Sorcerer Rising (A Virgil McDane Novel) (11 page)

All magic had
a flavor about it and in people you could usually identify it. There were countless sources of magic: the natural talent of a mage, divine influence, Aetherial contamination, gifts from countless magical entities, arcane diseases, ancient artifacts, you name it. New ones popped up every day.

And I guess I was looking at one right now.

Finally the burning in my nose got to be too much. I sneezed.

The power ceased abruptly. She had only been looking at me a few seconds, though it had felt longer, but my abrupt reaction had startled her. Solomon was smiling, I th
ink he was trying not to laugh.

Sarah didn’t look quite as amused. She looked downright terrified. Terrified and angry.

“You burned the whole thing,” she whispered.

I gritted my teeth. I
hadn’t wanted her to see that about my past. It wasn’t one of my proudest moments, and people rarely understood.

“I did what I had to,” I replied.

Temperance grabbed her face gently and made eye contact. “Quiet,” she whispered gently. “You saw too much, I told you about that. You knew what to look for, his past was not a part of it.”

Sarah tore her face out of the older woman’s grasp. “I saw more than I wanted to.” She glared at me. “I don’t care either. Not if you can help me.”

“Fine,” I said. “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”

She took a deep breath and said, “You’re going to fail.”

My stomach tightened up into a painful little ball. “Great. Thanks a lot for that essential service.”

“Hold on,” she said. “You can still succeed though.”

“You can tell me how I’m going to fail?” I asked. I was impressed, that was more dead on than I was used to.

“No,” she replied. “Listen, damn it. You are going to fail. There is no way around that. I do not know in what way you are to fail, only that you will. As definite as that is, you can still succeed at the same time. Either way, death is probable.”

I frowned. That figured. “Can you explain that one please? How in the…” I paused, looking from Temperance to Solomon, “…heck…can I do both?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Only that you can. J
ust listen. And take notes, it is long.”

Al clicked on, my vision blurring a bit in my left eye, my left ear buzzing as he took it all in for later.

“Should you choose this path, there will be much pain and much happiness. There will be desolation and redemption, for you as well as others. A world will die. You will be rewarded and betrayed and in many ways it will be the same thing.” She paused, staring at me with deep, dark eyes. “Most importantly, Virgil, I see you.

“This is a new path for you. Should you take this, you will fail, you may succeed, and you could die. These three things ruled what I saw. There will be wonder and horror, joy and sadness. It could be the end of your life or the beginning of several lives. This one event could lead you down many paths. What lies at the end? I do not know. This life could be full of misery or fulfillment, evil or good, success or failure. It could be all these things, some of these things, or none of these things. You can be more than you are now, push yourself to a new limit, become a new person. This person could be to your liking or to your distaste.”

She sat forward, her voice suddenly becoming low. “But know this: should you choose not to take this step, I see nothing for you. A long, empty path of nothing. There is a great deal of potential in your life, but only if you pursue this.”

“So, damned if I do and damned if I don’t?”

“No,” she replied, “I don’t think so anyway. I did not see death for you if you chose to deny yourself this. But the path you will follow, the life you will lead, upon refusing this…It will be…” She paused, looking for the right word. “It will be devoid.”

“Of what?” I asked.

She frowned. “I do not know. Simply that it will be empty of what you need. After looking at all of the possible paths your life could lead, the life you would lead in staying here is a void. Empty and desolate.”

I sat there trying to wrap my mind around that for a moment.

Solomon broke the silence. “That sounds like you’re screwed.”

“Thank you, Solomon.
” Of course, I had been thinking the exact same thing. I mean, damn, that sucked.

Beside me the Mother Superior looked thoughtful. “This makes sense. I k
now that it does not sound well. But this is a new chance for you, Virgil. Redemption is at hand.” She gave me that hard look that only nuns and generals could give. “This is your chance to be delivered from your past.”

There she went again. I didn’t have time for that conversation.

Sarah gave me a strange look. Was that pity? It was hard to tell. “Your turn, Sorcerer. I showed you mine, you show me yours. Whip it out.”

I smirked. She was good, spooky good, but I was still pretty sure mine was bigger. In the back of my mind I said,
Alright Al, time to show off a little bit. I think I’m going to need your help with this.

I looked Deeper into her eyes. At first absolutely nothing happened. Well, not nothing. I was leaning forward and she was an exceptionally beautiful, if exasperating woman. My face begin to heat up and all I could think about was the fact that I had not two minutes ago boasted about my ability right before she pulled a world shattering prophecy out of thin air. God
, would it look bad if all I did was stare at her.

Then Al must have flicked on a switch because the world froze around me.

I let out a long breath. Whew, that was close. I thought nothing was going to happen for a moment.

Then I stood up and walked out of the Church.

CHAPTER
SEVEN

I exited the church
fully expecting to see a damaged mind, but nothing could have prepared me for what I saw as I stepped into her psyche.

It was a truly shattered world.

I meant that literally, too. A vast field stretched out from the church, but it was pocked with craters and cracks. There was no wind and no real sky to speak of. A terrible emptiness filled the air and there was no color anywhere to be seen.

I squinted harder. No, there was color. Cool green grass grew across deeply sloping hills and clouds of yellow daisies speckled the horizon. Instead of a soft blue sky, or even cloud cover, it was empty and desolate, stretching on forever. Dark red light from an unseen source filled the blank sky and neither sun nor moon nor stars marked its expanse.

How had I missed that? There was something off with the color. It was a shade too pale, empty of the vividness one would usually see in reality. Everything was like that, a perfect replication lacking any warmth, any life.

It was all much too familiar for comfort. The last time I
’d seen a mind so desolate, so absolutely wasted and empty had been the last time me and Al tried to meditate.

A long strip of blacktop lead from the door of the church out over a hill, beckoning me to take my first step away from the sanctuary of reality.

I looked back. The four of us were still sitting in the garden. It would have been very easy to head back in and walk away. I had what I needed after all and to be honest, it didn’t sound very helpful. Why should I venture into this hell for someone who gave me, who gave my scar, that look?

I looked back over the horizon. Every person had this inside them, a world that represented their mind. As a mage, whether it be Wizard, Sorcerer or anything in between, you learned to navigate that world, to explore it much as you would any other frontier. We sculpted it, molded it. Its resources fueled our magic, its features gave us our spells. All our magic came from that. On the flipside, it also represented that person. Change it too much and you change the person, change the person and you change the world.

This was pain. There was no denying it. The soul and mind that made up the woman who had been a complete bitch moments ago was in deep, painful agony. An agony that I recognized and sympathized with.

And right now I was the only one that could do anything about it.

I took a slow step away from the church, scanning the horizon for any sign of retribution. I had her permission, even if she didn’t really know what I was doing, but if she felt uncomfortable or uneasy it could have very real consequences for me.

When nothing happened, I kneeled and studied a single flower growing by the side of the road. It was yellow and green and l
ooked just like a flower should, but there was something off.

I reached
for it. The moment I touched it, the flower’s stem snapped. It shattered like glass, sending shards throughout the field, creating the oddest domino effect I’d ever seen. I watched slack jawed as the entire field shattered, listening as the subtle roar of a hundred thousand blades of grass falling over filled the air.

Before long the entire hillside had been decimated. Instead of cool, green grass it was filled with broken crystal. I reached down and picked up one of the petals, now j
ust a colorless piece of glass.

What in the hell was going on?

This was bad. I had seen schizophrenics whose minds made more sense than this, minds ruled by murder and rape who had more consistency.

As I crested the hill, I saw a massive tree nestled in the center of the valley. It filled the hollow horizon, towering above everything. Its crown was decimated, like an old oak after an ice storm, its branches stripped of their leaves. Massive chunks of the trees lay in shattered ruins around the base, clear and colorless.

I knew my stuff, but I also knew when to admit I was out of my element. This was getting trickier by the minute and I needed help.

“Al!
You need to get out here and see this.”

It took a moment for him to shift his attention to m
e. For someone who can think in a dozen ways at once, he didn’t always watch the outside world. When there was a high school boy’s fantasy version of a nun, sure, but not when there was work to be done.

Suddenly
, a large bird landed on my shoulder, startling me. Al had a strange sense of humor. The bird turned its head sideways, gazing at me with a raptor’s eye. Well, not exactly raptor. It was orange and silver with a squat, fat body and even squatter, fatter beak. Thick plumage topped its head, giving it a strange crest. It let out a cry that sounded like a drunken laugh.

I sighed.
“Why are you a kookaburra?”

“What’s wrong with kookaburras?” Al
squawked.

“Nothing,” I replied. “But kookaburras aren’t orange.”

“This one is,” he said. “What’s up?”

I sighed. This is what lived in my head. “I’m in the nun’s
mind. Didn’t you notice?”

“Not really,” he said. I think that’s what he said anyway. He was preening a wing and it came out kind of muffled. “Once I figured out it wasn’t going anywhere worth watching with the redhead, I went back to work. I’m actually doing something important.”

“I am too,” I replied. “Look around, this isn’t normal.”

He stopped preening his wing and cocked his head. “God, Virgil! Did you do this?”

“No, I didn’t do this,” I said, indicating the tree and the world around me. “How in the hell would I do this?”

“No telling with you,” Al replied.
“This is some serious damage, way out of your league, but along the same lines. If we’ve ever seen anything like it, we don’t remember anymore.”

“Bu
t this was an assault?”

“
Aye, but not like yours,” he replied. “This was an actual attack.”

“Where do we start?” I a
sked.

Can birds shrug? Al did. “How about the big tree in the middle of her mind that all roads lead to?”

“Fine,” I replied, making my way toward the tree. Al continued to ride on my shoulder. “Aren’t you going to fly? You’re heavy.”

“I don’t like to fly,” he replied.

“Then why are you a bird?”

“What’s wrong with birds?”

I sighed again.

We made our way toward the tree, taking our time as we did. The tree’s ruined crown had showered the earth with debris, leaving the ground littered with a sea of sharp, glittering points.

The tree was more than I’d originally been able to see. A large alcove had been carved into its side, nestled between two massive roots. It had originally had a large, wooden portcullis. All that was left now were the shattered remnants.

“Look at this,” I said. “The wood is splintered. Glass, or whatever material she thinks it is, would
n’t splinter like this.”

“There wa
s a preliminary attack,” Al said. “Something ripped through the wood before the assault began and it reacted in kind, only becoming brittle afterwards.”

“She wasn’t just attacked; something was unleashed in her mind
.” It was one of the most horrifying things I’d ever seen, and I’d seen a lot. “Could it still be around?”