Alex Verus Novels, Books 1-4 (9780698175952)

by Jacka, Benedict

  “Let’s go, Luna,” I said. “We’ve got a world waiting for us.”

  Then suddenly there was a whirlwind in front of me, pushing me away. I jumped back with a curse, bumping into Luna and making her cry out. The whirlwind solidified, taking the form of a waiflike girl with spiky hair. “Don’t!” Starbreeze said urgently.

  “Starbreeze?” I recovered my balance. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Wrong! Don’t go!”

  “You’re in the way.” I tried to walk forward and again found myself in the middle of a whirlwind of air, driving me back. I came to a stop and looked angrily at her. “Starbreeze!”

  Starbreeze didn’t move. “Can’t go!”

  Luna looked at me puzzlement. “What’s going on?”

  “I have no idea,” I said in exasperation. Starbreeze wasn’t intending any harm, else my precognition would have sensed her, but she wasn’t budging either. “You can’t go,” Starbreeze insisted. “Wrong!”

  “Maybe it’s dangerous?” Luna asked doubtfully.

  “Luna, there’s nothing out there within a hundred miles that’s a danger to me,” I said impatiently. “Starbreeze, get out of the way!”

  Starbreeze shook her head again. “Wrong.”

  I took a threatening step forward. “You stupid little—”

  “Wait!” Luna said urgently, looking between us. She was close enough to Starbreeze to be dangerous, but Starbreeze was focused so desperately on me she didn’t even notice. “What’s wrong?” Luna asked Starbreeze. “Isn’t this the way out?”

  Starbreeze shook her head again. “Can’t go.” She stared at me anxiously. “He’s wrong.”

  “This is the way out,” I said. “Starbreeze, move or I’ll make you move.”

  “Wait,” Luna said. “What does she mean?”

  “Who cares?”

  “Wrong,” Starbreeze said again, insistent.

  “She keeps saying that…”

  “Who cares?” I wanted to get out of this place, walk outside the boundaries of the tomb and taste the night air, wanted it so badly I could taste it. Starbreeze was stopping me, and that was making me angry.

  Luna hesitated. “Shouldn’t we listen to her?”

  “No!” I said in frustration. “There’s nothing for us to go back for. We are done with this place!”

  As I spoke, Luna started. “Wait!”

  I was almost ready to kill Luna. “NOW what?”

  “There is someone we need to go back for. Sonder!”

  I stared at her for a second. “Who?”

  “Sonder! Alex, you saw him, Griff hurt him, don’t you remember? He must be back in those corridors.”

  “He’s probably dead.”

  Luna started as if I’d slapped her. “He’s not! He was breathing when Griff took me away. He could still be alive!”

  I started to answer and suddenly came to a halt. Luna was right. When I’d last seen Sonder he’d been alive. Griff hadn’t killed the younger mage, he’d only stunned him. So why had I been so sure he was dead?

  Luna was looking at me as if waiting for something. “What?” I said at last.

  “Aren’t you going to…?” Luna said. When I didn’t respond, she trailed off.

  “We’ll go back for him later.” I didn’t want to think about Sonder. I just wanted to get out.

  “He might be dead by then!”

  “Plenty more where he came from.”

  Luna started again, her eyes going wide. “Why do we have to deal with this now?” I said in irritation. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “I can’t believe you’re saying this! Alex, you were the one who told him to stay with us!” Luna was staring at me in shock. “What about what you told me? You said that you shouldn’t let someone die if you could help it. I believed you.”

  “When did I…?” I trailed off as I remembered telling Luna that. It had been after we’d helped Cinder and Rachel. Except I didn’t really believe it, it had just been something to say to—

  No, it hadn’t just been something to say. I had believed it. I did believe it. Luna was right. I couldn’t just leave Sonder back there, I needed to go back and help him.

  No, Sonder didn’t matter. What I needed was to get out.

  Wait, that was wrong. Leaving Sonder in the middle of that maze would be like killing him.

  But I didn’t care about that.

  Yes, I did.

  I made a noise and turned away, holding a hand to my forehead. I was getting a headache; it felt like there were two voices in my head at once. I paced back and forth between the walls of the tunnel. “I don’t know,” I muttered. “Let’s just get out of here.” I felt I’d be able to think clearly if I only got outside.

  “No,” Starbreeze said urgently to Luna. “Wrong.”

  “Shut up,” I snapped. Their voices were making the headache worse. “I don’t—” I turned and saw that both Starbreeze and Luna were looking at me now, and both had the same strange look on their faces. “What are you staring at?”

  “Back in the chamber,” Luna said slowly. “You were ready to kill them.”

  “Of course I was!”

  “I’m not sorry about Griff,” Luna said. Her left hand moved unconsciously to her crippled right, but she seemed to have forgotten about her broken arm. She was staring at me intently. “But I’ve never seen you like that, not until—” Luna stopped, and something changed in her eyes.

  For some reason I felt a sudden stab of fear. I wanted to push past, make a run for the exit, but Luna and Starbreeze were blocking my way now, staring at me. “What?”

  “Alex?” Luna asked, and all of a sudden her voice was very careful. “What happened when you picked up that thing?” She gestured to the wand in my hand.

  I opened my mouth to reply, and suddenly everything was silent and I was standing outside my body again. Luna and Starbreeze were looking at where I stood, but I couldn’t hear them anymore.

  I rolled my eyes. “Not you again.”

  “Are you going to stand around all day?” Abithriax demanded, striding into view. He’d appeared right next to me in his red robes, and he looked seriously pissed off.

  “Shut up,” I muttered. As soon as Abithriax had reappeared, my headache had gotten worse, bad enough that it felt like someone taking a hammer to my skull. Just talking was making me nauseated.

  “Listen, Verus,” Abithriax said. His voice was on edge, tense. “I’ve been sitting listening to this conversation and I’m thoroughly bored with it. Just get us outside and I’ll teach you to help this Sonder boy however you want.”

  “Leave me alone,” I said through clenched teeth. If only my head would stop hurting. “Why do you care about getting outside anyway?”

  Something flickered in Abithriax’s eyes, and I stopped. I’d only wanted to shut him up, but that look made me pay attention. I’d stumbled onto something Abithriax didn’t want me to know. More than one thing. I shook my head. If only I could think straight.

  “Look,” Abithriax said carefully. He’d calmed down again and his voice was calm, reasonable. “I’ve got nothing against the boy. It just wouldn’t be sensible to go back now. If we can get to somewhere with more facilities, then we can…”

  Abithriax kept talking, but I wasn’t listening. I was looking up through the portal at the stars shining down from the night sky. Starlight. What did that remind me of?

  “…more safely,” Abithriax was saying. “In any case—”

  “The greater power for the lesser,” I said absently.

  “What was that?”

  “Abithriax?” I said. All of a sudden my headache was gone. I could think clearly again, and all of my attention was focused on the man in front of me. “How do you know my name?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “My name,” I said pleasantly, and I didn’t take my eyes off him.

  “Well—your friend.”

  I shook my head slowly. “Luna calls me Alex. Not Verus.”

 
; “One of the others, then.”

  “Which one?”

  Abithriax hesitated. Just for a second his eyes shifted, and I saw something behind them, something calculating and cold.

  No, it had always been there, I just hadn’t been looking for it. “I will open my mind to you; my knowledge and skill will be yours…” Stupid, stupid, stupid. If I could look into his mind, he could look into mine. Why hadn’t I asked how someone who’d been sealed away two thousand years could speak perfect English?

  “Why do you want to get out of here so badly, Abithriax?” I kept my voice friendly, but inwardly I was tensing. When I’d merged with Abithriax last time, I’d touched him. He might be a ghost to everyone else, but if I could get close…

  Abithriax stood still for a long moment, then straightened. “All right.”

  I tried to move, but Abithriax was faster. All of a sudden I was paralysed, frozen. There was no spell or gesture: one moment I was talking, the next rooted to the spot. All I could move was my eyes.

  Abithriax walked forward. As he did he seemed to grow in presence, become larger, more there, as if until now he’d been holding himself back. The red streaks in his hair and beard stood out brightly, and all of a sudden they made me think of blood. “You just had to make this difficult, didn’t you?”

  I couldn’t answer. Behind Abithriax, I could see Luna and Starbreeze. They were talking, speaking to my frozen body, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. “Still, I suppose I should be impressed,” Abithriax said. “Normally my wielders never even notice. The name was careless of me…lack of practice, I suppose, it’s been such a long time…” He glanced at me. “You asked how I did it. I suppose it’s only fair. I was a mind mage. That was how I was able to imbue myself into my fateweaver. But I always hesitated to make that final jump…until the alternative was death. But once I’d adjusted to my new form, learning to control a bearer was quite straightforward…”

  Luna was standing next to my body, now. She was trying to pull the fateweaver out of my hands, struggling with her one good arm. Starbreeze had joined her, and Luna was shouting silently, her face frantic. “Interesting,” Abithriax said. “She’s worked it out. I think I’ll keep her, if she doesn’t make too much trouble…Where was I? Oh, yes. First I took revenge on my betrayers in the Light Council. It took them quite some time to realise what was happening. They’d kill my wielder, but then they’d take the fateweaver for themselves, and of course I’d just start all over again.” Abithriax shook his head. “And yet even when the last few figured it out, they couldn’t bear to destroy me. All that power, you see. So they built me this tomb and sealed me away, hoping to find a way to take my power for themselves. And eventually they stopped coming and I was left to wait out the years, alone in the dark.”

  I was struggling to move, but couldn’t. I wasn’t panicking yet, but things were looking bad. Abithriax was talking to me the way you do to someone who’s not going to be around long enough for it to matter.

  “And then you came,” Abithriax said. “I hadn’t expected it to be this easy. But perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. It may have been two thousand years, but mages haven’t changed. Power, power, power.” Abithriax took a final glance back at Luna and Starbreeze, and nodded to himself. “Well, we’d better get on with it.”

  Abithriax placed his hand flat against my chest. For a moment nothing happened, then I felt a draining sensation, as if the strength were flowing out of me and into the man—the ghost—in front of me. I fought against it, trying to pull it back. “There’s no point resisting,” Abithriax said calmly. “Each time you used my powers you granted me more of a hold. If you’d fought me from the instant you picked me up, you might have had a chance, but it’s far too late now.”

  Starbreeze was still trying to pull the fateweaver away, with no success. Luna was standing in front of me, and I could see she was crying. I could make out the silver mist of her curse clearly, its tendrils soaking into Starbreeze, but curling away from my body. “There’s no need to be afraid, Verus.” Abithriax’s voice was reassuring. “I looked into your memories, and isn’t this what you always wanted? To be powerful enough that you needn’t be afraid anymore? Soon you’ll be the most powerful mage in the world. Well, it won’t exactly be you. But you’ll still be in there, watching everything that happens.” Abithriax paused. “At least, I think so.”

  Abithriax’s voice was getting stronger, and I realised it was starting to sound like mine. He was taking over my mind, and soon he’d have the rest of me as well. My strength had been drained so far now that if I hadn’t been paralysed, I wouldn’t even have been able to stand. All I could do was look at Luna and taste despair. Oh Luna, I’m sorry. All this way, and this is how it ends. I don’t want to think about what this man’s going to do with you once I’m gone, but I can’t stop him. He’s going to win, and there’s nothing I can do…

  The light seemed to be fading, but I knew it wasn’t the light that was going, it was my vision. Because of that, it took me a moment to notice what was different about Luna, and when I did, I would have blinked if I could. The silvery mist around her was changing to gold. She was standing close to me, head down as if praying.

  “Good-bye, Verus,” Abithriax said, and he was smiling. “I’ve never known exactly what this feels like, but I don’t think it’ll hurt.” But I don’t very much care if it does, his eyes added.

  Behind Abithriax’s back, Luna placed her good hand on my body’s shoulder, pulled herself up on tiptoes, and kissed me.

  The golden light around Luna seemed to flash, then jumped into my body. To me, it felt like being struck with a bolt of energy. I felt Abithriax’s hold on me slip, and all of a sudden I was free, my strength rushing back. I staggered, and Abithriax jerked in surprise, staring at me. For a moment he hesitated.

  I didn’t. Before Abithriax could react I’d caught his wrist, twisted, and come in behind him, my arm locked around his throat. Abithriax choked. “Surprise,” I snarled into his ear.

  “What—?” Abithriax gasped. “How did—?”

  “That was a interesting talk, Abithriax,” I said, my voice shaking with anger. “I was paying very close attention. You said I might have a chance if I’d fought you from the beginning? Let’s find out.”

  Abithriax was struggling desperately, but I was stronger and better trained. I brought up my other arm, changing my grip to a hammerlock, and I felt Abithriax struggle wildly as I cut off his air and blood supply. “You’ll kill us,” Abithriax managed to gasp. “If I die—you—”

  I tightened my grip and Abithriax’s voice trailed off in a gurgle. “Oh, I don’t think so,” I said. “I learn fast, you notice that? I think you’re lying again, and this time you’re not getting any more chances.”

  Abithriax couldn’t speak anymore. The side of his face that I could see was red, turning purple. He clawed at my arms, but I only tightened my grip further. Around me, the world was starting to blur, the corridor and Luna and Starbreeze going in and out of focus. “Good-bye, Abithriax,” I snarled into his ear. “I don’t know if this’ll hurt, but I really hope it does.”

  Abithriax made a last desperate attempt to get free, then went limp. All around me, reality seemed to unravel and fade to black.

  When I woke up, I felt as though I’d just taken a long, relaxing nap. I would have liked to stay sleeping, but someone was calling my name, and I had the feeling I ought to answer. I shifted slightly and let myself come awake.

  “Alex? Alex!”

  I opened my eyes to see Luna’s face. “Oh,” I said agreeably. “Hey.”

  “Alex!” Luna looked like she’d been crying, and her face was drawn and pale, but she was desperately hopeful now. “It’s you?”

  I yawned and looked up. “Hey, Starbreeze. You stuck around too?”

  Starbreeze was floating a little way off, her face anxious. Luna looked back at her happily, then froze. She looked back at me, suddenly watchful. “Wait. How do we know it’s you?�
�

  I smiled. “Good girl.”

  Luna let out a breath and slumped back against the corridor wall. “It’s him.”

  I looked to my right. The fateweaver was lying on the floor, an inert wand of ivory. Experimentally I tried to manipulate the futures ahead of me, and found I couldn’t. The power had gone with Abithriax. “By the way, what happened?”

  “What happened?” Luna demanded. “I couldn’t move you, and Starbreeze couldn’t either, and she kept saying that it wasn’t you, and I didn’t know what was going to happen, and— You tell us what happened!”

  I closed my eyes and couldn’t help but smile. “Let’s just say it’s good to have friends.”

  We rested a little longer before I pulled myself to my feet. I reached down and picked up the fateweaver between thumb and forefinger. “Wait!” Luna said in alarm.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. The fateweaver was a wand of ivory again…for now. “I just think we should put things back where we found them.”

  Starbreeze looked at me closely, then nodded in satisfaction. “Sleeping.” She looked through the portal at the piece of night sky, hopefully. “Go?”

  “Soon,” I said. I took a look up at the stars, then turned back. “Well, then.” I gave Luna a grin. “I think we’ve got someone we need to go back for.”

  Luna scrambled to her feet. It must have hurt her, but she was smiling. “You wait here,” I said.

  Luna shook her head, still smiling. “I think I’ll go back with you.”

  “Find someone?” Starbreeze asked in interest.

  I looked between the two of them, then laughed. I turned and started walking back down the corridor, and both Luna and Starbreeze followed. The power from the fateweaver had gone, but my magic hadn’t, and I could still tell where to find Sonder. I didn’t think it would take long.