The Western Wizard Read online

  CARCOPHAN BEGAN TO CHANT

  the summons that opened a demon-sized pathway to the plain of Chaos. Almost immediately, dread enveloped the Wizard. Gradually, it took a visible form, a tarry stream, like smoke but more solid, an oily, shapeless blackness. Carcophan felt his magic pulse as the demon struggled to escape his spell-cast bands of binding, and pain hammered through the Wizard’s head, nearly breaking his concentration.

  As Carcophan tightened the web of magics, each individual band glowed red against the blackness, and, finally, the demon ceased its fight. It took the shape of a massive serpent that spanned nearly the entire room.

  The demon spoke, though its serpent jaws did not move. “Wizard, you called me to your world at the cost of your followers, who will die in an agony you cannot imagine. Your wards are trifling. When I shatter them, I will joyfully slaughter you first.”

  Carcophan ignored the taunts. “By Odin’s Law I have called you here. You must answer my questions and perform a service to the best of your knowledge and ability.” Having spoken the necessary words of binding, Carcophan had committed both himself and the demon. Now the struggle of powers would truly begin. . . .

  DAW Books Presents

  the Finest in Fantasy by

  MICKEY ZUCKER REICHERT

  FLIGHTLESS FALCON

  SPIRIT FOX (with Jennifer Wingert)

  The Novels of Nightfall:

  THE LEGEND OF NIGHTFALL

  THE RETURN OF NIGHTFALL

  The Books of Barakhai:

  THE BEASTS OF BARAKHAI

  THE LOST DRAGONS OF BARAKHAI

  The Renshai Trilogy:

  THE LAST OF THE RENSHAI

  THE WESTERN WIZARD

  CHILD OF THUNDER

  The Renshai Chronicles:

  BEYOND RAGNAROK

  PRINCE OF DEMONS

  THE CHILDREN OF WRATH

  The Renshai Saga:

  FLIGHT OF THE RENSHAI

  FIELDS OF WRATH

  The Bifrost Guardians Omnibus Editions:

  VOLUME ONE:

  GODSLAYER

  SHADOW CLIMBER

  DRAGONRANK MASTER

  VOLUME TWO:

  SHADOW’S REALM

  BY CHAOS CURSED

  THE WESTERN

  WIZARD

  Book Two of

  The Renshai Trilogy

  MICKEY ZUCKER REICHERT

  Copyright © 1992 by Mickey Zucker Reichert.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover art by Jody A. Lee.

  Interior map by Michael Gilbert.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 887.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-66388-2

  First Printing, August 1992

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  Version_1

  To Mark Moore

  for listening

  (and much more).

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank the following people:

  Sheila Gilbert, Jonathan Matson, Jody Lee, Mikie Gilbert, and D. Allan Drummond.

  Also, my “evil stepsons”: Benjamin Jordan Moore & Jonathan Lager Moore, with love.

  “We . . . were by nature the children of wrath.”

  —Ephesians 2:3

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Part I—BÉARN’S RETURN

  1. Pudar’s Homecoming

  2. The Night Stalker

  3. Béarn’s Justice

  4. The High King’s Heir

  5. The King’s Return

  6. A Call to Home

  7. Havlar’s Prophecy

  8. Vendor of Lies

  Part II—SANTAGITHI’S WAR

  9. Checkmate

  10. Colbey’s Story

  11. The Wizard’s Advice

  12. Mind Powers

  13. Preparations

  14. Talus Fan

  15. War’s End

  16. Storm Before the Calm

  17. The Survivors

  Part III—CARCOPHAN’S CHAMPION

  18. The Journeys Begin

  19. Flanner’s Bane

  20. The Demon’s Mark

  21. The Western Renshai

  22. Renshai Swords

  23. The Fields of Wrath

  24. Frost Reaver

  25. Wolf Point

  26. A Sword of Gray; A Sword of White

  27. The Next Betrayal

  28. The Symbol of the Coiled Serpent

  29. LaZar

  30. The Tower of Night

  31. A Swordsman Unmatched

  Epilogue

  Appendix

  PROLOGUE

  For centuries, the Amirannak Sea had kicked spindrift on the ragged Northland shores, but the Northern Sorceress, Trilless, watched waters glazed with calm. Perched upon a seaside cliff in the country of Asci, she stared into the fjord, watching wind scarcely ruffle ocean the color of steel. The tide tugged so gently that the waters barely seemed to pulse in time with her heartbeat.

  Trilless had come to this unpopulated shoreline for the quiet solace it offered, yet the ancient champion of all goodness found no peace within or without. For all its stillness, the ocean seemed coiled and restless, locked into the dark instant of lull that preceded the most violent storms. As if in answer, the memories and surviving slivers of identity from Trilless’ eighteen predecessors seemed to writhe within her. Always before, they had remained quiescent, a conglomerate of experiences and references she called upon in time of need. Now, they heaved and fidgeted like tempest-wracked waves, while the ocean itself remained uncharacteristically stagnant.

  More than four centuries ago, the ceremony that had established Trilless as the Northern Sorceress, one of the four Cardinal Wizards, had also, by necessity, claimed the life of her direct predecessor. Trilless knew that the pool of knowledge granted to her by that ceremony made her the most powerful of her line, just as her own successor would gain the benefit of her lore and become even more wise, knowledgeable, and skilled. The first four Cardinal Wizards established by Odin, including the original Northern Sorceress, had no magical powers. Haunted by dreams and images, they had written or spoken their prophecies, leaving them for later, more adept successors to fulfill. Now, Trilless found herself haunted by the first prediction of the first Northern Sorceress:

  In an age of change

  When Chaos shatters Odin’s ward

  And the Cardinal Wizards forsake their vows

  A Renshai shall come forward.

  Hero of the Great War

  He will hold legend and destiny in his hand

  And wield them like a sword.

  Too late shall he be known unto you:

  The Golden Prince of Demons.

  Clearly, that promised age of change had come. Trilless knew a tense expectancy that seemed to follow her, an inescapable current that suffused the world and all the creatures in it. Some of the tenets had already come to pass. Goaded by Carcophan, who was the current Southern Wizard, King Siderin of the Eastlands had launched the Great War against the mixed races of the Westlands.

  Trilless’ brow knit. A scowl formed naturally on her creased features at the thought of Carcophan, her evil opposite. Law and propriety had barred her from directly observing or taking part in this war. But, through magic, she had glimpsed those parts which involved Northmen. Only one of the eighteen Northern tribes had chosen to aid the Westerners in the War; the Vikerians had gone, allied to the Town of Santagithi. Their second-in-command, a lieutenant called Valr Kirin, showed promise as a warrior and as a possible champion of goodness. But, despite his competence, the hero of the Great War was not Kirin “The Slayer.”

  Trilles
s’ thoughts flowed naturally to the Renshai who had earned the title “Golden Prince of Demons,” Colbey Calistinsson. She saw his cold blue-gray eyes in a hard face scarcely beginning to show age. He kept his mixed gold and white locks hacked short, a style that looked out of place amid the other Northmen’s war braids. Though relatively small, he moved with a strength and agility she had never seen matched in any warrior or acrobat. At sixty-five, Colbey was older than any Renshai in history, except for the ancient Episte who had died a decade and a half ago. Enamored with war, Renshai rarely lived through their thirties, and inbreeding had fostered a racial feature that made them seem younger than their actual ages. This, combined with a custom of naming infants for brave warriors slain in battle, had given rise to rumors that Renshai drank blood to remain eternally young.

  Trilless sighed, missing the connection between Colbey and the doom suggested by the first Northern Sorceress’ forecast. So far, the Renshai’s actions fell well within the tenets of Northern honor. She found him as predictable as any of her own followers, though he had chosen neutrality over goodness. She doubted any mortal could challenge the Cardinal Wizards, let alone begin the Ragnarok, the great war destined to destroy the gods. Still, the prophecy implied that he would have some connection to the primordial chaos that Odin had banished to create the world.

  Below Trilless, the ocean remained gray and still. The presences of her predecessors shifted fretfully, reminding her that the poem never stated that Colbey would directly cause the Wizards’ broken vows, the change, or the rise of chaos. Yet just the linking of his name with those events made their imminence loom. How many more years can a sixty-five-year-old mortal have? Trilless answered her own question. At most, a decade. To a sorceress nearly five centuries old, it seemed like an eye blink.

  Trilless rose, her wrinkled features lost in the shadow of her hood. She wore a white cloak over robes so light they enhanced an otherwise nearly invisible tinge of pink in her ivory-pale Northern skin. To the Northmen, white symbolized purity. And, though no law of gods or Wizards made her dress the part of goodness to the point of caricature, she chose to do so anyway. It reminded her always of her job and her vows, and it gave added credence to her station. Odin’s constraints against direct interference kept her contacts with mankind rare and brief. Few enough men believed in Wizards anymore.

  Other concerns touched Trilless then. The Southern Wizard had disappeared even before the Great War had begun. Surely, he knew that his champion had been defeated; yet he had chosen not to acknowledge the loss or the rout of his followers. The experiences of Trilless’ predecessors led her to believe that he had retired to a private haven to sulk. It was not uncommon for a Cardinal Wizard to withdraw for decades, returning only when large-scale events made a swift or strong defense necessary.

  Yet Trilless knew her opposite too well. Despite two centuries as a Cardinal Wizard, Carcophan had scarcely more patience than a mortal. She could not help but admire his dedication to his cause though it stood in direct opposition to her own. She guessed Carcophan had left to plot in quiet; and when he struck, she knew it would be with sudden and unexpected competence and efficiency. His predecessors had relied on subtlety, insidiously infusing the followers of neutrality and goodness with his evil. Trilless and her predecessors had done much the same thing with their goodness. Over the millennia, this had led to a balance and a blurring of the boundaries and definitions of their causes. But Carcophan tended to choose warrior’s tactics: abrupt, committed strategies that resulted either in massive victories or, as in the Great War, in wholesale defeat. I need to know what he’s planning.

  And Trilless faced one more urgent worry. Odin had decreed that the number of Cardinal Wizards should always remain four; yet she had not heard from Tokar, the Western Wizard, in nearly half a century. Ordinarily, this would not have bothered her; the actions and locations of the paired champions of neutrality, the Eastern and Western Wizards, meant little to her. But when she had last seen Tokar, he had just chosen his apprentice, which meant that his time of passing was imminent. As well, the attack by Carcophan’s champion should have brought the Western Wizard into the foreground. But it had not.

  Shadimar, the Eastern Wizard, had taken over the tasks the Western Wizard had been destined to fulfill. While Odin’s Law allowed this, the Eastern Wizard was always the weaker of the two and far less capable of handling his stronger compatriot’s duties in addition to his own. Odin’s laws stated that if a Wizard was destroyed, the others must band together to replace him; but strict protocol regulated who could initiate the proceedings. Neither Trilless nor Carcophan benefited from neutrality, and their causes could only strengthen without the Western Wizard to oppose them. Had Shadimar requested their aid, Trilless and Carcophan would have had no choice but to give it. There could be only two reasons why Shadimar had chosen not to do so. Either the Western Wizard still lived, or Shadimar was as uncertain as she of the fate of the Western Wizard. Until Shadimar could prove his partner’s death, revealing his need to work alone could only make him vulnerable.

  Trilless wrestled with the problem. She knew there were only two ways to discover the fate of the Western Wizard, and both seemed frighteningly dangerous and difficult. The first involved trying to link minds with the missing Wizard. This had its practical difficulties. Although the Wizards could touch thoughts, to do so uninvited was considered a rudeness bordering on attack; and it required knowledge of the other Wizard’s location. That could only be achieved by physical means, and Tokar had not deigned to answer the messages she had sent him. The second means of gaining knowledge involved summoning. The idea sent a shiver of dread through her. Several Cardinal Wizards, including some of the Northern Wizards, had called forth creatures called demons from the magical plane of Odin’s banished Chaos. But Trilless had never done so.

  Trilless looked out over the Amirannak Sea, her legs braced and her focus distant. Clearly she had no choice. Given his recent defeat, Carcophan could not afford the risk of a summoning. Weak and burdened with the tasks of two Wizards, Shadimar could hardly be expected to accept the peril either. Of the three Cardinal Wizards who had been killed unexpectedly, two of them had been slaughtered by demons, and both slain in such a manner had been Eastern Wizards. Though knowledge of the Western Wizard would serve Shadimar best, Trilless could understand his hesitation. Still, this ignorance could not continue. Someone had to determine the fate of the Western Wizard. Clearly that someone would have to be Trilless.

  The memories of the previous Northern Wizards fluttered, some in agreement and a few in opposition to the decision. Then, as Trilless came to her conclusion, the suggestions disappeared beneath a rush of unified support. Those few who had summoned demons came to the forefront with solid advice and the words of the necessary incantation.

  Trilless closed her eyes, blanking her mind except for the guidance of her predecessors. Slowly, cautious to the point of paranoia with every syllable, she began the incantation that would call the weakest of demons to her.

  Gradually, a dark shape formed above the glass-still waters. Horror shivered through Trilless from a source unlike any she had known before. The familiar tingle of magic strengthened to a stabbing rumble that tore through her like pain. Space and time upended, physical concepts that lost all meaning. She gritted her teeth, not daring to cry out and lose the steady, unwavering cadence of her incantation. She grounded her reason on the constancy of Odin’s world and the necessary constraints of his laws. The collective consciousness of her predecessors began a low, changeless chant that gave her focus.

  As the creature’s presence strengthened, Trilless shifted her spell, weaving tangles of enchantment about the hazy shadow. She worked with methodical efficiency, winding webs that shimmered white against the shapeless, sable bulk of the demon she had summoned.

  “Lady.” The demon’s voice made the threatening hiss of a viper seem benign. “You called me to your world. You will pay with the lives of followers, and perhaps
with your own. You had best hope your wards can bind me.”

  Trilless tossed her hooded head without reply, keeping her attention fully focused. She knew that when the time came to return the demon it would demand payment in blood. But the amount it took would depend upon the quickness and competence of her craft. Dismiss it, distract it, and slay it. Trilless let the process cycle through her mind, hoping the knowledge of her predecessors would enhance the procedures while she concentrated on more immediate matters. Stay alert, she reminded herself. To lose even one life to this abomination would be a travesty.

  Demons cared nothing for good or evil. They followed no masters and obeyed no laws. The only feature about it on which Trilless could rely was its certain and violent inconsistency. And the longer she kept it here, the stronger it would grow. “By Odin’s law I have called you here. You must answer my questions and perform a service to the best of your knowledge and abilities.” Trilless hated wasting time with formality and information she believed they both already understood, but her predecessors assured her of the necessity. Unlike men, the demons had no natural constraints. They were bound only by the laws thrust upon them and then only when on the world Odin created.

  Wound with enchantments, the demon assumed a vague man-shape. Its eyes looked like points of fire in a bed of dying embers. “Ask, then, Wizard. But hope your answers are worth the blood I shall claim in return.” A glob of spittle fell from his mouth and struck the ocean with a hiss. Smoke curled from the water as its surface broke in widening rings.

  Trilless raised her arms to a sky gone dull as slate. She knew that the demon, though forced to answer with truth, could deceive to the limits of that boundary. Clearly, it would reveal more of the information that it wanted her to have, skewed in the direction of primordial chaos. She would need to phrase her questions carefully. “At this time, is there a living Western Wizard?”