Battle Mage: The Dark Mage (Tales of Alus) (57 page)

“It will come back to you in time,” the mage assured her as he placed the runes on the dark haired girl. “I can remember everything that happened before I was brought back.”

“Brought back?” the girl looked a little concerned and began to notice the blood on her bare skin. “Brought back from where?”

He didn’t really have time for questions, but to ease the girl’s worries Palose replied, “From the brink of death. It was a close one, now why don’t you sit and maybe use one of the blankets to keep warm until I am finished here. You wouldn’t want this girl to die now would you?”

Stasia looked unsure of whether she did want him to save the other girl, but moved to wrap a sheet like a toga around her body. “I have blood on me, master,” she said without true worry as the girl pointed out a simple fact.

“We can take care of that in a minute, Stasia. Now be a dear and let me concentrate,” the mage said gathering his power. It was like dealing with a child and he wondered if Stasia was like this before the ritual or if it was just her mind taking awhile to cope with the strangeness of it all.

The second ritual went the same as the first, though he now had an audience. When the second girl awoke, it was a similar experience as she took his blood. Her name was Talia and she wanted to kiss him as well, which made Stasia pout until he could divide his attention between them.

Feeling tired from the use of so much magic, the dark mage gathered the girls and moved upstairs to find the food he had stashed for both him and his hungry new friends. They could serve him in the city and around the house in a domestic capability perhaps. They were a successful experiment, at least, and given time Palose believed that he might find even better servants. Wakaraq might find someone with magical power to resurrect one day, but whether he did or not, Palose was already on the path to freedom from Atrouseon and onto that of becoming a true necromancer.

It was only two days later that the bells rang again, but these sounded different from the last two alarms. Palose had been spending most of his time suddenly distracted by his two new creations. Not just their affections but other needs had to be taken care of with the new mouths to feed. He was at the hideout enjoying one of the unexpected pleasures of his experiment when the bells disturbed the peace.

Palose pushed Stasia off of him as he heard the clanging of large bells from the harbor. Talia minded her side of the bed much better than the pretty little blond. Both girls could be very affectionate, but he could tell which one had once been a nobleman’s daughter from her neediness.

“Palose?” the pretty girl asked as she knelt on the mattress of the bed they shared. He would have to buy beds for the other rooms, unless he continued to share. There was also the thought of Sylvaine and what the apprentice would think when she returned from her patrol. As much as he enjoyed the attention of the two girls, there wasn’t the true spark that he felt with Sylvaine. Her friendship was different and not magically induced.

The dim light of day came through the raised floor window of the house he still rented, but now a new light came from the harbor. The light shone on the nude girls through his window as Palose began to pull on his clothes. Seeing the arch glowing from the magic used to bring something back through the gate, Palose knew there was something wrong. If he didn’t show up, Atrouseon or someone from the emperor might decide to find out what the dark mage was up to with his new freedom.

“You girls stay here. If I don’t return by tomorrow, you know what you are supposed to do during the day,” the young warlock stated to the girls. They had duties both menial and more significant. They were his eyes and ears in places where a warlock would be noticed in the city.

Both rose before he could escape and delivered kisses to either cheek. “Be safe, my lord,” Stasia said breathily.

“We will do as you ask, master,” Talia added. She was the more reliable of the two, though both girls served him well in many ways. When they were apart, the larger, older girl probably bossed little Stasia around he thought slightly amused, though the smaller girl probably hid more from him than he knew. They were sister like in his presence, so Palose ignored any other trivialities as long as things continued to go well.

Running out into the street, he spotted people gaping from windows and doors. He was forced to dodge more bodies as he raced to the dock where he knew Atrouseon and the others would be gathered for the unexpected interruption.

The wizard hunters had sent word through a scrying globe of their first capture. A Kardorian ship had been where it shouldn’t have been apparently. Lord Devolus had given his plan to split the fleet. One ship pursued another, while the remaining two moved to head off the potential goal of their quarry if they escaped the first. They had been confident that no ship could contend with the power of the black warships with a score of wizard hunter warlocks aboard.

As his feet thumped onto the wood pier, Palose came to a startled halt. The sight of a broken black ship limping through the gate was a surprise to everyone gathered and not just for the young warlock.

The once proud black ship was physically broken and battered. Two of the three masts were gone but for a ten foot stump in the center of the ship. The third, rear mast had sails with holes and broken cross members. That the vessel could even move was a wonder. Aside from the broken masts, the hull looked like it had been through a terrible battle. Broken timbers in the hull, rails dismantled into twigs, even one of the two cabins on the deck was damaged beyond use.

Palose wasn’t sure how long it would take to repair such a complete wreck.

It had been only a couple days since the trio had left and hunter three was now here and utterly defeated. What the ship had run into, whether their quarry or some pirate fleet, no one knew yet.

“Palose!”
Atrouseon snapped seeing the young man slowly walking towards the congregation of magi and military officials. “Get over here, boy!”

Palose did not like the man’s tone, but it was nothing new. The warlock still tried to uphold appearances that they were parting ways amicably and it wasn’t completely untrue. However, as he came closer to moving out, as if he basically hadn’t already, taking the warlock’s arrogant public treatment was becoming more difficult to bear.

“Master Atrouseon,” he half bowed his head quickly before looking to the broken ship still pulling up towards the dock, “any word of what happened?”

The man frowned. “Would we be standing here if we knew what had happened?” he snapped. Once it had been rare for the warlock to lose his temper with him this often for so little, but Palose took it in stride as their time together came close to an end. Besides he had been a cadet for several years in the battle mages and had harsher taskmasters before after all.

“It looks like the wizard hunters weren’t too successful,” he commented slightly amused at the sight of the once proud ship limping into the dock.

He could almost hear Atrouseon’s teeth grind in anger. Strangely, Palose thought, they should have been use to loss. Southwall had bloodied the emperor’s nose for almost two centuries after all, but he supposed that this force was among their elite. To have them fail meant something more than a few hundred orcs being killed out in the field.

Ropes were tossed from the deck and workers below tied the ship to the pier. A plank was lowered and soon a trio of warlocks walked down in shame.

An older warlock, Cortrive, grabbed the first man by the black shirt and shook him. “What is the meaning of this, Werinas? Where
is Karfon and the others?”

The younger man’s eyes looked hollow. He was as beaten as the ship and probably had less fight in him, Palose thought to himself. Maybe his punishment would be death also. Then perhaps Wakaraq could get this one for him to begin building his collection of magical assistants.

Greedily the mage hoped for the worst, even as the warlock finally answered, “All dead. We three are all that remain of the hunters, a handful of soldiers and we three.”

The crack of a slap across the face left the younger man staring in shock at the elder warlock. “What happened to them? Tell me.”

“After we captured a Kardorian ship, Lord Devolus, sent us to find another ship that had desecrated the island. It was they that set off the traps and defeated them. We should have been more wary of anyone capable of defeating the curse barrier, but we were so certain in our armor and magic.

“Then instead of us finding them, the ship found us. It was a simple frigate from the south. There was nothing strange about the ship, except before we even spotted them the enemy struck our ship from afar. They killed from miles away. I’ve never heard of such a thing before and then they used elemental magic with light and dark to defeat our best spells.

“We were supposed to be the only ones who knew those spells. How could they use them better than we could?” Werinas asked still fully in shock from the loss and death of his score of warlocks. The orcs and goblins were nothing to those men, but when other magi died there was a sympathy not given the other lesser races.

A low growl emanated from the elder. “Traitors have escaped before and now they’ve trained our most hated enemies apparently.

“Who did you face?” the man demanded and the warlocks knew what he meant.

“A handful of battle mages and about as many wizards from Southwall, they were working with a ship from the south, but I am unsure of its origin, Master Cortrive.”

For Palose, the story was beginning to make sense and he realized that his old friend had not only survived the beating that he had been given in Windmeer, but was now on that vessel. He had once believed Sebastian killed by orcs and goblins that he had left behind to kill the mage, but apparently someone had saved him from death. The man had as many lives as a cat it seemed.

The story of the arrows sent from afar and battle mages being sighted meant that the mizard was alive and learning their magic. He was both proud of his old friend’s achievement and annoyed that he hadn’t died as planned.

“Palose?” Atrouseon questioned seeing the man’s thoughtful look. “Do you know something?”

Other eyes turned to the young warlock. Their eyes looked on with some disdain at the former mage, a resurrection man, and in most minds still a mistake since Windmeer had not fallen last summer.

“They ran into the mizard.”

The men mulled the word over in their mouths like an echo of Palose’s words.

“What is a mizard?” Atrouseon asked knowing the minds around them questioned the word.

“The battle mage who has the mind of a wizard, he has apparently learned even more tricks since I last saw him. His ability to learn new magic makes him a problem and the ability to master it in new ways makes him even more dangerous.”

He looked at Werinas, “He has brown hair and is similar to my height. We’re also about the same age. If you were actually brave enough to face him, which I doubt, then you would have seen that he has blue eyes. Does this sound like him?”

The warlock nodded looking pale. Palose had called his cowardice into the light. It was just another way to keep the warlock on the chopping block. The dark mage wanted someone with magic to join him. He couldn’t fully trust most of the living in Ensolus, but perhaps a resurrection man like him would make things better.

The crowd of warlocks and military began to argue and discuss his revelation. Palose’s eyes never left the cowardly warlock. He had plans for this one, if he could make it work.

Chapter 30- Emperor’s Charge

Nearly a week had passed since the first black ship had limped back to Ensolus and everything in the city seemed to come to a halt as if holding its breath. Palose shook his head at the thought and decided that it wasn’t the whole city as much as the citadel and commanders in the army, who waited to see if their Wizard Hunters would be sending anymore ships bloodied and broken back to the city. The infamous black ships of the empire had never been defeated by a single ship according those who had to speak of the pathetic, broken vessel that was little more than a hull after running into a mere merchant ship.

From what Palose could make out from partial reports and rumors, Black Ship Three as it was so originally named, had come across the object of their hunt. Traces of magic set by the alarms guided them towards those who had dared to desecrate some islands that were somehow important to the emperor, though that detail remained hidden. Using the magic like a hound hunting a rabbit, the warlocks had given chase only to find their ship under attack from magic missiles from a distance so far that none of them had seen what had struck the men on the ship.

If Palose had to guess, this was the work of Sebastian. Stories like this in last summer’s battle reports had instances similar. Air lances had somehow been targeted miles away and only Sebastian had been close to both riding the winds and figuring out new ways to use the air spears of the wizards. If he was on that ship, the mizard must have found a way to track the black ships. That was potentially the
most damaging news of all. Even the emperor’s warships had never been able to hit beyond visual range. Annoyingly, it also meant the best throws of his air spears were insignificant compared to Sebastian’s talent as well.