Afternoon wore on. The city became restless, as a communal smell of nerves spread. Ulric and Taipan had long since returned to the barracks square containing his wards, with their aged wizard lacky, minion, advisor, bringing up the rear. Whatever else Baron Tras Kistalfer came up with to throw at the incoming fleet of ships, he had himself a little something to thin the heard as well.
How much was the million-dollar question. How much and would the certainty of staggering losses stop the advance. If Taipan's stories about how the Orlethrem savaged the Federated Defense armies levied against the Elves was any indication, he didn't have much hope that the armada would be turned aside by any working he might manage, no matter how stupefying. Especially not with the Merchant Lords themselves flogging their men forward into the meat grinder.
He supposed he'd been asking for it, in many ways. First sabotaging Bartala. Then closing the ports along the Vatyn, and sinking several ships, Magisters lost with most hands to boot. Word must have reached distant citadel, or, perhaps, lack of word, that clued them in to the loss of two Bane pits. Last, but certainly not least, was the open defiance of what had been a bastion of Prosper's authority in Prespang in Kistalfer. It was too much of an insult to go unanswered, apparently. The Gilded bastards were finally goaded to crush insurrection, to assert their dominion.
Seagulls cried overhead, or, well, maybe more like albino buzzards, the things were huge, with razored talons for snatching fish out of the water. According to Geras they would snatch young children, if they could manage it. Mostly just the caterwaling was the same, but it was a spot of familiarity. Like everything on Varda, just enough the same to make the differences that much more stark. Just like
This was an opportunity. If only he could seize it. The ships bearing those auric sails had to go. The men or women or bugpeople, whoever the fuck it was that sat pulling the strings on all the horrorshows Ulric had seen, they had to go too. If only he could manage it.
Brooding quietly, he created a little island of intensity around him. None of the Elves heckled him. None of the former citizens of the empire questioned him. He wasn't aware of them, his attention was inward. Processing. Weighing the odds.
Ever since the assault on Irielhos, near enough to half a Vardan year, the burning need in the Reforged man's life had been to remove the threat posed by Prosper. His glade depended on it. The peace of the Orlethrem depended on it. His life, certainly, depended on it. If the monster behind the scenes had managed to suborn even a high lord of Zelussin to his will, his, her, its ambitions would not tolerate even the slightest threat to those grand designs. Ulric Einar, for better or worse, had made of himself more than a slight threat.
Oh but for a magic mirror that he could look upon to see the sonofabitch had bleeding ulcers over his doings these past months!
Spiting deserving people was one of his favorite things. Right next to plowing his wife. Well, okay, he had to admit, breaking his stare down of the paving stones, who refused to yield or to give him answers. He let his attention waver for a moment, admiring the his one-time adversary's graceful form as she tended the flock, the lithe muscles in synchronous movement, maybe a fair bit down from that. But one of his favorite things, nevertheless!
Even that sweet notion couldn't distract him for long. Back to the stones of the square and his thoughts.
Geras had offered him an opportunity. Both to feel the essence of Nephel undiluted, and to see the trick to manipulating and forming clouds at will, before bending them to your will. It might have taken him days to get even the gathering of a small cirrus cloud, let alone manifest the more potent cumulonimbus, the anvil shaped storm cells that Geras tamed like he was herding sheep.
Blackskies, a name well earned.
They had only played with small versions, nothing larger than the square in which he sat. Something far, far greater they would unleash on the fleet, and soon. The Prosper trained mage had very particular ideas about how to shape and guide mana toward the formation of his weather magic. Ulric had none of that training, but he had years of seeing supercomputer assembled models for the movement of air currents, humidity, and fronts paraded about on the daily forecasts in the Before. You cared greatly about weather when rain carried fallout.
So, together, the arcane art of Varda's human wizards and the equally arcane art of the simulations had allowed both men to do what neither could alone. Ulric's [Vortex Flare] was an incredibly destructive weapon, but it was slow, it was cumbersome, and it took most of what his core could muster to create. Geras Blackskies' mastery would let him guide their counterstroke like an arrow fired from Taipan's bow. He would lead their little choir, and, in so doing, smite their foe. Smite'em fucking proper too. Mage Brodin would join them and add his potential, he was also trained in the same school, if with talents in other directions, as the former High Mage.
The Germen wielding former battlemage of Prosper was trying to remain stoic while the girl with a lashing tail, folded down ears, and wide cat eyes scolded him for doing something dangerous so soon after they were wed. She needn't have worried, Brodin wasn't going to be handling the spells, just adding some juice. Ulric was going to be refining the mana gathered by the choir into unaspected mana, to be directed by Geras. The older man didn't have nearly as efficient a technique for taking the aspected mana of an adept's core and reverting it to its pure reactive form. Prosper did not teach that technique, preferring instead to pigeon hole their mages into specific roles.
Ulric was certain that was an intentional choice to limit the power any one mage might wield. An Archmage might throw a wrinkle into things if they discovered the manipulations against them and took issue. Even weavers could sample enough harmonies of magic to detect the discord within the manipulation tokens all officers of the Golden Thrones wore. Officers such as the Barons of the City-States, the Battlemages, captains of the Federated Defense forces, any who might wield power that could threaten the grip of the Merchant Lords over Prespang.
This crippling of their Mage corps was the only reason Ulric and Geras' little trick had any chance of working. A single weaver might be able to sense the flows of mana and disrupt them, if they were strong enough to batter aside Geras' control. This was a delicate casting, after all. Many balls in the air, although juggling chainsaws was more apt. Fortunately, the only weaver to be involved in this battle was Ulric. For what he lacked in particular depth and practice, he had in breadth, in flexibility.
Grey eyes lifted from the flagstones and he contemplated the skies above, so clear and blue. He also had Ceraun. Not something to be underestimated, the second strongest of the fundamental forces. In addition to purifying the choir's mana, Ulric would be binding the clouds with lightning magic, to siphon the natural mana they would produce, to link the cloud to the sea when it was time to strike. Geras would craft the storm, but Ulric would call the shots. That catalyst staff, with its Amethyst stone tuned to lightning allowed Blackskies to gather and, in a limited way, direct Ceraun, but not with anything like the finesse of his core. Ulric was made for this.
"Well then," He declared, throwing himself down from the crate that had served as his seat while he pondered, "Guess we've got a couple hours left before those ships get close enough to have to do something about. Any ideas?"
That last he directed at Taipan, who had satisfied herself that as much was in order as could be.
She was serene, emerald eyes calm. The Huntress had fought dozens of skirmishes, had hunted men and lethal beasts for longer than he'd been alive. She was a veteran, compared to…actually about everybody around these parts. Huh. There he went forgetting how old his partner was, beneath that deceivingly youthful veneer.
Hands flashed in a gesture that he was pretty certain meant "All is well" in the hand talk that the Iriel'en used as a kind of secondary communication, alongside the spoken, much of the time.
"What can be done has been done, Glade Chief," Taipan of the Glade assured her mate, "You will hasten not destiny by thinking on it, and you make everyone nervous looking like murder had a statue of itself carved."
Yeah, he deserved that.
Ulric managed to relax a fraction. A small one. He had also come through the fires of conflict in these past months. His troubled dreams were proof enough of that. Anger, mostly, was his shield against the contemplation of what was coming. He didn't like to admit that he was afraid he was going to get everybody here killed.
Nodding to let her know he agreed with her assessment, the Lord of the Ancient Glade ruffled that silken midnight, almost blue-black hair on her ancient head, drawing a roll of eyes.
"Okay then, Taipan. Let's go over it again, just once more." Ulric asked.
Arms crossed over her chest, the coat's patches, charred spots, and stains reading like a fortune teller the path of her life, the Iriel'en woman narrated the order of battle. Part of it had come from couriers from Baron Kistalfer, who made official request for Ulric's aid in the coming fracas; as if he would just leave, with the sonsofbitches he was after not fifty kilometers away. The rest had come after a powow with Taipan, Blackskies, the squire still attending them in place of his Lord, and a few of the Orlethrem who would lead the Elves that could contribute to the fight. That wasn't so many, but every little bit helped.
"First, when the vessels come into reach, yourself, the elderly Magus, and the too young to be separated from his mother's apron mage, will launch your…trick, as you call it." She said, frowning at the word "trick", because she found his sense of humor incredibly odd at times.
"Then, if the sprung trap does not sufficiently deter them, or Prosper's Masters do not die in the attempt, then you will all recover your strength to eliminate ships bearing mages. The Baron will support, training the city's ballista on whichever vessels are marked by Brodin's working."
Mage Brodin said he could convince the wood of nearby ships to spring green leafed branches, and even to contract boards, thus taking on water. He couldn't do enough to outright sink a ship, not with dead wood, long seasoned, but marking the specific vessels to be focus fired was an efficient use of his limited strength.
"Next," Taipan continued now training her stare on the city around her, "If still we cannot deter the forces and they are able to land their ships, there will be a siege. A battle for the city will ensue, with the seas blockaded, and the enemy will attempt to wear down the defenses through hardship and sheer number."
The daughter of Bald'rt showed her teeth in a fierce smile then.
"If it comes to that, then you and I will hunt them through the nights, teaching them fear. During the day, they will try to take the city and they will be thrown back, or drawn into the city to be devoured by its streets. We will ravage them with light and shadow, until they are fled or dead or we are."
That was, more or less the plan.
A betting man would put his coin on the other guy. They probably had some five thousand soldiers out there on those ships. Kistalfer had some three hundred guardsmen, about fifty crack warriors, the Baron of Kistalfer himself, a plant mage who had precious few plants to work with, a cloud mage with one foot in the grave, about fifty wounded or crippled Elves with fighting experience, Taipan, Ulric, and somewhere around ten thousand citizens who would rush out with kitchen knives, clubs, and little else if they had to before they let their home fall.
Ulric hadn't told Taipan about his ace in the hole idea yet. The advancing armada was surging ahead of the great galleons, each bearing a Merchant Lord, the cowards hung back while their minions advanced. He was almost certain he was going to have to take a ship out from the harbor and run the vessel through enemy lines, because he doubted that the massive warships with the gold threaded sails were going to come close enough otherwise for him to take a crack at them. They were going to pay for what they had done to this world, and to him. But, he couldn't take Taipan into that, the risk was too high. A small boat, paddled by one person had a far better chance to slip through.
Carefully avoiding allowing her attention waver from her diligent survey of surroundings, particularly to linger on the figure by her side, lest he become suspicious, Taipan was coming to the decision that she would have to serve her Honor as a knife in the dark. He was focused on his coming task, so Taipan wouldn't tell her already agitated Glade Chief that she was most definitely going to commandeer a boat to slip out into the harbor that night to get to the Merchant Lords' ships, ships that she would bet Hal'et another crafting from her Uncle Uldin, wouldn't sail close enough to come within ballista shot of the city. She would go to them, instead, and end the threat to her people once and for all. She would claim vengeance for her brother. Her Glade Chief was too important to chance in such a thing, and she was the better suited for it, the risk was too great. One small rowboat, that would be the best way to find an opening.
She would try to stop him, he knew it, Ulric thought, keeping his face calm.
He would object and insist on going, she knew it, Taipan decided, remaining outwardly unperturbed.
"Glade Chief, I will likely not be attending you directly this night. I would be better used creating uncertainty in the enemy and discerning where the men who lead these soldiers sleep." Taipan mentioned, almost in passing as they retraced their path toward the ocean facing wall beyond, which lay the port of Kistalfer.
Ulric nodded along, before he snapped his attention on the Elf. She considered it her task to be present nearby while he slept, the attempted assassination in his rooms was one of her great shames, a Shadow should have been there to guard their Honor when they were at their most vulnerable. Most of that had sort of gone by the wayside, but many such duties Taipan still took very seriously.
"Certainly, lass, I understand. Be careful, I know you're good at what you do but that's an army and they're all ready for trouble." He warned, glad that he wouldn't have to come up with some kind of subterfuge to slip away.
The quick-witted Elf signed "agreement" before her hand froze mid-gesture. She narrowed her orbs at her mate. He never liked her taking on a dangerous task without his presence. The Valin other worlder was raised with strange notions regarding sharing hazards, he normally required at least a small degree of convincing. He had rolled over far too easily on this.
Onwards they walked along the main avenue, wide streets designed to permit three spacious trade wagons abreast, now devoid of traffic. The citizenry were filling buckets and barrels of water, storing them indoors in case of fire. The city was mostly stone, but that didn't mean that sorcerous flame was completely without peril, nor flung arrows bearing oiled rags. Seeing a Kistalfer, great looming architecture without the mill of its inhabitants to breathe life into it, made the city reminiscent of a tomb.
Through the great gate that separated the baroque dwellings of merchants, artisans, smiths, coopers, tanners, and all manner of professions for which great Kistalfer was known to send to distant shores, from the massive array of piers and cargo holds, to say nothing of the multitude of maritime transports tied up along the docks, the pair strode. Ulric noted a small sleek rowboat, almost a racing canoe, by its shape. It would serve his purposes, perfectly. Idly, he glanced over and saw that Taipan was eyeballing that same little hull with the same look she gave a tool she would need soon. Too suspicious.
"What are you planning, Taipan?" He asked evenly.
"I hear that twisty mind spinning wheels, you have something you are not telling me." She accused, simultaneously.
Damn. She was onto him. What gave it away? He wondered. Her ears twitched, a single slight lowering, the way they always did when she was up to no good. It was a good thing she didn't know she had a tick, or she'd be much harder to read, her face rarely let slip devious intent.
Now that the question was posed directly, there could be no hiding it. Early, early on Ulric knew that to lie to his partner was unthinkable. The fae folk did not look kindly on untruth. Slip and slide however you like, obfuscate freely, it was all in good fun, but never a lie.
The couple stopped and stared at one another. Valin and Aes'r, they read each other's minds.
"You were going to try to destroy Prosper's Masters, alone, weren't you?" His Shadow-wife demanded.
"Weren't you?" He said in turn.
"You have not answered mine question, now, have you Glade Chief?" She responded with a question of her own.
"I cannot help but notice you have avoided providing an affirmation for mine, would you care to, dearest Shadow?" He played his reverse card.
At an impasse, they leveled direct stares at one another.
"Oh, for the love of the Eternal gaze, would the both of you just give it a rest?!" Interrupted Geras, gravelly and piqued.
"The both of you are ridiculous! I'd have thought the Iriel'en brought their princesses up with more grace, and, you, young magus, are fooling yourself if you think you'll get within bowshot of those ships without being detected by the elite bodyguards that surely wait there." The elder mage scolded.
He frowned at the upbraiding but took some solace that Taipan was, in a rarity, abashed at herself. Fine. Someone had to be the adult here.
"It seemed like I might have a better chance at getting close alone. I didn't want you to worry, is all." He said, sidling into an apology at an oblique angle.
A hearty sniff accompanied that statement, but Taipan, offered, "I would not have you risked where I have the advantage of night's aid. Besides, you will need rest after your workings this day." to her great chagrin.
"Just so we're clear, you're not going to be out roaming around in the night? Just like I will be a good boy and sleep off the wizard hangover, provided we're all still alive?" Ulric checked.
"Agreed, Husband. You will not be throwing yourself into a [Hoarfrost Bear]'s den, and I will attend yourself and see to your protection." Taipan confirmed.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
So ended another tribulation in his marriage, this one absent bloodshed or contest. It was not always thusly.
"Aye, well I, for one, would like to end this procession before I expire on the streets." Geras grumped.
With that, they made their way to the location where the making of magic was to happen. A small lighthouse toward the center of the dockyards, a signal beacon meant to guide ships in toward their correct berthing in storm or night. It was a fifty-meter tall affair, solid stone, with a clear vantage of Vatyn. From atop the tallest story, where a beacon flame and mirrors would flash instructions, they would direct the forces of the sea and sky against their enemy, and, hopefully, break them.
It was a very fine spring day over Varda. The coast, rocky and unforgiving, was being gently lapped by white crested ocean waves, the rollers driven by gusty salt breezes. Warm and wet though it was, the air held no hint of weather, no clouds threatened rain. The only reason that he wasn't happier than a pig rolling in slop was the hundreds of ships, no more than ten kilometers out from Kistalfer. High overhead, the Twins sent reflective shimmers from the sails of the masters of this navy while they danced through the sky.
"What do you think," Ulric broke the silence with quiet anticipation, addressing the former High Mage, "The Baron will be able to do against so many, with so few left to fight?"
Shoulders stooped with age shrugged in the heavy, abused robes. Even on a day like today, Geras couldn't find a fragment of concern for appearance. That was, to Ulric, a bit comforting in a way. It was, at the end of things, just another day upon Varda. There would be others, for some. For some, not. Sort of the way it always was.
Coughing loudly into his robe's sleeve, the Nephel mage spat over the rail of the lighthouse's signal pavilion.
"He'll hold the city. For a time. For a long time, likely." Concluded Geras.
"Tras Kistalfer is his father's son, and his father was an unholy terror in his prime, before his will crumbled, crushed by the suggestions in those damned cursed artifacts. My Lord, well, former Lord, has been leading armies against the Barbarians out in the Reaches, against pirate encampments, against Beastkin uprisings, since his naming day. Any who come within reach of his axe will suffer for it." the old mage said, proudly of his home's ruler.
"But he can't fight hunger and there aren't enough who can fight to break out from this many warriors laying siege. The answer is out there, on those blasted ships, and us here, who wield the dragon's pulse of Varda. We must savage them with this stroke. Those Adepts out there will be crack mages, personal retainers for the Gilded thrones. They will be surrounded by their Praetorians, vicious, talented, loyal fighters all. Those men and women could disrupt what we do if they know it is coming. This will be our only opportunity for a lethal blow." Geras explained.
"You know my thoughts, young Lord Einar, on how a first strike should be leveraged." He said drily.
Ulric grimaced. He surely did. A Skylance, a massive thunderbolt, called from kilometers away to obliterate him. Only an Archmage's dedicated teachings and a core specifically empowered to control the energies directed at him had allowed him to intercept the spell.
A thought came, pieces falling into place from recent experiences, his piracy, how goddamned much that had happened within the last two weeks, from descending the highlands, to felling a small garrison, to making terms with Kistalfer. So much, so quickly. There was no way that Prosper knew the current status of the city, not when they would have had to have departed their iron walled city with this force long before those events even happened. He said as much.
Geras chuckled at his expense, "They don't care, lad, how many men we have behind our walls, nor about the choir of mages I had trained. For our hundreds of men they bring thousands, for our dozen Adepts, they bring sixty. So has Prosper always held tight the reins of Prespang."
Oh. Right. He'd forgotten for a moment who it was they were dealing with. Caesar would have peace in the Empire, and with his legions an example would be made of rebels against Rome. The taxes levied would be collected, to nurture mother Rome. Or else.
"Then we'd better make it stick." Ulric decided.
"Aye. And I will." Geras agreed, with a confidence Ulric wished he knew the source of.
Ulric stood back and watched as the elder mage used ink made from the dust of beast cores, all of a specific mana, to inscribe sigils on the lighthouse floor. Runes of power and control, beckoning, binding, all the aspects of magecraft that Ulric was only barely introduced to back in Iriel, for there had not been time to do it all. High Mage Geras had been thirteen decades a master of conjuring weather, he laid each rune with certainty, infusing it with whispers of his own magic as he did.
Brodin watched, rapt. He was trained in Prosper's schools, had been assigned to Kistalfer under the High Mage's command, but he had never watched the Blackskies ply his craft directly. It was art driven by scholarship, underpinned by philosophy profound. Brodin knew he was only beginning to walk the path that led to this destination, as the spell circle took shape on the stones.
The former engineer, and new student of magic watched attentively, noting the inscriptions, their positions, the flow of mana leaving the older man's core. He was watching Geras build a program for magic. It, in many ways, was reminiscent of how he cast mentally. There were defined structures in this web of runic ink, protocols. It was hideously complex, layers of algorithms designed to regulate the flow of magic, to control forces that ought not be controlled. Ulric wouldn’t be ready to try that kind of casting for a long, long while. Years, if not decades. Geras hadn’t mentioned that such a thing would be needed for their working.
After half an hour of machine precise inscription, the circle was completed with a final bold stroke of ink.
"Now, [Lord of the Ancient Glade], instill the matrix with your power, slowly, gently, so that the feel of your Ceraun is known to it. Brodin, do the same with your Germen. The sigils must know you, to be directed. I will drive the matrix, but each of you will contribute your part."
Slowly, trickling the chasing hum beneath his breastbone into the spell architecture in front of him, Ulric touched his magic to the circle, along with a delicate finger. It drew, hungrily, and he winced, careful to allow the runes to link to his power. It only took a few moments, though it felt longer, and the sigil matrix crackled once, a tiny spark to his touching finger.
"Damn thing bit me." He groused, when it was over.
Geras grinned and winked at him, "That's cause it likes you. If I wanted only me to link to it, it would have burned you to ash, or tried."
Fucking magical bullshit. Ulric could only shake his head. Always something to learn.
Brodin did the same and withdrew a finger with a single welling blood drop, as if pricked by a thorn.
"There!" the elder mage exclaimed, sighing with relief, "It is ready. There's no backing out now, the power is in place and it will come, no matter what we do."
Ulric stiffened, glaring at the wrinkled mage who leaned somewhat smugly against his staff.
"What do you mean, no matter what we do?! We haven't even started to cast the spell!" He demanded.
Geras, coughed, cleared his smoker's throat, and spat, before he answered, sarcastic, "You think you just reach out and summon the skies and seas to do your bidding whenever you want?"
Then the retired High Mage went contemplative, as he stared at Ulric.
"Come to think of it, you probably do. Seven hells, it probably does! Well, not for all of us, you young monster. Some of us don't hold the Eternal Gaze's artistry in our nexus." Geras complained.
"I, for one, do not make habit of pulling that much of the Field through my old bones. Better to scribe the circle, imbue it, and let it do the heavy lifting while I sip from my flask!" Which the old man reached a withered hand into his robes and presently did.
Smacking lips with obvious pleasure at the liquor, Geras looked out over the sea.
"Still. There's a first time for everything, and a last time too." The old mage said, finally.
Taipan reached over and put a calming hand on Ulric's arm. She had remained, up to this point, silent and out of the way, as was proper when the workings of magecraft were about. Especially ones involving the ritual binding of maelstroms. Besides, Taipan, not a mage, nevertheless knew enough of it to see an absence of safeguarding artifice.
"Glade Chief, be at ease. Your part in this has come to an end. It is Master Geras who will carry the burden. Let us leave him to it." She said gently, to her husband, seeing that he had not yet understood.
He turned to see her neutral expression, although there was the faintest hint of sadness there. He turned to see Brodin was shaking the old mage's hand, trading whispered words. The hell was going on here?
"The hell's going on here?" He barked.
"What's going on here," Geras said, raising himself out of his slouch with his catalyst staff, "Is that I've got work to do, and you two pups should sit back and watch. It's not every day you get to see the Telikos of a Nephel High Mage, especially not when it's been sweetened by the gift of a Ceraunic core, with a spice of Germen."
Another swig from the flask, and Geras looked like he'd shed ten years, his arm limber when he flung the spent flask out over the ocean. Ulric noted an aura of mana around the man, similar to what he felt when he concentrated on the radiance of a fire or the notes from beast cores freshly extracted. The old mage's magic rose like an orchestral number, quiet but filling with power.
"When this is done, I'd like you to take my core, Lord Einar, to balance the debt. Put it to some use. I've cheated you a bit here, my service was offered to you in exchange for my life, and I've decided to put that service to use for my home. I'm sure you won't begrudge an old man that." Geras said, almost cheerful.
What?
It clicked. The pieces coming together, even for someone as slow on the uptake as him.
"What have you done, Geras?" Ulric asked, even though, he was pretty sure now, what the old mage had done.
It was a fine swindle.
"I've done what we said we were going to do, lad. It couldn’t be done by one alone, if only for your dominance of Ceraun you were necessary, although the might of that thing inside you helps greatly." the retired High Mage said, still looking out over the seas, calm and composed.
"I gave two sons to Prosper, both spent too young, both wasted." Geras said, grim, haunted by that loss still, "My entire life I lived wielding my power like a butcher's cleaver, killing anyone who broke rank from the will of my Baron or Prosper's Magisters. All for a lie, all under the twisting of a twisted mind, an evil magic that should never have existed. As I think on it now, an evil as black as the one in those slave collars we tolerate on the Knife ears over there's kin. Well, not all mistakes can be made up for, not at once. Today though, there will be an answer for some of it. Today, the Blackskies will have his due."
Cold blue eyes were hardened on the ships that swam toward the mage's home.
"Kistalfer has been good to me. The line of Kistalfer has been good to me. To trade a handful of years for repaying that debt is nothing." Geras said with the conviction of the martyr.
The High Mage lifted the amethyst crowned staff to the heavens and the circle flared shimmering silver, grey, deep blue, all the colors of high seas and storm clouds.
Ulric felt the swell of energy, felt a ripple as the working came together, one that surged out across the rolling waves, climbing high into the blue skies. His core emptied in a moment, his entire strength stolen and it was most of what he could do to stay standing against the mana exhaustion that hammered him. Brodin sat suddenly, likewise drained.
Taipan offered her support when she saw him wobble on shaky legs.
"Watch carefully, young Ulric, [Lord of the Ancient Glade]." The Blackskies commanded, as master to pupil, "I learned much from your strange magic, insights hidden from me, in spite of my years searching for those answers. But where you are coming into your strength, I have mastered mine. For ones who touch Varda's field as we do, without the Akashic to buffer, without the protection of her classes, we might find, for a price, a greater power. Once and only once. When the cost of a life must be paid for its toll."
Mana roared, twisting at the call of the rune circle, racing along circuits, burning the crystalline powder of Greater cores mixed with quicksilver and alchemical solvent saturated with unaspected mana, waiting to resonate. The pulse of Varda's field rang like the planet's heartbeat, too deep to be heard, but felt, as Kistalfer's retired High Mage called the magic.
Deftness born from a century of practice, assisted by the structure of a rune circle, and sheer will pulled the surface from great Vatyn, a mist rising suddenly as the Mage forced the sea to form Nephel. Climbing into tight concentric spirals the cloud rose, darkening the heavens. Incendere joined to Caelum, woven ribbons of superheated air rising, their shimmering heat waves distorting the ships. Sails caught in that flow ignited. So too did people, their shouts rising with the wind. Infrig descended along another band of wind, and the spiral locked into place, leaving frozen mist in its wake.
The first flash of lightning was only moments behind, rippling in a mirror to the sigils on the floor across the looming, circling, roiling clouds. Thunder boomed across the horizon.
A liverspotted hand lifted to the sky and pulled it down on his enemies, amethyst crackling with Ceraun that bound the spell, that fed from it. A darkened vortex descended to meet the Vatyn tearing sails as it howled, drawing the ocean up into the sky. An arthritic finger pointed and sizzling lances struck a large galleon, scintillating light blasting it, then another, and another. The water spout, enormous, a quarter kilometer across, dragged vessels into its tow, crushed them to kindling, which hurtled out across the surface of the sea like javelins, shredding sails, sailors, mages, and warriors, punching holes below water and above through the hulls. Waves churned by vicious wind sent warships bobbing like toys in a bath.
More lightnings, Skylances burning images across Ulric's retinas as the High Mage selected which men would die by thunderbolt. Gale force winds lashed the sea. The funnel lashed to Geras' soul picked up speed, from afar seeming ponderous, but moving faster than a ship with full sails could ever hope to flee. Dozens of carracks and warships were obliterated by the wind driven water, dozens more attending vessels were sundered by the shrapnel of their peers, three of the golden sails were consumed whole by the vortex.
Geras leveled his staff at the other four gold crowned flagships, one by one, and expended his life in the spears of Ceraun that blasted them. Ulric felt each of those reverberations in his own chest, the link from his magic to the Prime elemental, twinkles of its attention from the amount of the colossal sprite's presence that were summoned.
The wrinkled face of Geras Blackskies smiled in satisfaction and his form turned to vapor, a cloud that dissipated, like an image of smoke, before it was drawn into the violently glowing grey and white swirled core of the High Mage. The splendid metal staff, its intricate traceries meticulously inscribed, its crowning jewel resplendent violet, clattered to the stones of the light house floor, along with the still glimmering remains of the man that had wielded it. Robes once fine and rich, now worn and faded, glided to the floor, as if catching a steady draft from the orb it enshrouded.
As suddenly as it was summoned, the water spout drew up from the sea, returning to the clouds, whose roil became random. Natural lightning now rippled across them as the will that animated the storm clouds joined them. Ulric, speechless, saw what had been wrought.
The navy was shattered. Not three in ten had survived the High Mage's wrath. Most of those had lost sails or listed badly. It was appalling the number of lives that had just ended. Appalling that he should feel so much relief at their end. So fast. Two minutes? Less?
Ulric looked to his partner and saw stark awe on her face, she who had witnessed the greatness of her people's workings, but nothing with the savage fury that had been levied here. Brodin was unconscious, the draw from his strength had felled him. Still numb to the devastation, the reforged man saw that the sigils inscribed by careful brushstrokes were burned into the lighthouse stone, as if by a laser. Geras' magnum opus, his Telikos, was immortalized.
Then and there, Ulric decided that the arcana upon the stones he would instill into the staff, alongside its owner's core, runes crafted from [Arcanite Diamond] set into Deathless metal to draw the residual mana from them. That artifact belonged to Kistalfer. A tool to protect it. The knowledge of how to touch the weather Ulric would keep, a priceless wealth that was enough for him. That was the course that felt like justice.
Taipan's voice prompted him from his thoughts.
"That is why Prespang never sent force overwhelming to Iriel. That is why, so long as Gother Cenur'it lives, none would dare muster their strength to crush us utterly. The archmage, in his final act, would call the forest to his will and feed them to its roots." The former princess of Iriel told him.
"My Father could and has destroyed a city. Gother, if not for his refusal to do violence, could destroy a nation, were his need great enough, if he were willing to expend himself to that end. Now you know better on what hinges Varda's history turns." She let her "lesson" rest.
Ulric took the core, its glow having dimmed to softness, barely more luminescent than a normal beast core, and wrapped it in the robes until recently filled. It wasn't even warm, just hard crystalline matrix, if beautiful in its pattern. Hard to think that this had been a man, not very long ago, he mused, as he put the core into his belt pouch. The staff he took up in his hands, a slight brightening of its violet jewel when its attunement to Ceraun harmonized oh so briefly with his own nexus. They were siblings in a way, his core and the staff's gem. Or, well, perhaps cousins. Ulric's core was exponentially more potent than the gem, animated by his will.
They waited a bit until Brodin awoke, hand in hand, watching the ships that could make a turn begin to move off. Several slid beneath the waves, unable to resist the damage to their hulls. Only a few were given aid by their fleeing comrades, which irritated Ulric no small amount. Even in defeat, his enemies were cowards. Did he even have enemies anymore? It was sudden. So sudden that he had the surreal sense of dreaming. The Merchant Lords were gone, their power broken. It would take years to rebuild a navy like that. It would take a generation to replace the lives that had been aboard that navy.
Didn't that mean he was free from his task? Ulric Einar, Reforged, [Lord of the Ancient Glade], could finally go home. He found himself giddy, smiling like a boy at the thought, despite the wreckage, the flotsam of men and women's lives that drifted on the Vatyn's currents. All thanks to a man he had barely known, who had tried to kill him and his wife on their first meeting. A man whose loyalties to home demanded a price be paid to preserve it. A man who paid that price gladly.
It was a funny old world sometimes.
He imagined this must have been how the old Japanese felt, seeing the Mongol horde turned aside by the Kamikaze. Preparing for a struggle that was almost certainly doomed, and, without warning, knowing that no battle was to be fought. For some reason, Ulric almost felt like he might cry for relief. So heavy had been the burden of leading the glade-folk against an enemy he couldn’t defeat. Now there was just the quiet sea breeze and the discordant song of seagull things.
Brodin came around after a few minutes. Unsteady, obviously racked by the mana exhaustion. Ulric’s unnatural physicality let him ride over the punishing effects of the debilitation with far less consequence than was normal, he had discovered. Yet another blessing he would count. He had a few, by this point. The lady holding his hand, for one.
They and the men upon the walls, and the Baron from his keep had been the only ones to witness the coming of the Blacksky to destroy Prosper’s punitive force. Word spread like wildfire, washing through the city to ignite a riot of celebration. It took nearly an hour to push through the jubilation to the Baron’s keep, to hand him the staff and the crystalline soul of his foul mouthed, belligerent, habitually insubordinate, and most faithful servant.
Tras Kistalfer didn’t bother to hide the tears he shed for a life so spent. He declared it the end most fitting for Geras Kistalfer, grand uncle to the ruling line.
Ulric and Taipan left the Baron to his Miria’s attentions, they had their own people to attend to. Short and bittersweet the tale, and at its conclusion. The Elves raised a mourning song for the one who had died in their Lord’s service. Aes’r didn’t really do funerals. The circle of life, return to the forest, all that kind of hippy nonsense, they interpreted death as a natural and inevitable part of living, not a separation from it. Theirs was the more enlightened interpretation, in Ulric’s mind. Sadly, he was Human and didn’t share it, even if he wished he could.
Celebrations lasted most of the day, jubilation, relief, and exultation over the vanquishing of some great enemy who most of the citizens had never even seen. Almost as if a ghost had been exercised. Tras Kistalfer, never a man to allow an opportunity to go wasted, sent a vessel with an official courier, destination Prosper, with the Praetorian Ulric had crippled packaged alongside news of what overwhelming defeat had occurred. The courier bore, along with the Praetorian, as both evidence of Kistalfer’s defiance and a show of good faith, their official decree of Independence. Three more vessels bearing that same declaration were sent across the Vatyn.
Within the season, at the height of trade, with so many peoples coming and going that limiting the spread of news would be impossible, the disintegration of Prosper’s empire would begin. Hidden inside the declaration was a code for the other Barons, normally reserved for messages containing battle plans, that revealed the treachery of the hidden weaving on badges of office. Only a handful of Magisters survived the initial declarations of persona non grata, and grudges born silently for decades, were given free permit.
Had he known about those doings, Ulric would have laughed heartily. He didn’t though, and wouldn’t for many weeks, because he was too busy wrangling almost three hundred migrants onto ships, two more of which he had bought separate from his dealings with the Baron, and dickering with cutthroat merchants over supplies enough to make the run into the Zelas. It was a two-week course to the gateway held by the Iron walled home of the Merchant Lords. They had to penetrate the blockade and then, hopefully, would find an escort of Zellusin to assist them down the high running river, full to bursting with melt water and violent in its fullness.
Ulric wondered frequently at how such a victory could have been won those first couple of days. Taipan solved the riddle, and he felt stupid for not seeing the obvious answer: Prosper didn’t know their long con had been discovered.
“Glade Chief, you only stumbled across the secret a mere handful of days before those ships arrived.” The Iriel’en Shadow-Wife pointed out, “For who knows how long, these items have passed hand to hand down the lines of those who ruled the City States of Prespang, and were worn proudly by all those who graduated Prosper’s academies for magecraft. How many who had the talent for touching and wielding mana do you think the spiders on their web let free to cause them ill, or to discover the ploy?”
“Never in their most wicked nightmares did they consider that one of their High Mages would discover the manipulation, would sell themselves to undertake a magic that has not been performed ever before to destroy them.” His Huntress Wife explained to him. Slowly.
“So, they thought they were just going to sail up here with a huge ass army, a gaggle of warmages, and pound Kistalfer to sand?” Ulric asked.
A lifted eyebrow and a small smile accompanied the words he frequently employed against her, “What is not broken, does not require mending, no?”
Huh. Beaten by pure happenstance. He could almost sympathize with whichever of those sonsofbitches was actually pulling the strings of the others that had certainly been out on the water. All that planning, strategizing, so many plots woven, just to be unwound by a hunch and a chance meeting. What a kick in the balls that must have been, he chuckled. The Irony Gods had claimed another victim, brought low under their hammers. He who plots most deeply and strategizes most grandly, discovers, with victory in sight, his end in sheer bad fucking luck.
Delicious.
Ulric Einar, accompanied by his grand lass, shared one last magnificent feast with the Baron of Kistalfer before they departed the great sea port. It was a pleasant affair, all things considered. Opportunity, like the regreening following a burn off of forest undergrowth, was uplifting to everyone. All of Prespang must have been heaving a sigh of relief. All of it that didn’t wear white robes or continue answering to the will of the departed Merchant Lords, that is. No few there were that never needed a hexed signet ring or some schlock to convince their greedy black hearts to commit to any evil asked of them. Those were about to find life a much more difficult affair, absent their master’s backing.
Not his problem though. Ulric was going home.
“Taipan, if I have to dick with one more guy over rice and beans and fresh fruit, I am going to be forced to stab them.” He grouched.
Merciless, the cinnamon skinned Amazon informed him “Oversight of the goods and plenty of the kingdom is the duty of a Lord. This and a great many things more will you be responsible for until a court of subordinate Lords has been established under your domain.”
“This would go faster if you did the negotiating. I was born like, a year ago, how the hell am I supposed to know what a ton of these little red beans is supposed to be worth?” He pointed out.
“You offer to buy a very small quantity, a few sacks at most, and overbid slightly. Then, when you have won the exchange with the merchant to claim those sacks, you go to a second seller of that same item and bargain harder for the bulk. When the first merchant discovers he lost out on a large contract by pushing too hard for profit on that small sale, he will attempt to underbid the greater order. So long as you have not signed a contract you are free to renegotiate between both sellers. Because ship’s ration contracts are guaranteed profit that do not require transport, they will come to an arrangement splitting the order for a better bargain. That coin can be applied to get ahead of other ventures for the early summer, such as ore or silks, or stake in the hunt of a Leviathan, both of the merchants involved will come ahead in the deal.” Taipan instructed dutifully.
A rough hand scrubbed down over his face as he considered the coming future of haggling with sharp eyed whole-sellers. First thing, he needed somebody to handle the acquisition of goods and plenty.
An idea came, to him, “Taipan, surely one of the people following us around has experience in trading or operating a shop. Can’t I, you know, delegate this shit?”
“Finally, he realizes that he doesn’t have to do it all himself.” Taipan sighed, looking perturbed, “I did not think you were going to ever come to this by yourself.”
Ulric tapped his leg, glowering at the tall Elf, “Is this why you kept bringing every teensy tiny little goddamned thing for me to fix?”
“It was, yes, Ulric. And a far longer time did you last than I thought when I started.” She answered, smug in her deception.
Dealing with Elves was a pain in the ass sometimes.
“You couldn’t have just said so?” He inquired, hopelessly.
Taipan shook her head slowly, “The lessons do not root as deeply if they are not watered with your own sweat first. That breeds dullness of wit, and overreliance on others.”
Of course it did. Of course it did. Friggin Taipan.
“Good to know, lass, consider yourself drafted. Nice to be working with you, First Minister of Feeding Our Asses Taipan.” Ulric declared loudly, “Your first order of duty is to negotiate favorable bargains for the supply of our transports. I will put Mage Brodin and his attached to the task of assisting you.”
“I cannot! You cannot!” the former princess spluttered, “How am I to stay at your side and protect you if I must thread through this great tangle of Valin to secure food?!”
Ulric nodded sagely, “That is reasonable and fair, dearest Taipan. I delegate to you the power to delegate. Now, make it happen, I’m going to go make sure those two extra crews aren’t too drunk to sail tomorrow morning. We’re gone from Kistalfer nice and early tomorrow.”
Ignoring her indignant shouts at him, other than to raise a hand in wave as he took off down the wide streets, Ulric set out to make certain that the captains of his two newest schooners knew the marching orders. He was no hero, but responsibility sat heavy on his shoulders for seeing the glade folk cared for, and it wouldn’t do to permit his return to the glade to be delayed by some piss drunk sailors.
A few weeks sailing, maybe little dust-up with what was left of Prosper’s goons as they ran upstream the Zelus, and then, Orlethrem. From there he could leave orders, and money to keep his newest ships in port, until he could send half of them some things to run down to the sea faring Aktinian to sell, and half to make way to Trachn’ir, those to be loaded with as much Reaper Fern as could be harvested without damaging the herb’s ecological stability. He would have greenhouses of basically every desired plant going before summer was done, with Mage Brodin’s and a few of the green thumb Aes’r in his hodgepodge for assistance.
In any case, one he’d left the ships they would make way to Iriel, to meet again with Taipan’s parents and young Brighteyes, as he’d promised. He was thoroughly prepared for Galed Uldin to blow a gasket at seeing his secretly married godchild returned. After that, as fast as possible, he was headed back to the glade, with a ragtag band of subjects tied to his apron. Despite that unexpected wrinkle, Ulric Einar couldn’t wait to be home.