The Mages' Winter of Death: The Healers of Glastamear: Volume Two Read online

  The Mages’ Winter of Death

  The Healers of Glastamear

  Volume Two

  By Charles deMontel Williamson

  This is a work of fantasy fiction. Similarities between its characters and any real people are a coincidence.

  This is part of a series available from Kindle. The previous volume was the Pogrom of Mages, and while the stories can be read separately, most people would enjoy reading them in order. I have included a list of spells and characters introduced in the previous volume.

  Please respect the author by using this work only for your personal enjoyment.

  This work is dedicated to my wonderful wife Diana. Without her help this and my other books would not be possible.

  The spells of Glastamear known by Michael Elf-Blood as this book begins

  Healing

  Amnesia release causes the patient to forget the past two weeks.

  Calm soul reduces anxiety.

  Cancer reach can remove cancerous growths.

  Clear lungs cures contagious lung disease.

  Detect all manna will show the presence of mages.

  Detect life will highlight all nearby animals and humans.

  Ease of passing reduces pain and suffering for terminal conditions.

  Fever search allows the caster to detect people with an illness that causes fever.

  Healing hands cures injuries.

  Hear the heart murmur improves the hearing of the caster.

  Heart stop will stop the caster’s heart permanently.

  Knit bones is used to realign and repair broken bones.

  Night surgery allows the caster to see in low light.

  Perfect recall allows the caster to remember anything they read in the past.

  Surgery sleep causes the patient to fall into a deep sleep.

  Water

  Float allows the caster to walk on water.

  No stink removes the odor of the caster.

  Open all locks can be used to open mechanical or magical locks.

  Quench fire magic causes fire mages to lose casting power for a time.

  Shell skin strengthens the skin against insect bites and small cuts.

  Still waters will block waves for a certain radius even in a storm at sea.

  Submerge manna will hide the manna of the caster.

  Transparency causes the caster to be invisible.

  Water breath allows the caster to stay underwater for long periods.

  Fire

  Asbestos robe prevents fire damage

  Fireless heat allows you to heat something like food without building a fire.

  Torch provides light.

  Winter blanket warms an area around the caster.

  Earth

  Copy metal shapes allows the caster to copy any metal shape.

  Dwarfish strength allows the caster to carry very heavy weights.

  Excavate digs a hole in the earth.

  Fast travel allows for travel between dwarfish travel rooms.

  Hide blades allows an elfish sword to become undetectable.

  Stone armor provides the caster with the equivalent of steel plate armor.

  Stone dome builds an impenetrable dome of force around the caster.

  Forest

  Alter form allows the caster to assume the form of any animal.

  Alter weight allows the caster to reduce his weight.

  Animal communicate allows the caster to communicate with animals.

  Become a Ki is a spell that allows Michael to assume the form of an eagle.

  Forest Vapor allows a fairy to pass through small holes.

  Speed crops is a fairy spell that makes plants grow faster.

  Characters in order of appearance in the Mages’ Winter of Death

  Lady Marsha is senior healer of Snowport. She leads the Snowport healers to a hiding place in the far north at Snow Trolls Fiord to avoid the pogrom that condemns all healers to death. In the winter and at great personal risk, she returns to Snowport to help control the epidemic of the white pneumonia.

  High Priest Adolfus Xian is appointed as high priest in Snowport to replace High Priest Carson who is banished to Swamp Ford for allowing the healers of Snowport to escape.

  King Richard the Vengeful, previously known as Richard of Ash Tree Ford, is officially King Richard the Twenty-seventh. He ordered the pogrom against all healing mages in Glastamear because he claimed that they murdered King Justin.

  Steven the Fifteenth, the Most Holy Son of Perry Ascendant, is the highest official of the Church of Perry Ascendant and the most powerful fire mage in Glastamear.

  High Priest Simon is the leader of the Southport clergy who allowed all of the local healers to go into exile while reporting to his superiors that he had them killed by drowning them at sea.

  Michael is an apprentice healer and mage who is also known as Michael Son-of-William when he pretends to be a merchant and as Michael Elf-Blood the hero of Gripton’s ancient promise. Michael is the only human mage who can preform all forms of magic. During the time covered by the Pogrom of Mages, he learns healing magic, fire magic, water magic, earth magic, and forest magic.

  Diana of Rock Point is the stunningly beautiful healer apprentice who Michael falls for when he rescues her. Michael and Diana wed on Mitchell Island in Diana’s hometown of Rock Point and move to the wealthy coastal city of Southport.

  Gripton is shaman of the Great Elves who traveled the star sea, and who in ancient times, helped in the bioengineering of humans, naiads, dwarves, fairies, and many other creatures of the planet Home under the star Blue Haven. He predicted two thousand years earlier that a human would someday be born with the power of a Great Elf.

  Lord and Lady Griffin are wealthy aristocrats in Southport Province who hold the first masked ball of the winter season in the city of Southport.

  Governor Jonathan and Lady Millie Talton are the governor of Southport Province and his aristocratic wife. Both become involved in Michael and Diana’s relief efforts to help those in the northern provinces during the Winter of Death.

  Sir James Neville is the son of the Baron of the Red Marshes and a fellow healer who is Michael’s best friend. Michael rescues him with Lady Agnes and two apprentices Herb and Gail from below the Great Temple of Westport. In Southport, Jim assumes the role of a guard for the wealthy merchant Michael Son-of-William and his wife Diana.

  The Oxbow Brothers are Jacob and Roger, and their non-healer older brothers Peter and Gregory. They were born in the village of Oxbow Narrows and were scheduled for execution when Michael rescued them at the town of Broken Arrow on the road to Southport. They are with Michael and Diana in Southport pretending to be their guards.

  Sir John Neville of the Red Marshes is the brother of Michael’s best friend Jim Neville. John decided to secretly practice healing at the town of Swamp Ford where High Priest Carson had been exiled.

  Henry Ironmaster is the uncle of the Oxbow brothers and the master of the foundry at the town of Oxbow Narrows in southern Hearthshire Province.

  Commander Farrier is the leader of the King’s Own Guards who are stationed in the city of Hearthshire Town. He becomes acting governor of the province after the death of the previous governor.

  Lady Agnes of Ice Castle is a member of the healers’ High Council who Michael rescues in Westport. She becomes a mentor to Michael.

  Sid is the owner of the Inn of Restful Repose of the Kindly Merchant at Sand Point, a small hamlet south of Snowport. He and Michael became friends when Michael gave him financial help to keep his inn going.

  Tob
ias Howardson is a merchant of Snowport who is a member of the same banking syndicate that Michael uses throughout Glastamear. He assisted with the relocation of the Snowport healers to the refuge at Rock Point.

  Mayor Tad Bookman of Snowport was an ally of Michael’s in getting the healers of Snowport to safety.

  Jake, David, and Marin are three healers at the refuge at Dragon Crag who are also experienced sailors. They man the cargo ship that Michael purchased, the Silver Trident, to deliver supplies for the island refuge.

  Alfred is the lead driver of snow-elk sleighs who Michael employs to get relief supplies to the large city of Briarton during the extreme cold and deep snow of the northern winter.

  Sir Gregory of Briarton is a successful merchant and banker in the prosperous city of Briarton, which is located in the most fertile agricultural area of Glastamear. He is the agent for King Richard, and his wife, Lady Breen, is the king’s cousin.

  Luke is the manager of the Houston Plantation that Diana and Michael purchase in eastern Southport Province.

  LOCATION

  Glastamear is a human kingdom on the planet Home under the star Blue Haven. The Kingdom of Glastamear is old by the standards of humans, over two thousand years old. It was the first homeland to the human species on the planet. The kingdom stretches from the perpetual ice of the White Mountains through the temperate climate of the breadbasket of the kingdom at Briarton Province and on to the south to the wealthy tropical area of Southport Province. Along the eastern border are the planet’s highest and most impassable mountains, the Eastern Barrier Mountains, and along the west and south are the Western and the Southern Seas.

  Humans refer to the original sapient inhabitants of the planet Home as dragons. They are a species of seldom seen and highly intelligent and enormous flying creatures with powerful magic. Dragons are nearly invulnerable and virtually immortal. The dragons welcomed the newcomers from a distant star when the Great Elves arrived twenty-eight centuries earlier in their starship, which still orbits the planet Home, and is now called Little Brother Moon by humans.

  These Great Elves made friends with the dragons who permitted them to help populate the planet using the elves great skill at genetic engineering. They created the many species now called the children of the elves. They designed each of their children by starting with elfish genetic material and modifying it to fit into specific environmental niches, and they gave each one a specific type of magic to best live in those niches. To the naiads of the tideland, they gave water magic, to the dwarves in their underground towns, they gave earth magic, and to the fairy folk of Fay Woods, they gave forest magic.

  When they created humans, they gave them healing magic because they were their only children who had short lives plagued with disease and violence. Humans invented warfare, and for two thousand years there have been only short periods in which none of the seven kingdoms of mankind have been at war. Because of the high death rate of their race, the Great Elves brought many other species down from their spacecraft to be used by their human offspring, including domestic animals and crops to make their lives easier.

  Along the coast of the Kingdom of Glastamear are three major cities. Snowport in the north is buried in snow every winter, and the frozen bay grounds its famous fishing fleet for three months. Northport is a larger city with a more temperate climate, and south of it is the wealthy southern city of Southport. Inland, the great walled city of Briarton is the dominant city for trade and agriculture in the kingdom’s temperate region, and to the south of it is the provincial capital of Hearthshire Town, also a major agricultural area. Both provinces provide food for the largest city on Home located high in the Mountains of Min.

  The great city of Min Hollow has both the compounds that house the Church of Perry Ascendant and the royal compound, which houses the king and his court. The city of over five hundred thousand humans is in the mountains in the northeastern part of the country and located at the only pass that connects Glastamear to the three kingdoms to the east. In the winter, Min Hollow cannot be reached from the other parts of Glastamear because of the heavy snowfalls and the constant danger of avalanches along the only road to the city.

  Prologue

  Fear gripped the country. Like an iron maiden that reached into every house in every settlement, it held the country immobile. In the north, the bitter storms of winter had stopped almost all travel, and in the south and central regions of Glastamear, royal soldiers blocked every road. They had orders to stop all travelers lest the fatal epidemic be further spread. Everywhere, citizens cursed the king and church in their fear and suffering. The king’s pogrom of the past summer and autumn had killed nearly all of the healers whose magic might have cured the terrible coughing and choking fevers of that winter of death. King Richard had assumed the throne by eliminating Great King Justin and most of his other heirs by poisoning their Perry’s Day feast and blaming the Healers’ Guild for their deaths.

  In two cities the death toll was low because surviving healers were secretly present among the population. In the northernmost city of Snowport, Lady Marsha, a master healer, and three other elderly healers were actively working to control the spread of the disease that was known as the white pneumonia because the first cases were seen in the villages of the White Mountain. The healers had opened three apothecary shops where a bitter but useless potion was sold to cure the deadly pneumonia. To be useful, customers were informed that it must be brewed and drunk immediately, even before the patient left the shop. As each customer drank the lemon, bitterroot, and rosemary potion, the healer mages who ran the shops cast clear lungs, an easy spell known to every apprentice healer and a reliable cure for most ailments of the lungs.

  The potions seemed to provide an instant cure, and everyone with a fever sought out their stores. Word spread to nearby villages and to the small towns of White Plains, and anyone sick who owned or could borrow either a sled or snowshoes headed for Snowport for the cure. These shops were not the only efforts to stop the epidemic. Healers using the spell fever search could identify anyone in a crowd who might be coming down with the sickness even before their first cough because the spell caused their faces to glow with the red of fever. The four secret healer mages shopped at the markets and went to every large gathering secretly casting clear lungs on those in need without anyone even recognizing their close call with death. Those who contracted the disease and were cured were immune to this form of coughing sickness.

  The only place in Snowport that received no healing was the Great Temple of Snowport. The High Priest Adolfus Xian had ordered the temple doors locked and forbidden any contact between his priests or his knight protectors and the general population. He hoped to weather the epidemic in safety, but that was not his fate. The white pneumonia was carried with every sneeze and stayed contagious on the surface of objects for weeks in the northern cold. Adolfus came down with the disease in the first week after he closed the temple. He survived, but each week thereafter, more priests and knight protectors succumbed, unaware that a cure was only a few blocks away.

  Three days travel by horse south of the city of Snowport was the much larger city of Northport where that past autumn the local residents had watched as scores of healers were flayed and burned in the square in front of the Great Temple of Northport. In the whole province of Northport, there was not one healer left to offer a true cure for the white pneumonia to the local citizens.

  The numerous dead were thrown into the street to be picked up by indentured criminals in permanent service to the crown. The bodies were tied to rocks, loaded on to cargo ships, and dumped into the Western Sea. The Temple was locked and barred, and no residents had seen the priests or the knight protectors in five weeks, although the people claimed they could hear ribald songs and the sounds of feasting coming from the temple precincts at night.

  Snow fell deep, and cold sea winds blew in that brutal winter. People in almost every household died. Even a trip to the neighborhood market to buy fresh fish
or salt cured pork was regarded with trepidation because of the risk of contagion. The anger and hatred toward the king and church grew as the death toll rose from one in ten to three in ten.

  It was the worst epidemic in the two thousand year history of the Kingdom of Glastamear because it was the first without healing magic. King Richard the Vengeful and the church’s highest leader, Steven the Fifteenth, had ordered the healers purged. Their actions had brought this spreading death upon the suffering kingdom. If they had not been locked in the Great Temple, many priests might have felt the daggers of their suffering neighbors of Northport.

  To the east in the fertile breadbasket of Glastamear was the large walled city of Briarton. It was the kingdom’s second largest and most prosperous city, but it did not escape the horror of the winter of death. Because of the restrictions on travel, food could not be brought in from where it was stored in the farm towns around the great city. While the travel ban had protected these villages and towns from the white pneumonia, at least a few cases had reached the city of Briarton before the closure. It spread.

  In the first month of the winter of death, the epidemic was in full force in the city of two hundred thousand residents. In the second month, food ran low for the general population and riots began. The government storerooms were looted and the governor was torn apart by the rioters. The angry crowds further spread the infection, and the furious residents of Briarton began to pile their dead in the square in front of the closed and locked precincts of the Great Temple of Briarton.

  The fireballs of the knight protectors, who were always fire mages of substantial power as well as armored knights, kept the citizens from direct attack on the temple and its storage rooms. Inevitably, once the food was gone, nothing could keep the starving citizens inside the city walls. They trampled the city guards and used the guards’ weapons to kill the royal troops at roadblocks as they spread out to every town in the fertile province. Only seven of ten of the citizens of Briarton would return to the once wealthy city, and no town in Briarton Province escaped the white pneumonia.