gentlemen were constantly in the Great Hall, now, looking at maps and reviewing lists. The warmagi who had competed in the Spellmonger’s Trial were lurking expectantly outside of the hall in the yard. The castle garrison was practicing and drilling in earnest, and in the village below there was a constant stream of archers practicing at the butts at the edge of the Commons.

  There was a tense and excited feeling in the air, entirely unlike the festive mood of the Fair for days. And it wasn’t just the castle. As Dara made the now-familiar trip back to Westwood Hall at the end of the day, she was surprised and depressed to see her brothers and cousins practicing their archery and dueling each other with wooden swords. She’d thought that all the war-like activity would have stopped, after the Spellmonger ended the war with West Fleria, but the news from Gilmora had re-ignited it.