“What just happened?” Milo gasped. He swallowed hard at the colonel’s strange expression, “I mean, what just happened, sir?”
The colonel straightened in his seat, and in his deliberate manner, reached out and laid a square-fingered hand on the covered tray on the trolley. The dome rose with tantalizing slowness, revealing a steaming pile of pierogi, their sides glistening with butter.
“You, Conscript Volkohne,” he said, the slightest tremor plucking at his voice to catch Milo’s attention, “have just performed magic. Now, would you like something to eat?”
2
A Choice
Despite everything that had just taken place in Room 7, Milo’s enthusiasm for the food on the tray was undiminished.
The colonel, who had introduced himself as Colonel Heinrich Jorge after handing over the plate, was happy to explain.
“You’ve just completed a bit of ritual magic. Banishing a minor shade to be precise,” he said as Milo sank his teeth into the first pierogi within reach. “As I understand it, it is mostly a matter of will and minor magical ability. Still, you’ve shown more magic than any human ever, and I’ve been told the experience is quite...taxing. I guessed you'd be quite hungry.”
Milo was too busy with his food to note the somber shadow that flickered across the colonel’s face. For his part, the man recovered quickly, his satisfied smile refusing to remain hidden.
The dumplings, stuffed with ground pork, onion, and goat cheese, had the masterful flavor only hunger could impart to hearty food. Milo could not remember when he had eaten anything so delicious, and for the first three, he didn’t have attention to spare for anything else, including all this talk of magic. Before Jules had finally decided to put an end to the “Volkohne problem,” he and his goons had made a game of intimidating the mess staff to ensure Milo always got the leavings. They knew he couldn’t steal anything better because doing so meant a bullet in the head for a penal conscript. Magic or not, he hadn’t eaten well in weeks.
The first trio having vanished, Milo came up for air and took a dumpling in each hand before looking at the colonel.
The colonel waited, his smile unmoving even as his eyes remained watchful.
For a moment, Milo didn’t know what to say, and he might have started gorging again if he hadn’t suddenly remembered the past ten minutes with painful, nauseous clarity. The food in his stomach became a lead weight, and he slid the two pierogi back onto the plate with numb, trembling hands.
His eyes darted around the room as he remembered the skittering horror that had disappeared between the lights. His fingers raked through his dark hair, nails scraping his scalp before they entwined with what hair they could grip.
“Magic,” he breathed, his eyes sliding in and out of focus. “You did say magic, sir?”
The colonel nodded, his expression guarded behind a wooden smile.
“Yes.” He nodded, his scrutiny unblinking. “Magic. An alchemic branch of necromancy if I understand it correctly.”
Alchemic? For Milo, the word conjured thoughts of long-nosed and long-fingered men surrounded by beakers simmering over flames and great tomes full of spidery scrawled formulae. Combined with the grisly title of necromancy, he felt something twist violently in his stomach. He opened his mouth to demand a justification or even an explanation, but then he remembered that awful day three weeks ago in Room 7.
The odd, trivial tasks: lighting a candle, pouring the water into a bowl, drinking it, and snuffing out the candle with his fingers. Milo had just assumed it was a sobriety check or screening. The abuse of liquor and other substances was hilariously commonplace among the colonial forces and the penal regiments particularly, so it had seemed sensible.
When the child with his eyes had appeared, he’d told himself there was something in the water he’d drunk, something to thwart the drunks and addicts. He’d told himself it was just an adverse reaction to that mysterious medication. Fearing being thought a degenerate, he’d said nothing, though he’d noted that the proctor for the test had noticed his furtive, anxious glances.
“The test,” he muttered, dreading how thick his throat felt and how his stomach trembled threateningly. “It was some kind of spell?”
Jorge nodded, his eyes boring into Milo.
“A ritual,” he clarified as he leaned forward and slid a hand beneath the white curtain of the trolley cover. “Which I am led to believe is different from a spell in some ways.”
Ritual. Sorcery. Witchcraft. Hellfire. Damnation.
The words danced a merry jig around Milo’s smoldering conceptions.
His stomach rebelled as the colonel produced a metal pail from the trolley. Milo forfeited the pierogi, along with whatever thin gruel had clung to the inside of his stomach. Head bowed, he felt somehow disconnected to the wretched thing he was, being sick in a bucket with mud still clinging to his ears, throat, and hair. How had so much gone wrong so quickly?
“This isn’t possible,” Milo muttered into the bucket. “How could I do magic without knowing it?”
Colonel Jorge chuckled, having settled back into his chair, hands resting on the table.
“It is a fair question,” he acknowledged with a tilt of his head to regard Milo with owlish scrutiny. “But not the one I had expected.”
“What might that be, sir?”
The officer’s calm replies and knowing stare were beginning to irk Milo, and he was distraught enough to let his military etiquette lapse. The colonel blinked away the breach, too busy watching to take note.
“Most would deny the existence of magic,” Jorge said absently. “It is my experience that even being very religious or superstitious doesn’t keep a person from questioning whether magic—real magic—exists.”
Milo paused at that, allowing himself to wonder, but then he remembered the child ripping himself in half and the patch of midnight that had been left behind. Somehow, dismissing magic seemed incredibly futile at this point. Either the colonel was toying with a madness in Milo he had been unaware of until now, or something supernaturally sinister had just taken place. Either way, he felt like the world was closing in on him.
“So, you tricked me into doing witchcraft?” Milo pressed as he put the odiferous bucket down between his feet. He’d thought to set it to the side, but saying those words made him think it would be wise to keep the pail at hand.
“I suppose that is one way to look at it,” Jorge affirmed with a nod.
“How?” Milo wheezed, choking back more bile.
Colonel Jorge crossed his arms, seeming uncomfortable for the first time.
“There is a simple but unsatisfying answer, which is, ‘I don’t know.’”
Milo stared, wondering if the hollowness he felt was better or worse than what had provoked the vomiting.
“What?”
Jorge shrugged and shook his head, a strangely vulnerable and humanizing pair of gestures.
“I’m afraid we are in the woods on this one,” he said. “The fact is that of all those we’ve attempted the experiment with—I think the total is nearly one hundred and thirty-eight thousand last tally— you are the first viable case.”
Milo supposed he should have been pleased that he was special, but Jorge’s sheepish expression pricked at his hardship-honed instincts. For the first time, he realized the colonel was holding something back. Milo knew that most must have been fine because his fellow conscripts who’d also been tested did not report anything like what Milo had experienced. The camp had been abuzz for a week over what the odd test was about, with all sorts of theories regarding testing medications, new chemical weapons, or things that were even more frighteningly esoteric. When no one got sick or grew new body parts, the chatter had moved on. Milo had written the whole unsettling business off as nerves.
Now, though, Milo felt his head spin but forced himself to focus.
“To be honest,” the colonel began in the way all lies do, “I am amazed that we found a successful candidate so quickly.”
“Always had the Devil’s own luck.” Milo snorted and then grimaced at the implication. Some of the boys at the Dresden Krieg-Waisenhaus, an orphanage for the war’s cast-offs, had told him his blue-black hair and silver-blue eyes were signs that he was a witchling. Milo, between beatings both given and received, had told them that was hogspit, but now he wondered.
Your momma was a witch, Volkohne.
Shut up!
Your momma danced naked with the Devil, and out you came.
“I understand the Russians hold some very...colorful ideas about the supernatural,” Jorge said before the silence could lengthen, perhaps reading Milo’s forlorn expression. “To be fair, it is not just Russians, but many people, and as this damned war has dragged on, more and more people are looking for something to believe in, even if it frightens them. I suppose that is how I was drawn into all this.”
The confessional tone, more than words, punctured Milo’s suffocating malaise, and he looked at Jorge. The colonel’s gaze was distant, racing down dark, uncomfortable corridors before he felt Milo’s eyes on him. He came back to the present with a self-deprecating nod. Milo didn’t like it, but the look they exchanged was a familiar acknowledgment: men recognizing they were on the same sinking ship. The last time he’d known this moment was with Roland, getting their first tattoos together.
Milo spat into the pail full of sick, then slouched back in his chair.
“So, what’s next, sir?” Milo grunted when his old, pugnacious tone crept into his voice. “You’ve turned me into a witch, and now what? You going to teach me to put a curse on the French? Or maybe the Italians or the English? Is that it, sir?”
The air grew a little cooler as the colonel straightened, but his intonation remained as steady as ever.
“I think you’ve missed something, Conscript Volkohne,” he replied mildly. “As I’ve already explained, I know very little about magic and understand the workings of what I know even less than that. If you are to be of use to anybody, you’ll need to be trained by someone who knows magic.”
“Another witch?” Milo asked, feeling dread fascination despite himself.
“I prefer ‘magus’ or ‘wizard,’ truth be told.” Jorge sniffed, then leaned forward slowly before tenderly plucking up a pierogi. “’Witch’ carries such...baggage, especially among certain circles.”
“Another wizard, then?”
Jorge shook his head as he swallowed.
“There are no other human wizards, Milo. You are the first scientifically recorded case of a human successfully engaging in a magical exercise and not going insane.”
“Successfully engaging” dug at Milo, but he pushed that to the side in pursuit of what seemed like a far larger and more ominous enigma.
“Then who is going to teach me, sir?” he asked, his mouth going dry as half-formed suggestions and insinuations began to bubble toward the surface.
“In official reports to the General Staff, I cite them as non-conforming assets. So far, no one has asked to what these assets do not conform.”
Jorge frowned, considering his words then gave a surrendering shrug.
“As far as you and I are concerned, we’d call them monsters. I am sending you into the dark to learn from monsters.”
After Jorge’s pronouncement about monsters, Jorge had recommended they leave the room before the smell became intolerable. Milo might have been embarrassed had he not been in a state of utter turmoil. In truth, even with the bucket right between his feet, he hadn’t noticed the stink.
Walking with a measured gait that was so slow it was almost painful, the colonel led him out of Room 7 and across the railed gallery to a pair of French doors that opened to a second-story patio.
This side of the building faced away from the command plaza and out toward the park, which had been turned into a muster field. Milo stood watching tiny figures scuttling about in the distance, looking for all the world like ants going about their futile tasks just before the boot descended.
“Have we reached the denial stage of the process?” Jorge asked as he settled into a dusty chair, not seeming to care how it powdered his uniform. “I always find that stage the most tedious, but I suppose it is only natural.”
Milo turned from watching the soldiers and crossed his arms as he considered Jorge.
“You are talking about the unsuccessful, sir? The insane?”
Jorge frowned before replying stiffly, “I was referring to anyone who accepts the new magical reality.”
“I’m all ears, sir,” Milo said, leaning forward a little.
He knew he was taking liberties left and right, and he knew that quietly, patiently, Jorge was acknowledging and dismissing each one, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. It seemed only fair, considering Jorge had blithely strolled in to turn his world upside down.
Ten minutes a wizard and already putting on airs. Careful, Milo.
“Well, I suppose it won’t hurt to say I have had to endure the strained transitions of those who came to grips with this new reality,” Jorge answered sagely, stroking his beard thoughtfully. “After I recovered from my shock, it became a matter of who and when in regard to letting others in. But you still haven’t answered the question.”
Milo frowned at the realization that this secret horror was not so secret, then mentally berated himself for the childish reaction.
“I suppose,” he began, trying to pick through the long-toothed and cantankerous thoughts racing around in his head, “that I’m not up for denying it. I mean, I suppose I could rationalize it was all drugs and conditioning and such, but that sort of thinking is at least as uncomfortable as what we’re talking about.”
“Fair point,” Jorge commented as he fished out a cigarette case. The cigarette had barely begun to move in Milo’s direction before he snatched it. They spared a minute to get the tobacco lit and savor the first few drags. Jorge drew over a small table with an ashtray, while Milo flicked the gray leavings over the balcony.
“As you surmised earlier, we’ve had a few others react to the process,” the colonel explained, his eyes sliding toward the occupied park. “The first was an administrative aid working out of a typing pool in Luxembourg. A good woman by all accounts, widowed with two children, a boy, and a girl. You see, once I had a method of testing, I was perhaps overzealous, and, well, honestly, things were just sloppy. That was nearly two years ago. I had been given clearance to pursue this fully, so I was dividing my time between this and other Nicht-KAT duties.”
Milo drew in another lungful of smoke and sent it out in a single rippling ring. The colonel was stalling.
“What happened to the good woman?”
“She died.” Jorge sighed into a cloud of smoke.
Milo waited, and to his surprise, the colonel succumbed.
“Seems her encounter apparition was an amalgam of her children. Unlike you and others, she acknowledged what she had subconsciously conjured. We wrote down the details, and we were pleased to see the apparition was bound to where it had been summoned. She seemed a little shaken but stable enough that we escorted her home with plans to have her try to interact with the apparition the next day. Once home, she locked the doors, shuttered the windows, and promptly killed and dissected her children and the young lady who lived with them and watched the children, an orphaned cousin, I think. She said she was looking for the stitches when we came to collect her the next morning, before turning the knife on herself.”
Milo had subconsciously begun drawing deeper on his cigarette until it bit his finger. He dropped it with a quiet curse. The glowing stub smoldered at his feet, forgotten before it landed on the stone tiles.
“We’ve learned since then,” Jorge said flatly, then more solemnly, “I’ve learned.”
“How many others?” Milo asked, his mouth tasting more acrid and bitter than even the tobacco could manage.
“Five more, all dead within a week,” Jorge said, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray. “Making you luc
ky number seven.”
Milo didn’t bother to turn his head to spit over the rail.
Jorge tensed a little, the first signs of a temper. Despite a lifetime of belligerence, Milo couldn’t hide the thrill of fear that ran through him. Wizard or not, he was a colonial penal conscript speaking to a federated officer. One word and the colonel could have him shot, and no one would bat an eye. Some might even thank the officer for it.
Colonel Jorge spoke slowly, his voice perfectly, frighteningly even.
“This is all very disruptive and even terrifying, I understand, but I think we need to make it clear that there are only two options here.”
Gripping the arms of his seat, he rose unsteadily to his feet. There was the slightest sway for an instant, as though his own two feet were untrustworthy, and some of the dust from the chair tumbled off his uniform. He righted himself and somehow looked Milo squarely in the eye despite the older man being several inches shorter.
“Your choices are darkness or dissection,” he said simply. “You either cooperate with my investigations and meet with the monsters in the dark, or I comply with a directive from the General Staff to have you sent back to Berlin for exhaustive and ultimately fatal testing.”
Milo’s eyes widened, and his crossed arms gripped his coat to hide the shaking in his hands. Visions of men in white coats with black gloves and long, long needles filled his mind.
“Y-you would defy an order from the General Staff?” Milo pushed the words out on an unsteady tongue.
“General Staff doesn’t need to know about our successful trial just yet,” Jorge said, another smile creeping under his mustache. “By the time the information has time to trickle back to them, you and an attaché will be thousands of kilometers away, and in contested territory, no less.”
Milo frowned and looked at the park.
“But the Mud-Snakes are heading west to reinforce the garrison at Metz.”
Witchmarked (World's First Wizard Book 1) Page 3
