Sorcerer Rising (A Virgil McDane Novel) (48 page)

Until I tired of this charade. I threw off the shackles of the primitive, shoving Virgil aside. It was all well and good for him to grow, but not if that meant dying to a colony of squid. I could hear Algernon screaming, but I ignored him as well.

The primitive frowned, unable to pass through the barrier I had put in place. I shrugged off his slimy grip, pulling Virgil to his feet. The primitive shrieked, furious apparently at my success in throwing off his grasp. He waved his hand and I felt the world swirl around me. It was really impressive the control they had over the Aether.

Impressive, but flawed.

“Impossible!” he screamed, his mind flowing over me like raindrops against a brick wall.

I shrugged off his control
, grabbing him by the head and touching his face to mine. Virgil and his tricks. They were amusing. Now it was time I showed what a true mage could do, the power of a real Sorcerer.

I grabbed a thought, snatching out of the air and driving it into the primitive. He roared and squealed, an animal in death. I let him go when his eyes began to melt. When he dropped to the ground
, his sockets were two pits, the bone burnt black, blue mist leaking from his charred brain.

I ignored the other islander as it tortured the Guild scum. That was not my concern.

In the distance, I could make out more of the islanders running toward me. This would need to be quick. I took a step toward the Arcus, examining its structure. I had theorized such a construct, but had not thought it practical. That they would put so much of their resources toward such a wasteful endeavor was distasteful. And dangerous.

They had been looking for worlds though, searching Virgil’s mind for his knowledge of the Aether, pitiful as it was. I smiled. They wanted a wo
rld, so be it.

I would give them one.

I reached out and touched the Arcus, tapping into its power source. It was a simple construct, a channeling of all the Aether of this world into a bridge that could breach the mist and bring them where they desired.

I focused, reading the Arcus through my fingertips. I had the distinct vision of the beam cutting up through the cave, traveling thousands of miles. Right now it was in a cloud somewhere in China, their retched little henchman doing their work on another world.

With a thought, I changed the Arcus’ direction, back to Africa, looking for the world I wanted. The beam honed in on the cloud, barren and burning ever since Virgil’s tantrum. I directed the beam straight through the mist, down into the world, falling right in the center of the collapsed tower.

In a corner, deep within a shadow, eight eyes blinked open, the
Arcus’ light shining off black, glossy carapace, highlighting a red hourglass.

My reasoning for not using such a ridiculous construct as this? First it was wasteful. They were channeling nearly all of the cloud’s power into it. Second, it was weakness. They used it to go to and fro, to snatch things that did not belong to them. To secret in and out of places all over the world.

It was a gateway, and gateways swung both ways.

I made the adjustments, reversed the flow, and clamped all of Virgil’s power down on the root of the construct.

Then I gripped my hand and ripped it straight out of the sky.

The world rumbled as the Arcus dissolved, fusing Nidia to this world. The sky above began to crumble, cloud cover coming down in an avalanche of Aetherial mist.

I laughed. I needed to get Virgil back his control, but first I would need to meet with him. He was moving too slow, and that fool Algernon was not helping.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT

I woke up in my mind
. I knew it was my mind because everything was covered in ash. I closed my eyes, waiting for the pain to pass. After a moment, I sat up and looked around.

I was sitting in a cave of sorts. It was rough, sharp stone. A single entrance and a stark cliff yawned out further.

How had I gotten here? Last I remembered, I had been in front of the Arcus, Ectan’s slippery fingers wrapped around my head. Then…Then what happened?

“About time you woke up,” Al said. He was sitting across from me, his back against a rock, blending into the shadows. “You’ve been out for a while.”

“What?” I asked. “Where are we? What’s going on?”

“No idea,” he replied. “You were under an assault and then it just stopped. Some serious power intervened. As for where, well, don’t you recognize it?”

I stood up and looked around. It was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Everything seemed to be in the corner of my vision, just out of sight.

I made my way to the mouth. The cliff stared down into a cloud of ash and smoke. Other than that it was hard to place. The ash obscured everything. The walls of the cliff went on for miles, in a ring.

In a ring.

I looked down and
my breath caught in my throat. The ash wasn’t coming down. It was floating up. Up from the dead mouth of the source of my power.

Mulciber
.

I shivered. For years I had searched for it. It represented everything that was my magic, the power behind it. The source.

The ground shook beneath my feet and light flashed from within the smoke and ash. I took a deep breath as a surge of energy washed through me. The mind was a tricky thing. This represented myself and my outside world, but at the same time by making it real, essential for any mage, I could affect myself by affecting it.

And as far as I could tell, it was rumbling. In a way I hadn’t heard in a long time.
             

Since the Guild and their
Brand.

Since Nidia.

“You can thank me later,” I heard behind me, interrupting my thoughts.

I spun around, looking into the dark tunnel. Al looked back at m
e, fear in his eyes. The tunnel suddenly lit up as dozens of torches sprang to life.

Standing in the tunnel not ten feet away was a tall, thin man. He was pale, almost sickly so, and his dark, slightly grayed hair, was tied in a short tail. His dress was out of place, colonial garb of black and silver. A smart looking pilgri
m’s hat was perched on his head. Electric blue eyes sparkled behind an ancient pair of spectacles sitting on a sharp, prominent nose. A long cloak, covered in black fur was wrapped around his shoulders and he wore black leather gloves and boots. A smile of bright white teeth shone out from the shadow of his hat’s brim.

“Who are you?” I asked, wishing more than anything I had a weapon.

“A benefactor,” he replied. “Someone who wishes to see you succeed.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence,” I
said. “But that wasn’t what I meant.”

“I know,” he replied. “But it doesn’t matter who I am. Only that I wish to help and have the power to do so.”

“Why should we believe you want to help?” Al asked. “Or that you can?”

The pilgrim’s smile dimmed, his eyes growing cold. “Quiet, familiar. This is between your betters.” He turned back to me. “For years you have toiled under the false notion that the Guild neutered you. Am I correct?”

“They did,” I said. “They took everything I had.”

“And that they did,” the pilgrim said. “Stole your knowledge, exiled you from their ranks. They ruined your mountain here, accused you of malevolence with your power.”

“Yes and no,” I replied.

“How so?” he asked.

“They stole my rooms, my knowledge,” I replied. “The damage to my keep, the wasteland, that was a side effect, the trauma of having your memories yanked out of your head.”

“You’re correct on some of that,” he said. “Touching the Aether,
Mulciber’s cooling, that was you.” He smiled again. “But what if the damage wasn’t a side effect, but on purpose?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” I said. “Not enough to take everything they taught me, might as well kick me while I’m down.”

“And what if they didn’t take anything?” the pilgrim asked.

I shivered, remembering
what the dragon’s revenant had said.

You’re power cannot be taken.

“Exactly,” the pilgrim said, throwing me a bundle.

I caught it, realizing as I did that it was my key ring.

“How did you get these?” I asked. Nothing, and I mean
nothing
, should have been able to get into my partition without my knowing.

“Again,” he said, “It doesn’t matter. What matters is what they go to.”

“The doors are gone,” I said. “Lost.”

He laughed, a rough, disturbing noise that made my hair stand on end. “Yet you never looked outside.” He turned around and the rest of the tunnel lit up.

I gasped. Standing against the rock was a tall, arched doorway. The arch was made from maple, a brilliant fiery red. The soot wafting up from below didn’t touch the wood. The door itself was made of heavy oak with a knob of brass. Inscribed on the door was the sigil of the Guild, the compass.

I walked past the pilgrim. Without even looking, I shook the key from the ring, the one made from loose
, compacted soil. I slid it into the door and turned it.

A light breeze blew across my face, and just like that I remembered.

I walked into the room, laying eyes on secrets that I couldn’t believe I had forgotten. The core of our magic, of the Guild’s magic. The Map Room, the place in which one explored and charted their mind.

My map room was small and compact, different than Dorne’s. Shelves lined the walls, circling the room in an oval. Books, scrolls, and other documents littered the shelves chaotically. In the center stood a table upon which was a navigator’s map.

Upon the table lay two pieces of wood.

I sobbed, picking my shattered staff off the table. I joined the Guild when I was sixteen, against my father’s wishes. I had forgone life as a Sorcerer, my grandfather’s trade, and as a mechanic, his own trade, everything he knew, and chosen the life his brother in law had held. I chose exploration and wealth, the life of a merchant mage.

And he had given me my staff. Had carved it from his favorite tree in their own backyard. It was oak, rich with color, prepared by his own hand with the care and precision of a man who never accepted anything but his very best. He had handed it to me the day I went into the Ben’s Charterhouse.

Only a few years later, Ben had broken it over his knee.

How could I not have remembered that?

Al was standing next to me, shaky hands playing over the map, over the staff. For all
intents and purposes, it was his dad too. His map.

“They stole this from you,” the pilgrim said, suddenly standing across from the table. “The Guild cast you out, locked away your rooms. Shattered your staff. Ruined you.” He picked up one of the pieces of the staff. “I have shown you the way, Wizard. A gift.” He snarled, and for a moment I was more afraid of this man than anything I had seen on this trip. Anything in my life. “Now use it!”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He threw the staff at me. “I shouldn’t be showing you this,” he replied, the geniality draining from him. “You should have found it yourself.”

“I did everything I could,” I said.

He laughed bitterly. “You gave up like a simpering child. Accepted the lie, allowed them to sell you a farce.” He pointed past me. “That is the dead fire of a man who gave up. Had you done as you were supposed to, you would have found this room and all the others they hid. You would have awoken your power and stamped out the weakness that kept it cold in the first place.”

“Whoa!” I said. “What weakness?”

He sneered. “You have wallowed in your own self-pity for far too long, Virgil. Did you think you were the only one to be cast from the Guild, that they were the only path to power?”

I was dumbstruck. “You don’t know anything about what I have had to do-”

“Silence,” he said, holding up a hand. “I cannot hear any more of it. You did little and even then you were squeamish about your means. None of that is important.” He glared at me. “What is important is how you let it fester, a parasite in your mind. And then you claimed it as power!”

He nearly spat that last word and that was when I got it.

BlackThorn.

Weakness. Bitterness. Everything I had pent up over the years. This was the mind made real, and he was failure made flesh.

I felt, more than heard, the deep raking rasp of his laughter. My heart sank, images flashing before me. I had hated everything, my uncle and the Guild above all else. And I had let that weigh me down, drain me, poison me. I had called up BlackThorn, used him as a talisman, because that’s what I had been doing ever since Nidia.

Fuck. That.

The ground rumbled beneath me, the smell of sulfur and fire and raw, molten earth, and the energy that propelled all that, enough to shift continents, to destroy cities.

To burn worlds.

I took a deep breath, my vision crystalizing, energy flooding through my muscles. I took up the pieces of my staff, placing them together. I focused my mind and the pieces mended together, forming a whole staff.