Mad Mage: Claire-Agon Ranger Book 3 (Ranger Series) Read online

  Quicker than the wizard, Sultain directed his own staff toward one of the walls and elicited a defensive spell that had been prepared years ago. The tapestries that hung there appeared benign enough, but they were imbued with powerful magics and charms, allowing them to fly off the wall and wrap themselves around Ke-Tor, who sincerely seemed surprise by this new development.

  No one knew a wizard better than another wizard, and the Kesh understood that in order for magic to work, there needed to be room for the wizard or mage to invoke and channel it from the very atmosphere around them. This required a certain amount of mobility and freedom of movement, and the large tapestries clung to Ke-Tor and wrapped around his staff to the point of nearly suffocating the man. Powerful magnets clinging to an anvil would have a hard time matching the tug and grasp of these magically enhanced and woven tapestries.

  Sultain moved quickly, preparing his second missile and wondering—or was it hoping?—if the crazed wizard would burn if disintegration by a lightning bolt wasn’t effective. Usually, the lesser wizards mastered fire before electricity, so this would, in essence, be a step down for the High-Mage, but appearances were the least of his worries at this stage of their conflict. Fire took longer to burn, but death by flame would lend the same result that the High-Mage sought after, namely victory.

  There was a muffled yell from Ke-Tor, and then the tapestries slowly started to melt. They were made of fire-resistant material to prevent an enterprising wizard from burning them, but they were not indestructible. The crazed wizard’s staff, dragon skull and all, became as hot as molten lead, and the tapestries started to liquify and flow off the rebel magic-user.

  “Impossible,” Sultain said, no longer maintaining any semblance of pride or calmness under pressure. A sincere appreciation to the danger that the High-Mage now found himself in was quickly becoming clear in his mind. No mage, much less a wizard, could have withstood not only the electrical attack but also the intense heat radiating from Ke-Tor’s staff, indeed the man’s body.

  Ke-Tor used his free hand to scoop up large dollops of what remained of the tapestries that had clung to his face and body, flinging the gooey substance onto the stone floor where it splattered and sizzled as it superheated the stone instantaneously. The man took a few tentative steps forward, much like a stable boy in a ripe horse stall, avoiding the messy remains of Sultain’s defensive trap. “No, fool is too weak a word to describe you and your feeble attempts to prolong your miserable life.” Ke-Tor stopped and faced the High-Mage. “You are incompetent.”

  To any normal person’s ears, being called a fool would seem the greater disgrace, but to a wizard or mage, being called incompetent was worse. Ke-Tor leveled his staff, the small, sleek dragon horns slicked back along the skull, and with a single word and a jab toward Sultain, a beam of light struck out.

  Luck was the only thing that saved the High-Mage, having leaped to the side just in the nick of time. There was no electrical attack, no fireball. Instead, the red beam of light emanating from the eye sockets of the small dragon skull narrowly missed the High-Mage and impacted the table against the far wall where Sultain had been working earlier. There was no explosion as the High-Mage had expected. Only the table simply disappeared, replaced by a puff of ash as it disintegrated in a millisecond.

  Panic welled within the High-Mage’s mind and body as he stumbled and rolled toward the only thing he could think to save himself—the ultimate defensive trap prepared by his predecessors centuries earlier and, to his knowledge, never used before. He would bring the Onyx Tower down on top of his opponent.

  Well, not exactly the entire tower, but the immense stone ceiling above them. The main activation lever for this was in a hidden compartment on the High-Mage’s armrest of his ruling chair that was bolted into the floor itself. The men had confronted each other slightly off to the eastern side of the chamber room. Each floor of the tower was large, a good fifty feet across to allow for stairwells and antechambers along the tower’s curved edges.

  Sultain was now well away from his chair and regretting not having taken a seat there where he would have had other methods available to defend himself. He could not reach the chair before Ke-Tor unleashed another beam of death his way, and he didn’t fancy the wizard would miss a second time after missing the first.

  The primary fear Sultain had entertained was that the wizard had somehow learned how to defeat or deflect the primary weapon of a mage—a lightning bolt. Thus, the High-Mage had constructed the magically enhanced orbs containing agents that would magnify and scatter both electricity and fire to prevent his attack from being defeated. Sultain recognized his arrogance and hubris in thinking that Ke-Tor could not have enacted anything else clever enough to defeat the High-Mage’s attacks, but he understood now that he had miscalculated the unknown insomuch as the fortunate wizard had somehow come across a powerful artifact that tilted the scales of power even now.

  The secondary trigger for the ceiling lay behind a stone block on the side back wall where an assistant or trusted advisor could enact the drop if something unwarranted happened to the High-Mage sitting on his ruling chair toward the center rear of the chamber. Sultain would have to push and then tug at the block to slide it back and away, and then activate the lever before Ke-Tor could execute a second attack.

  Sultain moved quickly and the block came loose sliding effortlessly to the side, exposing the small silver-plated lever that would save the High-Mage. In fact, the lever was harder to pull than the block was, and it had never been tested. Sultain didn’t have time to turn and face Ke-Tor, and he expected the red beam of death to strike his back at any second. Instead, he heard the rebellious wizard speak.

  “There is no escaping the Black Tower once—”

  Ke-Tor wasn’t allowed to finish his statement as several tons of stone and granite released from their moorings that held the ceiling in place over the main audience chamber high above the ground in the Onyx Tower. Only the edge of the tower’s walls in a rear arc, cutting across the center of the room to encompass the High-Mage’s chair, remained unscathed by the implosion from above.

  Dust bellowed in all directions, filling the room and bloating out the weak light. Ke-Tor disappeared under the dozens of stone blocks and rock that had fallen on top of him. Sultain moved quickly toward the nearest window, leaning out in an effort to breathe fresh air.

  “Look, lads! There’z our leader!” A voice from the gate wafted up to Sultain. The High-Mage looked down, squinting to see what was going on as the courtyard and surrounding streets had gone quiet upon the commencement of the magical battle.

  Sultain recognized his gate commander. “What in the abyss are you doing down there, Torwin?”

  “Attackers, traitors,” the commander yelled up while pointing through the open gate at the dark alleyway on the side of the street.

  Sultain held his free hand to his forehead, trying to see into the darkness. It was useless. He leaned back around and squinted into the middle of the dark, dusty room. Faint wisps of light came from a lone torch on the back wall. There was a reason that Sultain took down the magical lighting, but it appeared that it was for naught. There was no sign of the miserable usurping wizard known as Ke-Tor.

  Pulling his staff toward and then out the arched window, he pointed it gem first at the alleyway across the top of the parapet that ringed the Black Tower’s compound. A small blast of electrical energy hit the middle of the dark street and lit up a half-dozen black-cloaked figures with handheld miniature crossbows.

  Seeing their unmasked enemy and knowing that the Kesh outnumbered them, Commander Torwin yelled, “Charge those bastards!”

  The line of shield-men heeded his call, and drawing their short swords, they broke and ran through the gate and toward the alleyway, yelling at the top of their lungs.

  Sultain smiled, but it was short-lived. Out of the reacquired darkness came a half-dozen small bolts aimed right at him. Leaping back, the High-Mage narrowly avoided being hit. He f
ell over a stone block that had rolled near him, and landed on his back, keeping a grip on his staff. The fall was most ungraceful, and Sultain was thankful no one was around to see it.

  He waved his hand to clear the dust in front of him, and with much effort, he got to his feet and then stumbled a dozen feet to his chair, plopping down to rest and survey the dusty room that was once his chamber. The floor above had contained his personal living quarters, and now his feather bed lay strewn in a hundred pieces across the rubble. The thought that this could have happened when he was sleeping crossed his mind, and he wondered if his predecessors had even thought about this, or perhaps they had and his sleeping chamber wasn’t supposed to be above the main audience chamber.

  Something didn’t feel right with his tasseled hat, and he brought his free hand up to feel it. He plucked a small bolt from the top of it and inspected the small sharp needle that had missed his head by mere inches. It was Balarian made, and the black-coated tip hinted at a mysterious poison. How could the clumsy Ke-Tor have managed to recruit and organize at least a faction within the Assassin’s Guild from Balaria?

  Ke-Tor wasn’t an intelligent magic-user in Kesh, though that would need relevance and context to make sense. Any wizard or mage had to be smart by comparison to the other Kesh castes who clung to their social ladder, but again, by comparison, the wizard wasn’t the smartest or even in the majority of the wiser and more adept magic-users in Kesh society. Something didn’t make sense, and Sultain could only reason that this mistake almost cost him his life.

  He threw the poisoned bolt to the side and leaned back and started to chuckle, coughing once to clear his throat from the dusty residue that coated everything within the room. What a mess, he thought to himself. It would take months, if not years, to reconstruct the last level of the Onyx Tower.

  He wasn’t sure himself how the contraption worked to suspend so much weight above their heads mechanically without magical assistance. That was the beauty of the tower’s design and defense. Being mechanical in nature, it wasn’t visible to any contesting magic-user by any form of divination short of an engineering inspection. How wise the first High-Mage was to have thought this through over the many eons since the Onyx Tower was first erected.

  His gaze carried over to the center of the chamber where lay, under a pile of rubble and stone, the remains of a once-proud and crazed challenger to the pinnacle of Kesh leadership, the position of High-Mage, and by a wizard, no less. Ke-Tor had not yet risen to the rank of Arch-Mage. Sultain had thought for sure that his chief rival would be Am-Ohkre until that fool got himself killed in a duel with the last remaining Arnen.

  The trade was more than worthwhile, an Arch-Mage for a druid, and not just any druid. No, this was the one who had haunted the Earlstyne Forest for centuries, and the very same who had thwarted more than one Kesh incursion into Ulatha over the years. Good riddance. Sultain waved the last few particles of dust away from his face. So now, back to you and your little trinket of power, Sultain thought to himself, referring to the apparently now-deceased challenger to his reign. What exactly did you come by during your occupation of Ulatha?

  Sultain stood with the help of his staff and tentatively walked over toward the pile of rubble in the center of the chamber. He should have sat a bit longer and rested, but his curiosity started to nag at him, increasing with every minute. “Ha!” Sultain said loudly and triumphantly, kicking a rock stone at first and then poking at a collection of loose rocks that looked precariously balanced one on top of another. “You did not expect that, did you, fool?”

  The small rocks fell, causing a few other larger ones to follow suit before suddenly, a large portion of the mound gave way, falling through some sort of egress on the floor. Sultain’s first thought was that the cave-in was so powerful, it must have weakened the very floor on which he stood, until he saw the lip of the hole that the rubble was falling through. It appeared as if the floor had melted away.

  A chill came across Sultain’s spine, magnified by the rhythmic tapping that started as a barely audible sound from outside the main door where the staircase was located, growing louder as something, or someone, tapped a metallic object against stone. The sound was unmistakable. Slowly, the sound grew louder until it stopped directly on the other side of the door. He watched in awe and dread as the door handle latch started to slowly rotate, opening the iron-bound wooden door, swinging it wide so that he found himself staring at something grotesque, a mockery of life.

  In the doorway stood a disfigured Ke-Tor. The wizard’s face was bloodied and bruised. One of his eyes had popped out of its socket and hung loosely against his cheek. A tooth had impaled the other cheek and poked through the skin, exacerbated by his dislocated jaw that hung from one side as if hanging by thin invisible threads. The arm holding the now-pulsating staff with the dragon’s skull fused over the gemstone looked fine, but the other arm was bent at two angles when men only had one elbow.

  Ke-Tor took a couple steps into the room to stand at the edge of the now-shrunken rubble pile that separated the two magic-users. His face contorted in pain and anger, and Sultain grimaced at the sight of the once-arrogant and rude wizard. How Ke-Tor stood, much less breathed, was a mystery to the High-Mage. One of his feet was pointed straight backward, making the use of the staff as a walking stick more practical than normal.

  The once-haughty wizard tried to speak, but only grunts and a wheezing noise came out. The wheezing was the sound of air escaping out of a newly made airhole, and the grating had to be over bone, if not skin. Ke-Tor took his free hand, covered in blood that it was, and pushed his jaw back into place with a snapping sound as the joint popped back into place. He took the dangling eye and tried to push it back into its socket, tilting his head back slightly to assist, and then he tried to push his tooth back in through the skin, but it only popped out and was lost to the debris on the floor.

  Finally, with great effort, Ke-Tor spoke. “Look what you did to me.”

  Sultain, or any Kesh wizard, for that matter, did not normally feel sympathy for those in pain, poverty, or suffering, but the High-Mage had seen cadavers that looked better than this man. With a cross of pity and revulsion, Sultain responded, “I defended my position. Why did you challenge me?”

  Ke-Tor remained angry, but a smile started to cross his disfigured face, turning his countenance into a cross between hate and joy. “Even now you fail to realize what you are facing.”

  “I would have used a different word,” Sultain said sincerely.

  Ke-Tor was unaware of just how bad his appearance truly was. “Enough,” he said. “You do not know power the way I do. You do not know power the way that the ancients did, and you do not know the power of the draconus.”

  “There you are wrong,” Sultain said, shaking his head.

  “You are facing the power of a mage imbued with their power,” Ke-Tor explained. “You are facing a force immune to fire, lightning, frost, acid, or poison. A force so powerful, it swings the arcane power of death into and out of both worlds.”

  Sultain continued to shake his head in disbelief, though the proof stood in front of him. The crazed wizard’s body might as well have been dead, it was so injured, yet somehow the wizard still stood, a testament to the power imbued within the dragon’s skull. “Impossible,” was all he could mutter.

  Ke-Tor started to laugh, a mad laughter that filled the High-Mage with dread, and the only thing he could think to do was to pull his second and last orb from his pocket and hurl it at the disfigured mad wizard, where it ignited and started to burn as flames licked and curled around the man’s tattered robe. Ke-Tor stopped his laughter and gave Sultain a steely final stern gaze with his one good eye, and then said, “Time to die.”

  Sultain launched a ball of fire at Ke-Tor at point-blank range, where it impacted and burned, but the man seemed to bathe in it. Sultain then screamed one final defiant statement. “To the abyss of Akun with you.”

  Ke-Tor tilted the staff slightly, and th
e dragon’s skull seemed to rotate on the tip so that the eye sockets were level with Sultain. A beam of red light shot out, hitting the leader of the Kesh square in the chest. One second High-Mage Sultain stood in the Onyx Tower, and in the next. a pile of ash wafted across the chamber and floated out of the windows as the cooler fall breeze wafted in.

  Kesh had a new High-Mage.

  Chapter 2

  Dareen

  At first, Dareen had been treated fairly, if not for the mere fact that she was a prisoner in the Kesh dungeons in their capital. The wizard who had escorted her there was seldom seen, though she seemed to have been given ample food and water, until a couple of weeks prior. That was the first sign that there was trouble in Keshtor and for her. She was neglected, as were other prisoners she could hear faintly but not see.

  She was kept in a sort of isolated confinement with a lone high window at foot level outside, but no sign of people, animals, or anything else was visible to her. Her cell was only part of the room, with iron bars and a locked iron door separating her from the free part of the room shaped in the form of an “L” on either side of her. Her part of the room was square, with two walls forming part of her prison, along with the two sets of iron bars. She instinctively thought that the shape and layout of her cell was part of a two-tier security system whereby to reach the cell itself required opening a locked door into the room first, followed by opening the lone gate on one side of the iron bars. This allowed someone to enter a locked room and not enter her cell, using the area between the cell and door as a sort of isolated observation space.

  By looking out the small, rectangular window, through the iron bars, she could just make out the top of a large black tower that seemed to soar into the air and dominate the skyline. The dungeons were near to this, so she thought she was in some sort of Kesh wizard complex where they governed from, though she had never in a hundred years thought that she would see this place.