The fey passed a hand over his face, and the long, pensive features were replaced by a baphometian horror. A shaggy, goatish snout filled with slavering fangs snapped with bone-crunching force, while the huge head with a crown of barbed horns tossed left and right, sending ribbons of burning brimstone through the air. Each man felt the heat of the hellish breath against his face, and each nearly retched at the pungent aroma of sulfur and sweaty beast.
Milo and Ambrose fell back startled, their backs to the open gallery window. Hands fell to weapons, while their muscles bunched in equal preparation to leap into the fray or to an uncertain escape to the hall below. Milo’s coat could bear him down safely, but he wasn’t sure it could bear the additional weight of the stout bodyguard.
Before things erupted into violence, the transformed marquis drew back, and with another pass of his hand returned to his previous appearance. He was polite enough not to grin in their faces, but the mischief still shone in his eyes.
“Was that some sort of illusion?” Milo asked, ignoring the hammering in his chest. “A momentary bending of the fundament?”
“Yes,” the marquis said but raised a warning finger. “But do not confuse an illusion of the Art with a mere trick of the senses. With the Art, my will acted upon you, and your unprepared wills accepted it. If I’d bent to bite, my fangs would have opened your flesh as surely as any beast’s.”
Milo looked at Ambrose, who only gave a bewildered shake of his head.
“Your will acting on ours makes it real, even if you physically didn’t grow finger-long teeth?” Milo asked.
“Precisely,” the marquis confirmed.
“This whole gallery formed because the Art pressed your will on ours to make it,” Milo said, nodding, then his head drew up quickly with an idea. “Is this whole manor part of your will? The whole Lost Vale?”
The marquis beamed down at Milo and bowed his horned head slowly.
“Very good, Magus.”
Ambrose gave a grunt, and Milo and the marquis both turned to see him scratching his whiskered chin, his brows knit in concentration.
“So, if we know this, all of it,” he began, waving his hand to the gallery and the hall, “is just an illusion, why doesn’t it stop being real? If our will has to accept it as true, but now we know it isn’t, why doesn’t it disappear? Or at least, why can’t we see through it?”
“A fair question,” the marquis said gently. “But knowing is not believing. Again, the difference between thoughts and will is the difference between the child blowing dandelion seeds and the wind that propels the man o' war. A life among mortal men has raised your will to believe what your hands touch and your eyes see is real, and you’ve spent some time under my influence knowing it’s real. It takes more than a thought to convince your will to throw off what it believes—especially, if I may be so bold, when it is being affected by a practitioner of the Art as potent as I am. You are shackled to your experience, though with time and concentration, you could break free.”
Ambrose frowned as he nodded in acknowledgment, clearly uncomfortable with the whole business.
“All right, I think I understand the principle,” Milo said, drawing the marquis’ attention back to him. “But as a human, how am I supposed to learn the Art since I’m not a creature of will like fey are?”
“At first blush, I would say you couldn’t,” the fey said, the mischief replaced by scholarly gravitas. “Few humans can muster the certainty and focus to push back against all but the weakest of our kind, and even then, it is only to resist, not to push their own will out. Yet your unique ability to do ghulish magic gives me hope that there is a possibility that with some assistance, you could intuit how to begin mastering the Art.”
“How can I intuit something that is unnatural to me?” Milo asked, despair creeping into the corners of his tone.
The mischievous gleam returned.
“That,” said the marquis, “is precisely where things become very interesting.”
17
The Art
The marquis had offered to transport them to a different portion of the estate, but Ambrose had politely but firmly declined, so they’d spent some time moving through the manor before exiting and heading for the conical dovecote in the expansive courtyard where they’d first met the fey master of the Lost Vale.
“The reason I did not join you at the feast was that I needed time to riddle out this conundrum,” the marquis explained as they strode across the lawn under a huge yellow moon. “As you so keenly observed, Magus, the Art is intuitive and grows with the exercising of that intuition, but how to bridge that gap when the instinct isn’t present?”
Milo felt a growing sense of foreboding the closer they drew to the structure, and not because he expected the marquis’ challenge lay within. There was a vague but familiar sourness to the sight of the building. With each step, he found it more difficult to pay attention to what the marquis was saying.
“As is often the case, the answer was staring me in the face,” the fey said, shaking his head slowly. “After all, the Art is pressing my will upon the world and minds of others, so there was little reason I couldn’t impress some experience, especially upon a willing participant.”
Only a few strides away from the door to the dovecote, Ambrose nudged Milo with an elbow and nodded at the ground. The grass was matted down as though something had been roughly dragged across it. Some of the blades glistened black in the moonlight.
“What was it?” Milo mouthed to Ambrose as they followed the marquis.
The big man shrugged, but Milo noticed he’d surreptitiously adjusted his grip on his rifle. He nodded forward, and Milo realized that their host was still talking.
“Once I’d reviewed those, it seemed clear what I’d have to do. I know it might seem silly, but sometimes the ritual and metaphor of these things are an essential part of the magic. I’m sure you understand?”
The marquis turned as he came to the door, looking at Milo, who realized after missing a beat that the last statement had been a question.
“Oh, um, certainly,” Milo said lamely. “Whatever it takes.”
“I’m glad you understand,” the marquis said, and with a quick flourish of his hand, a bright red apple appeared between his claws. It shone with a throbbing light of its own, more fecund and vibrant than the pale gleam from the moon above. For a moment, all the three of them stood in silence, staring at the glowing fruit, one caught up in the drama of the moment while the other two were just confused.
“I have to eat?” Milo asked, pulling his gaze from the apple.
The marquis looked down at him, a little deflated.
“Well, yes. A bite, at least. I thought I’d made that clear.”
“Just checking,” Milo muttered as he reached out to take the apple from the fey’s hand.
The marquis let it roll from claws to Milo’s palm, who nearly dropped it in shock and surprise. The fruit was soft and warm and trembled like a living thing. Milo felt his skin crawl as though trying to retreat from the unnatural thing in his hand. He raised it to his lips, reminded himself it was for Rihyani and sank his teeth into the apple. The skin parted easily, and the flesh within was juicy and sweet in no way that any apple had ever been in his life, but there was a strangeness to the texture that Milo refused to focus upon. His jaw worked mechanically as he doggedly kept from making comparisons with all the things chewing it was like, of which any plant-based edible was not one. A few eternal seconds later, he swallowed the bite and looked at the marquis.
“I don’t understand,” he said, drawing a hand across his wet mouth. “What is supposed to—”
The marquis smiled as something like an experiential bomb detonated inside Milo’s head and heart. It was a firehose of sensation, not only information, but memories and emotions racing through him, chasing and devouring and regurgitating each other in a mad carousel. Milo felt his legs buckle and he heard Ambrose’s voice, but everything was surrendering to a swelling white overload. The
expanding overstimulation flooded every aspect of Milo’s mind, and for a moment, he was certain he was about to lose himself, drowned by experiences and will he couldn’t even begin to process from a being who was alien to him. In a fitting way, it was like when he’d had to hold the transformation of his blood in check, only now it was his soul and not his circulatory system that was in danger of being snuffed out.
Then, like the dawn of the fortieth day, the tide stopped, and Milo’s consciousness stood upon the last spit of his identity, on higher ground, looking over an ocean of experience that wasn’t his. He hung there, and for a moment, he realized there was something clinging to that higher ground with him.
Before he could ascertain what it was, the floodwaters began to recede, some evaporating into the psychic ether, some soaking into his mind’s aquifers of instinct. He felt them there, pockets of conviction that told him that if he willed it, the world would bend to him. It was not the same metaphysical muscle as that which shaped essence from necromist formulae, but it was similar to the sensation. When he controlled essence, he was drawing in, focusing it down to a point of combustion and transformation. This was pushing out, pressing against the walls of minds and realities until a crack was found to let his will fill that space.
The white-out of sensation began to shrink, and Milo came to with a jolt to find he was still kneeling on the bloodied grass. Ambrose was squatted in front of him, massive paws holding his head.
“I think he’s coming around,” Ambrose said, his eyes searching Milo’s face fervently.
“Your hands are sweaty,” Milo said slowly. “Are you nervous?”
A rush of relief followed quickly by irritation swept over the bodyguard’s face, and he gave Milo a little shake.
“You are not funny,” he growled before releasing him and rising. “Stop embarrassing yourself.”
The marquis’ chuckle rippled out, dark and rich in the night air.
“Oh, I can feel it, Magus,” he declared triumphantly. “Your will has bloomed. You are ready to put this to use.”
Milo wasn’t sure he was ready for anything except a full belly and a long nap, but it was clear neither of those was in his immediate future. With a grunt, he climbed to his feet.
“Are you sure he shouldn’t take some time?” Ambrose said, eyeing Milo skeptically. “You know, rest, and maybe get some practice?”
The door to the stone and mortar tower was sized to human proportions, so the marquis was forced to bend nearly double to take the ring in hand. He looked back at Ambrose, bemused, and gave him a wink.
“Time is of the essence, isn’t it?” he said, then tugged the door open. “And this is practice. He will learn by doing.”
Still bent over, the marquis ducked inside. With little choice, Milo and Ambrose followed.
* * *
The stone walls of the dovecote had an upward-spiraling series of alcoves that reached three-quarters of the way up the structure, while the last quarter was domino tiles that formed alternating bands of black and white around a central hole. Directly over this hole hung the immense golden moon, and in its light, Milo and Ambrose saw the source of the blood and drag marks outside.
Ezekiel Bouche knelt in the center of the floor, wrapped in graven chains that had been anchored to rings in the floor.
“Howdy, boys,” he cooed as Milo and Ambrose followed the marquis in. “I was wonderin’ where you two had run off to. Should’ve known you’d get busy makin’ friends with king o’ the old castle here.”
Ambrose rounded on the marquis, his words coming out hot and hard like shell casings.
“What the hell is he doing here?”
The marquis drew himself up to his full imperious height in response, an unhappy frown on his features.
“I told you there would be a test that, if passed, would give you the answers.” He sniffed. “This is it. The magus shall use the Art to discover how to save Contessa Rihyani. I will give him until dawn to extract the information from the cursed one.”
Before Ambrose could protest, Ezekiel burst into a fit of hysterical laughter. It rang off the walls until Milo’s ears ached.
“You think this milk-drinkin’ greenhorn’s got what it takes to break me?” he wheezed between snorts of laughter before turning his manic grin on Milo. “Boy, you better kiss your fey lover goodbye because even if he gave you a month of sunrises, you still wouldn’t have the gumption to make me sweat.”
Ambrose’s fist balled up and he made to go for the leering cowboy, but Milo put a hand on his shoulder. Ambrose looked at him, green eyes afire, but when he saw the hardened intent in Milo’s expression, he nodded and stepped back.
“Can I only use the Art, or are any other means open to me?” Milo asked, locking his eyes on the scalp-hunter’s wild stare.
“You are free to do as you will,” the marquis said before adding, “but I will tell you that the Art and the knowledge I’ve given you are your most certain path to success. Perhaps there are other ways, but I doubt it.”
“Oh, now we’re talking,” Ezekiel said with a dark chuckle.
Ambrose unlimbered and put down his rifle in one smooth movement before he began rolling up his sleeves.
“If it’s a matter of interrogation, I’ve got ideas that might make him a bit more talkative.”
“Oh, don’t tease me, fat boy.” Ezekiel giggled. “Come on over here and let me have it. Come on now, give me your best shot. Don’t hold nothin’ back!”
Ambrose was standing over the cowboy, hands curled into claws, when Milo stopped him with a word.
“No.”
Ambrose paused, glaring down at the tittering cowboy.
“The marquis gave me this test,” Milo said evenly, taking a step forward into the pool of moonlight. “This is for me to do.”
Ambrose tore his gaze from Ezekiel to meet Milo’s stare.
“And if you can’t?”
The question hurt.
Milo knew it shouldn’t. He knew it came from a place of deep concern, of love even, for Rihyani and him, yet it still stung. Pride, defiance, and anger rushed to inflame the wound and swell it in a vain attempt to protect himself, but he clamped down on the instinct, thinking that way wouldn’t help anyone. Instead, he reached out and squeezed the big man’s brawny shoulder, looking deep into his troubled gaze.
“Then I die trying,” he said.
Ambrose’s eyes swam with his own maelstrom, but staring into Milo’s, he found what he needed. He nodded and stepped back.
Ezekiel’s jeering snigger drew Milo’s gaze.
“Had a pair like you in a scalpin’ posse I used to run with,” he said. “One of ‘em used to ride the other so much we wondered why he didn’t get his boy fitted for a saddle and bridle.”
Not deigning to reply to the taunt, Milo turned to the marquis and Ambrose.
“I’m ready,” Milo said, appreciating that he sounded confident even as his stomach began to squirm. “Dawn?”
The marquis nodded, his expression inscrutable as he led Ambrose out, leaving Ezekiel and Milo alone.
For some time, the two men brooded in relative silence. Milo drew slow, even breaths, while Ezekiel muttered and giggled to himself in a low, broken voice that Milo couldn’t understand.
Then the air rippled with spectral winds.
“Here we go.” Ezekiel tittered in anticipation.
Milo’s will ranged outward, groping toward the septic wound that was Ezekiel’s psyche. Pushing through his disgust at the contact, Milo pressed in, drawing upon the dark corners of his recent memories.
The ghostly winds congealed into the mewling, many-limbed visages of shades, grasping and crawling up from the floor. Twisted, unnatural simulacrums of humanoid shapes wrapped in oily, ectoplasmic flesh, they excreted themselves out of the stones like huge, hellish maggots. Splintered, bony fingers scored the stones of the floor, and the temperature in the room plummeted so both men’s breath was visible. The shades groaned and wailed with the he
art-stopping voices of the damned as they turned too-bright eyes upon the bound cowboy. As they manifested around him, Milo had to remind himself that they were his own conjurations.
In a way he never could have apart from this experience, he began to appreciate what the marquis had said. Just because it wasn’t physical did not mean it wasn’t real.
“Spooky.” Ezekiel chuckled as he watched the lurching advance of the illusory shades. “But it’s goin’ to take a lot more than this, kid.”
The shades were now gathered around the cowboy, leaning forward and eagerly snuffling. As one, their gleaming eyes turned to regard Milo, their puppet master. Milo’s gaze hardened, and he felt rime spread across his heart. He knew he was not a cruel man, but life had been cruel to him, and for Rihyani’s sake, he was willing to do many terrible things. That knowledge encased his soul like frozen armor, even as Ezekiel laughed louder and louder.
“I’m sure knowing you can’t die seems like a comfort,” he said, meeting Ezekiel’s gaze with a chilling stare as the cowboy guffawed. “But that only means I don’t have to worry about you surviving anything I do to you.”
Every shade’s malformed mouth twisted into an obscene smile as sharp, jagged fingers stretched toward tender flesh.
Ezekiel’s laughter rose to a shrill cadence that was indistinguishable from a scream.
“You are going to tell me what I want to know, Ezekiel,” Milo said softly. “One way or another.”
* * *
Ezekiel knelt, head hanging, mangy strands of his stringy hair dangling over his face. He might have collapsed forward, but the chains that bound him would not allow him to do more than hang his head, shoulders taut. His breath sawed in and out between brown teeth as a string of crimson drool trickled from his mouth.
The last illusion had been a living strand of barbed wire that slithered down the cowboy’s raw, cackling throat to twist and gyrate as it worked its way through him and back. The curse had mended the worst of the experience as Milo’s will flagged, but there were enough lacerations in Ezekiel’s throat that blood welled up with every breath for some time. Milo, sweating and trembling with exhaustion and frustration, stared in disbelief as the trickle of blood lessened with each wheezing gasp.
World's First Wizard Complete Series Boxed Set Page 53
