The Line of Illeniel

Chapter 23

The next day I returned to working on my new explosive enchantments. Since my father’s suggestion had worked so well I decided to stick with iron for all my future experiments. I used several pieces to get a more precise feel for how much power could be placed in a specific amount of iron without risking a premature explosion. I was very careful to protect my ears before each test.

Once I had pinned down the amount of energy I could use I switched to my second task, finding a way to set them off from a distance. I could easily do so myself, if the piece was within a range of about five hundred yards, but for our plan to work they would need to be used over much greater distances. The gem Cyhan had used during my bonding ritual had given me the idea I needed.

It was a simple concept; I would include a gem in the initial enchantment to contain the energy within the iron. Afterwards I could presumably remove it and use it to detonate the iron by crushing it. The real problem was that gemstones were in short supply; in fact I had none other than the diamond set in Penelope’s engagement ring. I had a feeling she wouldn’t be too keen on the idea of me crushing it for a test of my new spell. In any case diamonds aren’t known for being easily destroyed.

Eventually I picked glass beads. As far as I could tell there was no reason the activating gem had to actually ‘be’ a gem. It just needed to be something strong enough to avoid accidentally breaking and brittle enough to be easily crushed.

Oddly enough, glass beads were almost as difficult to come by as gemstones. Washbrook hadn’t had an actual glassblower in decades. The small town made do with wooden shutters on windows and handmade pottery for dishware. After a fruitless search and asking various townsfolk I gave up and went inside for lunch.

Penny was studying me as we ate. “You seem deep in thought,” she remarked.

I realized I had been silent during most of the meal, “I’m sorry. I’ve just been trying to figure out a problem with a new spell.”

“Perhaps you should bounce your ideas off of me. Let me be your sounding board. Besides I’d like to know what you’re thinking before you kill yourself inadvertently.” It never ceased to amaze me how much faith she had in my magical experimentation.

Penny had a quick mind and it didn’t take her long to understand my problem. “So you just need some glass beads?”

I nodded affirmatively.

“Does it have to be a bead? What about faux jewels, you know… cut glass?” she suggested.

“That would work just as well,” I replied, “but I haven’t seen much jewelry of any kind around here. Have you?”

“No, but there is at Lancaster Castle,” she reminded me.

I was feeling a bit dense. “Where?”

“The chandelier in the sun room, it used to be my job to dust it once a week, it always took me forever,” she said. The sun room was an upstairs reception chamber, the same one where I had my original ill-fated conversation with Devon Tremont. I had never paid particular attention to the furnishings.

“Do you think the duchess would part with it?”

“She’s already given you every able bodied man on her estate… at harvest time, I would think the chandelier would be a small price to pay,” she told me.

“I hate to ask her,” I said uncertainly.

“I’ll do it. I can ride over there this afternoon,” she offered. “I’ve been cooped up here for days now with nothing to do. I’m starting to feel useless.”

“You can’t,” I reminded her, “Not unless I go as well and I have other things to work on today.”

“Why not?” she replied before she remembered our bond. She glanced down at the sword she wore ruefully. “I never thought this would be so inconvenient.”

“Who wouldn’t want to be stuck with me twenty four hours a day for the rest of their life?” I said sarcastically.

“It’s not that,” she said. “It’s just strange not being able to move about on my own. I guess you’ll just have to send a messenger.”

That reminded me, I still hadn’t set up any regular messengers. The only people I had available to me were the townsfolk, those few that weren’t involved in preparing the foundation for the dam. It seemed I was doomed to be perpetually short-handed. “Dorian can handle it. It will sound almost as good coming from him anyway.”

Since I couldn’t try my next experiments without the glass I spent the afternoon reading the books I had brought from my new ‘home’ in Albamarl. It had been over two weeks since we had left and I had yet to spend any time perusing them. I found a quiet corner in my room and settled down with ‘ A Definitive Guide on the Creation and Maintenance of Teleportation Waypoints’. It turned out to be every bit as interesting as the title sounded, which is to say not at all.

I forced myself to focus and spent the next several hours wading through the basics of teleportation magic. I had assumed it would be easy, but it appeared that creating a pair of linked circles was fiendishly difficult. In theory a mage could teleport without using a circle of any kind, but in practice it required a prohibitive amount of complex mathematics to precisely arrive at any given location.

It would never have occurred to me before that the motion of the world itself would be a factor, but it was. Because of this circles had been designed to create artificial anchors in reality. A circle created a sort of independent location in space that didn’t vary in the same way other points in space did. The result was that two circles, properly keyed to one another could be used to teleport easily from one place to another with no risk of a messy ‘accident’. Any halfway decent mage could safely use one once it had been created.

People without magical skills could also use them, provided a practitioner provided the magical power to activate it. The possibilities for using the circle in Albamarl to move supplies immediately came to mind. If I could create a circle here to match the one there I would be able to easily move large amounts of materials or people with ease.

I had one major problem however. I had only briefly looked at the circle in the capital, and at that time I had been ignorant as to which parts of it were key to identifying it. The only way I could get the information I needed would be to make another trip there and back again.

I tossed the book aside in disgust and rubbed my temples, I had developed a distinct headache while reading it. I rested my eyes for a few minutes before I looked at ‘ The History of Illeniel’. My short time examining it before had left me with more questions than answers, so I was still eager to read it. It had to be more enjoyable than studying teleportation. I opened it again and spent a few minutes finding my place before continuing:

The wizards of those times learned to be wary of the dark gods even as they shunned the new gods. None would treat with the dark gods or pay heed to the shining gods. Mankind controlled its own fate. Things might have remained so had one young wizard, Jerod, of the line of Mordan not given into greed and lust for power.

Jerod had been born to power but was not strong enough to speak to the earth. His jealousy of the existing archmages is part of what led to his downfall and his betrayal of humanity. At that time two archmages were alive, Gareth of the line of Gaelyn, and Moira of the line of Centyr. There were rarely more than two or three archmages alive at any time in history, so this was not uncommon.

Jerod had fallen in love with Moira of the Centyr, but she had eyes only for another, an unremarkable mage from the line of Illeniel. The details of their unfortunate love triangle did not survive the dark times that followed but it is known that Jerod gave in to the temptations of the dark god, Balinthor. Promises of power beyond that of the archmages seduced young Jerod. Believing that greater power might woo the archmage Moira he summoned the dark god and opened his mind to him.

Balinthor possessed him completely then, and used Jerod to open a world-bridge that he might cross over into the lands of men. Once he had crossed, Balinthor consumed Jerod’s mind and took his body for his avatar.

The creation of the world-bridge drew the notice of many of the greater wizards of the time and they strove to contain the dark god. Led by Gareth Gaelyn they rallied against Balinthor but were unable to prevail. Gareth was slain and the wizards were thrown into disarray.

It was at this time that the ‘shining gods’ took their place in the forefront of people’s hearts and minds. Many lesser wizards and other men who later came to be known as saints made pacts with the shining gods, Millicenth the Evening Star, Doron the Iron God, Karenth the Just, and Celior the Luminous.

The greater wizards and the archmage Moira Centyr remained mistrustful of the shining gods but worked with the growing power of the churches to save what remained of their shattered civilization. Their war against Balinthor and his minions was protracted over many years but it eventually became apparent that they could not win.

Mankind was driven inexorably closer to the brink of extinction until at last only one stronghold of note remained, in a land now known as the Kingdom of Lothion. Moira, the greater wizards, and the saints of the new churches fought long and hard but in the end they knew defeat was close at hand. In despair Moira called upon the earth in a way that no archmage before her had ever done. A great stone rose up, a stone which still stands in what later became the capitol of Lothion, and she treated with the earth.

The wizards then knew that all things, living and unliving, were sentient and aware. The earth itself was the greatest and largest of those things, but its mind was strange and foreign to the minds of men. Archmages past had been able to call upon it to perform great feats but their connection was limited. Moira cast aside her humanity and joined with the earth fully, stepping into the stone that had risen up before her.

The events that occurred afterwards are difficult to accept, but for the physical evidence left behind for modern scholars. A massive stone colossus was birthed by the Elentir Mountains and fought directly against the dark god. Balinthor’s power was unrivaled by any mortal creature but he was dismayed by the near unending power the earth’s guardian possessed. He was driven back for days and weeks, until he came to a land then known as Garulon.

Garulon was a beautiful country in those days, but it had already been devastated by the war. The inhabitants of the region were all dead or had fled with the remnants still resisting Balinthor. The earth chose that place for Balinthor’s grave and there it was that the colossus grappled with the dark god. It bore him to the earth and the land itself rose up over them. A great pit opened beneath them and Balinthor was swallowed up, to be crushed within the earth’s bosom. His death released a powerful blast and what remained of the region was torn asunder, leaving a great chasm that was soon filled by the sea.

This was the event known later as the ‘Sundering’. Once the god had been slain the remnants of humanity destroyed his servants, dark beings known as the ‘shiggreth’. Creatures of unlife, the shiggreth were difficult to root out but eventually they were all undone. Humanity was safe once more.

Civilization slowly rebuilt itself, but there were no archmages left alive and few mages of the great lines remained. The new religions had gained numerous followers during the war against Balinthor and their power grew among the rulers of the new nations. Jerod’s action in unleashing the dark god upon humanity was not forgotten and people grew fearful that another wizard might repeat his mistake.

An accord was reached, between the rulers of that time, the new churches, and the remaining wizards of the great lines. To safeguard against weakness and human fallibility each wizard with the strength to potentially create a world-bridge would form a magical soul-bond with another person. The bond would shield their minds from undue outside influences, such as the dark gods, and if they should betray mankind by voluntarily giving themselves over to one of the dark gods the bond-mate would be able end the life of the offender. The bond would link the life of the wizard with his bond mate; the death of one would ensure the death of the other.

In time the bond bearers were named Anath’Meridum which meant ‘Pact Bearer’ in Lycian. They were the final protection against another tragic mistake. After that time no new archmages arose and the great lines dwindled. The bond meant that any powerful wizard was twice as likely to die due to accident or illness and they were much more vulnerable to assassins, despite the Anath’Meridum’s legendary combat abilities.

My head was swimming with the information I had just read. The creation of the Anath’Meridum was the result of some sort of treaty? It sounded as if the remaining wizards left after the sundering had been at a serious disadvantage politically. Even more important, it was clear that wizards had been around for a long time without needing the bond to save them from madness. More and more it was becoming certain to me that the reasons for the bond revolved primarily around the threat of a repeat mistake and the political necessities of the time.

Another thing that truly fascinated me was the term ‘archmage’. I had no frame of reference for it, but it sounded as if hearing ‘voices’ was not such a bad thing after all. From my experience before my bonding I had clearly been able to identify one of the voices as belonging to what I would have described as the earth itself, if so did that mean I was potentially an archmage? Again I found myself cursing the fact that my biological father had never lived to teach me anything. I had no clue what the implications might be if I was, I was still figuring out what it meant just to be a wizard.

That also left me wondering about the stone-lady. She had been very different from the other ‘voices’ I had heard and I now suspected she might be the archmage mentioned in the book. “Moira Centyr…,” I mused aloud. If only the book had given the name of her lover. It had said that he was of the Illeniel line, but if his name had been the same as mine I could have been sure that she was one and the same person as my ‘stone-lady’. If she really was some historical archmage; still alive after centuries of living within the earth itself… I couldn’t begin to imagine what knowledge she might have.

A knock at the door forced me to return to the present, I found Marc standing outside. “Come in,” I told him. “I haven’t seen much of you the past day or two.”

“After I delivered your message to Arundel I found myself called upon minister to the sick,” he replied. “There were several there who had suffered injuries during the summer.”

“Oh,” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“I thought you should know however, Sheldon returned yesterday evening in a terrible humor. You really made a great impression on him.”

I smiled grimly, “The feeling was mutual. What did he say?”

“I won’t waste your time with most of it. He’s not a very inspired orator, the closest he came to an original insult was ‘pig-lord’,” Marcus smiled at me for a moment before his face grew serious. “Of more concern is that fact that he is already making preparations to winter in the capital.”

“He’s leaving already?” I was surprised he had moved so quickly. “What did he tell his people?”

“Nothing, it would almost seem to be a normal trip abroad, except for the fact that he’s taking all of his fighting men with him… and packing up every valuable possession he owns.” My friend shook his head, “He plans to leave them behind Mort.”

My poor opinion of the baron had lowered even more; his sheer indifference to the fate of his people irritated me more than I could say. “Has he left yet?”

“He was still there when I left. I think he plans to start out in the morning.”

A plan began to percolate in my head. It probably wasn’t the wisest thing I had ever considered doing but my conscience wouldn’t let me do otherwise. I went downstairs to make preparations for the next morning.