Vengeance (The Sorcerers' Scourge Series Book 3)

by Michael Arches

  “Your appreciation is noted. He has assured me that he will do nothing to interfere with our training, and I will ask you not to discuss my methods with him.”

  “You bet,” I replied.

  “This is an excellent beginning. I will speak with your grandfather, Tess O’Dell, and Don Blake to coordinate our efforts and avoid working at cross purposes to one another.”

  -o-o-o-

  Musique de l'eau Restaurant

  TO CELEBRATE MY NEW beginning, Laura drove me to our favorite restaurant. It was located in Boulder Canyon a short distance from town, and the name came from the fact that it was perched alongside Boulder Creek. The water was running high and fast now, and it produced more of a roar than any musical notes. But that was quibbling. The setting was gorgeous.

  Inside, Laura had managed to finagle a table by a large window overlooking the creek. The cottonwoods and aspens were just beginning to open their leaves for the new year, and the evening light filtering through the trees seemed to make those new leaves sparkle.

  We ate a marvelous dinner prepared by one of Nicky’s relatives, and Laura and I reminisced about our prior visits to the place. I’d fought a sorcerer in the parking lot, and we compared notes on how my technique had improved since then. Until Sitka set me back again. At any rate, no danger of a fight tonight because of the sanctuary. We could relax. Tomorrow, I had to face Lucinda Ricci’s wrath.

  Chapter 20

  Thursday, May 30th

  AFTER BREAKFAST, LAURA TOOK me to meet the manager of the ranch’s woodworking shop again. Inside, a dozen people were making furniture using a combination of hand tools and power tools. It was noisy.

  Laura walked over to a stout elderly woman wearing a smock over a plaid shirt and jeans. She wore ear protection and had her back to us. When Laura tapped her on the shoulder, she turned and hugged my wife. Then she came and hugged me.

  With a wave of her hand, she asked us to follow her to her office. After she closed the door, the noise dropped dramatically.

  She took off her earmuffs, and we sat on a sofa that was large and sturdy, no doubt crafted from pine right here and covered with soft leather cushions.

  She wagged a finger at me. “Ian, I’ve been wondering when you’d screw up your courage enough to come by. Diana insisted that I quarantine your staff until we can sort out what you did.”

  “Would it make you feel better to smack me with it a few times?” I asked.

  Laura blushed red.

  “The screw-up was all on me,” I said in as firm a voice as I could manage.

  “How exactly did you try to combine the two weapons?”

  “I looked on the Internet and found a spell.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You really expect me to believe that?”

  Her question caught me off balance, but I nodded anyway. I couldn’t trust my voice for a moment.

  She sighed. “Which website did you use?”

  “I can’t remember. It told me to strap the two staffs together and say, ‘Holarthon, elbo transfère.’”

  Lucinda threw up her hands. “You might as well have taken two sticks of dynamite, tied them together, and lit one. I’m surprised you weren’t consumed in a ball of fire.”

  Laura’s face got redder, and mine warmed.

  “I thought the website knew what it was talking about,” I said. That was going to be my mantra from here to eternity.

  “Would you have asked Gill to build you a dresser?” Lucinda asked.

  “Of course not,” I replied. “He had absolutely nothing to do with this.”

  She acted like I hadn’t spoken. “The great Holar fighter knows nothing about Mendile magic, absolutely nothing!”

  “I obviously screwed up in a big way,” I said. “I’m really sorry, too.”

  She nodded and blew out a deep breath. “Where is Gill’s staff now?”

  “In the closet at the apartment,” Laura said.

  Lucinda’s eyes flashed. “That’s like leaving a loaded gun around for Christina to find. Have you lost your mind? Get it right away and bring it here.”

  Laura dashed out, and I sat silently with a fuming Lucinda.

  A few minutes later, Laura came back to the office with Gill’s old weapon. I hadn’t thought for a second that it could be dangerous. Damn, magic was complicated.

  Lucinda took it, grasped it with both hands, and closed her eyes.

  “As I suspected, it is still partially charged.”

  She muttered rapid-fire in some foreign language, probably Italian. I assumed she was swearing at me. Then, for a moment, her short white hair stuck out in all directions. A few minutes later she handed me back the staff.

  “Now it is safe, merely a stick once more.”

  A sense of relief flooded through me, and Laura gave me a crooked smile.

  We’re too stupid to live in this world. We could’ve hurt Christina.

  After a few more choice Italian words, which were definitely not a blessing on my head, Lucinda strode over to a tall gun safe and unlocked it. From inside, she took out my six-foot-long dark brown staff covered with a variety of white images. “Look familiar?” she asked with a smile.

  “I refuse to answer on the grounds that you might use it against me,” I replied. “Is it okay?”

  Her face fell. “No, it isn’t, especially the charred top. I’m very disappointed because I’d been delighted months ago, at how well this weapon had turned out. I was furious when I realized how badly you damaged it with your clumsy end run around our magical laws.”

  I reached for it, but she kept it away. “Too dangerous still. I will do what I can to preserve as much of its strength as possible while I unravel the terrible mess you made.”

  “Wait!” I said. “One thing—I tried to collect some of Gill’s personality to help guide me in the future. I don’t want to lose that.”

  Lucinda muttered to herself for a moment. “You botched that, too. I’ll add back what personality I collected from his staff moments ago. No promises that I can manage the transfer you bungled.”

  My face warmed again. She was really laying it on thick, and I imagined she’d be even madder if I hadn’t almost blown myself to bits.

  She carried my staff out of the office to the outside and set it on a table made from a thick slab of granite. Then she returned inside and came back a few minutes later in what looked like a fireman’s protective clothing, complete with a helmet and a face shield. In one hand, she held a metal cup. A half-dozen workers from the shop came out, apparently to watch the spectacle.

  Lucinda pointed at a red rope pinned to the ground in a circle around the table. “Come no closer.”

  She waddled forward in her heavy outfit and waved her arms while saying words I couldn’t hear. My staff glowed a couple of times, and she brushed some dark liquid on it from the cup.

  Suddenly, my staff burst into flames. I cried out. When I tried to run forward, Laura and one of the other woodworkers held me back.

  The way they shook their heads told me this effort to repair my weapon wasn’t going well at all. The smoke from the fire wafted over us, and its acrid stench stung my nostrils.

  A minute later, the fire flamed out. Lucinda took off her helmet and stared at the now blackened weapon. In trying to save it, she’d charred it to a crisp.

  But one of the workers walked forward with another bucket containing a heavy wire brush. She took the bucket, dipped the brush in a light tan liquid inside, and scrubbed the strip of charcoal formerly known as my staff. Most of the shaft was black, but parts turned the same color as the liquid. The top that had burned off was still gone, but the wood at that end was solid instead of charred.

  When I walked forward this time, no one stopped me. My staff was now a glossy black pole. All the carvings that used to exist were still there, except now they were light tan instead of white. Another woodworker came forward carrying several cloth towels, and she dried the weapon and handed it to me.

  “Is it
okay?” I asked Lucinda.

  “Probably, but you’ll have to use it in battle to be sure. Some of the power from Gill’s weapon was incompatible with yours, and I left that out. Most of the personality from his weapon is now in yours, in addition to some of his magic. It’s the best I could do.”

  “I’m sure of it,” I said. “Thanks for all your help.”

  Laura and I grinned at her.

  She wagged her finger. “Don’t ever do that again. The next time you try, it goes in the fire pit. No third chance.”

  “Okay, got it.” As I walked away holding my weapon, a Texas drawl sounded in my head. “What a prissy gal. Can’t take a fucking joke.”

  “It’s talking to me,” I said to my wife.

  “Is it supposed to do that?”

  “Never has before,” I replied.

  She took the staff from me. “Gill are you playing us?”

  A moment later, she said, “He won’t talk to me.”

  I took the staff back and asked the same question. “No answer now for me either.”

  She sighed. “That’s him all over. Does exactly what he wants when he wants.”

  -o-o-o-

  I SPENT THE REST of the morning working for Holly, and I returned to the ranch for lunch with my family.

  Afterward, I met Sorcha in Tess’s training room again. We sat in a couple of plastic chairs facing each other. I’d left my staff locked up at our apartment so Gill didn’t get into a pissing contest with Sorcha.

  “I spent the morning at the university,” she said. “Your book is remarkable. We have arranged for carbon dating, but I will be quite surprised if it proves to be anything other than what Marie Carmichael’s family believed. She was a remarkable woman, by the way.”

  I had no idea Sorcha knew Gill’s wife. “You liked her despite your feud with her husband?”

  Sorcha chuckled. “I loved her dearly, and I was devastated at her passing. We used to compare notes on his many failings. Her family’s history was extraordinary. They’d documented their experiences with witchcraft going back to the reign of Julius Caesar. I don’t doubt that they acquired the book a thousand years ago, as Gill claimed, but it’s less clear to me that it is a translation of a much older text written during Holar’s time.”

  “Maybe it was even written by the great master.”

  She shrugged. “We’ve translated enough to know the title page claims the work was authored by Holar, but we have no other surviving writings from him to compare this artifact to. I will tell you in confidence that I hope the original was written by Holar, but we’ll never know with certainty. It does refer to many of his well-known spells, but it mentions others we don’t understand yet.”

  My skin tingled. “It’s a gospel for Holar! That’s terrific.”

  I could see her fighting a grin. “Perhaps. My instincts tell me that is the case, but scholars work from evidence, not hunches. We’ll have to study the question for years before I offer my opinion in any professional journal.”

  I fidgeted in my chair. “How long do you intend to stay here to work with the original book?”

  “I’m not certain. Some weeks, at least. I must return for Oxford’s Michaelmas term, but that doesn’t begin until early October. In the meantime, we have considerable ground to make up.”

  “Ready when you are.”

  She stood and motioned for me to rise, too.

  “In my discussions with Tess and Don, I was told that Gill may have given you dangerous advice.”

  I thought she meant how I’d combined the staffs, but she said instead, “They both described how Gill told you to divide your thoughts between cool, logical reasoning and hot, emotional feelings.”

  “Bad move? It seemed to work great during my fight with Sitka.”

  She walked around me as though she needed to inspect me from all angles. Then she placed the fingers of her right hand against my forehead.

  “By itself, that is a sound practice,” she said. “Most magic requires calm concentration, but Holar’s fighting spells are generally fueled by anger. Of course, it’s notoriously difficult to be both calm and furious at the same time. I do recommend that my disciples compartmentalize their thoughts, and most of the time they act rationally. Nevertheless, they keep a special place in their mind separate for strong feelings. Once you begin to think that way, it soon becomes second nature.”

  “Okay, what’s the problem?”

  “Tess and Don both told me that, during your last battle, your only attack spell was truly explosive. That was something you’d never managed before.”

  Her frown told me that was bad. “Sorry.”

  “A man's got to know his limitations. I believe Dirty Harry first expressed that truism. Even if your staff hadn’t overloaded, you would’ve suffered personal injury. You cannot push out too much magic at once without consequence.”

  “Okay, I’ll be sure never to do that again.”

  “Exactly. You probably wouldn’t survive the second attempt.”

  We practiced wards, and mine seemed hit and miss today. That was always my problem, a lack of consistency.

  Finally, Sorcha said, “You need to dramatically deepen your powers of concentration. You should be meditating for at least an hour a day.”

  “How am I supposed to find the time?”

  “It’s essential to your growth as a witch. Your priority has to be to recover your ability to fight. That includes not only physical training but honing your mind as a weapon.”

  It seemed like every day brought new challenges. Sorcha spent an hour with me showing me how to mediate on a candle’s flame. Then she turned me over to Don Blake who trained me in karate for an hour, including fighting with my staff. Luckily, I hadn’t lost my ability to fight hand-to-hand.

  By the time dinner came, I was exhausted. I ate with my family, and then we relaxed in the apartment playing Hearts. Christina was good enough to beat her mother and me twice. When she headed to bed, I sat quietly in the living room staring at a yellow flame until I nodded off.

  -o-o-o-

  Monday, June 10th

  Brigid’s Community Ranch, Boulder County, Colorado

  WITHIN TWO WEEKS FROM the day I first met Sorcha, I knew something was seriously wrong. But she’d held up her end of the deal, so how could I complain. She’d met me every day for at least an hour, and I had no doubt she was doing her best to turn me into the amazing fighting machine I’d once been. I just wasn’t progressing much.

  Finally, one morning in Tess’s training room, I asked my new mentor, “Is something wrong with my brain still? I’m not improving much.”

  She threw up her hands. “Yes, now that you mention it, there is something seriously amiss in your mind. You have no patience. Holar’s magic is extremely complex, and it takes a long time to master.”

  I knew that was bullshit because I’d already learned it once. “The last time, I picked it up a lot faster. I’m not blaming you. You’ve helped in every possible way. I just can’t get it this time.”

  She blew out a deep breath. “Yes, it’s no doubt frustrating to move at a slow but steady pace, but it’s much safer this way. You will recall that the last time you learned fighting magic, you were under constant siege from sorcerers. I’ve been told that you were first attacked four days after you arrived in Boulder, and you found your second magical fight three days after that.”

  I couldn’t remember the exact timing, but those early days of magic had been a whirlwind. “That sounds about right. Why does that matter?”

  She smiled like she won the point. “I’m under strict orders from both Diana and your wife—and they frighten me much more than you do—to keep you from fighting for another two weeks. Of course you learned quickly the last time. You took huge risks and had to fight or lose everything.”

  I thought about it for a minute. “Okay, you’re right that I took stupid chances, but I think I learned faster in my training, too.”

  Sorcha shrugged. “Perhap
s, but at that time, you also displayed shocking ignorance about how magic works. Diana told me you fought at least three times before she explained the underpinnings of Celtic magic to you.”

  My face warmed. I’d been remarkably slow in trying to understand the magical world. “I’m not real big on book learning, but I did have a knack for throwing magic at sorcerers. I can’t seem to get back in the groove.”

  “Perhaps, but your main failing is a lack of patience. I’m convinced that if you’d understood the fundamentals of magic better, you never would’ve made the serious mistake you did of trying to take Gill’s powers from his staff. He suffers from the same lack of depth that you do, and he never should’ve recommended such a reckless action.”

  That got my back up. “Wait, he had nothing to do—”

  She raised her hand. “Stop right there before you commit a serious breach of trust to me. I can read your thoughts as easily as you read a newspaper. Don’t lie to me again, or I’ll wash my hands of you entirely.”

  I stopped and took a deep breath. Lying was no way to repay her tremendous efforts to help me. “Okay, whatever happened was done with the best of intentions. It’s in the past, and Gill won’t be training me again. I just wanted to get better than I was at when I fought Sitka. Escobar is supposed to be much stronger still.”

  “Fine,” she said. “We share the same goal. I’m doing my best to get you ready to face the regional slayer. The best way to gain power is to fight and win. You cannot begin fighting again for two weeks. Let’s use that time wisely to prepare you for the coming battles.”

  She was right. “Sounds like a good plan. What’s the next step?”

  She slipped into her professor’s lecturing voice. “It turns out that the gentlemen at CU and I have uncovered something new in your precious book. It seems likely that Holar’s spells were chanted in a specific way instead of merely spoken. Many spiritual works from antiquity were originally sung instead of spoken, particularly in Central Asia where Holar lived. This opens an entirely new and fascinating area of investigation. We will experiment with various ancient chanting techniques, including pentatonic scales, to see if they strengthen your spells.