The Flaw in All Magic (Magebreakers Book 1)

by Ben S. Dobson

  “You came here for the magic? Well, let me tell you the most important thing about magic, Kadka. There’s a flaw in all of it, the same flaw in every spell: the mage. When they make a mistake, who’s going to challenge them on it? That’s why I’m standing here. That’s why my friend is dead. Because there’s always—”

  A distant howl cut off the end of Tane’s diatribe, something like an animal’s call with the low crack and groan of sudden frost behind it. It had to have come from deeper in the workshop, but it sounded somehow further away than the size of the room would allow. His heart thumped against his chest, and he half-turned toward the sound, then back toward Kadka.

  She was staring past him, a focused glint in her eye. Drawing her shortsword with one hand, she beckoned to Tane with the other. “My badge,” she said in a low voice. “Something is in there with you.”

  Chapter Four

  _____

  TANE TOSSED KADKA her badge. She caught it in her outstretched hand and stepped freely through the wards.

  “Stay,” she whispered, and started down an aisle between shelves, toward the source of the sound. She moved with the easy, silent grace of a predator—a wolf stalking prey.

  Tane hesitated a moment, and then followed. Kadka just shrugged, and held a finger to her lips.

  The noise had come from the back end of the shop, past the shelves, where the artificers’ worktables stood cluttered with parts and spell diagrams. At the last row of shelves, Kadka halted Tane with a raised hand and peeked around the corner, then beckoned him closer. Tane crept toward her and stole a look.

  Between the worktables, a shimmering silver-edged hole in reality split the air. Through it, Tane could see another room, but it was hard to discern any details—the image rippled and distorted, like he was seeing it through a translucent silver-blue curtain shifting in the wind. It could have been anywhere.

  “What is this?” Kadka asked, barely loud enough to hear.

  “A portal,” Tane breathed. “That’s not supposed to be possible.” He’d never even seen an open portal before—he’d been taught the theory, but opening tears in the world through the Astra was the most dangerous kind of magic, and his teachers hadn’t dared demonstrate. The strict portal wards on campus shouldn’t have allowed anyone but the heads of the University to open one here. Tane had only ever heard of it being done once in recent memory, when an ancient sub-basement of the invocation hall had collapsed over a decade ago, and even then only after every other way of freeing the trapped students had been tried.

  The sound came again, a distant, icy howl. Is that the portal? Are they supposed to make that noise? He’d read of portals making strange sounds, but he didn’t have the experience to be certain.

  And a tear in the Astra doing anything unexpected was a very bad sign.

  He was still watching the portal when Kadka tapped him on the shoulder. She gestured past the silver-blue rift, toward the back of the workshop where a bank of drawers ran along the wall—storage for spell diagrams. A figure in black was bent over one of the drawers. By size and build, he was probably a human or half-elf. From behind, Tane couldn’t tell what he was doing, and a dark cowl hid his face.

  Exactly like the cowl Allaea had seen in her last moments.

  “Have to stop him,” Kadka whispered. “This time, you stay.” With a slight grin, she stepped around the corner.

  She made no sound as she stalked across the floor toward the intruder. Tane watched, holding his breath, expecting the man to turn around with each step she took. But he didn’t, and she was closing the distance rapidly.

  This has to be the man who killed Allaea. The portal explains how he got by the guards, but why come back? Tane inched around the corner, straining for a better look. He had no intention of following Kadka—he couldn’t move anywhere near as quietly—but if he could just get a glimpse of the drawer the man was looking at…

  The tip of Tane’s foot slid beyond the front edge of the shelf.

  Instantly, the intruder spun on his heel. His cowl covered his face, but his head swiveled toward Tane’s position among the shelves as if guided there by magic.

  He must have had a detection spell up! But Kadka… And then Tane remembered: orcs were said to have a very weak Astral presence. He’d read of divinations struggling to detect them at all. Damn it! She would have had him if I’d just stayed still!

  It was only then that the intruder noticed Kadka, not twenty feet away from him. He uttered a muffled curse under his mask. There was something in his hand, but Tane couldn’t tell what it was before the man tucked it away behind his back.

  For a moment, neither Kadka nor the intruder moved. Both glanced toward the open portal—about halfway between them and several yards to the left, from Tane’s vantage point.

  And then the man lunged into motion, sprinting for the rift at desperate speed.

  Kadka was faster by far. She vaulted onto a nearby table, leapt across the next, and landed on her feet between the portal and the man in black. He skidded to a stop, spun, and ran for the shelves.

  He can’t get away. That was the only thought going through Tane’s head as his feet carried him into the open. He leapt in front of the intruder, and they collided with jarring force. Tane fell back, and the other man landed hard on top of him, knocking the air from his lungs.

  The man in black was on his feet in an instant. Kadka was already coming for him, her sword drawn. Tane heard the man utter a short spell in the lingua magica, and tried to warn her, but he couldn’t get his breath.

  Silver-blue force rippled from the black-clad mage in all directions—a precisely targeted spell would have taken too long to recite, with Kadka closing fast. A crushing pressure shoved Tane along the floor into a nearby shelf, and hurled Kadka against the worktable behind her. She grunted in pain as the edge of the table hit the small of her back.

  The man bolted for the portal, half turned, and sent another wave of force crashing over them. Kadka ducked beneath one of the tables, gripping the anchored leg to weather the spell; Tane couldn’t get on his feet in time to take cover. Silver magic pressed him hard against the shelf behind him.

  Unmoored by the spell, the shelf swayed dangerously, and started to topple.

  Tane tried to scramble out of the way on his hands and knees. Heavy metal and gemstones clattered to the floor on all sides. The shadow of the falling shelf stretched across the floor in front of him.

  He wasn’t going to make it.

  A grey hand tufted with white fur gripped him by the wrist, and yanked him forward. The shelf struck the ground just behind him with a thunderous crash; on either side, several others swayed and fell just as loudly.

  Kadka pulled him to his feet.

  “Thank you,” Tane gasped, but she was already whirling to chase the intruder.

  The mage was nearly at the portal now. Kadka drew the brass-barrelled ancryst pistol from her belt and took aim. Spellfire, no. All ancryst machinery was based on one property—that the translucent green stone reacted to the presence of magic by moving in the opposite direction, the way lodestones repelled one another from the wrong ends. When she pulled the trigger, the firing charm would be consumed in a burst of magical energy, propelling a lead ball with an ancryst core from the barrel of the weapon.

  Toward a portal into the Astra—the very essence of all magic.

  “Kadka, wait!” Tane shouted, already running toward her.

  He was too late. She pulled the trigger, and the pistol discharged with a silver-blue flash.

  Tane tackled Kadka to the ground as the ball ricocheted directly back from the portal. Splinters flew as it struck the table behind them, digging a long groove through the wood.

  When Tane looked up, the intruder was already through the portal. On the far side of that silvery curtain, the man extended his hand to touch something Tane couldn’t make out. The portal bulged at the edges, twisting and writhing.

  Kadka leapt to her feet and hurled herself forward
.

  The portal snapped closed in a blinding burst of silver.

  The man was gone.

  “Deshka!” Kadka cursed at empty space, and then turned to Tane. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’ve been better, but no permanent damage,” said Tane.

  “Captain will not like this. Let you steal badge, let this poska go.” She gestured vaguely at where the portal had been.

  “He didn’t get away entirely clean,” said Tane. “I took this when he ran into me. He tried to hide it when he saw us.” He reached behind his back and pulled a brass cylinder from his belt. It looked like a scroll case, capped at one end.

  Kadka laughed. “Clever man with clever hands. This is important?” She peered at the tube as she stowed her sword and pistol.

  Tane was about to answer when the lights began to flicker. Directly above, one of the magelight fixtures in the ceiling blinked out. Suddenly, the already dim workshop was a great deal dimmer.

  “Oh no. No no no.” Tane looked over Kadka’s shoulder.

  There, in the exact place the portal had been, a hazy figure drifted a foot above the floor, glowing a faint silver-blue. Another light flickered out overhead, and the shape became more defined, easier to see. It was humanoid but lacked any sort of detail, just an outline of Astral energy with two points of intense lightning-blue for eyes.

  A wraith.

  Kadka turned to see what he was looking at, and her hand went back to her sword.

  “Don’t,” said Tane, tucking the scroll case back into his belt and backing away from the hazy figure. “You can’t hurt it that way.” It was beginning to move towards them now, drifting slowly, still gaining its bearings in the physical world.

  “What is it?” She copied his movement, backing away a step as the wraith drifted closer.

  “A wraith. An Astral spirit.” Some said wraiths were what remained of those lost in unstable portals, forced to wander the Astra until they found a way out. Others claimed that they were spirits of corrupted Astral energy, created by grievous abuses of magic. Tane didn’t know what they were, just that they were extremely dangerous. “Whoever that man was, he had to close his portal without proper precautions to keep us from following him. He must have destabilized it. That’s why portal spells are so restricted—make any mistakes, and these things get out.”

  “Dangerous?”

  “Very. They feast on Astral energy, and the link to the Astra is everything that makes us who we are, mage or no. What people called the soul, before they knew what it was. You won’t die without it, but… The Astra-riven aren’t themselves anymore. Just shells.”

  Abruptly, the wraith blurred forward, moving toward Kadka with unsettling speed. The worktables did nothing to slow it—its silvery form passed through them as if they weren’t there. It made no sound as it moved.

  “Watch out!” Tane shouted.

  Kadka leapt aside; the wraith passed silently by.

  And kept moving toward Tane.

  That wasn’t right. Wraiths were drawn to Astral energy, and she should have been the nearest source. Spellfire, her Astral signature is too weak! Just like with the detection spell!

  It had never been moving toward her—she’d just been standing between it and a much tastier meal.

  Tane turned on his heel and ran.

  Artifice debris was scattered all across the floor from fallen shelves—maybe some with enough magical charge to distract the wraith a moment, if he was lucky. As he moved he searched frantically through the mess for what he needed. I know I saw… there! Sticking up from between the slats of a fallen shelf was the brass casing of an ancryst engine, large enough that Tane could almost have fit inside if he curled into a ball. Brass was always used for an engine’s outer shell, as an insulator—it stopped Astral energy from passing through, so no external magical force could disrupt the movement of the ancryst pistons.

  Tane hopped over the broken shelves that stood in his way and knelt beside the engine, then risked a look behind him. The wraith approached erratically, drifting for short stretches to drain this small artifact or that, and then advancing in blurs of sudden speed. As it moved, the magelights overhead flickered and failed.

  Just behind him, Kadka vaulted through the remains of the shelf to grab his shoulder. “This is not time for playing with machine! Run!”

  Tane tugged at the engine casing’s hatch, a twelve-inch square plate that provided access to the internal workings. It wouldn’t open—it must have been bent in the fall. “We can’t leave that thing free. They’re only visible in the dark. If it gets out onto campus in the daylight…”

  Kadka didn’t hesitate, just gave a firm nod. “What, then?”

  The wraith surged forward, and Tane threw himself out of the way just in time to avoid its touch. “It doesn’t seem to want you! I’ll keep its attention, just get that hatch open!”

  She yanked it open in a single pull. “What now?”

  “Give me a minute!” Tane scrambled back as the wraith moved implacably toward him. Something rolled under his foot. He stumbled, and barely caught himself on the edge of a fallen shelf.

  The wraith loomed over him. Hazy fingers reached out, grazed his chest. A terrible cold radiated through his body. He sagged back against the ground, felt his awareness fading…

  “Carver!”

  Kadka’s voice pierced the fog, and Tane rolled desperately to the side, gasping. If it touches me again, I’m done. And it was still there above him, a ghost made of silver-blue light. An indistinct hand grasped for his heart.

  Beneath his foot, Tane saw what it was he’d tripped on: a copper rod some four feet long. Just what I was looking for.

  He snatched the rod up, ducked beneath the wraith’s reaching hand, and made for Kadka and the engine. “Get ready to close the hatch, when I say!” Rod in hand, he turned to face the wraith.

  It was just behind him, moving fast.

  Tane jammed one end of the rod into the hatch, braced it so that it pointed at the wraith, and let go. The wraith surged forward, crossing the last few feet almost faster than he could see.

  And impaled a body made of magic on a rod of magically conductive copper.

  The wraith dissolved into silver-blue mist, drawn along the length of the rod, and pooled inside the brass engine casing. It only took an instant. With his sleeve over his hand, Tane grabbed the rod and pulled it free. Even that short moment of contact through the cloth of his shirt was enough to send cold racing up his arm to the elbow.

  “Now!”

  Kadka slammed the hatch closed.

  For a moment, they were both silent, watching the engine hatch. Nothing. No sign of movement. The seal was good, and the wraith was a creature of magic—it couldn’t pass through brass.

  Finally, Kadka looked up at him, grinning her sharp-toothed grin. “Is like this every day for you, or just lucky today?”

  “Oh, it’s all the time.” Tane couldn’t help but grin back. “That’s the third one I’ve trapped since breakfast.”

  Kadka cackled and clapped him on the shoulder, and then they were both laughing, out of giddy relief as much as anything.

  “You two seem to be having fun. I hope we aren’t interrupting.” A woman’s voice, from somewhere amid the shelves nearer the door. Tane instinctively slipped the brass scroll case from his belt and let it fall in with the scattered artifice parts littering the floor—just another piece of debris.

  In the space of a moment, a half-dozen constables of various races surrounded Tane and Kadka. All of them wore blue uniforms and distinctive brimmed caps, batons on one hip and ancryst pistols on the other. Constable’s badges glinted at their breasts—gold shields with the Protectorate’s gryphon at the center. Most were men—three humans, an elf, a kobold—but standing head and shoulders above the others was a nine-foot tall ogren woman, striking and statuesque, as her people always were. Even if Tane had been so inclined, trying to flee would be pointless. No one joined the constabulary without some skill a
t magecraft, particularly spells to locate and subdue suspects quickly and efficiently.

  Behind them came another woman in the same uniform, but with the gold cord of a constable inspector at her shoulder. She held her cap clasped under one arm. It was too dim to see her face very well, but she was half-elven, with slightly pointed ears and a build somewhere between human and elf, solid but lean. “Search them,” she said.

  The ogren bluecap grabbed Tane and Kadka and lifted them to their feet. The constables patted both of them down, taking Kadka’s sword and pistol—and several knives she’d apparently had hidden on her. Tane raised an eyebrow after the third; she just grinned back at him.

  “Nothing stolen, Inspector,” the elven bluecap said when he’d finally confiscated all of Kadka’s blades.

  When the ogren woman released his arm, Tane let himself fall, feigning a loss of balance. He landed hard on his ass, and winced. “Ouch.” A quick grab behind his back and he had the scroll case again. He tucked it surreptitiously into his belt and pulled his waistcoat down to hide it.

  “Get him up,” said the half-elf, and the ogren did just that, hauling Tane roughly to his feet.

  The half-elf approached, near enough that Tane could see her clearly even in the weak light. Her skin was a tawny brown, and her black hair was pinned up so that it would fit under her constable’s cap. Her face was more elven than human, long and delicately featured with high cheekbones. When she reached Tane, amber eyes that he would have known anywhere widened in sudden recognition. “Tane?”

  “Indree?”

  Chapter Five

  _____

  THE OGREN BLUECAP had to duck her head to enter the waiting room outside the chancellor’s office, escorting Tane and Kadka in behind Indree.

  “You can go, Laertha,” said Indree. “See that no one else enters the workshops without permission. I don’t want the scene contaminated any more than it already is.” She threw Tane an annoyed glance, there.