World's First Wizard Complete Series Boxed Set

by Schneider, Aaron D.

  He writhed on the floor, straining every muscle in his body to assert some control. He needed to reach the knife, needed to get this thing off him.

  Spittle began to froth around his gritted teeth, and every second seemed impossible, but somehow Reinhart felt himself winning the battle against the suit. He managed to twist onto his back and then to sit up, though his arms and legs twitched and seized as the struggle continued. He convinced himself that he could feel the suit tiring, its strength slackening. His muscles were burning with exertion, but the suit was losing its hold with every frothing breath he took.

  Then his right arm seemed free, and he threw himself toward the box from his seat on the floor. His hand overshot the box, and he knocked his elbow on the edge of the stand. The impact sent a tingling shock up his arm, and in that moment of weakness, the suit struck, seeming to throw its whole energy into his numbed right arm.

  Unfamiliar fingers—Murdoch’s fingers—wrapped around Reinhart’s throat and began to squeeze.

  1

  The Error

  Milo heard the dogs barking and knew he’d taken too long.

  The whole farmstead would be awake very soon if they weren’t already, and then things would become interesting.

  Gloved hands in the smoking chimney and with soot smeared across his face, Milo glared down at the dogs in the yard below. They’d been more than happy to take the scraps of meat he’d brought to distract them, but with their treats now gobbled down, the ungrateful curs had returned to their previous allegiance. If only they’d give him a few more minutes with his file.

  Voices from the house beneath, angry and sharp, hollered at the baying dogs. The animals persisted and the voice sounded again, this time calling from a window. Milo realized his inability to understand the Georgian tongue meant he’d forgotten to prepare and take the elixirs that allowed him to speak and understand any language.

  He swore under his breath as he extracted his hands from the chimney. He was losing track of things more and more these days. He knew why, of course. The answer was written across his black-veined body. Nightwatch was a remarkable elixir, but sustained abuse had other effects besides the unsightly discolorations.

  As he shook the last of the chimney dust into a pouch, he heard a man’s voice growling something, then the clump-clump of boots across the floor. The man of the house was headed outside to sort things out.

  Milo looked skyward, cursing the bright moonlight spread over the farmstead.

  If the man looked up, there was no way he wouldn’t see Milo. Milo imagined the owner of the home emerging, muttering curses, and then groggily following the straining hounds to look up at the roof. What would he do upon seeing Milo perched there like a black-streaked kobold or hobgoblin alongside his chimney? Scream? Run? Start throwing rocks?

  The magus had just started to sidle along the ridge of the slate roof as quietly as he could when the farmer stepped out of the house and stood at the edge of the yard. As a tube of black metal swept in front of the man, glinting in the moonlight, Milo realized that his concern about thrown rocks was grotesquely optimistic. Pennies to perogies, if the man spotted him, Milo was going to be shot.

  Sliding the pouch and file into his breast pocket, careful not to jostle glass vials and collection tools, Milo began to creep back down the other side of the house. A quick glance over his shoulder spotted the outhouse a dozen yards behind the house. Another dozen or so yards from that was a vegetable garden that butted up to the family’s fields. The winter wheat in the field was nearly ready for harvest and so stood over a meter tall.

  If he could clear the distance to the outhouse in one leap, he could scuttle behind it, using it to block line of sight from the house until he hopped the garden wall. Then all he had to do was crawl over the other side and worm his way over the first grain hill, and he was in the clear.

  Looking back, he saw the man was in the yard advancing toward the dogs, head and gun swiveling this way and that. The man’s movements were measured and suspicious. Was it just the disturbance that made him wary, or had he heard the rumors of the foreigners who’d taken up residence to the north in Shatili? Without the elixir of comprehension and tongues, Milo couldn’t even have asked him if he was trespassing.

  Milo turned away from the gun-toting farmer, feeling the back of his skull itch in preparation for a lead slug. He gauged the distance one more time, gathered his focus, and leaped.

  His coat flapped behind him, flickering from fabric into black-feathered wings that carried him easily over the muddy stretch between buildings. So easily was it that rather than landing in front of the outhouse, he thumped down on top of it.

  Milo swore as the Plutonian wings dissolved back into his coat and he fought to keep himself from tumbling headfirst to the ground. As it was, he perched atop the small roof, and the entire wooden structure gave a precarious creak as it bore his weight.

  For a second after the latrine’s protest faded, Milo heard only the constant yap of the dogs, and he dared to hope.

  The smell of the latrine being freshly used and a soft snarl strangled that hope in its crib.

  Milo barely had time to pull his leg clear when the door flew open and a sturdy young woman in a nightdress rushed out, her dark hair flying behind her. Three steps clear of the door, she whirled and saw Milo perching atop the outhouse, his silhouette clear in the silvery moonlight.

  She stood gaping up at him, and Milo thought the look of horror and wonder stamped on her face might have been empowering if not for the nature of his lofty position. The smell of excrement, old and new, was potent.

  “Eshmak’i!” she shrieked as she genuflected repeatedly. “Ts'adi!”

  Milo stared at her for a second longer, wondering what sort of incubus she imagined him to be, but the roar of the man at the front of the house knocked him out of his reverie.

  He needed to go and quickly.

  He spun and leaped into the air, applying the focus necessary to form the wings on his coat by reflex. He glided over the open ground and most of the vegetable garden. His feet nearly caught a tangle of vined stakes, but he tucked them up at the last second before slamming them down on the damp earth.

  “Mamik’o! Mamik’o! Mishvelet!” the young woman screamed behind him, her voice becoming a roar. “Mishvelet!”

  Milo didn’t bother to look behind him as he vaulted the garden wall and raced across the field, stalks of wheat whipping about him. This wasn’t the stealthy departure he had in mind, but he supposed it would do. A few dozen strides and he’d be over the hill, then it was only a short sprint into the forest beyond. Then it would only be a matter of tracking back west to where he’d left the bag of bones stashed along the bank of the Argun River.

  He knew his elevated mood was a side effect of the nightwatch, but he rode the wave of ecstatic energy, a laugh bubbling up from his throat.

  “De Zauber-Schwartz strikes again!” he crowed, throwing his head back to howl wildly.

  The cry was punctuated by the report of a rifle, and Milo saw the earth kick up on the slope to his right the barest heartbeat before he heard the ripping hiss of the bullet passing over his shoulder.

  Absently, Milo noted that the farmer must have been a good shot to have gotten so close. His pace didn’t slow but he began to weave, certain it wouldn’t matter but desperate to avoid having the back of his head proven right after all. Trampling wheat in his wild escape, kernels and chaff flew up behind him in a moonlit silvery spray.

  It might have been picturesque if the crack of another rifle shot hadn’t shattered the stillness.

  This shot came even nearer, zipping by close enough that Milo gave a cry as a sharp ripple of air slashed his ear in the bullet’s wake.

  “Just my luck,” Milo whined with a panting snarl as he crested the hill. “I got the village deadeye!”

  He plunged down the other side of the hill, glad for the dark stand of the trees looming at the edge of the field. With the hill between him and
the rifle, he felt the artificial buoyancy of the alchemical drug coming back. He couldn’t bring himself to cheer, but a smile spread over his face even as his breath became ragged.

  “Almost in the clear,” he rasped.

  Then he heard the baying of the dogs and heard their sleek bodies shooting up the wheat-crowned slope. He’d be lucky to make the tree line before they were on his heels. He was going to have to decide how much of his power to display to get out of this mess, and that was assuming the marksman-farmer didn’t pop over the top of the hill and blow his head off.

  Milo swore as he heard canine growls coming up fast behind him.

  This night was not going as he’d expected, and he imagined the drugs had given him a rosy idea of his odds.

  * * *

  Milo, scratched and battered, slid from the back of his unliving steed as dawn’s fingers worked their magic across the gray sky.

  “That could have been worse,” he muttered as he straightened, feeling sinews creak as bones popped and clicked. “But then again, it could have gone much better.”

  The Qareen horse, nothing more than bones woven with leathery cords of sinew, stared forward without comment. The shade that animated the corpus was one of the most docile and compliant entities Milo harnessed thus far, something that had seemed essential for what basically amounted to a vehicle. To Milo’s relief, despite this placidity, the animate had proven more than capable of driving its vessel at incredible speeds. Without the concerns of breath or muscle fatigue, the Qareen had torn through the countryside back to Shatili once Milo had finally managed to slip away from the dogs.

  “All right.” Milo sighed as he unslung the canvas bag from his shoulder and drew its mouth wide. “In you go.”

  The sigils inked inside the mouth of the bag flared with green light, and Milo felt a vague inhaling pressure from the bag. His soul felt it more than his skin, something like a gentle current brushing against his spirit.

  The effect on the undead horse was far more dramatic.

  Coming apart like a cheap children’s toy, the Qareen’s sinew unwound, sliding into the bag with a dry hiss. The sinew was still coiling inside when the bones danced apart from each other and tumbled into the bag, turning end over end. The bones deposited themselves in the sack, many of them vanishing inside a container that was shorter than their length. The weight of the sack barely increased as the enchanted remains slid into the ensorcelled container.

  In less than half a minute, where once a skeletal animate had loomed, there was nothing but some muddy hoofprints.

  “I’m sure that will get old someday.” He chuckled softly, then winced at the stabbing pain in his head.

  The nightwatch was wearing off.

  When was the last time he’d slept?

  Milo’s stomach twisted and his heartbeat quickened; he couldn’t remember. That wasn’t good.

  Nightwatch was a wonderful and potent stimulant, but extended use had its risks, not the least being a sudden loss of consciousness and even bodily trauma when it ran out. This was exactly why he’d adjusted the formula to give him a pointed reminder when it was wearing off. He’d told himself it was put in as a reminder to go get some rest, but lately, he’d been using it as a signal to take more of the stuff.

  Now he wasn’t sure if he hadn’t slept in days or weeks, but either way, he needed to get inside and take something before the full effects of withdrawal set in.

  Shatili, a small village in the Khevsureti highlands of Georgia on the northern slopes of the Caucasus, was largely untouched by time. Settled in a gorge carved by the Argun River, it would have been little more than a few simple hovels and homesteads except for the fortress complex that thrust up from the earth like a dragon spine. The Argun forked around the sheer-sided constructions of stone and mortar whose foundations predated the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire. This was the face of the defiant little hamlet, a bastion in a land familiar with war, and it had been Milo’s home and laboratory for the past eight months.

  When Lokkemand brought their contingent of Nicht-KAT up from Afghanistan, Milo had assumed they were heading further north, but they never made it past the Greater Caucasus Mountains. As they started to pass into Chechen territory, which was nominally held by a coalition of German and Ottoman forces, word had come for them to find a place to rest and wait. The captain had said the situation was “fluid,” so they’d settle into the defensible village to wait for word from Colonel Jorge, but when winter struck the mountains and they were trapped in Shatili for months, no word came.

  Now with the thaw mostly done and spring in full bloom, they still waited, though Milo had not been idle.

  The magus skirted the left fork of the bridge, knowing a sentry would be keeping watch over the bridges on the approach to the fortress. The sentry wouldn’t challenge him, of course, but he’d report back to Lokkemand, and that was a complication Milo wanted to avoid if at all possible.

  A little farther along the bank was an outthrust of rock that stretched a few meters over the Argun, and here Milo made his crossing. Leaping into the air and trusting his coat’s transmogrification to handle the rest, he swooped over the rolling gray river and came down in a series of short hops. Milo imagined he was the most ungainly of birds, but needs must, and right now, he needed to get to his study.

  Typically, he would creep along and come in through a postern gate he could lock and unlock using a si’lat servant he kept in his coat pocket, but there was no time.

  Impatiently checking to see that no sentry was prowling the walkway near his appointed wing of the complex, he scuttled to the rough-edged balcony that adjoined his study. It was no small distance, and even with climbing gear, it would have been difficult to scale it without at least raising a lot of ruckus.

  Which was exactly why he wasn’t going to climb.

  In the back of his head, he knew this was a bad idea. The wings he’d fashioned into the complex fetish that was his black surcoat were meant more for gliding than flying, but another sharp stab drove the concern from his mind in a crackling wave of pain. He was confident that if he pushed them and drew deep on essence worked into the garment, he could reach the balcony. He had to.

  Milo took a steadying breath and looked at the balcony, which seemed to be farther up the longer he stood there. For the first time in days, his limbs felt heavier, the fatigue beginning to seep through the insulating nightwatch like a cold, dragging tide. He had to go now or never.

  “RISE,” he commanded as he leaped upward with all his strength, the verbalization giving potency to his focus.

  The black wings beat the air and he jerked upward, rising in fits and starts. Like an overfed vulture trying to take to the air, his progress was an uncertain thing, but by the time Milo opened eyes squeezed shut in concentration, he saw he was within arm's reach of the balcony’s ledge. Drilling deeper into the latticework of essence until he felt it threatening to fray, Milo pushed the wings to propel him upward the final meter.

  His arms were up over the ledge and one foot was planted against the stones below when his focus gave out and the wings collapsed into the coat. He tried not to think about how vacant the space beneath his other foot was as he hauled with his arms and pushed with the planted foot. Grunting and swearing, fresh sweat prickling across his brow, he dragged himself up and over onto the balcony. He collapsed on the stones with a groan and lay there panting and muttering incoherent promises to never do something so stupid again.

  He might have stayed there for hours, except the stab in his skull told him time was running dangerously short.

  Moaning half-formed curses, he dragged himself to his hands and knees to crawl into his study. The full light of the new day hadn’t reached mountain-shaded Shatili yet but Milo’s nightsight elixir let him spot the small bottle on his desk easily enough. Just a few drops of the nightwatch would stave off the oncoming unconsciousness long enough for him to take stock of things.

  Without knowing how long
he’d been awake, he couldn’t let himself fall asleep since that could be fatal. However, he didn’t have time to make the restorative sleepbalm he normally took to protect him from the worst of his insomniac excesses. He hoped he could take enough of the nightwatch to give him time to make the sleepbalm and not so much that his stimulated mind forgot what he was doing and went back to his research experiments. The fact that this had been his goal the last several mornings did not escape him as a point of concern, but it shrank in significance as he inched across the floor to the desk.

  Arm feeling like it was laced with lead, he flopped it onto the desk and groped a clumsy hand over to the bottle. His blind fingers nearly knocked the container over, but mercifully his fatigue-softened grip was just strong enough to arrest its fall. He dragged the bottle off the desk and down to where he knelt, trembling, on the floor, his limbs threatening to abandon him altogether.

  With agonizing slowness, he tugged the cork stopper out and threw the bottle's contents into his yawning mouth.

  There was less in the bottle than he expected, but the taste of sweet onions in the back of his throat was soon accompanied by a rush of that pale, quivering energy he’d become fearfully accustomed to.

  Milo sighed as he rose to his feet, his burdensome limbs quickening to his command. ‘Well, that almost ended poorly.”

  Reflexively, he cast about the desk, looking for more nightwatch.

  After all, the dose he’d taken had been very small, and he would need more if he was going to get the sleepbalm made. That and he had to sort his gathered materials from the night, and maybe do a little more review of The Fluids Flow codex, and it might not be a bad idea to get breakfast, and then check in to see if Lokkemand had anything for him, and—