Court Wizard (Spellmonger Series: Book 8) (112 page)

“But she’s not really there,” he moaned.

“She’s just
lost,
” she insisted.  “She’s lost, and you’re the only one who can find her.”

“How?”
he demanded, weakly.  

“With determination, effort, guile and magic,” she proposed, boldly but sympathetically.  “And we’ll make a bunch of shit up as we go along, like we always do.”

“How can I when I feel so miserable?” he sobbed.

She indulged him for a few moments, letting the tears roll out of him as the sobs shook his body.  Pentandra’s empathy was inflamed, making her feel physically sick as she watched her friend in turmoil and grief.  

Human emotion was a powerful thing, she reminded herself.  Perhaps it was a good thing that Min didn’t have a powerful witchsphere hanging around at the moment. That much unfiltered, raw emotion could have been devastating filtered through the medium of irionite.  He carried a witchstone, of course, one of the Master’s Seven like her own, but it didn’t have as much capacity for random manifestations of internal emotional trauma as that damned witchsphere had been.  

As it was, she quietly reinforced the wards on her chamber.  She didn’t want to be disturbed without warning, and more importantly she didn’t want Minalan to attract every mage in town, if he should experience a moment of magical flux.

But Minalan didn’t seem like he was inclined to destroy the place . . . he was wallowing in grief and self-pity.  It broke Pentandra’s heart to see him that way, but after all he had been through she decided that if anyone deserved a moment of weakness in the face of an outrageous fate, Minalan did.  For the longest time she just sat there, his head in her lap, and stroked his hair while he sobbed.

Eventually he fell asleep, and she carefully disentangled herself from the snoring mage as carefully as she could.  She needn’t have bothered.  Minalan was out cold.  Just to be sure, she indulged in a good, solid sleeping spell to ensure that he got the rest he so clearly needed.

Then she contacted Terleman, mind-to-mind, to let him know his old war buddy was passed out, distraught and drunk, in her chambers.  He wisely skipped all of the obvious jokes and promised to come retrieve him and settle him into a guest room somewhere at the earliest convenient time.

Then she contacted Dranus, Minalan’s own baronial court mage, and let him know where he was.  Apparently everyone back in the Riverlands barony was concerned about the Spellmonger’s behavior since his lady wife fell at Greenflower.  The entire land was grieving, he informed her gravely, and no one knew what to do.  He was trying to keep things functioning as best he could until Sire Cei returned from that little territorial spat on Sevendor’s borders, but the place needed real leadership, soon.  

With a sigh, Pentandra closed the connection and went to find her apprentice.

Alurra was in her tiny room, studying, of all things.  Not that a passerby could have told that -- she appeared to just be sitting in a chair with her eyes closed.  But a cursory inspection with magesight showed Pentandra that the blind girl was making a valiant attempt at building a second-order spell, one that combined elements of three runes to produce an effect.  

“Strengthen the jyrex rune in the predicate,” she advised, without announcement.  “Remember, there’s a difference between
desire
and
will
.  Desire is what you
feel
.  Will is what you
demand
.  You might
want
the rune to manifest terribly much, but if you don’t
demand
that it does, it won’t be powerful enough to provide support to the others.”

“That’s . . .
hard!
” Alurra said, nervously.  

“It gets easier with practice,” Pentandra assured her.  “Which you may stop, now -- and don’t forget to ground your power.  I don’t need a grumpy apprentice sulking around the palace.”

“Too late,” Alurra grumbled, allowing the spell to fall and returning the excess power to the magosphere.  “I heard about Lady Alya.  That’s terrible!”

“How did you hear
that?”
Pentandra demanded.

“There’s a mouse in your chambers,” Alurra said, shrugging.  “I call him Little Arborn.  He lets me know if you need anything,” she said, anticipating Pentandra’s objection.

“You, uh, don’t linger in there, do you?”

“To watch you and Lord Arborn spark?  Not
bloody
likely!” she snorted.

“
Language,
young lady.  Good.  It’s nice to know I at least have the illusion of privacy.  So, little mouse, what can
you
tell me about . . . Lady Alya?”

Alurra’s face instantly fell.  “I’m . . . not supposed to say
anything
.  But you
knew
that.”

“I knew that,” Pentandra agreed.  “But now I need to know what happens to Alya.  She’s a close friend of mine, Alurra, and if there is
any
chance that she can be healed . . .”

“There’s a chance,” the girl admitted, grudgingly.  “That’s about all I know.  But it’s not bloody-- it’s not very likely,” she amended.  

“A chance is all I need right now, little mouse,” she sighed.  “
Any
chance.  If the Spellmonger fails . . .”

Alurra shuddered involuntarily at the thought.  “Don’t even
joke,
Mistress!  If you suspected how important the Spellmonger is--”

“I do,” Pentandra agreed, calmly, “which is why I’m doing everything in my power to aid him!  Right now he’s passed out in my chambers, drunk as a monk, wallowing in self pity and despair.  He’s damn near suicidal, Alurra, because
he has no hope
.  If I’m going to help him . . .”

“You
are
helping him,” the girl stressed, grouchily.  “But you have to be careful.  Help him the wrong way, and it could be disaster.”

“So help me help him the
right
way,” Pentandra encouraged, ignoring the surly attitude.  “What do I need to do?”

“He . . . you . . . oh, this is so
frustrating!
” she said, biting her lip anxiously.  Then she took a deep breath and collected herself.  “From what I understand, the Spellmonger
needs
to be miserable right now - no way to help that.  It’s his despair that sets him to action.”

“I understand that,” Pentandra agreed, patiently, “I just need to have a general idea of what direction that might be.”

Alurra thought hard, and Pentandra was genuinely upset that she was putting the girl in this position.  On the other hand, there was too much at stake to allow one thirteen-year-old-girl’s feelings to determine the course of the entire duchy’s destiny.

“He will need to go face the Necromancer, in the City of Rainbows, Anthatiel,” she finally said, although it was a great effort of will.  “That’s what the story Antimei told me says.  There’s something in the city -
under
the city - that can help restore Lady Alya, I think.  But . . .”

“But
what?”
Pentandra asked impatiently.

“I’ve said too much!”
she said, blushing.  “Really, I shouldn’t have said
this
much!  The Spellmonger already possesses most of what he needs to restore her, but there is one thing that can
only
be found in the City of Rainbows.  I don’t even know what that
is
,” she added, miserably.

“I do,” confessed Pentandra. “It used to be a magnificent citadel of the Alka Alon, at the headwaters of the river Poros, in the Land of Scars.  But two years ago the goblins sacked it, drove the Alka Alon away, and the place was a soggy ruin guarded by a brain-damaged dragon, the last time I saw it.”

“You’ve . . .
been
there?” Alurra asked, surprised.  There was respect and a bit of awe in her voice.

“Believe it or not, the life of a wizard isn’t as boring as most make it out to be,” Pentandra chuckled.  “But yes, I’ve been there.  And it looks like I’m going back.  But what is this
thing
he needs?” she pressed.

“I know not, Mistress,” Alurra said, miserably.  “Antimei was very scant with those details.  But they’re written down in her book,” she added in a low voice.

“The
book
. . .” Pentandra said, realizing that whatever book this was, it was the thing the undead minions of the Necromancer were seeking so diligently.  If it foretold of how Minalan prosecuted his war against them, it would be invaluable intelligence.

But it was also prophecy, and this maddening conversation was one reason that prophecy was eschewed, as a rule, by the Imperial system of magic.  It was just too fraught with potential disaster to mess around with.  

But here she was, seeking it out in her moment of need.  And she knew that she was not the only one.  Korbal the Necromancer evidently thought that Old Antimei’s secret book of secret prophecies was important, although how he knew about it when the old witch had apparently kept it so secret was a mystery.  

“Yes, it’s all there, she says,” Alurra agreed, miserably.  Lucky preened her hair with his beak sympathetically.  “All the important ones, at least.  The ones that concern the Spellmonger.  And you.  And Duke Anguin.”

“Anguin is referred to in the prophecies?” Pentandra asked, surprised.  Alurra looked even more miserable that she had let slip another piece of information.  

“Yes,” she finally admitted.  “
He’s
important.  The Orphan Duke, the Grandmaster, the Necromancer, the Abomination, the Alka Along, the Forsaken, King Rard, the--”  she struggled to get out more, but her hands clamped over her mouth.  Pentandra realized she’d pushed the girl too far.

“What was
that?”
Pentandra said, instantly.  “What was that about the
Forsaken?”

That term had attracted her interest more than any other.  The Forsaken were the entire reason that her family had been part of the Order of the Secret Tower for so long - since the days of the Magocracy.  They had a sacred duty concerning the Forsaken.  

Unfortunately, it had been so long and the records since the Narasi Conquest had been so fractured that the Order had very little idea who the Forsaken were, and just what their duty toward them entailed.  But they definitely were supposed to do something about the Forsaken.

Most in the Order were convinced that it was something to do with humanity’s ancestors who first came to Callidore.  Others were equally convinced that it concerned the Alka Alon, or the gods themselves, or even the mysterious Sea Folk.  Still others were not convinced that the Forsaken were anything more than a myth lost to the depths of time, eternally unfathomable.

Pentandra had been on watch to glean whatever information on the subject she could, regardless of the source, for those most earnest about the Order of the Secret Tower’s true purpose.  So hearing the term known previously only to initiates of the clandestine magical order come from the lips of an illiterate blind girl from a remote village in a rustic region was stunning to her.  If this Old Antimei’s prophecies concerned the Forsaken, then regardless of anything else, they were important by definition.

She only wished she knew
why.

“I can’t tell you!  She didn’t tell me!  I’ve only heard her mention them, compared to the others,” Alurra replied, unhappily.  “I know that they’re
important,
though.  I just don’t know
how.”

“No one does,” Pentandra sighed.  “That’s why I need to learn about them.”

“Well, you’ll just have to ask Antimei yourself, then,” Alurra said, sullenly.