Sorcerer Rising (A Virgil McDane Novel) (16 page)

I began to shake. The shakes
became more and more violent my lungs began to seize up. I had just killed four people, well, maybe not people, but things. Two in cold blood. Had I always been like this? Certainly not before the war. During? I had come out of the war unscathed for the most part. After Nidia though, well, not so much.

More than that, I had been slinging around a lot of power. The shotgun didn’t really take anything out of me, it was its own engine for producing magic, but the derringer was simply another talisman for channeling a specific spell. A poor one to boot, and executed even worse.

I looked at my arm. Angry, red veins crept up to the elbow. My hand was purple and swollen, the skin split around the knuckles. I didn’t have the juice to back a spell like that, not anymore. It had literally sucked the life out of me to perform it.

I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes until I saw stars. There was no time for this. I needed to meet up with the expedition the next day and now I had to make a new ring.

Damn it!

I sat down in front of my desk, slamming the rings on the hard surface. They glinted in the dim light of the room, filthy and soiled from the battle. I glared at them. They were a weak talisman, apprentice work at best, but they were all I had.

And they were only good as a set.

A talisman was largely unimportant, a mere tradition within mage circles. I wasn’t entirely sure how the Guild used them, but Sorcerers generally agreed that they were a binder to draw forth and harness magic. A quick link to the mind. For me, with my mind weakened, they were essential.

Each ring represented an element. Gold for air, silver for water, copper for fire, and steel for earth. The tin represented the fifth element, the most important one; the binder, the keystone that put the structure together and made the other elements work in tandem. It wasn’t anything in particular, just the drive, the catalyst for creation.

From what I remember
ed the Guild believed, and taught, that all magic, that the Aether itself, was made from the four elements and from those elements all matter, energy, everything was and could be created.

Everything could be reduced down to one of the elements. It was why all cultures celebrated those four forces. But the catalyst, the binding, the influence, was what made it all work.

And now it was at the bottom of a sewer.

I would need to meditate to make another
. I took a deep breath, forcing myself not to lose my temper. Meditation, for me anyway, was difficult at the best of times. Frazzled as I was, it would be even worse.

I rifled through one of the drawers of my desk, pulling out two objects. The first was a small bottle of Tennessee whiskey, the other a simple metal spoon. It would have to do.

I unscrewed the cap, breathed deep, and took a long swig from the bottle.

I removed the clothes from the tub, awkwardly hanging up the coat to dry with one hand. The suit and the rest of my clothes, I threw away. I could buy more clothes now. I filled the tub again and bathed, relaxing abused muscles, sipping on the whiskey and allowing myself to drift.

When I felt I was ready, I laid down on the bed, the spoon clutched tightly in my hand. I was half drunk, but that was fine. Distraction would actually aid me in this. I willed myself to relax, letting the barrier between my mind and body slip. It was just like talking to Al, but in reverse. Instead of letting him out, I was going in.

My body was sore after the beating those things had given me. Both hands were throbbing, one from the derringer and its spell, the other from the kick of a pistol grip on a double barreled shotgun. My skin itched from the intense heat of the blast and my body was covered in bruises.

I let the aches and pains drift into the background, not ignoring them exactly, that would be a distraction in and of its own, just letting them settle, letting myself get comfortable with the pain.

Steadily, the room began to shift, the light fading, the shadows becoming more and more distinct. My body began to grow more relaxed, alm
ost to a point of numbness.

I felt the bed drop out from under me. It was sudden, but not violent, and the whole rest of the room followed it, blowing apart like a house of cards.

I blinked and when I opened my eyes I was standing, a dark tunnel looming ahead of me. My apartment was behind me, tempting me to turn around. I ignored it, stepping into the darkness.

The tunnel was hot and damp. Condensation dripped from the ceiling, pooling on the ground in slimy puddles. The heat leeched me of my strength, clinging to my skin. In the heavy h
umidity, every breath was an endeavor.

No matter how far I walked, the apartment was always right behind me. The tunnel
began to slant up and I had to crawl to keep my balance. I crawled for days, shuffling on my hands and knees in the darkness. When ash began to blow down from the opposite side, I knew it was close.

Finally, the tunnel leveled out and widened into a small chamber, dead ending at a grey wall of stone, ash, and dirt.
It bore a single large rune, the only I still remembered, the ancient symbol of the outcast. The very same symbol I bore over my eye.

I glared at the wall. It was thicker this time and I was already exhausted. I let out a sob of frustration.

The rune glowed brightly as I approached, a deep red light that shone like fire.

I gritted my teeth. It wasn’t going to stop me, not like this. I reared back on my knees and clutched at the wall, summoning up the last of my strength and digging my fingers into the stone.

The rune glowed brighter, filling the tunnel with heat and burning my hands. Suddenly, there was a flash of light and I found myself naked, lying on the floor of my apartment.

“
Damn it!” I screamed, my vision blurry. I slammed my fist on the floor, beat against the wood until my knuckles bled.

I dragged myself to me feet and looked myself in the mirror. “What happened?” I was drunker than I thought too because my voice held a slur.

Nothing. I couldn’t even rouse Al out of whatever he was doing.

I threw the bottle against the wall, sending shards of glass all over the room. The spoon followed it, cracking my window.

I fell to my knees, my eyes level with the desk. The rings, my broken talisman, mocked me from the surface.

They sent me a car to take me to the Walter Cloud.

I sat quietly in the back, ignoring the driver, flexing my hand over and over.
The hand was fine but the web, the framework the talisman created, was too tight, weak. Any time I channeled magic through it, I felt it straining, like a patchwork of hastily stitched cuts against a flexing muscle. It felt like any moment it could split apart.

Before long
, I began to see signs of the people who had set up camp around the Walter Cloud. Stalls, carts, and stands crowded every available space, selling everything from food to talisman, trinkets, pets, tools, anything you could imagine.

Several tents were dedicated to select shows. Bars, brothels, and saloons had also been erected. Scattered in between all these were call men, pastors, soothsayers, doom callers, beggars, whores, tourists, anyone and every
thing you could imagine. I saw Fay and goblins, elves, dwarves, ogres and everything in between. Even FayTown had come to play.

We moved past it all, the driver obviously used to maneuvering through the chaos.

As we crested the area, I got my first glimpse. The Walter Cloud was several miles wide, a thick pooling cloud of purple and blue mist. Except for the color and slight glow it radiated, it could have been a simple fog bank.

The Walter Cloud was government owned, these days treated more like a park than anything else. Back in its heyday there had a rush for lumber and various mineral deposits but the cloud was so stable, so abnormally close to our world, there wasn’t as much fuss over it as the more exotic worlds.

Stretching from the cloud and straight into the clouds above was the Arcus, thirty feet around and bright as the sun.

I was seeing a legend, a myth, firsthand. It brought back feelings I
’d long thought dead. Seeing a new world, a new spectacle. The blood rains of Nod, the great storms of Terre d'échanges, the spiders of Nidia, and a dozen others. Beyond just that, beyond the majesty of the Aether, I’d seen totems, merfolk, the fay, lycanthropes, vampires, leprechauns, and yet had barely scratched the surface of what the world had to offer.

At one time it had been what I lived for.

The expedition had formed outside of the cloud and two more groups were waiting their turn behind us. Everyone wanted to enter at this exact spot. Where you entered decided where you came out on the other end, and this was the best spot for where the Arcus had landed inside.

I met up with the team, greeting James and ignoring the Wizards. It was a healthy expedition, one of the best equipped I
’d ever seen. Cyrus’s camp alone had six trucks and several jeeps, with enough supplies to keep us stocked in the cloud for months.

At the edge of the cloud I p
aused, watching as a truck drove in. In seconds, it had disappeared into the mist. I took a deep breath and followed it.

Breath it in, breath it out, that’s what the Guild taught. It offer
ed a natural, if subtle, motion to whatever you were doing, a rhythm that guided and focused the mind.

When you walk
ed into the Aether though, it was the other way around. You felt it breathe you in, inhaling you into its being. It was different for each. Some were hungrier than others, some practically tried to devour you. Two things made me immune to that. First, I’d been here before. Each time you entered a cloud for the first time, it worked you over, feeding off you, changing you. If you didn’t have a partition, well, all kinds of things could happen. Second, it just wasn’t aggressive enough. We hadn’t even bothered to partition most of the people going in.

The mist folded around me and I kept walking, ignoring the feeling of blindness. Within a few moments it began to fade, revealing a long sloping plain of tall grass bordered by woods. A large blue sun hung in the sky, perfectly mirroring the position of our own. It was cooler, and I felt a bit heavier, but otherwise there was little difference.

The Arcus broke through the sky above, manifesting itself high in this world’s atmosphere as it broke through the mist.

“How far out do you think it is?” Tiffany said next to me, startling me. She had sidled up as I examined the Arcus.

“Uh,” I said, surprised. “It’s hard to say.” I pointed at the Arcus. “It looks like it landed just on the border. Probably a mile or two out.” I paused. “I’m sorry, where did you come from?”

“Conrad snagged us some seats in one of the trucks, but I’m pretty sure that’s just so he can follow Diana around. I thought I’d come over and try to figure you out.”

“Uh huh,” I said, skeptical. “You could be riding in the truck with all the rest, but you’d rather walk to the Arcus with me?”

“Sure,” she replied. “How do you expect this to go?”

I shrugged. “Hard to say. Everything I’ve scraped together is myth and superstition.”

“Same with us,” she said, though I didn’t buy that for a second. “What do you think
though?”

“The main thing I’m concerned about is heading in the wrong direction,” I said. “Most of the fatalities I read about came from blindly following it in a straight line. A lot of people wasted time or went into places best left alone. I think if we can predict its origin we’ll be halfway done.”

That’s what I hoped anyway.

“Well,” she said, taking a moment to think on that. “I just wanted to know that I’m glad you’re here. I’ve heard quite a bit about you. I really couldn’t think of anyone better.”

I frowned. “What’s this about?”

She smiled.
“There are still some people in the Guild who think you were put in a shit position and did your best.”

“Well, I appreciate that,” I said. “But don’t believe that one damn bit.”

“What?”

“I’m a Sorcerer
. My magic is unbound!” I widened my eyes in mock fear and wiggled my fingers. “Just the way things are, and always have been.”

“You were in the Guild,” she said. “What did you think about Sorcery when you were a Wizard? Did you hate them then?”

“Didn’t have a whole lot of time,” I said. “I volunteered right out of the Tower, and by the time the war was over they were throwing us at anything to make as much money as possible.” I thought about it. “No, not really. But then, my grandfather had been a Sorcerer so maybe I just had the right perspective.”

“Well,” she said, “how many other Wizards do you think came from that background?”

“Not enough,” I said.

“My daddy was a Sorcerer,” she said. “And he hated me for joining the Guild.”

I hadn’t met many who could attest to that type of upbringing, but I knew it happened. “Well, thank you.”

We made it to the base of the Arcus within a few hours. Thick woodlands separated us from it, so the heavier trucks held us back. Luckily, several others, including Lambros, James, and Dorne, had taken jeeps to get there ahead of us.