Thief of Souls

by Emma L. Adams

  The little magic I had was useless in this situation, and I had nothing more than the few cantrips in the pouch at my waist. There was no escaping this without a miracle. I sent a silent curse to Dirk Alban, wherever he’d ended up after his death. If he hadn’t sought me out as a naïve student and taught me forbidden magic, I wouldn’t have a black mark on my record, and I certainly wouldn’t be staring down my own death beneath the skeletal hooves of the Death King’s soldiers. Let’s just say my old mentor’s decision had backfired on him in a very literal sense, but I’d lived to reap the consequences of his actions. He hadn’t.

  The gates shuddered to a halt. The four figures rode past the bushes without looking at my hiding place, but before I could release the breath trapped in my chest, a fifth figure joined the others. Like them, the soldier rode a skeletal horse, and wore a long hooded dark cloak in the same style as the others. My gaze panned from the newcomer to the other four Elemental Soldiers, wondering who the fifth rider was. Their hooded cloaks were well-made, the insides dyed with their designated colour. Red for fire, green for air, blue for water, brown for earth. And black for—fuck my life. Was that the Death King himself on patrol with his soldiers?

  Most people said he never left his castle, but the moment he rode past the bush, I knew my guess was right. Nobody else wore that armour, dark and moulded to his form as though made of living shadow, along with a black mask that obscured his features. Rumour told that nobody had ever seen his real face, but most of us suspected nothing lay beneath the mask at all. As the king of the liches, he hadn’t been alive in a very long time.

  The King of the Dead himself was inches away from me, riding a skeletal horse that hardly seemed to touch the swampy ground. A chill wind followed in his wake, sweeping through the gates and rendering my body frozen. I couldn’t have moved if I wanted to—and I most definitely did not want to. I’m dead. I’m so dead.

  Yet the soldiers were passing without slowing, without stopping, without looking back. I hardly dared breathe, my knees screaming with the pain of my hunched position. When the five of them were far enough away for me to risk breathing, I whispered, “Dex.”

  The fire sprite stirred at my side. “Yes?”

  “I need your help.” My heart hammered a wild beat against my ribcage, and if the rumours were true that the Death King could sense life and snuff it out, I was doomed. But there was one more target in the area. “Can you throw some sparks around over by our thieving friend? If you keep their attention over there until I can slip around them and get to the node, I might get out of this alive.”

  The other node lay within sight, but in an area of unbroken swampland. If I went that way, the five riders would spot me in an instant. I’d need to create a massive diversion to stand a chance of getting out of here as it was. The good news was, being a nuisance and a distraction was Dex’s speciality.

  Dex flitted out of sight, and a few tense seconds later, lights sparked above the thief’s hut. The Death King’s soldiers veered that way, and I eased a cantrip into my hand, counting down the seconds.

  At the unmistakeable sound of the water mage’s frantic scream, I ran out across the swamp. Vulnerability scraped me to the bone as I ran; no landmarks tall enough to hide me stood between me and the horsemen. They said the Death King could remove a man’s soul from his body with a touch. Not a fate I’d wish on anyone, but rather the thief than me.

  I ran, flat-out, my feet tearing at the swampy earth. The thief’s screams rang out behind me, but I didn’t look back. A tugging sensation propelled me towards the node. I was damned close. I have to make it.

  A familiar tree drew my sight, and I halted with a gasp. Here it is. I’d made it to the crossing-over point, the node through which I’d entered the Parallel to begin with. I ran up to the tree and removed my weapons. Knives, cantrips— I thrust them into the hole in the side of the hollow tree so nobody would steal them when I was gone. Carrying any kind of weapons, magical or otherwise, wasn’t allowed on the other side of the node. Cantrips weren’t banned, per se, but I lived in perpetual fear of the Order showing up on Devon’s doorstep and shutting down her business. Best to leave all evidence of her experimental magic behind. As for the amulet, my permit ought to be enough to cover anything I’d taken from the thief.

  I reached the spot where the node rose to the sky like a fountain from the core of the earth. My heart surged against my ribs like a tidal wave, my blood thundering in my veins. Showing up at the Order covered in mud would not be wise, so I’d need to head home first, which was miles from the spot where this node overlapped with the real world. In theory, though, any node in the Parallel could connect with any on the other side. If you knew where they were.

  “Come on.” I tensed, feeling the buzz in my fingertips from the node, and pictured the image of my home as clearly as I could. “I’d like to go home at some point this century, please.”

  Magic roared through my veins. Then the node caught me, and I was gone.

  2

  When the elemental war came to a close, the Order of the Elements had held a vote on whether to open up access to the Parallel from Earth, or leave the paths closed forever. They compensated by making it legal to cross only if one carried a permit. Without one, you’d run the risk of ending up with half the Order’s forces on your tail the instant you landed on Earth.

  As for crossing the other way around… if you rejected the Order, you were welcome to go and put your talents to use in the Parallel, as long as you didn’t come back.

  No matter how many times I made the crossing, it never ceased to be terrifying beyond measure, exhilarating beyond comparison, and when you experienced it once, you never wanted it to end. The air rushed through my lungs, my hair streamed behind me, and my body soared through nothingness as though free falling from a ten-thousand-feet height.

  Then the fall came to an end, and I landed on soft carpet in the back room behind Devon’s shop.

  “Holy shit, Liv.” My best friend stood before me, her jeans and checked shirt drenched with the swamp water I’d unintentionally brought along with me. Her short punky hair was electric blue today, courtesy of one of the cantrips she wore on a string around her neck.

  “Sorry.” I squelched along the carpet, my once-pristine new boots trailing water and mud. “I had to run through the middle of the swamp. The Death King’s people nearly rode me into the ground.”

  I shoved a handful of hair out of my eyes before any droplets got into my contacts. Like Devon, I kept it cut short, but ordinary brown instead of multi-coloured. With the amount of time I spent hunting thieves, it was better to be inconspicuous.

  “I’d have more sympathy if you weren’t dripping swamp water all over my floor,” she said. “Did you at least get what you went for?”

  “Yes.” I removed the amulet from around my neck. “The Order had better give me my money for this thing on schedule.”

  “I hope so, considering I lost my keys again and you just wrecked my game board.”

  Oops. I’d interrupted her in the middle of preparing for a D&D session, and judging by the soggy cardboard covering the table, our intrepid party would be taking a detour through the swamp after all.

  “Sorry.” I shrugged out of my coat. “If I showed up at the Order’s base dripping swamp water everywhere, they’d throw me out on my arse.”

  “And you’re sure I won’t do the same?” Her tone carried a teasing hint. Devon wouldn’t really throw me out. She just didn’t handle surprise soakings particularly well.

  The two of us had lived in the same shared house since we’d left the Order’s academy, so six years was a long time to get used to one another’s idiosyncrasies. I tolerated her hoarding habits and tendency to lose everything that wasn’t glued down, while she bore my penchant for bringing weird shit back from missions. Luckily the swamp water had only hit the cardboard props and not the TV and games consoles. They might be second-hand, but we’d saved every penny for them.

 
; “I hope not, or nobody would be able to find your keys.” I crouched down, and sure enough, the keys lay under the armchair. I held them up and tossed them to Devon, who caught them in one hand. “There.”

  She shot a grin at me. “Just testing you.”

  “Uh-huh.” I walked out of the back room and hung my coat up in the hallway to dry off. My new boots would need a wash before I could wear them again, so I left them in the hall before heading upstairs to change into clean clothes. I also switched my contacts for glasses, wishing I had time to shower. I’d have preferred to wait until tomorrow to hand over the amulet, too, but thieves and beggars can’t be choosers.

  If only the Order’s ridiculous rules didn’t prevent me from using the nodes to travel there via the Parallel instead of taking the bus. While I couldn’t see the node connecting the two realms from this side, I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t been a factor when we’d chosen to rent this house. Devon found it easier to make her cantrips on top of a node, too, but she also made her living selling charms to Order personnel, which made it doubly important that we stayed on their good side. Practitioners like her had to stay here and stick to the rules, or else go to the Parallel and stick to their rules. The Parallel came with magic, but the UK came with modern conveniences like transport and the NHS and no monsters in the basement. You know, the essentials.

  When I got back downstairs, I found Devon had already cleaned up the swamp water. I updated her on the full story while I stuck my boots in the dryer and found some clean shoes. By the time I’d finished, she was shaking her head. “The Order might have warned you you’d be up against a full-on water mage.”

  “Since when did they give a shit?” I said. “The Death King, I didn’t see coming. No clue what he was doing wandering about with his entire contingent of Elements like a bunch of Ringwraiths sniffing out nasty hobbitses.”

  “He wasn’t looking for that thief, was he?” she asked.

  “Petty thieves are beneath him,” I said. “But I made it his problem when I sent the thief running in his direction. Only way I could get him off my back, but damn if I don’t feel kinda sorry for the guy.”

  She grimaced. “How rare is this amulet?”

  “Rare enough that the thief thought he’d be safer hiding out on the Death King’s doorstep than the alternative.” An effective strategy… until the man himself had left his castle, that is. It’d struck me as weird that he’d take the risk, but what did the King of the Dead have to fear from a single rogue mage? Liches like him gained their immortality by using magic off-limits to the rest of us, and he didn’t need to fear anyone invading his territory or stealing his castle.

  He didn’t need to worry about the Order’s hands whisking the memories from his head if he overstepped his mark.

  “INCOMING!” roared the doorbell, making both of us jump. Since Devon had a tendency to get so wrapped up in her work that she sometimes didn’t even notice customers come in, we’d installed a custom doorbell that was guaranteed to catch her attention, but at times like this, I wished she’d picked something quieter. “Expecting someone?”

  Devon groaned. “Why are they always early?”

  “Who…” I trailed off. “It’s D&D night.”

  And I had to go to the bloody Order. They’d find me if I didn’t, especially as half our group was in their employment. Resigned, I headed through the door leading into the shop which formed the other half of our livelihood. Cantrips filled most of the shelves, each made of a rare metal found only in the Parallel and inscribed with symbols by one of the pointed instruments lying on the desk. I yanked open the door and found myself face to face with my ex-boyfriend—Brant, the fire mage.

  He hadn’t changed much during our time apart. Clearing six feet tall, he filled out his dark coat, dark stubble dotted his square jaw, while his blue eyes held the same intensity as ever. I stared open-mouthed for a very long two seconds, and then slammed the door in his face. Then I rotated to face Devon. “You invited him to our D&D night?”

  “Yeah, why? We’re open to newbies.”

  “I thought I said no elemental mages,” I said. “Don’t you remember the incident with the water mage who rolled a natural one, got killed by a giant, and wrecked the plumbing in protest?”

  Devon rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah.”

  “We were dealing with flooding and busted pipes for a solid month afterwards,” I reminded her. “No mages.”

  “I couldn’t just throw him out. He wants to talk to you.”

  “He made his feelings clear last time we spoke. Since when was he even back in town? Also, since when did he play?”

  Most of our group consisted of regular old practitioners, like Devon. Those who lived in the Parallel were too busy playing with literal fire to be bothered with us mere mortals. Brant must have a permit from the Order to be here and I’d bet it didn’t cover gaming night, but that didn’t make me happy to see him again.

  Devon nudged me. “Liv, I’ll have to open the door when the other players show up. I’m guessing he’ll stick around until I let him in?”

  “Probably.” Brant was as stubborn as a wight when he was on a mission. “Fine, but I’m gonna have to run. I need to get this amulet to the Order before it gets dark outside.”

  Devon leaned past me and opened the door. “Hey, Brant. You’re early.”

  What the hell is going on? Devon let anyone come to our D&D nights, true, but the guy had screwed me over, as she knew well. He gave me an apologetic look as he entered, but I side-stepped him without catching his gaze, despite the tugging sensation in the pit of my stomach.

  “I’m off to the Order,” I told him. “Mission to report on, rare magical artefact to get off my hands. Have fun.”

  Then I ducked out into the cold evening. I heard him calling my name, but I was already striding to the bus stop.

  You’d think a magical organisation would have an easier way to get there without having to use public transport, but it was that or drive through rush-hour traffic. Weirdos always sat next to me on the bus or train, perhaps sensing a kindred spirit. I had to listen to an old lady telling me all about her family’s medical issues for a solid twenty minutes while a teen’s phone blared nightclub music from the back row.

  My relief at getting off the bus faded at the sight of the office block which housed Birmingham’s branch of the Order. Most people thought it belonged to an exclusive club, thanks to the security guards on duty 24/7. The Order pulled all kinds of tricks to make ordinary people overlook their magical neighbours, but if anyone noticed the stream of odd people walking in and out of the place, they didn’t comment. Most mages and practitioners could only make real use of their powers in the Parallel, and with magic dampened on this side of the nodes, nobody would have a clue of our real nature.

  The security guard at the doors scanned my ID and took a moment to linger on the visible black mark imprinted on the edge. Since I’d been underage when my mentor and I had been caught practising spirit magic, I’d been stripped of just my memories, not my magic, but the Order didn’t screw around. Three strikes and you were out. Thankfully, the guard moved aside to let me through the double doors into the reception area without further comment.

  Order employees milled around the lobby, some wearing ordinary work clothes, others dressed in the more durable attire suited for the Parallel’s unpredictable climate. Two carried a large cage between them which emitted a series of bizarre cawing noises, while a small group of shapeshifters conversed in hushed whispers as they made for the corridor at the far end. As a low-grade employee, I hadn’t ever set eyes on the upper floors, and the retrieval unit was practically in the basement. I had zero desire to get stuck in one of the notoriously temperamental elevators, so I took the stairs instead.

  My footsteps echoed on the concrete steps, my old boots pinching my feet. I didn’t know why I thought spending my payment bonus on new shoes doomed to be ruined on the first day wouldn’t backfire on me. I might as well have jus
t bought a new anime figurine from eBay instead. Silence filled the cold basement aside from the occasional clicking sound from where a kid with greasy red hair sat behind the computer, a bored expression on his face. Only a broke student trying to earn some extra cash would be here on a Friday evening.

  “Hey there,” I said to him. “Got an artefact for you. An amulet.”

  He tapped some keys on the computer, squinting at the screen. “There’s no amulet on today’s list.”

  “It’s under ‘Cartwright’.” The kid must be new. He’d hear about me soon enough, no doubt—if not at the academy, then as soon as he graduated and joined the Order full-time. The joys of being a walking cautionary tale.

  “Olivia Cartwright.” He looked from me to the screen with his brow furrowed. “Is it true that you killed an Order employee?”

  “No, it isn’t, but that’s irrelevant.” I held out the amulet by its chain. “Found it?”

  “No… there’s nothing on here about an amulet,” he said, not sounding like he cared either way. “You’re on the rota for a retrieval job today.”

  “Yes, and this is what I found.” I dropped the amulet on the desk. “Believe me, I wouldn’t have set foot in the swamplands on a lark.”

  “The swamplands?” He dragged his gaze from the computer screen, his eyes going wide. “You went there? Did you meet the Death King?”

  Yes. Kind of. He almost trampled me to death, actually.

  “Of course not. I was chasing a thief who set up a safe house there with his hoard.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” He regarded the amulet with an expression of reverence. “Nobody in their right mind would ever set foot near his place. You’re brave.”

  “I didn’t have a choice.” I didn’t particularly want to chat about it with a kid who’d probably never even set foot in the Parallel yet. They didn’t start on that in the academy until after graduation to avoid calls from concerned parents, which would explain what he was doing slumming here in the basement to earn cash. Being one of the Order’s retrievers was the lowest possible place for an academy graduate to end up.