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  More than a Wizard

  by

  M. Lee Madder

  More than a Wizard

  Copyright © 2017 M. Lee Madder & Writers’ Ink

  All Print Rights and First electronic publishing rights: January 2017

  All rights are reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded, or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s or Writers’ Ink permission.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Published in the United States of America.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Also by M. Lee Madder ~

  More than a Wizard

  Should. Will. Can.

  Should Corrie trust Sverr? Will she? Can she?

  Months ago, Corrie fled the Prime Wizard’s prison. When he sends guards to re-capture her, the Norther swordsman Sverr helps her escape. She helps him escape the soldiers who want to arrest him for an assassination. They escape together after burning down an inn.

  When she awakes with spell-binding cords on her, she feels betrayed by Sverr. But he convinces Corrie that he needs her help to rescue his brother, now imprisoned by the same Prime Wizard who had used her for his black spells. His brother, also a wizard, will be undergoing the same blood-letting that Corrie had faced.

  Will Corrie help Sverr and his brother? Sverr’s plan is a convoluted scheme that involves her return to the prison from which she had escaped.

  Yet she agrees. And is rewarded when Sverr helps her discover that her magic is much more powerful than she’d thought. He believes that she is a Bane Wizard.

  Sverr’s plan will put her back in bonds and offered as a trade for his brother, with a tricksy denouement that should result in her freedom. Should. Will it? Can it?

  Corrie commits to trusting Sverr and his plan. She will trust him. The question remains: Can she trust him?

  Chapter 1

  Never had the foreboding been this strong.

  Not when bandits killed her brother while he guarded the baron’s outpost.

  Not when slavers came to Lesser Creek and took away half the crofters. They had missed Corrie because she gathered moss for an herbal infusion and was miles away.

  Not when her mother died.

  Not even even Lord Hardraste’s troops seized her on the word of a witchfinder.

  The premonition skimmed along Corrie’s nerves. Tension shook her hands. Her mind scattered into a dozen different hiding places. So distracted was she that Pagsey snapped at her several times to clear the empty tankards and bowls from the taproom.

  Corrie kept her head down as she worked the taproom. She survived by keeping her head down, her eyes hidden by her ragged mop of hair.

  She slid past the tapster and glanced around for the empties she needed to wash. This late, only a few people lingered. Two travelers leaned on the bar, questioning Mirkell about the state of the roads, the winter-mud not yet frozen. Three men still sat at a corner table, drinking and dicing. That scrawny merchant would push on to Verdeneth come morning. The ostler Ranulf warmed himself by the fire. Near the kitchen, eating alone, a swordsman in soaked leathers dripped rainwater onto the rough planks.

  Corrie gave the swordsman a look askance as she slid back into the taproom after taking the first tray of empties. She supposed he was good-looking, but she had to mop up that rainwater before she could sweep up after everyone left. Then she had the kitchen to finish before she climbed to her own pallet tucked under the attic’s eaves.

  The swordsman still scooped up greasy slurry with bread, so she passed him by. First she went to Ranulf. He gave up his bowl with a smirk and a snatch at her skirt. She whisked herself away. She scowled at his play, but her down-bent face and straggling hair hid her dislike.

  Ranulf scowled himself. “Aw, Corrie, lighten up. Ya gotta hev a little fun.”

  He’d been after her the whole week she’d been here. She did what she always did. She ignored him.

  When she collected the merchant’s bowl, he didn’t acknowledge her presence. He focused on Chael, who pretended to scrub his table. Corrie knew the maid’s plan. Over the past four months she’d heard similar plans from similar tavern whores. They would tempt coins from a man for a night’s work. This rail-thin man eyed Chael’s ample bosom. If his gaze lifted to the whore’s mouth and saw the boil festering there, he might hesitate to open his purse and his trews. Or he might not. During the past week, Chael’s boils and pus-filled sores hadn’t turned off the other men who wanted to ream her. The wench had a tidy stash of coins as proof.

  She glanced at the swordsman again. He had finished eating. Chair tilted back on two legs, he fished inside his split tunic. He seemed like black ice. Black leathers slicked by the rain. Golden hair darkened by the rain and slicked back to reveal a raptor’s sharp angles. Black hilt to his sword and the five knives she had counted. Glacial eyes when she encountered his gaze.

  She ducked her head and flushed that she’d been caught looking. She gathered his bowl without trouble. When she would have taken the tankard, his hand snaked past hers.

  He downed the remains of his ale then set it down hard. “Another.”

  Corrie glanced at Chael. The whore was territorial about serving drinks. Chael, though, had plumped herself onto the merchant’s lap.

  “Why are you waiting? Get me another.”

  Norther accent, as out of place in these plains as she was. Startled, Corrie lifted her head.

  If he hadn’t been glaring at her—testy at her hesitation, or if power hadn’t flared in her—giving warning of trouble to come, her mistake in revealing her eyes might have passed unnoticed.

  “Shite!” he burst out.

  Shocked, Corrie jerked back. Her hand knocked the tankard. It rolled. She grabbed for it, but off the table it went.

  Only it didn’t crash to the floor. He caught it, moving so fast she saw only a blur.

  His pale eyes never left hers as he returned the tankard to the tabletop.

  And Corrie finally remembered to duck her head. For weeks and months she had hidden her betraying eyes—only to ruin her cover with one incautious look.

  She expected the swordsman to curse her as a witch or damn her and tell her to get away. Hadn’t she spent months in Hardraste’s prison cell, captured by a lord who wanted his Prime Wizard to tame her power to his will? One of the lord’s pet wizards had cut her hair for proof of what she was. Then he’d used the shorn hair in a spell. That came before the worse, when the Prime had tapped her blood for his dark spells.

  The goddess Frigga’s mystery had protected her, though. Not one of the wizards had suspected she was more than a witch.

  “
Get me another ale. And don’t spill it,” the swordsman groused. As if he cared nothing for seeing the power flash in her eyes.

  Startled anew, Corrie again lifted her head. Her gaze collided with his. Ice-blue eyes, as biting as the wind that scoured the mountainous Norther lands.

  “Long day, foul roads, and more tomorrow. Get me another, wench.”

  She seized the offending tankard and scurried to the long plank on barrels that served as the bar. While Mirkell filled the tankard, Corrie’s power eased back into hiding. Yet she felt the tapster’s heavy scowl, and the two travelers also stared at her. She didn’t betray herself again, just kept her head down, her hair over her eyes. She sensed more than saw the tankard come down before her.

  Chael elbowed her out of the way. “Stop doin’ me job.”

  Corrie didn’t defend herself. She followed Chael back to the swordsman’s table, where she’d left the bowls she had collected. The whore gave the man an eyeful of breasts as she delivered the ale. He never looked Corrie’s way as she scooped up the bowls and headed for the corner table and the three men.

  When the men had arrived, before the rains that came with sunset, she had reckoned the well-kept gear and warriors’ horses meant soldiers. They didn’t bristle with weapons, though, not the way soldiers and mercenaries did. They talked quietly, not at all like the laughing and singing and joking that soldiers on leave did. They certainly weren’t journeymen, drifting from village to village, seeking work for their craft. The steady dicing had her thinking they were soldiers.

  For all that her brother became one, she hadn’t grown up around soldiers. During her weeks in the dungeons, suffering under the Prime Wizard’s foul spells, she had had nothing to do but watch the soldiers on guard. They diced day and night—when they weren’t beating the rebellious or raping whoever caught their attention.

  Corrie escaped the abuse. Blue-white eyes, wild hair, her power shackled by the rune-etched copper chains, she was still no easy victim. The Prime Wizard’s use of her blood gave them the first fear of her, and she used that fear to protect herself. Eventually, she used their fear to cause her escape.

  The foreboding that had ridden her since mid-afternoon shot an arrow of shock down her spine. She stumbled a step before she reached the men’s table. She’d had no time to cast a guarded spell to divine the danger. If Prime Enstigorr tracked her, any unguarded spell would draw him all the more quickly to her.

  The premonition had flared near the Norther. These men triggered a stronger omen.

  They stopped dicing as she stopped by the table. She picked up one bowl, another. When she reached across for the third, the man opposite snared her arm.

  “What have we here?”

  “Let go.” Her voice croaked from dis-use.

  “You’re a long-legged thing. Think you can take me and my mates?”

  “No.” She tugged her caught arm as his fellows laughed. Corrie didn’t want to call to Mirkell for help. She’d worked here a bare seven-night, not long enough to earn his good will. Chael had his ear first—and very likely his bones. Chael didn’t want Corrie around, even if her scruff work didn’t often bring her into the taproom. “Let me go,” she asked hoarsely. “Chael will do you.”

  “We’re not here for Chael,” the man said as his two mates joked about where they wanted to do her.

  Something wasn’t right. More than a foreboding warned her. And scared her. The man who clutched her arm wasn’t laughing. He sat sober, tense. She didn’t dare lift her head to read him. That would unveil her eyes, and with her rising panic, power would flare them to opalescence.

  She twisted her arm again.

  “We’re not here for Chael,” he repeated. “We came to find somebody. I think that somebody is you.”

  Hope drained away. She risked a look.

  He had waited for that exposure of her eyes. Seeing them, he nodded once, a signal, for the man to her left stood.

  He grabbed a hank of her dark hair and jerked her head up. A swipe of his other hand shoved the rest of her ragged mop out of her face—and away from her opaline eyes. Corrie tried to block the upsurge of power. If it flared, they would know for certain.

  “Look what we’ve found,” the third man crowed. “A witch. Can’t be nothing but with those eyes. Who wants a look at the witch?”

  “No!”

  “Witch-eyes,” the first said calmly. His gaze still tangled with hers. “Witch-eyes, so you’re a witch.”

  “I’m not a witch!” Desperation lifted her voice. She didn’t feel the power surge. How could he see her power if it wasn’t surging? She couldn’t hear any sound behind her. The whole of the taproom seemed focused on them.

  He twisted her arm, revealing the shackle scars around her wrists. “Witch, who was found once but got away.”

  When he reached into his vest, the premonition cried warning. Corrie strained away. She saw a flash of black in his hand; she felt the darkness of it. Then he clapped his hand on her forearm. The flash of black fastened upon her like a leech. She howled and jerked, twisted, writhed. It tasted of power, but ice-cold, warped. He had her wrists in both hands again, but she could only stare at her forearm. Blackness swirled beneath her skin, then nothing, not the wrongness of it, not even its ice.

  She knew that ice. When Prime Enstigorr conjured with the blood dripping from her veins, the power ate into her in the same way. This ice did not work from an open wound. Her skin didn’t seem penetrated. Whatever he had placed on her had vanished.

  “I am not a witch,” she insisted. It wasn’t a lie. She was more powerful than any witch—and more shackled than one. With their hands on her, she couldn’t use power. It would rebound on her. As long as she had to dam her power, denial was her only hope. “Let me go. You’re wrong. I’m just plain folk, not a witch. Please, someone help me!”

  “Witch. And they won’t help. I know who you are. There’s a fat reward for your return. We’ve been tracking you for weeks. Thought you hid it, didn’t you? Not good enough, though. Not when Enstigorr made a charm from the last of your blood.”

  Black power, with her own blood used against her. “Odin, help me!”

  “Aye, there’s the eyes. Opal now—but you can’t use that power, can you, not without hurting yourself?” He released one arm. “Keep hands on her, Reigel. Weir, get the cords.”

  Weir hauled up his pack and dug into it. He had to be looking for spell-binding cords, the only way to control her power.

  Her mind dashed about—and Corrie remembered her chore.

  She threw a bowl at Weir. She clawed at the hand grasping her arm. Reigel jerked her hair. She cried out but kept clawing—and twisted her body into the third man still digging for the cords. She shoved hard. He toppled out of his chair.

  Reigel jerked her hair again. Then he dropped a hand to her neck and squeezed.

  And the first man, calm as ever, snared her clawing hand.

  Throttled, Corrie kicked at Reigel. She couldn’t see Weir. If he got a cord around her wrist, the spell-binding that locked down her power would tame her for them.

  Rough hands bruised her wrists. Her throat hurt. She could barely breathe. She sensed movement on her right and knew Weir was getting up. She tried to kick the chair. She tried to shove the table. She writhed against Reigel, praying he would not tighten his grip anymore. Black verged her vision. Her chest burned with the need for air. If she passed out—.

  The three men stilled. The choke hold eased, and the roaring in her ears subsided. The pain and the blackness receded. Corrie slowly realized their focus had shifted away from her. Their grips slackened, enough to let her breathe, not enough to break and escape.

  She twisted the barest inches to see the reason she hadn’t passed out.

  The Norther stood a few feet away. His hands rested on his swordbelt. He had an easy “hail fellow, well-met” smile. But his eyes glittered like mirror shards.

  “She asked you to let her go. You should.”

  The first m
an stood. The stretch on her arms increased. “Go stick that beaky nose of yours somewhere else. We got business here.”

  “Use the whore. Let this one go. If you can’t pay, I’ll drop the coins for you.”

  “We ain’t after a whore,” Reigel said. “We’re after a witch. This witch.” His hand left her waist. Corrie thought he reached for his own sword.

  “Go back to your own business,” the first man barked.

  “I have a dislike of the odds you’re giving her.” That Norther accent cut like ice. “Three to one, and you’re all bigger than she is.”

  “You think you’re going to even the odds?”

  “What business is it of yours?” Reigel snapped.

  “Maybe I need a witch, too.”

  The first man dropped her hands. Corrie grabbed the hand on her throat, but she couldn’t pry his fingers loose. Reigel wouldn’t let go, but he dragged her around so he could get better eyes on the swordsman. “Damn, Weir, get the effing cords.”

  Weir bent to retrieve the pack that had fallen to the floor.

  They had hunted her. They knew what the powered could do. If Reigel released her, she could burn him to ash. Unless they got the cords on her.

  “Weir, with me,” the first man said as he ranged around the table. To the swordsman he held his hands out, waist high and inches from his sword, a gesture of appeasement which could easily turn to attack. Weir followed but hung back a step.

  Mirkell remained behind his bar. Chael had escaped to the kitchen, but the cook Pagsey had hefted her girth away from her hearth to stand in the doorway and watch. The travelers leaned elbows on the bar and kept drinking. The merchant had sidled away to the fire, near Ranulf. They would all watch the Norther be killed and her dragged off in spell-bane cords.

  “The witch bounty is ours,” the first man said. “This one escaped from Hardraste late last spring. Helped a half-dozen go with her. We got them back. Now we’ve got her.”