A Mage Of None Magic (Book 1)

by A. Christopher Drown

  45

  That the condemned are capable of saying anything to escape punishment is a fundamental investigational truth. The more severe the punishment, the more desperate and outrageous those statements will become. The boy feared for his life and was no doubt trying to save it. However, within his appeal rang a candor that stirred a moment of uncertainty.

  Not a single day of your existence has gone unbent in some way to suit his interests.

  “I am no one’s puppet,” she growled, as much at herself as at the boy.

  Yes, Thaucian had deceived her, but she discovered his lies and he would suffer for it. She had found the remainder of the Heart on her own, and deduced the possibility of Uhniethi still being alive—on her own?

  The light that enveloped her drew tight. Its warmth offered reassurance.

  “I would have said the same thing not too long ago, Magistrate,” the boy replied. “But I think we both might be surprised how many have had a turn at our strings.”

  The light trembled around her.

  Will you permit him to take me?

  “I don’t claim to know the particulars of all that’s been happening,” he continued, “but I believe neither of us need go along with it if we so choose. We can stop things now, here, before it’s too late. You said you knew why I was here, and likewise I think I know why you’re here. If there’s even the slightest bit of truth to the fables, then the Heart must not be healed. I ask you to abandon this. Otherwise, it could mean the destruction of so many—including you.”

  Abandon this course, Denuis pleaded. It will mean your destruction.

  Denuis. Thaucian. Uhniethi. And now this Niel.

  Lies.

  The world finally crumbled away from beneath Ennalen, once and for all.

  “No,” she hissed, taking hellish glee in the wide-eyed fear she felt grip the boy. “Indeed you are not the Apostate.” She reached to her depths, gathered the full measure of her fury, and directed it at the boy.

  “Indeed, you are nothing…”

  46

  Mindless terror seized Niel as Ennalen’s face changed from human to something utterly not. Out of blind reflex, he drew the dagger he took from Arwin’s belt. Backing away, he held it at arm’s length, the nervous wavering of his hand making the blade flash in the white light.

  Ennalen stopped with a curious, expectant look—then threw her head back and screamed with laughter. “It seems I’ve found a mage of even less than none magic!”

  She resumed her approach, shoulders hunched and teeth bared like a wolf stalking cornered prey. “What’s the matter, my dear fellow Apostate? Surely you’re not afraid, not with your cantle and that great big knife to protect you.”

  With a sweep of her arm, the dagger tore from his grip and hovered, spinning furiously in all directions just a hand-breadth from his face.

  Not even in his nightmares had Niel ever been so afraid.

  His mind whirled in desperation to recall any bit of magic he might use to defend himself, but murder and insanity poured from Ennalen as she continued moving toward him—a current of baneful power so strong it threatened to wash him away in a river of desolation.

  He felt as though he would drown.

  Shadows closed in around the edges…

  “Oh no, my friend,” Ennalen scolded. “It’s much too soon for that. Here, let me wake you.”

  A whip of air accompanied another flash, and in that same instant a stunning impact to the side of his face rocked Niel’s head backward.

  He instinctively cupped his hand over his right eye, where the blow had landed.

  A strange wetness filled his fingers. He pulled his hand away, but to see his fingers he had to tilt his head. Down into his palm slid what could only be the remnants of his ruptured eye. In the disjointed calm of shock, he couldn’t help noting how much it resembled a raw, bloody egg.

  He looked up at Ennalen’s grinning face, blurred by the still-spinning and noticeably reddened dagger between them.

  At first he felt more panic than pain, but it only took another beat of his heart for that pain to burst forth with luxuriant richness. It staggered him to his knees. His pulse pounded inside his skull; warm blood flowed through his fingers, down his face and neck.

  Suddenly nothing mattered but escape. He struggled to his feet.

  “Surely you’re not leaving?” Ennalen called in a mockery of concern.

  He wanted to scream at her to get away from him, to leave him alone, but he could barely stay upright and moving, let alone speak. The enormity of the cavern stretched out in front of him, and with each step bringing new agony, he knew he would never make it across.

  Ennalen’s shine penetrated Niel like a deep, icy shadow falling across his being. First, she would kill him. Then she would kill Arwin. After that, when she had healed the Heart, she would set herself upon the world. There would be no heroes to sound their horns and come riding, and there would be no gods to descend and offer salvation. Everyone and everything he had ever held dear would suffer, as he suffered.

  Strength left Niel as quickly as the blood pouring from his ravaged face. The hand covering his wound grew colder; his labored trot slowed to a hobble, then a defeated limp.

  He began to cry.

  “Yes!” Ennalen jeered. “Weep! Weep for the loss of all you know!”

  He turned in time to see Ennalen sweep her arm once more before he was hurled across the immense room and into the wall. The still-writhing mural clutched and clawed at his clothes as he tumbled to the floor. He struggled to his hands and knees, fighting for breath, and spat fresh blood onto the engraved stone.

  Ennalen stood over him.

  “Scream for mercy,” she said. “Beg me to end your pain. When there is no hope, there is no shame in submission. I’m certain your teacher would agree.”

  Niel pushed himself upright as best he could, squinting at her. “My teacher?”

  She smiled. “Oh yes, my dear. I knew him as well. You might say he and I were on the most intimate of terms. I killed him, you see.”

  Niel felt the truth in her words. Biddleby was dead.

  New, bloody tears streamed down his face.

  “Oh, you should have heard him, Niel,” Ennalen said with a terrible grin. “I flayed him open and showed him his insides. He screeched like an impaled rabbit and practically sang his curses for the day he paid for you…”

  She closed her fists, capturing Niel magically within, and lifted him from the floor.

  Biddleby was dead.

  Something deep inside Niel stirred, something wanting badly to be released.

  The betrayal he felt toward his teacher had long passed. Since then he had thought of countless questions for Biddleby when he saw him again.

  But Ennalen had murdered him.

  The stirring grew, its urgency less bearable with each passing moment. The pain in his body diminished as Ennalen brought him toward her. He stared down at her smile—a hunter dragging in her quarry at the end of a snare—and the fire within flared hotter still, seeking an avenue through which it might escape.

  Ennalen stopped him inches from her sneering face.

  “I like your bracelet, by the way,” she said.

  The final taunt tore from Niel a cry of anguish that shook the mountain itself. The explosion of his rage sent Ennalen sprawling as he ripped free of her magical bindings.

  She stood, bleeding from a gash over her eyebrow.

  “How marvelous,” she said, then launched herself at him.

  Spewing vile incantations, Ennalen turned loose her wrath. Niel crumpled beneath an unrelenting onslaught of flame and sheer force of might. The energies smashing into him drove him down, both mind and body. The chamber quaked from the ferocity of the attack, and blackness again clouded the periphery of his awareness.

  Then everything stopped.

  Rolling weakly onto his side, Niel again saw Ennalen standing over him.

  Odd, he mused, the details one noticed sometimes: th
e scuffed toes of her boots; the tiny, dusty pieces of ceiling that drifted down like snow; and the thin crackle of the not-so-tiny pieces striking the floor and bouncing away.

  “Enjoyable,” Ennalen sighed, “but I’ve much to do and can’t trifle with you any longer. I’m afraid this is where both the fable and you, my little storybook character, come to an end.”

  Niel shook his head, too exhausted and in too much pain to do anything but lie still and accept whatever would be. It made sense, after all: The stone around his neck had amplified his raw talent to an unimaginable extreme, but being an apprentice, he had no experience from which to draw. Ennalen, on the other hand, a Member of the College, wielded her cantle far more effectively.

  She was a magician. He was not.

  There was nothing left but to watch Ennalen begin her final incantation.

  Nothing left…

  …but it and what has always been with you.

  Lleryth.

  A bolt of comprehension exploded through Niel. His eyes cut to Ennalen’s feet, then to the floor and the pebbles that had fallen from the ceiling.

  Fallen, and bounced.

  The air already bristled with Ennalen’s concluding syllables when, with new hope, Niel shoved himself up onto one arm and shouted his own incantation.

  First, nothing happened, but the thick silence made it clear Ennalen’s spell had been fouled. In her red, rabid eyes he saw her recognize the same, and also recognize him as the cause.

  She gathered herself and lunged at Niel—but fell well short. She landed hard on the stone floor, her face twisted with bewilderment.

  Niel shouted his spell again.

  Ennalen rose a hand-breadth from the floor, then slumped back down again with an audible groan.

  Only she didn’t stay there.

  Over and over, louder and louder, Niel repeated the cantrip he had created as a child. Each time he did, Ennalen rose higher and rushed downward with increasing force, colliding into the hard stone.

  What felt to Niel like every shred of anger, frustration, and fear he had ever experienced poured from his being, and he delighted in the magnitude and potency of its release.

  The first several bounces, Ennalen’s curses filled the great room. In short order, though, her screams muffled to sobbing moans. Soon she ceased making any sound at all other than the dull thud of her limp form striking at Niel’s feet.

  The glorious strength of his magic sang through Niel’s body, and as he bellowed his spell at Ennalen, he stood, conducting her with his hands higher and higher, then pulling her down again and again into the unforgiving cavern floor.

  Beneath her spread a dark, thickening patch of blood.

  I think that will do, my boy.

  Niel gasped, not so much from surprise as from the stunning will behind the voice; he had no choice but to comply.

  With a heavy, wet slap, Ennalen’s body fell to a rest.

  As the sustenance of magic left him, Niel also fell to the floor, utterly spent, and fading.

  Yes, child, sleep, he heard the voice chuckle as blackness overcame him.

  47

  Niel, he heard Biddleby say. Niel, it is time to awaken.

  Overslept again. Late for chores. Except, he wasn’t lying down. He was standing.

  And Biddleby was dead.

  Arwin?

  Niel, the voice said again. We have not long, and I need you to wake up.

  The whirling in his head slowed, and Niel was able to open his eyes. He tried hard to bring into focus the dark, watery form in front of him.

  There you are, my boy.

  Uhniethi.

  Niel braced himself for terror, but none arrived. Instead, as his vision cleared, he looked upon Uhniethi with an unexpectedly easy amazement. The ancient magician, clothed in creamy, embroidered ceremonial garb, stood in continual transformation, shifting back and forth in appearance from strong, young man to skeletal decay, and every stage in—

  —as his vision cleared?

  Niel’s hand shot to his ravaged eye. He could see through it, and he felt no pain. However, his fingers found hard smoothness instead of soft, warm flesh.

  He grasped at his chest. The stone was gone.

  Dizzying ripples of nausea pulled Niel to the floor.

  “What have you done to me!” he shouted.

  “More than you would have liked, I grant you,” wheezed a withered, long-bearded Uhniethi, “but far less than I might have.”

  Niel forced himself to sit up. He searched his surroundings, listening hard to the instinct to flee, though at the same time knowing full well he could not. They were still inside the great hollow chamber of the mountain, but instead of at its center, they had moved to the foot of the sprawling throne carved into the cavern’s far side.

  The pervading violet cast that once filled the chamber had dissipated, and everything around looked strangely more defined than before—as if peering through a magnifying glass.

  Niel glanced about the rest of the chamber. Outside the dazzling white beam of light lay Ennalen’s broken body.

  “I did that,” he said quietly. “I killed her.”

  “You did indeed,” replied the handsome young man beside him.

  Niel knew once in a great while it became necessary for a magician to defend himself. He had always hoped to avoid using his magic to that end.

  If what he used could be considered his magic.

  “Don’t be so cross with yourself, my boy,” Uhniethi said. “After all, she was going to kill you. And I’m more than happy to share the blame.”

  “For bringing us here in the first place?”

  “Quite.”

  “Why am I here?”

  Uhniethi wore a satisfied grin. “For a very long time I’ve been trying to solve a great conundrum, Niel. You have helped me take a large step toward the answer.”

  “And that conundrum is?”

  “Personal,” the middle-aged wizard replied, unmistakable danger in his tone. “I will, however, confide that my years of preparation had reached a point where it became necessary for me to decide in which of two directions I would venture—a fork in the road, you might say.”

  “Two directions…” Niel thought out loud. “Ennalen and me?”

  “You are a clever boy. But please don’t interrupt. Even as far back as when I attended the College, there existed a certain malaise amongst the Membership toward Canon and how it was taught. I and a handful of impetuous young minds took it upon ourselves to meet in secret and learn everything we could about what lies outside the strict boundaries of conventional magic. In the end all but one other student abandoned that course for fear of being discovered. He and I continued our heterodoxical indulgences right up through our confirmation, even beyond receiving our first posts.”

  A young Uhniethi raised an eyebrow. “I believe you know how that turned out.”

  “And that’s how you found the Heart?”

  “It is. The whole of it, right here in this mountain. You can’t conceive what it was like, child, the bliss of standing in the midst of such raw might—so complete that for the longest while, I thought I had died.”

  “But how—” Niel paused as the faintest whisper of that rapture wafted through him, making him shudder. “How did the College get hold of their own pieces of the Heart, if—”

  “Because, my boy,” said the elderly mage, “I had work to do. Theories to test.”

  “Work…? So you… gave them the pieces?”

  Uhniethi made a dismissive gesture. “Slivers. Distractions. Baubles in comparison to what you have, to what our late Magistrate there had. I knew it would only be a matter of time before a pair of sufficiently able and resourceful young magicians found them and brought them back. Thanks to you, I believe I know how best to proceed with the remainder of my task.”

  “A task you’ve been working at for over a thousand years?”

  “Oh yes. Ever since I had that buffoon Herahm write his little book.”

&n
bsp; Little book?

  “Not to worry,” Uhniethi said. “Your new friends back in the Forest will explain what I mean. In more depth than you’ll care to hear, no doubt.”

  “Your Luminance,” Niel said, finding it hard to catch his breath, “I don’t understand how you could have known so long ago that either Ennalen or I, let alone both of us together, would end up here when and how we did. I’ve been taught that kind of precognition is… impossible.”

  “Yes,” Uhniethi replied with disgust, “I know. But imagine tossing pebbles into a pond, handfuls at a time. Spend long enough observing the act, and it not only becomes possible to predict when and where the pebbles will fall, but also how each ripple will interact with every other.”

  The impulse to reject the notion prodded Niel. Something about the entire account simply did not sit right. But amongst the words did resonate an inherent note of truthfulness, much as it had been with Lleryth.

  Uhniethi had found the Heart a thousand years ago, broken small portions from it and planted them along with other clues throughout the Lands to lure others in hopes of finding a solution to whatever problem he had.

  What could possibly drive someone—?

  Ripples on a pond.

  No, not ripples on a pond. Petals in a storm.

  “Gods in heaven,” Niel whispered. “That’s what you wanted at Chael. That’s the secret you wanted to know then, and that’s what you’re still doing now! You’re trying to bring her back. You’re trying to bring Anese back to life!”

  Uhniethi’s young, bright eyes narrowed with menace. “Lady Anese, if you please. And if you’ll forgive the conceit, I am well beyond trying. That is why I’ve enlisted your help in clearing the way for the rest of the process.”

  “My help?”

  “Indeed,” Uhniethi replied. “You are going to do away with the College for me.”

  Niel’s stomach went cold. “So… I am the Apostate?”

  Uhniethi laughed. “Yes. And no. In as far as you being a mythical figure of prophecy—you are not. As I indicated, and as I hope you have at least surmised, there is no such person. The Apostate is a farce. A ploy.”