The Wizardwar Read Online Free PDF

his throne and stalked toward the window, gesturing for Matteo to follow. Courtiers parted as the two passed, watching with furrowed brows as the king broke his own unbending custom.
    Zalathorm led the way to a hidden stairwell, where narrow, winding steps spiraled down to the street. These he took at an astonishingly brisk pace.
    “With respect, sire, may I ask your intentions?” Matteo called as he jogged after the king.
    Zalathorm stopped and shot a glance back at his counselor. “The people outside the palace are waiting for me to settle disputes. This particular one isn’t going to improve with age.”
    Matteo would have argued the wisdom of marching into the middle of a street disturbance, but he assumed the king had his reasons. He followed quickly, loosening the peace-ties on his daggers as he went
    By the time they reached the street, the situation had devolved into chaos. The elephant whirled this way and that, lunging at its circle of tormenters with short and astonishingly swift charges. Two wizards had cast spells of levitation to lift the terrified children out of the boxlike litter. They were floating, kicking and wailing, toward the frantically outstretched arms of their parents.
    Several more wizards advanced on the animal. Small balls of crackling, bluish energy flew from their outstretched hands and exploded against the elephant’s hide with sharp, sizzling pops.
    Matteo immediately sensed their strategy: Back the elephant into a walled garden, where it could be easily contained. The animal, though, was too panicked to cooperate. Emitting shrill, trumpeting cries, it began to rear and pitch like a bee-stung stallion.
    “Idiots,” muttered Zalathorm.
    Since their miniature lightning shockballs were not putting the elephant into retreat, the wizards began to hurl larger missiles. A small barrage of many-colored lights hurtled toward the terrified animal.
    The king lifted both hands and slammed his right fist against his left palm. Immediately the missiles struck an invisible wall and were deflected off at a sharply climbing angle, ascending the sky like festival fireworks.
    One of these missiles, a bolt of energy shaped like a slim crimson javelin, glanced off the magical barrier and came around in a tight turn, like a fish changing directions in a swift moving stream. It hurtled directly, unerringly, toward the spellcaster who had disrupted its course.
    Matteo’s response was part training, part instinct. He leapt in front of the king, his hands lunging for the shaft of the magical javelin. The weapon scorched through his clenched fist-only his deeply inbred resistance to magic kept the thing from burning down to bone.
    Even as his fingers closed on the shaft, he twisted his wrist slightly, not trying to stop the weapon so much as to shift it off course. The magic weapon turned broadside but kept its course. Matteo’s right arm jerked free of its shoulder joint in a searing, white-hot flash of pain. He hurtled backward, still holding the crimson bolt, and slammed into a courtyard wall.
    Matteo tossed aside the dissipating weapon and reached for his left-handed dagger, ready to protect the king if need be, but in the brief moment it took him to blink away the dancing stars from his vision, Zalathorm had moved to stand beside the elephant.
    The king stroked the animal’s bristled gray hide in a soothing manner. When the drover came up to take the reins, Zalathorm spoke a few quiet words. Matteo could not hear what was said, but he noted how the color leeched from the drover’s face. The man backed away, ducking his head repeatedly in quick, nervous bows.
    Zalathorm’s gaze swept the quiet, watchful throng. “Many are the tasks before us. Halruaa is equal to them all, so long as our energies are not distracted from the real work at hand. Those of you who require the king’s judgment may wait in peace. Those who came seeking spectacle have been satisfied and can go their way.”
    Though the king