That one was harder, and it took him longer to push his mind past the physical. Finally, like an icy river current touching the edge of his soul, he felt fear that would drag him into raving paranoia if he let it.
“Fear,” Mil said with a shiver, ridding himself of the offending bone. “Very strong fear.”
“Very good,” she said, then walked a few steps away and placed both bones on the ground.
“Watch,” she instructed and whistled, drawing the writhing bone-powder ribbon to her.
She breathed a command in Ghulish, and as swiftly as a well-trained falcon, the ribbon dove down on the hair-wrapped bones. Particles of bone coated both. He watched as the bone he’d named as feeling angry turned into a cloud of smoke where cinders danced. The other bone frosted over, and a second later, ice crystals bloomed outward, daggers arcing several inches from the bone in all directions.
“Knowing the nature of the ingredients is paramount,” Imrah said, nodding thoughtfully at her handiwork. “Even great members of our kind have fallen prey to arrogance and imprudence when they did not check ingredients that were mislabeled or tampered with. Knowing to verify is as important as knowing what each does.”
Milo nodded, trying to ignore that there seemed to be a face in the cinders that was watching him.
“Got it: safety first.”
Imrah laughed, and Milo found that her laughter was paradoxically the best and worst of all the ghul laughs he’d heard. It didn’t have the thick, viscous quality of most ghuls’, and if he didn’t think too hard about it, it could almost have passed for human. That similarity, knowing she was most certainly not his kind, left him torn and uncomfortable.
If she noticed, she didn’t think it worth expressing, and the lesson continued. The rest of the day was spent having him handle various ingredients and seeing if he could sense their “composition,” which was always a potent emotional reaction. He often couldn’t tell, and if he stood there too long, Imrah would pluck the ingredient out of his hand without explanation and replace it with something else. Before they ended for the day, he’d held the contents of nearly every container, from burnt slivers of wood and dented spoons to the brined eyes and several varieties of shriveled organs.
Milo realized more than ever that this sort of work was not for the squeamish or the faint of heart. More than once, the “resonance” he experienced left him trembling and sapped of both physical and emotional strength. He was ready for a meal and more rest.
After Imrah relieved him of what seemed to be a petrified horse hoof or a very peculiar rock he could get no read on, she dismissed him for the day. Milo was glad to leave, but the distress that so many of the ingredients had eluded him refused to let him leave just yet.
“Am I doing something wrong?” he asked as Imrah began sealing containers.
She turned back, her expression inscrutable.
“What I mean is,” Milo continued when she offered no immediate response, “is there something I could be doing differently? You know, so I could feel all of them?”
Imrah looked over her shoulder at the ingredients and then back at Milo, her brows knitting over her unsettling eyes.
“Can you teach an eye to see a color or an ear to hear a sound?”
Milo pondered the question for a moment before answering.
“In a way, yes. You can help someone to look for specific things or pay attention to certain sounds.”
Imrah shook her head.
“That is teaching them to understand what they are hearing or seeing. To differentiate between the stimuli that are already present.”
Milo wanted to argue, mostly because the implication was far from encouraging if she was saying what he thought she was. In the back of his mind, he wondered if there had been more in the artifacts than he had detected, and his anxiety about his calculations grew.
“So, I’m never going to be able to use those ingredients, then?” he asked, frustration making his voice sharp.
He knew it was petulant to be angry at her for his inability, but the sense of being robbed persisted. After everything he’d gone through, it felt like doors were closing to him before he knew they were there.
She gave what struck Milo as a very delicate response. “Not necessarily. Just because your sensitivity is lacking, it doesn’t render the ingredients inert. It will just make them harder to control and certain formulas more difficult.”
“Great,” Milo spat, hating himself for how childish he sounded. “Already starting off at a disadvantage, and now this?”
Imrah stared at him for a second, then took a step forward. Her eyes searched his face, and she slapped him. The bony knuckles along the back of her hand split his lip and had him staggering back a step in shock. Blood and curses flew, and Milo’s hands balled into fists as he glared at the ghul.
Arms trembling with anger, he took a step forward, ready to vent−by word or fist, he wasn’t sure. Before he could say or do anything else, he was brought up short when Imrah let loose leopard-like snarl and launched into him with cutting words.
“I thought your people sent a man, not a child.” She scoffed. “You are the first human in the annals of your fecund species to have both the opportunity and ability to learn magic. To stand upon the shoulders of sorcerers and alchemists throughout the ages to pluck a fruit long denied even the greatest among you.”
Milo’s hands remained knotted, but he couldn’t muster the will to keep his anger burning.
“I show you how to bend death and matter to your will, and you whine?” she hissed. “No, Magus, this will not be easy, and you will have limitations. The cosmos does not bow to anyone, not even the ghuls, but with patience and determination, you have it within you to bend it to your will.”
Milo’s hand uncurled and he swiped the smear of blood from his lip, silent in the face of her rebuke. Imrah turned away and walked back to the table, where she stood for a long heartbeat.
“Don’t ever waste my time like that again,” she whispered.
“Yes, ma’am,” Milo said softly, then, straightening, he added: “Thank you.”
Imrah didn’t so much as twitch in response, and they stood in silence before she finally spoke in her familiar rasp.
“Go. Fazihr will have arranged for food and reading material for tomorrow.”
Milo replied in the affirmative and joined Ambrose at the edge of the platform.
“What was that about?” the bodyguard asked quietly, nodding at Milo’s lip and shooting a look toward Imrah. “You picking fights on your first day of school?”
Milo sucked his lip, appreciating the sting and the taste of blood on his tongue.
“Just learning my first lesson,” he answered, then gave the big man a sly look. “More importantly, she told us to go find Fazihr and get some food.”
Ambrose grinned and adjusted his rifle on his shoulder.
“Now, there’s an assignment I’ll take to like a fish to water.”
“Your reading material will be sparse, especially at first,” Fazihr, who had turned out to be Imrah’s personal retainer, explained. “Most of these texts are not written in anything resembling your modern languages, so I’ve employed a scrivener to translate the bare bones of the information.”
Despite that statement, the leaves of parchment, which were packed with tightly scrawled German translations, were more than sufficient to keep Milo reading the rest of the day. In the orphanage, he’d learned that he enjoyed reading and possessed considerable retention, but he was not a fast reader. As such, despite the pounding in his head, he took the codices offered and dove into them before they’d even received their lunch. The food, which turned out to not be a prepared meal but rather bulk supplies to provide for several meals over several days, was delivered by a pair of shuffling skeleton porters shortly after Fazihr left their quarters.
The apartment they’d been given in the citadel was a small suite of rooms, with a large bedroom for Milo with an attached lavatory, a common r
oom, a second water closet, and a small cell-like room for Ambrose. Milo had cleaned off his lip at his sink and then come out to peruse the first text Fazihr had given him.
“The dead lads brought lunch,” Ambrose said, waving a hand at a pile of sacks and waxed leather parcels.
“Huh?” Milo responded, only partially listening.
The codex was compiled from the text Awakening Moro: An Introduction to the Necromist’s Trade and acted as a primer for understanding the basics of practical necromantic alchemy. The reading was dense, sometimes relying on assumed knowledge Milo simply didn’t have, but through contextual clues and by referring back to earlier paragraphs, he was piecing things together.
“Are you much of a chef?” Ambrose asked hopefully as he hefted a few sacks onto his shoulder and leveraged a crate against his hip.
“What?” Milo muttered, looking up from his parchment and blinking. “No, not much.”
“Figures.” The big man sighed and moved toward the corner of the common room. “I suppose it's up to me then, huh? Some form of soup work for the busy Magus?”
“Uh, yeah,” Milo murmured, diving back into his book as he sank onto a low couch in the center of the common room. “I suppose.”
Ambrose looked at him and shook his head as he laid his burden on a smooth granite counter in the corner. This part of the room seemed dedicated to meal preparation since there was a small but feisty hearth where a pale green fire crackled on one wall. A small fountain set into the other wall provided perpetual cool water. Around the sources of heat and liquid were stone countertops, above which bronze cookware hung from iron pegs.
As Ambrose brought the rest of the supplies to his “kitchen” and took stock of things, Milo was piecing together the basic differences between various kinds of magic.
Milo had deciphered that ghuls, as opposed to other shayati, were magical beings who created magic that was bound up in physical objects. The text made reference to how fey worked their sorcery spontaneously and the Hiisani used ritual invocations. That information was lost on Milo, but the text then stated how ghul magic—the superior magic, it insisted—was not just in alchemical reactions but in objects created or treated with such reactions. It went on to say that the only ones who came close were the Dwarrow, and its brief thoughts on those creatures and their works were dismissively bitter and scornful.
Milo made a mental note that ghuls didn’t mind letting others know how they felt about the Dwarrow and their works.
“Most of this seems edible,” Ambrose said mostly to himself. “Rice, beans, some dried meats, though I won’t ask what animal it came from.”
Milo ignored the bodyguard’s dark chuckles as the text laid out the most common categories of ghul magic.
There were elixirs that were ingredients and sources of essence. These were meant to be ingested or injected into the body, and Milo supposed the regenerative draught Imrah had made was an example. It went on to describe fetishes, which were pieces of dead beings, beast or otherwise, “treated” with alchemical ingredients and then used through commands to create magical effects. The skull lamp sprang to mind as he read the description, and despite himself, Milo felt a small surge of pride. Before he’d even known what they were, he’d created his first fetish.
“Some of these bits have me stumped,” Ambrose called, his rustling among the crates obnoxious to the engrossed Milo. “And you’ve got to remember I’ve been a lot of places and eaten a lot of strange things. Hello, what’s this?”
Milo grunted irritably, turning his back so he could not see what Ambrose held−an ovoid shape with a glossy nightshade shell.
“Maybe an egg?” Ambrose muttered as he set it down on the counter and fished out two more from a small sack. “Had some soup with eggs in it in the Orient when I was fighting for Tsar Nikki in the Aughts. Willing to give it a try?”
“That’s just fine,” Milo answered peevishly as he set to reading about animates both corporeal and incorporeal.
Corporeal animates were broken down into two categories: the Qareen, which were animated corpses like the skeletal porters, and the Homunculi, which were fabricated from multiple bodies or even inorganic material, like the Gate that had let them pass into the Underworld. The incorporeal animates had their own divisions as well, with the Hatif and Si’lats. Hatif were shades that were incapable of interacting with the physical world, apart from being seen and heard when they wished. Si’lats, on the other hand, were…
The crash of pans and an oath in a language Milo didn’t recognize came from across the room, jarring Milo from his reading. With a frustrated growl, he slapped his papers down and sprang from the couch toward the kitchenette.
“Not to be ungrateful,” he snarled, “but could you please—”
The words died in his mouth as he saw Ambrose scrambling over crates and sacks, trying to fence with a flying horror with only a small bronze paring knife. The intruder in their kitchen was black and granular, as though its body was made from glistening black sand condensed into a shape that was part scorpion, part bat. Erratic wingbeats sprayed black grit at the bodyguard’s face, while a stinging tail jabbed at his chest.
By reflex, Milo groped at his waist. He found his belt and pistol weren’t there, having been left lying on the bed after his trip to the lavatory.
Cursing with each breath, he vaulted over the couches and low tables as Ambrose frantically parried stab after stab. Milo snatched the pistol, drew and cocked it fluidly, and spun.
The monster had chased Ambrose into the common room, and with his door hanging open, Milo could draw a bead on it.
“Drop!” Milo shouted, hoping to God that he’d been heard as he started snapping off shots.
Ambrose dove and flattened as much as his lumpy frame would allow as bullet after bullet ripped through the apartment with echoing cracks. The bullets struck home, launching jets of black grit behind the abomination with each strike. Milo’s ears were ringing so loudly by the time he reached the end of the magazine that he didn’t hear the customary twang. He managed a useless pull of the trigger before he noted the open mechanism on top.
The flapping fiend turned its malformed face toward Milo, mouth opening to reveal gnashing mandibles. Its tail, arching beneath its punctured form, it launched toward Milo as he spun to grab his belt and the extra magazine that hung from it.
Seeing the speed of the demonic creature and the lack of effect of all eight shots, Milo knew in his heart he was doomed, but he threw himself on the bed and rolled as he snatched at the belt. The bat-thing zipped by overhead, its raking stinger missing by centimeters. It swung around and made for a dive bomb as Milo rolled off the bed onto the unforgiving floor.
Milo fought to pry the magazine clear of its sleeve as he saw his death descending upon him.
An intervening sack saved his life. Ambrose deftly scooped the sandy construct into an empty sack. The creature launched into wild spasms and stabbed with mandibles and stinger, but swinging the sack like a sling, Ambrose raced back into the common room. The stinger had just punched through the sack in two places when the bodyguard reached the kitchenette and hurled the monster-laden sack into the fire. Before the fiend could spring free, he snatched a large bronze platter and slapped it over the opening of the hearth. There was a strange hiss like a kettle about to boil over, along with fierce scrabbling against the platter.
With a piercing screech like metal being torn, black grit sprayed out around the edges of the platter. Milo felt something shift in the space beyond reality, a previously unnoticed pressure dissipating.
Ambrose still held his ground, even as the sound of his flesh cooking on the heated bronze platter filled the room.
“You can let it go,” Milo called much louder than he needed to because of his damaged eardrums. “I think I felt the essence leave.”
Ambrose didn’t need to be told twice.
Hissing and spitting profanity, Ambrose let the smoking platter fall from his seared fingers, and more
inert black sand slid across the floor in a small pile. When he held his hands in front of him, they were in far better shape than they had sounded seconds ago. He stumped over to the fountain and gingerly lowered them into it.
Even as a small sigh of relief passed the bodyguard’s lips, he twisted around and glared at the entrance to their apartments.
“Best get that peashooter loaded,” he called in a pain-roughened voice. “Whoever sent that thing might be coming by to finish the job.”
Milo nodded, finished loading his pistol, and went to check that the door was latched and locked.
He made it halfway across the common room when the door burst open and a contingent of ghuls led by Fazihr stormed in. They staggered to a halt when they saw Milo leveling his pistol and Ambrose, hands still dripping, holding a heavy bronze jug ready to throw.
“What is going on?” Fazihr hissed, his eyes darting between the two humans before settling on Milo. “Are you hurt?”
Milo didn’t lower the pistol as his eyes took in the troop of ghuls at a glance. All were armed with one esoteric weapon or another, which went from clubs made from femurs to whips made from sinew and vertebra, along with other stranger things. His eyes locked with Fazihr’s.
“Someone sent us a little surprise in the food your skeletons delivered,” Milo said, his voice hard and flat. “A creature made of black sand that tried to kill us both.”
“Stowed away as a couple of black eggs,” Ambrose put in, wearing a fierce smile below wild, roving eyes. “Thought you’d sent us a tasty treat, but it turned out to be inedible.”
Fazihr’s eyes widened at the implication, and after a short hiss in Ghulish, his entourage lowered their weapons.
“My sincerest apologies, Magus,” Fazihr said with a low bow his fellow ghuls imitated. “I was told to provide for your needs, including security, and I clearly failed. When we heard the sounds of violence, my guards and I rushed up here, but we were not fast enough. We will arrange for a pair of guards to be present at all times.”
Witchmarked (World's First Wizard Book 1) Page 13
