Free Swordmage by Richard Baker

not paid any dues because I haven’t joined the Merchant Council,” she said. “Nor do I mean to, so you and your men can see yourselves out anytime you fancy.”
    “You certain about that, Mistress Erstenwold?” the first man asked. He was a big, round-faced fellow with the complexion of a ruddy ham. “These are dangerous times. It’ll be difficult to do business without council protection.” He nodded toward the man along the back wall, who drew a dagger from his belt and slashed open a sack of milled grain. It poured out onto the floor with a soft hissing sound.
    “Enough,” Geran said. He turned to face the men in green and white. “She asked you to leave, so leave.”
    “This isn’t your problem,” Mirya snarled under her breath.
    “Mistress Erstenwold is right—this ain’t your problem, stranger,” the leader of the three said. He shifted his attention from Mirya to Geran and squared to face him. He rested one hand on the hilt of the long sword at his belt. “Why don’t you shut your damned mouth and think of some other place you ought to be?”
    Geran smiled coldly, but his eyes were hard. This was something else that he hadn’t seen in Hulburg before. This makes twice in two days that I’ve faced foreigners wearing steel in my own hometown, he thought. “Whose colors are you wearing?” he asked the man.
    The ruddy-faced man measured him for a moment before answering. “House Veruna. Lady Darsi’s helping the Merchant Council to establish order in this miserable town. Everyone who wants to do business in Hulburg is going to join, one way or the other. Now, you’re starting to annoy me, stranger. I’m telling you for the last time: Stand aside, and let me finish my conversation with Mistress Erstenwold here, or things won’t go well for either you or her.”
    “Geran, you’re not making things any better!” Mirya hissed.
    He ignored her. “I’m not moving,” Geran said.
    Ignoring the dark looks the Veruna men shared with each other, Geran emptied his mind of distractions and concentrated on the secret arcane syllables he’d studied for so many months in the starlit glens of Myth Drannor. It was not enough to know the words; to invoke their magic, one also had to understand the strange associations of thought that gave the ancient words their power, then hurl the focused might of one’s will at the combination of symbol and meaning. “Theillalagh na drendir,”he said aloud, clearly, his voice strong and confident in the ancient Elvish.
    A faint veil of violet mist coalesced around him, growing stronger and brighter, shaping itself into hundreds of scalelike shards of diamond-bright force that rippled and cascaded from his shoulders to his knees. The elf swordmages knew the incantation as the Scales of the Dragon. It armored him as well as the finest dwarf-wrought plate.
    “Did you hear that, Bann?” said the Veruna armsman by the back of the store. The man recoiled two steps. “It’s elven witchery! He’s a mage of some sort!”
    “Steady, lads,” the lead armsman, Bann—or so Geran guessed—said. His voice was steady, but his eyes narrowed, and he suppressed a small shiver. Slowly he drew his blade, a sturdy basket-hiked broadsword, careful to keep the point to the gleaming wooden floor. “Wizards are just men. They can bleed and die like anyone else.”
    “We’ll see,” Geran replied. “Ilyeith sannoghan!”He swept out his elven blade as he spoke the spell, and the subtly curved steel began to crackle with dancing sparks of yellow-white, almost as if he’d parried a bolt of lightning. In a voice as quiet as death he promised, “The next man who damages Erstenwold property will regret it for the rest of his life.”
    The Veruna armsmen exchanged glances and hesitated. None seemed willing to be the first to try Geran’s steel, not while shimmering veils of magic shrouded him and brilliant sparks danced like fireflies along his blade. The armsman Bann met Geran’s gaze