The Mad Mage of Sevendor (The Spellmonger Series) Read online

  Saram knew not the intricacies of magic or its potential effects. It was an odd variable, compared to the armed aristocracy and the unarmed common man who strove against each other. Well-understood rules of power were skewed by magic’s prominence in the emerging order. Wealth, she knew, and political authority were easy to quantify and appreciate in the scope of history. Developments in craft and technology could quickly affect a society. Small changes in simple matters could have catastrophic effects on a culture unprepared for revolutionary advances. But there was always an element of predictability involved, even when those predictions were wrong.

  But magic? Magic turned those carefully conceived ideas on their head. That troubled her, and undermined the security of her knowledge of the sweep of history. From her perspective many of the advances enchantment had achieved in the last few years had parallels to innovations in engineering or scientific understanding . . . but then many of them did not. Worse, to her memory, was the presence of the gods and their unstable and unpredictable displays of power and their impact on humanity.

  While she understood implicitly the threat of Merwyn to the kingdom and the destabilizing nature of Farise on commerce, considering the possibility that some seemingly-benign craft deity popping up and demolishing the social order through a fit of whimsy was just too drastic a thing for her to appreciate. To add in the subtle influence of the Alka Alon, the malign impact of Korbal and his minions, and the existential threat of angering the Vundel, Saram’s memory found itself . . . perplexed.

  As I experienced her reaction to the politics and statecraft I presented her with, I was naturally sympathetic – and a bit relieved. I’d considered these matters myself with no less a feeling of confusion and trepidation. I had managed to keep the gods from interfering overmuch largely through bluff and threat; the Alka Alon I’d alternatively wooed and confronted, Korbal I’d fought with tenacity and guile, and I’d been able to avoid the possibly catastrophic confrontation with the Vundel thus far. But I knew all too well how easily each of those conflicts could lead to doom.

  Magic belied reasonable assumptions, I knew from my own experience. History can account for novelty in science, engineering, or social transformation. It could not predict the inherently unpredictable or give much guidance on how to contend with it. Magic was a sudden flame, a secret fire that could burn down all we knew in an instant . . . and there was nothing either of us could do to prepare for that.

  I go to bed with Saram’s memory slowly fading, her sense of wonder and despair at my predicament both disappointing and oddly comforting. If a great scholar of history like her was perplexed at the Matter of Callidore, then my attempts to control the uncontrollable brought me some solace. It was a consolation, nothing more, but it provided me with at least a hint of satisfaction.

  24th of Baismas

  Today I awoke awash in bitterness.

  Sometimes one of my guest memories comes on me subtly. Other times they seize my mind and attention in an instant and ruthlessly cling to my consciousness as I stare helplessly on.

  With Raer Rinthon, however, the presence of the disappointed old Alkan lord is a low, constant hum in my perception. Compared to the two other Alka Alon in my memory, he is by far the most pessimistic and frustrated. He had seen the glorious culture of his youth all but destroyed by pettiness and selfish myopia. The ideals he held had been vanquished by self-important leaders who mistook their own selfish aggrandizement for cultural progress. He had endured it all with a stoic calm that concealed a sense of betrayal and despair. A sense of duty and an adherence to his ideals in the face of disappointment were all that preserved him, by the time his memory came to me.

  That’s a difficult perspective to hold while you’re having breakfast with your wife.

  That became abundantly clear this morning when Alya and I sat down at an outdoor table to begin our day. This is not an uncommon occurrence. Despite our disparate duties and interests, we had made a point of beginning our day together since we had taken up residence in Sevendor Castle. Even if we did not meet again until we both fell into bed at the end of the day, the practice maintained a connection with each other that gave us strength and sustenance.

  Yet, when I sat down at the table this morning I felt Rinthon’s cynical demeanor overcome my usually cheerful perspective.

  Part of that, of course, was his dismissive attitude toward “ephemerals” in general. Rinthon, like most Alka Alon, didn’t consider anyone who hadn’t put in at least four centuries to be a child or a pet. I could feel his disdain for the indulgence of my marital breakfast rise based on the transitory nature of the practice, alone. How could you take anyone seriously who had seen less than a century’s worth of sunrises? Understanding only came with experience, to his mind, and true appreciation of that fact could not arise until a few centuries had given one a truly adult perspective.

  Needless to say, it did not take long for Rinthon’s memory to pick a fight with Alya over the most inconsequential of subjects. Indeed, his contempt for her – and for me – permeated his view from the moment I sat down. Listening to Alya’s cheerful and determined demeanor over such matters as her herd, her creamery, and the state of the children seemed to inspire a sense of disgust in my guest, as if she were a dog who was particularly pleased at the discovery of a bone or how the importance of licking one’s genitals in the proper manner was worthy of conversation.

  While I was both appalled and darkly amused by this perspective, I also grew to understand it. In Rinthon’s youth all of the Wilderlands was a sparse land, long devastated by war, neglect, and unfortunate happenstance. There was a wasteland, here, before the New Horizon arrived. To see it bloom with alien flora and fauna when the efforts of the Alka Alon’s mighty magic had been lackluster, at best, was jarring. There was genuine resentment in his mind at the short-lived newcomers who had bested the finest efforts of his people to repair the world.

  The lush foliage and abundant importasta fauna that was clearly visible from our breakfast table seemed to mock Rinthon’s sense of propriety. There was something wrong, from his perspective, about a people who scarcely lived longer than theTal Alon being able to achieve what his people had not been capable of. But the truth of that achievement was evident in every leaf and nut in the gardens he could see from the table. He could not deny it. He could merely dislike it, and that irritated him.

  Worse, to his mind, was the temerity of Alya (and, of course, myself) in her feeling of possession of the lands around us. As if, Rinthon thought, such short-lived creatures as we had any real claim to the land. At most we were transitory tenants. We would both be long dead before meaningful analysis could show that our race had any lasting impact on the world.

  Rinthon recalled the world before the humani came. He had witnessed the first sky-ships fall to ground so unexpectedly. He’d given testimony to the Alka Alon council about the strange first encounters. The creatures who had emerged and began spewing promises and visions of a prosperous future, if their technological sorcery could be brought to bear on the wastelands. The claim seemed a mockery of his people’s careful, centuries-long endeavors to coax life back into this place after the ancient wars. He’d said as much in council. Rinthon had a decidedly skeptical perspective on my people’s promises. There was no chance that the arid, reluctant realm could be revived. Let them try, he had sneered at the council.

  Yet, he clearly saw, here was the proof of their – our – promise, more than seven hundred years after making it. Terran tekka had bested Alkan sorcery and songspells. And now we were, as a culture, an ignorant shadow of those arrogant creatures frolicking in the transplanted wilderness we had crafted.

  Faced with a certain measure of success exhibited in the lush vegetation around Spellgarden, Rinthon was forced to reconsider. I admit, I took a certain amount of humani pride in that. Rinthon is a stubborn, harsh Alkan in his assessments of the world. It was difficult for him to admit he might be wrong. It was even harder to win him over. While there was a certain exotic alien beauty to the life we had imported to his eye, we would always be an aberration on Callidore, an alien stain at odds with the previous cultures. We had no magic. We had no lasting civilization. We were arrogant and ignorant, naïve and overconfident.

  Even the love I felt for Alya, and she for me, was dismissed by this Alkan noble. His own relationship with his wife – and mother of his four children – was distant. Their marriage had been one of convenience and alliance; it was not born of love. Rinthon’s wife Lifalia had been attractive, intelligent, and a scion of an impressive family. After a century of intimacy, it had faded in importance and dwindled to a mutual respect. But love, beyond a certain familiarity, was foreign to him. Rinthon’s affairs and position were of little concern to his wife. The very idea that she might have an opinion or perspective on them was foreign to Rinthon’s experience.

  That was, unfortunately, reflected in my demeanor that morning, and when Alya pressed me on the Darkfaller matter, I became, to my shame, irate. The conversation led to me storming off for the solace of my tower, when Rinthon’s memory found her questions too probing and impertinent. I regretted it later, but at the time the old Alkan lord’s fuming saw me taking refuge in my workshop.

  Rinthon’s mind had become familiar to me, in the last few weeks since its introduction. His character was devoted to his duty to a degree that any gentleman knight would have found admirable. The esteem in which he held tradition and good society served an ideal that, alas, he had discovered was more fable than fact. Chosen when he was young for a prestigious position serving the Alka Alon council as an agent – official – well, as the Wise understand, the Alkan word is lareneth, but it has a lot of different connotations.

  Oft translated as “servant” in its most base meaning, the term differs from those Alkan words used to denote their Tal Alon, gurvani, and Karshak retainers in that it bears an honorific and implies a greater standing than those tasked with maintenance and upkeep. The lareneth are honored nobles chosen to execute the will of the council, and are chosen and raised to the office by unanimous affirmation after a lengthy period of examination and testing.

  To the lareneth are tasked specific responsibilities and duties to administer the great realm under the council’s purview. The lareneth had organized the embassy to humanity, when it came to Perwyn’s shores. They had interred Korbal and his minions once condemned, at the end of their horrible wars. And they had built the magical prison walls around the Tower of Refuge, entrapping the Sorceress of Sartha Wood within. They had great power, for they spoke as the mouths of the council and served as its eyes and hands. Their duty to obey and serve was implicit in the office and reflective of the high honor involved.

  Yet it was this very association which had tainted Rinthon’s character. For he had invested himself in the moral nobility of the council and the Alka Alon aristocracy, and, when confronted with the ugly reality of politics, he grew deeply cynical. The execution of the king had been the pinnacle of his disgust; Rinthon knew full well how little the mediocre monarch had been involved in the horror under the Kulines. To take his life was his duty, as per the council’s dictate. But it was a deep violation of his own moral code.

  I admit, Rinthon’s mind colored my perspective this morning as Sandoval appeared with an intelligence update about the Darkfaller situation. Mycin Amana and her minions have wasted no time in consolidating their power in a perimeter around the great fortress. Half a dozen villages have been summarily depopulated as the undead queen seeks workers to support her growing forces.

  Hundreds of hapless peasants and artisans were gathered and marched through the great gates of Darkfaller in mere days. Outposts and pickets of draugen, gurvani, and even Enshadowed were placed in their villages and hamlets to round up stragglers and screen the castle from intruders. Giant wyverns patrol the skies day and night over the great keep and its environs. Two much smaller castles that the Witch Queen had decided were too close to her new holding have been taken in short order, as the shock and surprise of the unexpected invasion found the Castali and Gilmoran nobility unprepared for such a sudden and brutal assault.

  Sandoval and I conferred for nearly two hours as he related the intelligence Terleman had gathered. The situation seems grim. An entire line of foes is deployed around the great castle, now, one long arc of vicious resistance.

  But there was something I noted that I, perhaps, might not have, if Rinthon’s pessimistic memory had not been so strong in my mind.

  “My lord Sandoval, note that they haven’t protected their southern flank,” I told him, as we regarded the magemap he manifested. “They see the river as an impermissible barrier.”

  “So they do, my lord,” Sandoval agreed. “My lord Terleman had the same thought. Whereas they see rivers as a wall, our folk consider them a highway. That must play some role in how we approach this matter.”

  “Water is ever the weakness of the Alka Alon,” I said. “Thus it should be exploited in our considerations. Has the location of the arcane prisoners been determined, as of yet?”

  “Nay, though we have sent our most adept agent to penetrate the fortress,” Sandoval assured me. “I expect better intelligence anon.”

  “Arrogance compounds their activity,” I noted, Rinthon’s brooding soul peeking over my shoulder. “They will expand their purview quickly to reduce any potential resistance to their rule; yet they consider our folk mere animals, unable to coordinate our actions or present a real threat. One would think after the Battle of Olum Seheri they would have reconsidered.”

  “They do seem arrogant in their conquest,” Sandoval agreed. “They have no respect for our blades. Or our ability to strategize. They have learned little from the defeats of Gaja- Katar and Shakathet.”

  “Nor do they respect our cavalry,” I continued as I regarded the map. “They think in terms of infantry. Note how closely they’ve clustered their perimeter around Darkfaller. Each picket is within marching distance. This will slow their advance.”

  “’Tis not mere territory they seek, my lord,” Sandoval reminded me. “Mycin Amana fancies herself Queen of Castabriel. They take what positions endanger their stronghold, but do not seem to seek to expand strategically. They care not for the many towns and villages beyond their sphere.”

  “They will not ignore the potential for resistance in the cities,” I objected. “But they do not necessarily consider the importance of each one, militarily. Look at how near to Markone their forces range. Markone is the largest town near to their holding; yet Markone, while well-peopled, is a town of farmers and markets, not knights and soldiers. They menace it, perhaps in quest for fodder for their foul strategies. But it is not a threat, to my mind. Soon it will not be from theirs, as well.”

  “Markone? A threat?” scoffed Sandoval. “It is as threatening as a nursery, my lord. There are less than a thousand men at arms there. It has not been threatened since the Gilmoran dispossession, and then only lightly.”

  “How soon, I wonder, until they realize that?” I asked, tapping at the dot on the map that was Markone with the tip of my wand. “And, once realized, what will their response be?”

  “The gods alone know,” Sandoval said, shaking his head.

  “Bah! The gods have little concern here. But once they recognize Markone is no threat, they will milk it for new slaves and garrison it lightly, I propose. They will not expect any resistance from those Gilmorans. Which makes Markone a good staging area for resistance. Irregulars,” I proposed. “Seeded heavily with our folk, who know their business.”

  “I shall pass that along to Viscount Terleman,” Sandoval agreed, dismissing the magemap.

  Our discussion lapsed beyond the strategic, as Sandoval was a friend. Rinthon’s sense of devotion and hospitality recognized a pleasant obligation which I was happy to fulfill, as we discussed his new bride and their future, and my own poor children’s experience with their wounded father. Politics, of course, was a topic of discourse as we exchanged perspectives on the appalling situation in Castal. The kingdom was a mess, and our party was, nominally, partially to blame.

  As we could not as a class or profession accept all of it, however, we had plenty to say about our political enemies. Much was said about the chivalrous aristocracy and the newly-minted royalty that seemed bent on indulging in their privilege whilst ignoring their primal duties. The rapacious Remeran merchant houses who control the flow of trade in the kingdom and beyond. The artisan and merchant class who was becoming more skeptical of the political order by the day. The clergy who were beginning to murmur. And the many thousands of peasants whose toil was – thanks to magic – no longer required . . . nor their rents and wages to be paid for their labor.

  Sandoval is a smart man, with a complex imagination, and I valued his limited insights. He was fairly astute about his judgments of popular opinion. His view of the royal court and the feud between Alshar and Castal was informative. And he knew how the new arcane aristocracy felt about the matter, compounding his insights.

  I confess, Rinthon’s perspective tinted my mood, and I may have lapsed into a cynical cast as I gave him my assessments of politics as a result. Rinthon’s aged wisdom concerning such matters made me feel as if Rard’s regime, as well as Tavard’s – and even Anguin’s – was doomed. Grendine’s corruption and the threat from both Korbal and Merwyn convinced Rinthon’s long experience that, thanks to our lackluster leadership, the future would be violent and bloody. But I also feel I provided Sandoval with some hopeful inspiration as I tried to foresee how events would unfold.

  For Rinthon, despite his distrust of authority and the inevitable corruption of leadership, did not condemn the ideals of loyalty and virtue, nor was he hopeless that corruption could be overcome. But it was a staid sort of stance, upon reflection. He believed in the inherent nobility of some and cherished the idea that the wholesome ideals they espoused would in some way bear real fruit. His jaded and cynical perspective was undermined, thankfully, with an unabashed conviction that people would – sometimes – follow the proper course and lead by principle, not by expediency.