Necessary Sacrifices

by R. L. King

  Stone paused to pour another generous shot into his glass. “My mother—didn’t anyone—the authorities—someone must have noticed that she’d disappeared but my father still had me.”

  “Yes, sir.” Aubrey let his breath out slowly. “That was…something your father’s newfound magical style could help him with. He arranged to have her ‘seen’ in Paris a few days later, employing powerful illusions to convince the authorities that she had fled there due to postpartum depression and succumbed to an overdose. I don’t know how he did it, or who, if anyone, he had helping him. I didn’t ask. I—I didn’t want to know.” His voice hitched a little. “I knew it was necessary, but…”

  Stone didn’t reply. He tossed back the liquor so fast it burned his throat; to his disappointment, it didn’t seem to be having any other effect on him at the moment.

  He had no idea what to do. His anger at Aubrey had long since evaporated—none of this was the caretaker’s fault. Even the part the oath hadn’t prevented him from revealing was only because he was trying to protect Stone. Part of him wished Aubrey had continued protecting him—he found the thought of his father living nearly the last twenty years of his life as a black mage because of him nearly unbearable. Then again—throughout his life, he’d always been convinced his father thought of him as little more than an heir, valuing him only for his magical abilities. But Orion had made that sacrifice to save his life. He wondered if the guilt at living as a black mage had contributed to what had happened that night with Desmond.

  That memory jogged another one in his mind, as once again he returned to the words in Desmond’s journal. He glanced up at Aubrey, who stood in the middle of the room, hands at his sides, looking almost as drained as Stone felt. “Aubrey…?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “When my father came home that night—the night he returned with me—did he have anything with him?”

  “Anything…with him, sir?” Aubrey tilted his head, perplexed. “He had you, of course, but—”

  “But was there anything else? Some sort of object? It might have been in a bag, or wrapped up in something.”

  Aubrey considered. “No…I don’t think so, sir,” he said at last. “I was a bit distracted at the time, but I think I would have noticed such a thing. All he carried was you, wrapped in a blanket.”

  “All right…all right…” Stone rose from the chair again. If he hadn’t brought the thing to the house, he must have left it somewhere—perhaps in the portal chamber—intending to deal with it later after he’d made sure his son was safe. After so long had passed, there’d be no way to know. “Aubrey…I…I’ve got to go.”

  “Go, sir?” Aubrey protested. “But it’s nearly three in the morning! And—” the caretaker eyed him critically. “—you’re in no shape to drive, even without everything you’ve had to drink. I don’t think you should—”

  “I’m not driving. I’ll take the portal. I need to go to Caventhorne.” If he’d been wise, or even mentally sound after all the devastating news that had been dropped on him tonight, he’d have gone back to the house and tried to sleep even though he knew he’d have no chance. But right now, the situation had settled into an obsession and he couldn’t put it aside. Not until he had all the answers he could find.

  “Caventhorne, sir?”

  He gripped Aubrey’s shoulders. “Thank you for telling me all of this. I—I don’t know how I’m going to cope with it all, but right now I have things I’ve got to do. Perhaps they’ll keep my mind busy enough that it won’t all catch up with me until later. It’s worth a try, I suppose. It’s worth a try…” he repeated, his voice trailing off.

  Aubrey’s expression was kind and sad. “Are you…going to be all right, sir?”

  “I have no idea, Aubrey.” Without waiting for an answer, he pulled away and swept out the door, into the night.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Once outside, Stone wasted no time. He knew he couldn’t afford to—if he stopped right now to think too hard about everything he’d learned tonight, there was a real possibility he might simply collapse into a ball on the ground and be unable to do anything else. He couldn’t let that happen. There were still answers he needed, and he wouldn’t let himself rest until he got them. Or at least until he made every effort he could manage.

  He’d run out of the house to confront Aubrey clad in only his jeans, T-shirt and boots; he’d been so angry on the way over that he’d barely noticed the chilly wind and cold rain. Now, every bit as agitated but less angry, he felt every blowing drop slicing through his thin shirt and soaking him to the skin.

  “No time,” he growled. To change he’d have to run back to the house, and right now even that short detour was too long. Bugger it, I’ll dry. He’d made it halfway to the graveyard before he remembered he didn’t have the key Desmond had given him. He swore loudly, reversed direction, and ran back to the house.

  Less than five minutes later, he was back outside. He’d swapped his T-shirt for a dry one, flung on his overcoat, and shoved the magical key in his pocket.

  As he hurried toward the cemetery, his mind refused to let go of what he’d learned. He played over scenes with his father from the time he was a young boy, trying to find some evidence—any evidence—that Orion Stone had been a black mage. But as hard as he tried, as much as he added to his pounding headache, he couldn’t think of even a single instance that had made him suspicious. True, he and his father hadn’t interacted often—throughout his youth he’d seen Orion only during school holidays, and even then intermittently, since his father didn’t adjust his travel schedule to accommodate his son’s school breaks. Once he’d begun his apprenticeship with Desmond, they had seen each other even less frequently. As much as he had idolized his father growing up, the relationship had been more one of admiration from afar than any sort of close father-son bond. He wanted to think he might have missed something, but he knew how careful his father was—and probably even more careful when his son was around. Despair filled Stone as he thought about the shame his father must have carried for all those years. If only Orion had trusted him enough to tell him the whole story.

  He reached the cemetery and entered the crypt, quickly calibrating the portal for Caventhorne. For a second he felt guilty about going there without telling anyone, before he remembered that, after today, he had more right to go there than anyone else. It wasn’t as if anyone would notice him, since he’d only be accessing the magically warded areas.

  The quick trip was uneventful—good thing portal travelers didn’t have to worry about their emotional state anymore, or he’d have been in a lot of trouble—and moments later he stepped out into Caventhorne’s familiar portal chamber.

  He stopped then to gather himself, taking a series of deep breaths and trying to run through a simple meditation technique to calm his mind. It didn’t work very well, but at least he’d stopped shaking for the moment. He wished Verity were here; right now, she was the only one he thought he might be able to talk about this whole mess with. But she wasn’t here—she was off in Vermont, probably avoiding him. The thought stung, but he pushed it aside. No time for that now. He had things to do.

  It didn’t take him long to reach the office Desmond had referred to in his journal, the same one in which Stone had found his body. A chill passed over him as he pushed open the door and switched on the light. The room looked exactly as he’d left it, with Desmond’s open research books and notes still on the desk and the fountain pen perched there as if waiting for its owner to pick it back up and continue writing down his thoughts in his neat, precise handwriting. Stone glanced at the spot where Desmond’s body had lay, but quickly looked away. That wasn’t why he was here tonight.

  The third shelf from the top on the north-side bookcase, Desmond’s note had said. Stone located the bookcase in question; the third shelf held a series of leather-bound tomes, a small statuette that looked African in orig
in, and a stack of notebooks. He pulled the key from his pocket and examined it, then carefully looked at each item on the shelf without moving them, using both magical and mundane senses. He didn’t see anywhere a key might fit. “Hmm…”

  With even more care, he removed each item one at a time and stacked them on the corner of the desk. None of them tripped a hidden switch to swing open a secret panel when moved.

  “Must be something about the wall behind…” he murmured to himself. But when all the items had been removed and he swept his magical gaze over the empty expanse, he still saw nothing. For a moment that confused him, but then he gave a tight, mirthless smile as the answer came to him. “Nice trick, Desmond.”

  With magical sight still active, he raised the key and moved it along the wall.

  As soon as he passed it across the right side, a small keyhole appeared where none had been before.

  He pulled the key away, and the keyhole disappeared.

  That was a nice bit of magic, but Stone didn’t have time to be impressed by it now. He raised the key again, and when the keyhole reappeared, slid it in and turned it.

  A small click sounded, and the entire bookcase shifted about half an inch outward.

  “There we go…” Stone murmured. He grasped the edge of the shelf and pulled outward; the whole section swung open on silent hinges, revealing a dark space within. The faint light from the office was sufficient for him to see the space was quite cramped, about the size of a small bathroom, but it wasn’t enough for him to make out what was inside.

  What he did see right away, though, was the ward around the room. With his magical sight still active, he examined the ordered, crisscrossing shafts of magical energy that formed its structure, noticing that Desmond had constructed what appeared to be a ward within a ward to protect the small and hidden nook.

  This place wasn’t a room—it was a vault.

  A few moments’ more careful study revealed a connection between the ward and the key he’d used to open the bookcase, and he reached out and touched the first layer. He wasn’t worried; even if Desmond had considered the object inside worthy of a lethal level of protection, the keyholder was apparently protected from any ill effects.

  His hand passed through the first layer of the ward without incident, except for a faint buzzing sensation. He tried the second layer and got a more substantial buzzing, but still no other effect. Taking a deep breath, he stepped through the ward into the tiny room.

  It wasn’t difficult to determine what he was looking for, since the room held only a single item. Desmond had placed it on a pedestal in the center, and yet another ward protected it. Stone let magical sight drop for a moment so he could view the item without the ward’s structure getting in the way.

  Desmond hadn’t been exaggerating: the thing was unsettling. Stone couldn’t even effectively describe it, except to echo what his master had written. It was about eight inches in diameter, roughly spherical with a flat base, and appeared to depict a mass of writhing tentacles carved in some dark-veined, exotic wood. He narrowed his eyes, raising a light spell around his hand. Upon closer inspection, the things didn’t look so much like tentacles as tendrils—thick, ropy things such as you might see on some kind of nightmare plant. Stone had to force himself not to look away.

  But looking at the thing with mundane vision wasn’t going to help. He took a couple more deep breaths and shifted to magical sight again, focusing his concentration to filter out the ordered structure of the ward.

  No glow surrounded the object. Nothing indicated that it was anything more than a mundane, inert wooden sculpture. Stone walked all the way around it, examining it from every angle, but nothing changed. He reached out with a careful telekinetic spell and turned it on its side, focusing on the base.

  Still nothing.

  Blinking, he let magical sight drop and contemplated it. As far as he could tell, it was nothing more than what Desmond had claimed it was—utterly non-magical. Stone couldn’t imagine how it could possibly have contributed to his father’s madness. Could Orion have stumbled on to something else in his travels? Something that had gotten its hooks into him without his even realizing it? Whatever it was, if its effects had been slow and insidious enough, they might not even have built up enough to have an adverse effect for weeks or even months. There were magical items like that—some would call them “cursed.” Some of them were very old, from days when magic was more powerful, and had been lost for thousands of years. In all of his world travels, Orion could have encountered such an object.

  But Stone didn’t think this thing in front of him was it.

  And neither, more importantly, had Desmond. Stone had no illusions about his relative magical ability when compared to his master. He was good, sure—he was damn good. He might even be as good as Desmond—someday. But not yet. Putting the object under this level of warding had been a precaution, nothing more—in fact, Stone would have bet that Desmond had probably forgotten about the thing over the years. If he’d written the messages to Stone shortly after Orion’s death, that meant this unsettling wooden sculpture had been in this tiny warded vault for twenty years. Had Desmond ever even checked on it in the meantime? Stone had no way to know. Wards didn’t come with log books.

  He stood looking at it for several more moments, considering his options. Did he dare remove the ward so he could take the thing with him? He wanted to study it, but he couldn’t do that here. At the very least, he’d need to get it out of the vault.

  You’re acting like a frightened apprentice, he admonished himself. Just get on with it.

  From his examination of the wards, he was sure they wouldn’t stop him from simply reaching through and taking the item. That was what the key was for. Desmond had made it for him, so he wouldn’t have to break the protections around the object. “All right…” he murmured, reaching out. “Let’s have a look at you.”

  He half-expected the thing to do something when he put his hands on it and carefully lifted it free of the pedestal’s ward—anything from tingling or humming to blowing up in his face. But it did none of those things. It felt like exactly what it looked like: a carved wooden sculpture. Sure, it was a creepy-looking carved wooden sculpture, but it still displayed no sign of magical activity.

  Stone kept an eye on it as he slipped back out through the door wards and closed the bookcase, taking care to put the key in his pocket so he wouldn’t lose it. He tucked the sculpture under his arm and hurried back to the portal. As he exited the crypt at the other end and hurried across the grounds back toward his house, he got an absurd image of himself as an American football player, running full-tilt for the end zone.

  Apparently Aubrey had gone to bed, because he didn’t intercept Stone on his way back to the house. Stone quickly took the sculpture to his heavily-warded downstairs work area, and put it on a table. He shifted back to magical sight and gave it a casual glance before going in search of a magnifying glass to get a closer look.

  He froze.

  The sculpture was glowing.

  It was faint, but it was definitely there—just as it definitely had not been there before. A sickly green nimbus surrounded the thing, shifting and shivering, almost making the tendrils look as if they were moving on their own.

  The freezing sensation crawled up Stone’s back, and his breathing and heart rate both quickened. “Bloody hell…” he whispered.

  Using telekinetic magic so he didn’t have to touch it, he snapped up the sculpture and carried it hastily across the room, where he shoved it into a warded cabinet and slammed the door.

  Had he been fast enough? Had the thing somehow affected him in the brief time it had taken to bring it back here from Caventhorne? And why hadn’t the glow shown up sooner?

  Had it known somehow when it was no longer under observation?

  No. That was absurd. Magic items didn’t have that kind of consciousnes
s.

  Stone stared at the cabinet for a few moments to ensure none of the green energy was escaping, then dropped into a chair and swiped his hair off his forehead as he tried to decide what to do next. It’s all right, he tried to reassure himself. Dad had the thing for years. There’s no way it could get its hooks into you so quickly.

  But even as he thought it, he knew he couldn’t be sure.

  He switched his focus from the cabinet to his own aura, looking for any traces of what Desmond had described in his father: any unexpected red or green energy arcing around his normal purple and gold. But his aura was as pristine as ever—at least color-wise. After all the shocks he’d taken today and tonight, it rolled and crashed like a stormy sea. But that, at least, was normal. Stone remembered Desmond’s description of his father, of the green glow in his eyes as the thing had taken control of him. He hurried to a mirror and examined his reflection, but aside from looking pale and stressed, he looked like himself. No unnatural green light obscured his blue eyes.

  “You’re all right…” he muttered. That had been a close call, though. He’d have to be more careful in the future.

  He checked the cabinet again—still secure—then threw himself back into the chair and thought about his next move. He needed to find out where the object had come from. His father had taken it from whoever had kidnapped him as a baby—the people his mother and her attendant had spirited him off to. Why had he done that? Had it somehow been related to why they’d taken him? Had they been trying to do something to him? Had his mother stolen him away for more reason than she simply wanted to get him away from his father?

  According to Aubrey, his father had been filled with single-minded rage and vengeance when he’d gone after these people, so it didn’t make sense that he’d have taken the time to grab the strange statue if he hadn’t thought it important. He’d even mentioned he’d taken it along because he couldn’t destroy it. But why had he thought it important? What were they doing with it?