Mage for Hire Read online

  Mage For Hire

  By Jason Kenyon

  Mage for Hire

  Copyright: Jason Kenyon

  Published: 15th November 2013

  The right of Jason Kenyon to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

  Find out more about the author or upcoming books online at www.mageforhire.co.uk

  Book Cover Design by www.ebooklaunch.com

  I wish to dedicate this book to:

  Jay, my Number One Fan and all-round awesome artist;

  My sister, who believes I will become a crazy old man who lives in the woods;

  Ed, who regularly cheats with blue shells;

  Karl, who made it in the end;

  My parents, who introduced me to fantasy and supported me despite me being a dreamer;

  Grandma, who put up with me for a summer of work , writing & arguing over evening television!

  Contents

  Chapter One: The Shadow

  Chapter Two: Quests at the Inn

  Chapter Three: Remains

  Chapter Four: Beneath the Pine Trees

  Chapter Five: Thieves in the Night

  Chapter Six: Along the Central Way

  Chapter Seven: Deliveries in Melethas

  Chapter Eight: The Mage School

  Chapter Nine: More Quests at Another Inn

  Chapter Ten: Insults and Pranks

  Chapter Eleven: Forest Mazes

  Chapter Twelve: Outskirts of Dusk

  Chapter Thirteen: Oops and Ouch

  Chapter Fourteen: Preparing for War

  Chapter Fifteen: The Firestorm

  Chapter Sixteen: Round the Campfire

  Chapter Seventeen: Welcome to Aldrack

  Chapter Eighteen: Bartell’s Bad Day

  Chapter Nineteen: Heroes of Old

  Chapter Twenty: The Etiquette of Life

  Chapter Twenty-One: The Great Feast

  Chapter Twenty-Two: The Shaming

  Chapter Twenty-Three: New Valanthas

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Brothers in Arms

  Chapter Twenty-Five: On the Border

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Verrinion Cathedral

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Growing Shadows

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Necromancer

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Plains of Desolation

  Chapter Thirty: Threads

  Chapter Thirty-One: Return to Form

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Bloody Paladins

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Bartell’s Kingdom

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Archimegadon Returns to Melethas

  Chapter Thirty-Five: The Great Magician Ub

  Chapter Thirty-Six: A Lesson in Magic

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: Ashes of Victory

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Last Road

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Gloves Are Off

  Chapter Forty: The Ruins of a Hero

  Chapter Forty-One: Casting Shadows

  Chapter One: The Shadow

  The Mage for Hire had been rather hoping to deal with an unpleasant wolf, or perhaps a couple of incompetent and easily-scared thieves. After all, that was what usually upset farmsteads these days. Once he’d arranged a rather nice sum of money for himself, the mage had followed one of the farmhands out to the valley where the threat had apparently taken refuge. What he found was not a wolf. Nor was it human.

  What he found was a steaming pit of foul ooze over which someone had stuck a great stone platform, joined to its surrounds by two walkways and gargantuan iron chains. On said platform was a great mess of claws, jaws and various other lethal implements, all gathered together in one giant demon.

  ‘That’s the one, sir,’ said Obdo the farmhand, gesturing with his pitchfork.

  The mage, standing at the threshold of one of the two walkways onto the platform, nodded sagely, putting a hand to his short grey beard and squinting. He felt an itch in his back and tried to scratch it with his magical staff, but he couldn’t manage it at the same time as looking wise.

  ‘Indeed,’ the mage settled for saying. ‘And… this creature… is just around the corner from your farm?’ He glanced back at a small gap in the mountains, close by yet so very far away right now.

  ‘That’s right, sir,’ Obdo said.

  ‘Mmhm.’ Obdo stared at him, waiting for some knowledge of ancient magical lore to come spilling forth, but his companion remained silent for several more seconds. Then the mage nodded. ‘Mmhm,’ he said again.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Ah… what?’ The mage, whose red robes were suddenly feeling rather thick and hot, re-gathered his thoughts. This had not gone at all according to plan. ‘Oh… the beast. Yes. Well, how about getting the farmer to move somewhere else?’

  ‘Sir, I hired you to kill it,’ Obdo replied.

  ‘Silence, oaf!’ the mage said, hoping to impress the simple farm fellow with his air of command. Obdo glowered instead. ‘I suggest this merely because I have seen this sort of thing before,’ he added quickly, trying to win back his audience.

  ‘You have?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Genuinely?’

  The mage straightened stiffly and glared down at Obdo from beneath mighty and thick grey eyebrows. ‘My good sir, do you doubt my word? The poison here, beneath this platform, will likely spread, causing untold damage to the farmstead. Yes, it would be wiser to move.’

  Obdo remained perfectly still for several moments. ‘How about – we hired you to kill it, so you go and kill it? Then I’ll tell my boss to move.’

  ‘Such an action would be in vain,’ the mage said, irritated that this foolish farm fellow was pressing the matter.

  ‘What if the creature moves as well?’ Obdo asked. ‘Better to do away with it now, instead of letting it kill more folk.’

  The mage put his hand to his beard and nodded wisely. This was not good at all. What had promised to be a bit of easy money had backfired into a total disaster. A duel with this creature promised certain, long, painful, unbelievable and very nasty death. Obdo said something else but the mage ignored it, staring with great wisdom into the distance. Hopefully Obdo would think that he was ruminating upon the problem and would soon arrive at a magnificent conclusion. As the mage’s eyes began to water from the lack of blinking, not to mention the putrid fumes from the ooze, he saw a sight on the far side of the pit.

  A knight and two other mages were advancing upon the beast.

  ‘I do believe that my companions have arrived,’ he said to Obdo. ‘Now I shall save your livelihood.’

  ‘Your friends?’ Obdo asked. ‘Since when did you have friends?’

  ‘Silence,’ the mage replied. ‘It is time to defeat the beast. What is its name, incidentally?’

  ‘Uh… well we all called it the Shadow.’

  ‘Splendid!’ The mage raised his staff into the air. ‘Then I shall slay the Shadow and become a legend!’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Indeed.’ Already the bardic tale was forming in the mage’s head. People would take comfort in winter halls listening to this for sure, and he would reap the rewards from the reputation he would attain.

  Obdo looked at the knight and his mage allies. ‘Look… maybe we’d better go back. I’ll get you a nice hot drink and we can forget about this whole thing.’

  ‘Never!’ the mage said. ‘I shall defeat this thing at once.’

  ‘You sure that you can?’

 
‘Indeed so!’ The mage fixed Obdo with a powerful stare. ‘For I am Archimegadon!’

  *

  Across the outer edges of the Kingdom of Valanthas a phrase was taking root and spreading out through villages and farmsteads. Like wildfire it was covering the lowest taverns, the meanest homes and the occasional guard tower. The phrase was one word:

  ‘Who?’

  In recent days the Order of Mages had fallen on rather hard times. The various orders of the Knights of Valanthas had grown in power and were taking care of things quite easily, and they didn’t really need the help of upstart mages to do it. Most of the neighbouring kingdoms were just too lazy to wage any wars lately, and there were few demonic invasions that needed stopping. People simply didn’t need mages any more. Money dropped out of the Order of Mages faster than anyone could have predicted, and soon even the mages themselves stopped funding it as they found themselves short as well. In order to make money back the Mage Academy opened its doors to anyone and everyone, setting up little branches all over the place.

  The problem was that most of the people who signed up for the courses were rich but untalented, and in the majority of cases the applicants were given magic staffs and told to go away. Lots of the supposed mages left it at that and simply did minor parlour tricks for free drinks or had amusing revenges on neighbours they didn’t like.

  Ardon Forseld had been a moderately well-off man in recent times, after creating a career out of doing the jobs that nobody else liked to do. It had reached a point where he really wanted a little bit more out of life, since he was now getting on, and his interest in odd jobs had fallen to a distinct low. His hair was going grey and his beard was showing signs of old age. Or of wisdom, as he preferred to put it. Either way he had applied to the local Mage School in Melethas and been booted out with this rather splendid Staff of Antagules. He wasn’t really sure what it did, aside from shooting off the occasional Flamebolt when he felt like it, but it had done him a fair bit of good when he had reinvented himself as Archimegadon, Mage for Hire.

  And this brings us back to the phrase that was beginning to be quite popular. Several unfortunate people had been subjected to the quite unnerving appearance of a moderately imposing mage at their door. Before they could so much as ask what he was, Archimegadon would thunder: ‘Greetings, good folk! I am Archimegadon!’

  You can guess the rest.

  *

  Archimegadon left Obdo behind, ventured across the bridge and edged towards the Shadow. While not the first monstrous creature he’d had the misfortune to behold, this particular specimen did not look like anything Archimegadon had ever seen before in the flesh. Archimegadon only hoped that the trio ahead were trained, although he was comforted by the presence of the knight. There were few untrained knights in Valanthas.

  The battle began in earnest as the two mages fired a volley of dark rays that stabbed through the Shadow and made it shriek in rage. As the demon lashed out, the knight’s two-handed sword was there to block it. Before the beast could do anything to counter, the knight ducked out of the way and then struck out, the great broadsword sweeping through one of the beast’s many legs and causing the creature certain discomfort.

  This heartened Archimegadon, who was bearing down on the creature with all the fury of a toadstool. The mages were casting various sorts of spells on the Shadow, which was still fighting despite the many wounds that the warrior was inflicting on it. Strange green lights flickered about the Shadow, occasionally interrupted by purple flashes and the odd red cloud. Archimegadon was starting to enjoy the light show when he remembered that he was supposed to be fighting the demon as well.

  The others had clearly not noticed Archimegadon, who was not one of their friends and unlikely to be counted as such any time soon. This did not bother him in the least, since he did not much want them to notice and complain that he was leeching off their battle. Nor did he want them to see his assault on the beast, since it was going to consist of one thing.

  ‘Flamebolt!’ Archimegadon said. For all his faults, Archimegadon did have a very powerful and awe-inspiring voice, although in this instance it did not work in his favour.

  The fire spell burst from the end of his staff and leapt onto the Shadow’s head, where it flamed briefly like a bizarre orange wig, but the word flamebolt drifted into the beast’s ears and it turned to face him.

  ‘Ah,’ Archimegadon said.

  The Shadow had not previously displayed any particular ability in any arcane arts, but now it chose to enlighten its attackers, and it raised a few twisted arms and gurgled an incantation. Archimegadon thought back to the First and Last Lesson in Magic and pondered what had been said. He was sure that counter spells had been taught, or surely mentioned. Perhaps he had seen it in the course book that they had loaned him for the lesson. Then he remembered.

  ‘Any counter spells are very difficult to conjure,’ the teacher had said. ‘It takes years of practice. We do not have time for that now, but I suggest you all study very hard in your own time.’

  Archimegadon smiled with satisfaction that he had remembered it, before taking in the lesson.

  ‘Damn.’

  An almighty screech drew his attention back to the battle at hand, and his eyes blanked out momentarily as a vast web of green tendrils crackled into life and shot at him. He heard Obdo yell something and felt the urge to put his hand to his chin wisely one last time, to cast a final great pose and die a hero. Instead he yelled ‘Flamebolt!’ again and watched the flames pass through the advancing green web and strike the beast in its mouth and make it cough.

  ‘That’ll teach you for challenging Archimegadon,’ the mage said, and then the green web slammed into him and dragged him to the ground, pinning him there. ‘Blast.’

  So the creature did not want him dead, eh? Perhaps it believed that it could steal the vast powers of the Staff of Antagules? Well, it would never take it!

  Of course, it was more likely that the thing wanted to kill him.

  ‘Free him!’ one of the mages, a woman with short, wavy blonde hair yelled to the other. ‘Mortimyr, you get its attention and I’ll hit it with a Vala Andrilus.’

  The knight, with long black hair in a ponytail and somewhat scrappy plate armour, more resembled a beardless barbarian to Archimegadon, but in his current situation Archimegadon supposed he shouldn’t be fussy. Mortimyr nodded at the blonde mage meanwhile and yelled a curse at the Shadow, which turned from its snack and tried to slice him in two for his cheek. Meanwhile the female mage started conjuring something and the second headed for Archimegadon.

  ‘Hold on there,’ the second mage, a young man with messy black hair, said. He waved his hands oddly while muttering an incantation, and Archimegadon felt as though someone had poured a bucket of ice over him, but at least the green goo was now gone. Instead of showing his discomfort he stood up and adjusted his robes, brushing the dust from his shoulders lightly.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Archimegadon said with a slight bow, ‘although I was about to finish the incantation to kill it.’

  ‘Well, as Sen Delarian says, to finish is to start,’ the mage said. ‘But you might want to start starting too, next time.’

  Archimegadon wanted to ask what on earth this upstart mage was talking about. Who was this Sen fellow? Nevertheless he needed to prove his seniority. It was doubtful that this man had a certificate signed by Orgus Alhamis, Mage Supreme of Valanthas.

  ‘I, unlike you, do not need to speak or wave my arms to cast spells,’ Archimegadon said. ‘You are talking to the greatest mage in Valanthas.’

  ‘Oh really?’

  ‘Yes!’ Archimegadon replied.

  ‘None but the greatest mages can cast a spell without speaking and waving arms,’ the upstart mage said. ‘As you so delicately put it.’

  ‘I can, knave!’ Archimegadon said. ‘For I am Archimegadon!’

  The upstart mage did not respond.

  ‘Terrill, can you stop yabbering and back us up?’ the female
mage shouted.

  ‘Duty calls, Arlimegadum,’ Terrill said. ‘See you around.’

  Terrill joined the fray again, but Archimegadon did not waste his time pondering such a frivolity. Not when his good name had been besmirched! It just went to show what an abject fool Terrill was.

  ‘Hey, if you’re going to kill it, then do so!’ Terrill shouted back at him.

  Although Archimegadon didn’t really want to attract the creature’s attention again, he wanted to maintain the illusion that he was helping, and thus rationalised that maybe it wouldn’t notice with the other spells raining down on it. He raised the Staff of Antagules and sent off another flamebolt, with the appropriate yell, and watched with satisfaction and a little surprise as the creature literally exploded. He shielded himself as the flames spread outwards, but as soon as they came close enough to touch him they were sucked back into what appeared to be some form of vortex. A few seconds passed as the gaseous clouds were sucked into the vortex, and then the air fell still once again.

  ‘Hahaha, take that!’ Archimegadon said. ‘Thus perish the foes of Archimegadon!’

  ‘Nice,’ Terrill said, ‘but that was actually Gelenn’s Vala Andrilus spell.’

  ‘My flamebolts are considerably more powerful than the usual puny crop,’ Archimegadon said. ‘I rather enjoy creating vortexes with them. It impresses the common folk, and those with simple minds.’

  Terrill, Gelenn and Mortimyr stared at him.

  ‘I thank you for distracting it long enough for me to dispatch it,’ Archimegadon said. ‘Now that I have freed the nearby farmstead, perhaps you would like to accompany me for dinner there. Heaven knows I have earned it.’

  ‘I think he went to one of the schools,’ Terrill said.

  ‘Ah,’ Gelenn said. Her eyes took on a look of pity. ‘You go and enjoy your victory, sir.’ She glanced at Terrill. ‘What was his name?’ she whispered, although Archimegadon could hear every word.

  ‘Arlimegaden,’ Terrill replied. ‘I think.’