Death Mage (Prof Croft Book 4) Read online

  I stretched a hand toward her and shouted, “Vigore!”

  But the energy that stormed through my prism died inside me, stolen by the magic-cleaving power of my own sword. The woman closed in on my mentor and drew back the blade.

  “Chicory!” I cried.

  But among the detonations of magic, he couldn’t hear me. I recoiled as she drove the blade forward, my mind supplying the crunch of flesh and bone as the blade disappeared into his back.

  That didn’t just happen, I thought. That couldn’t have just happened.

  Chicory sagged, his wand clattering from his grasp. The blinding magic around him blinked out, and the room fell dim. The woman withdrew the sword, and I watched in horror as my mentor collapsed to the ground.

  Chicory? I called through our rapport.

  But the connection was severed, the pressure behind my eyes and inside my ears releasing like a dying breath. The Death Mage looked down at Chicory, then over at me. I imagined the smile behind his mask. The same smile he’d worn while watching my mother burn.

  I stood slowly. “Think that’s funny?”

  The room wavered with odd colors, like the ones I’d seen in the dream of the forest. I took a drunken step forward. I would die too, but not before ripping the mask away and beating his grinning face to a pulp.

  Marlow sent the Order her ashes in a trash bag, I remembered Chicory saying, referring to my mother.

  “You think that’s fucking funny?” I asked more loudly, breaking into a shambling run.

  Marlow’s frowning mask continued to watch me. The colors of the room grew more intense and discordant. They spiraled around, making my head pound. I was no longer aware of the other magic-users, couldn’t even see them. The room seemed to have been reduced to a crazy, spiraling tunnel, Marlow at its far end, but growing larger, getting closer.

  “I’ll show you funny,” I promised.

  The pounding swelled in my head. I staggered and willed myself upright again. I was going to reach him, dammit … was going to tear the mask away … was going to pound his…

  And then Marlow was right in front of me, uttering something I couldn’t understand.

  With a clawed hand, I stretched for his gold mask and collapsed into blackness.

  8

  I was in a dark forest, running for my life, but everywhere I turned, there were the black-robed creatures, their fish eyes staring, mouths opening and closing, scimitars slashing. Everything hurt. God, everything hurt, down to the marrow in my bones. But I had to keep running, had to find the place in the forest where Chicory would bring me back. Most of all, I had to escape the whispers.

  Everson … erson … son.

  Sweating and shaking, I doubled over and vomited up a green bile that seemed to come from a deep and evil pit inside me. I willed myself to stand and run, to push my way past the fungus-coated trees and festering pools where wretched things lived, past the jabbering, stabbing creatures, none of which seemed to end.

  But every so often they would end, and I’d find myself in a clearing, and I would fall onto my back, succumbing to the pain and exhaustion. My mother would be speaking over me, wiping my face with a clean, cool cloth, while sun shone down through her hair, turning it a radiant white.

  “Help me,” I would mumble. “Help me to the place where I can go back.”

  She would only smile and continue to speak in what I realized was a chant as soft and melodic as a lullaby. But as the chant carried me into sleep, I would find myself back in the dark forest, running for my life, trying desperately to evade the evil creatures and the whispers.

  Especially the whispers.

  Everson…

  I cracked open my swollen eyelids. I was on my back, tucked into a bed of white sheets. A light dew of sweat coated my body. When I swallowed, my stomach felt as tight as a stretched drum.

  “Everson,” the person repeated.

  My head swam when I rotated it. A woman was rising from a chair to my left, the sunlight through a window behind her infusing her hair with hazy white light. Morning light. I fought to think back.

  The forest, the vomiting…

  No, that hadn’t been real. I’d been dreaming. Or more accurately, nightmaring.

  I strained to remember how I’d gotten here. The evil ceremony, Lich’s book in flames, my confrontation with the Dark Mage. The horrible image of a blade—my blade—crunching through Chicory’s back. And then my effort to reach the mage, to rip the mask from his face, only to fail, to fall.

  Had I died? Had the experience in the forest been some kind of purgatory? Was this my… I squinted at the woman. …mother?

  “You’re awake,” she said in a strong, maternal voice.

  I peered around the small room. Walls of handsome stonework shone white up to a high ceiling. Colorful rugs covered the floor. I’m not in the palace anymore, that’s for damn sure.

  I looked back at the woman. “What is this place?” I croaked.

  “It’s an infirmary,” she said.

  “Infirmary?”

  “We had to sedate you for several days while the poison was purged from your system.”

  Though fresh air breezed through the room’s open windows, I picked up an undercurrent of illness. I remembered the vomiting from the dream—or whatever that had been. Poison, she’d said. All right, so maybe I wasn’t dead. I struggled again to think back.

  “What happened to the Death Mage? Those … those creatures. How did you get me out of there?”

  “We’ll answer all of your questions, but first you need to eat.”

  I watched her as she stepped from the sunlight and walked around the bed. Without the backdrop of light, her face aged, her cheekbones becoming more stark. The whiteness of her hair had not been an effect of the sunlight, I saw. This woman was older than my mother would have been.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “My name is Arianna.” Moving with strength and grace, she arrived at a table on the other side of the bed and picked up a bowl with a spoon inside it. She was the woman I had seen in my feverish sleep. “I knew your mother,” she said. “Can you sit?”

  I pushed weakly with my arms and scooted up until I was sitting against the wooden headboard, dizzied by the effort and what the woman had just said. “Knew my mother? When?”

  “Before you were born,” she answered, handing me the bowl. Inside was a broth that held what looked like a suspension of grains and minced herbs. A rich scent drifted up when I stirred them, making my stomach quiver with hunger. “In fact, I helped deliver you.”

  I stopped stirring the broth. “What?”

  “In this same room,” she said. “More than thirty years ago.”

  I looked around as my mind crunched the numbers. If Marlow was my father and I was one year old when he killed my mother, I would have been born while my mother was infiltrating the…

  “You’re a member of the Front,” I said coldly, setting the bowl back on the table.

  Arianna’s white hair shifted as she straightened. I gauged the length. It was the same hair as on the magic-user who had seized my sword and driven it through Chicory’s back. I incanted quickly while pushing myself out the other side of the bed. An invisible field blocked me.

  “Yes,” Arianna admitted, “but the Front is not what you’ve been led to believe.”

  Her voice propagated through the air in calming waves. Whisperer magic, I thought, recalling what Chicory had told me. Making one see what isn’t there, believe what isn’t real. I was still in the palace, then, magic worming through my mind, my senses. I stared around. The stone walls weren’t really as clean and white as they appeared, but oozing with black gunk, the air swirling with poisonous spores. I inhaled sharply, trying to catch a whiff of them. And this Arianna was no woman, but a mold-covered creature, the killer of my mentor.

  “Vigore!” I shouted, thrusting a hand toward her.

  A surprising charge erupted from my fingers only to slam into a cocoon of energy around
the bed. The transparent shield shuddered as it absorbed the blast. When the shield stilled, Arianna remained where she had been.

  “I know this is confusing,” she said, no hint of scorn or menace in her voice.

  I hammered the shield several times until my arms tired and then tried to break through with another force invocation. The shield felt even stronger than the last time, powerful magic maintaining it. I sagged back against the bed, my body trembling, hair matted with sweat.

  Arianna, who had looked on compassionately while I struggled, said, “We didn’t expect you to understand. Not right away. Your confinement is only temporary. We’re going to explain everything.”

  A soothing breeze blew through the windows and washed over me.

  An illusion, I had to remind myself. All one big goddamned illusion.

  “There’s nothing to explain,” I said. “You’re a clan of sickos and murderers. But guess what? Your book’s history. If Chicory got through, so can the Elders. It’s just a matter of time.”

  “There are no more Elders,” a man’s voice said.

  I turned toward the lean figure striding into the room. He looked to be late middle aged, strands of silver streaking through his dark, shoulder-length hair. He took a position beside Arianna. Intelligent gray eyes looked down from a handsome face etched with faint scars.

  “There is no Order,” he finished.

  “Keep telling yourself that,” I scoffed.

  “Where are they, then?” he asked, looking around. “It’s been almost five days since your battle with Marlow.” Arianna whispered something to him, but he showed a staying hand, his gaze remaining fixed on mine. “Hmm?”

  I incanted quietly, building up my prism, my capacity. I didn’t know how long I’d been out, but my mind had clearly been screwed with. That’s what the feverish dreams had been about—not detoxing, as Arianna claimed, but being poisoned by Whisperer magic.

  “Rivelare,” I whispered, attempting to disrupt the veil, to peer past it to the black rot and evil from earlier. But everything remained horrifyingly pristine. Through the open windows, birds tittered merrily.

  “Ask yourself this,” the man said. “Have you ever seen a representative of the Order?”

  I stared at the ceiling. Don’t listen to him.

  “Sure, there was Lazlo, your first mentor,” he said. “And Chicory. But other than those two? Well, how about a fellow magic-user, then? An organization that goes back several millennia, vast, branching lineages—it seems you would have been introduced to at least one or two others, no?”

  “They’re out there,” I said defiantly.

  “But the Order keeps everyone compartmentalized, is that it?”

  “Connell, he needs to rest,” Arianna said.

  “Naturally,” the man replied. “But I want to leave him with something to consider. Assume for a moment, Everson, that everything to this point in your wizard’s life was an illusion and that this is the reality. Assume that we’re not the enemy, but the ally. Assume that the Front isn’t opposing the Order, but fighting in its memory. Assume that our goal was never to call the Whisperer into the world, but to strain with the last fibers of our magic to keep it out.”

  I remained staring at the ceiling, trying to bar his words from my mind.

  “Assume for a moment that your mother was helping us,” he said, “and was killed for doing so. See if that doesn’t make more sense than what you’ve been led to believe.”

  I turned enough to glare at him. “Don’t you dare mention my mother.”

  Connell watched me intently for another moment, then turned and strode from the room. Arianna remained standing over the bed, head tilted. She seemed to be struggling with what to say.

  “Call out if you need anything,” she said at last.

  Then she too departed.

  9

  When Arianna’s footsteps receded, I felt the cocoon-like shield around me expand to the walls of the room. My head swam as I threw my legs over the side of the bed. The expenditure of energy in my attempt to break through the shield earlier had left me weak. Being down for five days didn’t help.

  I sat for a moment, my gaze edging over to the bowl of broth on the bedside table. I lifted the bowl and brought it to my nose, its rich smell making my stomach quiver again. But I couldn’t trust it.

  It’s something vile, I decided, setting the bowl back down.

  When I pushed myself to my feet, the ends of a gown I was wearing fell to my knees. My shins looked thin and pale. I checked my chest, not surprised to find my coin pendant missing. My cane wasn’t anywhere to be seen either. Ditto Grandpa’s ring. I walked, using the wall for support—a wall of clean, solid stone—until I arrived at the window Arianna had been sitting beside earlier.

  Squinting against the sun, I peered past the energy field and out into the world.

  The courtyards inside the palace wall were handsome. The wind-blown plain below shimmered golden. The forest that ringed it appeared lush. I peered more closely at the plain. It was being patrolled, but not by wargs. The creatures looked like … common mastiffs?

  I grunted. The illusion was impressive, I’d give them that.

  I completed a circuit around the room, which included a small corner bathroom. The room’s other window as well as the door were covered by the shield—a defensive system I lacked the power to break through. I made my way back to the bed and sat, disturbed by how exhausted the short tour had left me. I leaned forward, hands dangling between my knees.

  What was I doing alive? Why hadn’t the Death Mage killed me?

  Because the Whisperer wants to use you, I answered, remembering what Chicory had said. And that’s what this is—one big mind fuck to get you to believe that they’re the good guys.

  I peered around, considering the magic at work. Just as powerful as my mentor had warned me it would be. But though the Front could make me see, hear, and smell whatever they wanted, I still had my beliefs. I would be damned if I was going to let them crack those open.

  The first step to resisting them would be knowing the Front’s strategy. I began cycling through Connell’s suggestions. My original impulse had been to block them out, but I needed to analyze his words, get a better grasp on how the Front would try to influence me.

  There are no more Elders, he’d said. There is no Order.

  They were trying to chisel cracks in the foundation on which my concepts of wizarding and my role in it were based. They were trying to challenge my identity.

  My thoughts turned to Connell’s questions. Who had I encountered in the Order besides Lazlo and Chicory? The answer was no one, but so what? That was how the Order operated. Absent more often than they were present, taking forever to respond to correspondences—or ignoring them all together—giving confusing directives. It wasn’t like I didn’t have my marching orders, and I’d been reprimanded more times than I could count. If there was no Order, then who in the hell was doing the threatening and punishing?

  Assume for a moment that everything to this point in your life was an illusion and that this is the reality, Connell had said. Assume that we’re not the enemy, but the ally. Assume that the Front isn’t opposing the Order, but fighting in its memory.

  More attempts to undermine my identity, only now planting the seeds of a replacement identity, one that included the Front and whatever the Whisperer had them working toward.

  And finally, the coup de grace:

  Assume for a moment that your mother was helping us.

  Bringing family into it, making it personal.

  Taken together, the Front’s strategy was to merge my identity with theirs. Join us. Join the cluster. Become one. I wouldn’t let it happen. Would they resort to torture? A mind flaying?

  Hopefully the cavalry would show up before then.

  I caught myself listening for them, but all I could hear was bird song. My fingers began to fidget with the hem of my robe. It was strange no one from the Order had come. But knowing how abs
entminded Chicory could be, he might have neglected to tell them that I had crossed into the Refuge. I mean, the guy almost forgot to cast a bonding spell before sending me in.

  “The Order knew he was preparing to send me,” I said quietly, urgently. “I’m here at their mandate, after all. If it’s been five days, they’ll know he’s fallen off the map. Will probably send someone to the safe house to check on him, someone who will find the house empty, see the circle in the basement, put it all together.” I stopped to listen again. “Help will be here soon.”

  Unless there is no Order, an insidious voice in my head whispered back.

  “They’ll come,” I insisted, my fingers ditching the hem and digging at one another. “It’s just a question of when.”

  Days? I wondered. Weeks? I could attempt to escape, but getting out of the room and palace weren’t the issues. Getting out of the Refuge was, and that required advanced magic. Meaning I needed to figure out a way to send a message to the Order, something that would spur them to act now.

  A grumble from my stomach interrupted my thoughts.

  I eyed the bowl of broth again.

  I didn’t see Arianna or Connell for the rest of that day or the next. Instead, I was tended to by a pair of what appeared to be automatons. Young men and women who looked part mannequin, part robot. They were pleasant in appearance and manner, leaving me to guess at their true monstrous forms. Probably something similar to the two creatures I’d slain with my sword.

  I ate the broth they brought up and drank the water. If I hoped to recover my strength, I had no choice, I’d decided. And after each meal, I did feel stronger—which bothered me more than anything Connell might have told me. Probably the point.

  By late the second day, I was strong enough to pace the room without frequent rests. I thought as I paced, still concerned by the absence of the Order. It had been a week now.

  My direct line to the Order is a flame, I thought. That flame is held in a silver cup, fed by an oil crystal, and linked to the Order’s … switchboard, I guess you’d call it, through an incantation. So, material wise, I need a silver cup, an oil crystal, something to write on, and something to write with.