a surfeit of wizards 15

 

 

Chapter 15

 

When I woke up, Chessina squealed, and kissed me.

I kissed her back, and yelped as my healing flesh was still tender when I moved.

“Castamir! I have exchanged messages with Harmana, and she says all the villagers are safe, the servants are shovelling the shit from the animals in the basement into my rose garden, and Florisin managed to hurt… what shall we call this one?”

“Nosy,” I said. “So, he’s Fishface’s seer.”

“Shareen warned everyone, but Harmana had to relay orders, because she curled up in bed crying,” said Chessina. “But Harmana can assure her we are fine. We are fine, aren’t we?”

“Well, I am,” I said. “A trifle overdone in parts, but otherwise only medium rare.”

She poked me.

I noticed we were in a private tent, so I let that lead to its inevitable conclusion. Best cure in the world.

 

And when we woke up, we packed.

“If you don’t need us anymore, Clovo, I want to get home,” I said. “It must have been terrifying for the children.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Clovo. “We handled the less demons; we set up a banishing circle and got rid of them all at once by using voice projection and enhancement spells held up by some of the ritual circle.”

“Nice,” I said. “Ritual increases power exponentially, not as the sum.”

“Yes, Castamir, very nice, polish Harmon’s fancy mathematics on me,” said Clovo.

“Oh!” I said. “No offence intended; I thought all wizards taught mathematics.”

“Out here, our mathematics consists of two dead enemies equals better than one dead enemy,” said Clovo. “It’s new territory to have ‘one gained ally equals better than one dead enemy.’  And mathematics and science were Harmon’s thing. It’s why he has so much about the Agarakians, who are engineers.  I’d love a few engineers out here, but we don’t have enough people to teach it. You take a heap of apprentices and if you have one who can learn to teach mathematics and engineering at the Academy, I wouldn’t care if he can’t turn cooked chicken into sandwiches or summon a breeze when he farts.”

“I see,” I said. “I think Frigermar is capable, perhaps he can teach it. I’ll chat with him.”

“You do that,” said Clovo.

 

When we got back, various children flung themselves on us, not just our three apprentices. Sirrit, Norva and Aritsa were there in the bundle as well. Shareen buried herself against me, silently.

“We had an attack by a demon,” said Florisin.

“I know; Harmana kept me up to date,” I said. “I gather you dealt with it adequately. That was the one I was supposed to be dealing with, but he summoned three demons which Clovo called Fyrteufel. So, we had our hands rather full.”

“And the sea is damp. I’m amazed you both survived unscathed.”

“I’m a little scorched, and Chessina is magically exhausted, but we did it,” I said.

Florisin promptly performed a post mortem on our battle; what we could have done better. He was surprised at the idea of using a cleaning spell to temporarily blind them.

“It’s a good idea, most shields and natural defences are aimed towards offensive spells; the neutrality of cleaning spells overcame shields with spells which were not recognised as offensive,” he said.

“The theory does work, then,” I said. “I was hoping it might.”

“Big gamble.”

“It was that or make a straight fight of it, and I wouldn’t expect to survive that,” I said, honestly. “I hoped that cheating would give us a chance.”

“Against things like that, it isn’t cheating if it works,” said Florisin.

He was impressed by the use of preserved momentum, too.

“Harmon always was fond of mathematics,” he said. “Well done for applying it!  I suspect that the frost ray spells would not have worked as well without softening them up, and you’d have been out of energy almost as fast as Chessina.”

I did not tell him that I had backup from the tower.

“So, what happened here?” I asked.

“Shareen had had a nightmare, and then started screaming, and curled up in a ball. Harmana took it upon herself to raise the war wards, and sent Rosie out to bring everyone inside, cattle and all,” said Florisin. “The Priestess Oakheart is one scary lady, though Rosie laughs at me for thinking so.”

“She can be,” I said. “She’s a dear sister to me, though, and we work well together.”

“Well, I looked out of the scrying window, and the village looked desolate; apparently the tower puts up this vast illusion. It’s impressive.  And we had everyone in as this demon lord came screaming up from the southwest, passing through the village, and hurled himself at the Tower. It threw him half a mile. Harmana was at the wardstone, and I found later she was powering the runes with blood as she has less of a connection to the Tower than you, but I had to tell her firing lightning bolts was a waste. She found something which surrounds the Tower in an effective whirlwind, which caused him no little disruption, and I used some overpowered Missiles of force to check out how hard he was. Which, if you are wondering, is very; he deflected about half, and I’m no amateur.  He was hurling lightning at the tower, which, as far as I can gather, just absorbed it.  I used the striking fist spell, and that discommoded him somewhat. Then Priestess Oakheart chanted up a sacred rain, and he really did not like that, and he fled, declaring that he has disrupted the tower enough to kill all those you care for. I think he believed that; the scrying mirrors showed the tower in apparent bad shape, but as it showed a hole right through the room I was in and knew to be intact, I doubted the rest as well, and then I could see it was no such thing. This Tower is powerful!”

I did not say, ‘You have no idea how much!’

I silently thanked the Tower, and Arcana, and felt the warmth of their love.

“Harmana, are you healed?” I asked, taking her hands. She had a number of cuts to her palms which were roughly healed. I finished the process.

“He told me what to do,” said Harmana.

“Florisin?”

“No, Tower,” said Harmana. “He likes me, but I am not Towermaster, so he helped me make it work. He told me what Shareen was seeing, kind of, so I knew what to do, and to send a wave of compliance through the village to overcome their fears. I think Auntie Silavara helped save the day, though, chivvying those who wavered.”

“The Tower and the Circle work well together,” I said.

“Yes,” said Harmana. “It was scary, so we are glad you are back.”

 

I would be lying if I said it was an easy job sorting the villagers back to their village; and we ended up keeping a few of the frail and elderly, and the two women who had gone into labour during the scare. It took a week to get rid of the new mothers, but the up side was that Elizelle’s little entourage also stayed in the tower, and took up residence, and were prepared to care for Granny Lala and Granny Matty, who spent time minding Elizelle, and telling stories to her and young Vella and to our apprentices. The Tower seemed to like being a place of haven, not somewhere to be feared. And the grannies had their independence, of sorts, being able to cook for themselves if they wished, and with their own space, but no fears about keeping warm enough, or affording food, as the Tower servants provided, and helped clean up, tactfully and invisibly without making an issue of it. I suspected that this was going to be the way things were; elderlies who needed more than their families could give them would come to us for their declining years.

And the village children started dropping in for stories as well, and seemed to have lost any wariness of the tower.

And I did make sure to warn them that there were dangerous things on upper floors, and the Tower helped me put in wards so that only those permitted above the ground floor could go there.  Except when invited, as we had the elderlies and Elizelle’s people up to dine from time to time, and when our apprentices’ friends came up.

I did wonder how everything fitted in; I measured some of the features by eye, and the inside seemed larger than the ground profile should allow.

I decided not to check that out by measuring properly; I needed to know more before I wanted to accept that Arcana or the Tower, or both were messing about with space-time. A bit like the Place of Waiting, where the size of it was a matter of Emaxtiphrael’s opinion.

I got a chime for that little insight.

 

I had word from Clovo that Gerd had managed to convince the tribes of goblins to work with him with a conclave, as mutual protection against demonic interference, and to sign a pact with Ezustry. A portion of the Marches was ceded to them for their co-operation, and aid to settle,  increase the forestry, and essentially, set up a buffer state against the Wilds.  A well-warded forest under the control of a Fae people would hold the dangers back better than human troops. That plan had fallen apart badly on Nosy, and ultimately, on Fishface, and I was glad.

“He is in the wind, though,” said Chessina to me, regarding Nosy. “We did not banish him, and Florisin, Silavara, and the Tower only wounded him. Somewhere he is licking his wounds, because there is no way he will return to the abyss, once summoned, because then he has to rely on being summoned afresh. Whilst he has a presence in this world, he can summon more demons, and make a place for himself.”

She was right, of course.

And I needed those libraries, those contacts.

“We need to go to Adalsburg,” I concluded. I had already decided that, of course, but had been putting off the decision.

“And, Castamir!” said Chessina, “You have to stop referring to ‘Ambassadors’ as ‘Ambastardors,’ or one day you will say it to the wrong person and become persona non grata.”

She was right about that, as well.

 

We stayed long enough for the blessing service on the Spring Planting, which involved blessing the ploughs, which in theory required a priestess of Elara, the goddess of cultivation, but Silvana was the deity who got to be overworked in our corner of the world. There was a temple to Elara in Stonebridge, but when I asked if anyone wanted a priestess sent for, I was given the sort of looks given to a rather dim child asking if it was acceptable to go around naked in midwinter.

Silavara for Silvina it was.

The traditional bull race was a bit too exciting, as young village bravos raced their chosen bulls to the cow pens for the yearly impregnation.

I did get a laugh from the village men, when I told the story of the old bull and the young bull, when the young bull said, ‘Hey, old man! Why don’t we run down the hill and cover us a cow each?’ to which the old bull said, ‘Lad, why don’t we walk down the hill and cover us all the cows?’

No, I don’t know if riling up the bulls made them perform better, or make better seed, but it was what the villagers believed, and it was a note of colour and excitement for them, so who was I to criticise?

There were dances as well, and the girls who had been given mistletoe crowns either burned them to signify that they were not going on with courtship, or exchanged then for crowns of early leaves to continue the courtship, or got married.

It was good to be a part of the community and accepted, not feeling like an onlooker.

The crowns of leaves were also for girls just newly being courted, and Vella received one from Roff.

I was a little equivocal here; Roff is my age, not yet thirty, and Vella is fifteen, daughter of Aria, who was caring for our foster-daughter, Elizelle. But he was a good catch, being the local verderer, able to use some druidic spells, and Vella was used to magic. But it was Aria’s business, not mine. And don’t tell me this is hypocritical as I made no bones about Rosie being courted by Florisin; she’s old enough to know her own mind, and he’s rich enough to leave her well off when, as is likely, he dies first.

Well, it was a better match than some that might be made, and I dropped a word to the wise to Frotelin, son of Garrzlan the Blacksmith, that having a new love every seasonal celebration and leaving her with child was not acceptable, and if he was offering a flower crown at the Mayday service, I would consider that his profession as Blacksmith would not suffer if he was short of three items.

He got my point.

He is a big, strapping, handsome lad, and being a smith, does well for himself; and nobody but me – and Silavara – dare go against the Blacksmith.

And these stupid girls, always, all of them are convinced that she will be the one to tame the bad boy.

He was also less than impressed when I informed him that he was going to be paying for any bastards he had left, and that if his bereft love of the mistletoe crown was with child, he was going to build her a house, and acknowledge the child.

No, I wasn’t about to make him marry her.  He would probably beat her and the child for being trapped into marriage, because he did not have the stones to beat me.

Fortunately, it turned out he was only just getting together the idea that he could do anything with the foolish wenches, other than a bit of canoodling in the barn and a few hand-jobs, and Miss Mistletoe Crown, whose name I thought was Zelly, had been given an appropriate draught by Silavara, who did not condone children out of wedlock.

“Nice work on Frotelin,” she said to me. “I was going to threaten him with a draught to make it inoperative for all but passing water, but I think the short, violent, direct way got home to him better.”

“There’s always one,” I said. “I take it you won’t have any trouble reminding him of my threat while we are away?”

“Not in the least,” said Silavara. “You are now a part of the village life, but you are also the apex predator, and they won’t forget that.”

 

We set off next day to install ourselves in the city for the foreseeable future, and I was glad the merchant’s house was quite large.

Florisin stayed in the Tower; Rosie could use the gate to visit him, after all, and I needed her to give Chessina consequence.

What a nuisance, demons are.