“Light, Dark,” said Bracchus with a swish of his hand. “These are nothing more than silly labels given to abstract concepts of morality and obligation of making one choice over another. There is only magic, Alex. If you’re willing to accept that our gift is the one thing that matters in this world, I can offer you unimaginable power.”
“I’d rather die,” I said with more bravado than I felt.
“Well, that is certainly not the only other option on the table. I’ve no doubt your knowledge of the craft can provide you with a few unpleasant alternatives?” He smiled again. “I’ll give you a while to think it over.”
Bracchus went back to the table and flipped to a new page in the grimoire. For several minutes, I sat impotently, watching him scan the ancient text. He occasionally paused to mutter some snippet of an incantation, but mostly he stood and stared.
It was all rather anticlimactic. There were a hundred ways he could use his power to keep me alive indefinitely while he tortured me, but his preoccupation with the grimoire and the amulet made his vague threat of retribution seem like something he might get around to later if he had a spare moment. That could change in an instant if he grew agitated enough to take out his frustration on me. As I watched him flip back and forth between two pages, I wondered if I couldn’t use it to my advantage.
“You can’t unlock it, can you?” I asked him.
“Carolus had a lifetime to develop the amulet and its corresponding activation spells. I’ve only had his grimoire for a day. You of all people should know these things are never easy.”
I wriggled my toes and flexed my fingers experimentally. Bracchus hadn’t bothered to restrain me in any way, probably assuming there was no attack I could launch on him that he couldn’t deflect with a thought. He didn’t seem to care what I did with myself, so I forced myself to get to my feet, limping closer to the table so I could lean on it for support.
“What do you want the amulet for anyway?” I asked. “What purpose could you possibly have for wanting to destroy the ungifted?”
Bracchus looked up from the book and stared at me with a quizzical head tilt. “That’s what you think I’m doing?”
“Isn’t that the amulet’s primary function?”
“It is a function,” he explained. “But it is merely a secondary one I have no intention of using. No, the true power of the amulet, and the reason for its creation, was that it allowed Carolus to harness the power of other mages under his command. When used properly, it gives the strength of many to a single caster, allowing a battle mage to work continuously at the center of a magical nexus while those feeding his powers rotate and recover.”
For the first time since learning what kind of deep shit I’d tumbled head over heels into, I imagined an outcome truly worse than death. I’d been operating under the assumption that Bracchus was after revenge against the ungifted for one insane reason or another, but with this new information I finally saw the truth of it. The Dark mage planned to harness the power of other magic users. If the amulet gave him the power to take even some small portion of mage’s power, it could easily be modified to allow him to drain another mage dry.
And he had a perfect test subject standing right in front of him.
“What happens to me if I join you?” I asked him in as calm and measured a voice as I could manage.
He looked up from the grimoire, eyes assessing me with cruel rationality. I’d love to be able to say there was a maniacal glint in his eye that spoke to the recklessness of insanity, but the truth was that he seemed more coherent and lucid than any other mage I’d ever met. It was nearly impossible for a human brain to work magic without being affected in some small way. This manifested in everything from subtle quirkiness to homicidal rage, yet in Bracchus’s gaze I saw nothing but focus and discipline. He was a man who’d set himself on the path of becoming the most powerful mage in existence, and I almost had to admire how single-mindedly he’d pursued that goal.
“Join me, and not only will I let you live, but after a period of faithful service I will grant you use of the amulet to enhance your own powers. Imagine it, Alex. I could teach you so much more than that fool Viktor you dote on. I’ve been searching for the amulet for more than three hundred years, and I’ve come by a lot of previously lost information in that time. As my apprentice, you’d be privy to every last bit of it.”
When he spoke, it was with such enthusiasm and conviction I almost believed him. The power of the amulet crackling throughout the room didn’t help much either. Between Bracchus’s determination and the siren song of power flowing around me, it was extremely difficult to remember what was so wrong about devouring the magic essence from people and creatures who would doubtless die during the process. I’d tasted that kind of power in the ring with Nyota, and a big part of me wanted very badly to have more.
I licked dry lips and swallowed the desperate longing welling up within me. This was a feeling more attractive than any drug I’d ever put in my body. Only the memory of how fully I would become dependent on something so dangerously addictive kept me from giving in and accepting Bracchus’s offer.
“It’s not going to happen,” I said with a shake of my head. “You’ll never figure out how to activate it in time.”
“And who’s going to stop me?” He sneered.
Bracchus reached out for my throat and physically forced me to my knees. Fingers digging into the soft flesh beneath my jaw, he tilted my head back at a painful angle. I felt blood seep through my tights from where my kneecaps had slammed down into the rough stone floor.
Bracchus’s overconfidence in his ability to wave off any spell I could fling at him had left me an opening to use magic, but I’d only be able to get a single spell off before he cut me down. Focusing all my intention on the wellspring of power deep within me, I prepared myself for what might be the last spell I ever cast. Bracchus only watched in curiosity as I lifted my hand and held it out palm up. When I was finally in position, air snorting from my nose with the effort of trying to breathe through his grasp on my throat, I cast the most basic spell in my repertoire.
The spark of light flared up in my hand, burning brighter than I’d planned as it fed on the ambient energy floating around it.
A crushing blanket of energy smothered me, extinguishing the spell and suppressing my magic so I couldn’t so much as tap my mage sight. Arms tightly bound by my side, I tried my best to relax, remembering how much worse his hold had been when he’d left me in the basement of the library.
“Cute,” he said. “You think I don’t know that your friend is carving up my wards outside or that the Conclave is tracking your use of magic? Did it never occur to you that this entire room was constructed as a magic clean room from which no energy can enter or escape?
“I’ll take this silly little trick as your official refusal of my offer, though. Once I unlock the power of the amulet, I will rip your magic from while you beg for mercy that will never come.”
My hope of beating Bracchus fizzled out as thoroughly as my now dead light spark. Summoning the Conclave had been exactly what I’d been hoping to get away with, but if Chase’s work above had only served to chip away a superficial layer of concealment, then the Conclave would still have no idea I was using magic. If they’d had any way to track me down, they’d probably have shown up already.
Bracchus threw me to the ground and went back to his work. Still bound by his containment spell, I was no threat to him, and for the first time in my life, I knew with absolute certainty that I was going to die. The second Bracchus managed to unlock the potential of the amulet, he’d turn his attention back to me. It could take seconds, or it could take weeks, but eventually he’d drain even the tiny bit of magic that was the spark of life. I’d read enough horror stories of mages who’d had their power ripped from them to know that my last moments would be anything but peaceful. Instead of filling me with fear, I felt a sense of calm finality wash over me.
Laying immobile while an ad
ept mage worked his craft gave me a perspective I’d never had before. Beneath my mage sight, I saw the same beautiful elegance to Bracchus’s spellwork that I’d felt when he’d caught me in the library. Though I understood very little of what he was doing, I could appreciate the masterful way in which he shaped his power into one spell after another in his attempts to trigger the Amulet of Duan Marbhaidh. Seemingly boundless amounts of energy flowed from his fingers and into meticulously constructed spell forms, woven with such masterful skill that it was nearly impossible to detect the seams.
That’s when it hit me. Bracchus’s work chamber was nothing more than a giant lockbox. Everything was magnified considerably, but the principles were the same. From my position on the floor, I could see the subtle spellwork woven into the hewn rock of the chamber itself. Such a large magical mesh needed very little energy to sustain itself since its primary purpose was to repel magic from either side. The ward would be practically indestructible from the outside, but if I could somehow slip a thread into it, I might just be able to blow it open with the little energy I had left in me.
Careful to keep my probing wisps of magic as inconspicuous as possible, I prayed to every deity that had ever been worshipped that Bracchus would be so focused on the amulet and grimoire that he’d stopped paying attention to me entirely. Exploring the weave of the ward spell without alerting him to my manipulations was tedious work, but it was the only chance I had to stop my captor. Even if he snuffed me out like a candle when he discovered what I’d done, I had to gamble on being able to get the attention of the Conclave as a final act of sacrifice. Even if I wouldn’t live to see it, I had to at least try to save all those who would eventually fall before Bracchus’s potentially unlimited power.
“Of course,” Bracchus muttered to himself from his position at the dais. “An inversion of Ó Duibhdabhoireann’s principle. So elegant.”
He grinned widely, and I saw the amulet pulse with a light that was nearly blinding beneath my mage sight. Bracchus had figured out at least part of the unlock sequence, and as he flipped quickly through pages of the grimoire, I redoubled my efforts to destroy his final ward. The timing would be extraordinarily dangerous, but if I could get it just right, I might be able to break the mesh without him noticing.
Desperately seeking the tiniest of flaws in Bracchus’s protective spell, I stretched myself more than I’d ever before dared. My skin tingled, then burned as I drew strength from the deepest recesses of my reserves. As Bracchus chanted more and more aggressively, I fought to keep panic at bay while I continued my delicate work. Shaking from the exertion, I sequestered my conscious mind into a compartment of its own, ignoring the toll I was putting on my body.
Sensing my moment was at hand, I used every trick I could muster in order to isolate a point of entry into the ward’s spellwork. Even as Bracchus shone with a magical light so brilliant that I had to close my eyes against it, I poured myself into the ward, flooding it with my own compressed energy before letting it expand all at once.
The ward crackled with light blue sparks before simply dissolving. Though there was little in the way of dramatic explosion, a less preoccupied Bracchus would have felt it as keenly as a sewing needle shoved into his temple.
As it was, he didn’t so much as turn to look at me.
Struggling to stay conscious, I conjured a concentrated burst of air that sent the smoldering brazier flying into the grimoire. Hot coals spilled out onto the pages, tendrils of smoke curling into the air where the old dry pages had begun to smolder.
Bracchus simply laughed as he swept the coals aside.
“You’re too late,” he told me, a smug grin contorting his features. “Admirable though your persistence may be, it’s too pathetic an effort that comes far too late.”
I had to force my words through a tightly clenched jaw. “The conclave will eventually find out what you’re doing here.”
The barest ripple of energy cascaded throughout the room, so subtle that I’d never have noticed it were I not specifically looking out for it. I didn’t dare break eye contact with Bracchus, trying not to tip my hand in the hopes that he was too caught up in the influx of new power to realize what was happening around him.
“Those deluded imbeciles won’t care about my actions so long as they think I’m only after the ungifted. They claim their rules are to protect both gifted and ungifted alike, but when push comes to shove, they’ll do what everyone does. The Conclave will only act to protect themselves.”
“They’d care if they knew you were eventually going to go after their power,” I said.
“By the time they understand my true purpose, I’ll be far too strong for them to have a chance at stopping me.” Spit foamed at the corners of his mouth. “I will have each of them bow before me, and then I will suck every last drop of power from their withering bodies.”
I forced a smile. “Then they’d better take you out now before you have a chance to do it.”
A half dozen bolts of electric blue energy lanced towards Bracchus from the shadows. Caged lighting engulfed the Dark mage. He screamed as the restraint wound around him, tightening into an electric mesh not unlike the one he’d used on me.
This broke his link to the spells that had been holding me down. I scrambled to my feet and stepped back, warily eyeing the six Conclave mages converging on Edward Bracchus.
“Not so fast,” said a seventh mage that had appeared behind me. She put her hand on my shoulder, and I felt the power in her fingertips tingling a warning that I’d be put down with a thought if I tried to resist. “You and I need to have a little chat.”
“What is the meaning of this?” cried Bracchus from within his temporary prison. “I’ve done nothing wrong. I demand you free me at once!”
At some unseen signal, the mages holding Bracchus teleported from the room in an instant. One second they were there, and the next I was alone with the woman holding onto my shoulder as though I was her kid sister. There’d been no flash of light or sucking sound that accompanied any kind of teleportation spell I knew of. They’d simply vanished as quietly as they’d appeared.
“I trust you’ll behave yourself if I let you go?” the mage said as she stepped away from me.
I watched her walk over to the table where she picked up Carolus’s grimoire. She closed it softly, ran her fingers reverently down the cover, then tucked it under her arm.
“Who are you?” I asked. “What are you going to do with Bracchus and the amulet?”
“You can easily enough deduce that I represent the Conclave,” she said, speaking curtly. “But that’s all you’re going to get, I’m afraid. As for the amulet and the spell book, we’ve been trying to track these particular items down since they were lost in the ninth century. You may rest assured that they’ll not see the light of day any time soon.”
“And what about me?” I dared. “Are you here to hold me accountable for what happened with Eskola?”
She began walking towards the room’s exit, beckoning me to follow along. “In light of the service you just provided us, I think we can come to an arrangement on that particular count. Provided, of course, you can agree that you and his people would do well to avoid each other in the future?”
I nodded quickly. “That seems perfectly fair to me.”
“And you’ll no doubt keep your… companion in check.” She waved in the general direction of where Chase was no doubt still hacking away at Bracchus’s wards.
“Yes, of course,” I told her. “I take full responsibility for him.”
“You accept that your fate will henceforth be linked with his? That you shall bear the punishment for any transgressions he may purposely or inadvertently commit?”
“I do.”
The woman eyed me for a moment, as if trying to gauge my understanding of exactly what I’d just signed myself up for.
“Then I see no reason to mete out the standard punishment for those who challenge the Conclave.”
The mage too
k one last look at me, and before I knew what had happened I was standing in the cool night air of Bracchus’s backyard. I couldn’t say for certain, but I swear I’d seen the conclave mage smile and shake her head in amusement in the hazy moment before I was teleported from Bracchus’s basement.
I breathed out a long sigh of relief and threw my arms around Chase when he came running towards me.
“What happened?” he asked, the words almost unintelligible from the speed at which they tumbled from his lips. “Did you find Eddie? Did you get the amulet? I smashed all the wards like you asked me to bu—”
“Chase,” I said, holding him at arm’s length and smiling reassuringly. “It’s over. We did it.”
“We?”
“Damn right,” I said as I linked my arm in his and led him back towards where we’d first slipped onto the property. “I’d never have been able to do it without you.”
“You’re really going to have to explain this all to me. I destroyed the last ward like an hour ago, and I’ve just been standing around trying to figure out what to do next since then. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so useless in my life.”
“I’ll tell you all about it over takeout,” I said as we walked. “You would not believe how hungry I am.”
“Uh, Alex, you know it’s nearly four in the morning, right?”
“Don’t worry about it.” I took my phone out of my pocket and sent a message to a certain friendly kobold. “I know just the guy to hook us up.”
Chapter Thirty
“And that’s how I ended up back on the lawn,” I said, punctuating my recap of the night’s events by stuffing a deep-fried wonton into my mouth.
Viktor looked on with his usual all-knowing expression, while Skreek went to town on his third plate of a noodle dish so spicy that none of us had been able to stomach more than a bite.
Black Magic (Black Records Book 1) Page 28
