Magician Prince (11 page)

Now her days were spent caring for little
Avelice or tinkering with her enchantments. The magician control
collar that had been in her possession for nearly two years still
eluded her ability to solve. There was a component that was
different from any magic that Alia knew, but she knew that it was
only just escaping her comprehension and once she understood how it
worked, then she would be able to break its hold over
magicians.

A knock at the door broke her away from her
thoughts and she raced to open it before the unwary knocker woke
Avelice from her nap. If whoever it was woke her baby, she would
rip-

She hastily opened the door and was greeted
by the wizened face of her father. “I hope I am not disturbing
you,” Xander whispered, “but I had some free time and wanted to pay
my two favorite girls a visit.”

“Not at all, father. Please come in,” Alia
stepped aside so that Xander could enter, “but you may be
disappointed to learn that Avelice is taking a nap right now.”

Xander sat at a small table while Alia poured
two glasses of wine in her narrow kitchen. He did not understand
why she would choose a house of such modest size when there were
larger ones available to her, but he never understood her desire to
move out of the castle either. She tried to explain it to him once,
but it was difficult to put into words. The castle and its grounds
were so large that it felt impersonal. This place felt like it
should be someone’s home. “You are looking well,” the old man
observed amicably as he sipped his wine. “Motherhood seems to suit
you well.”

“That is kind of you. We are getting along
nicely although sometimes I miss the comforts of the castle. Here I
do everything for myself.”

“You can always come back,” Xander offered.
“I have kept your quarters purposefully vacant although that
apprentice of yours has been vying for the larger accommodations
aggressively… and convincingly.”

Alia laughed abruptly. “That does sound like
Tomlin.” She took a sip of wine and swirled it lightly about the
cup out of habit. “Let him have the room and if I ever decide to
move back into the castle, then I will kick him back out.”

“You are a shrewd one,” Xander told her
good-humoredly, “I must admit you get that from me.”

“So how are things going with the
Collective?” Alia asked and she was surprised at how frankly
curious she really was. She may have handed the reins of leadership
over to another person, but there was a part of her that still
wanted to be the one that everyone looked to for guidance. A part
of her wanted to know that no matter how capable the hands were
that held the Collective together that they were not as good as
hers. She knew it was a vain desire, but could not help herself
from feeling it.

“We were visited by spies recently,” Xander
took another drink and his normally smooth brow became furrowed as
his expression shifted to one of concern. “Two Kenzai of modest
ability. We dealt with them harshly, but not before taking the time
to interrogate them first. Unfortunately, they didn’t know where
the intelligence that led them here came from, but it is clear that
someone in the kingdom knows or at least suspects that we are
here.”

Alia stopped herself from speaking for a
second, but decided to ask the question that came to mind. “Do you
think Byrn has anything to do with it?” she asked and immediately
feared the answer she might receive.

Byrn had disappeared more than a year earlier
with the Kenzai knight, Kellen, and had not been seen since. The
last Alia had heard of Byrn’s whereabouts was from the former orc
commander, Zakux Doombreaker, who tried to kill Alia and Tomlin
when they went looking for the missing fire master. The orc had
told them that Byrn was a demon-sorcerer and that he turned into a
terrible fire monster and destroyed most of the city. It was
unclear what happened to Byrn after that and her sprite friend,
Alphene was only able to track him to Silvering before losing the
trail of his essence, but from Zakux’s description of events Byrn
was nobody’s prisoner. Her own father, the most powerful
necromancer in the world, had tried repeatedly to summon Byrn’s
spirit from the underworld without success meaning that he still
lived. So why had he failed to return to her? When she first met
him, Byrn was a knight-magician under the service of one of the
warlords in the west. She did not want to think that Byrn had once
more chosen to side with the kingdom over the magicians, but who
else knew where the Collective was located? Even Kellen who had
been their prisoner had no idea where he was being held. Sadly, the
only thought that gave her hope that Byrn had not betrayed them was
that he was rotting in a dungeon somewhere while his captors
tortured him for information. A chill ran up her spine at the
thought.

“I don’t know, but fear the worst,” was
Xander’s answer. He did not care to expand on what he meant by “the
worst,” but Alia did not press the matter.

It was Xander who changed the subject as he
finished off his glass of wine. “Sending spies here shows that the
kingdom fears us already. It may be time to strike against the
noble families and cut off the heads of the hydra as it were. Our
numbers are still too small to stand up to the full might of the
kingdom if it was arrayed against us, but without unified
leadership we can bend them to our will in small patches of
territory at a time or crush them into the dust if need be.”

“No matter the size, the body cannot act
without the head driving it,” Alia agreed as she poured some more
wine.
The body cannot act…
Wine poured out over the rim of
Xander’s glass as she filled it.

“Alia?”

“The body cannot act without the head!” Alia
blurted uncontrollably in her excitement. “I thought it was an
enchanting spell. A powerful one beyond my ability to understand
like an ancient secret of some long-dead grandmaster, but maybe it
is something different altogether! I need to speak with one of our
manipulation masters.”

“Alia, try to calm yourself and tell me what
you are talking about,” Xander pleaded. He rose to meet his
daughter who was bundling Avelice in her blanket for a trip to the
castle. The baby was rudely awakened by her mother’s sudden
movements and began to cry loudly, but Alia was so distracted that
she took little notice.

“The collars,” she told him barely able to
contain the exhilaration that had so suddenly energized her, “I
might know how they work.”

Xander opened the door for Alia and they
hurried to the castle as fast as the old man’s bones would take
him. The Collective knew that most of the domains had been
evacuated long ago and the collars were believed to be what was
being used now to hold the domain magicians captive in some as yet
undiscovered location. If there was a way to break the spell, then
the numbers of the Collective would swell and they could demand the
surrender of the kingdom by whatever terms they set.

***

“A spell that could sever the mind from the
body-“ Ryonus mused at Alia’s query, “Yes, there is such a spell. I
am well aware of it, but it is no master level skill. Anyone with a
fair degree of talent in the manipulation discipline could cast
such a spell with relative ease.” To Xander he added, “I used that
very spell on Mantellus in Baj to make him appear dead.”

“Yes, I remember,” Xander darkened as he
recalled the failed prison break in which the only one to escape
was Mantellus Firekin who was thrown into a mass grave, believed to
be dead.

Avelice had settled somewhat since being so
impolitely disturbed from her sleep, but she threatened to begin
her crying anew at any moment. It was only the rhythmic bouncing of
her mother’s knee that kept the child happily entertained.

Ryonus explained, “That particular spell
weakens the connection between brain and body to the point where
all voluntary functions cease completely and non-voluntary ones
like breathing and the heartbeat are slowed to the point of being
nearly undetectable. The effects are slow moving to prolong the
effect. The spell takes a long time to activate and wear off, but
there are other versions of it that can paralyze the body in an
instant, but wear off much sooner.”

Alia absorbed Ryonus’ words, which rang true
with her own ideas regarding how the collars worked. She had seen
the collar work several times on test subjects and the effects were
not that much different than what Ryonus was describing. “But the
collar that we have has been active for at least two years. How
could such a spell work indefinitely? I find it hard to believe
that the kingdom has a magician that powerful on their side.”

“It would require either a group of very
powerful magicians or…” the master of manipulation fell silent.

“Or what?” Xander demanded.

Ryonus shook his head; “It would require a
tremendous amount of source energy from humans or other members of
the higher races.” His eyes inadvertently shot to Xander, who
nodded. “That would mean the siphoning of the magical energies-
either directly or through the blood source- of several people to
power one collar. If there are hundreds of these collars as we
believe-”

“Then it would require the genocide of a
small city,” Alia finished for him, “but that is not the kind of
news that could stay hidden for long.” Everyone had heard the
stories of Xander’s destruction of Colum from the magicians he
freed there. Alia didn’t want to admit that a part of her feared
her father for those actions and that was perhaps part of the
reason that she felt safer outside of the castle’s walls.

“Ryonus said ‘higher races,’” Xander
corrected her, “He did not say it had to be humans.”

“The orcs,” Alia stated showing that she
understood her father’s meaning. When she interrogated Zakux he
said that entire orc villages had been disappearing along the
border with the kingdom. “Did we cause this to happen? Could it be
that in an attempt to better control the magician population the
king would risk war with the orc tribes to power the creation of
their own magical weapons?”

“Not precisely,” Ryonus examined the collar
he held closely, “This one was made before the war started; before
anyone in Aurelia even knew the Collective existed.” He looked at
Alia in that way he had of casually analyzing things, “It is
fortuitous that you created the Collective when you did or the
magicians of Aurelia would already be doomed.”

“Then you can thank me by helping me figure
out how to disable this paralysis spell,” She took back the collar
and placed it inside of her coat’s pocket.

“It would be my pleasure,” Ryonus sincerely
assured her.

It was the third town that they came across
since leaving Mollifas and was no less promising than the ones
before. The largest cities in Aurelia were the ones most often
attacked by Collective soldiers, but the hysteria was an even more
palpable sensation in the small towns that had no Kenzai warriors
or any sort of a military presence to even pretend at being
protection. They had a militia of farmers and shopkeepers to defend
their homes, but they were little more than a collection of men
with pitchforks and old, dull swords. If the Collective was to
attack one of these towns, there would be nothing left and these
people knew it. That was the lesson that Xander Necros taught the
kingdom to great effect when he destroyed Colum, a city boasting a
populace of ten thousand, single-handedly in the course of a single
day. So it was little wonder that they were distrustful of
strangers, but knowing that did not make it any easier for Byrn to
stomach the looks that people gave them as they rode into town or
walked the streets.

During his years as an apprentice, Byrn grew
used to the hate that the normal people held for his kind. It was a
common thing for most of them to spit insults without so much as a
thought for what they were saying. The fact that most people had
little to no contact with magicians only made it easier for them to
feel comfortable in demonizing them, but those times, as bad as
they were, were almost pleasant compared to the anti-magician
sentiment that was now ever-present wherever they want.

They rode into the main street of the town,
if it could be called that. It was a main street in that most of
the shops and the lone inn were on this street, but was in truth
not much more than a dirt road with a handful of buildings on each
side.

Money in these smaller communities was tight
compared to the coin that changed hands in the heavily populated
cities. People who lived in small towns often bartered their goods
and services rather than relying strictly on money to get what they
needed. It was for this reason that Byrn was able to purchase fresh
supplies and a large room at the inn for a handful of copper coins
when similar purchases in Mollifas would have required coins of a
golden hue.

When they sat down for the evening meal Kaleb
ate like a ravenous wolf gulping whole chunks of meat with every
rip and bite. At one point, he suddenly stopped eating, realizing
that his steward sorcerers were staring at him in surprise as he
fed his face. He smiled at them causing some meat juice to drip
down his chin and said, “Mmssgood,” before going back to his
rending and tearing of beef using only his hands and teeth.

Sane’s meal was eaten more purposefully, but
with equal relish. Since being freed from the bonds of the control
collar the sorcerer’s pallet took on a healthier pink tone and
though he was still incredibly thin he started to put on a few
pounds already. He swore that food tasted better since regaining
his freedom and shared the same eating habits as Kaleb for the
first week of their journey since they left the capital.