The Viper's Fangs (Book 2) Read online

  The Viper’s Fangs

  Book 2 of Angus the Mage Series

  By Robert P. Hansen

  Copyright 2014 by Robert P. Hansen

  Kindle Edition

  All rights reserved.

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to Ronda Swolley, of Mystic Memories Copy Editing, for the copy edit, and Linda Foegen of American Book Design for the cover art.

  Dedication

  For Tom, a long-time friend.

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Connect With Me

  Additional Titles

  Prologue

  Fletchings

  Symptata

  The Plateau

  Confrontations

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Robert P. Hansen teaches philosophy at a community college and writes fiction and poetry in his spare time. His work has appeared in various small press publications since 1994.

  Connect With Me

  For updates on my writing, visit my blog at: http://www.rphansenauthorpoet.wordpress.com/.

  Although I seldom use it, you can also follow me on twitter (http://twitter.com/frummery).

  Amazon author page: http://www.amazon.com/Robert-P.-Hansen/e/B00I22730I/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

  Additional Titles

  A Bard Out of Time: a long fantasy poem accompanied by other fantasy poems.

  A Field of Snow and Other Flights of Fancy: a collection of light verse and other short poems.

  Corpus Colossal: a collection of all the poems in the collections published in the spring of 2014.

  Last Rites…and Wrongs: a collection of macabre poetry.

  Love & Annoyance: a collection of poems on love and philosophical speculation.

  Of Muse and Pen: a collection of poems on writing and the creative process.

  Potluck: What’s Left Over: a collection of poems with no particular theme.

  The Drunken Wizard’s Playmates and Other Stories: a humorous, fantasy adventure novel with a few extra stories added in.

  The Snodgrass Incident: a science fiction novel in which the crew of The Snodgrass travels to Enceladus to investigate the formation of a new Tiger Stripe.

  The Tiger’s Eye: the first book of the Angus the Mage series of fantasy novels.

  Worms and Other Alien Encounters: a collection of science fiction stories.

  Prologue

  1

  “Sardach,” Fanzool said as he placed the components of the divination spell on top of his desk. They were the standard components: a live rat, a bowl of purified water, a small pile of fine rock dust, a blossoming plant—a very costly daisy, one of the few still blooming this close to winter—and a small brazier of coals. Lastly, he set Argyle’s coin—the item he would be divining—on a fine silk cloth in the center of them all.

  He sighed and said with a tight voice, as if he were forcing a command into the form of a polite request, “I will need privacy.” He paused for a long moment and then added, “It is a challenging spell, and distractions will add to the difficulty of the reading.”

  Behind him there was a brief rustling like the whisper of a veil caught in the slightest of breezes—at least, that’s what he imagined he heard as he felt the presence of Sardach move ever-so-slightly back. But Sardach didn’t leave; he was still there, still hovering….

  “Please, Sardach,” Fanzool begged without looking up, without hiding the strain in his voice. “I must weave together several strands in a very precise manner.” He doubted his words would make a difference, but he needed to say them even if they were only for his own peace of mind. They were comforting and helped him focus on the task before him. But Sardach would stay or leave because Sardach decided to stay or leave, and nothing he could say would change that; only Argyle had sway over Sardach, and he had ordered him to go with Fanzool to Blackhaven Tower. What other orders he had been given, Fanzool did not know—did not want to know. But they hadn’t left yet, and the foul thing wouldn’t leave him alone! How could he find out who had possessed the coin with the stench of Sardach breathing warmly on his neck?

  Still the mind. He thought. Still the mind. Still the body. Still the—blah blah blah. He knew the mantra, but it didn’t work for him. He always struggled when he cast spells. That’s why he had chosen divination, where any mistakes were far less likely to be deadly than they were in the other areas of magic. Except where Argyle was concerned. Then the mistakes were deadly. He needed to make a clear reading. If he didn’t….

  And Sardach was adding to that burden.

  He shook his head. It wouldn’t do to think about it any longer; he needed to focus on the spell. He had cast it before, and there were no real dangers with it, even if he made major errors. But it was a delicate process, and mistakes in casting always led to mistakes in the divination, and he did not want those mistakes. He desperately wanted the spell to work so he could tell Argyle—with certainty, this time—that Typhus had not touched the coin. He sighed and reluctantly turned around.

  Sardach was gone! A wave of relief flooded through him, even though it was only a brief respite and nothing more. Still, it was enough—for now—and he set to work on the spell. He took a deep breath and removed the dagger from his belt. He held it before him, studying his reflection in the polished surface. There was no sign of Sardach in the reflection, but he couldn’t escape the nagging feeling of Sardach’s warm breath against his neck. He turned his gaze away from the blade and toward the rat. It was scurrying in its little cage, testing the corners, poking its pinkish nose and paws out of the holes….

  He always hated the first step in the casting, but it was unavoidable. He had to kill the rat. Not that he liked rats—he didn’t—but he didn’t like killing, even when it was necessary. And it was necessary. He couldn’t cast the spell without a fresh strand of death magic, one that was still clinging to the life that was ending. The further removed from that life the death strand was, the less successful the divination would be, and he needed success. Desperately. It was the only way he could avoid seeing Voltari again.

  Yes, he would have to kill the rat, and it would be messy. It would be a slow death, because he needed time to weave the threads together. It would be a noisy death, too. Dying rats squeal. But there was no help to it; he needed that fresh strand of death—that dying strand. It was the only way to reach into the coin’s past to bring the residue of those who had held it before him to the surface. He needed that residue to rekindle the coin’s past back to some semblance of life, to build the images into the illusion, to see who had once held it. If one of them was Typhus….

  He sighed, opened the top of the rat’s cage and caught up the rat in his hand. It wasn’t the first time he had captured a rat, and that made it easy to avoid the teeth, to pin down the claws, to make the deep slit in its throat.

  It was messy. But he had prepared for it. The cover for the cage was in place before too much blood had sprayed across his desk, and he had made sure to face the cut away from the other components of the spell. If they were contaminated, he would have to begin again, to kill another rat, to buy another daisy. Still, he would have to clean his desk. Again. Why must I have to be the one to kill it? Why can’t someone else do it? But he knew the answer. The spell would be attuned to him, and only he could kill the rat. Or cat. He had had to do that once when the shop ran out of rats. That was a strange time. Chickens were popular; you could eat them afterward. But they were very messy, and Fanzool didn’t like messiness any more than he liked killing. Rats were small and didn’t have as much blood as chickens. He had tried a mouse,
once, but it wasn’t large enough; it died too quickly. It really didn’t matter what was killed, just that something was killed.

  He turned away from the still struggling rat and concentrated on the magical energies within him and brought those around him into focus. It was the normal mix of strands: the life-giving shades of green permeated the flower; the liquid blue wove its way through the bowl of purified water; the rich, rustic brown stretched out from the rock dust; the subdued, deep red pulsing within the embers and brazier; and the deep greenish-black of the rat’s dying. It would be all black by the time he finished the spell, and once it was, it would be nearly useless for him. It was the dying that made the past open to the present, and only then for but a brief glimpse.

  He reached out for a greenish-black strand and anchored it around his left pinky. Then he turned to the coin. This was the delicate part; he needed to find the tiny tendrils of magic left behind by those who had held it, separate them from the strands embedded in the coin’s nature, and knot them together with the other strands of the spell.

  He bent to work, a part of him distantly aware of what hovered behind him, within him, watching what he was doing, seeing what he was seeing. But it was only a small part that noted his companion’s presence; the rest was absorbed in the casting of the spell, the weaving of the knots, the images fluttering to life as he went.

  His image came first, since he was the last to touch the coin, and he quickly cast it aside. Then Argyle’s dreadful sneer began to come into focus, and he once again heard the threat Argyle had made and the sadistic laughter that accompanied it. I will kill you if you fail. He banished the image of Argyle—if it were only that easy to banish Argyle, himself!—but not the fear it brought, and he once more wished the mantra worked for him.

  He delved deeper, unmasking the history of the coin one hand, one face at a time, looking for the one he sought, looking for Typhus. There was a large man, obese beyond belief and bejeweled like a king. Although he had never met him before, he knew the man by reputation: Dirk. Of all the names that could have been given to the man, Dirk had to be the least likely. A thin knife? Him? No, it wasn’t his appearance that named him; it was his actions. Dirk didn’t mind killing any more than Argyle did. He shuddered and thrust the image aside, allowing room for the next one to coalesce.

  It was a young man—the thief Argyle had mentioned? Giorge, was it? He looked like a thief: small and wiry, but surprisingly well-muscled for a boy of his size. He could easily get into—and out of—tight places, and his dark complexion would be a shadow’s lover, so intermingled they could be. He turned to the face and studied it, memorizing the contours of the angular cheeks, the playful dark-brown eyes, the lopsided grin, the thin black moustache that was so sparse that it had no business being there, and the short-cropped black hair, only a little longer than his thumbnail. When he was satisfied he would recognize the boy if he saw him again, he moved on.

  The next image startled him, and his fingers fluttered, almost losing their grip on the myriad strands of magic. Typhus! he screamed in his mind. It can’t be! He’s dead! The image began to fade, and Fanzool hastily reinforced the knots he was making, adjusting the pattern until it worked the spell back into its fullest potency. As the image stabilized and cleared up, he bit his lip and examined it more closely. He knew the appearance of Typhus well; he had seen it many times while searching for him for Argyle, but that search had proven to be fruitless, and he had assumed it was because the assassin was dead. It was a reasonable assumption, since he knew of nothing that could block a divination so completely. Had someone found a way to do it? Had Voltari?

  There was no doubt a striking similarity between Typhus and the image he saw before him, but there were differences. Were they merely cosmetic? Disguises intended to conceal what lay beneath them? Typhus was a master of disguise; an assassin of his quality had to be. If his targets saw him, recognized him….

  Typhus had no beard, but this image did—a scruffy one that sorely needed tending. And his hair? It was black and long enough to drape over the top of his collar. Typhus never wore his dark-brown hair that way. Had he dyed it? Was he wearing it long to throw off pursuit? And where was the scar? Even if it were hidden from casual observation, it couldn’t hide from his divination; the spell always showed the true image of the target. That scar was too much a part of the truth of Typhus for it to be concealed from him. It ran down his neck, from the left ear to the collarbone, and there was no sign of it! No sign? Fanzool squinted and looked more closely. It is there, but it is smaller, much smaller, barely a crescent snick right below the ear. He frowned, and his frown deepened as he continued his appraisal.

  The eyes were wrong, too. Typhus had grey eyes, and these were blue, almost silver in appearance, and there was a kind of naïve kindness in them. Typhus’s eyes held no kindness at all; they were cold, unfeeling, ugly eyes. Every time he had seen them in the images of his divinations, they sent a chill through him. But these eyes? They were almost friendly. Almost. There was a hint of something sinister hanging about their edges, as if something hideous lurked in their depths. Or was there? Was he merely imagining that he saw a touch of Typhus in them? He frowned and took in the broader image of the body.

  This man was younger than Typhus. Typhus was over forty, and this man looked in his early thirties and carried himself as if he were somehow younger than that. The skin tone was wrong, too; this man was pale, almost ashen, and Typhus was ruddy of complexion. That nose had been broken, but none of the other images he had seen of Typhus had a broken nose. None. Still, it could have happened recently….

  No, he concluded, This is not Typhus.

  Typhus always wore a custom-made padded leather tunic reinforced with chain links. It had all the pockets he needed and those pockets were filled with the godforsaken things he used when he assassinated people. And where were his form-fitting, sleek, tight, breeches? He would never part with those; they were wrought from silk spun by enchanted spiders. But this man wore the robes of a wizard—a black silk robe like Voltari’s—and he carried himself the way a wizard would, not an assassin. He was a bit taller than Typhus, a bit heavier…. It must be Angus, the wizard who had given the coin to Giorge. But he could be mistaken for Typhus, so much alike they are! But the differences….

  The image hovered before him for some time before he let it dissolve so he could seek the next one. But there was no next one. The residue ended with Angus, and there was no more trail to follow. Fanzool worked the spell to its fullest magnitude, trying to draw into focus the smallest of fragments left behind by those who had possessed the coin before this wizard, this Angus. But there was nothing. Voltari, Fanzool thought with hideous certainty. Somehow he erased the residue! It was the only explanation. The coin was nearly a thousand years old, and it should have had a very long history, one tracing back to the coinsmith who had pressed it for King Urm. At the very least—

  Unless Angus had forged the coin himself. His brow furrowed as he considered the idea. Could it be a counterfeit coin? Could Angus have found a way to forge anew the coins of Urm? It would take a great deal of skill and knowledge to do it. He would have to know King Urm’s profile—that could be copied from another coin, couldn’t it? If he had one genuine coin, it would tell him all he needed to know to replicate it—the weight of the gold, the placement of the symbols, King Urm’s profile. Yes, if he had one to use as a model, it could easily be done. But it would take a master craftsman to do it.

  Or a master wizard.

  Fanzool smiled and let the threads of his spell slip from his fingers, freeing the magical energy to return to its normal state. Perhaps he wouldn’t have to visit Voltari after all? It would be a simple matter to locate this Angus—he had the coin—but he would have to prime for the spell first….

  2

  Angus frowned as he closed Braden’s The Origins of the Fishmen Invasion. The tome was thick with anecdotes about how the fishmen attacks had begun, but there were few facts in t
hose stories. Most of the accounts were sensationalized narratives with nasty descriptions of the battles and grandiose platitudes of the king’s prowess and generosity. He suspected some of them were lies, especially the ones claiming the fishmen had “six inch claws and rows upon rows of dagger-sharp teeth.” He had seen fishmen, and they didn’t have six inch claws, and their teeth were not much different from a dog’s. Still, they were entertaining stories. But he wasn’t looking for entertainment; he was looking for information. Credible information. A set of facts that he could draw upon to devise a course of action, and those facts were sorely lacking in this tome. But what choice did he have? Embril had said it was widely acknowledged as the authority on the origin of the fishmen incursions, and few of the other tomes on the subject of the fishmen dealt with those origins—and when they did, they simply repeated parts of Braden’s stories. So, what had he learned from those stories? What were the facts to be gleaned from Braden’s outlandish tales?

  One thing was certain: the attacks had begun as small, seemingly independent incursions. For nearly two generations, the fishmen attacked a village here, a village there, but never the same village twice—never in the same area twice. The attacks were sporadic, with perhaps a half dozen a year, and most happened near harvest time. The fishmen never went far beyond the border of the Death Swamps, where they lived, and they never stayed long after their attacks. It was as if they were testing the village’s defenses for weakness—and there were plenty of weaknesses! For a generation, King Dib had been slow to respond; he left the villages to their own resources, which were sparse at best. Most of those first attacks were massacres, bloody ones the way Braden told them, with few survivors. The villages might have been forgotten entirely if King Dib hadn’t been concerned with the taxes they owed….