Magician Prince Read Free

that you will both always be welcome in my
humble alchemy shop.”
    “Enough with the goodbyes,” Nikare cut in,
“Byrn, we have found a vessel that should meet your needs and is
set to disembark within the week, but it will require no small bit
of magic on your part.”
    “That won’t be a problem,” Byrn assured
him.

Chapter 2
     
     
     
    The incessant bickering of the nobles drove
Prince Janus to distraction. They stood before his father’s court
and pleaded for favors like back alley beggars or tried to position
themselves to improve their social standing, but when Aurelia
needed them to protect their own cities, they could not be counted
on to do even that much.
    For a year the Collective magicians had
terrorized the kingdom with great success. They would lay waste to
a fort or a Kenzai outpost, and then disappear as quickly as they
came. Usually they kept their attacks limited to military targets,
but every few weeks they would grow bold and raid a city just to
show that they could. The only advantage that the kingdom held was
the magicians’ lack of manpower. They could attack any place in the
kingdom seemingly appearing from nowhere and disappearing just as
quickly, but they lacked the bodies necessary to occupy and hold
those outposts that they seemed to take such delight in attacking
without spreading their numbers too thin, so the kingdom could
always take them back though there was little left once the
magicians were done.
    Worse than the loss of buildings and
resources was the effect that it had on the commoners. They were
frightened for their lives and their confidence in the nobility to
protect them was waning. As sentiments against the nobility grew
the poor sheep would eventually throw their lot in with the
magicians to regain that feeling of safety, no matter how false,
then the crown and its loyal servants would be crushed.
    What were the nobles’ responses to these
attacks? What was his father’s response to a danger that could take
his kingdom if nothing were done to stop it? It was to do nothing
and live in fear! They wanted to fortify larger garrisons and
abandon smaller ones altogether in favor of waiting for the
magicians under Janus’ control to complete their training before
considering their next move. It was ludicrous to think that giving
up ground without a fight could be considered anything other than
an admission of defeat and relying on Janus’ collared magicians to
rout the Collective sent the wrong message.
    They needed to be more aggressive. That
damned sorcerer had a vision of death coming from Wolfsbane in the
east nearly two months ago. His father should be bolstering his
army by conscripting able-bodied men and preparing to march them
east now, but the old man refused to listen to reason. He believed
that it was too risky to move the army without hard proof, but when
the sorcerer served as the king’s adviser for decades he had no
trouble acting on Sane’s premonitions.
    The truth was there, but Janus did not want
to admit it. His father, the king, was soft on the magician threat.
Perhaps it was because the sorcerer had been a trusted ally for so
long or because his second son, Byrn, was a magician, but whatever
the reason it was clear that the old man was putting the entire
kingdom at great risk for his misplaced sentimentality.
    Janus had no such notions of weakness when it
came to the wizards. If he were in charge, then he would amass all
of the kingdom’s armies under his banner and march them to
Wolfsbane without a second thought. He would use all of the
collared magicians from the domains against their own kind. Then
when the battle was won and the magician threat was no more; he
would execute the domain magicians too. It was almost too tempting
to keep them as a military force like he kept Kennath Altermas as
his personal bodyguard, but it would be far safer for the kingdom
as a whole to be rid of all of the domain magic users especially
after they had learned so