Tales of the Nameless World

Volume III

Christopher G. Nuttall
http://www.chrishanger.net
http://chrishanger.wordpress.com/
http://www.facebook.com/ChristopherGNuttall
Cover by Brad Fraunfelter
www.BFillustration.com
All Comments and Reviews Welcome!

Contents
Cover Blurb
Introduction
A Note on Previous Publishing
The Ranger’s Tale
The Ranger’s Tale Commentary
The Sport Captain’s Tale
The Sport Captain’s Tale Commentary
The Blademaster’s Tale
The EndThe Blademaster’s Tale Commentary
The Blademaster’s Tale Commentary
The Grandmaster’s Tale
The Grandmaster’s Tale Commentary
The First Witch’s Tale
The First Witch’s Tale Commentary
Afterword
How To Follow

Cover Blurb
Five Schooled in Magic novellas, published together for the first time …

The Nameless World is a place of magic and mystery, of kings and princes and magicians and merchants and rebels, fighting for supremacy or power or even just to carve out a place for themselves in a world of wonders and terrors, a world forever changed by a traveller from our world …

Meet the very first woman to study magic at Whitehall – and learn how she became the school’s very first witch. Meet a young man intent on building a sporting career for himself, whatever the cost, and a young woman who intends to become a blademaster no matter who or what stands in her way. Learn how Grandmaster Hasdrubal became the undisputed master of the school, and just what happens when a group of exiles set up a colony in the Blighted Lands.

All this, and more, in this collection of novellas.

Introduction

Welcome to the third Tales Of The Nameless World collection.

As before, you will find four republished novellas (previously published in assorted Fantastic Schools anthologies - more details on those at the end of this collection) and a fifth novella unique to this volume, all set within the universe of Schooled in Magic. All explore different aspects of the universe, from playing sports in a magic school to a colony of exiles trying to build a settlement in the post-apocalyptic nightmare of the Blighted Lands, with Emily herself barely mentioned. I have also included some commentary on each story and my reasoning behind it, which might hopefully be of interest to you. If not, feel free to scroll past those sections.

If you have been reading my work for some time, you will be aware that one of these earlier novellas (The Cunning Man’s Tale) was developed into a full trilogy (The Cunning Man). I have ideas, and plots in various stages of development, for similarly expanding each of the novellas here. If you are interested in seeing that happen with any particular story, please let me know – either on social media or by email at christopher_g_nuttall@hotmail.com. And of course, reviews are always appreciated.

I don’t have much else that hasn’t already been said in the first two collections’ introductions, so without further ado – here are the stories.

Christopher G. Nuttall;

Putrajaya, Malaysia, 2025.

A Note on Previous Publishing

The Grandmaster’s Tale – originally published in Fantastic Schools Staff, 2023

The First Witch’s Tale – originally published in Fantastic Schools V. 8, 2024

The Sport’s Captain’s Tale – originally published in Fantastic Schools Sports, 2024

The Blademaster’s Tale – originally published in Fantastic Schools Wars, 2025

The Ranger’s Tale
In the wake of Emily’s defeat of the necromancers, and the development of magitech that can cleanse the Blighted Lands of their tainted magic, vast tracts of land have been opened up for settlement. Everyone from kings eager to get their hands on new territory to magicians and freemen looking for a place to call their own has been trying to establish settlements, in hopes of making their claim stick.

This is a story of one such settlement.

Prologue

“You didn’t have to send your guards to fetch me,” I whined cheerfully as I was shown into my sister’s private chambers. “You could have just sent a messenger.”

Elizabeth, Lady Hawkshire, gave me a mischievous smile. “But at least you can’t say you came of your own free will,” she teased. “That’s important to you, isn’t it?”

I nodded. My sister and I had a slightly odd relationship, when we were alone, but the moment someone mentioned that I was a bastard – or that she was a young lady – things got sticky. Our father should have sent me away instead of acknowledging me as his get, for the sake of his wife and legitimate children instead of raising me in his household as his son. Perhaps he’d hoped he’d have a legitimate son who would have a greater claim than either Elizabeth or myself; perhaps he’d cared more for my mother, whoever she was, than he’d ever admitted. It didn’t matter. I’d chosen to join the Rangers because it was the best way to ensure that Elizabeth’s claim to the lordship remained unchallenged. I loved my sister. There was no way in hell I would undermine her position simply by existing.

But the hell of it was that I did.

We made an odd couple, I reflected as a serving maid poured us both wine and then retreated as silently as she’d come. I was short and muscular, wearing a battled set of leathers and carrying a sword, a wand, and a handful of other tools at my belt; she was tall and thin, with long blonde hair and a willowy figure that hid the sheer bloody determination that drove her on. If I had inherited my father’s looks, Elizabeth had inherited his stubbornness and absolute refusal to compromise in the face of opposition. The handful of minor noblemen who thought they could force her to marry them, then concede all power to her new husband, hadn’t lived to regret their mistake. I’d killed one myself.

“It’s good to see you again, James,” Elizabeth said, as she sipped her wine. “And I’m glad to see you’ve come back intact.”

There was an edge to her voice I understood all too well. Rangers didn’t just patrol the edges of the Blighted Lands, they travelled far beyond the border in hopes of gathering intelligence of just what sort of storm might next break upon the Allied Lands. The necromancers were a very clear and present threat, of course, and I’d lost comrades to their dark magics, but they were very far from the only threat. Creatures warped and twisted by magic; humans who’d walked into pools of tainted horror and emerged changed; armies of orcs; strange creatures that rarely stepped into the light; maddened gods … it was hard to tell, sometimes, just what might be waiting for us on the far side of the Craggy Mountains. There were stories I knew to be true that no one believed, and vice versa.

“I’m fine,” I assured her. “And yourself?”

“A couple of minor headaches, rapidly dealt with,” Elizabeth said. Being on the frontier meant constant pushing and shoving from her neighbours, who thought a young woman couldn’t possibly defend her territory. They saw weakness and opportunity … I made a mental note to look into it when I had a chance. I was a weaponmaster as well as a minor magician and a trained soldier; I could make their lives miserable without showing my hand too openly. “But I didn’t call you here for your support.”

I nodded. It was important to her to make a show of acting alone, without her half-brother being the power behind the throne. Anyone who thought Elizabeth would be content as my puppet didn’t know her at all well, true, but opportunists are very good at not seeing things they don’t want to see. I didn’t mind. I’d never wanted the lordship.

“I gathered,” I said, dryly. “What do you want?”

Elizabeth smiled. “The elocution teacher just took the money and ran, didn’t he?”

She leaned forward before I could come up with a suitably cutting response. “Have you ever heard of the Freesteaders?”

I shook my head. “No.”

Elizabeth’s lips thinned, just for a moment. “They’re a group of freemen in Hollander County,” she said, curtly. “Levellers, or at least strongly influenced by them. To sum up a long story, both the Court and his son were killed in the war, leaving a question mark over the issue of who should inherit the lordship. There are at least five sets of claimants and four have reasonably good claims. The dispute has been going on for the last three years, with no end in sight.”

“Ouch.” 

I didn’t try to hide my amusement. In theory, lines of succession were clearly delineated; in practice, when you moved beyond direct descendents, it became a little tricky to determine just who was the legal heir. If you went by one set of rules, it was the first claimant; if the second, it was someone else … depending on just where you drew the line. No one would give up in a hurry either, even if they had a weaker claim. The prize was worth the expenditure and if they made enough of a fuss, the rightful claimant might buy them off instead of fighting it out. In the end, the only people to come out ahead would be the lawyers.

“Yes, ouch,” Elizabeth said. “Point is, with no lord in the manor, the Freesteaders have come into the light. They took effective control of their farmland and town and set up to build a community of their own, claiming the absence of lordship meant they were all freemen and, as they were the ones who worked the land, they owned it. By the time His Majesty realised there was an issue, it was already too late to be stopped without bloodshed.”

“Perhaps he shouldn’t be stopping it,” I said. “It might be better in the long run …”

“You know better than that.” Elizabeth cut me off firmly. “If it spreads …”

I nodded. Most freemen and serfs accepted their lot, knowing little better, but the rise of the Levellers and the end of the Necromantic War had unleashed resentments that threatened to sweep away the established order. I knew just how they felt. Why should the men who worked the land be little more than slaves to fancy aristos who lolled around all day instead of dirtying their hands in the fields? Merely asking the question could get your head chopped off, because there was no good answer. And the more the aristos tried to crack down, the more the resentments would spread.

“His Majesty has a solution,” Elizabeth continued, unrolling a map. “He has already laid claim to a chunk of the Blighted Lands” – she tapped a point on the map meaningfully – where it should be possible to raise crops and generally establish a settlement. He intends to grant this land to the Freesteaders, so they may be exiled from the kingdom peacefully.”

I frowned. “The Principality of Yolanda,” I mused. It had been a small mountain kingdom once, if I recalled correctly, but the necromancers had destroyed it as easily as they’d destroyed everything else on the wrong side of the Craggy Mountains. “I take it there are no princes in exile who will object …?”

“No,” Elizabeth said. “If anyone held a legitimate claim to Yolanda, it was dropped long ago.”

I nodded. A king booted into exile by a usurper could hope to return to his kingdom someday, but there was little hope for anyone forced to flee by necromancers. They could never return home … no, that wasn’t quite true any longer. Lady Emily had beaten the necromancers once and for all, ensuring the handful that remained were firmly on the run. It was the only reason the king had countenanced laying claim to the desolate land. There was no one there willing to fight for it.

“I see,” I said. The lords had always bitched and moaned about runaway serfs being given sanctuary in the free cities, but they’d never protested very hard. It was a good way to get rid of ones who might otherwise turn rebellious, removing them from their communities and depriving the others of their bad influence, without making it too obvious. “Why do I have the feeling there’s more to this story?”

“There is.” Elizabeth tapped the map. “There are two points. Historically, Yolanda controlled a set of roads through the mountains, giving it power over trade routes. His Majesty would like to control those routes himself, hence establishing this settlement.”

“Clever,” I said. It was, if one was prepared to play the long game. The new settlement would need decades, at least, to turn into a going concern – no one knew more than I just how dangerous the Blighted Lands could be – but if it worked the king would be in a very strong strategic position indeed. “And the second point?”

“Yolanda was known for its mages,” Elizabeth said. “They were supposed to have developed all kinds of magical tricks that were never duplicated and died with the principality itself. It’s hard to say from such a distance just how much truth there is in those old stories, but His Majesty and his College of Magicians wants us to explore the region and see what we can discover.”

“Before anyone else sticks their nose in,” I muttered. The White Council was gone now, leaving both mundane kingdoms and magical communities in disarray. The old rules – including the agreement that kings wouldn’t set up independent magical societies of their own – were gone. Our king was playing a dangerous game and yet, if half the stories were true, the prize really would be worth the risk. “Do you think they’ll find anything worth having?”

“I don’t know,” Elizabeth admitted. “But I do know we can’t allow the Levellers to get any more influence in the kingdom than they already have.”

I snorted. “Good luck with that. No one likes being on the bottom.”

Elizabeth gave me a sharp look, then shrugged. “Setting up a community in the Blighted Lands will be difficult,” she said. 

She didn’t know the half of it, I thought.

“His Majesty,” she continued, “has requested that you serve as … advisor … to the settlers.”

“Oh.” I made a show of raising my eyebrows. “Does he want me to give them the benefit of my experience, or does he want me to keep them from too many thoughts about independence?”

“And also make sure the magicians don’t do anything stupid,” Elizabeth said. “You know how dangerous the Blighted Lands can be.”

I nodded curtly. There were some regions where human settlements fought a constant battle for survival, trying to eke just enough nutrients from the soil to allow them to live long enough to be taken by the necromancers – and some regions that were utterly merciless to anyone who accidentally wandered into them. The lucky ones died in agony. The unlucky ones emerged changed. Even with supplies from the homeland, and the absence of necromancers, it would be difficult for a settlement to become self-sustaining. And it was quite possible the settlers would run into some completely unknown and unexpected threat.

“Yeah,” I said. “And what is he offering me for serving him in this role?”

“The lordship of Yolanda, if you want it,” Elizabeth said. “Or …”

“No,” I said flatly. The lordship would be one hell of a poisoned chalice. I’d be lucky to survive long enough to claim it, and if I did … it would cause no end of problems. “Money?”

“That was on the list,” Elizabeth said. “And there are other titles …”

“We can discuss that after I survive,” I said. I had no illusions about just how hard it would be to get the settlers through their first year. They might include experienced farmers as well as carpenters and blacksmiths, but they’d never visited the Blighted Lands. “You do realise the king might be sending them to their deaths?”

“Yes.” Elizabeth met my eyes. “And so does he.”

I winced. Kings and aristos couldn’t tolerate anything that smacked of revolution amongst the lower orders, no matter how legally justified their claim. A nobleman could be forgiven anything from not bowing properly to outright treason; commoners who dared look their masters in the eye, let alone raise a hand to them, could not be allowed to live. The king needed to destroy the Freesteaders … I had to admit that sending them into de facto exile was a neat way to get rid of the Freesteaders without openly slaughtering them. No matter the outcome, the king came out ahead.

It may well be a death sentence, I reflected. And one that lets the king keep his hands clean.

“I understand,” I said, privately resolving to bring the Freesteaders through their first few years even if it killed me. “I won’t let you down.”

Elizabeth gave me a sharp little smile. “I never doubted it.”

Chapter One

“And you really think we need to build more defences?”

I kept my face under tight control as Goodwoman Charlotte glowered at me. Farmers’ wives were supposed to be meek and mild, submissive to their husbands and male authority … whoever had said that, I had come to discover very rapidly, had never laid eyes on a real farmwife. Charlotte was large and muscular, with a loud voice and a personality that would have taken her far, if she’d been a man. She’d certainly taken it as far as she could, I reflected. She was the acknowledged leader of the Freesteaders and that would never have happened if she hadn’t been very good at her job.

And she doesn’t have an ego too, I reflected. My sister’s council chambers were designed to showcase her wealth and power; the settlement’s meeting hall, where all the decisions were made, was strictly utilitarian. The chairs and tables were plain wood, the stone walls bare except for a map of the surrounding region – as close to accurate as possible – and a portrait of the king that was routinely ignored. She will protest, because she must, but she will listen to common sense too…

“Yes,” I said as calmly as I could. Being a Ranger had meant being on my own, answerable to no one other than myself, and I wasn’t used to negotiating when deep in the Blighted Lands. “We really don’t know what’s lurking out there.”

Charlotte seemed unconvinced. I didn’t really blame her. We’d been in the region for six months and we’d seen nothing larger than a warped and twisted bird, in stark contrast to the orcs and other horrors found in other parts of the Blighted Lands. There was no reason to think the settlement was under threat, but … I knew from grim experience that that could change very rapidly. We weren’t the only settlement in the south – I’d visited both Kuching and Kentigern to get an idea of what challenges we’d face – and it was quite possible those settlements would start driving orcs away from their lands and into ours. They might not intend to do it – I was sure they wouldn’t – but the outcome would be the same regardless.

“It’s not worth risking our lives over,” I said. We’d had the same argument several times before. “If we get it wrong …”

“Hah.” Charlotte crossed her arms. “Do you think the Hall will go along with it?”

I shrugged. The Freesteaders believed in democracy to an extent that shocked the moderate Levellers. Every adult, male or female, got a say in affairs and while they’d elected a five-person council to serve as a government, wise councillors made sure to measure the pulse of public opinion before coming to any final decision. It worked, in a crude manner, and I would have found it admirable if I hadn’t been so aware of the dangers of the Blighted Lands. The Freesteaders had listened to my lectures and taken some of my advice to heart, but they didn’t get it. How could they? This was the first time any of them had been more than a few dozen miles from home.

“You need to make them listen,” I told her. On paper, my advice was supposed to be taken as orders. In practice my authority was very limited. The Freesteaders knew just enough to think they knew everything … and besides, I represented the authority of the king and his aristocrats and that meant they regarded me as a potential enemy. “We don’t want to lose everything because we didn’t invest in our own defence.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Charlotte said. “But …”

She shrugged, expressively. The Freesteaders could be astonishingly pragmatic at times – they came from farming stock and farmers had no time for loafers, which was why they hated the aristos so much – but their sense of pragmatism was very different from mine. They would invest  months of labour in clearing the fields and sowing crops, while refusing to waste even an hour per day or week preparing for war. I took their point – they regarded soldiers as natural enemies – and yet I couldn’t escape a nagging little feeling at the back of my mind that trouble was brewing. The Blighted Lands had never been fully explored. Who knew what might be sneaking up on us even now?

I nodded. “Do your best,” I said. “If nothing else, who knows who might try to take this place from you?”

Charlotte scowled. I understood. The settlement was supposed to be under the king’s personal rule, but this far from the kingdom the settlers were effectively independent … they certainly acted as though they no longer needed to defer to the king and his officials. There was little worth the taking, right now, and trying to collect tax would cost far more than any potential return … but that might change, if the settlement ever became self-sustaining or we discovered something worthwhile in what remained of Yolanda. If the king decided he wanted the settlement after all …

I stood and headed out the door, making my way into the open air. A faint tingle of tainted magic brushed against my skin, too low-level to be dangerous but just enough to make me and anyone else with any sensitivity to magic feel uncomfortable – or worse. The region we’d settled had been swept several times for dangers, by myself and a handful of others, yet … there was just no way to be sure. The Freesteaders didn’t seem to feel threatened, thankfully, but I worried. I couldn’t help it. 

The settlement had no name, officially, but everyone called it Freetown. It looked grim and gray to my eyes, the stone dug from the local quarries or salvaged from the remains of long-dead towns and converted into plain, functional houses, shops; a school and a single official meeting hall. There was a blunt simplicity about the layout, a cluster of buildings surrounded by a patchwork of farmland, that appealed to me. The fields weren’t very large – calling them fields was a bit of an exaggeration – but they were efficient, the farmers knowing every trick for eking life from the soil. It was probably storing up trouble for the future, when disputes started over who owned what, but at the moment there was little choice. Right now, everyone had to work together or die together.

I allowed myself a tight smile as I walked around the edge of town and inspected the fields. It was a strange combination of ancient tradition and modern technology, patches of land worked by hand co-existing oddly with recent innovations … some more workable than others. The Freesteaders weren’t unwelcoming to new ideas, from what I’d seen, but they were careful to test them carefully before relying on them completely. It was common sense. Just because a way of doing things was old didn’t mean it was outdated. My eyes lingered on the visible fieldworkers and then drifted to the cluster of workshops assembled on the edge of town. The local carpenters and blacksmiths had plenty of space to work. The gunpowder mill was quite some distance from the rest of the settlement. Someone had learnt that lesson the hard way.

And it’s better to learn from other people’s mistakes than your own, I reminded myself. The last thing we need is an explosion in the middle of town.

The wind shifted, blowing the stench of tainted magic towards me. I looked up at the distant mountains, all too aware of the ruined city beyond. Yolanda had been little more than a ring of mountains surrounding a city and cropland, the mountains both providing a remarkable degree of physical security and, at the same time, preventing further expansion in almost any direction. The surrounding kingdoms had all tried to conquer Yolanda at one time or another, only to find it impossible; it was a shame, I reflected grimly, that the necromancers hadn’t found it hard to get into the city-kingdom. They’d destroyed all four kingdoms so completely that nothing remained outside the mountains, save for endless ruins. And who knew what might be waiting for us in the mountains?

I scowled. The records, such as they were, claimed there’d been dozens of sorcerers living in the mountains, researching magic and sharing the fruits with the kingdom. It was hard to tell how many of the stories were accurate, and I was fairly sure some of the wilder stories had been made up by fantasists, but it was clear a great many secrets had been lost when the necromancers stormed the kingdom. If they could be rediscovered, it might put Freetown on the path to stability once and for all.

“Sir Ranger!”

I schooled my expression into a blank mask and turned, slowly, as Mage Artois hurried up to me. He was a middle-aged man who managed to look older than he was, his lined face haunted by an air of quiet desperation. He looked more like a trained magician than a great many real trained magicians, a red flag even if his title was more of a courtesy than anything he’d earned for himself. Not a complete fraud, I knew, and a man more open-minded to new ideas than I’d expected when my sister had introduced us, but a man so desperate to make a name for himself that he couldn’t be wholly trusted. I knew the type all too well. I would have preferred to leave him behind, at least until the settlement was up and running, but that hadn’t been an option. The king wanted the secrets of Yolanda and he wanted them yesterday.

“Mage,” I said, careful to keep my voice even. It wasn’t a proper title and I knew it. “What can I do for you?”

“The last of the windmills is up and running now,” Artois said. “It’ll be just a matter of time before we can start charging wands. And spellware.”

“Good work,” I said. I meant it. I was mildly surprised Artois had embraced any kind of magitech – most older magicians regarded it with either contempt or horror – and it was greatly to his credit that he was prepared to use it. “That’ll make things much better for all of us.”

Artois preened, even though it had been minor praise. I felt a twinge of sympathy mingled with irritation. On one hand, I knew what it was like to struggle constantly to be seen and yet be constantly overlooked; on the other, I knew just how dangerously vulnerable it could make you to someone perceptive enough to see that weakness and take advantage of it. Artois wanted to be famous, to be respected as much as Lady Emily and every other magician who’d changed the world. And yet he lacked the talent or the raw power he needed to make a name for himself on the other side of the Craggy Mountains.

“Yes,” Artois said. “The wands will come in very handy, I am sure.”

There was no sarcasm in his tone, no sense of dark amusement. Most sorcerers sneered at wands, seeming them as a sign of weakness – or a complete lack of magic. They needed to be primed with the right spellware to make them work properly, I knew, and then they needed to be charged by a real sorcerer … or magitech. The wands we were charging now would make a difference … it remained to be seen just how much of a difference. The wand-wavers would be no match for a real magician, let alone a necromancer, but if nothing else they might buy time for me to come up with something clever. I was good at that.

“Yes,” I agreed.

Artois leaned forward. “And now, can we explore the mountains?”

I hid my irritation with an effort. Artois had been pestering me for months to let him and his team go exploring, without waiting for the settlement to be properly established. I’d said no, pointing out that the mages needed to help with the settlement before they did anything else … an argument that, somewhat to my surprise, Artois had accepted without open disagreement. I’d kept a wary eye on him since then, wondering if he intended to go exploring without permission, but if he had he’d managed to do it without my noticing. That wouldn’t have been impossible for a fully-trained sorcerer, yet …

“You know the risks,” I said, slowly. “We don’t know what’s up there.”

Artois scowled. “And the only way we can find out is by going and looking.”

I shook my head. I understood the importance of uncovering whatever secrets might be waiting in the ruins, and getting an idea of what might be lurking in the mountains before it crept up on us and attacked, but poking through magical ruins was a good way to get killed. Or worse. Freetown had been constructed on a relatively flat plain, uncontaminated by tainted magic, while there were pools of lethal magic scattered throughout the mountains. I wasn’t sure there was anything there to find, while the risks …

“His Majesty was very clear that we needed to go looking as quickly as possible,” Artois pressed. “Those were his orders.”

I didn’t doubt it. The king was desperate to make sure his College of Mages was firmly established before the magical community recovered from the events of the last few years and cracked down hard. They needed a success badly and they hadn’t been able to recruit the kind of magicians who might produce one, not when anyone with that sort of talent would prefer to go to the families or set up shop on their own. Artois was the best the College had, from what I’d been able to tell, and while he wasn’t untalented he wasn’t particularly imaginative either. He was a plodder … nothing wrong with that, under most circumstances, but not the sort of person you would expect to make a breakthrough.

“We don’t have the experienced crews we need,” I said. Artois had seven magicians under his command, the dregs of the magical community … no. That was giving them too much credit. The king had been so desperate to recruit as many magicians as possible that he’d overlooked a whole string of problems, from a handful who had never managed to get into school to one who’d been expelled. “If you get into trouble up there, I won’t be able to get you out.”

“You’re a weaponmaster,” Artois protested.

“That doesn’t make me a god,” I snapped. The weapon at my back was practically an extension of myself, taking the little magic I had and shaping it into an astonishingly versatile tool, but it didn’t make me invincible. My instructors had pointed it out, time and time again. I could die as easily as anyone else, if I were caught with my pants down. “And there’s enough tainted magic up there to overwhelm even a weaponmaster’s blade!”

Artois rested his hands on his hips. “And how long do you intend to defy your king?”

I swallowed several nasty responses. He needed a breakthrough too. If he wanted to establish himself as the respected magician he wanted to be, he would need to do so before he became too old to enjoy it. He wasn’t powerful enough, I thought, to retard his own aging; he needed to do it soon – or never. And the more desperate he became, the more likely it was he’d do something stupid.

The nasty part of my mind suggested I should just let him go. But that would have been a betrayal of my oath.

“Give me some time,” I said. It was the last thing he wanted to give me. “I was planning to inspect the forest tomorrow. If there are no obvious dangers … we’ll see.”

“And then we can go?” Artois turned to look at the mountains. “We could find answers!”

I rolled my eyes at his back. If the local magicians had left anything behind, it had likely been taken by the necromancers or simply left to rot. The odds of us discovering a library of preserved scrolls were roughly akin to the chances of the king summoning me home and declaring me his heir. I had the feeling Artois expected to do just that, unaware that the really powerful secrets were rarely written down. Reverse engineering spells was an old custom and very little stayed secret for long, once someone knew it was possible, but if no one had duplicated the magics of the local magicians … either there was something very odd about them or, more likely, the stories were exaggerated. Artois might spend the rest of his life in a long-dead sorcerer’s lair without learning anything, anything at all. 

“We have time,” I said, although I knew he had little. It was only a matter of time before he became too old. “Let me see what I find tomorrow. And then we will see.”

Artois snorted and walked off without so much as a nod. I watched him go, then shrugged and turned my attention to the towering mountains. The city beyond wasn’t just rubble now; it had been bathed in so much dark magic that anyone who went inside the remaining buildings would be lucky if they merely died. The unlucky ones … I didn’t want to think about it. I’d had to put down monsters in my time. Some had deserved it. Others had been pitiful. They hadn’t deserved to die and yet I’d had no choice. They’d been too dangerous to be allowed to live.

And that’s always been the job of a Border Ranger, I told myself as I turned and walked back into town. You knew what you were doing when you signed up.

Yeah, my thoughts answered. And in the end, you and Artois are very much alike.

I wanted to deny it. But it was true.

Chapter Two

I’d always preferred my own company, to be honest.

It wasn’t as if I’d lacked personal relationships as a child, a teenager and then a young man. My sister had been a constant companion, my father a firm and fair presence in my life … my stepmother cool at first, then welcoming when my father had made it clear I would never be allowed to threaten Elizabeth’s position as the heir. The young men of my age – aristocratic or commoner – had never quite known what to make of me, which made deep friendships difficult to maintain. It had been good preparation for being a Ranger, I’d come to discover, on my first mission outside the Allied Lands. Not everyone could handle being hundreds of miles from home, completely alone. If something went wrong, help was hundreds of miles away too.

I left Freetown in the early morning, striding past the borderline we’d set up to mark the edge of the settlement and making my way towards the mountains. I’d half-expected Artois to volunteer to accompany me – or one of the settlers who seemed to be having second thoughts about spending the rest of their lives farming, when they could be having adventures instead – but no one had said a word about it, either at dinner or later in the communal hut. I wasn’t too put out; I preferred to be alone.

The air shifted as I walked, the scent of tainted magic brushing against me. I hadn’t felt so unclean since the time I’d walked into a smoking den, in search of one of my father’s retainers. The air had been hot and yet somehow cold and clammy, my skin crawling as if I hadn’t washed for weeks or months and was now coated in my own filth. The ground beneath my feet was odd, a strange mixture of ash and soil … I shuddered as I raised my eyes, looking toward a town that had once been a respectable settlement and was now little more than ruins. There was no one alive to even remember what it had been called.

Poor bastards, I thought. The necromancer had gone through the place like a knife through butter. Anyone who’d tried to stand in his way had simply been brushed aside; anyone foolish enough not to flee had been sacrificed on the spot or turned into breeding stock. If the latter, they’d either been marched north or simply exterminated when the necromancer moved on. They never stood a chance.

I put that thought out of my mind as I kept walking, the mountains rising up in front of me until their peaks were hidden in the clouds. Faint flickers of eerie lightning darted through the darkening clouds, their colours so strange I felt my head begin to hurt the moment I looked at them. I kept my eyes down, watching the forest for possible threats. The trees managed to look both mundane and yet alien, their roots and branches twisted by exposure to tainted magic. There wasn’t enough in the air to do real damage, at least not now, but they’d been exposed for years before the magic had started to fade. It was wise to be careful. Very careful.

The landscape twisted again, revealing a stone road leading up to a mountain pass. I eyed it warily. The road was surprisingly intact, for something that had been abandoned over a century ago … the stories about the local stonecutters and their magics, I decided, hadn’t been exaggerated as much as I’d thought. The surface didn’t look cracked and broken, although the forest had grown right up to the edge of the road and branches reached out over it. I inched forward, keeping my eyes open for possible threats. The undergrowth was so tightly wound together that cutting it back was going to be one hell of a task.

And the Freesteaders will throw a fit if asked to do so, I reflected. Serfs and freemen were often conscripted to do just that, work that was bitterly resented because it took them away from farming at the worst possible time and made it easier for tax collectors and tax farmers to hunt their prey. We might need to bring in brute labour if we can’t get it done ourselves.

I walked up the road, keeping one hand near my weapon. The air blew hot and cold, the stench of tainted magic mingling oddly with the scents of life. Birds and insects darted through the trees … the former showing an odd fear of me, something I hadn’t expected this far from human settlement. Freetown hadn’t sent out hunters, not when it wasn’t clear if the local wildlife was safe to eat. Perhaps they were just afraid of anything my size. Or perhaps there had been other humans passing through … I heard something rustling in the undergrowth and peered into the shadows. There were flickers of motion, but nothing clear.

The day grew warmer as I reached a stone clearing and a building that might, once upon a time, have been a stagecoach inn. It was impossible to be sure. The stone framework remained largely intact, but the wooden walls had rotted away, as had much of the interior. What little remained looked thoroughly unsafe, to the point I made a mental note to have the remains knocked down before someone tried to play in there and got hurt. The field beyond was strikingly overgrown and yet … I couldn’t help feeling it wasn’t as overgrown as it should have been. That was odd … I made a mental note of a handful of possible food crops as I walked through the field, pausing as I caught sight of the watering hole at the bottom. It was larger than I’d expected, a pool of water fed by a stream coming down from the mountains … I tensed, one hand reaching for my weapon. Pools of water were always dangerous if they weren’t used regularly …

I relaxed slightly as I saw the animal tracks on the far side of the pool. Deer, perhaps, along with smaller animals … that was a good thing, even if the animals themselves were nowhere to be seen. They tended to have a better sense for danger than the average human, I’d learnt through grim experience, and it was wise to avoid any watering hole shunned by animals. The still waters could run very deep indeed … I stepped forward, studying the tracks thoughtfully. Most looked common, but some were odd … warped creatures? Or warped humans?

Something rustled, in the foliage. I froze, watching carefully as the sound came towards me and … a monkey popped into view. I blinked in honest surprise. The only time I’d ever seen a monkey had been in the Royal Menagerie as a child, the beast hopping and climbing for the amusement of the court … I’d never expected to see one here. The monkey came up to the water, showing no sign of fear, and stuck his hands into the pool. I leaned forward, sucking in my breath, as it pulled a wriggling creature from the water and bashed it against a rock, tearing open the shell to get the meat within. A crayfish? The monkey looked at me – for a horrified moment I thought I was looking at a transformed human – and then scampered into the undergrowth, taking his prize with it. It hadn’t been scared of me …

Interesting, I thought.

I walked up to the pool and peered into the water. There were dozens of fish and crayfish clearly visible, apparently untroubled by my presence. I reached down and snatched one out of the crayfish water, dropping it by the side of the pool. The lobster-like creature wriggled unpleasantly until I smacked it hard enough to kill, then wrapped it up in my bag. They would need some careful inspection before we tried eating them, but if they were safe to eat they would pad out our diet. We needed it. Our crops were growing rapidly, but we needed more variety.

And they might be worth selling onwards too, I mused. It was rare to find fresh fish so far from the sea. I’d certainly never heard of any fishing holes in Kuching. Who knows what we can do with them?

I slung the bag over my shoulder, then kept walking up the road. It twisted and turned as it made its way towards the mountain pass, the wreckage of a giant fortress overshadowing me as I neared the pass itself. The castle was small compared to the border castle I’d called home, but it was perfectly positioned to rain hell on anyone who tried to force their way into the pass. Magic tingled against my skin as I stared up at the ruins, wondering just what overpowered spell had been used to shatter the wards. A fortress that could have slowed, even stopped, a sorcerer was no barrier to a necromancer. The unnamed monster who had destroyed the kingdom had probably blown it apart with a single spell.

My mood darkened as I made my way through the pass, an uneasy sense of being watched crawling down my spine. The rocky walls had been thoroughly scorched by dark magic, so thoroughly cleansed of life that there was no trace of moss or lichen, just burned stone and traces of foul magics. Balefire, I guessed. Whatever the necromancer had used, it had left the road scorched and pitted too. The pass was wider than it should have been, yet I felt claustrophobic. I was glad when I reached the end and yet …

I swallowed, hard, as Yolanda came into view. The records had insisted it was a city of supernatural beauty, towering stone castles and fragile palaces surrounded by hundreds of smaller apartments, homes, and warehouses; the records had insisted the locals had dug deep underground, carving out warrens below the surface as extensive as the labyrinth under Celeste. Now … the city was in ruins, half-hidden in a haze that reeked of powerful magic, a haze that gave the impression the city might be intact if I looked in just the right way. There was no trace of anything moving, not even the wind. It was an eerie sight that chilled me to the bone.

It felt as if something was waiting to happen. Something bad.

I shuddered, turning away. It was hardly the first horror I’d seen in the Blighted Lands and yet, somehow it was amongst the worst. The odd illusion the city might be more intact than it seemed only made it worse. Artois wanted to go into that? He could take his chances alone, at least until we found a way to drain the magic once and for all … I shook my head. If it was up to me, and right now it was, we would start by exploring the buildings outside the city itself.

The air shifted again as I walked back down the pass. The sense of being watched grew stronger. Anything could be lurking within the city, anything at all … I shuddered helplessly, wondering just what had happened to anyone left behind. The magic might have warped and twisted them – or worse. And we would have to explore the city one day … there were plans to use magitech to drain the magic, to burn it up on useless spells, then recover what was left. I told myself it was just a matter of time.

I kept walking, feeling the sense of unseen eyes fading away as I made my way back down the road. The forest felt almost welcoming, compared to the remains of a once-great city. The trees hummed with life …I remembered the monkey and smiled, before sobering. Someone would try to hunt the beasts, if I was any judge, and that meant … poor creatures. Could people eat monkeys? I didn’t know. They were too close to human for me to feel anything but disgust at the thought.

It felt as though it took little time to make my way back home, even though I knew it was nonsense. I circled Freetown and made my way to the magical compound – with typical grandiosity, Artois had termed it High Magic Court – and stepped inside. The interior didn’t remotely live up to the title, managing to be a strange combination of underfunded classroom, workshop and social club for magicians with big egos and small names. Artois was the most capable of the seven, which surprised me. The remainder had too many issues of their own to become true sorcerers.

Artois hurried into the workshop as I entered, looking tired. I wondered if he’d managed to get any sleep last night. He had a room of his own, which was more than anyone outside the handful of mages had, but judging by his complaints it wasn’t remotely comfortable. I wasn’t too sorry for him. Even I knew a few spells to make a simple room more comfortable. 

“Did you find anything?”

“A little,” I said, taking the crayfish out of my bag. “Can you check this for taint?”

“Nasty looking thing,” Artois said. “I wouldn’t want to meet him up a dark alley.”

I shrugged. One couldn’t afford to be picky when permanently on the verge of starvation. I had eaten things that would have made Elizabeth faint at the thought of tasting them, and I was hardly the least fortunate person in the world. There was dark rumours about just what the poorest of the poor ate, because they had no choice. The crayfish was luxury incarnate compared to rats, mice, and other things best not mentioned in public. Shellfish could be dangerous if not properly cooked, but …

“Check anyway,” I said. “See what you make of him.”

Artois nodded, moving his hand over the crayfish and muttering the spell out loud … another sign of weak magic or lack of focus. I kept that thought to myself as Mage Henry entered, a man with the air of an absent-minded academic combined with the desperation of someone who wanted to prove himself before it was too late. He’d been trained as a theoretical magician, after his talent had proven itself too weak for classical training … I wondered, suddenly, why he hadn’t gone to Heart’s Eye. He would certainly have fitted in there better than here. Perhaps he thought the university had plenty of theoretical magicians already …

“It seems safe to eat, I think,” Artois said. “The magic isn’t high enough to do harm. It might serve as a potion base, perhaps, but … if there are any magical applications I can’t see them.”

“Of course not,” Henry said, just loud enough to be heard. “You wouldn’t …”

Artois swung around. “You dare …”

I scowled. The confrontation would have been amusing if they didn’t have enough magic to be dangerous. “Gentlemen, please,” I said. “Set a good example for your students.”

Artois shot me a sharp look, then jabbed a finger at the crayfish. “Safe to eat,” he snapped. “Just let me check anything else from the general vicinity before you try to eat it.”

“Yes,” I said. Perhaps it would be worthwhile setting up a tent near the watering hole. The mages could check the area for tainted magic and, just as important, be out of my hair for a while. It would keep them busy and hopefully distract them from their true goal. “I saw a monkey too. And tracks suggesting deer …”

“Out here?” Artois sounded sceptical. “The levels of ambient magic must have fallen faster than we thought.”

“Or it just rolled out of the mountains and pooled in the land underneath,” Henry put in. “It’s hard to model what such magic will do.”

I nodded in agreement. Rainfall made logical sense. It ran down hills and rooftops and pooled on the ground, eventually evaporating or sinking into the ground. Tainted magic seemed to obey laws of its own, laws that appeared to change with every passing day. Some areas I’d expect to be lethal to unwary humans were completely safe, others I’d thought safe were dangerous beyond words. Yolanda was clearly the latter … perhaps. The magic had definitely pooled there.

“And now, what did you see?” Artois hadn’t forgotten his goal. “Can we go up there?”

“Not into the city itself,” I said. Common sense would agree with me, but common sense was very uncommon. “The magic is too high to risk your lives. But we can try and examine the outermost buildings …”

Artois reached for a map and laid it out on the table. “Sorcerer Ruthless was supposed to have had a lair here,” he said, tapping a place on the map. I wondered just what sort of sorcerer would term himself Ruthless and decided it was a good thing the man was long dead. “If we go looking …”

“You’d have to find it first,” I pointed out. Half the map was fantasy – and that was being generous – and the rest was outdated. “You have nothing more precise than a rough location, and you can be sure he will have hidden his lair as much as possible.”

“If any of his protections survived,” Henry said.

I shrugged. Older wards either faded into nothingness or mutated, growing and changing in ways their designers had never intended. Some old buildings had become very dangerous over the years, others had become practically part of the family. It would be interesting to see what had happened to the old lair, if it had survived at all. The only way to find out was to go look.

The door burst open. “Sir,” Martin said. He was a young man who had trained as a scribe, before the New Learning had wreaked his planned career. I wasn’t sure why the king had sent him along and I didn’t much care, as long as he did his job. “Goodwoman Charlotte needs you! Coriander is missing!”

I swore. “I’m on my way.”

Chapter Three

Coriander was a child who might, charitably, be called a little scamp.

She reminded me of myself, to be honest, when I’d first met her. Nine years old and already mischievous beyond words, leaving her work to play and have fun in a world where everyone had to work or starve. Her parents were long dead and she’d passed through a multitude of extended families – tracing who was related to whom in farming communities was a tricky task, where blended families were the norm – before finally winding up with the Freesteaders, who had presumably admired her rebellious spirit. Or seen her as free labour. That wasn’t unknown either. Quite a few children were sent to farms or workhouses when their parents couldn’t take care of them any longer, and while the farmers were often welcoming they did expect the kids to work.

I hurried after Martin, cursing under my breath. Goodwoman Charlotte had found a role for Coriander she was actually good at, searching the nearby foliage for plants and roots the community could eat. She’d settled in better than I’d expected for such a little spitfire; sometimes, all kids needed was a little responsibility – and praise – to become good citizens. I’d actually considered taking her as my apprentice, when she got a few years older, and training her up as a Ranger. If the Rangers were still around a few years from now. We had always been a very loose-knit, very informal, organisation and now, without the White Council, our future was extremely uncertain. There were too many factions with their own ideas of what should happen to us.

Charlotte looked up as we joined her, on the edge of town. “She didn’t come back on time,” she said, shortly. Her voice was flat, but I could hear the concern underlying her words. “She might have gone further afield …”

“Or she simply lost track of time,” Martin said. He’d never liked Coriander. “She might be on her way back even now.”

I shook my head. Farmers normally had a very good sense of time passing and Coriander had spent most of her life in one farming community or another. She might have detested the work, and she did, but she’d had to do it anyway. She wouldn’t have lost track of time so easily … I glanced at the sun and swore again under my breath. There wasn’t much time before night started to fall. Being caught outside the settlement after darkness fell would be … bad. I knew how to ward myself. Coriander didn’t.

“There’s no time to put together a search party,” I said. Most of the community would pitch in, of course, but it would take far too long to even gather them together and explain what was going on. “If she wandered south …”

I forced myself to think. There wasn’t much to be found to the north. The only place that remained unexplored was the south, where I’d been myself, and if Coriander had gone that way … she might be walking into very real danger. Or she might have gotten lost …it wasn’t impossible. She might know how to navigate by the stars – most farmers did – but travelling after nightfall was always dangerous. If she ran into something she couldn’t handle … Coriander was a tough little girl, and carried a knife, but supernatural threats would just laugh at her blade before they swept her up and ate her. Or worse.

And if she wanders into a pool of cursed magic, I thought grimly, I might have to put her down myself.

“I’ll go looking for her,” I said. It was my duty. “Put together a search party, sweep up to the edge of the deep forest and stop there. Make sure you get everyone back behind the line before night falls.”

Charlotte said nothing, her face darkening as she confronted the unpalatable choice between abandoning Coriander to her fate and risking the lives of everyone in the settlement. Farmers were supposed to work together, to help their neighbours and be helped in turn, but should they risk everything for one little girl? I could name a dozen people in the community who would be glad to see the back of her, although they’d never say it out loud. Back home, Coriander would have been beaten into submission or … encouraged …to go to the nearest city and not look back. Here …

“Got it,” Charlotte said, finally. “Good luck.”

I nodded. “Does she not have any relatives in the settlement?”

“Not as far as I know,” Charlotte said. She’d been married twice and was raising a brood of kids that included several from her first husband’s first marriage, kids who weren’t related to her in any real sense of the word. Charlotte had taken it a great deal better than my stepmother, somewhat to my surprise, although widows and widowers were expected to marry again to ensure the kids had both a mother and father in their lives. “She’s completely alone.”

“Which probably doesn’t help with the sense of not truly belonging,” I said, shaking my head. My family had welcomed me. Coriander’s caretakers had been a great deal more ambient about the situation. “I’ll do what I can.”

I checked my weapon automatically. Coriander not having any relatives meant I couldn’t use a drop of their blood to track her, which meant that any hope of tracking her down would rest on my deductive skills. I was a competent tracker, true, but the Blighted Lands changed so rapidly there was no way to be sure I was following the right trail. Coriander might have gone in the opposite direction and I wouldn’t have a clue, if I let myself be misled right from the start. I hoped she hadn’t done something stupid like trying to walk to Kuching. The map made it look as if someone could walk from Freetown to Kuching in a day, but I knew better. It would take at least two weeks for someone like me, assuming I survived the hazards between the two settlements. I doubted Coriander could make it, even if she didn’t run into something nasty. She was still a child.

The thought nagged at me as I walked out of the settlement, heading for the treeline. We’d cleared a great deal of land during the early days, chopping down trees and digging up the roots to ensure they didn’t flourish again, but the task of clearing even a few square miles of land seemed never-ending. Coriander and her peers had used to hunt for mushrooms in the lands surrounding their farms and taken their skills to Freetown, although they had strict orders to make sure everything they found was tested before anyone tried to eat it. A poisonous mushroom could kill, or inflict a stomach ache that would make the victim wish he were dead. A root contaminated by tainted magic could make death seem the best of a set of bad options.

I gritted my teeth as I kept walking. Coriander was bright and daring … bright enough not to go wandering too far? Perhaps not. I’d done a lot of dumb things in my childhood, despite lectures and beatings from my father and his master of arms, and a number could easily have gotten me killed if I’d messed up. The less said about my experiments with alcohol the better. Father hadn’t beaten me for that, merely laughed. The hangover had been more than enough punishment.

The forest started to close in as I reached the edge of the cleared region, the undergrowth already starting to sneak back in. Someone had scattered hundreds of seeds through the area, hoping patches of wild crops would spring up … I had no idea if it was a good idea or not, but it was a small cost and the rewards might be huge. My eyes swept the area, noticing where mushrooms had been picked and a handful of holes dug to allow extraction of wild and perhaps mutated potatoes. Coriander was nowhere to be seen.

“Coriander!” I put as much command authority into my tone as I could. My first instructor had been such a commanding presence that whenever he told us to jump we jumped and only afterwards asked how high. I wasn’t as good as him – I’d never led men in anything closer to combat than brief training exercises at Stronghold – but I did know how to project my voice. “Coriander!”

There was no answer. My mood darkened. Coriander might stay out longer than she should, avoiding farmers who would find tasks for her and farmwives who would look down their noses at her, but she wouldn’t keep her mouth shut if she knew people were looking for her. She had more sense than that …probably. I stepped forward, examining the ground for clues. Someone had kept walking south, picking up possible crops, until … 

I sucked in my breath as I saw the basket lying on the ground. It was a simple wicker affair, nothing like the gold and silver baskets aristocratic girls used to play at being farmers, but Coriander would never have left it behind. She needed to prove she was the best at foraging for wild crops or someone would find her something else to do. The contents were spilling on the ground … I inched forward, keeping one hand on my weapon. If someone, or something, had jumped her then they would have made sure to take the basket too. Coriander had collected enough to feed an entire family or two, if they were added to the pot of constant stew.

Shit, I thought. There were signs of a struggle, faint but clearly there. At least two people – people who shouldn’t have been there. Human … or near enough. My mind raced. Coriander might not be popular, but she was a little girl. No one in the settlement was going to drive her out with extreme force, or mete out the kind of rough justice they’d offer to a child molester or a mercenary. The worst anyone would give Coriander was a beating and even then … I didn’t think there were many who’d be able to beat her without getting bitten, perhaps even stabbed in return. If it wasn’t anyone from the settlement who’s taken her …

I checked the area carefully, looking for a body. There was no sign of any corpse, just hints that the mystery attackers had headed south …presumably marching or carrying Coriander with them. If she was still alive …there was no way to be sure. There was no visible blood on the ground, but that was meaningless. There were plenty of ways to kill someone without leaving bloodstains behind.

My mind raced. Time was already running out. If I went back to the settlement and rounded up a posse, darkness would fall before we caught up with the kidnappers. I also had no idea just who was out here, or why. A necromancer? People tended to notice superpowered and insane magicians stamping around, blasting everything that displeased them on a whim. I’d had the area checked, just to be sure, and found nothing. A dark wizard? Someone who wanted the Freesteaders to fail? There was no shortage of either. And if I didn’t go after Coriander at once …

I drew my weapon, shifting it into the form of a simple dagger. It wouldn’t look particularly threatening, and it was at least possible the kidnappers would try to take me too rather than stabbing me on sight, but it was a piece of conjured magic linked directly to my soul. I closed my eyes for a long moment, reaching out with my mind to search for other magics, yet … there was nothing. The general haze pervading the Blighted Lands made it difficult to sense anything beyond a few metres. I’d have to do it the hard way.

Not the first time, I told myself, as I started to walk. And it probably won’t be the last.

The landscape shifted as I kept walking, following the trail as it led deeper into the forest and towards the mountains. Wild magic darted through the branches, small creatures rustled through the undergrowth … the canopy closed in overhead, casting an eerie greenish radiance over the land. The ground steepened, rising up as I reached the base of the mountains … I cursed under my breath as I realised I was running out time. This far from civilisation, or even the settlement, I would have no choice but to ward myself at nightfall and hope to hell I could pick up the trail tomorrow. If, of course, there was a trail. The possibility of being misled was never far from my mind. I’d had instructors who’d done just that, leaving false trails to teach us never to take anything for granted. Here …

Darker flickers of magic danced against my awareness, drawing my eyes to the remains of a tiny community so overgrown it was difficult to believe it had ever existed at all. I spared a thought for the locals, hoping they’d managed to flee before it was too late, then forced myself to keep moving. The air was growing cleaner, but warmer. Much warmer. Sweat prickled down my back as I paused to take a swig of water from my canteen, then resumed the march. It looked as if they’d taken Coriander deeper into the mountains, towards one of the old magical fortresses. It boded ill. If a magician had managed to survive all these years, hidden out in a fortress carefully screened from outside view, he had to be as mad as a hatter by now. And if he lacked the insanity of a necromancer, he would be a dangerous foe.

My weapon grew warm in my hand, alerting me to magic … focused magic. I’d nearly walked right into an obscurification ward, a spell so subtle it would have turned me back without ever knowing I’d turned around, leaving me convinced there was nothing to find behind the ward. I had to admire the craftsmanship as I paused, feeling the spell plucking at my mind; the spellcaster, whoever he was, knew what he was doing. Most obscurification charms became worse than useless if the target realised he was being charmed – there’s nothing more obvious than a man diving for cover – but this one was subtle enough to be dangerous even though I knew it was there. It was still trying to convince me it didn’t exist, that I should turn around and go home and invent a reason not to come back … a reason that would make perfect sense to me because it came out of my own mind. I pressed my weapon against the cobweb-like charm, tearing a gap in the structure and stepping through … bracing myself for trouble. Most magicians used simple charms to deter intruders initially, but those were often backed up by far nastier hexes and curses. If I kept moving …

I’d expected to see something on the far side, a castle or a mansion or even a simple hunting lodge, but instead there was just empty forest. The trail continued into the trees … I cursed under my breath and inched forward, trying to move as quietly as possible. I wasn’t skilled enough to determine whether the obscurification charm was linked to a living mind, but I dared not assume it wasn’t. If someone was monitoring the spell, they’d know I’d cut a hole through the spellware and walked through. If not … I kept my eyes open and one hand on my dagger, watching and listening for trouble. There was no birdsong, not here. That wasn’t a good sign.

The trail came to an end. I looked around, gritting my teeth. It just … stopped. No sense the kidnappers had been met by others, no sense they’d ditched Coriander and kept moving themselves … they just vanished. A flicker of panic shot through me, a fear I might have been misled after all … I forced myself to inspect the area carefully, noting how the trees rose into the canopy and blended together into a nightmarish tangle of twisted branches. I recalled playing in my treehouse as a little boy, and wondered if they’d gone up. The trees were so tall I could easily imagine a treehouse at the top, completely out of sight. I could climb up, if need be … perhaps I should. If they’d taken Coriander up there …

I stowed my weapon down my sleeve, so it was ready to draw at a moment’s notice, then started to clamber up the tree. It was harder going than I’d expected, some parts so slippery that several times I almost lost my grip and tumbled back down to the ground. I wondered if magic was involved, but a swift check revealed nothing. Clever, if it had been done deliberately. Most magicians would sweep for magical surprises, but ignore a very obvious booby trap because it wasn’t pulsing with magic. I’d seen a dark wizard killed by walking over a wafer-thin piece of wood covering a deep hole, sending him plummeting into oblivion. The idiot would still have been alive and tormenting people today if he’d been just a little more careful.

The branches grew tighter as I climbed higher, their mere presence pressing down on me. I felt as if I were spelunking once again, not climbing through a maze of trees; I almost felt claustrophobic. I wasn’t even sure I was on the right track. Coriander’s kidnappers had been a few hours ahead of me, with more than enough time to hide themselves properly. And then … I didn’t know, but I doubted it would be pleasant. Anyone kidnapping a little girl could not possibly have good intentions.

And then something moved, above me.

I barely had a second to draw my weapon and shift it into a shield before all hell broke loose.