Witchmaster: The Guildmaster Saga, #5

By C.E. Murphy

The safe, predictable life Rasim al Ilialio once knew is in shambles. It isn't exactly his fault—he didn't mastermind the fires that have struck his beloved home city of Ilyara, or the poisoning of Northland lakes, or the kidnapping of a nomadic prince—but his quick thinking did see the patterns that linked all of those terrible events together. Small conspiracies to hold power all over the continent are leading to a terrible uprising against his home city...

 

...and the worst of it is coming from within Ilyara itself.

 

Now, betrayed by those he trusted, Rasim has one last insurmountable task: stop a regime change that will shake Ilyara to its core, and root out the source of a rot that goes back to before he was even born. But there are risks that Rasim never dreamed of, and reasons for Ilyara to follow the strict rules of magic that has shaped it for generations. With only his fellow journeymen Kisia and Desimi to help him, Rasim will finally learn the true danger of becoming...

 

...a Witchmaster.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C.E. Murphy
• Release date: Nov 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9781613171905

C.E. Murphy

C.E. Murphy is the author of more than twenty books—along with a number of novellas and comics. Born in Alaska, currently living in Ireland, she does miss central heating, insulation and—sometimes–snow but through the wonders of the internet, her imagination and her close knit family, she’s never bored or lonely. While she does travel through time (sadly only forward, one second at a time) she can also be found online at www.cemurphy.net or @ce_murphy on Twitter

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Kisia smelled the desert first.

They were still impossibly far from the Ilyaran basin, Rasim thought. Even at the height they skimmed through the sky, far higher than any ship’s mast could reach, the world below them was only ocean, with no land masses shadowing the horizon. But when Kisia exclaimed that she could smell the desert, Rasim straightened on the glasswing’s back and took a deep breath, trying to catch the dry flat scent of sun-baked sand.

Maybe he could. Maybe a prevailing wind coming off the desert carried Ilyaran sand up to where three Seamaster journeymen clung to the glittering spine of a fragile creature made of elemental air.

Glasswings lived in the sky, as real as a gust of wind, and most of the time, as hard to see. They were drawn to magic—Rasim was discovering a lot of terrifying things were drawn to magic—and when they incorporated into something visible, they were beautiful. Huge, dragonfly-like wings fluttered against the air as long, sinuous bodies caught the light in a thousand colorful prisms.

There wasn’t really room for three teenagers to fit on one’s back, but Rasim, Kisia and Desimi had been desperately hanging on for days now. They hadn’t had much to drink, had eaten even less, and none of them wanted to talk about what eliminating bodily waste entailed.

It was not, overall, a journey Rasim wanted to repeat. It was, though, much faster than even the swiftest Ilyaran ship, and time was of desperate essence. I still don’t smell it, he said on a dry throat. But I hope you’re right.

Kisia sniffed. Well, I guess I just smell better than you do.

Desimi, who rode at the front because he was biggest and the glasswing seemed to be able to carry him most easily directly between its wings, looked back at the other two with a guffaw swept away by the wind. None of us smell very good right now, Kees!

The short-haired girl was squished in the middle between the two boys, but still managed to elbow Desimi’s torso. That’s not what I meant!

"She probably still does smell better than we do," Rasim said through a grin. They were all unwashed and stinky, but thirteen-year-old boys somehow did seem to smell worse than fourteen-year-old girls.

The glasswing doesn’t have to fly us all the way to Ilyara, Kisia said fervently. Just to the river delta. It can dump us in, for all I care, as long as I get to wash.

Soon, Rasim promised.

You have no idea if it’ll be soon or not, Desimi muttered, but aside from brief bouts of conversation like this, none of them had the energy to talk a lot, much less bicker. The glasswing’s natural tendency was to fade back into the air, dissolving into something largely untouchable. Either Rasim or Desimi had to keep up a continuous use of sky witchery, the magic that allowed certain Ilyarans to control wind and air, to keep the glasswing beneath them.

Before a few months ago, neither of the boys, both raised in the water-magic-using Seamasters Guild, had been able to command sky witchery at all. Now, between the glasswing’s lightning-fast wingbeats and the tailwind they maintained, the trio had made impossibly good time in their race home.

I can smell the sand, Kisia said again, defiantly. Rasim, who didn’t really doubt her, straightened up a little more to see if a deeper breath would help him smell what she did.

Instead, for a heartbeat, he was shocked breathless at the expanse of ocean below them, at the curve of the earth, and the sheer emptiness of the world from this height. That shock had hit them all more than once as they flew. Although he knew he wouldn’t see anything, Rasim twisted around, searching for the continents and islands he knew were out there.

He had flown this high—or almost—once before, on the back of an enraged red dragon. Then, though, it had been across the Shenryalan steppes, far to the west of where they now flew. The steppes had been surrounded on all sides by mountains, making the plains like the bottom of a vast bowl. The rest of the world had been invisible beyond the mountainous boundaries. Even that had been impossibly huge, but it didn’t compare to the ocean’s endless width. The clouds seemed small, compared to the ocean, and their shadows flickered across the rolling water like mirages.

Sunset had begun scattering through the clouds and water alike, streaks of red and gold playing with the shadows and dancing over the ocean’s surface. During the nights, they kept an eye on the stars to navigate. Now Rasim glanced upward, wondering if there were enough of them out yet to tell them where they were, but only one or two shone palely in the fading blue sky. He’d hoped they wouldn’t be stuck on the glasswing another night, but wasn’t sure Kisia’s nose would lead them to land soon enough.

There. Desimi spoke with his gaze on the southwestern horizon. Land ho. Kisia was right.

Kisia sniffed again, this time indignantly. Of course I was right.

Rasim grinned and leaned around her, looking toward where Desimi had indicated. The faintest smudge discolored the ocean, although within minutes—hardly any time, compared to how long a ship took—visible greenery spilled across the fast-approaching land mass. Just as fast, that greenery faded to desert, touching the coast here and there. Mostly, though, the desert ran deep into the continent, such an unbroken expanse of pale sand that all three journeymen fell silent in awe.

I knew the desert was big, Desimi whispered as the sand, now below them, went blue with rising moonlight. "I just didn’t know it was…this big."

Rasim nodded silently. They were more or less following the continent’s coast now, riding gusts of unexpected warmer air that rose from the land below. The vast delta their home city sat on opened onto the sea, so they didn’t have to fly into the desert. Still, seeing it spreading endlessly beneath them was somehow a shock.

They had all grown up knowing that the patch of deep vegetation that Ilyara had developed in turned to desert where the river’s waters couldn’t reach. They had all sailed the Ilyaran Sea, and had seen the desert stretching out beside them on that journey.

It was different, seeing its breadth from the sky. Seeing how it stretched so far into the continent that the southerly border couldn’t be seen, or really even imagined. Like the ocean, Rasim thought. Once the Wafiya, the now-fallen Ilyaran flagship, left the sight of land, the rest of the world faded away. The desert was like that. Once its borders were breached, there was really nothing else. But he knew the sea in a way that he didn’t know the endless sandy dunes. Do you think the Stonemasters know how big it is? I mean… He faded off, not sure how to put what he meant in words.

You mean like, do they spend as much time studying it and traveling it and learning it as we do the ocean? Probably. Desimi sounded so thoughtful it was almost critical.

Given that Desimi hardly ever thought at all, Rasim decided he shouldn’t object to the critical tone. Especially when the bigger boy, still gazing out at the desert spilling off to their left, added, "I’m beginning to see why the king wants a guild of witches who study all the magics. We’d be studying the landscape, too, wouldn’t we? Learning about how everything works together. I know the desert is there, he said impatiently. I know how to live for a little while in it, but I didn’t even know how big it was."

Kisia twisted her head around to give Rasim a brief, big-eyed glance. He widened his own eyes in turn, a silent exchange of surprise and agreement in those two quick looks. Desimi had been born with an extraordinary talent for water witchery, the kind of power that practically guaranteed him a ship of his own and a crew to command. He had always been arrogant and obnoxious in his power, showing very little inclination to even learn how to be a good captain, never mind think beyond the Seamasters Guild and consider the rest of Ilyara. Hearing frustration in his voice about things he didn’t know was simply astonishing.

And neither Rasim nor Kisia were going to say a single word out loud to express their amazement, because Desimi was bigger than both of them put together and would probably push them off the glasswing if they had the nerve to mention they were amazed he was using his brain. Rasim grinned into Kisia’s shoulder at the idea, and took his gaze from the endless desert on their left to watch the dark blue Ilyaran Sea stretching below them on their right.

Another continent lay farther yet to the right, still so far away that even from the glasswing’s back, Rasim couldn’t see it across the sea’s white-capped breadth. He wished he knew what was happening at its heart, where the slaver city of Moran had crumbled under a rebellion he’d accidentally started. But he and the others had been far away from any standard trade routes that might bring news for weeks now. The best they could do was hurry on to Ilyara learn what they could, and share what they knew with the Ilyaran king.

He’d been running through thoughts like that for days, ever since they had flown away from the wrecked Wafiya. He had no more answers now than he ever had, and eventually his circling thoughts spiraled into silence. For a while he slept as much as he could on the uncomfortable, dragonfly-like back. Desimi woke him in the middle of the night to take over the air witchery that kept the glasswing’s attention, and Rasim watched the black water below gradually turn grey as dawn chased them. After what felt like hours of glazed watching, he finally realized he’d been staring blankly down at rich green foliage for a while.

We’re home! The excitement in his voice woke the other two. The delta is ahead of us!

Oh, thank Siliaria, Kisia breathed. Let’s go home.

Let’s land, Desimi said at almost the same time. His shoulders stiffened as Rasim and Kisia both said, Land? as if he’d started speaking another language.

We’re exhausted. All of us. And we don’t know what’s going on in Ilyara. If it’s bad…

Kisia’s sigh matched Rasim’s own. Then we should be rested before we go try to fix it.

A sudden laugh rose in Rasim’s throat and he tried to choke it off. It ended up being an awful snort of a sound instead, one that first startled, then amused the other two enough that they were all abruptly giggling with hysterical weariness. Kisia, after a startled heartbeat, grinned. "Because of course three unwashed journeymen who haven’t heard the news in six weeks will just sweep in and fix anything that four Guildmasters, their guilds, and a king can’t handle, right?"

A new whoop of laughter broke from Rasim’s chest while Desimi simply bent forward over the glasswing and howled his disbelief against the beast’s glittering thorax. Kisia, feeble with her own laughter, pounded on his back. Get this thing to bring us to the ground before we fall off from laughing too hard.

Rasim thought it was more likely they’d lose control of the witchery that kept it solid and all plummet to their deaths, but that didn’t seem like the right thing to say. Instead, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, he sent the wind around then on a slow arc toward the ground, and after several minutes, they finally tumbled off the glasswing’s back onto soft, rich, delta earth.

The glasswing leaped back into the air, back hunched, then flexing, stretching itself like the weight off its shoulders was a tremendous relief. Leaves and dust sprayed with the rapid flutter of its wings, and it darted in a small circle above them, obviously pleased to be unencumbered again. Rasim called, Thank you, to the translucent creature, and it flexed one more time before rushing higher into the sky. All the witchery he and Desimi had been holding to keep it with them faded, and between one blink and the next, the extraordinary beast disappeared, once again no more visible than the wind.

Both boys collapsed into the dirt, leaving Kisia standing above them with an air of exasperation. "Fine, fine, I’ll get fish and fruit and water. Don’t mind me, doing all the work here. At Rasim’s croak of protest, she laughed. No, I’m kidding. I’ll look for all of it. You two have been using witchery for days on end. Sleep. I’ll be back in a while."

Rasim said, No, I’ll help, and the next thing he knew, a stack of deliciously-cooked white fish lay wrapped in leaves within a small stone cairn that Kisia had clearly built. He made a guilty sound at the effort she’d put in while the boys slept, but kept it quiet so the others wouldn’t waken, although they both did before he was done eating. None of them spoke much as they ate. Without discussing it, they went into the water together to swim up the Ilyaran delta as secretively as possible. Witchery gave them the air they needed, and the speed: it wasn’t long before they surfaced in the harbor, barely rising above eye level in the water like a trio of curious seals.

For a few seconds none of them really understood what they were seeing, and then Desimi gave a choked sound that echoed the feeling in Rasim’s heart.

The Ilyaran harbor was filled with ships, every single one of them burned to the water-line.

CHAPTER TWO

Instantly, without speaking, all three journeymen submerged again. They always carried enough air under water to speak, but this time all of them made larger bubbles around themselves than usual, as if they all expected to have a lot to say. Except no one spoke after all: instead they frowned worriedly around the harbor from under water, comparing what they’d seen on the surface with what lay below.

Nothing had been scuttled: there were no ships on the harbor floor, just the burned hulls bobbing too high in the water without the rest of the ships to weigh them down. Rasim had spent weeks trying to anticipate the worst disasters that could have befallen Ilyara. Moran could have, somehow, moved more quickly than expected and an army could have descended upon the unprepared city. Perhaps Prince Lorens of the Northlands, who had been acting against them for all the time Rasim had known him, had sailed to Ilyara even more quickly than the journeymen could fly on the glasswing. Maybe the pirate captain and lady of the Islands, Donnin, had brought her army to Ilyara, although she was, at least in theory, an ally.

All of those things were possible, but none of them seemed very likely. Which left only one probable explanation for the burned ships at the harbor’s surface: Ilyara faced trouble from within.

He didn’t—couldn’t—know for sure, but he suspected the Sunmasters’ Guild of treachery. Like many other sea witches, he had only recently learned that once, the four magic-using Ilyaran guilds had rotated through the palace as advisors and teachers to the royal family. In his lifetime, though, only the Sunmasters had been the royal diplomats, counselors, and tutors. They had come to power nearly a hundred years ago, when Isidri, once Guildmaster to the Seamasters, had been a girl…and they had never let it go. There were reasons for that, even good reasons, but the fact remained that one guild had rooted itself where four used to pass through.

By itself, that was predictable, maybe, but not necessarily evil, Rasim thought. Wrong, but not evil.

But almost fourteen years ago, Ilyara had been stricken by a great fire, one that the Sunmasters had failed to subdue. There were reasons for that, too: the king, who usually guided major works of magic within the city, had been away from Ilyara at the time, and the guild had been unable to organize without that guidance.

Unless, of course, they had chosen not to, rather than been unable to.

Rasi. Desimi spoke in a low voice, dragging Rasim out of his thoughts. Are we going to stay at the bottom of the harbor forever?

He took a sharp breath and shook his head. We should go in through the shipyards, he said in an equally low voice. The other two nodded, and as if by agreement, used only the very minimum witchery necessary to swim deep, as close to the harbor’s bottom as they could manage. Given the state of the boats above, Rasim didn’t really think anybody was searching the harbor for new arrivals, but Ilyaran waters were notoriously clear. Depth at least offered a measure of obscurity, and Rasim, heart hammering with worried anticipation, was afraid they could use every bit of protection they could get.

The shipyards backed up to the guildhall, a protected segment of the harbor that let shipwrights work year round and still return to the hall easily at night. The journeymen swam through them together, toward a ladder worked into the sea walls, and scrambled out with the ease of long habit.

For the first moments above the surface, all Rasim could think about was the heat and the noise. It had been months since they’d been in Ilyara’s humid delta heat. Rasim had thought the Shenryalan steppes were cold, but now, for the first time, he thought Ilyara was hot.

Desimi, just behind him climbing up the ladder, exhaled in surprise, too. It’s hot.

Kisia, ahead of them both, snorted quietly under all the distant sound. "This isn’t hot. Try baking with the ovens roaring in mid-summer. That’s hot."

This is hot too, Rasim breathed. For a moment, he wished he’d come out of the water wet, but sea witches really only got wet if they meant to. He took the last steps up to the shipyard’s docks, wiped his hand across his forehead, and frowned around at the shipyards in confusion.

There were no shipwrights at work. It looked like there hadn’t been for weeks, maybe months. Rasim could see ships in the same stage of completion they’d been when they had left almost half a year ago. But beyond the shipyard there was shouting, cries of anger and pain, orders being called, and beyond that, a roar that seemed to run through the whole of Ilyara. Kisia whispered, "What is going on?" not as if she expected an answer, but as if she couldn’t keep the words in.

Nothing good. Desimi took a few steps forward, then paused to look back at the other two. Well, come on. We’re not going to learn anything standing here.

I’m not sure I want to know what's going on, Rasim said lowly.

The big journeyman gave him a dark grin. Me either, but we didn’t come this far to run away now, did we?

Nasira was right, Rasim said as he and Kisia joined the bigger boy. The three of us together are determined to get in trouble.

Did she say that? Kisia sounded oddly pleased.

Something like it. The shipyard was separated from the main hall grounds by a gated wall, mostly to keep very young apprentices from doing themselves harm on the building site, and Rasim thought he was prepared for whatever he would see when he pushed the gate open.

He was wrong.

Whatever he had imagined for their return to Ilyara, the guildhall wracked by chaos wasn’t it. People lay in temporary beds and stretchers all over the huge open grounds, while Seamaster-clad healers moved between them with grim expressions. The temperature dropped noticeably as the journeymen stepped between the shipyard and the main grounds, with unexpected shadows providing relief from the heat. Rasim’s gaze went upward to find tremendous canvases pulled taut between the hall and its outer walls, dramatically reducing the sunlight that fell on injured and dying Ilyarans.

Desimi whispered, "Siliaria’s tears. What…?"

They’re at war, Kisia said just as quietly. Ilyara is at war.

Rasim’s voice cracked. "With who?"

Everyone’s brown, like us, Desimi said after a few grim seconds. Either they’re not healing foreign soldiers in the guildhall, or…

Or we’re fighting ourselves, Kisia whispered. Ilyarans are killing each other. Rasim. She hiccuped his name, fear carried in it. Rasim, do you think the Sunmasters…?

Even Rasim barely knew how to finish that question. He could hardly imagine that the Sunmasters—or anyone—might have actually tried to overthrow King Taishm, but obviously something terrible was happening. If they did, at least we’re not letting them win without a fight.

Kisia, gazing at the injured and dying ahead of them, said, Is that a good thing? as they edged into the makeshift hospital. No one had noticed them yet, and Rasim wasn’t sure anyone would. There were so many people, so many injured, and so many sea witches struggling to help them. The healers’ arm of the Seamasters had never been large, and was obviously taxed far past its limits. Sea witches who Rasim knew had never healed anyone were among those trying to help, but there’d been a reason Master Usia had been so pleased to discover that the fourth-year journeyman Sesin had a talent for healing. It just wasn’t common, even among seamasters.

There’s pressure around his heart. Kisia had stopped beside a too-pale Ilyaran, who lay with his eyes crushed shut and sweat pouring off his body. I know how to squeeze a heart. I don’t know if I know how to… Witchery flowed, cautious and gentle as she tried to figure out what was wrong inside the man and offer him some relief. It’s hard, she said in a tight voice. The heart is in a sac of water, did you know that? And there’s too much water around his, and there’s nowhere to pull it out from. I don’t know how.

Diffuse it. Desimi crouched beside them, his hands spread but no power washing from him. The body is full of liquid, Kees. If you can tell the difference between the heart sac and the rest of the blood, you can thin it out until it’s back in his blood. I can’t do it. Sesin tried to explain it to me when you were poisoned, but all I could do was slow the blood in your body a little. Just take your time.

But how do you know? Kisia’s voice broke with fear. What if I make it worse?

I don’t think you can. The man spoke, every word breathy and difficult to hear. "Two witches have looked at me already and gone on because they