Dark apprentice, p.25
Dark Apprentice, page 25
Waves crashed mercilessly against the rocks, as he would crash mercilessly against any who opposed him. For a moment the thrill of raw power held his fascination, then he began to see the folly of it all. The rocks were impenetrable. They took no more note of the waves beating against them than the birds overhead. Foolish to think he could make any headway against systems that had been in place for thousands of years. He was little more than a mangy cur yapping at the heels of fate and kicked aside just as easily.
With a twinge, he recognized the encroaching thoughts weren’t his own, and yet he couldn’t stop them. They overwhelmed his mind, stripping him of every last shred of confidence. He would do nothing and become nothing. He would die and be forgotten. Medea had been right not to learn his name. Who was he to insist anyone take notice of him?
Nikolai sank to his knees and a dry sob erupted. No point in going on. He was Useless; he understood that now. Better to tumble onto the rocks below than continue his miserable existence. He groped toward the edge, hands grasping dried grass. One second and it would all be over.
Pain shot through his index finger. Nikolai yelped and pulled back his hand. Something green came with it, clamped on like a vise with a serrated red edge. He shook his hand violently and watched the green thing flutter. A bird.
The parrot released his hand only to fly at his face. He swatted at it, but the damned thing kept coming. Claws scratched and wings pummeled his eyes. Nikolai shielded his face with one arm and scrambled backward until the attack ceased.
He sat panting in the grass several meters from the cliff edge. The bird landed on the ground and glared at him with pinpointed eyes. Had he disturbed a nest? When he moved, it opened its mouth and lunged. He looked around for a rock to throw but there were none, and the malaise, which had momentarily retreated, crept back.
Couldn’t even defend himself against a bird. Worthless, stupid . . .
Nikolai got up and stumbled toward the hovel. He probably wouldn’t make it, but at least he could put some distance between himself and the cliff’s tantalizing promise of release.
22
THE DUNGEON
Medea stepped into the crisp evening air and made her way to the graveyard. Dark nights were perfect for scraping lichen off tombstones. When she first moved to the island, she’d seeded it with as many useful plants as would grow in the natural climate. She knelt in the damp grass by the mausoleum and pulled out her collection tools. A moan interrupted her gentle scraping.
Around the corner of the mausoleum she found Nikolai sprawled in the grass; the ambient magic of the island must have concealed his presence from her senses. Dew soaked through his clothes, causing him to shiver in his sleep. Had he spent all night out here? She’d blocked off the cave to keep him from drowning, a gesture that seemed pointless now. The curse could just as easily drown him in the bathtub or cause him to die of exposure. Maybe not here, but elsewhere certainly. Without treatment, it would hang over him the rest of his life. Nikolai’s leg twitched and he shuddered. Even though he deserved this punishment, it was difficult to see him so.
Medea scanned his brain and found the curse dormant; the least she could do was wake him up. She conjured a ball of light and nudged Nikolai with her foot. He didn’t stir, so she knelt and gripped his shoulder, giving it a vigorous shake. His eyes fluttered open and he glanced about, disoriented.
“What are you doing out here?” she asked, berating herself for the stupidity of asking a question to which they both knew the answer.
“Oh, you know, just chatting with the dead.” He sat up and patted the mausoleum wall. “You won’t teach me necromancy, so I thought I’d go to the source.”
There was an edge to his words. Was he serious? She couldn’t tell. Who knew what they taught at the Academy? She erred on the side of caution. “You can’t learn necromancy that way.”
“I know.” He rose stiffly and straightened his jacket. “It’s this new thing called a joke. You might’ve come across them in your reading.”
“I know what a joke is.” She paused and grinned, adding her own. “I work with one every day.”
Attempting to puncture Nikolai’s overinflated ego had become one of her favorite pastimes. He could do to learn a little humility. Alas, his ego proved to be as impenetrable as her shields, and he brushed aside her casual barbs and jests like they were nothing.
Until now.
Fury flashed across his face. Her smile faltered and she took an involuntary step back. What had she done? Fear paralyzed her, not the fear of facing an enemy of great skill, but something even worse, something she hadn’t felt since she’d last had friends—the fear of causing irreparable damage to a relationship.
“Sorry . . . I didn’t mean—”
“Yes you did.”
“No, I . . .” She scrambled to find the words to make everything better, to assure him she didn’t think him a joke. He needed something. There had to be a magic word or phrase that could fix this, but such a skill had always lain beyond her capabilities. If she’d upset anyone else, she could have asked him for advice on what to say, but as he was the upset party . . .
The sight of blood on his jacket momentarily distracted her. “What happened to your hand?” she blurted out. Physical wounds were something she could fix.
“Nothing,” he said stiffly.
Nikolai walked toward the hovel, leaving her alone with her guilt.
Nikolai slammed the hovel door and strode to his room. Blood splattered his jacket—probably ruined—and his clothes stank of sweat. With his good hand, he grabbed a set of clean clothes from his armoire and went to the bathroom. He turned on the shower, stripped, and examined the throbbing, ruddy mess that was his bitten hand. The sink tinged pink as he ran it under the tap, reigniting stinging pain. The wound was superficial; nothing a potion couldn’t heal. He retrieved one from his pouch and took a sip, testing the shower water as the wound closed—still cold. Despite the modern plumbing, the water always took forever to warm.
He gazed at his reflection as he waited. He tried to keep himself in good condition, well muscled without being too bulky. His mother’s Turkish heritage blessed him with the appearance of a slight natural tan. Even with his efforts to eat more when feeling well, his ribs and cheekbones were too prominent, and his skin had taken on a sallow cast. Still handsome, but that was beside the point—he wasn’t in top form, and his health continued to be affected by the malaise.
The Roman chamomile—his last hope for a potion remedy—had failed, and he’d nearly killed himself on the cliffs. Not only that, a pattern was making itself painfully clear—the malaise tended to strike when he was doing well, making big plans, or enjoying himself. It didn’t always strike at those times, but it never struck when he was doing something boring or unimportant, and the effect seemed proportionally worse the better he was doing, ranging from general apathy and lack of energy to predilections for suicide.
Conditional spells—magic that only activated under set conditions—could do that, and Medea had already demonstrated her prowess with them. The letter addressed to Petrov had been enchanted not only to blind anyone beside the addressee reading it but also to give multiple warnings. If he hadn’t been so pissed off at being on the receiving end, he would have admired the spell for the work of art that it was. Shame Medea wasn’t teaching him that instead of making him boil water and levitate stones.
The spell afflicting him now seemed no less complex. He had to hand it to her, it was a pretty good way to keep apprentices in line. But the long-term ramifications were unacceptable. What if it struck when he was about to make a discovery? While he was giving a speech? Fighting an enemy? Any time he made any headway, the spell could activate and bring him to a staggering halt.
Given his appearance, the spell likely did more than squelch his spirit. The malaise left him weak and weary. Either she was draining his youth, or she was transferring her age onto him. She’d see how much of a “joke” he was when he killed her.
Steam billowed from the shower. Nikolai stepped inside and considered the problem before him. What he needed was information. If Medea had any living apprentices, he needed to speak with them and find out what they knew about the affliction. It was a fair bet she had one or two ex-apprentices stashed in the dungeon. Why else keep it locked? To get in, he’d have to learn ward-breaking.
In the meantime, he would probe Medea for more names. The woman had a weakness for lectures. Her conceit drove her to talk ad nauseam when asked about magic, but the same didn’t hold true for other topics. If he could find a way to phrase the question just right, he might be able to get her talking about people she’d trained. If there were none living, he’d have to settle for dead. From what he could recall from the Academy, contacting the dead was tricky. He’d have to check the library for a séance spell.
It was past time he checked Medea for vulnerabilities. A direct attack would be suicide. He was a damn good duelist, but not that good, not yet. Poison might give him an edge, but someone else must have tried it by now. He needed a susceptibility test. Not on the island—she’d suspect him immediately—but perhaps in a Magi town, where an assassination attempt was more likely to come from someone else.
When he did kill her, he desperately hoped there’d be an opportunity to tell her before she died, as he had with Petrov, when she no longer had a chance to stop it. He wanted to see the look in her eyes when she found out it was him. That after a millennium of countless assassination attempts, it was he, Nikolai Fedorov, who’d bested her.
Nikolai studied the blue rune on the dungeon door and cast Magic Sight. A slender golden tendril appeared, running from the rune to the door handle. The ward was too simple, almost like Medea expected him to be able to break it. All he’d have to do was sever the magical golden line.
He placed his cheek flat against the door, searching for hidden traces of magic. There. A transparent thread, finer than spider’s silk, ran from the rune all the way across the lab and through the opposite door, probably to Medea. If he cut the obvious golden tendril and opened the door, the clear thread would notify Medea. The only way to bypass the clear thread without triggering it was to use a counter spell.
For once, Medea’s library had been Useful in that regard. He’d come across an ungodly number of books devoted to the technique in his search for ward breaking. Counter spells used something called resonance, which involved hitting a spell with identical-yet-stronger magic. Somehow this would disrupt the spell and cause it to fall apart.
Due to their nature, counter spells were virtually impossible to create on the fly, as each only targeted one thing. The counter spell for Pummel couldn’t be used for Fireball. Not only that, individual Magi could have slightly different variations to their spells, so what worked for Harry might not work for Jane. This was especially true if they didn’t use “standard” spells or wands. Medea’s insistence on wandless magic made a lot more sense in this context. No one could counter her spells if they were unique.
Technically, he could counter her ward, given that it was sitting there, not winging toward him mid-duel. But that could take hours of careful observation as he tried to piece together the nature of the spell, and a single failed attempt would no doubt alert Medea.
Nikolai traced the golden tendril with his finger, trying to sense what exactly the ward did. On closer inspection, it disappeared into the locking mechanism. At some signal from Medea, it would unlock. The clear thread would be triggered if the door was unlocked, or if the handle compressed enough to indicate the door had been opened.
The hinges, on the other hand, were free of magic.
After a bit of oil and telekinetic coaxing, he managed to remove the pins holding the door hinges in place. He wiggled the door slowly out of its frame—thankfully age had warped the wood, leaving a bit of a gap for his fingers—and propped it against the wall, ward undisturbed.
A circular flight of stairs vanished into darkness. He summoned a bit of flame into his hand and crossed the threshold. The momentary reflection of light was his only warning. On the second step, at knee height, a black thread glistened. Trap or alert system, he couldn’t tell. He stepped over it and carefully descended, straining to make out other threads.
As the stairs curved away from the light of the doorway above, crystals embedded in the ceiling sprang to life, emitting a faint glow that extended the reach of his own flickering flame. Halfway down he found another thread of magic, this one at chest height. He ducked under it and continued. The air grew chilly and the stairwell seemed to muffle every sound. At the base of the stairs was another thread at neck height. Their placement was puzzling. Together, all three threads could have formed a reasonable barrier, but placed separately as they were, he had no trouble avoiding each.
The stairs opened to a cavernous room walled with stone. Crystals above glowed as Nikolai entered. It smelled like a cellar, stale and dusty, with a hint of something else, something intangible.
Misery.
An indented stone table lay front and center. Leather restraints dangled from its sides. The surface was pocked with strategic holes leading to a collection trough below. He caressed the cool stone and drank in the rest of the room.
Worktables. Wooden and clean, though worn from centuries of use. Shackles. A rack sporting knives and other cruel instruments. Rectangular doors, as one might see in a morgue for storing bodies, and just beyond them, a large oven. It was beautiful. The things he could do here . . .
Despite Medea’s obvious talent, she always scoffed at his interest in dark magic. He’d almost begun to think she didn’t use it. This proved her hypocrisy. Her craft was hidden down here, far from prying eyes.
Shadows stirred to life at the far end of the room. Nikolai grinned and hastened toward a row of cells. He was right, she did have apprentices down here. Iron bars framed each cage, supplemented with an invisible barrier to keep the occupants from reaching out. He approached and peered inside. No beds, no furniture of any kind, not even a bucket for them to shit in.
All the occupants were male, save one. A pitiful lot, most sat with vacant expressions, but a few mumbled or cried. Some appeared quite old. How long had they been here? Or had Medea’s draining spell made them appear older than they were?
The last two cells on the left shone brightly against his senses. Enchantments wove through the bars themselves, the stones lining the walls, everything. Whoever was in there, Medea wanted to make damn sure they didn’t escape.
He rapped the bars on the second to last cell. “Hey. You in there. Are you a former apprentice?”
The man’s head jerked up. His eyes narrowed and he spat in Nikolai’s direction.
“Come now. That’s rude. I’m just here to talk.” He tried the next cell over, but the prisoner just shook his head and turned away.
A cackle came from one of the less enchanted cells.
Nikolai followed the sound to cell number four. “What’s so funny?”
Prisoner number four had long, scraggly white hair and piercing blue eyes. He wagged a finger at Nikolai. “You’re not supposed to be down here.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she hasn’t given you the grand tour yet.”
Nikolai nodded to the last two cells. “Why won’t they talk to me?”
“Can’t.” The man leaned forward and nonchalantly propped his arms against the bars, as if he were conversing with a stranger at a bar instead of from inside a cage. “She cut out their tongues. Doesn’t want them castin’ any spells.”
“And you?”
“I ain’t no wizard.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Who the fuck knows?”
Nikolai peered into his mind. It was calm like a pool of still water. Overwhelming boredom. Annoyance at being held captive. Hope that he could manipulate the kid into releasing him, or at least into killing Medea. That would be funny.
“How long have you been here?”
“Too goddamned long.” He didn’t know, but he’d been much younger when he’d woken up in the cell one day. His hatred of Medea was so intense it ran cold.
“How many apprentices have you met?”
Three. “I’ll tell you if you get rid of this.” The man pressed his palm to the invisible barrier between the bars, unaware that his mind had unknowingly given Nikolai the answer.
“I’ll consider it. What I’d really like to know is if any of them are in these cells.”
No. “Yes. Remove the spell and I’ll tell you which.”
Shit. He’d hoped to find at least one down here. Looks like Medea really did kill them. “It’s not important. What does she do with you all?”
Images of spell experimentation. Occasional blood-draining and harvesting of body parts. Medea did all this without any obvious pleasure, just clinical detachment.
The man sensed he was losing Nikolai’s interest and switched to martyr. “She tortures us! Please. You have to help me!” All a performance, just as Nikolai performed for others. The hatred was real, as was the desire to get out, but the prisoner wasn’t remotely afraid. A man not unlike himself. It took a moment, then the prisoner recognized it too and stopped his pleading. The men assessed each other, one predator to another.
“I’m not removing the shield,” said Nikolai. “You can’t see it, but I can. Which means so can she. Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”
The prisoner spoke to his back. “She’s gonna to kill you.” Speculation based on information he’d gleaned from one chatty, sadistic apprentice. He had no memories of his own to back up the statement. Wherever Medea killed her apprentices, it wasn’t down here.
“She can try.”
“You want an edge, let me out and I’ll help you bring her down.”
As if he needed Mundane help. “I’ll consider it.”
