Defilers curse, p.56
Defiler's Curse, page 56
part #8 of The Magician's Brother Series
Cassandra and Demise both rolled their eyes.
“And what’s to stop them arresting me?”
“For what?” I asked.
“Anything they bloody like! It’s not like I have a lot of friends out there!”
“And whose fault is that?”
“Yours!”
“Oh. Right.”
“And while we’re on that topic... was that you who took Yoruba from his palace?”
“Why would you ask that?” I said innocently.
“I knew it. You destroyed a beautiful empire, Graves!”
“Yes... it was rather a good bit of work, wasn’t it?”
“No! It was utterly destructive!”
“Well... Black Magic. It was a bit of an influence.”
“If I don’t get to use that as an excuse than neither do you!”
“I didn’t agree to that.”
“Figures,” he grumbled.
Chapter 75
I called Hellstrom. I left her somewhat conflicted.
On the one hand she was ecstatic that we were down one existential threat, but on the other, she wasn’t happy that not only did we still have another one to deal with (a potentially worse one) but that there was no point in arresting the previous one, seeing as how there was no fair court that would convict him. He also had Sovereign Immunity when committing those crimes... if you could actually define anything he’d done that way. That, too, was annoying.
For my part, I had no idea what to do with the man. I wanted justice of some sort, but what the hell did that mean?
Was he the same man he’d been before I’d stabbed him?
No. I hated to admit it, but no. I certainly wasn’t.
So, what did that mean for that justice I wanted?
Damned if I knew.
At any rate, Rerek was now in SCA custody, with a lawyer (hadn’t even had to ask. Hellstrom simply arranged it) and he was now, officially, someone else’s problem.
With any luck at all, that would be the last I’d see of the sort-of bastard.
Ha.
After dropping him off at the Conclave, I went home. I was exhausted and frustrated, but also so relieved. I still felt odd, my mood strange. But at least that mood wasn’t one of nearly homicidal rage. That was progress. God, it felt good to be just pain, old miffed again. To be able to be annoyed without wanting to kill or maim.
I stepped through a Portal and back into Clarion. As the cool air of the lobby washed over me, I let out a sigh of pure relief.
Even with everything we still had to sort out, the world was a brighter place.
“Alright, we’re alone. What the hell, Graves?!” Orpheus barked, startling me. “What the hell happened to you back there? You’re all different again!”
I did my best to explain what had happened from my perspective. I wasn’t going to do that when Rerek was around. That was none of his business.
Cassandra stepped up to me and looked me over again. She’d been doing that since my signet came back, but now it became intense, deep and probing, with Magic involved. I let her.
She looked for quite a while.
Then she blinked.
Then she burst into tears and yanked me off the ground into a hug that threatened to squeeze the life out of me.
“Air! Air!” I complained as she sobbed onto my shoulder.
She squeezed harder.
“Good grief woman, there is very little practical difference!” I wheezed.
“Shut up. You know that’s not true!”
“I swear you people are quite mad,” Orpheus grumbled. Demise patted his shoulder again.
Eventually Cassandra put me down and wiped her eyes.
“I never believed it. A Black Magician who isn’t... wrong. Well, any more wrong than he started anyway.”
“Hey!”
She laughed and started hugging me again.
“That’s hot,” Tethys said, suddenly right behind Cassandra, causing my Warden Commander to fling me away so hard that I actually left the ground for a second there.
My Shadows caught me, though.
So good to have those back, have I mentioned that?
“Thank you, Tethys,” I said to my girlfriend, giving her a glare to which she returned a grin.
Warmth flooded through me. My emotions were still burning hotter than they had (quite a bit hotter), but they weren’t as uncontrollable as before. Rerek put it best; I felt more human. Less like a twisted caricature of one. What had ruined him, completed me. What sort of a weirdo did that make me?
Tethys came over to wrap me up in a hug that flooded my nose with her scent and made me light headed as she kissed me gently.
“Welcome back, Love,” she said meaningfully, her voice shaking slightly. I’d had a phone line open to her when I’d explained things to Hellstrom; the rest she’d learned from skulking, no doubt.
“Thank you,” I said with a smile that had her blushing.
“Now, tell me everything. Spare no detail. Did he cry? Crap himself? Tell!”
I laughed. I hadn’t really described how the knife had come to find itself lodged in a part of Rerek’s anatomy to Hellstrom.
Was I ashamed of what I’d done? I had been somewhat despicable there.
Nah.
“I still can’t believe you did that,” Orpheus grumbled once I’d finished telling Tethys. “Literally while his back was turned.”
“Well... it is the safest way,” I replied.
Four groans. One of them may have been somewhat different, but I didn’t want to look too closely at Demise in that moment...
“Oh what? I’d already beaten him fair and square two times, I was done with that,” I complained.
“How was anything you did fair and square?” Orpheus asked. “You ambushed him twice and then literally stabbed him in the back.”
“Butt, the butt! There’s a difference!”
“Not a big one.”
“Cassie, someone else is ruining it for me, do something.”
“I would, but I smell dinner,” she said, walking past me towards the dining room.
I harrumphed. Orpheus grinned and followed, Demise hot on their heels.
I stayed with Tethys, her fingers intertwined with mine.
“You feel better,” she said gently.
“How?” I asked with a smile as she turned to hold me.
“Lighter.” She put a hand on my back, between my shoulders. “The knot’s gone.”
I smiled and held her close.
“I can’t explain it,” she said, “but you really do feel like Mathew, again. I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference before, but now... I know that I was always a little tense around you. A prey-response, now that I’m looking back on it. I don’t feel like that anymore.”
“Good?”
“Very. And never put yourself in a position like that again.”
“It wasn’t like I did it on purpose!”
“I don’t know... this is exactly the sort of elaborate, convoluted plan you’d come up with. You did end up with indescribable power, vast wealth and the girl...”
I whistled innocently, earning me a prod in the side.
I kissed her.
“Think you can distract me with your manly wiles do you?” she whispered. “Well, I’m onto you, Graves.”
“Too late, Love,” I growled, making her giggle, “the plan has already succeeded. Surrender to the inevitable.”
“Never, you beast...”
“Good grief, you have a room!” Cassandra barked, startling us both.
I turned to glare. My friend just smirked.
“Come and have dinner, idiot,” she said, “you haven’t eaten since this morning.”
“Yes, Mother,” I said with a sigh, drawing Tethys with me towards the food, smiling all the while.
It was as if a black cloud had been following me and now was gone.
Hell, the only thing that was still really bothering me... bothering me...
Oh God.
Zion.
“Matty?” Tethys said, concern in her voice as I stumbled to a halt, went white... then green.
I looked around desperately for a receptacle and all I could find was a potted fern.
Oh so much vomit...
“What’s wrong?” Tethys said between heaves.
I shook my head, then shoved it back in the pot.
“What the hell, Graves?! I loved that fern!” Cassandra complained.
I tried to swear at her, but it coincided with another wave of nausea, so it didn’t quite have the effect I was going for.
Tethys rubbed my back while Cassandra came over to kneel next to me.
Finally, there was nothing left and I slumped against the wall, casting the usual Spells to get rid of the mess (and more importantly, the smell).
“What was that in aid of?” Cassandra asked with a raised eyebrow. “I know it wasn’t food poisoning, you were immune to disease even before you became a Black Magic monster.”
Oh, that just reminded me again...
I dry-heaved a couple more times, which could not have been attractive.
I breathed carefully, trying hard not to think about what I’d done.
Naturally Cassandra wouldn’t let me.
“Come on. Out with it. We don’t have all day,” she nagged.
I shook my fist at her half-heartedly, but it didn’t work.
“Zion,” I finally answered. “What I did to Zion.”
Her eyes lit up, but she tried to be casual about it.
“And?” she said with a shrug as she started to twitch.
How the hell could I tell them this?
Slowly, that was the way. Ease them into it...
“Well, you know how he’d joined Namia’s little group of fanatics?”
“Yes? Yes?!”
Tethys was squeezing my hand rather hard. The gleam in her eyes told me that she’d wanted to know as much as Cassandra had, but she’d had the good grace not to ask.
“Well, their symbol is the Ouroboros.”
“We know this, Matty, get to the point.”
“I am,” I said, looking away. “I figured that if he liked snakes so much, I should just help him get closer to them. So I used the Black... and I adjusted his biology.”
“You turned him into a snake?!” Cassandra gushed, biting her lip.
“Not as such. I integrated his arms into his chest, fused his legs together, reshaped and elongated the torso and neck, dissolved some bones so that he was a human with the basic shape of a snake. No scales or fangs or anything.”
“Damn... that’s rather awesome.”
“Not done.”
Tethys was starting to look a little green herself. She’d got there already.
“Oh?” Cassandra said. “What could be better than that?!”
“Well, the Ouroboros isn’t just a snake. It’s a snake that eats its own tail...”
It took her a minute, but Cassie got it.
“Seriously?” she gasped.
I nodded.
“I lobotomised him so he couldn’t speak or communicate with a Telepath, added some rapid-regeneration so he couldn’t die, then some mental commands... and I left him to it.”
The pair of them blinked at me for a while.
“Wow,” Cassandra said softly after a bit.
“Yikes,” Tethys added.
“Well... that sounds about right to me,” Cassandra said after a while.
“It does? How?” I asked. “Even for me, that is some pretty evil stuff!”
“Well, he did kill one of ours,” Cassandra said with a shrug. “I can’t think of anything worse than what you did to him, or I’d have suggested that instead. Works for me.”
Tethys nodded, squeezing my hand gently.
Everyone had liked Rodger.
“I was expecting a lot more in the way of being carted off to the loony bin,” I said.
“There’s a reason why justice is supposed to be impartial, Mathew,” Cassandra said. “But since it wasn’t, far better that the job be done properly. No half-measures.”
“Was rather thorough, wasn’t it?” I said.
“That may well be the ultimate fate worse than death,” Cassandra said. “Or top ten anyway. I’m fine with this.”
“I... I’m not sure I am,” I said.
“Well... that’s because you’re a great big doily.”
She smiled and cupped my cheek, her eyes wet again.
“And it’s good to have our doily back.”
She leaned her head against mine.
“That wasn’t really a compliment.”
She chuckled. “Do what you have to do, Mathew. If there’s one thing I can rely on, it’s that you’ll do the right thing. More or less. Eventually.”
I grinned and got to my shaky feet. I saw Demise leaning against the frame of the door leading to the dining room. She was flushed, biting her lip; her eyes were lidded and her legs were trembling.
“Wow... that is just disturbing,” Tethys said, seeing the same thing, “and that’s coming from me.”
I shook my head, resuming my trek towards the food.
I was going to have to do something about Zion. But that was a problem for another day. A bit more suffering would do him good.
That aside, I really felt like we were on the home stretch, that everything really was going to be okay.
Which, in retrospect, was stupid.
As much as I may have preferred otherwise, Hellstrom wasn’t willing to just let me slink back to my normal, anonymous, way of doing things. I was now the Archon. Nominally the one in charge of Magical civilisation. I won’t bore you with the details, but she had me in meetings for two days after that, rebuilding confidence and restoring the status quo, during which I did my best to dump as much of the responsibility on her as I possibly could.
I likely increased her personal power and prestige considerably, but if there was one person I trusted in the political arena, it was her.
She made me give half a dozen speeches in four different Conclaves, which I loathed at the best of times. I just couldn’t get out of it. Let me tell you, aside from Cassandra and my mother, I’d never met anyone who could lay a guilt-trip as well as Arianna Hellstrom.
But, by the time I was done, the Conclaves were coming back into line, and there weren’t any overly-loud mutters about Black Magic, so she clearly knew what she was doing.
I was rather astonished by how well I was received. The British Conclave actually cheered me in. Even the others I visited were glad to see me. That was almost certainly just happiness over a return to stability, to normality. Councillors and statesmen who’d only grudgingly had me in their countries before welcomed me with open arms. More than a few men and women who’d railed against my very existence in the past had hugged me and welcomed me ‘home’.
Politics...
Anyway, things were starting to shape up a little. Yoruba was neutralised... rather permanently (still annoyed that I hadn’t been the one to deal with that. The whole thing felt anticlimactic). The African Council was consolidating before electing a new Triumvir, so they weren’t going to be a problem for a while, and that was before Hellstrom’s P.R. campaign told everyone that I was back and wanted the status quo restored. After that, the African Council started doing their best impressions of church mice.
Rerek was cooling his heels in ‘protective custody’ and the Wardens’ Garrison was being reinforced by the day with new volunteers. The Conclaves who’d wavered had seen which way the wind was blowing and wanted to pretend they’d supported us all along.
So, we had two issues left. Crafting materials...
And Ankiala.
She seemed to have gone quiet. No Snakes, no Hosts, nothing. But I knew that she was preparing for something, marshalling her resources. It was now a matter of who would get to finish their work first; her or me.
Chapter 76
“So, would you like the good news or the bad news?” I asked Cassandra a few days after handing Rerek over. She was sprawled over a sofa in my library, pretending to watch the Rugby. No doubt she hoped I wouldn’t notice the graphic novel she’d tried to hide under the sofa when I walked in.
“Good news,” she said with a sigh.
“We’re going for a little walk.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“You don’t like going for walks. You object to what you once described as the ‘unholy trek’ between your bedroom and the kitchen.”
“I like going to libraries,” I said innocently.
“I don’t like the way you’re saying these things. Makes me think you’re up to no good.”
“You wound me.”
“Really? What’s the bad news, then?”
“We’re off to the Archive,” I said with an ingratiating smile.
She groaned. “Not again!”
“You don’t even know what I had in mind!”
“Oh yes I do. You want to steal that damned book again!”
“Is ‘steal’ really the word?”
“Yes!”
“Technically, I have the authority to remove any article from the Archive that I see fit.”
“Oh sure, use the rules against me!”
I chuckled and sat next to her. “She belongs here. With us.”
Cassandra grumbled, crossing her arms and pouting. “I guarded that book for seventy years, Mathew. It was my goal in life to keep it away from Black Magicians.”
“Yes... and now that I’ve tricked you into my service, ultimate power will soon be mine. Just as I always planned,” I said sinisterly.
She went white.
I couldn’t hold my evil expression, though and burst out laughing, earning me a thump.
“You arse! I peed a little!”
“You are so easy!”
“Oh, I’ll give you easy, you little bastard!” she growled before leaping at me and yanking on some rather sensitive things.
“Uncle! Uncle!” I gasped as she got my arm up behind my back.
“No, I think you need more pain.”
“I disagree!”
She snorted and let me go, shaking her head.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “I shouldn’t have fallen for that. I do know better.”
“If anyone’s earned a minute to get used to this,” I said, gesturing at myself, “it’s you.”
