World's First Wizard Complete Series Boxed Set

by Schneider, Aaron D.

  Milo sensed an undercurrent of sinister will behind the obedience, but for now, he was glad she wasn’t testing the limits he knew he wouldn’t keep to.

  “Good,” Milo said and held out his hand behind him.

  Stepping reluctantly forward, Ambrose opened the envelope and placed the knife in Milo’s hand before backing away once more.

  “Have you brought me a gift?” the shade asked, leaning forward so her blood-soaked hair dripped phantasmal blood on the dungeon floor. “Or is this something even more precious than a gift for your old teacher?”

  Milo remained unmoving, glaring until the specter of Imrah leaned back, after which he held the knife out for a visual inspection.

  “This knife was used in the murder of two fey, and it clearly has magical properties,” Milo explained. “But it is not necromistry. I need to know as much as Imrah knew about what it might be.”

  The shade’s gaze had remained fixed on Milo’s face, a wide smile spreading from human teeth to the overlapping fangs of the ghul.

  “I see, I see,” it purred, still refusing to even look at the blade. “Dead fey? Not easy to do. Is that smoke-sucking strumpet one of the two? Is this a quest for vengeance? Are you on a quest to avenge your slain lover?”

  The words rolled out of the shade’s throat with an unctuous timbre that roused Milo’s anger, and when his command came, it seared the wraith-like flame.

  LOOK

  REMEMBER

  There was an instant of resistance, but the shade’s pseudo-will snapped beneath the driving piston of Milo’s command. Its head twisted around, and its eyes wrenched wide open to look at the knife. Milo could feel something shifting within the slippery phantom as deeper recesses of echoes and their fractured memories bubbled up to the surface like the last gasps of a drowning man. Milo held the shade through will alone until he felt its essence heavy with congealing memories.

  “Enough!” it cried. “I remember! I remember! Please! Enough!”

  Milo released his command and watched as the shade clutched its skull, swelling like a balloon until the locks of bloody hair were stretched over a grotesque bulb.

  “What did she know?” Milo asked, channeling Lokkemand’s utter and certain command.

  The shade’s neck bowed under its immense, wobbling head, struggling to raise a hateful glare to meet Milo’s gaze. Its fingers trembled over bulging veins on its distended skull as though trying to come to grips with what had happened to, its bitter stare never leaving Milo’s unflinching gaze.

  “The blade is curzed,” the specter hissed through a scraping thicket of fangs. “It’z been touched by a dark hex.”

  Milo didn’t allow his determined expression to so much as flinch as he slid a glance to the blade and back to the shade.

  “Curse? Hex?” Milo mused. “I haven’t read about anything like that in the texts.”

  “Becauze it is not ghul magic,” Imrah’s echo snarled, the very effort of speaking the memories seeming to be accomplished only with significant discomfort.

  Milo couldn’t keep the eagerness from his voice as he leaned forward.

  “What sort of magic is it?”

  “Err! Wretch…agh! Wretched fey witchery! Ahhh! It hurtz!” the shade gasped, squeezing its skull until the flesh was dimpled and he could see tiny rivulets of glittering ectoplasm leaking between its fingers.

  Milo frowned at the shade’s behavior, sensing an undercurrent of movement, like a loose thread being jerked fiercely. Could some of the memories be potent enough, dangerous enough, that clear remembrance put the shade in danger of losing cohesion?

  Milo wasn’t sure, but that uncertainty made him wary of pushing much further.

  He knew it was fey magic, a hex, or a curse, and that would mean he would need someone to tell him about their magics. It seemed a cruel irony that the very one he was saving was the very one he could trust to give him advice on how to handle this curse, but then again, Milo remembered he was Russian, and expatriate or not, cruel irony was par for the course.

  “How do we undo the knife’s curse?” he pressed, his words coming out fast as he watched the shade digging fingers deeper into the pulsing skull, gouging past the first knuckle.

  “Kn-knife izn’t, ugh, c-curzed,” it moaned. “The hex is the owner’z. Knife iz hiz, zo-erkh! Zo knife touched by curze—AHHH!”

  The last utterance became a shrill scream, and a silvery seam began to form along the crown of its skull. Ectoplasm leaked freely, and Milo felt flashes of essence dissipating into the aether. The shade was coming apart from the weight of the memories; there could be no doubt now.

  “I think it’s time to wrap this up,” Ambrose suggested at Milo’s shoulder, his voice brittle with horror and disgust.

  “If Ezekiel is dead, why is his knife still carrying his curse?” Milo asked, partly of Imrah’s shade and partly of Ambrose. “If he’s the one who’s cursed, and the knife is cursed because of him, it follows that if he is dead, this hex should be lifted.”

  The shade didn’t answer except to gasp and give a series of mewling screams, as hideous as they were pitiful.

  “Either way, I don’t think we are getting anything more from her.” Ambrose pointed at the widening gap in the shade’s head. Inside the wound, past the ragged ectoplasm-leaking edge, Milo saw the trembling darkness of the shade’s essence made manifest. Staring at it, he felt the fragile energies beginning to shake apart in psychic tremors of growing intensity.

  Milo bit back the furious questions demanding to pour forth and snatched up the lock.

  REST

  A few moments later, the shade was bound and recovering in its box, and Milo stood with both palms against the growing ache in his skull. He told himself they weren’t sympathy pains, but the voice in his head was not entirely convincing. He wondered, not for the first or last time, why he couldn’t be as good at lying to himself as he was at lying to other people.

  “Well,” Ambrose said, gingerly scooping up the supplies, “we’ve got part of the puzzle.”

  “Yes, we do.” Milo heaved a sigh and gave up his feeble attempts at forcing the tension back. “And I’m pretty sure I know where we are going to get the next piece.”

  “Really? Where?”

  Milo fought back the sick feeling in his stomach at what lay ahead.

  “Doing something I’m going to hate even more than this,” he groaned. “Let’s hope I get better results from the next person I have to ask.”

  Ambrose paused as he bent to pick up the box with Imrah’s remains.

  “You’re not saying what I think you are.” Incredulity sharpened his words. “You can’t be.”

  Milo shook his head and headed out of the dungeon. He suddenly felt more tired than he had that morning when the nightwatch was wearing off, except this was fatigue of the soul rather than the body.

  “I didn’t say it was a good idea,” he muttered as he slowly began to mount the steps that would take him out of the darkness. “Just the only one I’ve got.”

  * * *

  The elixir was in his hand as he stood over her, but his whole body seemed locked in place by some paralytic. His heart hammered in his ears, and between the throbbing beats, he could hear his breath rasping horridly loud.

  “We don’t have to do this,” Ambrose said at his shoulder, his deep voice seeming sudden and alien against the clamor of Milo’s body.

  “What are our other options?” the magus asked, certain he knew the unsatisfactory answer.

  “We could wait and see if Jorge has any more fey contacts,” Ambrose said, sounding less than convinced. “Maybe one of them can get here before she’s too far gone.”

  Milo looked at the contessa, noting her silvery glow and the dull sheen that could be explained as a trick of the light. Her skin was gray and loose around her long form as though she was withering from within, which given that she was constantly losing blood wasn’t far from the truth.

  “Does she look like she can wait?” Milo as
ked, the question broken but without malice or anger. “You heard Brodden say it was a miracle she was holding on, and even if we can keep up the transfusions, the efforts to keep the bleeding under control are going to start having lasting effects if they haven’t already.”

  Ambrose wanted to argue, but his eyes were downcast as he looked at the fallen fey with welling sadness.

  “I assume she’s too weak for an amputation?” the big man asked, eyeing the pink-stained bandages across her shoulder.

  Milo nodded.

  “She’d be dead before they could even start to close things up.”

  Ambrose swore softly in French and sucked his teeth as he scratched his chin.

  “And none of your magic can fix her up?” Ambrose’s expression said he knew the answer before Milo gave it.

  “Besides changing my blood, everything else has magic interacting with the wound,” Milo explained. “That triggers the curse that pulls it apart, and pulling it apart like that means it could do more damage. Even if it doesn’t do more damage, it will use more of my energy and ingredients, and thus I will be less able to do anything useful if and when we do have something we can do.”

  “So, this is it, then.” Ambrose’s massive shoulders drooped in a way that might have been comical had it not been for the circumstances.

  “Like I said,” Milo murmured, raising one hand to the stopper on the vial, “not a good idea, but the only one I’ve got.”

  Ambrose nodded. “Should I wake Brodden up?”

  In true veteran fashion, the medic had collapsed into sleep the second the two of them arrived. The steady sawing of his gentle snores was the only thing that confirmed the lump on the cot opposite Rihyani’s wasn’t a bundle of old laundry.

  “No,” Milo said softly. “Let him sleep. If things go wrong, he’ll know soon enough.”

  Milo remembered the man’s bloodshot eyes and harrowed face and made a mental note to do something for him, however this turned out. Ambrose would probably know what to do and could see it done.

  “Dear God,” Milo whispered, the word sounding like an entreaty instead of a curse, “let this work.”

  He removed the stopper, gently opened Rihyani’s mouth, and slowly poured the nightwatch down her throat as he impelled the ingredients with essence from a razored thumb.

  As predicted, the elixir took some time to work. Rihyani’s eyes fluttered teasingly as her limbs trembled and her fingers twitched. Milo could feel Ambrose’s gaze shifting from the fey to himself and back, checking to see if anything the contessa had done was a good or bad sign. He could have told him that he had no idea if any of it was a good or bad sign, that he was flying blind, but he had a feeling Ambrose already knew that.

  Milo watched silently, half-remembered prayers overheard in his youth going up with every twitch. He’d seen demons and he walked with a half-angel, so it wasn’t beyond hope that someone was listening, though in Milo’s experience, fathers and mothers, divine or otherwise, were never around when they were needed.

  That thought, one thorny musing amongst a field of bitter brambles, dug deep into the prayers. The entreaties became pleadings, became demands, became accusations. Gradually, as his eyes bored into Rihyani’s supine form, he saw through her to the flow of essence he’d issued into her, which sparked and tickled along chords of magical power suffusing her frame. His will and fury stoked by his prayers-turned-condemnations lashed at the essence, driving it onward.

  God was not here, but Milo the Magus was, and he would be damned if he let this fail.

  “Milo!” Rihyani cried, and Milo’s eyes focused on crude matter once more.

  The fey’s body was sinking down from a cruel imitation of ecstasy’s arch, her limbs still trembling.

  “Milo,” she murmured softly, one hand reaching out to him feebly. “You hurt me.”

  Milo, blinking and wondering at the wetness upon his cheek, met her searching wine-dark eyes and nearly gasped at the sadness rippling behind those golden pupils. Pain he had expected, anger he had accepted, but sadness struck him where he was unhardened and unguarded.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, deflating as his guilt sucked the bile from him and left him aching. “I needed you to wake up.”

  “All for the best, chéri,” Ambrose said in a steady, soothing voice.

  The sadness still swimming in Rihyani’s eyes told him that neither of them was afforded the ignorant innocence of the bodyguard. Milo inwardly cursed himself for letting his emotions, and such powerful and bitter emotions at that, interfere with his magic.

  As she stared up at him, Milo felt the urge to run and hide like a child, such was his shame, but then a shudder wracked her body, and he realized what was happening. He was making it about him again, and it was costing them time they didn’t have.

  “The cowboy, Ezekiel, was hexed,” Milo began, his words coming clean and fast. “The knife was cursed too, so your wounds are cursed. That’s why my magic can’t heal them and they won’t mend on their own.”

  Rihyani seemed to be struggling to maintain focus, her gaze drifting, but as he finished speaking, she began to nod.

  “A Death Hex,” she whispered, and her eyes slid to half-mast. “We should have known. Should have und…understood…”

  The words slid out, then the contessa lost the understanding of where she was, her head lolling one way and then the other. Milo hadn’t expected her to burn through this much of the elixir this fast.

  He dropped down and took the hand he’d been too ashamed to hold before. Her skin was cold to the touch and rolled freely over the delicate bones of her hands.

  “Rihyani,” he called, hating how weak he sounded. “Please, can you break the hex?”

  Her head stopped rolling and she looked at him, her lips spreading into a glorious sleepy smile.

  “No.” She sighed, her eyes drooping a little lower. “But you can.”

  Milo’s fingers tightened around hers as though by his grip, he could keep her from succumbing to the trauma-induced slumber.

  “How, Rihyani?” he pleaded. “Tell me how.”

  With what must have been the last of her strength, she drew Milo closer to her.

  “Tsminda Sameba,” she whispered. “Go there.”

  Milo’s heart sank. He didn’t know where Tsminda Sameba was, but he knew every town and landmark within a day's travel. If it were farther than that, what hope could there be that she would last that long?

  “Rihyani, we don’t have time for that,” he implored, his heart sinking. “You are dying.”

  Rihyani shook her head.

  “I’ve strength enough to wait for you,” she muttered softly. “Climb to Tsminda Sameba and ask to meet the marquis.”

  Milo pulled back so he could look at her face, his heart beginning to beat in his ears as he felt the magic weakening in her and her grip on his hand loosening.

  “The marquis?” Milo asked, the questions springing from his tongue before he had time to even consider them. “Who is that? A fey? Will he help me, teach me how to break the curse?”

  Rihyani’s eyes were closed now, but her smile was even more brilliant, as though transported by whatever she saw behind her eyelids.

  “He won’t want to,” she said, a laugh she didn’t have the strength for dancing behind her words. “You’ll have to make him see.”

  “See what?” Milo demanded even as he felt her slipping away. Ambrose’s big hand descended on his shoulder.

  “Easy, Magus,” the big man muttered thickly. “Easy.”

  “See what?” Milo repeated miserably.

  But Rihyani was unconscious once more, fresh blood seeping from her bandages.

  10

  The Truth

  “Not that I mind you taking a concern outside your study,” Lokkemand called sharply as he strode into his office, heels snapping on the stone floor. “But I do prefer it when subordinates ask to enter my office rather than assume the privilege.”

  Milo straightened from gazing
over Ambrose’s shoulder as he sketched out a rough imitation of the map before him. Goat-toothed Dieter watched, helpless and befuddled, from the door until Lokkemand firmly shut it. It wasn’t a slam, but it was hard enough to punctuate his entrance.

  “Do you care to explain to me exactly what it is you are doing?” he asked in a tone that made it very clear it was a courtesy. “Or do you want me to start filling in the blanks?”

  “We needed a map,” Milo replied simply, eliciting a distracted snort of amusement from Ambrose. Milo’s gaze slid back down to the maps once again.

  “Obviously,” Lokkemand replied in flat disgust. “Perhaps I should have been more specific. Where do you plan to go that would require you to acquire a map?”

  “Just about done,” Ambrose muttered, his gaze sliding between his map and the one on the table. “

  “Volkohne?” Lokkemand demanded, his voice dropping to a low growl.

  “Tsminda Sameba, sir,” Milo said as he met Lokkemand’s glare. “Took us a bit, but we found it. Seems it’s an old church on the slopes of Mount Kazbek.”

  “Kazbek,” Lokkemand repeated, and Milo could practically hear the files being shuffled behind Lokkemand’s gray eyes. “That’s in the Khevi province, nearly two days travel from here.”

  “I think I’ve got it down to a day and a half if we use the Rollsy and these routes are cleared out,” Ambrose said as he straightened, his map held out at arm’s length for a final inspection.

  “Is this where the guerrilla force is going to be?” Lokkemand asked, his tone hopeful despite the incredulous scowl on his face. “I heard from some mutterings that you’ve been engaging in your own methods of reconnaissance.”

  Milo and Ambrose shared an uneasy look. They’d always assumed their efforts were wilfully ignored by the soldiers in Shatili, and even more so when they attempted secrecy. The fact that their investigations, however vaguely observed, were known to the men was a shock.

  Both men lapsed into silence, alternating between looking at each other and the captain.

  “You didn’t seriously think I wouldn’t keep tabs on you?” Lokkemand barked with a sharp, mocking laugh.