In this, book 8 of Senta and the Steel Dragon: Senta Bly, the most powerful sorceress in the world has disappeared and no one knows where or why. What happens to Port Dechantagne and Birmisia without her protection for four years? Wizards with all sorts of their own agendas descend on the colony, and the citizens must cope the best they can. Nineteen-year-old Iolana Staff lives the life of a famous author, far away in the capital city, but how does her friend Esther, the only Birmisian lizzie on the continent deal with human society? Meanwhile Iolana’s cousin Terra has made the journey to the lizzie city of Yessonarah, to learn what living in the palace of a reptilian king is really like.

A Plague of Wizards is available as an ebook at Smashwords for just $2.99.

Lady Iolana Staff opened her aquamarine eyes and glanced around the interior of the tent, startled. She knew exactly where she was, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember falling asleep or even laying down.  Colonel Bentford looked down at her from just inside the tent flap.

“I’ve had them bring you a bit of breakfast,” he said, gesturing toward the folding table and chair. “Needless to say, you’re to remain here until the battle’s conclusion.”

With a click of his heels, he slipped outside.

Iolana could hear the sound of marching boots all around.  She stood up to peer outside, but her eye caught the plate on the table. It wasn’t a feast worthy of the Dechantagne Staff house, but it was a finer meal than she could remember having seen in what seemed like a year—a large fried egg, two pieces of black pudding, a slice of bacon, and an honest-to-Kafira scone.  She slid into the chair and tucked in, finishing her scone and bacon before even thinking to look for the silver fork.

Her mind no longer on her stomach, Iolana thought about what to do next.  Then she heard a horrible chugging sound, accompanied by a pounding on the ground that almost lifted her off her feet.  She stepped out the tent flap and looked around.

“Nuffin’ to worry ’bout, y’ladyship,” said the sentry, throwing out a restraining arm.  “It’s just ’at crawler war machine.”

The crawler was indeed making its way past, not fifty feet away.

“Yes, thank you,” she said, ducking back inside.

Without stopping, she crossed to the back of the tent, pulling her knife from her belt.  For a moment, she mourned the loss of her pistol, but then it wouldn’t have been nearly as handy at that exact moment. With a single cut, she opened a Iolana-sized slice in the canvas and stepped out, to find herself in a space between two rows of tents, both pointing away from her.  She followed the little alleyway to the end, and then stepped out.  Soldiers were hurrying this way and that, though most in the same general direction that the crawler had been moving.

“Which way to the prisoners?” she asked, grabbing the arm of a passing soldier.

He looked her up and down, then pointed, and hurried off.  Iolana went the general direction indicated and soon found a circular wire pen holding six or seven lizzies, most of them lying prone.  The single guard watching them, rifle in hand, had little to do. The lizzies, in addition to being inside the pen, were all shackled hand and foot.  The girl quickly stepped up in front of the soldier.

“Oh, I’m feeling faint!” she cried, throwing her arm up over her eyes and falling backwards.

“Careful, Miss,” said the man, catching her in one arm, holding onto his rifle with the other.

“Oh, I’ve just lost my air, I’m afraid.”  She leaned back into him, fanning herself with one hand and feeling his muscular arm with the other.  “My, you’re so strong, Sergeant.”

“Whatever are you doing out here, Miss?”

“Oh, I’m such a silly girl. I was so excited that I ran all the way from the Colonel’s tent.”

“The colonel?”  The soldier tried to straighten both of them up at the same time.  “What about the colonel?”

“He wants you to bring one of the lizzies to his tent… for questioning, I expect.”

“Did he say which one?”

“I don’t think it matters. Maybe one of those that was captured early on.”

“All right then.”

Fishing the keys off his belt, the sergeant opened a padlock on a makeshift gate, nothing more than slice in the wire really.  Stepping inside, he kicked one of the prone lizzies with the toe of his boot.

“Come on, scaly.  It’s time to go meet your betters.”

It was doubtful that the lizzie understood a single word, but he seemed to understand the gestures that went along with them, climbing to his feet and followed the man out of the enclosure.  After replacing the padlock, the soldier took the reptilian by the arm and began to lead him away.

“Sergeant,” said Iolana, throwing her body in his way.  “I’ll stay here and guard your charges for you.”

“Not really necessary. They’re chained up anyway.”

“Well, thank you for your chivalry,” she said, giving him a quick hug.

No sooner had the man and his charge started away, than Iolana turned to the enclosure.  Examining the key ring she had just taken from the soldier’s belt, she unlocked the gate and slipped inside.  It was easy enough to identify the lizzie priestess, even for one not nearly so familiar with the reptilians as was Iolana.  Tokkenoht, the only lizzie that didn’t seem half asleep, stepped right up to her.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” said the girl, bending down to unlock her leg shackles.  “I’ll leave your hands cuffed until we get beyond the camp.”

“Unlock the others,” said Tokkenoht.

“We can’t,” said Iolana, trying without success to pull her along.  “Soldiers might not think twice about one prisoner being moved.  Besides, it would probably only get these lizzies shot.”

“She is right,” said one of the lizzies on the ground.  “Hurry and go, Your Eminence.”

Tokkenoht allowed the human girl to pull her out of the gate and then through the military camp. There were far fewer soldiers moving about than there had been even just a few minutes before.  The last battle units had formed up and moved toward the field. All that remained behind were sentries and support personnel.  A few gave the lizzie and the human girl in a military uniform a strange looks, but no one accosted them.  Within five minutes, they had reached the southwestern edge of the camp.  Fifty feet beyond the last tent, they ducked down into a large bush.

Iolana stopped shoveling, and placing the tip of her shovel on the seam of the metal floor, she used it to prop herself up.  Her blond hair was plastered to her head and her clothes were soaked through with perspiration.  It was at least 130 degrees in the engine room, closer near the open furnace door, and she had been shoveling coal for what seemed like forever.

“Keep shovelin’,” said her companion, as he threw another scoop into the furnace, the flame reflecting on the smooth sheen of his sweaty, shirtless body.

She imagined that it would feel so good to shed the khaki uniform blouse.  It would certainly give the crew of the crawler a shock.  She really wanted to do it.  But she just couldn’t.

“I’m all talk,” she said to herself.

“No time to talk. Just shovel.”

“How’s it going, men?” called Tiber Stephenson’s voice from the engine room hatch.  “Nice and warm in here, eh?”

“You’ve proven your point, Tiber,” said Iolana, staggering as she scooped more coal.

“That’s Lieutenant to the likes o’ you!” shouted the shirtless soldier.

“I’m not having you shovel coal to prove a point, My Lady,” said Tiber.  “I’m having you shovel coal because that’s what makes this vehicle go.” He looked at the shirtless soldier. “How long till shift end, Swaim?”

“About forty more minutes, Sir.”

“Good.  When your relief comes, bring our little stowaway up to the officers’ quarters.”

“Right you are, Sir.”

Though she managed to finish out her shift in the engine room and then march along behind Swaim to the front of the vehicle, when he left her just inside the door to the officers’ quarters, Iolana’s vision began to swim and she collapsed.  If Tiber hadn’t been there, she would have fallen to the sheet metal floor.  Instead, he caught her and carried her over to an empty bunk, laying her down.  Then he opened a vent and cool, moist air from outside blew gently across her face.

“You look a little warm, My Lady.”

“Bugger yourself,” she said.

“Now that language is certainly not very ladylike.”

“I’m not a lady.  I’m a grunt who works in the engine room.”

“Well, relax grunt, and when you’re ready, I’ll get you something to eat.”

Iolana was asleep before he finished his sentence.  She didn’t know how long she slept, but when she woke, the sheet metal floor and everything that touched it was still throbbing with the energy of the steam engine. The buzzing of the saws still echoed through the metal walls.  She slowly sat up; her arms and back crying out in anguish.  She didn’t think she had ever done so much physical labor in her whole life.  When she stood up, her legs, if anything, hurt even worse than her upper body.  She moved like an old lady across the room and out the door.  She turned and walked up the sloping passage toward the front of the crawler, her hand against the wall.  She hadn’t gone very far when she saw Tiber walking toward her.

“I was just coming to check on you,” he said.

“How long was I asleep?”

“About fourteen hours. I was starting to get worried.”

“You mean I slept through our stopping for the night?” she asked.

“No.  We haven’t stopped and we won’t.  We have a crew of twenty-two officers and men so that we can run twenty-four hours a day.”

“What about the relief column that’s with us?  The men can’t march all night.”

“Oh, they’re not traveling with us.  They merely left at the same time.  I imagine they’re forty miles ahead of us by now.”  He took her by the shoulders, turned her around, and marched her back to the officer’s quarters.  “They stop for the night, but then they move much faster than we do.  We’ve only gone about forty-five miles from the city’s edge.”

“Forty-five miles?” wondered Iolana.  “Then, when you found me, we couldn’t have been more than a long walk from town. You could easily have turned back, or even made me walk back myself.”

“You didn’t want to go back, did you?”

“No, of course I didn’t. Though now I’m wondering about your motivation.”

“Please, My Lady,” said Tiber.  “I’m a gentleman, one little kiss notwithstanding.  Now sit down. I have something for you to eat.”

Iolana took a seat in one of the two metal chairs that faced a small metal table between the two bunks. The young lieutenant hefted a canvas rucksack from cubby and dropped it heavily on the table.

“Well, you have a choice: beef stew, corned beef, or pork and beans.  Take my advice and skip the stew.  Heated up, it’s barely edible.  You’re eating your food cold, and in such a case, it’s plain disgusting.”

“Pork and beans, please.”

“Here you go.”  He handed her the tin can.  While she peeled off the key and began opening the can, he continued.  “You also have a block of cheese and a box of crackers.  You might want to skip the crackers.  You can crack a tooth if you don’t soak them in water or tea.”

Iolana dug into the beans with a flat wooden spoon, also included in the kit.  She recognized that the pork was nothing but a square bit of fat, but she was so hungry that it tasted wonderful.  While she ate, Tiber poured water from a canteen into a folding cup and used the edge of his knife to grate off bits from a block of condensed tea into it.  Then he unfolded a small packet of sugar and poured it in.

“Here you go.”

The city-state of Xiatooq was unlike anything that Senta had ever seen, and under the light of the full moon, it seemed truly to be of another world.  It was, she imagined, unlike anything that any human being had ever laid eyes upon.  It’s great walls, built of copper colored stone, and standing a hundred feet or more tall, faced the empty plain that surrounded the city on its northern side, while its other southern side climbed up the slope of a great mountain, higher and higher, built upon terraces carved into the rock.  The buildings were designed with a completely different esthetic than any other lizzie city.  There were no huge square palaces like there were in Tsahloose, and there were no great pyramids like those that had decorated mighty Suusthek.  Xiatooq was filled with round structures, large and small, that tapered near the top so that they resembled giant hornets’ nests. That they were dotted with windows out of which lizzie heads appeared and disappeared, did nothing to diminish their resemblance to insect hives.  The higher one looked up the slope of the mountain, the grander these structures were, and the view was all the more impressive because this was not just any mountain.  This was a massive volcano with an open caldera at the top, out of which belched a constant stream of black smoke and white steam.  Occasionally, blobs of red lava were tossed up into the air, lighting up the night.

“General,” the sorceress commanded.  “Prepare your troops for attack.  This will be the largest battle ever fought on this continent.”

Arrayed out on either side of her was a vast army.  Thousands of lizzie warriors with spears and atlatls, hundreds of lizzie cavalry, riding in howdahs on the backs of great sauraposeidons, and lizzie siege weapons pulled by teams of triceratops.  That none of these soldiers or their animals were born of nature was unimportant. They had been conjured by magic and to an enemy, they seemed as real as any flesh and blood.

The lizzie general, who was so much shadow stuff gathered together, waved his hand and the siege weapons rolled forward, screened by the infantry.  The cavalry moved to the flanks.

At that moment, three huge double gates in the wall opened and another army moved out.  In front of each unit, teams of twelve lizzies carried great braziers filled with flame.  There were no siege engines or cavalry, but there were thousands of lizzies brightly painted with feathers and carrying spears and atlatls.  Then there was something that Senta had never seen before. Wave after wave of lizzie warriors marched out the gate, armed not with throwing spears, but with pikes, twelve feet long, with huge metal tips.  And these lizzies were wearing armor.

Senta stood up on the great beast she was riding and held out her hand.  A large pair of binoculars materialized within her grasp, and she brought them to her eyes.  She was no metallurgist, but the armor and the tips of the pikes both appeared to be iron.  All the reptilians that she or other humans had come into contact with up until this point had been limited to copper-smelting technology.

Wave after wave of soldiers came out and formed into giant square units, until they were as large and impressive looking as Senta’s own army.  Then one more group of lizzies exited the center gate and took positions directly across the plain from the sorceress.  She raised the binoculars once again.  A group of a hundred lizzies, wearing armor like the other warriors, but with skin painted white and wearing white capes completely encircled another group, this one wearing no armor but with black painted bodies. Senta looked carefully at the latter group.  They were very far away and dark, but she could swear that they had their eyes stitched closed.

The Sisterhood of Pain—her book had revealed a passage about them, she thought by mistake.  But there were no mistakes.  The Sisterhood of Pain was made up of two parts.  There were the white sisters: a group of female warriors who cut out their own tongues, and then there were the dark sisters: magic wielders who gouged out their own eyes, but gained supernatural perception, in addition to the powerful spells. But they had lived a thousand years ago, and they had been human.  But they worshipped a dragon, and all lizzies did that, so it wasn’t much of a leap.

Tossing the binoculars aside, Senta conjured a magical megaphone and brought it to her mouth.  “I call upon the people and leaders of Xiatooq to return my dragon, or to face prompt and utter destruction!  There will be no deviation!  There is no alternative!  I will brook no delay!”

There was a moment of silence.  Then she heard it—chanting.  The dark sisters were too far away for her to hear, but she could hear them nevertheless. She could hear their magic.

Senta looked to her far right.  The cavalry at the far end of her army began to evaporate.  The smoky forms of their dinosaur mounts puffed away on the breeze. She looked in the other direction to see the same thing happening at the far left.  Faster and faster her army disappeared, the infantry and then the great siege weapons, and at last the giant beast upon which Senta stood.  As it vanished in a cloud of smoke, the sorceress fell down through it, collapsing in a heap on the dried mud of the ground.

She could hear hissing from far side of the field.  She was sure it was the lizzie version of laughter.  She jumped to her feet.

“You chant your seven syllables to dispel my army and you think you’ve won?” she yelled.  Then she screamed at the top of her lungs.  “You think I need an army?  I will bring down the sky on you!”

She grabbed a glamour floating around her head, the stored energy of a spell cast weeks earlier—energy that was released when she crushed the gem-like object.  Then she plucked another from the air and crushed it as well, and then another.  They were spells to increase the power and intensity of other spells.  As she released the magic from the red glamours and the blue, the hissing slowly died away.  As she released the energy from the green glamours and the clear ones, she felt fear coming from the blind lizzies who could sense the power.   And as their fear increased, it radiated out to the warriors who stood around them.

“Here you go, little one,” said Tokkenoht, setting a handful of forest slugs down on a rock beside the human.

“I can’t.  I know I should, but I just can’t.  If I eat them, I’ll vomit, and then I will lose all the water I drank back at the stream.  You eat them.”

The priestess scooped them back up and tossed them into her mouth.

It had been two days since the small human had helped her escape from the soft-skin warriors. Tokkenoht had managed to find enough food to keep her strength up.  Forest slugs were considered a delicacy among her people.  The human, however, had eaten nothing.  Tokkenoht was beginning to worry about her.

“I’ll eat today,” said Stahwasuwasu Zrant.  “Mark my words, I’ll bring down something I can cook today.”

“I don’t mean to criticize, little one,” said Tokkenoht.  “After all, you arranged my escape, and then managed to remove my chains with that hair wire…”

“Hair pin,” corrected the human, using the soft-skin word.  “My hut elders were correct.  You really cannot do without them.”

“Yes, you have shown great cunning for a having seen so few summers.”  She bobbed her head in annoyance.  “How many summers have you seen, anyway?  Six or seven?”

Tokkenoht hissed when the human let out her strange warbling laugh.  It was such a strange sound; it was unnerving.

“I have actually seen thirteen summers, though that’s not really what you’re asking.  The fourteenth anniversary of my birth was a short time ago.”

“Fourteen,” mused Tokkenoht. “I would not have guessed it, though I have been told that the soft-skins age much slower than we do. Wait.  You mean you were born in winter?”

“Oh yes, my people routinely defy all the laws of nature.”

“Perhaps humans are much more dangerous than we thought.”

“If you are only now figuring that out, then perhaps I have been giving your race too much credit,” said the human.

Tokkenoht grunted in recognition of the insult and perhaps of an unsettling truth as well.

“As I was saying, I don’t mean to criticize, but those spears are too small to throw, even with an atlatl.”

The human female had crafted three small spears with tiny spear points and had trimmed the back ends of them with pieces of a feather she had found on the ground.

“Oh, these are not spears. I have tried throwing spears with an atlatl, but I’ve never been very good at it, and I certainly don’t have time to become good now.  I need a weapon I already know how to use.”

“But you have your thunder weapon.”

“Yes, I do.  I also only have ten more um… uses for it.  I shouldn’t have wasted four scaring the males when one would have sufficed.”  The human peered around into the forest.  “I can use these to bring down something to eat and save the thunder weapon for defense. I don’t intend to end up in the belly of a feathered runner, like poor Warden.”

“This Wharden was a member of your hut?” asked Tokkenoht.

“No, he was just a friend.”

“I am sorry.  I recently lost someone.”

“A member of your hut?”

“Yes, and more.  She was the wife of my husband.”

“The wife of… fascinating! I had no idea that your people were um… that the males married more than one female.”

“Only the most powerful kings.”

“Then… you’re Hsrandtuss’s wife?”

Tokkenoht hissed the affirmative.

“Then it’s doubly important to get you back safely to your city.”

The human stood up and taking a knife from her belt, used it to cut a long segment of a branch from a willow tree.  She carefully trimmed it.

“The warrior Azkhantice is your friend?” said Tokkenoht, after a few minutes of silence.  “You hugged him.”

Stahwasuwasu Zrant stopped carving.  Her face flushed in a way that the lizzie had been unaware was possible.

“Um, yes, Ascan is a friend too.  We should get going.  I can work on this while we travel.”

They started off again through the forest, walking in the direction of the morning sun.  Tokkenoht took the lead and Stahwasuwasu Zrant followed, working her willow switch as she walked.

“What is your human name, Stahwasuwasu Zrant?” asked the priestess.

“It’s Iolana.”

“How strange.  It sounds like a bird call.”

“I suppose,” she allowed. “What is Hsrandtuss like?”

“He is a good king. He is very strong and very brave. He is also wise.”

“Wise enough to get thunder weapons.”

“Yes, we bought them from the human traders from the other human city state—the one called Natine.”

“The Mirsannans?” wondered Iolana.  “Not too much of a surprise, I suppose.  I understand they’re setting up trading bases in the far east.  You might even be better off with them on your side. They’re not looking to export as many settlers I imagine, since Mirsanna is so much larger than Brechalon in terms of land area.”

“You seem to know much about the politics of your people,” said Tokkenoht.

“Oh, no, not really.  Everyone knows those things.”

Kieran Baxter turned the knob and pushed the heavy door open.  His pistol led the way as he stepped into the Result Mechanism warehouse. Bright light streamed in through the windows along the ceiling, the puddles here and there attested to the previous night’s rain.  It took only a moment to see the body lying halfway across the room.  With one more quick look around to make sure there was nobody else there, he stepped across the cement floor and knelt down beside it.

“Sweet Kafira,” he muttered when he saw Peter’s dead eyes staring upward.

It was only too obvious that the wizard was dead, but Baxter felt for a pulse anyway.  Then he closed the young man’s eyes.  Carefully examining the body, he found a bullet’s entrance wound in the chest.  He scanned the floor for a shell casing, but didn’t see one.  Then he noticed Peter’s hand.  The young wizard had drawn a shape on the floor using his own blood.  Baxter tilted his head one way and then the other, but he couldn’t make out what it was supposed to be.  With his index finger, he traced the design.  Suddenly smoke exploded from the spot on the floor. Jumping back, Baxter watched as the column of smoke rose up and coalesced into a shadowy form of Peter Bassington.  Then the shadowy form spoke.

“I’m glad it’s you, Baxter. I don’t have much time.  It was Pantagria.  Bell freed her.  She has Philo Mostow, maybe others, helping her.  They’re going to St. Ulixes.  I don’t know how I know, but I do.  You’ve got to stop her.  Tell Senta…”

Whatever magic was holding the smoke in Peter Bassington’s form ended, and it became regular smoke and floated up, dissipating into the air.

“Kafira damn it.”

* * * * *

The door opened and the face of Chief Inspector Saba Colbshallow peered out.  He looked first at Baxter and then at the child he carried, and his face lost some of its color.

“What do you want?”

“I need a few words,” replied Baxter, “and a favor.”

“And why would I do you a favor?”

“I didn’t say it was for me.”

“Who is it, Daddy?” The face of a six-year-old, with large eyes, one brown and one hazel, and a cute button nose, all framed by a veritable forest of multihued curls peered around the chief inspector.

“It’s just a gentleman and his… little girl.”

“Can she come inside and play?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Perhaps that would be best,” said Baxter, setting Sen down.

“For just a few minutes then,” said Colbshallow through thin lips.  “Take her inside, DeeDee.”

The six-year-old stepped around her father and took the three-year-old by the hand and led her inside. Neither looked back.

“I was sorry to hear about your little boy,” said Baxter.

“Just say what you wanted to say.”

“Senta’s brother is dead… murdered.  His body is in the Result Mechanism warehouse.”

“Why aren’t you at the police station?”

“The killers have already fled the city.  They’re on the train to Mallontah.”

“We can send a telegram to the police in St. Ulixes.”

“It wouldn’t help,” said Baxter.  “It’s a magic um… situation.  I’ve got to go deal with it.”

“Why you?”

“Because I’m here.”

“I’ll get my gun and go with you.”

“No,” said Baxter.  “I need you to take care of little Senta.”

“Why me?” asked Colbshallow.

“You know why.  You’re the only one who’ll protect her like I would.”

“I’d give my life for her,” said Colbshallow.  “But I can’t have her here.  My wife will see her next to Dee Dee and see how much they look alike.”

“Maybe she won’t notice,” said Baxter.  “All children look alike.”

“Not to women, you ass.”

“You have to do this. I may not come back.  I need to know she’ll be okay.”

Colbshallow sighed. “All right.  You have my word she’ll be safe here.  But I can’t let you go alone.”

“You can’t?”  Baxter arched a brow.

“I’ve seen you in action. You’re handy with a firearm, I’ll give you that, but if you’re going up against magic you need somebody with you. You need somebody to cover your back.”

“No wizards.  I can’t trust them with this.”

“You shouldn’t trust them with anything,” said Colbshallow.  “I’ve got a man for you.”

“All right,” said Baxter.  “Have him meet me at the train station.  The train leaves at 4:40PM.”