With an ultimate magus, it’s more important to keep yourself as close as possible to a single-classed spellcaster on one side than it is to keep the two even.
Thus you want to circumvent as much as possible ultimate magus’s attempts to progress your lower-level class.
Because at 1st, 4th, and 7th level, ultimate magus advances the class with lower caster level (your choice in the case of a tie), this has a tendency to even out your two classes. If you avoid that, and continue to progress in the more advanced class, you will have more of your highest-level spell slots, which are also higher level than they would be.
Practiced Spellcaster is the solution to taking manual control over which class ultimate magus progresses. Practiced Spellcaster increases a class’s caster level (but no other facet of its spellcasting) by up to 4 (capped at the spellcaster’s HD, so the feat is only beneficial to multiclassed spellcasters). Normally, caster level is nice but not as crucial as things like spell slots or higher spell levels. Ultimate magus switches this up, though.
If a Wizard 4/Sorcerer 1 takes Practiced Spellcaster for sorcerer, his weaker class, his sorcerer caster level is 5th. This puts it higher than his wizard spellcasting’s 4th caster level, so first level of ultimate magus advances wizard. This is despite the fact that the ultimate magus’s wizard spellcasting is, for most purposes, more advanced than his sorcerer spellcasting.
Now you have some control over your advancement, and that allows you to maximize your spell slots.
At 4th level, both classes are even, so you should choose wizard. At 7th, barring finding some other bonus to sorcerer caster level, though, you have to accept some sorcerer progression, which is a shame but not the end of the world. You’ll end up “missing” a total of two wizard spellcasting levels (compared to a single-classed wizard), but gain a total of nine sorcerer levels, plus of course all the rest of the ultimate magus class features.
Otherwise, you need to improve the abilities that grant you bonus spells. Consider the beguiler (Player's Handbook II) instead of sorcerer: you'll use Intelligence for both classes.
Versatile Spellcaster is another feat that will make your slots more flexible.
And pearls of power and rings of wizardry can help by letting you reuse slots. Memento magicka are like pearls of power for spontaneous spellcasters but they are 50% more expensive, which is badly overpriced.
I’m going to answer “how do I combine Dervish with Lightning Maces,” rather than specifically how to get a slashing mace.
Aptitude Special Ability
The aptitude special ability from Tome of Battle can be applied to a weapon to cause feats that are specifically for another weapon to apply to the weapon with aptitude. It is likely that the designers meant just to let you switch Weapon Focus (dagger) to your aptitude longsword and similar, but the wording of the feat allows even feats where you never had a choice about the weapon type to apply to the aptitude weapon. This is frequently quite powerful, and occasionally completely nonsensical.
If you really want to use maces specifically, you could have an aptitude light mace, and then apply the Versatile Unarmed Strike feat to it. This is probably going to fall into the latter category for most groups, but it’s RAW-legal.
Alternatively, you could use an aptitude slashing weapon, ideally one with a large threat range (the kukri is almost certainly your best bet here: light slashing weapon with a large threat range), and then let Lightning Maces apply to it.
In either case, the Roundabout Kick feat works similarly to Lightning Maces, but for unarmed strikes: once again, aptitude can allow you to take the extra attack with your mace or kukri.
Combined with Disciple of Dispater, the kukris are looking at enormous threat ranges, which means you’ll score a critical on very-nearly every single attack that successfully hits. The maces are only somewhat smaller. Combined with Lightning Maces and Roundabout Kick, every critical triggers two attacks. Your number of attacks is thus more likely to increase rather than decrease; if you hit on the first two or three, you are statistically unlikely to stop attacking until the target is dead.
This is, of course, broken.
Were I your DM, I would allow you to have your slashing mace or allow Dervish to use non-slashing weapons without a second thought. On the other hand, Lightning Maces already is on my banlist. I also consider any combination of aptitude with a feat that couldn’t normally select the weapon in question to be something to be adjudicated by me, on a case-by-case basis.
Best Answer
Maybe a weapon made of ferroplasm will do?
A weapon made of ferroplasm that deals 1d4 or 1d6 points of damage gains a +1 enhancement bonus and costs an additional 2,500 gp, while a weapon made of ferroplasm that deals 1d8, 1d10, or 1d12 points of damage gains a +2 enhancement bonus and costs an additional 7,500 gp.
Alternatively, how about a sentira weapon?
Sentira is, you'll note, made of "powdered crystal" but "treated as mithril"--I don't know if that's close enough for the DM (or a chem professor), but at least the description mentions another metal, albeit a fictional one. Interestingly, although no statistics are given for making weapons from the sentira, everything else in Secrets of Sarlona is made of sentira (e.g. armor, mosaics, gates, public art installations, passports, entire buildings). It'll be up to the DM to determine the price of sentira weapon. I suggest he be guided by the special abilities and costs of emotional armor (137-8).