19
An Understanding
“I still don’t get it,” Milo muttered as he paced the room, boots scuffing the bare floor. “How does any of this make sense?”
They’d been given respectably-sized but utilitarian quarters not far from the main road. The furnishings were spartan or so unfamiliar as to be useless, but none of them was going to complain. It was the largest structure in what amounted to an abandoned neighborhood, functionally sequestering them from the rest of the town and the army. This, combined with a large basement beneath the house, made it the ideal location for Milo’s training to continue.
True to form, Ambrose had begun to take stock of what could be done in regards to preparing something to eat. Imrah had scuttled to the basement to make “preparations,” leaving Milo with his reading. He couldn’t bring himself to fish out the codices just yet.
“Is that rhetorical?” Ambrose called from the other room.
“Yes,” Milo shouted back irritably, but then thought better of it. “Well, maybe. Do you have something useful to share?”
Ambrose peeked around the doorway.
“That will depend very much on what is vexing you, my good wizard,” Ambrose replied with a look of serious concern. “What doesn’t make any sense?”
“What Lokkemand said, obviously,” Milo snapped, pausing in his pacing to give the bodyguard a dirty look. “I understand he’s a drunk, but what business is he rambling about, blaming me for Jorge’s decision to have him work alongside some rebels in the army?”
“Seems fairly simple,” Ambrose said, ducking back into the kitchen, where he raised his voice to be heard. “You’re the only wizard ever, so you need time to learn, and Jorge is going to give you that time no matter what it takes.”
“How does working with that kind of people buy us time?” Milo demanded.
“Because conspiracies, even unmagical ones, work much harder at isolating enemies and potential enemies than they do friends,” Ambrose called back. “Exposing Nicht-KAT exposes them, and Jorge knows that.”
Milo supposed it made a kind of sense, but the idea of Lokkemand blaming him for the loss of his soul caught and tore at Milo’s psyche on multiple levels.
“You seem to know an awful lot about this cloak and dagger business,” Milo growled, knowing he sounded petulant and not caring at the moment. “If you were the witch, things would be going a lot smoother, I bet.”
“But I’m not,” Ambrose hollered. “Now, stop whining about being the chosen one and do your homework!”
Milo tried and failed to keep the smile off his face as he grudgingly surrendered and snatched up his bag.
He drew out the codices, and the smile faded from his face. Only hours ago, he’d been aching to dive back into his studies, but now the sheaves of parchment felt like lead in his hands. Search as he might within himself, he couldn’t find that hungry spark, that longing to know. The longer he stared at the codices, the more he felt a fathomless ennui crawling up his body. It wasn’t just that he was distracted by what the captain had said, but he actually didn’t want to read them, and the thought of doing so sapped him.
What was wrong with him? What had changed?
After staring at them for a while longer, Milo realized the truth.
Ambrose was not only right that he was whining, but he’d been leading him to a point, intentional or otherwise. Milo realized he was fixated on what Lokkemand had said because for the first time, responsibility was settling over him, and he hated how it felt. Milo hated the idea of Jorge hanging everything on him, even Lokkemand’s conscience and stability. He hated thinking that if he didn’t learn things quick enough, didn’t master magic of some kind in time, everything would come apart. The work and lives of so many hung on Nicht-KAT, and if he acknowledged that, he could take it a trembling step farther and remember why Jorge was betting so much on him; the War. Colonel Jorge had bet on Milo being the one who could end it, which if true, meant every misstep or failure meant the War lasted longer and more people died needlessly.
Like a mountain was settling on his shoulders, Milo sank to the floor, still clutching the codices.
“How am I going to do this?” he gasped, his eyes staring through pages of parchment at a yawning gulf threatening to open before him and swallow him.
“Simple,” Ambrose called, still shouting in a jocular tone from the kitchen. “You open to the first page and read. Once you get to the end of that one, turn the page and read the next.”
Milo lifted Awakening Moro, and the effort felt like lifting a bucket of cement.
“Far as I know,” Ambrose chuckled, mostly to himself, “all any of us can do is the next thing, right?”
“The next thing,” Milo whispered to himself, staring at the spidery script.
Maybe Ambrose, however unwittingly, was right.
Milo couldn’t end the War, couldn’t save Nicht-KAT, couldn’t even rescue Captain Lokkemand from his conscience. What he could do right now was read. Read and study, then maybe eat whatever Ambrose was concocting before Imrah emerged to lead him through another lesson. That was what was in front of him. That was what was next.
Right where he’d crumpled to the floor, Milo settled into a more comfortable position and began reading Awakening Moro, not even looking up to see Ambrose peeking from the kitchen to smile at him.
“Wake up.”
Milo started with a sharp intake of breath and looked up into darkness. He had a vague impression of someone standing over him, but little else. He felt the stone floor underneath, and his joints gave a small series of crackles as he sat up.
“What’s going on?”
He remembered eating with Ambrose and then going back to finish Awakening Moro. He’d wrapped up the abridged text, his head swimming with concepts of alchemical combination and necromantic catalyzation as he scooped up the next codex. He must have fallen asleep very early into Spectral Ruminations: A Guide to Shades and Their Permutations because he remembered next to nothing about the text.
“Imrah?” he asked and then gave a long yawn. “Is that you?”
“It’s time for lessons to resume.” The voice confirmed his suspicion. “My preparations are complete, and it is time we begin in earnest.”
“Earnest?” Milo yawned again, then scooped up the codices he’d fallen asleep on top of. “What were we doing before this?”
“Testing you,” she said simply, then hissed a low syllable.
The room was bathed with light from the miniature eye sockets on Milo’s cane.
“I thought testing came after you learned something,” Milo muttered as he climbed to his feet. “Not before.”
Imrah’s face, lit by the witchlight, was positively terrifying.
“Consider it an initial evaluation,” she said, grinning wickedly. “Now that I know what you are capable of, I must push you to the brink. That starts with you meeting someone.”
“Lucky me.” Milo sighed, trying to remember this was the next thing. “Lead on, Professor.”
With a growing sense of foreboding, Milo followed Imrah, who carried the lit skull cane to the stairwell down into the basement. Milo’s boots thumped on the wooden floorboards, and he found it hard not to wonder what he would meet in the basement. He told himself Ambrose wouldn’t let anything too dangerous show up, but Ambrose had already proven less than infallible. As stairs creaked underfoot, Milo allowed some small part of his mind to remember every story of Butzemann and Babay or whatever other fearful figment children could whisper about at night. He tried to dismiss the nagging murmurs, but he’d learned that faeries were real recently, so why not them?
In fact, as he thought about it, he imagined the stories of child-snatching goblins and kobolds that vanished underground could have easily been about ghuls. The thought made him shiver.
His feet landed on the packed earth at the bottom of the stairs, and Milo felt a rush of pressure against his mind and soul. There was magic, potent and tangible, in the ba
sement. As he moved to follow Imrah, the air thickened until it almost felt like wading.
The basement was lit by spectral blue fires in bottles hanging from the cobwebbed floor joists, revealing tables littered with ingredients, along with what might have been drying racks made of bone strung with sinew. In the corner farthest from the stairs, seven bowls, each full of amethyst flame, were arranged in a loose circle around a patch of quivering darkness.
“Where did all this come from?” Milo asked, remembering that the ghul had left Ifreedahm with only a satchel slung over her shoulder.
“All in good time,” Imrah answered cryptically.
With a cluck of her tongue, Imrah dismissed the light from the skull and left the cane lying on a table as she moved toward the undulating patch of night in the corner. Milo made to pick it up as he went by, but he heard Imrah calling to him.
“Leave it,” she said. “It is safer this way.”
Milo’s outstretched fingers ached to close around the reassuring weight of the weapon, but he resisted. Muttering curses to himself, he followed Imrah past the tables toward the seething blackness.
“What is that?” Milo called as they passed the drying racks, from which hung what looked suspiciously like human skins.
“That is the lesson after this one,” she said softly. “And hopefully not your last.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Milo muttered as they drew closer, then stepped into the violet light cast by the bowls.
They stopped an arm’s length from the bowls, within whose circle the raw night, devoid of any star, seethed and writhed. This close to it, Milo felt his skin prickle at the chill that suffused the air. Milo had shed his surcoat after eating, his body warmed by a full dinner, and now found himself wishing he hadn’t.
“What is it?” Milo asked, his breath misting in front of his face.
“Didn’t make it very far into Spectral Ruminations then,” Imrah said almost as a note to herself. “Your reading habits will need to improve.”
Milo looked at her with a frown, in part to remind her she hadn’t answered his question, but also because as he stood there, he felt a growing understanding that the darkness was looking back at him. Awareness pushed through the rippling, coiling darkness, and Milo was convinced that whatever its motives were, they were not friendly.
“This is a soul well,” Imrah explained. “A misnomer, as you should know from Awakening and our previous discussions that souls have nothing to do with the necromist. This is a repository of essence in the form of multiple shades bound around a lynchpin fetish.”
Milo turned to the darkness, noting that it rippled like a flame, though there was something intentional about the movements. As he stared, he began to see faces, or at least the impression of faces, form and then dissipate in the blackness.
“It looks dangerous,” Milo said, trying not to let the fear he felt reach his voice.
“Oh, it is,” Imrah said, her voice almost giddy. “Without proper precautions, this many shades bound together could easily kill us both and then go on to slaughter many more of your people before it finally tore itself apart.”
Milo wrenched his eyes from the hypnotic horror of the soul well to view his teacher warily.
“Then why make it?” Milo asked. “It’s tied to a fetish, which means you had to make this on purpose. Why?”
“Isn’t fire dangerous?” Imrah asked. “And yet, you humans use it for many things. For war, for industry, even to cook your food. Humans use fire, despite its dangers, because it is a source of power they can use. Have you forgotten what shades are made of?”
“Essence,” Milo said, the words so automatic he couldn’t even feel proud for knowing the answer.
“Good, at least you remember something,” Imrah said as she produced a long, thin vial from within her garments. “And why is essence so important to the necromist?”
“Because it powers everything they do,” Milo said, feeling foolish. “So, you have a large pool of essence here to draw from.”
The temperature dropped further, and Milo’s skin began to ache from the cold.
“Is it doing that?” Milo said as he rubbed his arms and shivered.
“Yes,” Imrah said, her eyes darting to the bowls on the floor. “It is pressing against its containment, trying to find a weakness.”
“W-will it f-find one?” Milo asked, teeth chattering. “A w-weakness, I mean.”
Imrah’s gaze rose from the bowls, and she turned to Milo with another wicked smile.
“We hope not,” she said, then raised the vial so Milo could see the grains filling it. “You don’t want the soul well loose while you assemble your first Si’lat.”
“What?” Milo balked, his mind conjuring the memories of the flapping horror made of black sand that had nearly killed him and Ambrose.
“It is a simple process,” Imrah stated, deliberately oblivious to his disbelief. “Using only your will, though later, we’ll train with a focus conduit, you draw a shade from the soul well and then compel it to occupy the medium you’ve chosen.”
She rattled the dark granules in the vial with a shake of her outstretched hand. Swallowing heavily and still shivering, Milo reluctantly took the vial.
“There you go,” Imrah said indulgently, eyes shining in the amethyst light of the burning bowls. “Now, the hardest part will be drawing the shade out without it dragging too many of the others along with it, which would waste most of the essence at best or breach containment at worst. That is why we are not using a focus conduit yet. It will be harder but safer for you to do it with sheer will.”
“Safety first,” Milo muttered, looking at the vial and then at the soul well. “H-how do I get the s-shade out?”
“Focus your mind and emotions on the soul well,” Imrah instructed. “It will be similar to how you could sense certain ingredients, only the sensation will be more intense. Don’t let it overwhelm you, or the shade will try to affix itself to you. Don’t worry, it can’t because of its containment, but the backlash will sting. Nothing fatal, of course.”
“Of c-course.” Milo frowned.
“If it helps to visualize by holding out your hand, do so. Just be careful not to stick your hand into the well.”
“If I d-do?” Milo asked, his hand shaking in the unnatural chill.
“Well,” Imrah said, considering the best way to answer the question, “let’s just say you won’t be able to make that mistake again, at least not with that hand.”
“Naturally.” Milo huffed, sending up another gust of crystalizing breath. “This would probably be easier if I had my coat. I’m freezing!”
“It wouldn’t help,” the she-ghul replied flatly. “The cold you are experiencing is both a physical and a metaphysical phenomenon. You could be bundled in the thickest furs and sweating, but you would still feel as though you were deathly cold.”
“S-such a p-pleasant thought.” Milo shuddered.
“Quickly now,” Imrah snipped. “I’m tired of your whining.”
Checking his distance to the soul well, Milo raised one trembling arm and tried to keep his gaze and mind fixed on the roiling darkness. For one aching, straining moment, there was nothing but the perpetual cold, and Milo wondered if Imrah had overestimated his abilities as he sensed nothing. Then, like the sub-audible hum of a live wire, Milo felt the thrumming power of the soul well. At first it was a low, vague thing, easily overlooked; then, like some crazed actor rushing to the foreground, Milo realized it was crashing toward him. Finally, it was on top of him.
It was like plunging his head into a swirling maelstrom of not just physical but emotional sensations. Incredible heat gnawed at his skin, while a desperate longing raked his heart. Sharp, grating pain sawed his bones as a towering rage roiled and blazed in his mind. Every sensation was magnified and writ large on his mind and body, and despite his best efforts, he was dragged into their sucking depths.
“Don’t let them drag you down,” Imrah hissed in h
is ear. “Your will is strong enough. Don’t let them—”
There was a loud snap, then pain, pure and simple, lanced through Milo’s skull. The world vanished in oblivion.
“Get up,” Imrah’s voice commanded across the gulf of unconsciousness. “Get up and try again.”
Milo dismissed the distant demand, yearning for nothing more than vacuous sleep.
“Get up,” the voice pressed. “Get up.”
Milo was dragged back into wakefulness and instantly regretted it.
His head throbbed with pulses of agony, and when he raised his hands to his face, a gaping wound wove a puckered line across his brow. There was no blood, which was even more unsettling, as though the scabby fissure had erupted from within to gape open with exposed bone.
“Not fatal,” Milo groaned, his eyes watering so badly he couldn’t see anything but a shimmering blur that made his head pound worse. He decided it would be better to just squeeze his eyes shut for the moment.
“Stop whining and hold still,” Imrah said, her voice coming closer.
Hard fingers took hold of his, and Milo couldn’t keep a small cry from slipping between his gritted teeth. His face was guided left, then right, and then the fingers released him.
“Don’t move and don’t resist,” Imrah murmured, which did little to ease Milo’s anxiety.
Something cold but mercifully numbing was spread across his brow, and Milo felt the pull of magic sliding across his mind. In a process that was harder than he would have imagined, he tried not to resist the pull, slowly allowing it to have its way. As he did so, a different sort of pain, cleaner and easier to bear, suffused his brow. His scalp itched and the skin tingled uncomfortably, but within a minute, the only sensation left was a faint dampness across his forehead. He carefully opened his eyes, feeling a mixture of relief and irritation at the sight of Imrah standing over him, wiping her fingers on a rag.
Witchmarked (World's First Wizard Book 1) Page 23
