Mage guardian 1, p.1
Mage Guardian 1, page 1
Mage Guardian 1
Dante King
Copyright © 2022 by Dante King
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
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Immortal Swordslinger
Bone Lord
About the Author
Chapter 1
Rune Tellarus was up to his elbows in dirt, when a voice said, “Oooh, go deeper.”
He looked up from the rosebush he was planting and squinted against the late-day sunlight, which outlined the silhouette of an ornate mansion looming before him. Made of bare cedar, curved and twisted by magic, the building reminded him of a huge, hunched gargoyle, dutifully marinating in the last light of day.
And leaning against the porch rail of said mansion was a household servant, a maid most likely, given the feather duster she was using to fan herself. She was only a few feet away from Rune, yet he hadn’t heard her approach.
“Excuse me?”he said, unsure.
The maid grinned at him.
“Mmm? Did I say something?” she purred, and continued her fanning, breathing out with a sultry murmur, her chest rising and falling dramatically—and given the size of the chest in question, the effect was positively theatrical.
He swallowed and glanced away. “A maid was already out here earlier. Sweeping and whatnot.”
“Was she?” the woman asked, before leaning clear over the rail. Even in his peripherals, he could tell she was nearly slipping out of her green-and-white maid’s uniform, which—now that he was paying closer attention—was a fair bit shorter than the one he’d seen earlier that day, on a much more modest maid.
Ah. One of those types, he thought. He’d heard of women like her—beautiful women hired by wealthy noblemen for housework, mostly to keep their mistresses close at hand.
“I’m Lenore,” the woman said, in a way that suggested she was delightfully entertained by his presence.
“Rune,” he replied. With effort, he avoided looking at the bare shape of her chest as he pulled his trowel off the back of his utility belt, knelt, and got to work breaking up the root ball of the rosebush.
“Awfully sharp trowel you have there, Rune,” Lenore said. His glance up found her lazily dusting the rail. “You must take very good care of your tools.”
He could see where this was going. “I’m not interested,” he said.
“Oh? In what?”
He replaced his trowel. “I don’t have any money, either.”
“Money? For what? I must admit, you are confusing me. But you are just handsome enough that I’ll let it slide. I do like my men dirty, you know. Especially when they go fist deep.”
Rune eyed her again. Short, slight, her dress as skin-tight as it could be without actually tearing along the seams, and of course, and especially, that chest. Rune, as a rule, strived to keep his gaze respectful, but at a certain size the wandering glances became inevitable.
Meanwhile, her gray eyes sparkled with mischief, and her hazelnut skin displayed no sign of a blush whatsoever. Her hands were busy, fiddling with her single braid of black hair, which reached just past her breasts.
“Awww.” She smiled. “I get nothing for that? Not even a little chuckle?”
“I said, I don’t have money,” he said. Women like her always wanted money. Oh, sure, you could have a good time with them, eat and drink and be merry, but by the end of the night you’d somehow lost them in the crowd along with your wallet.
Still her smile persisted, either woefully oblivious or intensely unoffended. “So,” she said, “you’re the gardener? I thought all gardeners were stuffy old men. The last one through here was.”
He began to scoop the displaced soil over the roots of the rosebush. “You do what you can to get by,” he said. And luckily, this was the last bush he’d have to plant in the city of Cedar. Once he got the cash for today’s landscaping, he’d have just enough to reach the next town over. Hopefully there, he’d find some trace of her.
If she isn’t dead yet, he thought.
Don’t think that, he rectified. Camellia can’t be dead. The words were a hollow refrain, an oft-repeated mantra to keep him moving for the past six years and eight towns of his life. In all his travels, he’d heard nothing, found nothing. It was as if his childhood friend had vanished off the face of the earth.
But he would find her. Just one more job, just one more town. Someone, somewhere, had to know something.
“You should try mercenary work,” Lenore said as Rune stood up. “Big muscle-y man like you. There are always rich idiots looking for extra lackeys, you know, and it pays a lot better than, well, dirt. You sure you failed your Guardian test?”
Rune rolled his eyes as he brushed dirt off his faded canvas pants. The government gives the Guardian test to all male children at puberty, to determine whether or not they are susceptible to magic. Men able to resist magic, the lucky ones, get to be trained as Guardians.
Rune had failed, of course. The phrase “no aptitude” had been written on the top of his report in red letters, that may as well have been seared into his skull for how impossible they were to forget.
“If I had Guardian blood, you think I’d be digging holes in some rich guy’s yard?” he asked Lenore. As for mercenary work, he’d considered it before, but the idea of going around killing people just because someone else told him they were bad didn’t sit well with him.
Lenore tugged her braid, probably to draw attention to the creamy brown expanse of skin between her smooth neck and the dangerously low collar of her livery. Rune resisted the little trick—he was well-built, decent-looking, and he knew how to bathe, so he was used to women noticing him now and then.
All the same, he couldn’t say he minded the attempt. He was starting to like Lenore’s sharp gray eyes.
“I could probably find a gig for you,” Lenore finally said. “Let’s just say, I know a guy. Why don’t you swing by the Gilded Lotus sometime? That’s an inn, on the north side of town—”
“I know what it is.”
She smiled softly. “I’ve got a room there, upstairs. Nice and quiet. I could give you plenty of work to do.”
Oh, boy. “Thanks for the—advice,” he said, very nearly saying Thanks for the tip. Who knows where she would take that one. “Listen, I’ve got to get going. Have you seen the master around?”
She shrugged one shoulder, still leaning over the rail. “You mean Master Cedric Lumenz, of the Lumenz Line of Esteemed Tree Huggers, Tenth of His Name, or whatever? He’s probably porking the scullery maid to take his mind off his daughter’s Trial today. Word is, she’s not half the mage her older sister was. Might not even make Adept. You ever seen her? She’s a redhead.”
“No,” he admitted, a little thrown off by the mention of the scullery maid. Maybe Lenore wasn’t a mistress after all. Or maybe Cedric had more than one. That wouldn’t surprise Rune in the least.
He ran a hand back through his short, dark hair, dislodging a few grains of dirt. “So today was Trial Day,” he said. “That explains a lot.”
It had been busier than usual this morning, on his way to the city. More hawkers, more Artificer carriages, more bruisers guarding buildings. Young women from Cedar’s ancillary towns must have traveled from afar to test at the Trial, some even bringing along family members who hoped to see them succeed. Any 20-year-old mage could apply, and if she proved herself str
At least, that’s what was supposed to happen. But when Camellia had gone to be tested six years ago, she hadn’t ever come back.
“Speaking of,” Lenore said, mirth leaving her voice, “here comes our very own Covenant watchdogs. Look alive.”
He followed her gaze to see an Adept and her Guardian approaching. He’d seen the pair earlier in the day, patrolling the property, probably working security for Master Lumenz.
The Adept —who, like all Adepts, was a woman—wore a slim emerald dress, but her diminutive size seemed deceiving to Rune, given she stomped along like she was trying to trample her own shadow to death.
The Guardian—who, like all Guardians, was a man—wore emerald-tinted armor to match her outfit, and rumbled along at her side, stone-faced. In fact, everything about the man made Rune think of a rough boulder; the face was just the stoniest bit. Meanwhile, the Adept was thin as an icepick and just as cold. Both had the pale skin common to this region.
And although they’d passed him twenty times that day, now that Rune was standing up, they took notice. He met eyes with the Guardian and watched impassively as the man sized him up. He got that a lot. He wasn’t the tallest or the most muscled man around, but he was big—big enough that beating him up would give another man some decent street cred.
Unfortunately for them, though, it never worked out the way they imagined it. It was them who always ended up on the floor, and Rune who always walked away unscathed, with other people’s lost bets in his pocket.
“You there,” the woman snapped at him. “What’s your business here?”
He indicated the rosebush calmly. “I’m the gardener. Just finishing up.”
She sneered at the plant as if it had personally slighted her. “Ugly thing,” she commented.
He shrugged easily. “It hasn’t bloomed yet. Try back in a couple of months.”
Her sneer remained. “I hate roses. Except red ones. The color of blood. Are these of a red variety?”
“No,” he said honestly. “White.”
“Shame,” she said and raised a hand.
Behind him, there was a rushed crinkling sound, like dead leaves underfoot. He turned to watch the rosebush—a novelty variety, worth nearly a week’s salary—shrivel into a skeletal shadow of its former self, its branches thinning to brittle twigs, the green of its leaves gusting away in a puff of gray dust.
And, just as he was understanding what was happening, he noticed Lenore had vanished from the porch. He hadn’t even heard her footsteps. He set the thought aside and rounded on the Adept.
“That was a very expensive rosebush,” Rune said evenly.
“Like I said,” the woman replied. “A shame.”
He stared at her, and she stared back, her eyes the same dull emerald as her clothes, both of which matched the gemstone on a glass chain around her neck. All Adepts had one, worn in plain sight by state law. The Guardian wore his on the back of one gauntlet.
“Are you planning to pay for that?” Rune asked, danger seeping into his tone.
She laughed, an unpleasant sound. She patted her chest. “Me? Pay for landscaping? You must be out of your mind. No, I think you’ll be paying for it. You should have kept a better watch over it, after all—”
Before she could finish, Rune had his trowel out in front of him, grip firm on the handle the way his father had taught him. The woman’s Guardian stepped in front of her—but if Rune had meant to hurt her, the man would have been a second too late.
“You dare—” the woman started, but then a frosty sound cut her off. It reminded Rune of the cracking of thin ice.
She shifted behind her Guardian, who never once took his frigid black eyes off Rune, even though the gemstone on the back of his gauntlet had very obviously started to glow. Rune figured it had made that weird cracking sound. Some sort of magic alarm?
“What is it?” the Guardian grated out, talking to his Adept.
“Not here,” the woman replied.
She stepped away from her Guardian’s shadow and sneered at Rune again. In her hand, she was holding her own gemstone, which was also glowing. Yep, it had to be magic. Rune had never seen a rock do that before. Unflinching, he kept his trowel raised.
“We shall deal with you later,” the woman said. “Did you know, it’s a capital offense to threaten a member of the Covenant?”
“Threaten?” Rune replied. He made a show of looking around. “Who is threatening you? Huh, I ought to get out of here, if there’s someone here who’s a threat to an Adept and her Guardian.” He hefted the trowel and raised an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t want to get caught up in that, seeing as how I’ve got more digging to do.”
If a person could be said to sneer two times at once, then this Adept was doing just that. But she didn’t press the issue, and instead waved huffily for her Guardian to follow her.
The two vanished around the corner of the mansion, but not before Rune heard the woman hiss, “Not now, Oak. The message is from him.”
Message? Rune thought. Was that what had happened with the glowing stone? A message was being passed through it, somehow? Well, I guess that’s magic for you. They say it can do anything you can think of. Of course it can make a rock talk. But did the rocks speak directly to your mind, or was there a special language you had to learn, a rock-tongue of some kind?
Before he could get caught up in daydreaming of magic’s mysteries, the clopping-sound of an Artificer carriage reached his ears, and he sighed and faced the front drive of the mansion. It had already been a long day of hard work, and now he had to try to convince the Master he hadn’t burnt the bush out of negligence or for the heck of it. The nobleman wouldn’t believe him. The cost of the damned rosebush would have to come from his own pocket, which would set him back, what, three weeks?
Three more weeks before he could leave this fruitless town, and three more weeks for any leads on Camellia to grow cold.
Worse yet, it seemed the Master’s prodigal daughter was returning, which meant Rune would have to wait around for Master Lumenz and family to discuss how her Trial had gone, before Rune had any hope of being paid anything.
Rune found himself feeling distantly bitter toward the beautifully carved wooden horses that trotted along ahead of the carriage, their bodies directed by yet another Covenant pairing that sat on the vehicle’s front bench. The woman had to be an Adept, specifically an Artificer, and her magic was what kept the wooden horses walking. She must be expensive, too, because those horses almost looked real, but for the elegant designs on their flanks and their creaking joints. Of course, it wasn’t the horses’ fault that his rosebush was ash.
Hoping to cut in line and sneak in a quick talk with Cedric before the returning daughter, Rune made for the front double doors of the mansion, which had been ornately carved from—what else?—cedar.
Bars of shadow crossed over him as he approached, each dark line cast by a structure suspended high up, just outside the Lumenz property line. There, a phalanx of massive cedar trees towered over the grounds, with stone paths and aqueducts and even the occasional building strung between them. You could tell how rich the Lumenz were by how few roads were grown over their home.
Rune beat the carriage to the front doors, and had just raised his fist to knock when he heard sobbing. He turned to the carriage, which was fully enclosed, the curtains drawn over its windows, doing its best to hide its occupants.
“I can’t do it,” a woman’s voice said. “Iris, I can’t do it—”
And the mansion door opened under Rune’s fist.
He spun, but Cedric Lumenz was already shoving past him and hastening toward the carriage. “Narcissa!” he roared.
And, very faintly, Rune heard the voice in the carriage say, “Shit.”
“Narcissa, get out here this instant!” Cedric raged.
He was a big man, red-faced and fat but also just plain large, with the sort of commanding voice that intimidates pretty much everyone. Even the Adept and Guardian atop the carriage bench exchanged worried looks, and the Adept barely caught the scroll that Cedric shoved at her.
“Your payment, for whatever it isn’t worth,” Cedric growled. “Carting around my useless failure of a daughter. Get out, Narcissa. I said out!”
