Chapter Two My History . . . And A Frightening Discovery-5

"What in six hells is it, Spellmonger?" Sire Koucey demanded. "It must

be magical. And deadly. You look as though you've seen a ghost."

"Not far from it, my lord," I answered, breathlessly, my heart sinking a

foot a minute. "That, Sire, is something I haven't seen since the Farisian

campaign. It is something that most wizards live a lifetime and never get to

see. The one I saw there was half this size and in the hand of a master

sorcerer."

"It is an enchantment, then?" he asked, having no real idea what he was

asking. I answered him as he wanted.

"It is all enchantment, my lord," I whispered. "And it means trouble for

your domain." And my livelihood, but that wasn't what I was focused on. I

had bigger things to concern me than my clients – indeed, my worst

possible fear was realized.

The Imperials called it irionite. My people called them witchstones. It's

a type of green amber found, it is said, in some mountain streams in the

Kulines and Mindens. But this innocuous looking little translucent rock was

mightier than the foundations of the strongest fortress.

It made a dent in my mind, like a magical fire whose flames warmed the

part of me that does magic. These stones were once only nearly-mythical

devices. Now they were almost unheard of. Historically, they were

extremenly important. Witchstones were the source of power that propped

up the ancient and creaking Magocracy for centuries against the onslaught

of my barbarian ancestors, after all. And for centuries, it took little more

than that.

Irionite magnifies a mage's natural expression of magic a thousandfold

or more. No one knows how, or why – the few specimens that have popped

up have presented an irresistible lure to the magi who found them, and all

study on the matter is a closely-held and highly-regulated secret – but the

barest amount of that milky stone was enough to amplify the powers of the

dullest mage. A simple flame cantrip, such as I use to light my pipe, can be

turned into a raging inferno with a witchstone. Spells that would ordinarily

take hours of preparation and concentration could be done with little effort.

Wars had been fought over the stuff. A lot of them. And recently. The

Mad Mage of Farise had killed thousands of soldiers and sailors from the

Duchies with a mere sliver of it. To see that milky green pebble in a black

and furry hand made me so frightened my bowels turned to water.

"This is going to complicate things." I said in a voice that was almost a

whisper.

* * *

For those of you who weren't fortunate enough to get an Imperial

education in the Art and Science of Magic – and I assume that is most of

you – the story of irionite is intrinsically intertwined with the history of the

Magocracy, and, by extension, that of the Five Duchies and of all Callidore

itself.

The Magocracy evolved on the lost island of Perwyn, a mountainous

subcontinent located somewhere in the Eastern Ocean. It was alleged to be

the Birthplace of Man, though there are other places that claim to have

human settlements at least as old, and most legends say we were spawned

from the Void above. But when we arrived, we knew little of magic. The

Tree Folk taught us.

The First Archmage, legend has it, united the various tribal magi of

Perwyn under his banner at the city of Nomaowi. While he was

consolidating political power he also established in writing the basic

principals of Magic, convened the first Privy Council of Magi, and founded

the first Imperial Academy of Magic. He also fought a successful war

against his competitors using his cabal of magi liberally against them.

Eventually, through war and negotiation, he dominated the other nontalented factions on the island, and handed his successor a tidy, unified and

well-run little kingdom.

He is also, hagiographically speaking, credited with receiving from

Yrenitia, Goddess of Magic and Science, the three Great Gifts of Perwyn.

The first was the Periodic Table of the Lesser Elements (the Perada, in Old

Perwyneese); the second was the Twenty Principals of Magic and the

Physical World (the Perinsi); and the third was the basic symbolic system

for shaping and channeling magic, which are still in use to this very day

(the Padu, for those taking notes). What exactly he did with these gifts is

still debated in the rarefied chambers of academia and religion. But

whatever he did, the man got results.

For almost a thousand years human civilization flourished on Perwyn.

Dynasties of Archmagi ruled (often benevolently) over the island and its

associated mainland colonies. Masters of politics and diplomacy as much as

magic, they ruled by guile and wit, shrewdness and calculation.

They ruled with the backing of the Dabersi Guards, the elite warmagi

who were the Archmage's personal army. They ruled by maintaining

control of the sea-lanes against the pirates of Farise (who were troublesome

even when they were a "loyal" province of the Magocracy) and the navies

and leviathans of the non-human Sea Folk.

But mostly they ruled because of magic. Using irionite, few nonmagical forces could stand up to him. Where did he get it or the knowledge

of its use? The most accepted historical theory implicates his alleged

involvement and research with the Tree Folk of the Continent.

That ancient race had contact with the coastal colonies that later grew

up to become the Greater Magocracy and then the Five Duchies, and the

First Archmage was said to have been shipwrecked there in his youth. Some

stories say he stole the first Nine Witchstones, others say that they were

given to him. Either way, the First Archmage of Perwyn, Cordan I, reigned

and ruled with those most potent of artifacts in his hand. Later he placed all

nine in the Emerald Staff of the Archmagi, and that just made him and his

successors more powerful.

The Staff could do all sorts of wondrous things, such as raising or

quelling storms (useful for controlling the sea lanes) and laying waste to

enemies with bolts of Blackfire (handy for quelling the occasional rebellion

or coup attempt). It was said to have had a voice of its own and was free in

offering wise advice to the reigning Archmage – in some cases, the legends

and histories hint that the Staff itself played an active role in the scheming

politics of Perwyn.

The power was put to the test many times, including the construction of

the Twin Towers of Nomaowi, the creation of the Spire of Perwyn,

changing the course of the River Ilnoy, and the reclamation of the

Samprinso Bay from the sea three centuries after the first Archmage died in

office.

That last one was notable because of both its scope, which was godlike,

and its failure, which was catastrophic.

For four short years Kephan the Damned, the thirty-second Archmage

of Perwyn, basked in the glory of his greatest magical achievement,

growing the island's limited arable land by almost a third. Unfortunately,

something went wrong and eventually nearly the whole island plunged back

into the depths, leaving only a tiny archipelago of mountaintops to mark the

site of the great civilization. After the Inundation the Spire of Perwyn, an

ancient gray tower that had been built on the highest point of the island, was

the only remaining sign that a civilization ever existed there.

When the survivors regrouped on the mainland, the Staff had been

recovered, and the first Archmage of the Later (or Greater, depending upon

your view of history) Magocracy began the long slow process of unifying

the coastal colonies and rebuilding them into a shadow of Perwyn's lost

glory. Irionite became the means by which the barbarian hordes (my

ancestors) were held back, irate nonhumans and rebelling peasants were

kept in line, and politics were dominated. The Palace of the Archmagi was

built in Reymes using irionite.

It was also the means by which the first of the Mage Wars were fought.

If the old Archmagi of Perwyn had used the stones to unite an empire,

they were used by the Magelords of the Later Magocracy to nearly tear one

apart. A score of feuding houses, descendents of Perwyn's displaced

nobility, spent two hundred years or so laying waste each other's holdings

in an attempt to grab power from whomever was perceived to have had it.

For a time the stones were plentiful, it seemed, and nearly every mage

of any significance had one. Factions allied against other factions while

entire villages were destroyed in the orgy of bloodshed. Great magical

weapons of devious and deadly design were used to wipe out whole

districts. It was a dark time in history, broken only once the sitting

Archmage, an impotent snot of a magelord named Sinfineer, quit sitting on

his hands and began using the Staff the way it was supposed to be used.

He finally put together enough of a coalition to defeat his opponents,

then brought his allies to heel. He made all irionite the property of the

Imperial House and had it collected from friend and foe alike. In an act of

great charity (according to the official historians) or of great desperation

(according to his critics) he had the bulk of it taken to sea and dropped

ceremoniously into the depths where Perwyn once lay.

That made him enormously popular with the common people, who were

tired of magical death descending upon them without notice, and extremely

unpopular with the nobility, who were almost powerless beside the strength

of the Staff. But it did bring peace and centralized authority to the land.

Four hundred years later that peace and stability was abruptly

overthrown by the invasion of the Empire by my ancestors, vicious

horseback barbarians from the steppes of the North. Our priests were no

match for the Imperial warmagi, but we had a huge army, inspired

leadership, and faced inept military commanders and a relatively weak

Imperial army.

Too late did the Archmagi realize their folly, and the last few did their

damndest to defend their tattered Empire. The last stones on the Emerald

Staff were cannibalized to create Androbus, the great Sword of the Empire,

a last-ditch attempt to save the Magocracy. (It failed, by the way; the sword

was lost when the Imperial capital was taken by King Kamaklavan and his

five sons.)

The brutal oppression of the Imperial nobility and all things magical

began almost immediately after the creation of the Five Duchies, King

Kamaklaven's attempt to divide his realm to his heirs equally. He instituted

the Royal Censorate of Magic to oversee the conquered magelords of the

Empire, and nearly oversaw them out of existence. The empty staff still sits

today in the old Palace, guarded by the monks who live there now, a gilded

and bejeweled and utterly impotent relic of more potent days.