Magic and Loss g-3

by Nancy A. Collins

  He laughed joyously as he grabbed me up in his arms, twirling about as if we were on a dance floor. For a few glorious moments everything we’d gone through seemed to disappear, and we were happy again, just like we used to be. We were still laughing as he pulled me down onto the bed.

  “When you went away, I was afraid I’d never get the chance to be a father to my child,” he said, placing his hand over my gravid belly. “I know what it’s like, growing up without a father. I don’t want to perpetuate that kind of a family tradition.”

  “You’re not being fair to your dad, Hexe. Your mother sent Horn away to keep your grandfather from banishing him.”

  “I realize it’s stupid and childish,” he sighed, “but part of me is still mad at him for not being around when I was a kid. There’s so much I needed to learn that only he could teach me—like how to be a father and a husband. This is all new territory for me, and I’m afraid I’m going to fail at it.”

  “The fact that you’re worried about being a good dad is a good sign,” I reassured him. “I attended some of the most exclusive private schools in the city and, believe me, truly bad fathers fuck up their kids without giving what they’re doing a single thought.”

  Hexe held up his right hand, turning it from side to side as he studied the Gauntlet of Nydd. “The funny thing is, I just wanted to be able to support you and the baby. You would think I, of all people, would know that magic has its price. The gauntlet may have given me back the use of my right hand, but it’s come at the cost of nearly driving away those I care most for in life.”

  “Well, it’ll be gone for good in a couple of days,” I said firmly.

  “Still, even though it perverts my magic, at least it allows me to use my hand for more wholesome purposes, such as brushing my hair . . . and other things,” he said as he slipped his hands underneath my blouse. The gauntlet’s finely crafted chain mail felt as smooth and organic as snakeskin sliding against my flesh. “It’s been a long time . . .” he whispered.

  “Too long,” I agreed, as I pulled his hungry mouth toward mine. We made love for the first time in weeks, fumbling and giggling until we found the best position to accommodate the changes to my anatomy. And once it was done, we drifted off to sleep, with Hexe cradling me in his arms as if I might disappear. The bitter lime smell that clung to him was almost entirely gone, save for a faint, lingering trace.

  * * *

  I am walking up a long, winding staircase of living glass, its colors forever shifting and pulsing. The staircase twines about a towering pillar, and as I climb I look out across a vast cityscape made of living glass, its spires shining and strobing in the sunlight. I raise my eyes to the skies and see massive dragons wheeling far above my head, their long, narrow tails fluttering in the wind like the tails of a kite.

  At the top of the staircase is a temple. Although it, too, is made of living glass, its doorway is fashioned from the skull of a massive dragon, its fleshless maw yawning wide to accept the faithful. I enter the temple, the interior of which is one vast room, in the center of which is a huge cauldron filled with multicolored flames. Kneeling before the holy fire is a figure dressed in a hooded robe, its head lowered in prayer. Although I have never seen this place or this person before, I know that I stand in the Temple of Adon and that this is the Dragon Oracle.

  The robed figure rises and turns to face me. In one hand he holds a tall staff made from the shin of a battle-dragon. I start with surprise, for the face of the Dragon Oracle is that of Mr. Manto. The only difference is the white sash that binds the blind prophet’s eyes. The Dragon Oracle points to the multicolored fire dancing in the cauldron, causing it to flare and jump even higher. When he speaks, his voice echoes like a struck gong.

  “The hand is in the heart.”

  As the Dragon Oracle intones the words, I recognize them as the final portion of the prophecy pieced together by Mr. Manto, a world and countless millennia away. But before I can unravel the meaning of his words, I am overwhelmed by the smell of rotting limes. Suddenly a disembodied six-fingered right hand emerges from the sacred fire and strikes with the speed of a cobra, grabbing me by the neck. I try to pry the phantom hand from about my throat, only to have it tighten its grip. I struggle to free myself as the life is throttled from my body. . . .

  And I awoke from my dream to find Hexe leaning over me, his eyes rolled back in his head, as his gauntlet-clad hand squeezed my windpipe.

  Chapter 25

  I tried to call out his name, but all that came out was a strangled groan. I kicked and flailed at him, but he did not let go. Just as my vision started to turn gray around the edges, there was a horrific screeching noise and Scratch launched himself at Hexe, beating his master about the head and shoulders with his batlike wings while raking him with his claws.

  Hexe let go of me and jumped off the bed, cursing in Kymeran as he grappled with Scratch. Blood poured down his face and neck and onto his naked chest and arms from the dozens of deep scratches that the familiar had dealt him. His eyes had dropped back down, but were as glassy and unfocused as those of a sleepwalker.

  “You dare attack your master, hellspawn!” Hexe shouted indignantly as he tore the madly clawing winged cat off his head and hurled it to the floor.

  “I don’t know who you are, buddy,” the familiar hissed, his eyes glowing like live coals, “but you’re not my master!”

  As Hexe lifted his left hand, I saw the flicker of hellfire ignite in his palm. Scratch flattened his ears against his skull and growled in preparation of a second attack.

  I tried to shout, but the best I could do was a hoarse croak that made me grimace in pain. “Hexe! Don’t do it!” To my relief, his eyes regained their focus and his left hand dropped to his side, extinguishing the flame.

  “You did it, Tate!” Scratch said. “You woke him up!”

  “What—what happened?” Hexe winced as he touched his face, staring in bafflement at the blood staining his left hand. His eyes jerked in my direction, only to widen at the sight of the bruises that now ringed my neck. He then looked down at his right hand, to find its fingers still moving of their own accord, as if trying to strangle an unseen throat. With a shout of wordless horror, Hexe dashed from the bedroom.

  “What’s wrong with him, Scratch?” I rasped.

  “The boss is possessed,” the familiar replied. “But not by a demon; I’d recognize the smell if he was. It’s some kind of evil spirit—” Whatever else Scratch had to say after that was abruptly drowned out by the bansheelike screech of a power tool.

  “He’s in my studio!” I exclaimed. I leapt from the bed and hurried down the hall without bothering to throw on my housecoat, Scratch following at my heels.

  As I entered the room, I saw Hexe standing naked at my workbench, brandishing one of the cordless power saws. He held his right hand away from his body, staring in disgust at its wildly writhing fingers as if they were venomous snakes.

  “Hexe! Put that down!” I croaked, my voice still rough from being throttled. “What are you doing?”

  “I have to do this, Tate! Don’t stop me!” he replied, gesturing with the power tool. “The darkness is in my hand—I can feel it—it’s crawling up my arm, creeping into my brain, and spreading through my heart. I can hear it inside my head—it’s whispering to me—it’s telling me things—promising me things—it wants me to hurt you and the baby—I can’t let that happen—I won’t let that happen—!”

  As if in response, the gauntleted hand suddenly lunged at his left forearm, as if to knock the saw away. Hexe responded by menacing his right hand with the spinning blade, and it promptly recoiled.

  “You were right, Tate!” Hexe exclaimed, his eyes filled with a terrible determination. “I have to get rid of the gauntlet—before it takes me over completely and makes me hurt you and the baby again!”

  “Hexe! No! Don’t do it!” I pleaded.

  “There’s no other way!” he replied. “The voice is too strong—if I don’t do it now, it�
��ll be too late!”

  “Miss Timmy—? What on earth is going on? Oh. My.”

  I turned to see Clarence standing in the open doorway of the studio, dressed in his pajamas and bedroom slippers, his eyes agog at the sight of a naked, crazed Hexe wielding a live power tool. Hexe used the distraction to bring the saw down on his right forearm, just above the Gauntlet of Nydd’s white-gold cuff. There was a sickening crunching sound, followed by an agonized scream as blood sprayed across the floor. I added my screams to Hexe’s own and covered my eyes, unable to bear the sight of the saw blade ripping through unresisting flesh and bone.

  The gauntleted hand dropped to the floor with a heavy thud, only to promptly right itself and scuttle away like a silver-clad spider. Scratch gave an angry yowl and pounced on the amputated limb, sinking his fangs deep into the back of the hand, just like a house cat attacking a rat. The fingers of the severed hand wriggled frantically for a few seconds, like the legs of a crab, before finally going limp.

  The power saw slipped from Hexe’s grip mere seconds before he collapsed. I knelt beside him, desperately trying to stem the lifeblood spurting from the stump of his right wrist. I felt something drape across my shoulders, and I realized that I had just been covered with a blanket. Suddenly Clarence was there, kneeling beside me with a first-aid kit.

  “It’ll be all right, Miss Timmy,” he said reassuringly as he placed a tourniquet fashioned from one of his ties about Hexe’s forearm. “I was an Eagle Scout, in my day—always be prepared.”

  “I had to do it. . . . There was no other way . . .” Hexe mumbled, his golden eyes seeming to grow paler with each spurt of blood.

  “Hold on, Hexe,” I said, squeezing his remaining hand as hard as I could. “Don’t you dare die on me.”

  “Boss—are you in there?” Scratch mewed, butting his head against his master’s bloodied chin. “Can you hear me?”

  “I’m still here, old friend,” Hexe replied with a faint smile as he squeezed my hand, his voice sounding frighteningly weak. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You better not,” I said through the tears streaming down my cheeks. “You’ve got a son to raise, you know.” Suddenly Hexe’s eyelids flickered and his eyes once again rolled back, exposing their whites. “He’s going into shock, Clarence,” I said anxiously.

  “You both are,” he replied quietly.

  With a start, I realized he was right. The initial burst of adrenaline that had first spurred me to fight, and then kept me on my feet, was finally starting to disappear. I felt like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, watching helplessly as the light from the world above dwindled into nothingness. As my vision telescoped down from gray into black, I thought I could hear the Queen of Hearts shouting somewhere off in the distance: Off with his hand! Off with his hand!

  Chapter 26

  I woke up to find myself in one of the recovery rooms at Golgotham General, the community hospital that served the city-state’s diverse population. I had been there, once before, when a demon broke my arm. I sat up straight, gasping like a swimmer coming up for air. “The baby . . . ? Hexe . . . ? Are they—?”

  “Your baby is fine, Miss Timmy,” Clarence said reassuringly from his post at my bedside. “As for your young gentleman, I would say he’s in amazing spirits for someone who has just chopped off his own hand.”

  I looked to where Clarence was pointing and saw Hexe sitting propped up in the hospital bed beside me, talking to his parents. His face was still pale but no longer bloody and the bites and claw marks Scratch dealt him had already disappeared, as if nothing had happened. The same could not be said for his right wrist, which now ended in a gauze-wrapped stump. Upon seeing I was awake, Hexe tossed aside his blankets with his remaining hand and swung his legs out of the bed. He took a couple of steps, only to have his knees buckle. Captain Horn stepped forward, helping to steady him. Hexe flashed his father a brief but grateful smile.

  “Thank God you’re alive; I was so afraid I’d lost you,” I sobbed as he wrapped his arms about me.

  “Don’t cry, Tate,” he said soothingly, wiping at my tears with his left hand. “Everything’s going to be better now.”

  “But your hand—!”

  “What’s done is done,” he replied. “Ever since I put on the Gauntlet of Nydd, my mind has been filled with a thick fog. Sometimes I was aware of what was going on, but most of the time it was like I was watching myself in a dream. I could hear horrible, ugly words coming out of my mouth, and at the same time I was wondering ‘why am I saying this to her?’ It broke my heart to see the hurt look on your face, but I still couldn’t stop the words from spilling out. I realize my saying ‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t begin to cover everything I’ve done and what I’ve put you through—”

  “Of course I forgive you,” I said, cutting him off in midapology. “I knew something was wrong. You would never hurt me or our baby.”

  “I had my forensics team go over the gauntlet,” Captain Horn interjected. “Turns out there was a puppetry spell woven into the original enchantment that allowed the spellcaster to exert control over whoever wore the gauntlet. I’ve never seen such an insidious bit of spellwork in all my years of investigation. Do you think this Madam Erys is the person responsible?”

  “It has to be her,” Hexe replied. “She’s the one who approached me about the Gauntlet of Nydd and arranged for Moot to do the surgery.”

  “I looked into this woman—there’s no evidence of her living either here or the Faubourg, at least under that name. It’s like she simply walked, full grown, from the Outer Dark. The landlord who actually owns the glover’s shop on Shoemaker Lane says she only paid him to rent the storefront for a month or two, and used cash to do it with. As soon as the two of you are clearheaded enough, I’ll send our picture-maker around to do an automatic drawing of the suspect, so my people will have an idea of who to look for.”

  “First things first, though,” Lady Syra said firmly. “Once news of Hexe losing his hand begins to spread, both of you are going to need charms and spells for protection. You have plenty of enemies—not all of them Maladanti—who will no doubt make a move against you when they realize you are defenseless.”

  “What do you propose we do?” Hexe asked.

  “Just leave it to me. I am the Witch Queen, after all.”

  * * *

  After being released from Golgotham General, Hexe and I rode back to Lady Syra’s apartment building in her private coach, driven by the albino centauride Illuminata. The panacea I’d been given at the hospital had healed me, inside and out, but left me feeling like I’d just finished fifty laps in a swimming pool. Suddenly I felt the baby kick. I automatically reached out to place Hexe’s hand on my belly, only to have my fingers close upon thin air.

  Lady Syra lived on Beke Street in a fifteen story neo-Gothic apartment building. Like my parents, her home was the penthouse, which was crowned by a copper-sheathed observatory that she used in order to draw up astrology charts for her clients. As we entered the ground floor lobby, the elevator doors began to open, prompting Hexe to hide his missing hand in his jacket pocket.

  A second later Syra’s fellow tenant, Giles Gruff, accompanied by Mayor Lash, stepped out into the lobby. While Giles was dapper as ever, monocle in place and monogrammed cane in hand, Lash was nervously working the five-foot-long periwinkle blue braided ponytail he wore about his shoulders like a rosary. The two politicians were so heavily engaged in their conversation they did not seem to notice our little contingent.

  “But I’ve always been able to count on you delivering the satyr and faun vote in the past, Giles—!” The mayor protested.

  “Well, you should have thought about that before you decided to get into bed with Ronald Chess!” Giles replied sharply. “Because of you, my niece was kicked out of her apartment!”

  “How else could I afford to campaign against O’Fae?” Lash snapped. “Do you have any idea how many pots of gold that sawed-off shyster has in his war coffer?”
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br />   Lady Syra scowled and mock-coughed into her fist. Mayor Lash started at the sound, his face losing all color as he realized who was standing before him. Giles, on the other hand, merely smirked as his companion quickly scurried across the lobby and out the front door.

  “Your Majesty,” the satyr said, touching the brim of his top hat with his cane.

  * * *

  The first thing I noticed upon reaching Lady Syra’s penthouse was that there was no minotaur stationed outside the front door.

  “What happened to Elmer?” I asked.

  “I had to let the poor dear go,” she explained. “He was the proverbial bull in a china shop—always getting his horns caught in the chandeliers. He’s now working as a longshoreman down on the docks. I think he’s much happier there, to tell you the truth.”

  As we entered the apartment, we were greeted by Lady Syra’s manservant, Amos, whose welcoming smile quickly dissolved as he caught sight of the beige-colored arm sock that covered the stump of Hexe’s right hand.

  “My son’s condition is not to be discussed. Is that understood?” Lady Syra stated firmly.

  “Of course, Your Majesty,” Amos replied with a bow of his maroon buzz cut.

  “Come with me,” Lady Syra said, motioning for us to follow her up the spiral staircase that led to her workshop.

  The inside of the observatory reminded me of an inverted copper bowl and was dominated by an antique sixteen-inch refracting telescope measuring twenty feet in length. The gleaming brass eyepiece was positioned six feet off the floor and was accessible only by a wrought-iron gangway. The retractable roof was decorated with murals depicting the zodiac and other astrological signs, and the walls were lined with bookcases, pigeonhole bins full of rolled-up charts, and a glass display case containing a taxidermied crocodile—the hallmark of the Kymeran archmage. Lady Syra made a beeline to a large horseshoe-shaped table at the foot of the telescope.