Read Court Wizard (Spellmonger Series: Book 8) Online

Authors: Terry Mancour

Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #Fantasy, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Epic

Court Wizard (Spellmonger Series: Book 8) (6 page)

BOOK: Court Wizard (Spellmonger Series: Book 8)
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The next morning Lenguin was gone.  He’d left a healthy purse and other fine treasures for her, which she gratefully took.  She nearly hung herself in despair, but prayed to Ishi for answers.  A few days after Lenguin departed, she took lodging in a distant abbey to conceal her swelling belly from the gossip of court.  The next spring, three days after Duin’s Day, she gave birth to the first son of Lenguin II, future Duke of Alshar.  She called him Gydion, after Lenguin’s favorite hunting hound.  But she did not see the healthy little boy’s father for years afterward.

When Amandice returned to Vorone she told the boy off as the son of her maid to the public while she anxiously awaited his father’s return, so that she could present him with his son in secret.  In vain, she waited.  For two long years Lenguin and his wife stayed in Enultramar, far from Vorone, while Amandice raised the boy and waited.  He sent no word.  He did not answer her letters.  When the duke’s new bride gave birth to Anguin, Lenguin’s heir, Amandice even sent a simple gift and a note of loyal affection to the future Duke.  He answered her with a short, vague note thanking her in a general way.  It was signed by a clerk, not in Lenguin’s distinctive hand.

Holding back her despair, she planned on revealing the existence of his first born to him when he arrived the next summer.  But before the Ducal party could leave Falas and set off to Vorone, the old duke took ill and perished in a fever, despite the best efforts of the court physicians.  Lenguin, newly wed and newly a father, was suddenly the monarch of a mighty land.  He had little time for lovers in general, and no time for an aging mistress from his youth.

Amandice kept few lovers in those years she looked after her child and waited.  She was careful with such affairs: just enough to amuse her, and occasionally to re-supply her coffers, but never to raise a rumor among the courtiers.  She oversaw her son’s raising and education, instead, in preparation for meeting his father.  Gydion was strong and hearty, like his sire, and she encouraged his efforts in secret, in memory of the passion she had born for his absent father.  But for year after year, the duchy’s business and the duke’s life conspired to keep them apart.  Gydion grew.

Then the day came one spring when word finally arrived that the new Duke and Duchess would at last return to the summer capital with their children.  The Wilderlords would be able to pay homage and swear fealty in person to the vibrant young duke for the first time.  The entire town cheered to see its purpose fulfilled, and spared no effort to make the sovereign welcome.  Amandice herself made great preparations for the return, remembering the promise Lenguin had made to her before he’d departed.

But the man she saw arrive at the Opening of the Palace after the Wildflower festival that year was not the same smiling, carefree youth she recalled.  Instead he was older and more worn, surrounded by ministers and monks with parchments, not young gentlemen with swords and hunting spears.  He looked worried, serious, and deep in thought as he conducted the official rite that transferred ducal power to Vorone.  He was no longer near as handsome as he had once been.

Worse, as he made his entrance through the thronging crowds, his eyes lit long upon Amandice . . . and he
didn’t recognize her.

That hurt Amandice’s heart more than anything.  He walked
right past
her, though she was bellowing his name as loudly as her lungs would let her. She was trying to get his attention as wildly as any peasant, in a gown that could have purchased a village of them, but when their eyes locked for an eternal heartbeat, it sealed her fate.  If Lenguin remembered her, his eyes showed no sign of it.  Burning with embarrassment, she returned to the Flower Bed and redoubled her efforts.  Baroness Amandice was not to be so lightly forgotten!

For days she conspired to get an invitation to the palace’s many announced functions, but she found herself spurned at every turn.  Old and dear friends at court suddenly stopped paying calls upon her, or even returning her correspondence.  Her attempts to secure a place at even minor functions where the Duke might be present were challenging.  Twice she attended luncheons in the hopes that he would appear . . . but rumor said that he sat in chambers with his staff, day and night, working on the governance of his lands.  He barely took his meals, let alone go hunting and jousting as he did in his carefree youth. 

Politics was to blame.  There was pressure building on the young monarch to try a campaign to retake fair Gilmora, the lands lost by Alshar to Castal a generation before, she found out later.  Lenguin was trying to assess the Wilderlords’ military strength for such a campaign. 

But Amandice did not know that.  All she knew was that where once she was welcome, now she was disdained.  The Duke barely attended the functions he sponsored in his own palace, and the new Duchess had
very
Remeran ideas about social propriety, as an acquaintance of hers from court (sent to her by special appointment, Amandice later realized) explained to her.

“No woman wants the mother of her husband’s
bastard
at her table,” Lady Peshta informed her at tea one afternoon that summer.  “Really, Amandice,
everyone
knows that the Duke favored you in his youth.  You were a pretty widow, he was a handsome heir.   But we all knew what was going on – he bragged about it to his gentlemen oft enough.  Not many women would present themselves for that kind of humiliation, I suppose, but you managed it well, I’ll give you that.  If it hadn’t been so sweet and romantic, it might have been scandalous.  And despite your pretenses,
everyone
knows who the parents of that handsome boy are,”  she added, smugly, her eyes full of superiority and judgment. 

Those concerned Amandice not at all.  She was concerned for her lover.  “Does Lenguin . . .?”

“No
,” Peshta said, sharply.  That’s when Amandice knew that her acquaintance had been dispatched with a message that was just shy of official.  “The Duke is not aware of his bastard.  Nor does his wife
wish
him to know.  Her Grace has mentioned, quietly, that she would find that distracting.”

“But, Lenguin—”

“She is aware of your position in his
old
life, but now that His Grace is married she will brook
no
affairs to complicate her life and bring scandal to her court.  Lenguin has grown into his legacy, now, and no longer has time for such . . . foolishness.”

“Perhaps if I met with her,” Amandice proposed, “spoke with her face to face—“

The laughter that interrupted her was painful and mocking.  “You still do not understand, you stupid little bird.  You are not welcome at the palace any more.  Nor does the Duchess feel you have
any right
to be at court with her.  Not with the
reputation
you now enjoy.  Not with the threat to her marriage that you pose.  Surely you can understand
that
, my dear?” she asked, coldly.

Soon after that dreadful meeting, before she could act on the impulse to find a way to meet with her lover, Duke Lenguin was called away south to mediate a private war between two vassals, pledging to join the Duchess in Falas after the season. 

Amandice lost all hope.  She was exiled from court, denied her lover, and left with a brat to raise by herself on her diminishing savings while the Duchess had a palace and servants and plenty of money.  As bitterness set in, so did resentment.  But Amandice was not helpless.  When Gydion was seven years of age, she called upon an old favor and had him sent to southern Castal as the page to a tournament knight, along with enough to purchase horse and armor, when he was knighted.  Then she returned to her dashed dreams and vowed to knit them together.

As the years went by, she continued to scheme and plot.  She continued to take lovers of wealth, title, and reputation, though there were fewer of them each year.  She continued to attend what palace events there were available to her, and cultivated a circle of other ladies similarly unwelcome at court.  Regardless of what they did, however, the unofficial ban stood.  Amandice was not welcome in court, as the mistress of the Duke or in any other capacity.  Her bearing of a bastard was known to all but Lenguin, and the topic of conversation during dull moments for years.

Over time, the resentment Amandice felt became harder and harder to bear.  Rumors of a string of younger mistresses floating through Lenguin’s private chambers crushed her, even while she delighted in the Duchess being embarrassed so.  Eventually, even her own scandal ceased to be of any interest amongst the jaded courtiers.  She was all but forgotten, a remnant of a more pleasant age left to fend for herself at the margins of society.

Then Lenguin came to Vorone again, his own children growing into adulthood.  Amandice remembered standing near to the street that year, just for the barest sight of her former lover.  Once again she strove to catch Lenguin’s eye, but once again he was distracted, or did not recognize her. 

Determined not to be ignored again, she had made a complicated series of plans to get her into the palace, into Lenguin’s proximity.  But, tragically, before she could execute them, His Grace was persuaded to lead his Wilderlords to war to stop the goblin invasion . . . a battle from which he had never returned.  The next time Amandice saw her lover, he was lying in state at the Temple of Orvatas.

Since then, her life had descended further and further into despair.  The sudden loss of the ducal family and the kidnapping of Lenguin’s heir by Castal plunged Vorone into an economic depression.  Waves of ignorant, poor refugees from the north inundated the town, and the appointment of an unpopular steward by a foreign duke over the capital grated on everyone.

There was very little left of her life in Vorone the day Amandice looked out of her balcony and made a decision that would affect the lives of all Voroni.  If her best days had been as a novice in the Scarlet Temple, she would seek them again, she vowed.  If there was no actual temple to the Goddess of Love and Beauty here, she would contrive to build one.  If there was any way her talents and abilities could rescue the town that she fell in love with Lenguin in, she felt compelled to use them.  She would invoke the goddess, herself, and give herself over in any way her patroness chose.  Body and soul.

It was time, she decided that fateful day, to invite the goddess Ishi to come to Vorone.

 

 

 

 

  1. The Goddess In The Garden

 

As the last words of the ritual faded in the night’s air, and the last tendrils of smoke arose from the censor, Ishi looked down at the hands – her hands, now - still dainty and feminine, but wrinkled and spotted despite the best creams the apothecaries could make – with her new eyes.  Age, beauty’s tireless nemesis. 

“A glass!” Ishi demanded to no one in particular.  “Bring me a
glass!”

The bucktoothed servant girl startled at her mistress’s sudden change in tone, but hurried to bring the old gilded brass looking glass to her.  Ishi regarded herself in the imperfect surface.  Like the face and body she now inhabited, the mirror looked fine and ornate from a distance, but once you got close enough its age was easily revealed. 

“This . . . is
barely
adequate,” she muttered to herself.  The Baroness was beautiful, for her age, but despite the care and attention she paid to herself, the climate and conditions conspired against her.  The hair was exquisite, treated with herbs, brushed, and washed regularly.  The body was well cared-for, she had to admit – strong, vibrant, humming with desire – but she had to do something about that
face.
  Those . . .
imperfections.

She was the goddess of feminine beauty, after all.  Ishi concentrated a moment and filled her vessel with divine grace, directing it to achieve her goal.  When she returned to regard herself in the glass she had been transformed. 

It was no maiden who stared back at her, to be sure.  But the face she beheld was smooth and clear, now, with the rich, healthy glow of youth.  The eyes were clear and blue, sparkling like mountain streams in the morning light.  Gone was the hint of despair and loss the Baroness’ worn face had carried for years.  A beautiful woman first, her maturity and bearing was now a complement to that beauty, not a detriment to it.  The marks of age on her hands were gone.  Her hair was even more luxurious, and now fell over her shoulders with enchanting grace.


Much
better,” Ishi said, satisfied.  “We’ll contend with the wardrobe later, I suppose.  You, girl – your name?”

“Lespeth, Mum!  But you know that, don’t you?” she asked, her mouth open unattractively.

Ishi sighed.  “I have a lot of work to do here.  Lespeth, I bear joyous news.  Your mistress’s ritual was a success.  She has invited me to occupy her body as my vessel.  She has been chosen as Ishi’s earthly avatar, here and now.”


Ishi
. . . Mum?” Her eyes went wide with awe and wonder, and her jaw dropped.

“Oh, close your mouth, girl, you make me think of rabbits!” Ishi said, testily.  “Yes, I – your mistress, the Baroness Amandice – invoked me by holy rite, known only to my priestesses.  She has been chosen to bear the spirit of Ishi, the goddess of love, lust, beauty . . . I believe you are acquainted with the lore.  Be not afraid.  I am merely borrowing her, for a while, and will leave her enriched when I depart.  Like borrowing a friend’s jewelry or a gown for a few nights,” she explained.

BOOK: Court Wizard (Spellmonger Series: Book 8)
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