Prologue
Five thousand one hundred thirty-two years earlier...
"Have they started yet?" Gaiana asked, breathless from rushing through the corridors. She'd lost track of time trying to teach shaping magic to a group of children far too young to be learning such complicated spells. The Chosar would need more shapers if they were to rebuild the cities that had been lost.
Her husband nodded a greeting but didn't smile. "They're just starting now," he said. Time had changed Argyros--he was no longer the man she'd married. The war had drained all of the humor and joy out of him, leaving nothing but a sense of duty and a determination to keep moving forward. It had been years since he'd touched her with any passion, and, in truth, she hadn't wanted him to. She'd changed as well, more interested in her research than her marriage with this hard man she could no longer love. They were partners and friends, nothing more.
But the war was over now. Perhaps Argyros could learn to be happy again. Perhaps something could be salvaged of their relationship.
Lydos gave her a wide grin. "Perfect timing as always, Mother," he said.
"Don't start that," she said, wagging a finger at him.
He just laughed. The war had shaped half his life, but unlike his father, it hadn't broken him. His generation provided hope for the future.
First Admiral Myrrhine nodded to Gaiana but remained with the other Councilors at the far end of the observation window, giving the royal family some space.
On the other side of the window, in the ritual chamber itself, the wardens had separated into two groups, the wizards in one and Demea and Hera in the other. Boreas and Iris would be handling their parts of the ritual from a distance, with Hera participating as an elder mage rather than a wizard to even out the numbers.
The four in the wizard group arranged themselves facing each other from the cardinal directions, ten feet from their closest neighbors. Hera and Demea, too, faced each other. There was no visible indicator of Iris's or Boreas's readiness, but the other wardens seemed to sense it was time. They began the ritual without delay, closing their eyes as they entered a trance, the wizards muttering the words to the spell while the elder mages did something Gaiana couldn't follow.
The wardens had been designing this ritual for years, but Gaiana had doubts about whether their goal was even possible. They'd claimed to have found some conjunction of the magics in a realm that didn't otherwise exist, but the only people who could see it were the wardens themselves and a few wizards who could wield both elder and arcane magics. Gaiana had taken the time to learn the spell they'd used, but it had never worked for her.
General Straton snorted quietly as the ritual dragged on with no apparent effect. "This is nonsense. I don't care what Pallis says--there's no way a ritual to choose more wardens would be harder than a ritual to change the nature of magic itself."
"When did you become an expert on wizardry, General?" Lydos asked. "The wardens have more experience with this than anyone."
"And they're centering more power in the hands of those who already wield it! Each new warden means nine more mages can achieve their full potential. Instead, we're granting more power to the ones we already have."
"It'll help
all
of our mages, not just the wardens."
"Did you ever notice what they
didn't
say, Lydos? They never said it would make you stronger. You'll still have trouble lighting a candle; you'll just learn multiple ways to fail to light a candle."
Lydos scowled. Gaiana's son was an excellent commander of wizard troops in battle, but he wasn't much of a wizard himself... and he had too much pride to ask Hera to bond him. Perhaps Gaiana could give the woman a few gentle hints.
Argyros cut in. "Enough!
This
is what we're doing now. We can discuss other matters later."
The two men put their argument on hold, turning back to the observation window.
"Is that supposed to happen?" the seneschal asked.
Pulses of blue and white light had begun flickering through the ritual chamber. The wardens hadn't noticed yet--their eyes were still closed and they were now deep in trance, the ritual spell requiring their full concentration.
Gaiana's skin tingled. She recognized wild magic from an excursion around Donvar when she was young. The ship she'd been on had sailed close to land in the hope of sighting scourlings, but instead they'd attracted a burst of wild magic which had disabled the ship's enchantments and killed two sailors. The ship had completed the voyage on wind power alone.
Was wild magic supposed to be part of the ritual? The wardens had never mentioned it, but the spell was incredibly complicated and the smaller details were known only to the four wizards amongst them.
Then she saw something that made her blood run cold. The wardens had placed a protective barrier around the ritual chamber to prevent any distractions, but they hadn't built it to block hostile magics from escaping. It was a cylinder rather than a sphere, and the pulses of wild magic were slipping through the floor into the undercity.
That couldn't be intentional, could it? There was no way to control wild magic, and many of the enchantments that allowed The People to live in comfort within the mountain were located in the lower levels. What would happen if the water purifiers were destroyed? Or the power collectors for the cookers? Unleashing that much energy all at once might kill everyone in the undercity.
"Stop them!" Gaiana exclaimed. She rushed to the observation window and pounded her palms against the glass, shouting through it, but the protective barrier blocked all sound. "Try the door!"
"What's going on?" Argyros asked her.
The others stared, confused, until Myrrhine gathered her wits and pulled on the door handle. "I can't open it--it's inside the barrier. What's wrong?"
"The spell's gone out of control!" Gaiana said. She slipped her wardbreaker out of her pocket--she'd borrowed it back from her sister at the beginning of the war--and tapped the small iron bar against the window.
Nothing happened. The protective barrier was too strongly warded for the wardbreaker to overcome, and there wasn't time to craft a new spell designed to pierce it.
The others started pounding on the window and shouting while Straton tried to kick the door down.
It was all pointless, but somehow, something woke Warden Zachal from his trance. He saw the pulses of light and his eyes widened in panic, then he shouted something at the other wardens. When they didn't react, he grabbed Pallis by the shoulders and shook him. The other warden still didn't wake, too deep in the trance to notice.
Zachal saw the observers' efforts through the window and yelled something to them, but they couldn't hear his words through the barrier. Then another burst of wild magic pulsed around the room before launching itself downward.
A look of horror grew on the warden's face as he realized the implications. His lips moved again, but from his stance and demeanor, it was apparent he wasn't trying to talk to them this time. He was casting a spell.
"What's he doing?" Argyros demanded.
Lydos started murmuring but Gaiana beat him to it, triggering her stored arcane sight spell. Her vision was immediately overlaid with information about the structure of all the spells and enchantments within view.
"A healing spell!" she announced in relief. Zachal was a healing wizard, and he'd apparently realized the danger to the workers in the undercity. An undirected, wide-area healing cast over a long distance wasn't ideal, but it had a warden's strength behind it. It was better than nothing.
And it was a message to the observers as well. Lydos realized it first. "We need to send healers below!"
"And warding specialists to block the wild magic!" Gaiana said.
"
What
wild magic?" Argyros asked.
She didn't answer her husband's question--there was no time to explain. Before she could summon help, though, another pulse of wild magic echoed around the chamber, but instead of escaping downward, it flowed into Zachal's healing spell. In the visible spectrum, nothing changed, but to Gaiana's arcane sight, the spell turned dark and sickly--necromancy, the magic of death. Zachal realized the same thing and stopped his casting, but the spell didn't end. Both it and the bursts of wild magic were now pulling their power from somewhere else--that strange conjunction to which the wardens had tried to open a gateway.
If there was necromantic magic loose below, sending rescuers was no longer an option.
"Evacuate the undercity!" Gaiana said. "Sound the alarms!"
"I'll go!" Admiral Myrrhine said, heading for the nearest alarm control.
But just as she reached the entrance to the corridor, there was a flash of blue. Myrrhine cried out in pain, and then half of her body disintegrated. There were quiet thumps as the remaining pieces fell to the ground.
That burst of light had escaped through the top of the barrier rather than the bottom. It was loose in Fortress West... which was full of spells, wards, and enchantments that could be twisted and warped by the wild magic.
Gaiana stared at the mangled remains of her friend, then forced her attention away.
I'm back in the war
, she told herself.
Mourning comes later
.
Zachal attempted another casting, perhaps to banish the flawed healing spell, but the longer he was locked in there with it, the more it drained his strength. He fell to his knees, dazed, before he could finish.
It was the growing encroachment of the necromancy magic that finally woke Pallis. He saw Zachal at the center of the corrupted spell and shouted angrily at the other man, but Zachal didn't rouse from his stupor. In frustration, Pallis triggered a stored banishment spell. Gaiana held her breath in hope, watching through her arcane sight, but the spell drew in another burst of flickering blue and white light. The banishment spell faded away as it was swallowed up by the wild magic, and Pallis realized for the first time that there was a greater danger. He seemed to think Zachal was the cause, and with a grim look of determination, he waded into the heart of the necromancy spell, drawing his sword and thrusting it through the human warden's chest.
Zachal's life faded away, as did the necromantic spell, but not before it claimed Pallis. The First Warden dropped his sword and slumped to the ground, struggling to push himself up to his hands and knees before falling again. This time he didn't move.
But he'd succeeded, at least in part--the necromancy spell was gone.
Another flash of blue raced down the corridor outside the observation room, followed by screams from deep within Fortress West. And then the repeating sound of a deep bell--someone had reached the alarms. But the tone was wrong. It was the attack alert for Fortress Central. The wild magic had already escaped the western complex.
Argyros and Lydos were talking, trying to get Gaiana's attention, but she ignored them. Her mind leapt from idea to idea, processing and discarding plans as fast as she could think, until she was left with only one.
The necromancy spell was gone. It might have drawn power from the conjunction, but it had still failed once the mage who'd cast it was dead.
