Masters of Magic Read online

  I have confidence in you. You’ve got potential, that’s for sure.

  The words were reassuring, like a childhood memory, but it wasn’t that long ago, it was nearer, much nearer.

  A wizard’s power is in his mind, his will, his imagination.

  It was Helmut Anselmus, standing like a forgotten figure of lore in his mind, with his long face and serious eyes. With a lurch of grief, Lothar felt hot tears spring into his eyes. He would not fail that memory. He could not stumble now, not when the chance for revenge was in his grasp.

  His mind, his will, his imagination.

  Slowly, he felt his mind begin to resist the shaman’s invasion, to push back the visions of madness and death.

  It was just as Anselmus had always told him. The power of a wizard lay in his will. The flashier magicians might grab the attention, might perform the wildest deeds, but the ones who truly mastered the art did so through the strength of their inner selves, their resolve to control the instinct and talent within them. That was being tested by the shaman. Lothar pulled some final, hidden reserves of self-belief from deep down, like weeds from a well. The small part of him that had not been driven into insecurity and doubt by Malgar’s legacy still remained.

  With sudden certainty, he knew he could not be overcome. The shaman fed off doubt, the doubt that had plagued him since Malgar’s defection, the doubt that would be his downfall. Calmly, ignoring the pain, Lothar began to drive the alien presence from his mind, coolly allowing the visions and madness to pass. The real world began to reassert itself around him in all its violence, noise and glory. His confidence grew. The shaman withdrew the spell, hissing with frustration.

  Lothar emerged from the madness, gasping for breath, like a swimmer bursting from underwater. He looked around frantically. The scene was desperate. Marius continued to engage the shaman with furious streams of Amber magic, his long hair flying around as he parried and attacked with his staff. He looked like a force of nature made manifest, his teeth bared in a snarl and his cheeks flushed.

  Karsten’s men were faring badly. Most had been dragged down or crushed by the orcs around them. Only the castellan and a few others remained, pushed back towards Lothar and Marius, their swords flashing quickly against the furious onslaught. Even as he watched, one more was killed, skewered through the chest with a jagged, blunt spear by a great orc champion, the scream echoing even over the general tumult. Only the bravery of the few remaining soldiers and the crackling aura of magic in the air kept the rest of the horde from overwhelming them. With a grimace, Lothar turned back to the shaman and sent a dark bolt of shadowy essence straight at its cracked, leering face. It exploded across its eyes, seeming to blind it for a moment. Lothar followed with a second spell, summoning shadows from the ground around him and looping them around the monster’s flailing arms.

  “Nice to have you back,” said Marius sardonically, wielding his staff with undiminished energy. “What happened?”

  “A trial of strength,” replied Lothar grimly, weaving and hurling shadows with a newfound intensity, “and it isn’t over yet.”

  The Emperor’s Champion pulled his sword from the corpse of the orc warrior with a heave. The body went limp, the red fire in its eyes extinguished, and it collapsed to the blood-soaked earth. With a terse grunt of satisfaction, Schwarzhelm looked around. Things were bad. He had lost his horse to a vicious pike thrust, and now went on foot although with most of his entourage. The Imperial lines were pressed hard on every quarter. The sheer numbers of orcs hammering away was wearing the defenders down. They still had the advantage of the higher ground, but the endless swarm of greenskins was beginning to tell. Since the disappearance of the monstrous apparition things had gone better, but he knew that time was not on their side.

  He strode towards Fenring, taking a moment casually to smash aside a lone goblin, small and foolish enough to break through the ranks of Imperial soldiers and leap towards him. The old eye-patched warrior was limping a little, his left arm bandaged, but otherwise looked in decent enough shape.

  “We’re being pushed back,” Schwarzhelm said simply, leaning on his sword heavily.

  Fenring dispatched a loping, long-armed orc with a swipe and a thrust of his sword, before coming over to the Emperor’s Champion.

  “Aye,” he agreed, his breathing heavy. “It’s hard work, but better since that apparition was destroyed. Maybe wizards do have their uses.”

  Schwarzhelm nodded.

  “The fat one, at any rate. The other is on the ridge, casting her spells from afar.”

  Fenring frowned.

  “I don’t think so. She was with the Gold wizard when he ripped himself apart.”

  Schwarzhelm gave him a level look, something like fear showing in his eyes for the first time.

  “Are you sure?” he asked, his voice urgent. “I told her to remain at the rear.”

  The officer looked uncertain.

  “I could be mistaken, but…” he began.

  Before he had time to finish, Schwarzhelm had raised his sword, hefting it lightly in his dented gauntlet.

  “I need to find her,” he said, his voice grim. “Hold the line; I’ll be back when I can.”

  Fenring gazed at him in amazement.

  “She’s just a…” he started, but seeing the commander’s look, wisely held his tongue.

  Schwarzhelm gave him a hostile stare, and was gone. He plunged through the orc ranks with abandon, his powerful frame throwing them aside as if they were children. His gore-splattered armour was soon running in fresh blood, his sword rising and falling like a blacksmith’s hammer. His expression was intense, unwavering. Despite all his training, all his experience, all his sense of duty, only one thing mattered to him at that point. Find the woman.

  Lothar gritted his teeth, and sent fresh nets of shadows rippling towards the hulking form of the shaman. From the corner of his eye, he saw yet another of Karsten’s men collapse in agony to the ground. His heart ached with anger and frustration.

  “We’re running out of time!” he cried to Marius, himself busy with a fresh spell.

  The Amber wizard looked at him crossly.

  “He’s too strong!” he yelled back, his own impotent fury evident. “I’m doing all I can.”

  Lothar felt a deep, sickening fear begin to well up within him. It was just as it had been with his master at Helmgart. The shaman was too powerful. Nothing seemed to hurt it, and the horde came ever closer, lapping at their feet like the rising tide. No escape was possible. He had neither the time nor the energy to conjure a fresh ward. Even if he had, the thought of flight barely occurred to him. Vengeance was all that mattered, and it was going to be denied him. The shaman was too cunning, too old and too drenched in evil. He felt the first stirrings of fatigue creep into his limbs, the warning signs that his body was nearing its limits. With a yell of impotent fury, he pulled a brace of iron daggers from the air, just as he had done at Helmgart, and sent them spinning towards the lurching, drooling form before him. As before, they clattered harmlessly away, mere toys beside the deep, feral force commanded by the shaman. It was over. The orcs were closing on them, and they were out of ideas.

  “Lothar!” called Marius, his crackling staff whirling around him in a sparkling sweep of amber. “This can’t go on! I know what must be done! But I need a moment. You must hold its attention for a few seconds. Do it, and you may yet survive!”

  Lothar stared at him stupidly.

  “What do you mean?” he yelled back, stepping into a vicious blast of green energy from the shaman. His staff sent the preternatural substance fizzing and spitting into the ground, scorching the earth where it fell. Despite his parry, the blow felt as heavy as iron, and his arm throbbed from the impact.

  “No questions! No time!” cried Marius. “I know what this is about now! Keep it busy, that’s all you have to do. I know you have the power. Do it, Lothar!”

  Wearily, hardly seeing the point, Lothar prepared a spell of confinement, a le
ss ambitious version of the technique Helmut had used to contain the shaman at Helmgart. While Marius tied the hulking figure up with rapid bursts of luminescent amber claws, raking at the air like disembodied wildcats, Lothar hurriedly took the necessary steps. This would be his last meaningful contribution to the struggle. He could feel his remaining capability drain from him rapidly. And, it would be useless. At best, the spell would only hold the shaman in place for moments, not nearly enough time for either of the wizards to draw fresh strength. With a sigh of resignation, he spun a thick shadowy substance from the air, moulding it into a ball with his staff tip, caressing and coaxing the dark, fleeting forms into life.

  “So be it,” he said to Marius, before hurling the cloudy material towards the lumbering shaman. While in mid-air, the tight-knit substance burst open, floating like a spider’s web, and gently draped over the vast orcish figure, settling in diaphanous skirts over his fevered, staring face. Leaning heavily against his staff, feeling a deep-seated exhaustion begin to set in, Lothar whispered words of command to the ghostly essence, reinforcing it and building it. With a roar, the shaman issued a counter-spell. The fragile-looking substance rippled and pulled, but it was stronger than it seemed. The translucent webbing clung tight around the shaman’s powerful limbs, blinding and constraining, sucking itself onto the orc’s ruined flesh and squeezing with vicious force. The shaman roared with frustration, and started to thrash wildly against its bonds. They held, but only just. His brow lined with sweat, Lothar continued to support the spell, feeling the last drops of his power drain from his body.

  “What are you going to do?” he hissed at Marius, his teeth clenched.

  The Amber wizard was swaying gently, his eyes closed, looking as if he was trying to recall something from long ago.

  “I know what I did, back then when I was young,” he said dreamily. “It wasn’t Ambrosius, that fat fool. It was me. I unlocked something forbidden, with power beyond the dreams of all those old men in their towers and libraries. So long, searching for the secret, and it was within me all the time.”

  His eyes flicked open, and there was a strange, unnatural light in them. His cloak looked as if it was alive with flickering flames, but they were hard to focus on.

  “Perhaps I suppressed the knowledge deliberately. Or perhaps I really forgot. It matters not. Now I remember. I remember it all. The power that consumes, the knowledge they never teach us. Of all the colours, the most potent, because it is all the colours combined.”

  Suddenly, Lothar knew what he was going to do. He slipped in his incantation, and the shaman struggled free. A great claw burst through its temporary prison, grasping at them. It came forwards.

  “No, Marius,” cried Lothar, “this is forbidden!”

  Marius grinned, his face apparently lit by distant flames, even though none could be seen. His eyes were wild, ecstatic.

  “Not for me!” he cried, his voice tinged with a manic laughter. “What have I got to live for? My life is a fraud, a joke! Not for nothing was I brought here. No mightier wizard has ever walked the earth, and I will prove it!”

  The shaman screamed its defiance, and shrugged off the last of its bonds. With a roar of anger and triumph, it raised its hands into the air. Green energies of frightening power began to crackle above it.

  “Marius!” cried Lothar, oblivious to all but the terrible force drawing towards the Amber wizard. “Do not do this! For the sake of your soul…”

  It was too late. While the shaman had been distracted, Marius had invoked something terrible, something that was rushing towards them like the thunderous clouds of a storm. It couldn’t be stopped. He had repeated the dreadful spell he had uncovered so many years ago, a spell so powerful it had nearly killed him. Now he was so much stronger, its effects would be even more destructive.

  “Feel the power of it!” cried Marius, raising his arms towards the heavens as if in prayer. “Dark Magic! The soul of Chaos! None shall stand before it!”

  A ball of darkness exploded from his chest with a shuddering roar, rushing into the real world with horrifying speed. It grew phenomenally, spiralling into the air like a globe of black fire, its unnatural flames flickering against its circumference like stabbing snakes’ tongues.

  Lothar was thrown backwards hard, flattened by the force of Marius’ summoning. His staff was ripped from his fingers, and flew far beyond his reach. Around him, he was dimly aware of bodies being crushed and thrown about madly.

  “Marius!” he cried, but uselessly. The vortex around the Amber wizard was gathering pace, destroying everything in its path. With a high-pitched scream, the pent-up energies surged towards the shaman, its ragged form wreathed in spectral green light. Where the two magics met, the world seemed to rip apart. A great gouge in the earth opened up. The shaman was borne down by the black fire, its skin ablaze, its wide maw open in terror and fury, its claws clutching reflexively, but without purpose. The dark wind howled around it, throwing men and orcs to the ground like toys.

  The shaman fought with all the fury and tenacity of its race, bellowing like a stricken bull. Green energy flew from its flailing fingertips like whips of fire, immolating any still close enough to come into contact with it. But the Dark Magic was too powerful. It dragged the shaman down, dousing its emerald flames, choking and sucking it towards the earth, blocking out all light, draining the vitality from whatever it touched. Slowly, horrifyingly, the crazed form began to disintegrate. Its dark blood spurted high into the air, its jaw opening and closing in agony.

  Gradually, the lurid green light stopped coming, and the bent, stooped form diminished further, howling like a mere goblin of the mountains. The Dark wind churned, consuming, devouring, scouring. The shaman was crushed. Its blood ran freely, staining the mud of the field black. The wind howled in triumph, and then relented, its fury spent. As quickly as it had come, it rushed back out of existence, the only sound of its passing a hollow whine on the air.

  The shaman’s gnarled staff stood still for a moment, poised in the air before the pile of rags that was once its master, wavering in the world’s breeze as if sustained by its own power. Then it toppled and fell, rolling across the tattered remnants of the mighty spellcaster, coming to rest against the pile of burning flesh that was once its claw.

  Lothar knew he was near his end. The blood was running freely down his forehead from where Marius’ blast had caught him. Lifting his head with pain, he could see the scorched ring of earth surrounding him, the piles of bodies, some of them moving, some of them still. With a pang of grief, he saw the broken form of Karsten, an orc’s scimitar jutting from his breast, his pale eyes sightlessly staring into the sky. He had done his duty.

  Casting his eyes around, he searched for Marius, but there was no sign of him. Only his staff, blackened and severed, lay on the ground where the Amber wizard had stood and laughed. Lothar felt tears spring to eyes. Marius had triumphed at last, but at what cost?

  He felt his awareness begin to slip away. Dimly, he remembered the danger he was in, and tried to rise from where he lay. It was no good, his mind and body were broken. He heard the sound of bodies running, men or orcs? It made no difference now. His head spun, pulling him towards forgetfulness. On the edge of hearing, he thought he heard someone calling his name, a woman’s voice. Then the world lurched on its axis, and his head fell against the ground. The darkness came, and he knew no more.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Tell me again,” said Katerina, her eyes shining. “I enjoy hearing it.”

  Schwarzhelm rolled over, feigning weariness. His torso was covered in slashes and scratches. He groaned, and took a long swig of ale from the mug on the table by the bed.

  “You were about to have your beautiful head smashed in,” he said, grunting with grim amusement at the memory. Outside the narrow window of the chamber, the pointed roofs of Altdorf rose high into the night sky. The city slept as peacefully as it ever did, its panic long since banished by the returning Emperor’s Champion at t
he head of his victorious, if battered, army. The head of the shaman, shrunken and blasted, was on a twenty-foot pole in the main square, any trace of its former terror long since gone.

  “I’m sure I was about to do something about it,” said Katerina, laughing.

  Schwarzhelm snorted derisively.

  “You were out cold, or I’ve never seen it,” he said, helping himself to more beer. Katerina thought he looked more relaxed than she had ever seen him. Perhaps this was the way he always celebrated after a victory.

  “That’s what I wanted it to think,” she said, frowning slightly. “You have no idea what tricks a wizard can play when flat on her back.”

  Schwarzhelm smiled.

  “I reckon I do,” he said, but his amusement seemed slightly wistful. He sank back against Katerina’s expensive bolsters, looking thoughtful.

  “You know, I’ve been in dozens of battles,” he mused. “I’ve never had a problem keeping to the plan. It’s what’s made me the man I am. If a common soldier had done what I did—leave his post, charge across the ranks, madly looking for some woman he’d only known for a few days—I’d have him flayed alive. It’s out of character, and that bothers me.”

  Katerina didn’t reply at once. She pulled herself up against the bolster next to him, the pain from her head wound now only a dull throb.

  “I don’t suppose you had anything to do with it?” asked Schwarzhelm, suspiciously.

  Katerina raised her eyebrow in surprise.

  “You mean, something magical?” she asked. “My dear Ludwig, how many times do I have to explain? Magic isn’t something you can just turn on and off, casting a love-spell here or a summoning-charm there. It’s difficult, dangerous work. Anyway, I wouldn’t dream of trying to influence you. You’re too strong a character. Maybe, at times, I’ve had to steer weaker minds in a particular, helpful direction, but it’s not easy, and I was in no condition to try anything like that on the battlefield. You’ll have to accept it: you’re madly in love with me, and the thought of my being dragged off to a hole in the ground by an orc was more than you could live with. Don’t feel bad about it. I quite like you too, after all.”