“Dhuul is emerging faster than the pit is failing,” she said.
I stopped to listen. I could hear him, the ancient being’s whispers climbing like an ungodly force of nature, growing louder, more terrible. We had no choice now but to speak the Word, to repel Dhuul and collapse the hole to his realm. My father, the rest of the magic-users, me…
We would all perish.
But the world will be spared, I reminded myself. That’s what matters.
I thought about Vega and her son and all of the good and decent people I had known. Then I thought about my mother, who had died in service to them. I thought about my grandfather, who had sacrificed himself so Lich wouldn’t find the Banebrand. I watched my father, the vast pit rumbling and fuming before him, and the love I felt for him became enormous.
At last Marlow stood and walked over to us. “The Word is ready.” His eyes glowed with magic. When our gazes met, he smiled and nodded. Well done, he was saying. I’m proud of you.
I nodded back, fighting to contain my emotions.
“You’ll only have a moment,” he said to us. “When you feel the membrane failing, Arianna will pull from the other side, but you must push. With everything you have. Do you understand?”
I looked around as the others voiced their understanding.
“Are you saying we can destroy the pit and return?” I asked.
“You will return,” my father answered.
“You’re not coming?”
His sober look told me everything. As the most powerful magic-user, he alone would speak the Word. He would unleash the impossible force that would repel Dhuul. The hope that had been swelling inside me ruptured and deflated. He held up a hand before I could say anything.
“It’s the only way, Everson.”
“Let me help,” I said. “Maybe together we can channel the force, contain it…”
But he was already shaking his head. The hand he had raised came to a rest behind my neck. He pulled me against him. “I feel your willingness, Everson,” he whispered, “but you wouldn’t survive, and the sacrifice would be pointless. Arianna and the new Order will need you.”
I squeezed him back, a huge knot of grief closing my throat.
After another moment he stood back, held me by the shoulders, and looked intently into my eyes. “I have to go. But I go with the joy that I finally got to see you, to know you.”
His imaged blurred as I blinked back tears.
He smiled, then peered past me. “Be ready, everyone.” Then to me, “Be ready.”
“I … I love you,” I said.
“I love you too, Everson.”
With a final squeeze, he turned and strode toward the pit. It was spouting up giant gouts of green bile now. The horrible whisper continued to climb as Dhuul stormed toward the surface to claim our world. My father stopped at the pit’s edge and peered down. He looked back at us, nodded once, and before I could raise a hand in farewell, dropped from sight.
I stood stunned, then ran toward the pit. I couldn’t bear the thought of him descending alone, no one to watch him. The magic-users shouted behind me. I arrived at the edge of the pit in time to see my father’s flapping robes consumed by the vast darkness. The horrid whispers continued to swell, but now something was meeting it: a Word, more potent and resonant than anything I had ever heard.
Far below, a light flashed like an exploding star and Dhuul’s whisper became a scream.
A blinding force rushed up and threw me back. In the next moment, the scream was buried by a roar. The pit was imploding. A new force pulled me from the pit’s edge. I was back among the magic-users. They were leaning toward me, trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t hear them. As the roaring grew, they began to disappear, popping from existence. I looked around. The entire realm was sliding toward the pit. Even the nightmare sky stretched and tore.
When you feel the membrane failing, Arianna will pull from the other side, my father had said, but you must push. With everything you have.
I glanced back at the pit where the Word continued to echo in my father’s voice.
And I pushed.
29
Two weeks later
“Your grandfather hid the blade’s power well,” Arianna said, looking up and down the length of my sword. “But it’s just as you say. He removed the blade from the Banebrand, smelted it, and from the metal fashioned this.”
“And set up his own double bluff,” I said.
“I’m sorry, a double what?”
I had spent two days in the Refuge before returning home to grieve my father’s death. I lived and relived our scant time together: his revelation about Lich, our walk together across the plain, our final embrace beside the pit. I was fortunate to have had those fleeting moments, I decided. But the fact was hard to reconcile with the pain of only having had those moments. Of never really having gotten to know the man behind the figurative mask. I spent the two weeks in a tearful fugue of thankfulness and regret until, at last, I woke up one morning—this morning, in fact—and decided to recommit myself to magic-using.
Naturally, Arianna knocked on my door shortly after.
Now sunlight streamed through her white hair as she turned from a bay window in my apartment. Though she’d adapted her attire to blend in with the modern world—a long skirt and peasant blouse with a plum-colored shawl—she still looked strange to me outside the Refuge. A place the Front no longer had to hide inside. The Front was no longer a resistance group, after all. They were no longer even “the Front.” They were the Order.
“A double bluff,” I repeated. “It’s a concept I learned from James. My grandfather hid an enchantment inside the blade, one that cleaves magic, but beneath that enchantment he’d hidden the true design of the blade.”
“Which could only be released by the story he’d bound it to,” Arianna said.
I nodded, thinking about my staff and sword in pieces across the table at the safe house. I suspected now that Lich had disassembled it to make extra certain there was nothing inside that could harm him. All he’d found was the magic-cleaving enchantment—one he tried to warp to his own purposes, using me as his unwitting agent.
“I didn’t know my grandfather was a mythologist until Marlow told me,” I said. “Grandpa passed the sword on to me after I’d begun my own studies in mythology. Bound it to me.” I remembered how, during our final conversation, he’d asked me to unsheathe the sword. I hadn’t been watching his face, but he’d no doubt been incanting to ensure that, if lost, the blade would find me again. It had already tasted my blood. “I must have been his fail-safe.”
“Your grandfather bound the blade to you, yes,” Arianna said. “But through you, it was also bound to Marlow. That was how you were able to reunite and end Lich’s reign.”
I nodded in growing understanding: my father and I had shared the same blood. And then something even more startling occurred to me. “So … Lich was the unwitting agent?”
Arianna smiled. “Even though he believed he had all the contingencies covered, Lich took a great risk in sending you to the Refuge alone. He should never have done so. But the bond between you, the Banebrand, and your father was too strong. It compelled him. And in the end, it improved the likelihood of his demise. Just as the weapon was designed to do.”
I marveled at the power of the blade, but something continued to bother me. “I hate to second-guess my grandfather, but it seems like he took a huge risk, too. I mean, counting on me to find the symbols he’d left?”
“You have to remember, he was dealing with incomplete information. He assumed we were receiving his messages through his familiar, such as the location of the vault in which he’d stored the artifacts. Once he had determined which artifact was the Banebrand and made the switch, he wouldn’t have told anyone, the information being far too sensitive. His focus turned to finding the glass pendant. Clearly, he never did or he would have destroyed it himself. When he felt Lich was too close, your grandfather left the clue i
n the vault, passed the blade to you, and ended his life. He trusted that, with the power of the blade, and enough time, you would connect with the Front and correctly interpret his message.”
“Still,” I said, “there were no guarantees.”
“There were never any guarantees,” she agreed. “Just better chances.”
“I mean, I barely made the connection between the words and the myth before it was too late,” I went on, remembering the pain of Lich’s crushing tentacles, his eyes burning inches from mine.
“Your grandfather saw something else in you besides your schooling.”
I pushed away the memory. “What was that?”
“Your luck quotient.”
“Luck quotient?” I repeated. “I thought there was no such thing. I thought all those last-second solutions were the result of Whisperer magic.”
“We told you that because a luck quotient is not a thing you want to count on. Experience is more important. However, in this situation, it was something Marlow and I and the rest of the Front were very much counting on. With time running out, it was all we had.”
That explained why they had sent me into the keep alone despite my relative inexperience.
“So … it’s rare?” I asked.
“To the extent it exists in you, it is. But like I said, it can’t be counted on. I’d prefer you—and us, for that matter—never to have to resort to it again. We’ll start you on a new course of training once we’re able to locate the remaining magic-users. That may take some time, however. Lich’s segregation of the community was thorough, and he covered his tracks. Not everyone has a demonic companion.” She cut her eyes to where Tabitha was snoring on her favorite divan.
That reminded me of a question I’d been pondering. “The night I faced Lich, I was blood-drained, low on power, nearly passed out from pain and exhaustion. But Thelonious never came. Is he still … with me?”
“He remains bound to you, yes,” she said, “but he shrinks from the power of the collective. With enough exposure he may decide to terminate the contract on his end and leave you for good.”
“That would be nice,” I said. “So I can call on the collective when I feel him near?”
“Always. But it’s something else you shouldn’t count on, at least not in the near term. The portal to Dhuul’s realm was so deep that when it collapsed, it sent shockwaves through many realms, including this one. Small tears formed in the fabric that separates them. The more experienced of the Order have already begun repairing them, but it will take time.”
“Are you saying our world is more porous now?”
I thought about my father’s sacrifice, worried now that it had been for nothing.
“None of the tears extend to Dhuul’s realm, or even close,” she reassured me. “The portal is sealed. But yes, our world will be more porous for a time. Creatures who yearn to enter our world will do so more easily, and sorcerers who command such creatures will become more powerful, especially where there are potent currents of ley energy. We’ve restored the wards in the city for you to monitor. Your work here will become more important than ever.”
Her words felt daunting. “I’ll have help from others in the Order, though … right?”
“When it can be spared, yes. Like I said, the most experienced will be addressing the problem at the source while others will be tracking down the Diaspora of magic-users. That’s what is most urgent right now. In the meantime, you’re to form a team.”
“A team? Of magic-users?”
“Of anyone committed to protecting our world from the darkness and the creatures that darkness spawns. That was the original mandate of the Order. Our numbers are down, however. Lich murdered many, including our most powerful. We must solicit help where we can.”
“I suppose I can start with James,” I said, not entirely enthused at the prospect. Though he’d been a big help against Lich, our styles weren’t exactly complementary.
“We’re sending James out west,” she said.
“What’s out west?” I asked, feeling disappointment now.
“An area better suited to his particular energies. And it’s what he wanted.”
I thought of his cowboy hat and battered leather boots. Made sense, I guessed.
“We’ll introduce you to his replacement when we have one. You’ll be able to collaborate as needed.”
“No more compartmentalization then, huh?” I said with a smile. “So, where do I find this team?”
Arianna looked at me as though reading an invisible cast of bones. “They will find you, Everson. One at a time.”
I was preparing to ask what she meant, but she held up the sword. “We’ll have to keep this, of course.”
“Of course,” I agreed.
“But know that for twelve years you wielded the mightiest weapon the Order had ever forged. Not many can say that.” She smiled and disappeared the sword into a fold in her skirt and then produced a new sword. “Your father made this for you. It will fit inside your staff.”
My heart cramped as I accepted the sword from her and looked up and down its length. The handsome steel blade was beveled, its edge lined with silver. Runes ran down one side. Something about the grip reminded me of our final embrace, which made sense. My father would have willed the blade into being, then imbued it with his own magic. I was, in essence, carrying a part of him.
“He designed it to better channel your specific energies. As your power grows, it will unlock certain enchantments.”
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“I have something else for you,” she said, reaching a strong, vein-lined hand into a skirt pocket. I imagined that same hand helping deliver me from my mother’s womb more than thirty years before—much as she’d helped deliver me from Lich’s imploding realm, her powers pulling me back into the Refuge. I was the last to arrive, and though Arianna hadn’t said so, I sensed it had been close. When her hand emerged now, it was holding a misty orb the size of a tennis ball.
“Your mother wanted you to have this,” she said, handing it to me.
The mist stirred as the orb settled inside my cupped palm. A feeling of profound warmth and what I could only describe as love overcame me. I hadn’t felt anything quite like it since Nana’s death.
“What is it?”
“It’s an emo ball,” Arianna explained. “After you were born, your mother invested it with her feelings for you. She knew well the danger of her work, and if something were to happen, she didn’t want you to grow up without knowing the love of a mother for her child, for you. After Lich sealed us in the Refuge, we had no way to get it to you. But the feelings of an emo ball do not fade. They are as authentic as the day your mother put them inside.”
I caressed the orb. As the mist stirred again, I felt another rush of warmth and love.
“This is incredible,” I said, my voice beginning to tremble. The feeling of my mother’s presence was a lot how I’d imagined it would be, but also wonderfully different. Deeper. “Thanks for safeguarding it all these years.” I looked from the orb to the sword and back.
“I’ll leave you now,” Arianna said, “but we’ll be in contact.”
“And if I need to reach you…?” I asked. My mind was already going to cups and flames and special parchment paper and strange formalities, wondering how that was going to work now.
“Give us a call,” she said.
“A call? You mean, like, on a phone?”
“I’ve left a number on your counter.”
I turned to where she nodded. A rectangular business card sat on the kitchen counter beside the telephone. “Oh,” I said. “Okay.”
“And remember,” she said as she strode toward the door, “until we repair the fissures, the world will be a little stranger.”
At that moment, my fog-horn alarm sounded and the hologram upstairs began to flash red.
“Good luck,” she said.
30
“What in the hell happened to you?” Vega asked.<
br />
“Oh.” I touched the bandages on my forehead. “A group of teens thought it would be cute to call up their recently-deceased friend. An acid-flinging bug showed up instead. I … was flung at.”
She smirked. “In that case, you’re forgiven for being late.”
I started to tell her that the encounter had happened before I’d called to invite her and Tony to dinner, then decided against it. I’d take the mulligan. I slid onto the bench beside her. The venue was a popular restaurant in Brooklyn, its interior set up to look like a Latin American plaza: picnic tables arranged around a stone fountain, trikes and Big Wheels strewn about for kids to ride and fight over. “Mr. Croft!” Tony shouted as he flashed past, pumping one of the trikes like it was a scooter. He was gone by the time I waved back.
I smiled. I figured he’d enjoy it here.
“I went ahead and ordered,” Vega said. “Hope you like street tacos.”
“Delicioso,” I said.
“In the meantime…” She lifted a sweating margarita pitcher and poured me and her a salt-rimmed glass apiece. “I think we’ve earned it.”
The collapse of the portal had pulled with it the Whisperer magic that had begun flowing into the world. Those who had lost their minds regained their baseline sanity—or baseline insanity, in some cases. In the hours prior, the NYPD had followed through and fumigated the city with cannabis smoke. The smoke stopped the rioting in its tracks and spared large swaths of the city. The cleanup and rebuilding were another story, but it could have been a lot worse.
“No kidding,” I said wearily as we clinked glasses.
I took a large swallow, glad to be out in the world again, glad to be drinking margaritas with a … friend? Remembering my conversation with James, I snuck a sidelong look at Vega. Her midnight hair was down, spilling over the shoulders of a simple V-neck shirt that she managed to make look amazing.
Yeah, I liked her.
“Hey, slow it down,” she called to her son as he zoomed past on another circuit. But Tony was too absorbed in his laughing, hair-whipping fun to hear. She frowned and shook her head.
Death Mage (Prof Croft Book 4) Page 22
