Death Mage (Prof Croft Book 4) Read online

  After thirty minutes that seemed longer than the flight over the Atlantic, a derelict chapel appeared among some trees. “The turnoff is up here on the right,” I said, squinting past the headlight beams and pointing. “There. The farm is about a kilometer down that drive.”

  Olga pulled in front of the drive and idled. “This is as near as I will go.”

  I almost asked her why before remembering what she’d said about the ghosts. This was the farm she’d been thinking of.

  “Do you mind waiting for me?” I asked.

  She looked at the bills I held toward her. “One hour,” she said at last, accepting them. “Do you have light?”

  I started to nod before realizing my staff wouldn’t work as well in the rain, especially if it started coming down harder. Olga reached beneath her seat and handed me a brick-shaped flashlight. When I snapped it on, shadows sprung over Olga’s face, making her appear sinister.

  “Beware the ghosts,” she said. “You will know them by their whispers.”

  Her words sent a bone-deep chill through me. Gripping the flashlight and my cane, I stepped out of the truck and into the Romanian night.

  I made my way up the drive, rain pattering over a poncho I’d pulled from my pack and slid into. Though it had been more than a decade, I remembered every turn in the dirt drive and even some of the larger trees that bordered it. Toward the end of my training, Lazlo had challenged me to direct force invocations down the winding drive to a target without rustling the leaves. It was as hard as it sounds.

  At the final turn, I stopped and looked out over an open yard that was almost unrecognizable.

  No.

  Olga was right. The place had been decimated by fire, and judging by the weeds growing up through the heaps of charred timber, it had happened a number of years ago. I stepped forward, shining the flashlight over the ruins of the main house and then the barn. The place where Lazlo had helped me to construct my mental prism, to strengthen and hone it, push energy through it … gone.

  Even the fencing that had once penned his beloved horses, Mariana and Mihai, had burned to the ground. My heart thudded sickly in my chest.

  I turned back to where the house had once stood. Though I could see nothing through my wizard’s senses, dark energies seemed to pollute the atmosphere. Perhaps my own sense of foreboding. Far away in the mountains, wolf cries echoed.

  They think he was inside house, Olga had said. In cellar.

  I drew my sword and aimed it at the hill of ruins. “Vigore!” I shouted.

  Energy pulsed bright from the blade, overcoming the dampness to slam into the ruins and plow it back in a wave. Chunks of charred timber rained down in the fields beyond. With a second force invocation, I cleared the remaining debris from the trapdoor that led down to Lazlo’s cellar.

  I stood over the door and listened. All I could hear was the rain tapping my poncho. The door broke away when I pulled the handle—the hinges had been baked black. I set the door aside and shone the flashlight down the steps. During my time with him, Lazlo had forbidden me from going down to his lab. That had been fine by me and my phobia then, but now I had no choice.

  If Lazlo had been trapped, his remains might tell me something.

  I set the flashlight down and, with a Word, summoned a glowing shield and descended. The steps groaned underfoot. At the bottom of the steps, I grew my light out. The brightness revealed a small room overgrown with black mushrooms and mold. Similar to what I’d seen in the Refuge, the wet growth swarmed over everything: stacks of old books, shelves holding vials and spell implements, even over the remnants of a casting circle that took up most of the floor.

  In the circle’s center lay a mound. No, a body.

  Lazlo?

  The body was on its side, facing away from me. As I approached, my light illuminated wisps of dark hair, a deflated wool sweater and trousers, the last tucked into a pair of battered rubber boots. Kneeling, I set my sword down, gripped the body’s bony shoulder, and pulled it toward me. For a moment the body stuck to the ground before releasing with a wet rip.

  “Jesus!” I cried, and jumped back.

  My heart thundered in my chest as I looked at my former mentor. Or what remained of him.

  The eyes staring up at me were large toadstool-filled sockets. Dark, wet growth had erupted over the rest of his face, reminding me of the wargs. I eased forward again, staff held up. Black mold glistened in the light, making it appear as though the growth was crawling over him.

  “What in the hell happened to you?” I whispered.

  The casting circle around Lazlo was for protection. He’d been trying to defend himself. But against what? Something stronger than him, evidently—and Lazlo had been a Third Order mage. My gaze moved back to his body. Bared teeth showed through Lazlo’s decayed lips.

  If only he could talk, I thought, then stopped.

  Lazlo had had a barn cat, a tough gray tom named, well, Tom. During my final month here, I’d found Tom in a corner of the barn one day, his mouth open, tongue out. When I nudged him with my shoe, his body was as stiff as a board. I told Lazlo the bad news. He simply nodded and wrapped Tom in a towel that I assumed he would bury him in. The next day, though, while I was loading hay from the barn, a thick, purring body swiped my legs. I looked down and there was Tom: dusty gray coat, cloven right ear, and one hundred percent alive.

  I sprinted inside and told Lazlo.

  “It was not his time,” my mentor said.

  “Not his time?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. “Tom wasn’t sick yesterday, Lazlo. He was dead.”

  “Yes, but that was my fault. Not his.”

  “Wait … you resurrected him?”

  “I shouldn’t have put the rat poison where he could get to it.”

  “How?” I pressed.

  The magic we’d practiced to that point had involved basic invocations. But resurrection?

  Lazlo’s lips tensed in what was the closest he ever came to smiling. “One day, Everson.” Which was his way of saying it was an advanced spell for which I didn’t have the necessary experience.

  “Well, that day’s today,” I whispered now, grimacing at the idea.

  I still lacked the experience, to be honest, but I’d read enough books in the decade since to understand how resurrection worked. For someone as long gone as Lazlo, I couldn’t hope for much, maybe a few seconds of life, but if it was enough for him to tell me who had killed him, I would be closer to understanding what was happening, who I could trust. And if Lazlo had resurrected Tom, he would have the necessary spell ingredients.

  I wheeled toward his shelves and began unstoppering old vials and sniffing their contents. Fennel … yarrow … I was looking for moschatus, a rare oil. On the top shelf, I found it. I re-stoppered the vial and began looking through his moldy collection of books until I found a familiar tome that focused on the dead. I had the same tome in my own collection. I flipped to the section on resurrection.

  The next half hour involved reconfiguring the casting circle and preparing Lazlo’s body with the moschatus oil.

  At last, I stood outside the circle.

  “Cerrare,” I said. Energy coursed through my sword and closed the circle. Consulting the book, I began incanting in an ancient tongue. Cold energies swirled throughout the room. I trembled from them as well as from a deeper dread around what I was doing. Restoring a decayed form to life, however briefly, felt wrong on so many levels. Also, except for in exceptional circumstances—and with prior approval—the Order forbade resurrections.

  What if the rule is to prevent communication with sacrificed magic-users? the voice whispered inside me. A voice I no longer suppressed. I would know something shortly.

  “Vivere!” I finished.

  I watched Lazlo’s body, a part of me hoping it would remain still, that the spell wouldn’t take hold. I was violating a law of nature, which may have been the actual reason behind the Order’s prohibition. But I steeled my mind, reminding myself that I
was doing this for a magic-using community that could be in mortal danger. I doubted Lazlo would object. He—

  I broke off mid-thought and stiffened. Had Lazlo’s jaw just shifted?

  I leaned nearer. His bared teeth parted, releasing two scratchy words. “I … hurt.”

  “Lazlo?” I said, my own voice barely a whisper. “Lazlo, it’s Everson.”

  His body remained still for so long, I thought I’d lost him again. But then his top arm trembled as though trying to lift his wasted hand. His jaw shifted again. “Everson?”

  “Yes, Lazlo,” I said, kneeling and placing my hand over his. I tried to ignore the wet feel of the fungi and tissue. It was like he was being slowly digested. “What happened?”

  “Leave,” he said.

  “I need to know what happened to you.”

  “I’m in … the pit.”

  “The pit?”

  “In … him.”

  “Who?”

  “They’ll … take you … too.”

  A shudder passed through me. “Who? Lich? The Front?”

  His head shook, though whether in a tremor or to say he didn’t know, I couldn’t tell.

  “My hair,” he rasped. “Take it … find me.”

  I nodded quickly, cut a wisp of his dark hair with the sword, and placed it in my pocket.

  “Leave,” he repeated in what sounded like a plea. I imagined his cloudy wolf-torn eye staring into mine, though on his corpse there was only the cluster of toadstools. “They … they’re coming.”

  “Is Lich alive?” I asked.

  “Hurts,” he mumbled. The trembling in his wet hand ceased.

  “Lazlo?” I asked, giving him a light shake. But the resurrection spell was spent, the magic expired. My former mentor was a fungus-riddled corpse again, his soul returned to whatever plane it inhabited.

  In the pit? I thought. In him?

  Had Lazlo meant Lich? That would jibe with what Connell had told me—how Lich was sacrificing souls to feed his efforts as well as to sustain himself. But Lazlo could also have been cast into the pit by Marlow and consumed by Dhuul. Hence, “in the pit, in him.”

  They’ll take you too, Lazlo had said.

  Who were they?

  Above me, the rain fell harder. Wind shrieked past the doorway to the cellar.

  It was only when the wind died again that I realized the cellar stairs were creaking. Someone or something was descending. Above the creaks, a pair of low whispers sounded.

  16

  I rose from beside Lazlo’s body, light radiating from my protective shield, and adjusted my grip on my sword. Shadows shifted on the wooden steps as the whispers grew. I remembered what Olga had said about no one coming here because of the ghosts. You will know them by their whispers, she’d said.

  If Lazlo’s soul had been sacrificed to the Whisperer, then a conduit now existed between his body and Dhuul’s realm. Maybe no more than a seam, but enough for shadow entities to come and go, to feed on the lingering magic, of which there were still traces.

  Those were the ghosts the villagers had seen. And now I was seeing them.

  I shuffled back. Though immaterial, the man-sized beings were horrid. They descended on tentacled legs. More tentacles writhed from their shapeless bodies of matted hair and sharp beaks. They slowed as they neared the bottom of the steps, their whispers alien and wet. Multiple sets of pale eyes glowed into view, all of them watching me.

  “Vigore!” I shouted.

  In my fear, my force invocation lacked control. It rammed into the stairs, sending splintered timber ricocheting from the walls and off my shield. Shrieks sounded. I jumped back as something lashed out—a tentacle. It grazed my neck, suckers grasping for purchase, before recoiling back into the darkness behind the ruined staircase. The skin where it had touched me burned like fire.

  My shield didn’t stop that thing, I thought in horror.

  I backed from the shadowy creatures as they crawled from the ruins, their whispers turning to low hisses.

  “Illuminare!” I called, channeling power through my coin pendant.

  The coin glowed, limning the creatures in blue light. They slowed, eyes squinting away. The coin held an enchantment to ward off shadow creatures, but these shadows were from much farther down. The enchantment seemed to have a stalling effect, but it wasn’t stopping them.

  Another tentacle lashed out. I grunted and brought my sword up in a parrying motion. The blade sliced harmlessly through the tentacle. The tip of the tentacle affixed to my chest, the contact like boiling acid. I screamed as I felt my soul lurch inside me, yanked toward the point of contact. I dug into my pockets, searching for … there!

  I yanked out the glass vial Arianna had given me. Pulling the stopper free with my teeth, I splashed the creature with the clear liquid inside. The tentacle released me, the creature withdrawing with a screaming hiss. I advanced on the two of them, splashing more liquid. Steam spewed from their forms.

  “Go!” I commanded, my voice trembling from the pain in my chest. “Go back to your cursed realm.”

  I splashed several more times. How much of this stuff would it take to banish them? The creatures had retreated, screaming, to the far corner of the cellar when I realized the vial was almost empty. Need to make tracks, I decided, easing back and recovering my sword.

  The stairs were gone, but I could use a force invocation to launch myself like I’d done in the Refuge. I stood beneath the hole where the trap door had been, aimed my blade at the ground—and cried out as a tentacle whipped around my ankle. Fire enveloped my lower leg, and I could feel blood soaking into my sock.

  A second tentacle seized my sword and wrenched it away. I heard it clatter off somewhere. Another tentacle wrapped around my staff. The light from the opal sputtered as the creature and I struggled for possession. Multiple pale eyes emerged from the shadows.

  You’re not thinking, I chided myself through the pain. Don’t have to banish them … just have to close their portal.

  My gaze shifted to Lazlo’s body. Burning it would shut the door on this end.

  I plunged my free hand into another pocket and withdrew a vial of dragon sand. The tentacle around my ankle flexed. I landed prone with a grunt, out of range of Lazlo. Pain seared my stomach as a tentacle snaked underneath me. I could feel its suckers opening and closing.

  Not suckers, I realized in horror. Mouths.

  Each mouth had a ring of spiny teeth, and they were tearing at my soul, trying to suck it out. They’ll take you too, Lazlo had warned. I clawed at the wooden floorboards, desperate not to meet my mentor’s fate. I imagined my body buried in toadstools, my soul trapped in a pit, in endless pain.

  I grunted as part of a fingernail tore off between the floorboards. The tentacles were winning. They flipped me onto my back and began dragging me toward the creatures’ gaping beaks. As I passed beneath the cellar doorway, rain spattered over my face. I squinted against it. In the fog of pain, it took me a moment to realize someone’s silhouette was framed in the doorway.

  A deafening blast broke through the cellar. The creature holding me screamed. Its tentacles recoiled, releasing me. Another blast went off, but I was on hands and knees now, crawling toward Lazlo’s body. I reached him and shook a dose of dragon sand over him.

  “Fuoco!” I shouted.

  I reared back, forearms to my face, as searing flames billowed from his body. The creatures’ screams turned to piercing shrieks. I turned in time to see their shadow forms breaking apart as the fire from the dragon sand consumed Lazlo’s body, slamming closed the portal.

  I recovered my sword and looked up. A thick rope now dangled through the cellar doorway. Sheathing my sword and sliding the cane through my belt, I seized the end of the rope.

  “Got it,” I called.

  In a jerky motion, I began to rise. After ten or so feet, I was able to reach up and grab the doorway frame. Grunting, I pulled myself through. Olga, who was larger than she had appeared in the truck was staring down at
me, rain dripping from the bill of her newsboy hat.

  “I heard screams. I thought you fell into ruins.”

  “Thanks.” I gained my feet, the places where the tentacles had seized me still burning like a bitch. My soul didn’t feel quite right, either. Like it had been gashed and torn. As I whispered a healing incantation, Olga slung the rope in manly loops around an arm. My gaze moved to the shotgun she had leaned against a charred length of timber.

  “What was in that?” I asked.

  “Rock salt,” she answered.

  I nodded. Sometimes the best deterrents against evil were the most basic.

  When Olga finished gathering the rope, she stuck her arm through the coil, pushed it up to her shoulder, and grabbed her shotgun. In rubber boots similar to Lazlo’s, she marched from the ruins. I took a final look around, my eyes falling at last to the cellar, where Lazlo’s remains continued to flicker. Pain and rage stormed through me. Murdered.

  But by whom? Lich or Marlow?

  By the time I caught up to Olga, the rain was falling harder.

  “Do you have place to stay?” she asked.

  A pack of lean dogs ran up to the truck as we pulled into the yard in front of Olga’s house. They began barking when they saw Olga had brought company, but when she shouted several harsh words in Slovak, they stopped and sniffed tentatively toward my crotch as I got out.

  “I really appreciate this,” I said.

  “There is extra room,” she replied.

  Though it had stopped raining, water dripped from my pack as I grabbed it from the back of the truck, shouldered it, and followed her toward the one-story farmhouse. She lived on the outskirts of Bacau, not far from the train station. More important than a spare bed, she had a working phone.

  Blocking the dogs with her body, she opened the door for me and then followed me inside, closing the door to their whines and whimpers.