Awakening Camelot: A Wizard's Quest (Awakening Camelot Duology Book 1)

by Dan Wingreen

  "Oh, that's just bloody unfair!" Eallair yelled.

  Aidan gaped at the rock blocking their way. "How does that even—"

  "He's obviously got the same tricks as the Shaman," Eallair said. He shook his head in disgust. "Unfair. Completely unfair."

  "Now what?" Aidan asked. The burning undead were close enough that he could feel the heat, and the undamaged ones were right behind them, picking up speed as they shambled closer to their prey.

  "Now…" Eallair spared one last glare at the cave-in, then turned around, suddenly weary, to regard the cavern. "We hope there's a way out at the other end."

  Aidan looked at the enormous cavern in front of them, at the shadowed outlines of the undead shuffling towards them, as despair welled up inside him. "We're going through them?"

  "Aye."

  "Can we…actually make it?"

  Eallair looked him in the eye. "You want me to lie?"

  Aidan thought about it. A nice, comforting lie would be pretty great right about then. But knowing it's a lie would probably kill the effect. He shook his head. "No."

  Eallair's serious look suddenly split into a grin. "Then, yeah, probably. All depends on clearin’ a space…"

  Before Aidan could yell at him—stupid, infuriating sorcerer—Eallair raised his hands again and two more streams of fire shot out. Unlike the last time, he didn't bother trying to get any of the undead other than the ones right in front of them. Like last time, though, only the ones nearest to them fell immediately. The fire didn't go far enough either, fizzling out right at the edge of the light from the orb. The burning undead, the ones that weren't in front of the second fire blast, were almost close enough to reach out and grab Aidan with their burning hands.

  "Lee—"

  Before he could get any further, Eallair screamed. It was a defiant, angry scream. And then it turned into an agonized scream. His whole body tightened and tensed up so hard, Aidan could see his veins throbbing in time with his rapid heartbeat. Eallair started to shake and a loud roar filled the cavern as the streams of fire from his hands quadrupled in size and whooshed across the open space, burning to dust in seconds every undead it touched. Aidan covered his ears and scrambled to the side away from Eallair, his skin smarting from the heat. This time the stream reached all the way across the cavern where it—presumably since it was too far for Aidan to see clearly—smashed into the wall on the other side.

  Every undead directly in front of them was dust, leaving a perfect, straight path all the way through.

  "Merlin's balls," Aidan whispered, not even caring if Eallair gave him weird looks for it. "That…"

  He looked back just in time to see Eallair collapse to the floor, smoke pouring off his unmoving body.

  Chapter 6

  "Lee!" Aidan shouted as he threw himself to his knees next to Eallair's too still body, grunting in pain as they cracked against a stone floor this time. He had a brief, horrible flashback to the cafeteria. This was so similar, except this time Eallair wasn't moving or making a joke or struggling to get to his feet. He was just lying there, still. Too still.

  You're not dead. You can't be dead. Please, please, please be alive! Aidan grabbed his shoulder to shake it then snatched his hand back with a yelp. Eallair's jacket was scorching hot.

  “Fuck!”

  Eallair coughed. Aidan nearly screamed.

  "Ow." Eallair rolled over onto his back with a groan. "Don't ever let me do that again."

  Aidan let out a shaky breath. "You're alive."

  "I hurt too much to be dead," he said with an unsteady grin.

  "I thou—"

  Sudden heat at his back was all the warning Aidan had. He turned around just in time to see one of the burning undead that hadn’t been in front of Eallair’s second blast raise its smoldering fist and bring it smashing down—

  Right onto Eallair's shield.

  Aidan stared, wide-eyed, breathing rapidly as his heart struggled to pound its way out of his chest.

  "I think I'm gonna throw up," he said.

  "Sorry ‘bout that," Eallair said, sounding better than he had a few seconds before. He let go of Aidan's wrist—which was also the first time Aidan realized that Eallair was touching him—and immediately the feeling of nausea went away.

  "What did…" Aidan paused. "Did you just take magic from me?"

  "Aye," Eallair said with a wince. "I'm sorry, but I didn't know if I had enough for the shield."

  Aidan thought about getting mad—Eallair did just siphon him—but it would be pretty stupid to get mad at someone for saving his life. Especially since it didn’t feel nearly as bad as when Eallair gave him magic, which seemed all kinds of backwards. Plus, hadn't he been willing to let Eallair do exactly that earlier if he needed to?

  "It's okay," Aidan said. "Just…let's try not to do that again. It's kind of…"

  "Unpleasant."

  "Right." Aidan nodded. He went to chew his thumbnail, but stopped himself at the last second "And, thanks. You know, for saving my life."

  Eallair smiled. It wasn't different from any smile he'd ever given Aidan, but now that he knew what it looked like, he saw so much feeling behind it he couldn't believe he'd ever missed it. "Anytime."

  A flare of blue light and a dull, muted pounding brought Aidan back to reality.

  More undead had surrounded them. Only one of the new ones was on fire, and they were all beating against the shield; the rhythmic thump-thump-thump echoing hollowly in the enclosed space. The path Eallair had burned in front of them was still open, but the undead on either side were slowly being jostled into it by other undead near them.

  "I think we should probably get going," Eallair said, standing up with a groan.

  "Are you okay?" Aidan asked. He tentatively reached out to touch Eallair's shoulder, ready to snatch his hand back if it got burned, but his jacket wasn't even warm anymore. The only evidence it ever had been was a slight, almost-melted feel to the leather. "Can you even walk?"

  "Of course," Eallair said easily. "What's more, I can even do this."

  He clapped his hands and, just like back at the village, the shield exploded outwards, sending the undead closest to them flying off into the distance, broken and battered.

  "Told you wizards have a lot of magic all stored up in 'em," Eallair said, smirking.

  "How much did you take?" Aidan asked warily, suddenly worried. It hadn't been that long since Anwir's stupid stone had sucked all the magic out of him, and he could still remember how it felt with unappreciated clarity. He wasn't exactly eager to feel even half that weak again, especially if they had to run across a whole cavern filled with walking corpses.

  "Enough."

  Well, that wasn't cryptic at all.

  It was, however, the best answer he was going to get. The undead were getting closer and the path wouldn't be a path forever. He swallowed his questions and grabbed Eallair's hand.

  "Let's just get out of here."

  "You're not half bad at this good idea stuff," Eallair said with a smirk, and they took off at a run. The smooth floor made it a bit slippery, but it wasn't enough to slow them down.

  It became obvious as they ran down the path that the undead weren't all that smart. They seemed to be almost oblivious to Aidan and Eallair until they were already past them, causing the undead to turn slowly and shuffle after, closing off the fire-cleared path behind them, bit by bit, as they ran by. Aidan was breathing heavily as he ran, but he wasn't even close to being exhausted when the other side of the cavern came into view.

  There was an exit, a smooth, round opening leading into what seemed to be another cave system.

  We're gonna make it!

  Aidan's vision narrowed. The slowly growing exit was the only thing he saw, the only thing he let himself think about. They were going to get out. They were going to survive. Even the moans of the undead were drowned out by the rush of exhilaration he felt, the laugh of triumphant joy that tore from his lips.

  He never even saw the hand t
hat tripped him.

  All he knew was one second he was so close to freedom he could almost smell the slightly-less-stale air of the smaller tunnels, and the next there was a tug on his ankle and he lost his balance, stumbling once before his feet slid out from under him on the too smooth floor and he went smashing chest first into the ground.

  It hurt. His breath was knocked out of him by the fall and he slid across the floor for a few feet, bits of rock scraping his chest through his sweaters. But the pain was nothing compared to the sudden terror as the shadows fell over him. The moans of the undead sounded like they were in right in his ears and he felt cold, dead hands grabbing at him, tugging at his clothes, gripping his hair—

  Then there was a bright light and a flash of unbelievable heat on his back, and the hands were gone.

  "Are you okay?" Eallair asked.

  Aidan didn't bother answering; he just scrambled to his feet and shuddered.

  I can still feel them. Forget what I said before, I'm gonna need to shower for three weeks.

  He shook his head. Now was definitely not the time to worry about being clean.

  "You're not? What's wrong? Did I burn you?" Eallair asked worriedly. He started running his hands all over Aidan; looking for burns, he guessed.

  "Wh… No, the head shake was…never mind, I'm fine," he said, pushing Eallair's hands away.

  "Okay," Eallair said. He didn't seem convinced, but it wasn't like he had much choice other than to take Aidan at his word. The fire blast he'd used to save Aidan was strong, but it didn't go very far. Already the undead that hadn't been hit were starting to close in, almost near enough to grab them. As Eallair tugged Aidan's arm, and they started towards the exit again, his mind snagged on a strange thought.

  What happened to the undead that got hit with the fire?

  There weren't any bodies and the ones shuffling behind them weren't burning even a little.

  And then he noticed the thin, dark gray dust that seemed to be sloughing off him with every step.

  Oh, that is disgusting. Aidan shivered with revulsion. He tried not to think about what the corpse dust was doing to his new jacket.

  "Not to be rude, but can we maybe pick up the pace a bit?" Eallair asked, tugging on Aidan's arm. "I'd kinda like to get out of here before they start eating us."

  "They eat us?!" Aidan exclaimed.

  Eallair frowned. "Isn't that kinda implied in 'undead'?"

  Aidan didn't even answer; he just pushed past Eallair and started running faster. No way was he going to be eaten by corpses a million miles underground.

  Eallair quickly caught up. A few undead had wandered into the fast disappearing path in front of them, but Eallair knocked them back with small bursts of wind, not even bothering with fire. It didn't do any damage or even push them very far away, but it was enough to get them out of the way and, before Aidan knew it, they were suddenly less than four or five carriage lengths away from the exit.

  And, by some amazing twist of fate, there wasn't a single undead between it and them.

  Eallair flashed Aidan a grin, and Aidan returned it, the exhilaration coming back in a heady rush.

  A loud, terribly familiar tearing sound from above them was all the warning they had. Out of nowhere, the spikes on the ceiling of the cavern extended rapidly, shooting down towards Aidan and Eallair. Aidan barely had time to look up and realize they were going to die before Eallair was shoving him to the ground and throwing himself on top of Aidan. He threw up a shield, but it was too late, the spikes had already crashed into the ground with a loud crack of rock punching through rock.

  Aidan squeezed his eyes shut and waited to feel the pain of being impaled…but it never came. Dying should hurt more…right? He kind of thought it should. But still, no pain. Maybe…he wasn't actually dead? Confused, but hopeful, he slowly opened his eyes.

  The spikes, instead of impaling them, had formed a kind of cage around them. There was about four inches of space between each spike, enough to see and stick a hand through, but not enough to escape.

  They were completely trapped.

  "Ah!" Eallair grunted in pain as he shifted off Aidan's back. There was just enough room in the "cage" for them to sit side by side.

  "What's wrong?" Aidan asked, pushing himself up so he was sitting and looking over Eallair. He didn't look like he was bleeding, but he was gingerly holding his ankle.

  "Twisted it," he said with an almost disgusted look. He held the ankle with one hand and placed the other over it. There was a flash of white, then he let go and moved it around, apparently not in pain anymore. "Hate wasting magic on stupid injuries…"

  Personally, Aidan was glad it was just a "stupid injury". They could have easily been skewered. And he wasn't very eager to stick around and find out why they hadn't been.

  "How do we get out of here?" Aidan asked. The spikes were thick; all different sizes but the smallest were about as big around as Aidan's forearm and looked sturdy. He tried kicking at one anyway, but all he ended up doing was hurting his foot. All around them, the undead kept getting closer.

  "I think I can blast through," Eallair said after studying the spikes for a moment. He touched one and his fingers came away wet and slightly dirty. "Maybe I could draw all the water out, but does that make rock brittle or stronger?" He frowned.

  "I wouldn't do…any of that…if I were you."

  Aidan scrambled to his feet, looking for the source of the voice, but it seemed to come from everywhere as it echoed off the cavern walls. He looked around, but all he could see were the undead. The voice was ragged and halting, like it was hard for whoever it was to speak more than a few words at a time, but it spoke with a lilting, musical quality that was familiar.

  And that was when he realized, other than the voice, the cavern was totally silent. The shuffling and the moans of the undead had stopped. Their "cage" was completely surrounded, but they'd all stopped just outside of arm's reach; not that Aidan was in any hurry to try and touch them. This close, the musty, sickly-sweet smell of semi-preserved corpses seemed to cover him like a second skin. It made him feel even grimier than before.

  Then there was a shifting from behind him and he turned around to see the undead shuffle to the side to make way for a man.

  At first Aidan mistook him for another undead. He was tall and bald, terribly thin with a frame that suggested he was meant to carry a lot more muscle than he currently did. His clothes—a dark blue woolen shirt and a pair of animal skin pants—hung off him like large blankets more than clothing. His skin was the tanned brown of the People, but it was also sallow; sickly, with dark purple rings under fever-bright blue eyes. The way he walked reminded Aidan of the way the voice sounded, deliberate and difficult, like a man struggling to carry some heavy burden up a steep hill. He looked barely more alive than the corpses, but despite all that, he didn't look old. His paper-thin skin was mostly unlined and his eyes held a spark of dark intelligence, a slow burning intensity which seemed to hold the potential to do great and terrible things.

  This, then, was the necromancer.

  He didn't look powerful enough to raise the dead and carve stone, but Aidan didn't doubt he could. The wrongness he'd been feeling since they got close to the cave was pouring off the man in waves and Aidan had to fight not to be sick. How could anybody stand being the source of all that tainted essence? If Aidan had to live with that then he'd…

  Well, I'd probably look a lot like him, actually.

  The necromancer stopped right in front of the spike cage and peered in, studying them with avid curiosity.

  "And why wouldn't ya?" Eallair asked a moment later. He'd stood up at some point too and moved next to Aidan, their shoulders just touching. "Blowin’ up a cage what's holding me in seems like a pretty good idea to me. Unless you're into that sort of thing, I suppose."

  The necromancer's dry, cracked lips pulled into a smile. "They are…load bearing," he said in his strange, halting voice. "The spikes of rock. Break through them…and the
whole ceiling…will come down…and crush you."

  "And we're just supposed to take the necromancer's word on that then?" Eallair asked skeptically.

  The necromancer cackled. It was a horrible, dusty laugh and Aidan couldn't help but cringe and take a step back.

  "You are…free to test…of course."

  Eallair kept his face neutral, but when he didn't move, the necromancer cackled again. Or he tried to, the cackling quickly dissolved into a coughing fit that wracked his whole body.

  "You're not a lich?" Eallair asked, frowning.

  The necromancer didn't even seem to hear him, he just kept coughing.

  "What's a lich?" Aidan asked.

  "A kind of undead," Eallair answered, never taking his eyes off the necromancer. "A necromancer takes his life force—his soul—out of his body and puts it in an object called a phylactery. You can kill the body as many times as you want after that; so long’s the phylactery ain’t destroyed, it'll keep getting reanimated over and over again. Even burning the body to dust can't kill it, not really. Give it enough time and it'll bring itself back. It's why most necromancers even start necromancy. To live forever. But liches can't get sick and they definitely never cough."

  "You know…your necromancy," the necromancer said. He'd recovered from his coughing fit, but he seemed a bit more unsteady on his feet.

  "I know a lot about magic," Eallair said flatly. "What I don't know is why you ain't a lich. You're all but dead as it is. Most necromancers would have liched themselves up a long time ago."

  To Aidan's surprise, the necromancer glanced away. "I don't need…to be a lich."

  "Because you're also a Shaman?" Eallair asked. That, Aidan wasn't surprised by. He'd come to that conclusion himself earlier, but he was kind of stupidly proud he'd figured it out before Eallair said it. "Because that just means you're burnin’ your body up even faster. Wizard magic and necromancy don't mix well with a normal human body."

  The necromancer didn't answer.