A Shadow Bright and Burning

by Jessica Cluess

  “One flies and one swims?”

  “No, the correct answer is: everything. Sorcerers conduct the earth’s energy from one place to the next. We magicians are creators. Do you understand?” He tapped a finger to his forehead in emphasis. “We generate, we don’t manipulate. Your Master Agrippa surrenders himself to the power of the elements; he’s a mere conduit for them. Meanwhile, your feelings, thoughts, dreams, ambitions, all build your magic. How do you feel now?”

  Fearful. Angry. My throat was tight, and my head pounded. The blue flames ignited and swirled about me.

  Hargrove cried out, “You’ll burn us all! Calm down.”

  The anger released itself, and the fire died, until it was only a thin shell that clung to my body. With a thought, I stopped burning. “What does it mean?”

  “It means, cherub, that what you think and feel directs your ability.”

  I took a chair and placed it in the center of the room. Facing the chair, I used both arms to lift my stave, employing the earth’s magnetic force. I didn’t clear my mind. I imagined lifting it. Above all, I wanted to lift it. I felt something build inside me, a kind of pressure. After a few wobbly tries, the chair rose three feet and hovered without the slightest waver. I lowered it to the floor, giddy with relief.

  “Can I work with sorcerers?” I asked, tension draining out of my body.

  “Yes, as long as you focus on yourself. They can feed on your power, but never tell them what you really are.” He returned to cutting open the intestines, inspecting them carefully. “You’re a cuckoo in the nest. If they learn the truth, they’ll push you out and break your neck.”

  “Master Agrippa wouldn’t do that.”

  “Everyone has a limit. Aha!” He held up a coin, covered in blood. He wiped it and flipped it into the air. “Two-faced, just as the man said. How nice to know there are still trustworthy people on the black market.”

  “What else can you teach me?”

  Hargrove shook his head. “I don’t think I should show you any actual tricks. The less you know, the less you can slip up and reveal to the sorcerers.”

  “Mr. Hargrove,” Billy said, standing on his tiptoes and gazing out the window, “come look at the birds!”

  “Yes, nice birdies,” Hargrove said absently.

  “How much do magicians know about magic?” I asked.

  He puffed himself up. “We’ve forgotten more than Master Agrippa could learn in a lifetime.”

  “Mr. Hargrove, the birds!” Billy called again. I peered through the window to where the little boy pointed. A ring of ten ravens sat on the street below. The passersby skirted around them.

  “Why are sorcerers so afraid of magicians?” I said.

  “Because of our potential for power. We could wipe out the sorcerer Order with little effort.” He gathered up the rest of the intestines and dumped them out the open window. Below us, someone gave a disgusted cry.

  “If we’re so powerful, why haven’t we done that already?”

  “Because magicians don’t like order. We enjoy our freedom.” He shuffled to a bowl of water and washed his hands. “We make our own mistakes.”

  I was about to ask what he meant when screams started outside.

  The ten ravens began to swell and change shape, like a child’s balloon in the hands of a carnival worker. They hopped into the center of the circle and melded together into a fat, feathery mound. The blob grew, and a moment later one large black shape remained. It rose in the center of the street, a tall human-esque figure with dark robes and a cowl covering its face. Ebony feathers coated its long, vaguely winglike arms.

  It was one of the ravens, the Familiars of On-Tez the Vulture Lady. With one swift, terrible motion, the monster swung out a claw-tipped hand and sliced off a man’s head.

  Chaos erupted below as people trampled one another to get out of the way. The bird creature flapped its arms and struck a woman, knocking her to the ground.

  “Why would On-Tez send one of her ravens? She stays in Canterbury,” I said, horrified.

  “Attacks don’t only happen at night, my ducky. Old R’hlem’s fighting a war, and he means to win it.”

  “Why don’t the sorcerers do something?”

  He glared at me. “Because the Familiars don’t attack the ward, dear heart, and that’s all the Order cares about.” He grunted as he looked out the window. “This is the fourth time in two months. I should move. It’s not fair to the area.”

  “Why should you move?”

  “The magic,” he said, as though it were obvious. “The Ancients and their Familiars are drawn to the scent of it like ants to a sticky bun.”

  London was filled with sorcerers. Was the city under constant attack because of us?

  “Come,” Hargrove said. “I’ll show you a way out.”

  “If our power called these creatures, we should be the ones to put a stop to it.” I grabbed his coat sleeve as he brushed past me.

  “I don’t have to do anything. If it’s between them or me, I choose me.” He yanked himself from my grip. I looked back out the window.

  The Familiar sliced its way through a man’s chest, leaving him to bleed out on the ground. The street turned a roiling crimson as the thing threw back its head and screamed in triumph, arm-wings bristling. My hands felt hot. When I pulled open the front door, Hargrove slammed it shut. “You’ll get yourself killed!” he snapped.

  “Help me. I know I can’t fight it on my own.” I grabbed Porridge from its sheath.

  “You want to throw a little wind and rain at it? It’ll take more than weather play, you stupid thing.”

  “Help me!” I pointed at the door. “Or I’ll go down there and die in the attempt, and you’ll have to live with the guilt of failing my father.”

  “I think you’re overestimating how much I liked him,” Hargrove muttered, “but all right. Wait.” He ran to the back of the room and thrust the curtain aside, dispersing the children while he dragged out a wooden chest. He banged on the lid twice, and it swung open. One by one, the children stepped into the chest and disappeared, making little noises of excitement or terror as they did so. Once the last child had vanished, Hargrove closed the lid, tapped upon it three times, and reopened it. The trunk now contained a collection of odds and ends, bits of string and candles and toys, tarnished copper bells and golden rings in the shape of dragons, lace handkerchiefs, and glass vials of thick, odd-colored liquid. An aroma of moths and rose petals wafted out.

  “Where did the children go?”

  “Er, storage. This is what we need.” He selected something, shut the box, and went to the window, covering it with what appeared to be a large and durable spiderweb.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’ll need extra power for this. Use your stave.” He put his hands to the web and said, “Weave it with your malice, woven with your gall, grow to catch a spider, strength to see it fall.” My nose crinkled in distaste. “Well, it works for me. Activate Toast or Marmalade or whatever that stave’s name is, and use it as best you can. Only remember to envision something big enough to catch that creature.”

  I put Porridge to the web, closed my eyes, and imagined a great net strong enough to hold a bird. Nothing happened. “I thought you said I was a magician.”

  “Stop whining and think of exactly what you want to do.” Intentions—I had to be specific in my intentions. The screams below spurred me on. I envisioned the web catching that raven, saw the bird squawk and collapse as I snared it. First, I had to weave the web, make it grow. I spun my stave in a gradual spiral, beginning at the center and spreading outward. I imagined it growing larger, big enough to catch the bastard. Catch it. Catch it. Catch—

  “It worked!” Hargrove yelled. I opened my eyes and stared out the window. The Familiar lay pinned to the earth in the center of the street, trapped beneath an enormous spiderweb. I opened the front door against Hargrove’s protests, pulling my cloak on and my hood around my face. The creature began to rip free.


  Running down the steps, I sliced my stave through the air three times, using my anger as fuel. The wind rushed out of the east and pounded the thing. When the Familiar raised its winged arms to shield itself, the gale ushered it into the sky. I slipped back into an alleyway and hugged the wall, watching the Familiar struggle in the wind.

  Out of nowhere, a great red-and-purple-and-orange cloak appeared, flapping in the breeze. The garment swept upward and wrapped itself around the raven. It looked as if the two were wrestling. With a wave of my hand, I stopped the wind. The raven plummeted to earth. When it landed, the coat rose up and flew away quickly, as if attempting to sneak off.

  The Familiar lay still. Slowly, people began to approach. I kept my head down and inched forward in the crowd, stopping above the collapsed pile of rags and feathers to stare at the now-dead thing. I glimpsed the less-than-human face beneath the cowl. Its teeth were pointed and black, skin whiter than chalk, except where bits of crimson blood and gore had splashed onto its chin. Black feathers covered the top of the monster’s head, so that I could not see the eyes, and a once-human nose had sharpened into a pointed beak. Brackish liquid oozed from a stab wound in the raven’s sunken chest.

  Someone grabbed me by the shoulder and, placing a hand over my mouth, spun me into a whirlwind. A moment later, hands released me. I stumbled around to face my attacker, Hargrove, who smiled and nodded behind me.

  “Don’t step back; it’s quite a fall.” He grabbed me when I didn’t listen and almost tumbled into space. We stood atop a roof. Below us, the crowd’s confusion was a persistent murmur. Balanced on the roof’s slope, Hargrove cleaned blood off a silver blade. “Another great defect of the sorcerers is they don’t get creative with their weaponry. Magic is fine, but a knife works marvelously well. Ravens tend to die best with a blade of silver. I wrote all about it in my journal, The Life and Times of a Really Fantastic Magician, His Thoughts and Theories, Volume Seven.” He studied his reflection in the blade’s surface and licked his thumb, rubbing it over a patch of black blood on his forehead.

  “How did you fly without wind? How on earth did you disappear? How did you get us up here?” My voice was high and breathless. It was impossible. It was brilliant.

  “Those,” he said, slipping the knife into the folds of his coat, “are the sorts of questions you can’t ask.”

  “You don’t have to teach me how to do what you do. Just teach me—”

  “How I do what I do, but not how to do what I do? What if what I do has to do with my knowledge of what to do, and doing requires only the knowledge of doing? What would you do then?”

  I blinked. “I believe you hurt my brain.”

  “It’s a good brain, all things considered. Listen, my adorable bonfire, I cannot teach you much. Our safety requires it. But I suppose a little magic never did a body a great deal of harm. Unless it was the magical art of rearranging bones. Or turning flesh inside out. Or—never mind. Really, I’d forgotten how much I missed being collegial with my own kind. A magician without an apprentice is like a dog without a bark.”

  “Will you teach me how to fight them?” I waved my hand over the Familiar’s corpse, far below. “How to kill them?”

  “Bloodthirsty, are we? You don’t want to go and get yourself slaughtered before your big commendation.”

  “I can’t let these people suffer. If the Order won’t do anything, I will.”

  Hargrove sighed. “Very well. Next lesson, we’ll discuss battle techniques.”

  “I may not be able to come often.”

  “Whatever time you can spare.” He looked at me with something like sadness. “You did well today. You used a bit of magician trickery yourself, you know, even with the stave. I’m sure some of that will bleed into our lessons. Now, speaking of blood, I must seek out a bath.” He wrapped the cloak around us and, instantly, we stood in the alleyway again.

  “Thank you. I’m glad to know my father had such a good friend.”

  “No, don’t think that.” His expression darkened. “If there’s one thing your father was unlucky in, it was his friends.” Before I could ask what he meant, he folded himself tight within his cloak and vanished.

  —

  THE FAMILIAR APPROACHED ME FROM ACROSS the room. She licked her dry lips with a thick black tongue and hummed deep in her throat. This was the rider I had met, the one with the eyes sewn shut with coarse black thread. “Little lady sorcerer,” she hissed. Her thin white-blond hair lay stringy against her face, down her back.

  She was even more hideous than I remembered. I sank down onto the sofa, trying to keep my wits about me. This was a dream. We were seated in the mist-shrouded library. I looked across the room to my sleeping body collapsed over my desk. This would teach me to study when I was so tired.

  Would these visitations happen every time I went to sleep?

  I tried not to panic. If R’hlem could kill me in a dream, I felt certain he would have done so already. These last three nights, he’d followed me about the room wherever I went. He’d watched me struggle to wake up, an amused smile on his face. But he had never touched me. Perhaps he couldn’t.

  And there he was. R’hlem appeared beside the rider, a pleased expression on his skinned face. “Do you like her?” he said to me. The girl knelt at his feet, as if she’d twine about his legs like a pet cat.

  “No,” I replied.

  R’hlem laughed at my sullen response. He chucked the Familiar under her chin. With a wave of his hand, she vanished.

  “No fear this time. You did well.”

  Did well? “What does that mean? How are you doing this? What do you want from me?” He didn’t respond, only came to offer me his hand. I rose without it and backed toward the fire. Wherever I went in the room, he moved after me at a leisurely gait. He seemed to take enormous pleasure in my confusion. I tried a different tack. “Are the Ancients attacking London because of the scent of magic?” There. That finally stopped him. “You’re attacking us because so many magic users live inside the ward, aren’t you?”

  R’hlem sneered. “Ask your great men what sins they’ve committed.” Sins? Now he regarded me with real interest. “Who told you this?”

  I wouldn’t give Hargrove away. “I want to wake up now.”

  R’hlem strode toward me. Before I could dodge him, he grabbed me by the wrist. His touch was slippery and cold. Bloody. I screamed and struggled. His grip tightened. He was squeezing hard enough to break my—

  —

  “HOWEL?” MAGNUS SHOOK ME AWAKE. I swung about blindly, sending paper flying all across the desk. “Sorry. I didn’t realize you were so determined to sleep.”

  “I must have nodded off,” I muttered, rubbing my eyes. Magnus grabbed my wrist.

  “Did you cut yourself?” Looking down, I discovered fingerprints shining wet with blood. I pulled away and wiped off the marks with my handkerchief.

  “I scratched myself when I was out in the garden. It must’ve bled more than I thought,” I said lamely. What would have happened had Magnus not woken me? Perhaps he would’ve discovered my mangled corpse at this desk. Trying to appear preoccupied, I grasped my pen and looked over a piece of paper. Magnus watched me with his back against the hearth. After a minute, I gave in. “Yes?”

  “I was just wondering,” he said, arms crossed over his chest, “why you were outside the ward today.”

  I dropped the pen. “I wasn’t.”

  “You were, and you clobbered that raven with a blast of wind. I planned to join in the fray myself, but it was over before I could do anything. Why were you there?”

  I stood and turned away from him. “I didn’t see you follow me.”

  “You spoke to me.”

  “I didn’t.” I looked back at him, confused. “When?”

  He hunched himself and shouldered past. “ ’Scuse me, miss,” he said in a gruff, familiar tone.

  “You were the fellow who bumped into me? How did you know where I was going?”

  “I saw
you sneaking down to the kitchen for food, so I followed. Why did you go?”

  “I wanted to bring something to that horrible magician Hargrove’s children. Please don’t tell Master Agrippa.” I realized I’d given Magnus power over me. Damn.

  “How did you have such control over the wind? You couldn’t even lift a feather during lessons this morning.”

  “Sometimes when you have to do something, you find you can.” Would he accept that and say no more?

  Magnus nodded. “I suppose that makes sense. You did well, actually, battling that thing. Hideous beasts, aren’t they?”

  “Yes. Were you aware that Familiars sometimes attack the unwarded area during the day?” I felt ill recalling the carnage I’d witnessed.

  He looked uncomfortable. “No. The Order likes to keep secrets from us, don’t you think?” He spun a globe that sat atop the desk, skimming his fingers across the Pacific Ocean.

  “We should do something about it.”

  “We will. Once we’re commended, we can change things.” He leaned against the desk, the image of confidence.

  “You believe that, don’t you?”

  “I never have any trouble believing in myself.” He smiled, but there was no cockiness in his expression. “And I was right to believe in you. In time, you’ll be a great sorcerer.”