Halfway (Wizards and Faeries) (14 page)

    
Temet felt sick. After so many years at the Order, he had begun to feel his only option was to make the best of it and make the Order his home. He stared at the jar of powder in his hand. He had wanted to be a researcher, to bury his mind in books and never think about the monstrous organization he had been forced to become a part of. As he stared at the jar, the glistening blue powder shifting inside, he knew he would not be a researcher. He would never stand idly by while the Order continued its ugly work. For now, he would continue at the University, but he would begin looking for opportunities to strike back at them. And he would plan.

    
#

    
Temet felt tears on his cheeks at the memory of the girl. Where was she now? Had she forgotten her old life yet?

The Ten Ring was still there, thumbing through more memories. Enraged, Temet gritted his teeth.

“You steal children, you brainwash everyone else to be afraid of us… and now you won’t even leave my head alone? Get out of my head!” he screamed. There was no use hiding his true feelings anymore; they had seen everything. “Get out of my head, you monsters!”

    
With a rush of desperation and anger brought on by the memory of the girl, he fought the sleepy barrier.
 

    
He went too far.

    
Before he realized it, he had shot past their attacks, their mental defenses, and their present thoughts… all the way to
their
memories. The tables had been turned.

    
The Ten Ring realized this and fought to hide their memories, which were a jumble of images and thoughts Temet felt lost in.

    
One thing stood out from all of their minds.

    
He saw an image of a high black arch, spells laced around it. Gringwell and the other wizard who had saved him stood near it, pouring even more spells onto it as the Ten Ring stood by, still wearing their cloaks, as anonymous as Enforcers.

    
So that was what Gringwell and his companion had been in the Ten Ring’s tower for,
Temet realized. They were building something with the Ten Ring. Something secret.

    
What was it?

    
The Ten Ring fought him harder. He retreated from their minds, their onslaught too strong for him. Apparently this had been a great secret he had stumbled upon.
 

    
But before they beat him back, three words were pressed upon his mind:
Portal To Space
. An image of the airless void of space, scattered with stars, flashed through his mind.

    
Space? Why did they want to travel to space? Space was a black void with no air.

    
…No air. That meant no atmosphere! None of the wizards knew why, but atmosphere hampered Magic. So Magic in space would be unlimited!

    
Temet retreated further. He had only meant to fight back, not to jump headfirst into their memories. Even though the archway intrigued him, he allowed himself to retreat from their minds completely.

    
He was not a monster.

    
…Magic outside the atmosphere? That was ridiculous. There was no way to breathe and live outside the atmosphere, so death would be swift to any power-hungry wizard who thought space would give him unlimited power. Unless they had found a way around that…

    
“I am sorry for the intrusion into your memories, Ones-Who-Hold-The-World-Together,” he said, feeling false. “I did not mean to go that far in, only to repel your onslaught. I you wish, I will—”

    
“You must die!” one of them hissed.

So an apology was not an option. They still preferred murder. The Portal to Space must have been an
incredible
secret.

Temet leaped out of the pool of light and ran for the door. A minor spell guarded it, but he batted that away, threw the door open, and ran.

The Ten Ring were going to kill him! Already he heard their shouts.

He ran further down the hallway. Where could he go?

A bolt of magic shot past his head, singeing the hair near his ear. It hit a wall, leaving a large burn mark.

An icy web slammed down in front of him, blocking the hallway. The contribution of some other irate Ten Ring wizard. Quickly, he shot a hole in it. Too small. Summoning more Magic, he blasted another hole and crawled through it, the ice too cold on his hands.

Then the real fighting began.

He wasn’t sure how many attacks there were or even how he fought them. He just did, his mind blank. No emotion; it would just get in the way. Flying knives at his heart, firebolts, skin-eating chemicals. No emotion, just repel them. He cast them aside.
 

    
Snakes, attempts to stop his heart from afar, poison gas. The poison gas burned his nostrils, sending him coughing. It took all his strength to neutralize it. The Ten Ring weren’t even
trying
to be subtle anymore.
 

    
He felt sleepy again. No. They had him once; he was leaving them for good this time. With a huge effort of his will, he broke though the sleepiness. If he survived this, he would have to work on getting better at defending against sleep-attacks.
 

Temet ran. He was almost to the door. How would he escape? The platform had defective air masks!

Throwing open the door to the air outside air, he ran to the edge of the platform. Such a long way down.

He could see the Ten Ring approaching. Some of their hoods had been thrown back in the fight, revealing their half-veiled faces.

They were normal. Not freakishly tall and scary, not with booming voices. They were wizards, just like he was. Wizards whose ambition would turn them into murderers if they succeeded in killing him. He could see them coming towards him, still hurling spells, their mouths twisted in snarls.

Turning, he dove off the edge of the platform.

#

    
The wind rushed past his face, colder than a splash of water. The white ground was rising up to meet him.

He felt calm. There was nothing left now, nothing at all. What reason did he have to live?

His eyes slowly closed.

The image flashed through his mind: a woman, hair ice-blond like his own, asleep in a bed while a man in dark glasses held a strange piece of equipment over her head.

She stirred fitfully, as if in pain.

He recognized Duke Von Chi as the man… he’d seen pictures of him before. But the woman… ice-blond hair like his own, the same nose shape…
 

Could it be Cemagna?
 

Was she alive?

    
Temet slammed a cushiony barrier of Magic down in front of him, softer and more yielding than a net of feathers.

    
He hit it with the speed of a firebolt, nearly breaking it, but it held, easing him to the ground instead. He panted, lying facedown in the snow of the forest.

    
But he was alive.

    
Temet jumped to his feet. The snow-covered trees were all around. He had to get to the city and find Cemagna. Why was she with the duke? How long had she been there? Whatever Von Chi had been doing to her did not look wholesome.

    
Brushing the snow from his robes, he took off his black scarf and ripped the silver moon-eye pin from it. The moon-eye he had been almost proud to receive when he had been accepted into the Wizarding University.
 

    
Then, wrapping the scarf warmly around his neck, he hurled the pin as far as he could and headed for the city.

    
I’m not part of the Order anymore,
he told himself.
They have failed me. My purpose, now, is only to find Cemagna.

    
Chapter 17

    
Cemagna

    
I followed Ormas as he quickened his pace through the snowy forest.

    
He stopped to look up at the sky, where the sun had risen at last. It had been a long, cold night of trudging through the forest and I was exhausted.

     
“It’s warming up,” he said to me. “We have to go faster, Cemagna. Snow and ice can melt in this sun.”

    
“Very correct, my son. Luckily for me, I realized that far before you did.”

    
Duke Von Chi stood there, hands in his coat pockets, expression unreadable behind those dark glasses. “My son, why did you take her away from me? She has such promise for my research.”

    
Ormas stepped in front of me. “You can’t have her. She’s not a toy or an experiment. She’s a
person
.”

    
“Move out of the way, Ormas.”

    
“No. You’ll have to kill me to get to her.”

    
“If that’s what it takes.” Von Chi raised his hand and Ormas’ body flew to the side to crash into a tree trunk. Head first. Had he killed Ormas? Had he really just killed his
son
? I turned to run to Ormas but found myself encased in an invisible material, unable to move. The duke had trapped me. I felt myself beginning to panic, sweat forming on my palms. Ormas lay there, motionless.

    
What was I doing? No! I could use Magic too; I had done it with the Enforcers!

    
Focusing, I used Magic. I punched a hole through the duke’s invisible prison and slipped out, running towards Ormas. He couldn’t be dead. He
couldn’t
be.

    
The duke was in front of me before I had even taken a few steps. He threw a fiery blast of Magic at me, but I redirected it easily. I could do Magic, too! He wouldn’t defeat me!

    
I thrust a burst of fire at him. It hit him in the face, weak enough only to send his dark glasses flying.

    
I stared at his eyes.

    
They were a blank, empty gray, no pupils. The same color as his watery army.

    
“How can you see?” I blurted before I could stop myself.

    
“I can see excellently. This is simply a side-effect of my… work.”

    
Oh. So messing around in people’s heads and trying to copy their Magic into himself caused creepy eyes. “Perhaps you should stop your
work
before it gets worse.” I stared at Ormas, my lover for such a short time. He still did not move. His chest wasn’t lifting or falling—he wasn’t breathing. “He’s dead,” I whispered. “You killed him. You killed your own
son
!” I cried, feeling tears filling my eyes. Ormas was dead, the only man who had ever been affectionate to me. The only one who had ever kissed me and made me feel safe. Dead.

    
A smile spread over the duke’s face, made creepy by the sight of his eyes. “Oh, Cemagna, he’s not the one I want. He was only a soft-hearted child.
You
are what I want.”

    
Then he did something I had seen only once before but knew immediately. He threw a handful of white powder into the air. It was the same white powder Aylward had used to render us all unconscious when he had kidnapped Temet.

    
I held my breath, but it was too late; I had already inhaled the powder. My knees felt weak, and I felt myself hitting the cold snow face down.

    
#

    
As I awoke, the first things I noticed were that I couldn’t move and that there were lights in my eyes.

    
“We meet again, Cemagna.”
 

    
I blinked, my vision clearing.
 

    
I was lying strapped down to a padded table, lights shining down on me. Across from me stood Von Chi, standing in front of a table upon which lay a variety of instruments.
 

    
I tried to turn and look around, but my forehead was strapped down too, with a leather strap.

    
But I knew where I was. I was in the duke’s experiment room.

    
“You never helped me find Temet. You said you would.” I wasn’t afraid, and that surprised me. I only felt anger. “Instead, you drugged me and did stuff to me when I was asleep. What kind of duke are you? I mean, I know I’m not really your subject, being from a different country and such, but I don’t think that made one whit of a difference to you. Do you do this to your own people, too?”

    
“You talk too much,” he said. “So how did you find out about my experiments at night?”

    
“I woke up with pinpricks in my head.
Bleeding
. That’s not exactly subtle of you, you know.” I stared at his eyes, at the creepy blank gaze he had caused himself.

    
“I’ll have to perfect that.” He turned to his table and began rummaging. “I assume you know what I’m going to do, then.”

    
I was nervous, as anyone strapped to a table by a madman would have been, but I forced myself to continue speaking. I had been cowed most of my life, and it had to stop.

    
I tried to ignore the sound of metal-scraping-metal that was coming from the duke’s direction.

    
“Not really,” I said. “I’ve only heard hints. You’re a scientist of some sort and you study Magic. And you know I’m Halfway.”

    
“I’ve spent most of my life replicating Magic I found in others, but I’ve never had a chance to study a Halfway before, someone who can blend human and faerie Magic to create something better.”

    
“You weren’t born with natural Magic abilities, so you artificially make yourself have them.”

    
“Correct.”