Death After Death

The war that followed was both brutal and short, at least if the reports were to be believed. Simon attended court every day during that period, listening to the infrequent updates from messengers that relayed the status of the war, one engagement and naval battle at a time. Simon would have much rather joined the fleet, but Elthena forbade him from doing that, not that he blamed her. He still wasn’t in good enough shape to play swashbuckler, but his magic could have come in really handy in some subtle ways if it was necessary.

It turned out that it almost was when it was revealed the enemy had warlocks of their own. Their fire spells sank a dozen ships of the Queen's fleet before they were taken down if the reports were to be believed. For someone raised on 24-hour news networks, the whole ordeal was painful to him. He couldn’t see it; he had no idea how it was going, and then one random afternoon, there was a report that they’d either won or lost a battle and a list of casualties.

Sometimes, the messengers got lost or sent off course by storms, and the reports came in out of order, which somehow made the whole thing even worse. Simon spent some time trying to surmount this problem by weaving together the words distant minor light transfer in the hopes of making a scrying spell that might let him at least peek in on events, but other than temporarily blinding himself, those experiments accomplished nothing except for burning a few more weeks of his life.

When the enemy mages were sighted, Elthena spoke to him again about his magic after getting less than satisfactory answers from her vizier about the situation. Simon explained how it worked, broadly speaking, but didn’t teach her any of the words and made it very clear that the words of power were dangerous.

“So every time you use magic, you sacrifice a bit of your life?” she asked. “How ghastly.”

Simon didn’t dispute that and pointed out that it was that much more dangerous than their enemies had such powers because it spoke to desperation or zealotry. Still, before they could worry more about that, the report came that the Alfonsic’s island fortress had been captured thanks to the bravery of Ionian warriors. The place was apparently quite well fortified, but because most of the defenders had been sacrificed to fuel evil magics, there weren’t enough guards to hold the walls when the time came.

Simon thought that was more than a little anticlimactic, but from hundreds of miles away, there was little he could do about it. Still, it was a complete victory, and even now, captives, including the merchant prince, along with other men of importance, as well as ships full of spoils, were on their way back to Ionar. That was excellent news, and a week of celebrations was ordered to commemorate the event, and a fine new temple would be raised to celebrate Elthena’s wisdom.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t all the ships brought back. Even as the seized wealth was shown off in the form of gold, jewels, and expensive bolts of cloth, and the most important prisoners were paraded through the streets to be pelted with rotting produce, the same black plague he’d cured once so long ago had found its way into some of the ships too. Unfortunately, no one suspected a thing until it had swept across the waterfront in a wave of fevers and blackened sores.

“We have to restrict all traffic from the lower city,” Simon explained, the evening that the Queen’s physician had given a report and explained that with the proper oils, there was nothing to worry about.