Trial of the Thaumaturge (Scions of Nexus Book 3) Read online

  Contents

  Trial of the Thaumaturge

  Front Matter

  Map

  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

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Author's Note

  Also by Gregory Mattix

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  TRIAL OF THE THAUMATURGE

  SCIONS OF NEXUS

  BOOK 3

  GREGORY MATTIX

  Trial of the Thaumaturge

  Copyright © 2019 by Gregory Mattix

  Cover art by dleoblack

  Map by Gregory Mattix

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and events are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or deceased, business establishments, events, locales is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  The pavilion reeked of death. Hours earlier, brave men had fought and died in the tent’s close confines, their blood soiling the rich Nebaran carpets as their lives drained away.

  Needlessly, and all for my sake.

  Sianna Atreus, rightful queen of Ketania, lay on her cot, clutching her maimed hand to her breast, and fought to hold back tears of pain, sorrow, and frustration. She was a prisoner of the Nebarans and in particular the evil fiend Nesnys, warlord of the invading army.

  Sunlight streamed through the gap of the tent flap, but Sianna paid it no mind. Her thoughts were still on the tragedy that had occurred the past evening. Her friends, Rafe and Creel, along with a number of other valiant men, had given their all to rescue her from the heart of the Nebaran army camp. Her rescuers might very well have succeeded, too, had not Nesnys reappeared from wherever she spent much of her time, bringing an abrupt end to the rescue attempt.

  The whole situation had been a trap, and Sianna had been helpless to do anything about it.

  She knew she wasn’t worth the loss of life for her sake. That was the cold, hard truth, with which she had come to terms during the agonizing hours since the disastrous nighttime rescue attempt. She was merely one inexperienced young woman, barely more than a girl, expected to ascend the throne and somehow miraculously salvage the kingdom from ruin. Her parents and brothers were dead, and all the weight of duty and expectations fell upon her untried shoulders. And hours earlier, a dozen brave and capable men had fought and either died or been taken prisoner, all for her sake—for their belief in the promise of a frightened young woman.

  Signs of the desperate fight had since been cleared away. The broken tentpole had been replaced, the tables and chairs righted, the corpses dragged away. Even the worst of the soiled rugs had been removed, yet the stench wouldn’t leave the tent. It still stank of death and of Sianna’s own vomit and charred flesh, where a hot brazier had cauterized the finger Nesnys had bitten off as punishment. The lingering odors alone made her want to be sick again. However, the contingent of guards filling the tent didn’t seem to be bothered by it overly much, busy heartily shoveling down their plates of breakfast.

  Added to all the tragic loss of life was Sir Edwin’s betrayal. The fact he’d shown cowardice in fleeing before Nesnys was a sin that was possibly forgivable. But what Sianna had a tougher time digesting was that his proclaimed love for her was a farce.

  How could any man whose love is true abandon his beloved to the hands of such a fiend?

  With such dark thoughts and the burning ache in her maimed hand plaguing her, she barely noticed the tent flap thrown aside until sunlight speared her eyes. Dark silhouettes loomed in the doorway.

  “Chain that wench up beside the other one till the warlord says differently,” someone ordered in a rough Nebaran voice. “A queen should be allowed a maidservant, eh?”

  “Sianna?”

  The second, familiar voice broke through Sianna’s miasma of bleak thoughts. She saw sunlight flash on blond hair, then two men were shoving a tall, slim woman toward her.

  “Iris?” Sianna could only watch with wide eyes, thinking for a moment she was hallucinating.

  Then her friend was in her arms, the two women clutching each other.

  “I’m so sorry we failed you, Sianna. Rafe and the others…” Iris choked back a sob.

  Sianna tried to ignore the men attaching a shackle from Iris’s ankle to the tentpole, joining her own there. Her friend’s pretty face was marred with bruises, one eye blackened and swollen, her lower lip split and crusted with dried blood. Iris hadn’t gone down without a fight, a fact that made her heart fill with a sudden surge of pride.

  “Sit beside me, Iris.” Sianna swung her legs off the cot to make space and clasped Iris’s hand when she sat down. “Oh, gods, how could you all be so foolish? She’s using me as bait for a trap, you know…”

  Her words devolved into unintelligible sobs, then Iris was holding her, stroking her hair as she had when she was a child.

  “Shhh. It’ll be all right, Sianna. Somehow. Sol will provide for us.”

  “I’m not worth it. And those brave men died on account of me.”

  “Hush,” Iris said firmly. “Don’t talk like that.”

  Sianna looked at her friend—really looked at her—and saw Iris had changed in the weeks since she’d last seen her. She had a newfound fire, a strength and determination that hadn’t been there before.

  Iris gasped. She gently gripped Sianna’s left wrist and tilted her maimed hand to examine it better. “Gods, what did these brutes do to you?”

  “My punishment for killing one of my captors and trying to escape,” she said bitterly. “At least that bitch summoned a healer to tend to my broken ankle, but she ordered him not to touch the hand as a reminder. As if this ugliness wouldn’t have already scarred me forever.”

  “Who did this? Nesnys?”
/>
  Sianna nodded.

  Iris grimaced. “I saw Rafe and Creel and some of the others outside, chained to posts but alive, I think. What of Sir Edwin?”

  “Fled like a coward when faced down by Nesnys.”

  Iris put an arm around her. “I’m so sorry. About everything.”

  “No, I’m the one who should be sorry, Iris.”

  “Don’t say that. The whole group volunteered to come—every one of us. They love you and believe in you! They need you—we all do.”

  Sianna didn’t reply, not wanting to give voice to any more of the vitriol filling her thoughts.

  “Well, at least we’re together again,” Iris added.

  Sianna hugged her again, a bittersweet and selfish happiness at her friend’s presence warring with guilt over her being there. But she had to take what scant comfort she could find, she supposed, although doing so made her feel ill inside.

  ***

  Kulnor couldn’t believe Creel still lived. The man had clearly bled out in the pavilion, for Kulnor had seen how much blood soaked into the fancy Nebaran carpets covering the ground, and he had no right to still be alive. Yet he was. Not only was he alive, but he had regrown his lower leg and foot. Even now, the skin was pink and new, a contrast to the rest of the man, who was dirty and bloodstained. However, his new foot had a fair chance of becoming frostbitten, for the cold was cutting, autumn swiftly turning to winter.

  He had tried to reach his human friend and do what he could to save him, but the Nebaran whoresons had knocked Kulnor unconscious before dragging him from the tent and chaining him up outside with Rafe and the other warrior, a veteran named Jahn. Neither of them was as bad off as Creel had been the past eve, yet now, as dusk was approaching the day after the raid, Creel seemed in perfect health, not a bruise or cut on the man, though he’d spent the entire day fast asleep.

  As Kulnor was considering that uncanny fact, Creel opened his eyes, squinting in the slanting rays of the descending sun. He glanced around, noting the others there, all chained in a row to sturdy poles driven into the earth on the parade ground before the officers’ pavilions, mere steps away from where their ill-fated rescue attempt had come to an end. Creel also took note of the guards posted around the clearing, ordered to watch them at all times, Kulnor assumed.

  If not for that damned fiend who showed up, we could’ve gotten away. Well, also if that yellow-bellied lordling hadn’t turned tail. Kulnor spat in the dirt at the memory. He remembered seeing the hurt in the young queen’s eyes at the betrayal by her knight.

  But worse than the emotional hurt were the pained cries that had come from the tent following their failed rescue attempt. Kulnor had regained consciousness while being chained to the post, in time to hear the queen’s agonized screams as the fiend must have been torturing her. He didn’t even know the lass, but the thought filled him with rage and sympathy both.

  Kulnor turned his thoughts back to the present and his awakened friend. “Welcome back.”

  Creel looked over at Kulnor. “Guess we failed then, huh?”

  “What gave it away? The chains or the arse-beating we took?”

  Creel grunted what might have been a laugh. Rafe and Jahn were both looking over at the two of them, although they didn’t seem surprised at Creel’s revival.

  “Sir Edwin fled,” Rafe spat. “The coward! He had a chance to try and grab Sianna, but he got unmanned and fled when that bitch Nesnys stared him down.”

  “What of Sianna?” Creel asked, staring at the command tent intently, as if he could see through the canvas walls.

  “She got her ankle broken in the fightin’, looked like,” Kulnor said. “I saw a healer go into the tent early this morn, so I reckon she’s gotten it treated at least. But right after they dragged us out here… well, from the screams, I think that wench tortured her.”

  Creel grimaced at the news, and Rafe and Jahn looked both shocked and concerned, for they’d still been unconscious at the time.

  “We haven’t seen Sianna since the fighting,” Rafe said. “They captured Iris earlier today and took her into the pavilion. Both women must still be in there.”

  “Unless they sneaked yer queen out the back,” Kulnor said. “That lass has more fight in her than that craven knight did, I must say. Seems the type of queen a fella could be inspired to follow.”

  “Aye, that she is,” Rafe replied solemnly.

  “What the Abyss happened with yer leg, Creel?” Kulnor asked, his curiosity finally getting the better of him. “I thought sure ye’d bled out in that tent. Ye looked dead enough hanging there, but slowly yer leg started growin’ back… ’Twas the damnedest thing.” He still couldn’t get over the way the strange nub had slowly grown back from the stump of his leg over the course of the day, until he had a brand-new foot.

  Creel wriggled the toes on his bare foot. The other still had his old boot on it. “I’ve the constitution of a hundred dwarves,” he said. “’Twas but a mere flesh wound.”

  Kulnor barked laughter. “Bah! Too bad ye don’t have the strength of a hundred. Then ye could snap those chains like the strings of a whore’s bodice and get us outta here.”

  “Oh, gods… don’t make me laugh. It hurts too much,” Jahn wheezed. He had a couple of cracked ribs, from the sound of it.

  Even Rafe, who’d been thoroughly depressed after their failure, cracked a wan smile.

  A short time later, an officer trailed by a squad of soldiers strode onto the parade ground. A pair of men dragged an unresisting figure between them. Kulnor recognized Sir Edwin by the blond hair, though the lordling had been beaten and bloodied quite thoroughly. The knight sullenly glanced at the four of them as he was thrown to the ground before an unused post on the opposite end from Kulnor. The Nebarans went about shackling the coward.

  Good they put him down there. I don’t want to even look at that cowardly prick nor hear his bellyaching.

  The Nebaran officer regarded Kulnor and the others. He was an older man with close-cropped iron-gray hair and beard. He had a veteran’s hard look to him—an impression reinforced by a left arm missing below the elbow.

  “I counted a mere dozen of you bastards, living and corpses, yet three dozen of my men died last night,” the officer said, scowling. “If the warlord didn’t want you lot kept alive, I’d have your heads right now.”

  “And why exactly does she want us alive?” Creel asked, but the officer ignored him.

  “More incentive for the next bunch o’ fools to make a rescue attempt, I reckon,” Kulnor muttered.

  The officer pointed a finger at Edwin and gave a toothy smile. “This little rat bastard who got unmanned and fled during the fighting was found hiding near the latrines. I’m surprised he didn’t climb right in. My shites are harder than his backbone.”

  The officer and his men laughed, and Kulnor had to admit he was probably right about that.

  “We did discover another of your conspirators hiding out in the grass with your getaway mounts,” he gloated. “A little blond-haired lass. Any more rats skulking around I should know about?”

  Kulnor glared at the man but said nothing. The others remained silent as well.

  The officer scratched at his beard. “And the damnedest thing is we’ve apparently got traitors in our own ranks. If I catch any of the bastards, I’m gonna ram a spear so far up their arses they’ll be tasting their own shite. Were it up to me, I’d do the same with the lot of you.” He started walking away but then turned back as if thinking of something else. “The warlord made it clear the little princess is off limits, but that other lass we found… I’m of half a mind to let my men take turns with her. Pretty little thing.” He leered.

  Rafe shouted a curse and strained mightily at his chains.

  The officer laughed. “That your wench then, boy? We’ll take good care of her—don’t you worry.” He turned on his heel and started to walk away.

  “Colonel Mazun!” one of his men called, pointing at Creel. “Look at his leg… What i
n the bloody Abyss?”

  Mazun turned and studied Creel a moment, clearly as astonished as his soldier. “Was that not you bleeding out in the tent with your foot chopped off and ruining the carpets? What manner of deviltry is this?”

  “No deviltry at all, just a steady diet of dwarven spirits—puts steel in your sword,” Creel joked. “You should up your own intake.” He glanced pointedly at the stump of Mazun’s arm.

  The colonel’s face turned an ugly red. He snatched a pike from one of his men then strode up to Creel. He raised it in the air and drove the butt of the pike down hard onto Creel’s bare foot. Kulnor winced at the sound of cracking bones. Again and again he slammed the polearm down, shattering toes and foot bones alike.

  Creel cried out, a wordless howl of rage and pain. His lean muscles bunched and corded as he yanked ferociously at the chains. He snarled like a caged animal, and the colonel took a step back at his ferocity. Kulnor thought briefly the chains might tear from the post, but after a few moments, Creel’s rage subsided. He lifted his bloodied ruin of a foot, putting his weight on the uninjured one.

  “Why don’t you try that when I’m not chained up?” Creel’s icy-blue eyes burned with fury and hatred.

  Mazun glared at him coldly, then spat on the ground and turned and stalked off, tossing the bloodied pike back to his man.

  Wish these whoresons would get it over with if they mean to kill us. Reiktir, if ye mean to call me home, grant me the chance for a clean death—and some vengeance afore I fall.

  Chapter 2

  Wyat clapped Elyas heartily on the back, telling him he was proud to see his son becoming such a fine warrior.

  Elyas beamed, filled with pride at his father’s approval. He collected the training swords and went to stow them back in the barn. His muscles were pleasantly fatigued after a strenuous sparring session with his father. These days, he beat his old man more often than not.

  The afternoon sun was sinking low in the sky, and the cool autumn air felt refreshing on his sweaty skin. From the house came his mother’s voice calling them to dinner. He glimpsed Taren lounging against a hay bale, a book in his lap as usual.