Sorcerer's Creed Books 1-3

by N. P. Martin

  42

  Growing Up

  I PROBABLY GAVE you the impression before that I had an idyllic, privileged upbringing in Ireland, what with the big house by the lake and all my father's wealth to keep us pampered, and that because there was all that cool magick around, the family home was like Hogwarts, with spells and fun times had by all. Well, there were spells and magick (a lot of it), and occasionally my siblings and I managed to have some fun, but mainly my memories of that house and my upbringing, in general, were not what I would call happy ones, and this was mostly due to my father's constant overbearing authority and strict discipline. He made our home into a magick bootcamp where the priority was always exercising discipline and studiously learning how to channel and wield magick without causing disaster (unless causing disaster was the goal, which it was on a few occasions).

  Most of my memories start around age four or five. I don't remember much before that. I had the sense that I was a loved child and this was mainly down to my mother and older brother and sister who always had a smile and a hug for me (or a punch to the shoulder in my brother's case).

  My father remained aloof for the most part. When I did spend time with him as a child, it was never to play, but to be instead exposed to the concept of magick.

  The first time I saw any kind of magick was when my father conjured a small sphere of dark blue energy in one of his large, long-fingered hands. The swirling blue energy was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen at the time. When I went to touch it with a curious but tentative finger, my father slapped my hand away, the sting of the slap bringing tears to my eyes. "Not yet," I remember him admonishing me. "Only when you are ready."

  “When father?” I would say back.

  He would stand over me, tall and domineering. “When I say you are.”

  As things went, he thought I was ready by age five, and I joined the regime my older brother and sister were already on. My brother, Fergal, was eight years old and my sister, Roisin, was seven. They were both experts in magick already, or so it seemed to me at the time. They could do things with magick that I couldn't do yet. I barely knew what magick was at that point. That all changed, however, when I had to start getting up every morning at 5:30 a.m. If my father were around (which he usually was), he would lead us around the grounds of the house and through the neighboring forest on a long run, believing as he did that a good Mage needed to look after their physical body because it was the conduit through which their magick flowed. The morning runs were hateful and grueling for the first couple of months. Though because I was so young, my father allowed me to walk whenever I got tired while he and my brother and sister carried on running. This usually meant that it took me a long time to make it back home for breakfast. And it didn't matter how wet or cold it was outside. We never missed a run. If I was late getting back for breakfast, I had to go without (although Roisin always saved me a piece of bacon or sausage if that happened, for which I always loved her). Needless to say, I soon learned to keep up if I wanted a full breakfast.

  The rest of the day was structured around various classes and tutorials as we were home schooled at my father's insistence because that's always the way it had been in his family. My mother Brenda, a beautiful looking woman with long, curly red hair and kind blue eyes, handled the standard education that most kids get, teaching us literacy and numeracy and a whole host of other subjects, including art, which I always loved (and still do to this day). My mother's classes were usually relaxed. She tried to make learning fun for us, and even though we were all at different levels, she did a great job of educating us.

  My father's tutelage was a lot less relaxed, and he was always dominant with us, explaining that magick had to be taken seriously and was not to be messed around with. His teaching sessions were grueling on every level. He usually started with magick theory, forcing us to memorize huge chunks from antiquated books that most of the time, were written in some obscure language that was difficult to get your tongue (or your brain) around. If you messed up your recital, you got a slap on the back of the hand with the thin willow stick my father always carried in the classroom. If you really fucked things up, you got the stick across the back of the legs, and let me tell you, my father didn't hold back. Your tears and pain meant nothing to him. In his eyes, that was how you learned not to fuck things up again. My brother and sister were used to this kind of brutal instruction, but I wasn't. I don't think I ever got used to it. My father's stern and often aggressive behavior had me constantly on edge, which meant I fucked up a lot. The only way I could advance in my studies was to spend what little free time I had trying to learn or master whatever I was supposed to have learned in class. On my own, I picked things up pretty quickly without the overbearing presence of my father there to fluster me.

  That was my life for nearly eighteen years. We were allowed weekends off, unless my father had arranged for us to study under a different teacher, which he often had, bringing in his Mage friends and acquaintances to teach us specific magick techniques. These sessions could be fun, depending on who my father had brought in to teach us, but for the most part, the instructors were all as dark and serious as my father was. I often thought if becoming a Mage made you so damn serious and joyless, what the hell was the point?

  Thank God for my mother, who always made a point of taking us places on our weekends off, where we at least got to mingle with other kids our age. But even that proved awkward most of the time as we found it hard to relate to the other children, who would talk about stuff (TV and pop culture mostly) that neither I nor my brother or sister had much of a clue about thanks to the bubble we lived our lives in, a bubble that only magick seemed to penetrate. So mostly, Fergal, Roisin and I would stick together when we went places. My favorite place was always the cinema. Now that was true magick, and over the years, those films were the only real window I had into the rest of the world. Sad, I know, but when you're a kid, you need some sort of escapism. Needless to say, my father knew nothing of these cinema visits. Otherwise he probably would have banned them, like he did most things that involved fun.

  That was my life, pretty much, right up until the night my father performed the demon summoning that changed everything.

  The day before that happened, my father called me into his study, a memory that I had forgotten for a long time. My father sat behind his imposing oak desk and had me stand (as always) opposite him, hands clasped behind my back, head up, staring straight ahead like a soldier standing in front of their superior officer. "What I'm about to tell you, August must go no further than this room. Are we clear?"

  Of course we were clear. I wouldn’t have dared to disobey him. “Yes, sir.”

  My father put his hands on the desk, interlocking his fingers as he always did when he was about to say something important. “Things will change around here soon. I need you to be ready for those changes.”

  “Changes, sir?” I asked, confused. Nothing ever changed in the McCreedy house. Everything was always depressingly the same, so what was going on?”

  “What is the only thing that matters?”

  It was a question he had already asked me (and my siblings) a thousand times already over the years. “The pursuit of greatness, father.”

  “And at what cost?”

  “At all cost, sir.”

  My father nodded. "That is correct. At all cost. Do you believe in that doctrine, August?"

  Of course I didn’t. Neither did Fergal or Roisin. But what was I going to say, no? “I do, sir.”

  His intense gray eyes stared into me, and as always, it felt like he was reading my soul for the truth. “Good, because you know, out of the three of you, you have the most potential, August.”

  It was the first kind of praise I had ever heard come out of his mouth. My eyes met his for a brief moment before looking away again. “Thank you, father.”

  "Don't thank me, boy. It is a matter of not wasting that potential. I intend to see to it that you don't."

&nbs
p; “What do you mean?”

  “Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained. I taught you that, didn’t I?”

  I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  "My own desire has been shamefully weak of late," he said, adjusting the cuffs on his dark suit. "Progression is called for."

  "Progression?"

  “Yes. Advancing to the next level of power. You understand?”

  "Yes." I didn't though. The desire he saw in me was merely the desire for greater learning, as, by that point, I had developed a deep and genuine appreciation of the arcane arts since I began studying them. Granted, I never had a choice in the matter, but like it or not, magick was in my blood. It was a part of me. Sure, I was always striving to increase my skills and the potency of my magick, but that striving was never motivated by some all-consuming lust for power or the desire to rule the damn world. I hardly knew the world at that time anyway, having spent most of my life within the walls of the house. The desire my father was talking about was merely the desire for raw power, or power for power's sake. It was a level of ambition I couldn't relate to, but I wasn't about to tell him that either, which would have been like telling Adolf Hitler he was taking things a bit far.

  “Good,” he said, nodding. “Because sacrifice will be required. You understand the need for sacrifice, don’t you, boy?”

  I was no stranger to sacrifice, but sacrifice had limits. There were things I would never think of doing in the pursuit of power. That especially included not hurting other people. For my father though, I knew there were no limits as to what he would do for more power. The constant glaring ambition in his eyes said it all, an ambition that was much too strong for me even to think about arguing with, so I simply said, “I understand.”

  My father looked at me for a long time, as he liked to do from time to time. Under his glare, I felt naked and vulnerable, sometimes shameful. “We shall see,” he said, finally taking his eyes off me.

  The next night, the summoning took place, and I saw firsthand just how much my father was willing to sacrifice in pursuit of his goals.

  43

  Fatherly Love

  “YOU KILLED THEM!”

  The memories of that night came rushing back into my head like an out of control freight train. All too vivid images flashed painfully in my mind: the violence inflicted by the demon on my poor mother, and on my brother and sister; all the blood and screaming.

  And my father’s face. His face as he watched his family get torn apart by a monster he had summoned. He knew what was going to happen, had planned it all, in fact. He had watched his own family get killed with hardly a look of remorse on his face. And when I screamed his name, begging him to help, he merely looked at me as if to say that it had to be done.

  My father's look from that night was now seared into my brain, and I screamed and attacked him, swinging my fists at his face, wanting only to pummel him to death, to rip him apart the way the demon had ripped my family apart. But my fists went straight through him like I was punching only air.

  “You have no physical body here,” he said like he was talking to a child having a temper tantrum. “You might as well stop.”

  Fuck him. I wasn't going to stop swinging just because he said so, though eventually, I did give up on trying to hurt him when it just became too pointless to continue. I backed my spirit form away and glared at him. "I'm going to kill you."

  My father shook his head impatiently. "August, you need to stop with this childish nonsense. You need to face the truth of things. Magick and power are all that matters. How can you not see that by now?"

  “The only truth here is that you’re a monster,” I spat, staring hard at him, making sure he could see the hatred and murderous intent in my eyes. “You took them from me. You left me all alone in the world.” I lashed out at him again, only because I didn’t know what else to do. And despite only being in spirit form, I still felt the hurt in my belly as it twisted my guts. A hurt that seemed like it was there to stay forever like a cancerous cyst that couldn't be excised in case the poison spilt into the rest of the body.

  Which is why I blocked out the truth of what happened that night in the first place. Some memories are just too painful to bear.

  “Your childish spats are becoming tiresome, boy.”

  “Fuck you. I’m not your fucking boy. I never was.”

  My father averted his eyes from me for a moment, perhaps hurt by that statement, though I doubted it. A man who would willingly sacrifice the lives of his own family in return for power wasn’t going to be hurt by anything so inconsequential as his youngest son disowning him. Despising him. “It’s not too late, August. You can still join me. It’s what I planned all along, to have you by my side.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. “Why would you ever think I would stand by you after you had my family slaughtered like animals? You’re fucking insane. You’ve always been insane…”

  “I thought you would come to understand eventually. Clearly, I misjudged you.”

  “Understand? Understand what?”

  “If you have to ask, then you will never know.”

  "Oh, I know, father. I know that you're just a power-mad psychopath like all the rest. I know that your soul is corrupt and blackened by your selfish lust for power."

  "Selfish?" My father's face twisted up in a fury. "I gave you everything!"

  "Yes, and then you took it all away like the tyrant you are! You should have had me killed that night along with mother and Fergal and Roisin." Just saying their names filled me with sadness. "Why did you let me live? You should have just let that demon kill me instead of leaving me all alone."

  “I was supposed to be with you, August. The demon betrayed me, locked me up in some filthy hell in the Underworld.”

  “It was less than you deserved. And did you actually believe that I would want to stay with you after what you did?”

  “It didn’t matter what you believed.”

  “Why not?”

  He stared straight at me. “Because I was going to steal your physical body. I was getting old, and my body was becoming frail. I needed a new one. Yours, August.”

  If I weren't a mere spirit, I would have thrown up right then. Just when I thought the man who pretended to be my father couldn't get any more despicable. Anger and pain coursed through me like twin streams of acid. "You want my body? Fucking take it then, you despicable cunt! Take it, and I'll rip myself apart just to kill you."

  My father didn’t seem at all fazed by my outburst. He merely made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “I have no need for anyone’s body now. I can take whatever physical form I want. Besides which, when Rloth comes here and grants me the power he has promised me, any physical form will be beneath me. I will exist in a place of pure power. A place where I can make manifest whole worlds if I so desire. Or destroy them entirely.”

  I had heard enough of his insanity. “Release me from this cage. Now!”

  "As you wish," my father said. "But I wanted you to know the truth, and now you do." Sadistic bastard. He drifted close to me, and it was all I could do not to turn away in disgust. “But you should know. If you continue with this pursuit of yours, I will destroy you.”

  Despite everything, it still hurt like hell to hear him say that. "You might as well kill me now then because I won't stop hunting you until you're dead, old man.”

  He nodded and something of a smile came across his ghostly face. “I expected nothing less. You are my son after all.”

  Then he waved his hand and disappeared along with the void we were floating in.

  “Creed?”

  I was still standing in the alley, Leona's voice and the noise from the street at the front of the cinema bringing me back to reality. Leona was standing a few feet away, looking unsure if I was back with her or not. "Yes?" I said to her in a distant voice.

  She looked relieved as she came up and put a hand on my shoulder. “Where did you go?” she asked. “Yo
u’ve been standing in a trance the last twenty minutes. It was like you were frozen or something.”

  Shaking my head, I sighed deeply and said nothing. I was so gutted, I couldn't even bring myself to speak, least of all try to explain what had just happened.

  Leona gently squeezed my shoulder. “Come on. I’m taking you to my place.”

  It was the first good thing I had heard all day.

  44

  Scorpion

  MY MIND WAS still reeling when we got to Leona's place. Actually, that's an understatement. It felt like a bomb had exploded inside my head, in the process dislodging and scattering memories and thoughts that I had kept safely locked away until then. And with my father's unveiling of his evil self and the revelations he chose to impart, it was too much for me to handle. Leona didn't seem too sure about how to be around me either since I hadn't said a single word to her on the drive back. When we got inside the apartment, she told me to sit down on the sofa. Then she went to the kitchen and came back with a bottle of Glenfiddich and an empty glass which she filled with the whiskey. "Drink," she said, holding the glass out to me as if it contained some magickal medicine that would cure all the bad in me. I looked at her blankly before taking the whiskey and downing it in one, handing her the glass back straightaway. "Okay, its like that then, is it?"

  I nodded. “Its like that.”

  "I'm going to make tea for myself." She stood up. "When I come back, you're going to tell me what happened."

  I said nothing as she walked away and I sank into the sofa, cradling my glass of whiskey in both hands, the alcohol doing little to alleviate how I was feeling, which was betrayed mostly, and sickened. Sickened that my own father could do such unspeakable things, that he was still doing them, despite the fact that I thought he had been dead and gone for so long now, along with the rest of my family.