God of Magic

by Logan Jacobs

  “Coward!” Lavinia shouted at the mage before she spared an urgent glance to Maruk.

  Shield raised, Maruk slipped around the corner and started for the gravestone while Lavinia moved around to the other side.

  I was about to move out from the relative shelter of the cabin wall myself when I saw Lavinia’s eyes go wide. She loosed her arrow and shot another two in quick succession, and I heard Maruk grunt as something collided with his shield. She didn’t take her eyes off her target, but she called out to me, her voice urgent.

  “Gabriel, we could really use your help over here!”

  When Lavinia had said Allowen was a mage, I’d expected that meant he would be launching magical attacks as the wraith had, but when I looked around the corner again, I realized that wasn’t the case.

  Allowen had moved from the cover of the gravestone and was now surrounded by a guard of six walking corpses. He wasn’t a mere mage, he was a necromancer, and as the dirt trickled off of their bodies, I saw that they were in varying states of decay. Two were so rotted that the remaining tendons and tatters of flesh barely held them together, but those that were fresher were no easier to look at with their dull, waxen skin. One was covered in the scars of some sort of pox, half of its face gnarled and misshapen, and another stumbled around its own intestines as they swung freely from the gaping slash across its abdomen, but despite their differences, each of the corpses’ eyes glowed with the same purple light of Allowen’s mana.

  Three stood as human shields around Allowen while the other three swarmed Maruk, and it was everything the orc could do to keep them at bay while Lavinia shot arrow after arrow into them. The steel seemed to have little effect, if any, against the undead, and the dragon-woman couldn’t seem to get a clear shot off at the man who controlled them.

  Aerin cursed behind me, but then I felt her hand on my shoulder. “I’ve got your back,” she whispered.

  I had to do something, but Allowen wasn’t casting like the wraith. While the corpses had been reanimated by his mana, they seemed to move now of their own accord, and I wasn’t sure I could influence them the way I had with the wraith.

  I’d have to focus on Allowen, then, and stop his magic somehow.

  I raised my hand out to the mage, and as soon as I did so, he locked eyes with me and raised his own hand. His palm was completely red, and streams of blood ran down his wrist and arm from where I guessed Lavinia’s arrow had struck him.

  One of the corpses that guarded him turned and fixed its glowing eyes on me, and a chill ran through my entire body as it detached from its company and began to shamble over to me.

  “I got it,” Aerin said as she drew her mace and moved in front of me to meet the corpse. “You deal with Allowen.”

  The necromancer’s eyes narrowed, but before he could make another move, an arrow from Lavinia punched through the soft tissue of one of his corpse guards and nearly struck him. Only nearly, but it distracted him at least.

  The blood rushed in my ears as I focused again. Maybe he wasn’t casting, but I’d been able to stop the wraith from teleporting, hadn’t I? I should still be able to control his magic. I swallowed and willed his control over the corpses to break.

  At that moment, Aerin drove her mace into the head of the corpse Allowen had sent to attack me, and it crumpled into a heap on the ground as its skull caved in beneath the blow. It didn’t get up again, and when Allowen noticed, his eyes widened with alarm as he looked first to Aerin and then to me.

  The necromancer’s face twisted into an expression of disbelief and then terrible rage. He raised his bloody hand again, and all of a sudden, the three corpses that had been assaulting Maruk swung about as one and began to march toward me.

  As soon as the zombies took a step, Maruk grabbed one and slammed it against the cabin wall while Aerin swung her mace at another. Lavinia was still trying to get a shot at Allowen between his remaining two guards, and the third corpse advanced unhindered. Its jaw was slack, and its lips were stained with dark blood. One of its eyes was missing, and a swarm of wriggling maggots now occupied the socket.

  I staggered back as bile rose in my throat, but I forced myself to tear my gaze away from the corpse and focus again on Allowen. He was the one with the magic, he was the one I could fight.

  Stop, I thought.

  The corpse kept coming, and only a few feet away now, I could smell the putrid odor of its rotting body, but I kept my eyes locked on Allowen’s.

  Stop, I commanded.

  I could feel the force of Allowen’s mana like a flame, strong and bright, within him and within the corpses he had reanimated. I knew I had to snuff that flame out, but Allowen was powerful, and he knew what I was now. He wouldn’t go down easily.

  Sweat trickled down my temple as I closed my hand into a fist and visualized the light in the mage’s chest being extinguished within it. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination or not, but I thought I could feel the heat of it against the skin of my palm, hotter and hotter as I forced my fist closed.

  Suddenly the necromancer made a choked sort of sound, and all five of the corpses fell to the ground as the purple lights in their eyes blinked out. A heartbeat later, one of Lavinia’s arrows entered Allowen’s skull right between his eyes, and he dropped as well.

  I let out a shuddering breath and finally looked away. The maggot-eyed corpse lay at my feet, dead again, one arm stretched out as if to grab me. I kicked its hand away and joined Lavinia, Aerin, and Maruk as they picked their way over the corpses toward Allowen’s body. Lavinia pulled her arrow out from between his eyes and a sprinkle of blood speckled across his face.

  “Dead wife’s ring,” she scoffed, “what a load of bullshit. I wonder what he was really digging around for out there.”

  Aerin frowned at the corpses that surrounded us. “Maybe some more old friends,” she suggested. She shuddered and then turned to me. “Good work, Gabriel. We’d probably be one of these things if you hadn’t stopped him.”

  Maruk made a disgusted sound in his throat at the idea, and Lavinia grinned.

  “Thanks, manipulator,” she said as she clapped me on the shoulder. “None of us had to see what Maruk would look like all rotted to bits. Let’s go see if this asshole left anything useful behind.”

  Chapter 8

  It seemed wrong to leave all the bodies lying around, but we had no tools with which to bury them again and very little time to spare anyway, so that was what we had to do. I reasoned that, at least, whoever these people had been, they were finally at rest without Allowen to control them, and that had to be worth something.

  While Lavinia and Maruk checked for valuables, Aerin and I looked over the books and various alchemical ingredients in Allowen’s cabin to see if there was anything that might be useful to us. Aerin ended up taking a few of the bottles from the shelves and put them in her pack, and I took two spell books that I had found among the old necromancer’s collection, as well as a thin, battered grimoire that appeared to be of Allowen’s own making. After what I’d just seen, I was somewhat hesitant to look inside. The last thing I wanted right now was a detailed guide on how to magically revive the dead, but I knew there were probably instructions on other types of magic inside as well. I couldn’t leave it behind when I had so little to go on already, so I stuffed it into my pack with the others and decided to look through it later.

  “Be careful with those,” Aerin warned as she watched me. “No doubt the Mage Academy has banned those, you don’t want to get caught with illegal spell books.”

  “Right,” I said. “I’ll keep them hidden, thanks.”

  Aerin chewed her lip. “And, well, it’s not only the Academy you should worry about,” she added. “Those books are probably full of dangerous spells and dark magic.”

  “Worried your golden goose will get injured?” I chuckled.

  “Well, that yeah,” the elf woman said with a smirk, “but I also like you. I mean. You are going to make us a mountain of gold, but… yeah. You are�
� uhhh. Just be careful. Okay?”

  “I will, I promise,” I replied, and her cheeks turned a bit red as I stared into her emerald eyes.

  Lavinia and Aerin moved on to the small kitchen area, and we turned to find the big man examining a fur that Allowen had hung up on the wall.

  I found that my gaze kept trailing back to the rows of skulls on the shelves. If I hadn’t known any better, I might have sworn I could feel them staring back. I rubbed the back of my neck and forced myself to look away, and that was when I noticed the edge of a box peeking out from under the bed.

  I went over to retrieve it. The bed frame was low enough that the box was thoroughly wedged between it and the floor, and there was a loud scrape as I yanked it free.

  Like the rest of Allowen’s possessions, it was fairly simple, a plain wooden box about twelve inches wide with a small brass clasp and a lock to hold it closed. I stood again and brought it over to the table.

  “I found this under the bed. Did anyone see a key anywhere?” As I asked, I realized that more than likely Allowen would have kept the key on his person, and we would have to go search his body for it, but Maruk waved me aside.

  “We don’t need to worry about that,” he assured me, and in a single, swift motion, he brought the edge of his smaller shield down against the clasp. It broke off and clattered to the floor.

  Lavinia and Aerin paused their raid of the pantry to crowd around the table as I lifted the lid of the box.

  I wasn’t sure what I expected to find hidden under the bed of the necromancer who had tried to kill us, but a ton of letters was pretty far down on that list. As I took them out and spread them across the table, I was suddenly reminded of another box, one that was painted with roses and had belonged to my grandmother. She had kept letters from my grandfather and photos of him in it after he had died, and while Allowen’s scrawling penmanship was nearly illegible, I realized that this must be a similar collection.

  A final scrap of paper was folded up at the bottom of the box, and when I unfolded it, I was met with an illustration of a face that, while clean-shaven and decades younger, was undoubtedly Allowen’s. It was a wanted poster, and it advertised an impressive bounty for an infamous necromancer by the name of Elor Cadigan.

  Behind me, Aerin gave a low whistle. “That’s a lot of gold,” she whispered.

  “Do you think it’s still good?” I asked. Obviously, no one would have been able to claim it while Allowen had been living out here, but the poster in my hand didn’t have the seal of the charter office, and I wondered if they would honor a bounty they hadn’t put out.

  “Take it,” Lavinia said, “and we’ll find out.”

  “I’m sure we can get something for it,” Aerin added.

  I folded the poster up again and tucked it between the books in my pack.

  “Well, I think we got everything worth taking,” Lavinia said as she scanned the small space one last time with her hands on her hips. She directed a pointed look at Aerin, who had been eyeing a few of the various trinkets that remained on Allowen’s shelves. “Everyone ready to go?”

  I knew I was. Even without the pressure of tracking down the Dovar-cu and getting the maps to the Shadow Delves, I didn’t want to spend any more time here than I had to.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said, and Aerin and Maruk nodded in agreement.

  Allowen hadn’t led us very far off our course, but after the time it had taken to defeat him and search through his cabin, it was late into the afternoon by the time we entered the forest again. Ideally, we would have reached the river and found our monster a couple of hours ago, but we were still making better time than if we had stuck to the roads.

  Lavinia paused with the cabin at our backs to consult her map again, then nodded to herself before she turned back to the rest of us.

  “We’re not far from the river,” she said. “Follow me.”

  The heat grew more intense as the afternoon wore on, and it felt as though the thick canopy trapped the heat more than shaded us from it. Of course, it didn’t help anyone’s mood that we were all carrying a few extra pounds of loot we’d gotten from Allowen’s cabin. What was more, a swarm of gnats seemed intent on following me no matter how much I swatted at them.

  I was just about to ask Lavinia exactly how far ‘not far’ was supposed to be when I suddenly caught the gentle burble of running water from up ahead. The trees were as dense as ever, so I couldn’t actually see the river, but even the thought of dangling my feet in the cool water was refreshing at that point.

  The others must have heard it too, because Aerin’s weary pace picked up as well, and we all started at a sort of half-jog toward the sound, excited by the prospect of fresh water and the end of our hike.

  It wasn’t until we’d gone another fifty yards or so that I began to suspect something was wrong and slowed down. Despite our progress, the river didn’t sound any closer now than it had before, and I realized I still couldn’t see any breaks in the trees ahead. If anything, it seemed like the forest was becoming denser, the trees older, larger, and closer together. I supposed that could mean there was a source of water nearby, but I couldn’t ignore the feeling in my gut.

  Lavinia cast a quizzical and slightly annoyed glance at me over her shoulder. “Why are you stopping?”

  Now that she asked, I felt a little foolish. “Well, it’s... where’s the river?”

  The archer frowned and pushed back a strand of long black hair that had stuck to her forehead. “Can’t you hear it? It’s right up here, let’s go.”

  She didn’t wait for my response and started off again at an even quicker pace, but after another few dozen yards, Aerin and Maruk slowed and stopped as well.

  “Lavinia,” Maruk started to say with a note of warning in his tone, but Lavinia ignored him as she continued on.

  Maruk, Aerin, and I exchanged glances.

  “Lavinia!” Aerin called. “Wait for us!”

  “Hurry up,” Lavinia replied testily without stopping or even looking back at us. “We’re almost there.” The strained note in her voice belied the confidence of her words, but after another look to the others, I followed her. It would only make things more difficult if we got split up.

  I could hear Aerin and Maruk panting right behind me, but Lavinia was far enough ahead now to be only a smudge of dark armor appearing here and there between the tree trunks, and she showed no inclination of slowing down.

  I judged we were over a hundred yards from where we’d been when I’d first heard the sound of the water, and my apprehension had solidified into definite unease. It should sound closer, at least.

  Suddenly Lavinia stopped and whipped her bow up into shooting position. She’d loosed an arrow before I could even see what she’d been aiming at, and then she cursed and charged forward to pry the arrow from a tree trunk. It was too high up for her to reach, but when the rest of us joined her, Maruk was able to wrest it free.

  “What was it?” Aerin asked, concern overlaying the weariness in her voice.

  Lavinia didn’t seem to hear her as she nocked the arrow again and whirled around toward the ever-distant sound of running water. I saw the dark shadow flit through the upper branches of a distant tree just as Lavinia shot at it, and there was a chattering noise that was eerily like laughter as her arrow once again thudded harmlessly into a branch.

  “Oh, no,” Maruk groaned. “Is that--”

  “A puca,” Lavinia finished bitterly. She turned back and shouted into the trees, “You better hope I don’t catch you, you little bastard! I’ll turn you into a hat!”

  Her threat was met with another gibbering chuckle.

  I frowned. Allowen had mentioned that name, too. “A what?” I asked.

  The looks on my companions’ faces were hardly reassuring. There was a furious light in Lavinia’s red eyes, and Maruk’s mouth was curled into an uneasy frown.

  Aerin answered, her brows knit, “Consider yourself lucky that you don’t have them where you’re f
rom. They’re distantly related to goblins, but they’re shapeshifters and tricksters. This one must have heard we were looking for the river and thought it would be fun to lead us astray.”

  Just as she finished speaking, there was a rustle in the branches overhead, and a shower of acorns rained down over us. When I looked up, I met a pair of enormous, bright green eyes set into a furry, catlike face. The creature was about the size of a badger, but its twitching ears were long and resembled those of a donkey, and the paw that was curled around the tree branch was covered in dark, wiry fur and had long fingers and an opposable thumb. Its pupils narrowed into horizontal rectangles as it stared back at me, and it cocked its head inquisitively until it was twisted almost all the way upside down.

  It stuck out the tip of its gray tongue and made a trilling call like the sound of running water, then its face split into a mischievous grin full of needle-sharp teeth. As Lavinia nocked another arrow out of the corner of my eye, the puca made a sound I could only describe as a giggle and leapt. Not away, as I would have expected, but at me, and it landed with a thump on my shoulders.

  Before I could react to the puca on my back, Lavinia had turned her bow on me.

  “Gabriel, don’t move,” she ordered.

  “Lavinia!” Aerin stepped between us. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “I won’t miss,” the archer insisted.

  “Hold on,” I said. I had to admit, even I wasn’t willing to trust Lavinia’s aim that much, but I could hear the puca over my shoulder as it snuffled at my pack curiously. “I think it’s friendly.”

  As if to prove me right, the puca made a purring sound and rubbed its head against the side of my neck. Mindful of the creature’s sharp teeth, I reached up slowly, and the puca clambered over my shoulder to allow me to scratch it behind one long ear.

  “It’s not friendly, it’s using you as a human shield,” Lavinia argued. “Now shoo it away so I can kill it.”