A Sorcerer's Rings, page 23
part #4 of Song of Sorcery Series
“You agree to this, Sinkel?” another sorcerer said.
“I welcome it,” Wedo said. “I am not being forced to go, or forced to stay. I am a free man.”
“We’ll see about that,” one of the sorcerers muttered under his breath.
“Shall we sit?” Ricky asked. He drew upon his meetings in Dimani for guidance as to how he should act in front of others.
“King Renako commanded us to be here,” one of the sorcerers said.
“Good. Then you know we come at the King’s request. He suspects the Sorcerer’s Guild of plotting the overthrow of his government. What do you say to that?”
“What right do you have intruding into Vorrian affairs?” another sorcerer said.
“Your king asked me to intrude,” Ricky said. “Surely, as fellow sorcerers, we can speak frankly about the king’s suspicions.”
“And what are your suspicions?”
“I come as an interested outsider,” he said. That was what King Courer had called him in Dimani. “I am interested because my future domain lies not two days away across the Parantian border.”
“You are that Valian, Noacci’s heir?” a sorcerer said.
“I am. I bring a gift to your guild.” Ricky looked at Wedo, who extracted one of his distressed wands. “You know the value of Sorcerer Sinkel’s wands.”
He laid it on the table.
“You have one of your own. We understand it was damaged in the fight with the Dimani pretender.”
Ricky wouldn’t have classified Ticco as a pretender, but he withdrew the black metal wand from his own wand case.
“This is one of Sinkel’s wands?”
“I remade it to suit me,” Ricky said.
“You?” one of the sorcerer’s said, his eyes growing wide.
Ricky extended the blade. “Wedo has taught me the basics of wand-making, so I created something a bit different. I don’t have the attachment to dark dimani that you Vorrians do, and being trained as a swordsman, I wanted a blade that could be used if I had to face an opponent with a sword again.”
“May I?” one of the sorcerers said. He stepped away from the others and showed by his moves that he, too, had taken fencing lessons. Ricky had set a deflection spell in case the sorcerer decided to end Ricky’s involvement in a violent fashion. “I compliment you,” he said. “I would not have thought to mix the two concepts.” The man tried to retract the blade but failed.
“My personal blade has a slightly different spell.” Ricky took the wand and returned it to wand shape.
One of the other advantages that Wedo provided Ricky was the ability to retract an opponent’s blade with the alternate method. Ricky was sure by the expression on the sorcerer’s face that fact wasn’t lost.
It was time to get back to the insurrection. “I understand that Blink Renako is working alongside you to replace his father. Do you really think that Blinak would be a better head of state? I don’t think so.”
“And what do you intend to do?”
“I’m here to ask you to reconsider. If you have issues with the Council and with King Renako’s reign, then those issues should be discussed. Vorria will be weakened with a sorcerer’s rule.”
That comment brought some angry looks. “How can you say that? You are nearly a member of the Tower.”
“Do Tower sorcerers rule the Hessilian States? Duteria? The answer to that is no,” Ricky said.
“Not now,” one of the sorcerers said.
Ricky raised an eyebrow. “If not now, then when?”
None of the sorcerers responded to Ricky’s question.
“And if by chance there really was an insurrection, what would you do?”
“What did I do in Dimani?”
The sorcerers looked at one another. “You would kill the entire guild?”
Ricky shook his head. “I am not looking at the entire guild. I am not a murderer,” Ricky said. “But I can enforce King Renako’s rule. I can punish those who eliminate council members.”
That wasn’t a viable long-term solution.
“I am a victim of Paranty’s fixation against sorcerers. I’d hate to see the same restrictions placed on your guild. Talk to King Renako. If you feel you have a right to rule, beware. Sorcerers felt the same way half a millennia ago. They were ground into the dust of history.”
That silenced the room. Ricky let them stew in their thoughts before proceeding.
“I don’t believe you,” the sorcerer who had known Wedo said. “You bluff.”
“All I’m asking is that you talk to King Renako. Don’t do it for him, do it for the people of Vorria.”
“Noble words,” the sorcerer who had wielded Ricky’s blade-wand said. “We will consider your position.”
The man had sounded sincere, but Wedo might know better how the man thought.
“You may contact us at our townhouse in Okansil or indirectly through King Renako,” Ricky said as he tugged on Wedo’s sleeve to join him in leaving first.
~
“When should we report back to the king?” Ricky asked once they entered their townhome.
“A written report might be adequate since no decisions were made,” Wedo said. “Your words might have persuaded a few, but I looked at all their faces, and most revealed dissatisfaction.” Wedo pursed his lips and then said, “What do you know about what happened when the commoners revolted against the sorcerers?”
Ricky didn’t need to keep the ancient library a secret anymore. “I uncovered an ancient library in Applia, one of Paranty’s biggest cities. It predated the Crespi dynasty. I was able to transcribe some of the volumes. I scoured them for spells and ignored the history until I needed some inspiration for our meeting.”
“And?”
“The commoners defeated the sorcerers through the use of anti-music,” Ricky said, smiling at the term. “They generated discordant tones that would reduce or breakup resonance, rendering sorcerers weak or weakened. Most sorcerers don’t train with weapons, so it is easy to see what resulted.”
Wedo nodded. “We have legends about those days with a different twist. The commoners summoned devils with music that destroyed the most powerful of sorcerers. Vorria chose to make the sorcerers sign pledges not to fight.”
“What happened since then?”
“Evidently the pledges don’t mean anything anymore.”
Ricky rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Can King Renako revive the pledges?”
Wedo shrugged. “He’d have to get the sorcerers to agree.”
“Would you sign such a pledge?”
“Certainly. I’m no threat to the king, but signatures would come easier with a little enticement.”
“I wouldn’t suggest anything monetary,” Ricky said. “What else would a Vorrian wizard want?”
Wedo narrowed his eyes. “For the lower-level sorcerers, a guarantee they wouldn’t be sold as contract servants.”
“That’s a start. Anything else?”
“You can threaten any violators with forcing them to sign a contract.”
“Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of ending the system?” Ricky said.
Wedo nodded and blushed. “I’ll have to think about it. We can talk about it tomorrow. I’m a bit wrung out from the meeting.”
Ricky was a bit tired, too. He took his wands up to his room and decided to play with them for a bit while he thought. Half of the enticement was a definite in his mind. Sorcerers exempt from contracts might spread to other parts of the society, he thought.
He practiced extending and retracting Pira’s wand using both spells. He extended both blades and laid them on the table, and willed both of them to detract. He could feel his power tug at him a little. The specific spell that Wedo taught used much less power. Ricky learned that using more will to make a spell work didn’t make it more efficient.
His mind drifted into imagining tactics fighting other sorcerers. After Ricky’s first sorcerer duel, he never tried again. Minnie had made him promise not to fight in the open. He set his opened wand on the table with the blade pointing out and created a deflection shield and walked towards the blade.
His spell pushed the wand back. Ricky didn’t know if someone could push a blade through his shield, but in his simple experiment, at least the blade met some resistance. He spelled the blade to deflect and succeeded in touching the blade to his arm after working to force the edge through his shield, cutting the fabric on his shirt. Knowing a lot more than when he had started, he took a little nap before dinner arrived. He would draft his note in the evening.
~~~
Chapter Twenty-Seven
~
R icky paced in the foyer. Wedo had offered to deliver Ricky’s report to King Renako, and he was two hours late getting back. He wondered if he should go out and wait for him.
He had kept a copy of the report and copied that before heading out into another rainy day. He buckled both the sword and the wand to his belt and flung a cloak around his shoulders, traipsing through puddles to the palace.
“My friend was supposed to deliver a note to King Renato,” Ricky said, hoping the guard spoke Parantian.
Ricky’s Vorrian consisted of hello, goodbye, and excuse me. After a little confusion, a courtier arrived at the gate.
“Lord Valian, your business, today?” the courtier said in heavily accented Parantian. “I was in the halls when you visited Renako before.”
“My associate was supposed to have already come with a message for King Renako,” Ricky said.
“The wand-maker?” the courtier asked.
Ricky sighed with relief. “He has been here?”
The man shook his head. “I know he hasn’t delivered anything. I am Renako’s secretary, and all messages come through me first.”
“A report of my meeting with the Sorcerers Guild,” Ricky said, handing over the copy.
“I will see that Renako gets this immediately. I would go look for your friend. The Guild is not to be trusted.”
Ricky didn’t have to be told that. He bowed and thanked the man before leaving the gate and walking the streets of Okansil, wondering what to do. He stopped back at the townhouse and didn’t see a note anywhere. He even checked the floors for smaller wet footprints than his own, but Wedo hadn’t returned. He had no choice but to walk the streets some more. The only other person he knew in Okansil was the king’s son, Blink.
He found the house and knocked on the door. As before, Blink answered his own door.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, much less cordial than before.
“I’m looking for my companion, Wedo Sinkel. The little sorcerer?”
Blink ground his teeth. “I heard about your little meeting with the Guild. I wouldn’t be surprised if he is there right now.”
“Can you give me directions?”
Blink made an angry face and leaned out the door. “Two blocks south and two blocks east. It is the only building on the street crossing with light yellow stone and a conical roof on its tower. Does this mean you won’t kill me like you threatened all the sorcerers?”
Ricky couldn’t tell if he was serious. “I didn’t threaten them unless they began killing councilors.”
Blink pursed his lips. “You really would?”
“I promised your father I would do what I could to maintain order in his kingdom. I fulfill my promises. You can answer that question better than I can.” Ricky walked down the steps and headed to the Vorrian Sorcerers Guild in Okansil.
Surprisingly, Blink had given him correct directions. He stood on the opposite corner and watched a few sorcerers come in and out of the Guild wearing dirty white shoes. He expected most of them knew a spell to clean them, but why bother in the middle of the day?
Ricky couldn’t tell the layout of the building from the outside, so he adjusted his weapons, crossed the street, and walked through the door.
“I’m looking for Wedo Sinkel, the wand-maker. Is he here?” Ricky said in Parantian.
The sorcerer at the counter gave Ricky a blank look. He said something Ricky didn’t understand.
“I’ll see if he’s here,” a woman about Hemo Grakel’s age said from behind him. “If I remember, he is a short man with a long, dark beard.”
“His beard is no longer dark, but gray and barely a beard at all; however, he is still short,” Ricky said.
The woman laughed. “And you are?”
“Hendrico Valian.”
She looked at his sword and wand. “Have you come to capture us all?”
Ricky sighed. “Have you done anything treasonous lately?”
The woman put a finger to her cheek and looked up at the ceiling in mock concentration. “Not this week or the week before. Am I safe?”
“For the time being,” Ricky said.
“Stay here and kill as few guild members as possible while I’m away.”
Ricky spotted a chair in the lobby and sat down to wait. Knowing Vorrians, he might be in the lobby for some time.
The woman returned a few minutes later. “I’ll take you to his cell.”
Cell? Ricky didn’t believe the woman was serious by the tone of her voice. He hoped they were still bantering. “Lead on.”
She didn’t seem the least bit anxious, and Ricky hoped that was a good sign. She led him up the stairs and into a lounge of some kind. A bar filled with various shapes and colors of bottles and jugs filled one wall of the room. Wedo sat facing away from him, sitting on the arm of an upholstered chair laughing along with a group of six Vorrian sorcerer’s. His friend was the only one without white shoes.
The woman touched Ricky’s shoulder from behind, making him flinch. “He shudders from the chains of laughter we have bound him with,” she said, as she gently pushed him into the room and shut the door.
“Wedo!” Ricky said.
“Ricky, come on in. Let me introduce you to some old friends.”
Now that the shock of finding Wedo in such surroundings had worn off, Ricky did notice that all but one of the sorcerers were older. His friend introduced all the sorcerers. The younger one was the son of a late friend.
“I don’t speak Vorrian,” Ricky said.
“We won’t hold that against you,” one of the sorcerer’s said in Parantian. Some of the men laughed.
“I haven’t delivered the letter, yet,” Wedo said. “I was accosted on the street not far from our house and led here.” He waved the document at Ricky. It looked like the reunion was comprised of reminiscing and drinking.
“No matter,” Ricky said. “I made sure it happened.”
Wedo frowned. “Your lack of the Vorrian insensitivity to time, eh?”
Ricky nodded. He’d have to break down and teach Wedo how to link.
“We have been asked to dine. Is that acceptable?”
“Shall I fetch your white shoes?” Ricky asked. The men who knew Parantian laughed and translated Ricky’s words to the others. They all laughed some more. Ricky suspected that alcohol had expanded their sense of humor. “Do you mind if I listen in to your Vorrian stories?”
Wedo furrowed his brow. “Go find Greda, the woman who showed you in. She might have some perspective on our task.”
Ricky could sense the dismissal and didn’t mind wandering the Guild unaccompanied. He might need to know the layout before their assistance to King Renako was complete. He stepped out of the lounge and wandered around the second floor.
“Lost?” Greda said. “I went to check on you and found you had escaped the cell you shared with Wedo. Do you fancy a private conversation with a lady?”
Ricky shrugged. She led him to an office.
“Is this yours?”
She nodded. “I am the Vorrian Historian. It has a charming ring to it in Parantian that it doesn’t in my mother tongue.”
“Which is actually a variant of Craltian,” Ricky said.
“You are well-read, for a toddler,” the woman said, nodding in appreciation. “I was given a version of your discussions with my fellow sorcerers, but they wouldn’t be my selection for a group to seriously discuss an agreement between the Guild and the Crown.”
She sat quietly taking notes while Ricky related the meeting. She did interrupt him from time to time to clarify which sorcerer said what. Ricky didn’t pay perfect attention at the time, but she seemed satisfied by Ricky’s depiction.
“Your account is different than what I was told. However, knowing the reporters, I would have almost come up with a similar version of the events that you did,” Greda said. “I am not one of those who seeks to upend a political system that has worked for centuries.”
“Except contract labor,” Ricky pointed out.
She looked astonished. “Can you read my mind?” she said with mock amazement, but then she relaxed. “I have no fondness for the practice, to be honest. Wedo Sinkel was the worst case. Lord Rasso and the Guildmaster connived to ruin poor Wedo in Okansil, all but forcing him into slavery in South Dimani.”
“I have a friend that thought as much.”
“I had a word with Wedo as we fetched a few more of his friends. He looks to you as his savior. I hope you don’t disappoint him.”
Ricky was taken aback by the woman’s sincerity. “I can’t promise success in my endeavors, but disappointment? I’ll do my best.”
She nodded. “So you intimated to my cohorts about bringing back old punishments?”
“Punishments?” Ricky asked.
She looked down at her notes. “Grinding sorcerers into the dustbin of history?”
Ricky laughed. “Grind them into the dust of history. Dustbin gives my comment a different feel.”
“Ah, I do like that nuance better,” Greda said. “Do you know how commoners did such a thing?”
“You already know,” Ricky said. “The citizens called up demons to help them take care of the nasty sorcerers.”
“Folk tales,” Greda said. “What do you think?”
“Some smart commoner discovered that discordant music distrupted the active resonance that makes sorcery possible. It was enough, anyhow, to give non-sorcerers a chance.”
