The Trials: The Spell Saga: Book Four, page 1
The Trials
The Spell Saga: Book Four
Cari Z
Warning: this book contains adult language and themes, including graphic descriptions of violence. It is intended for mature readers only, of legal age to possess such material in their area.
This book is a work of fiction. All characters, companies, events, and locations are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places, or events is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author and publisher.
The Trials: The Spell Saga: Book Four
Copyright 2022 by Cari Z.
Cover art by Black Bird Book Covers
Editing by No Stone Unturned Editing
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
About This Book
Anton Seiber, Master Thaumaturge and reluctant architect of the French Empire’s newest weapon of war, is on the verge of collapse. It wouldn’t be so bad if his blood wasn’t required to power the spell revolutionizing the battlefield, or if he were allowed to communicate with his friends and family, or if he could see his lover Lord Camille Lumière, special investigator for the emperor himself, more than once every few months. As it is, he’s barely holding himself together. He’s determined to make it through…until an accident in the laboratory leads to his collapse.
Camille is a loyal servant of the empire, but it will take more than a war to keep him away from Anton. He returns to find his lover on the brink of death, and it takes Camille’s special “gift” to keep him alive. He is ordered to leave Anton behind and return to service—the future of the empire, and everyone “gifted” like him, might depend on it.
There’s only one thing to do: escape to England with Anton. If only they weren’t surrounded by armed guards, dangerous magic, deadly cannons and, oh yes—a war for control of the entire continent.
Part One
Chapter One
The first battlefield trial of the empire’s newest weapon took place in Strasbourg, France, on a cold spring morning just before dawn. Anton Seiber watched with trepidation as the tanks rolled into position several hundred meters out from where the Dévoué insurgents were camped all around the city. It was early, but the men defending rebellious Strasbourg were as awake as the Imperial forces were. He could hear them shouting, see fires blazing to life. Anton knew from reconnaissance brought by the scouts that the Dévoué had secured over a dozen cannons for their camp, all of which now faced the south, directly at the approaching army he was part of.
Only it wasn’t an army. It looked like an army from a distance, a force to be reckoned with, hundreds of men stretched out in a line and supported by cavalry and the emperor’s newfangled metal “tanks”—treaded machines that stank of the fuel they burned, and which were rumored to be an engineering disaster.
“They can’t even handle firing a proper shell,” whispered gossipmongers both inside and outside the Imperial court. “Armored or not, enemy fire will turn them into scrap in no time at all.”
That was the worry, and the reason the “army” supporting this armament trial was a hundred men long but only five men deep. They were here to prevent the Dévoué’s cavalry from making a sally across the field separating them until the trial of the emperor’s secret weapon had been completed.
If it worked, it had the potential to turn the tide of the oncoming confrontation before it began. If it worked, thousands, perhaps even millions of people would live who otherwise would have died in the looming war. If it worked, Anton’s name would go down in the history books as the creator of a device so hideously effective it saved an empire.
If it worked, Anton wasn’t sure he would ever be able to forgive himself. There was no choice, though, not if he wanted to save lives. Saving minds and spirits…that would be the work of the clergy once this was all over.
“Sir.” Lieutenant Romilly lowered his spyglass and glanced at Anton. “The mist is lifting. If you want to beat the sunrise, now is the best time for it.”
Anton glanced over at the architect of this entire scheme, Lord Laurent Jourdain, the head of L’Institut D’Ingénierie Technologique, colloquially known as the Institute. He was much more than that, in truth, but it wasn’t Anton’s place to speculate on such things. “Now’s as good a time as any,” he said after his assistant relayed the image emanating from the golden orb they held at head height. “They’ve got their own mages looking our way, helping to aim those cannons just right. We need to beat them to the punch.” He looked at Anton. “Our attack should be on your word, however, Mr. Seiber.”
Right. Of course it should. It was his invention being tested right now, after all. Never mind there was no incantation needed for these shells—the simple act of firing them provided the impetus for their activation. No, he had to take responsibility for what was to come next. He hated it, but he had to.
Anton drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, then moved a few paces to the left so he stood next to the lead tank. It was short, no taller than a horse, and the turret at the top of this one was open so the gunner could see him. This tank was one of four that they had—experimental prototypes from the Institute. By this time next summer, they would have a thousand of these.
Hopefully by then, they wouldn’t need them.
Anton looked up at the gunner.
“Loaded and ready,” the man said.
Anton nodded, then turned toward the Dévoué camp. He could see more men moving about, could hear them hyping themselves up. It had to be now if they were going to beat them to the attack.
“Fire.”
The gunner nodded. A second later, a relatively gentle FOOM sounded from the four-inch gun at the front of the tank as it sent one of Anton’s inventions flying through the air. The shell exploded on impact with the ground just a few dozen meters in front of the line of Dévoué, flinging bits of wood and ash in a haphazard ring around it. The contents smoldered for a moment, then the flames died down.
The Dévoué, who had taken cover for a moment, returned to their posts with jovial ferocity, jeering and laughing loudly enough that Anton could hear it without straining his ears. He waited. Five seconds…ten…
“Sir,” Romilly began, but then all of a sudden things began to change.
The smoke from the shell, which had been drifting across the front line of the Dévoué, abruptly coalesced into a singular figure. Anton couldn’t make it out from here, but he thought it might be a man, staggering forward. The distant jeers turned to shouts of alarm, and as the figure dropped to the ground, their shouts became screams of agony as the moment of death for the apparition before them caught them in the jaws of its pain.
Well then. The resonance between the blood and the spell worked even when the quantity of blood was quite small. That was a positive development. The fact that the shell had only produced one ghost was less positive, but its psychological impact couldn’t be overstated. At least a dozen men were on the ground, still screaming—others had run, but there was no outpacing this psychic pain. It had to be endured until the spell ran its course, and given the amount of powder Anton had put into the shell, it wasn’t about to end any time soon.
“That is good enough for me,” Lord Jourdain said, then turned to the lieutenant. “Fire at will, Lieutenant Romilly.”
“Aye, sir.”
The command spread along the tanks, and more shells soon joined the first at the front ranks of the Dévoué. Some didn’t produce any ghosts at all, but one must have hit a family’s plot, because dozens of ghosts rose from it, and the chaos it caused as the spell forced the watchers to relive the shadowy spirits’ deaths was incredible. Even the peaceful, sleepy ends were their own brand of terrifying as the sensation of a sluggish heart beating its last was felt by everyone in range.
The entire line broke, men abandoning cannons and losing control of their horses as they ran for cover from something that couldn’t be evaded. Soon the shells penetrated deeper, and after fifteen minutes the Dévoué had managed exactly one cannon’s worth of resistance—and just one shot from it at that—to the tanks’ barrage of spirit shells.
It was an utter rout.
“A good first effort,” Lord Jourdain mused. “Of course, rain and snow will change the shell’s effectiveness, and the Dévoué’s mages will try to work up spells to deflect them. We’ll have to stay on our toes if we want this weapon to keep its potency in battle.”
“Of course,” Anton agreed dully. He ought to feel glad it was such a success, but he just felt sick inside. Resurrecting the shades of the dead—not their actual souls, several priests had confirmed for him, but the shadows of the lives they’d led and the deaths they’d endured—was a harrowing experience. Sharing those deaths with the people close enough to be affected by the smoke was a whole new type of combat.
In his lighter moments, Anton thought about the positive ways his spell might be put to use. As a means of discovering the truth behind someone’s death, it was a fascinating avenue of investigation. He wasn’t sure how far back the spell could reach, but early tests at the Institute had brought back shades dating to Roman times, and for all the awfulness of their deaths, it had been a fascinating illumination of a time long gone.
As a method for tracking down the perpet rators of atrocities, there was also a lot to be said for the process. Of course, the fact those atrocities then had to be experienced by the person using the spell was rather a dampener, but…
The tanks stopped firing a moment later, holding back some shells until they verified how successful their initial attack had been. Anton stared into the distance, willing the smoke to clear faster. A second later the sun crested the horizon, revealing…
There was no word for it other than devastation. Even without a glass or a spell to sharpen his distance vision, Anton could see that not a single person had been left standing upright in the camp itself. No one was manning the guns. Those who could be seen were either on the ground or kneeling, while in the distance some few who were on the periphery of the spell had run, and were still running.
There remained some people within the camp, men who were lucky enough to be out of range of the spell, but the rout of their colleagues had put them into a similar state of disarray. Of course it had—they’d been expecting bullets and cannon fire, and they’d gotten something completely different.
“No more than a hundred men remain behind in the camp,” Romilly announced. “It will be a simple thing for our troops to march in and apprehend them before they manage to regroup.” He glanced at Anton. “If the air is safe for our own men, of course.”
“It’s fine now,” Anton replied, sure of that much. “The effect lessens exponentially in those who aren’t there for the initial detonation, and by the time the shades are gone, there’s nothing to be feared.”
“Well, then.” Lord Jourdain nodded to the lieutenant “See it done. Once you’ve rounded up the leader from wherever he’s run off to, I want you to prepare him for an audience with me. Bring the mayor of the town as well. Our initial assault is just the first round of repercussions to be felt for their efforts toward anarchy.” His face was calm and cold. “An example must be made of the enemies of the empire, after all.”
“Yes, milord.” Lieutenant Romilly began moving, calling for his men, but Anton didn’t pay attention to him. He was caught in the viper’s stare that was Lord Jourdain’s appraisal.
“As for you,” Lord Jourdain said, “we need to discuss the efficacy of your new armaments immediately. Walk with me back toward the transport.”
Transport. How needlessly vague. As though the silvery airship was going to be able to hide from the sun, and prying eyes, much longer. It was one of only three like it, and all of France knew it was the craft carrying those in the Emperor’s particular favor. Right now, that was Lord Jourdain and Anton, among others.
They walked back to where it was docked together. Upon seeing their approach, the cabin boy opened the compartment that would allow them inside.
“Takin’ off already, milords?” the lanky youth asked, looking between them curiously.
“Not quite yet, Bert,” Lord Jourdain replied. “Merely here for a conversation. Go and join your captain abovedeck.”
“Aye, milord.” Bert left Anton and Lord Jourdain alone in the dim underbelly of the airship. The smell of its magic, petrichor and ice, and the eerie Nothing that powered it was almost enough to take the scent of his own spells out of Anton’s nose. He hadn’t even been close enough to smell the explosives going off, but he knew their scents, and couldn’t help but feel that knowledge reflected in his mind.
“The trial went better than I expected, but not as well as I could have hoped,” Lord Jourdain said, getting right to the heart of the matter as he always did. Small talk was for people he needed to cozen, not his indentured servants.
Unfair. You indentured yourself to him in exchange for Caroline’s life. Anton would never regret giving up his freedom and the science behind this particular spell in exchange for Bonaparte III granting his oldest friend clemency after she’d been caught spying, but he was not a saint—he harbored plenty of resentment over it.
“Apart from the long-term effects of the spell itself needing more study, the shells need to spread the effect over a larger area,” Lord Jourdain went on, ignorant of—or more likely ignoring—Anton’s moment of pique. “As the cost of production currently stands, we’re spending five times the price to manufacture one of these shells as opposed to traditional armaments. It’s not a good enough return on the empire’s investment.”
“Those costs would go down if you would allow me to teach the spell to someone else,” Anton pointed out, not for the first time either. “The catalyst for the spell is simple enough, and the structure of the equations could be learned by any master thaumaturge after a short period of study. They don’t even have to specialize in spells for the dead.” Like Anton did. It was a rare specialty, among thaumaturges—far more popular these days were ballistics experts and explosion generators, ever more desired as the continent careened toward war.
But Anton was the one who would stop that. If he could sway Lord Jourdain to his way of thinking, at least.
“You have Hrym for your assistant,” Lord Jourdain said dismissively.
“Yes, and he is a massive help when it comes to component balancing and the basic enchantment to arm the shells,” Anton said, “but he can’t help provide the primary ingredient. That has to come from a thaumaturge who has seen death on an intimate level. None of the people at the Institute have even that basic experience now that Lord Atwood has passed away.” Not that Anton would have let that crotchety old man near his spellwork unless he was under orders. He wouldn’t forgive him for setting Caroline up to be caught.
“The process is too powerful to be shared,” Lord Jourdain replied. “If it got into the wrong hands, the effects on our troops could be devastating.”
“You are talking in circles, milord,” Anton said tiredly. “Either we must find a way to cut the cost of the process down by farming production out to more facilities, or we must shut the whole program down because it is inefficient and costly. You cannot have it either way right now, and I would venture to state that given all the resources you have already poured into these shells, it would be far better to grapple with your security issues and place any new practitioners you might hire under a geas of silence than to end this now. After all, I’m supposed to be working for you for another year.”
Lord Jourdain smiled. It was a small, chilly thing, but seemed genuine enough. “There are times when I understand why he likes you,” he said, and Anton went still at the mention, however oblique, of Camille. Lord Jourdain almost never talked about him, despite their personal connection, but whenever he did, Anton couldn’t help but lean in for more.
“You are inelegant with your words,” he went on, “but there is a time for elegance and a time for action. Very well. I shall send you a number of dossiers to review, and we will discuss the training of your secondaries three days from now. Have a manual written up by then with all pertinent information contained.”
“Of course,” you bloody taskmaster. Good thing Anton had been keeping his notes on the process so organized; it wouldn’t take much rewriting to turn them into a comprehensive training manual.
“Good.” Lord Jourdain turned and headed for the exit, motioning Anton to walk with him. “What is our current stockpile of armaments at?”
“Somewhere around three thousand shells,” Anton replied. “Your quartermaster would know for sure.”
“We need ten times that within a month.”
Anton sighed and shook his head. “Then you’d best bring me ten more thaumaturges who have the necessary qualifications quickly, milord, because I only have so much blood.”
“And we must be careful not to drain you completely dry,” Lord Jourdain added with a wry tilt of his head as he stepped back onto the ground. The sun was a hand’s width above Strasbourg now, illuminating a cityscape as beautiful and calm as any other morning…from this distance. If he listened harder, Anton could still hear screaming. The closer someone was to the heart of the explosion, the longer the symptoms lasted. “Very well, then. Three days, Master Seiber.”
“My lord,” he interjected just as the tall, regal man began to turn away. “If I could—that is, if you don’t mind—I would greatly like to speak to Camille again.” He received letters, of course—he couldn’t send them in return, since Camille moved around so frequently in the course of performing his duties—but it wasn’t the same as seeing his face and speaking to him. The process of doing so was convoluted, thanks to what Camille and Lord Jourdain were, but it wasn’t impossible to make a connection.
