Magic Zero (22 page)

W
ith a cry that seemed to claw at the very air itself, Edgar flew straight at the monster, darting down to rake his talons across the intruder’s face. The rook’s wings beat the air in an urgent, angry flurry. Timothy’s eyes went wide when he saw that the bird’s talons barely nicked the creature’s thickly plated hide. Its flesh was like armor. Edgar was doing more to annoy it than to harm it.

And the towering monstrosity
was
annoyed.

It snarled, plumes of fire curling from its nostrils, and turned its attention on the bird.

“I seek Argus Cade!” it roared. The heat issuing from its bellows of a mouth was enough to sear Timothy’s face, even as the boy backed away. “Where is Argus Cade?”

“Caw!” the rook cried. “He’s where the likes of you can’t do him any harm, Wurm! And I won’t let you harm his boy, either.”

In the momentary distraction, Ivar blended in with the room, nearly invisible in the shadows and the dark, rich earth hues of the study. Frantic, pulse racing as he tried to figure out how to help, how to fight the monster, Timothy glanced around and caught the silhouette of the Asura warrior slipping behind the Wurm.

“Damn you, bird!” the intruder roared. “I want Argus Cade!”

“Caw! Caw!” Edgar continued to beat his wings in front of the beast, talons scratching that stony hide. “Timothy, run!”

“Edgar, fly!” Timothy shouted, fearful for his friend.

The Wurm opened its mouth and inhaled deeply, snorting. Tendrils of black smoke issued from within its jaws, where the glow of fire had diminished. But only for a moment. It shuddered, eyes lighting up as though the flames blazed behind them, and it braced itself as though to scream.

What came from its mouth was not a scream but an inferno.

Timothy shouted for Edgar to escape as fire jetted from the Wurm’s mouth. The rook soared low across the study, wings beating the air, feathers singed with flames as it tried to stay ahead of the stream of fire. Timothy could hear the rook screaming in pain and terror, and he felt numb and cold. He began to shake his head back and forth, even as the Wurm paused to take another deep breath, its eyes tracking the flight of the black-feathered bird through the room.

“No!” Timothy snapped. Heedless of the monster’s fire breath, he lunged across the study and swung his father’s
cane at the side of its head with both hands and all the strength he could muster. It connected with an impact that resonated through his entire body, the wood splintering across the bony ridge behind its horns.

The Wurm grunted and staggered a step forward, colliding with an ornate chair that shattered under its weight. With twin jets of fire streaming from its nostrils, the monster shook off the blow and turned toward Timothy, the rook now forgotten.

Timothy froze. Brandishing what was left of the broken cane before him, he backed away, eyes wide. His gaze shifted toward the study door, but he knew he had no hope of reaching it if he ran. A chill went through him, a sadness he had never felt before.

He was going to die.

Teeth clenched, brow furrowed, he stopped retreating and raised the splintered cane higher. Fire burned behind the Wurm’s eyes, and Timothy was mesmerized by it. The monster let out a short burst of charnel breath, then it began to inhale again, the inferno churning at the back of its throat. Timothy clutched the cane, preparing to dive toward the monster, to try to penetrate its scaly, plated hide with the jagged shaft of wood.

Ivar spoke then, his voice seeming to come somehow from nowhere and everywhere all at once. “There has been a mistake,” the Asura warrior said, the words heavy with regret and warning.

The Wurm narrowed its eyes, clamped its jaws shut, and
spun in search of the source of those words. Black smoke plumed from its nostrils, forming a cloud much larger than before, a cloud that enveloped Ivar, revealing his silhouette. The Asura bowed to the confused Wurm, but it snarled and its jaws snapped open. A burst of flame erupted from its throat, charring its own black teeth, arcing across the room.

As though dancing with the fire, Ivar twisted himself out of the way of the attack. Then, with one swift motion, he stepped forward, grabbed the creature by its horns, and drove it to the ground. The floor shook beneath its weight. The Wurm thrashed at Ivar, who tumbled onto his back and turned the momentum into a somersault that brought him back to his feet in a crouch a moment later.

“Damn your eyes, Asurahi!” the Wurm roared, rising to its full height, quivering with rage.

Ivar tilted his head to one side, still in a crouch, and deftly brought his hands up in front of him. With his thumbs together, palms outward and fingers fanned like a bird’s wings, he put his hands in front of his face so that he seemed to be peering through a mask.

“Let calm prevail,” Ivar whispered.

Shaking, fire leaking out from the corners of its eyes and dripping in ropy tendrils of liquid flame from his mouth, the Wurm took several long breaths, chest rising and falling like a bellows. At last its rage seemed to recede, and it nodded slowly at Ivar.

“All right, Asurahi. Let calm prevail, as it did between our tribes in days of old.” The monstrosity curled its upper
lip back from its ebony fangs and glanced at Timothy for a moment before its gaze ticked back toward Ivar. “But now I must have an answer. Where is Argus Cade?”

With a flutter of wings Edgar appeared from behind a chair in the far corner of the room. He hopped, flying just a few feet before landing awkwardly, feathers singed.

The Wurm turned to glare at the bird.

“Caw! Caw!” Edgar chided it. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, lizard. You’re the intruder here, let’s not forget. And you just charred my tailfeathers. I have half a mind to—”

“Edgar,” Timothy snapped.

The rook glanced up at him, black eyes widening in surprise.

“That’s enough.” Timothy dropped the broken cane and strode over to Ivar, who rose at his friend’s approach. The boy turned toward the Wurm, a strange calm settling over him despite the fire-breather’s ferocious appearance. “I am Timothy Cade. Argus Cade was my father. I deeply regret having to inform you that he is no longer with us. He has passed through that gate from which none of us returns.”

Timothy had heard the words spoken before—by his father, by Ivar, and by Edgar—but this was the first time he had spoken them himself. He found within himself a strange, melancholy peace. One day he would pass beyond that same gate and join his father on the other side. Until then he hoped to live with courage and conviction, and without fear. He met the Wurm’s gaze with his own and did not waver.

A change came over the creature then. Its expression contorted, altered by a sadness that mirrored his own. The beast seemed crestfallen and its head sagged, eyes narrowing, so that for the first time it seemed not at all horrid to him. With a flourish it brought both hands up to its face in the same gesture of respect and peace that Ivar had used, fiery eyes gazing out between its talons.

“I am Verlis of the Wurm, Timothy Cade, and I am sorry for your loss,” it said, its voice bubbling with the liquid fire that still boiled in its throat. “My tribe and I share your grief, for without Argus Cade, there is little hope for us.” Verlis narrowed its eyes, black teeth flashing as it spoke. “I am sorry to have intruded, young Master Cade. With your father gone, you and the rest of the Alhazred have troubles of your own.”

Timothy frowned, shot a glance at Ivar and Edgar, who was now perched on the Asura’s shoulder, then looked back at the Wurm. “What do you mean? What troubles?”

The Wurm gazed at him curiously. It dipped its head in an odd sort of nod, as if displaying its horns to him for inspection. Then Verlis gave a short jerk of its head, a motion that Timothy interpreted as the Wurm’s idea of a shrug.

“Of course you must know. You are the son of Argus Cade. How could you not know? Without your father, there is nothing to keep the terrible, withered sorcerer Nicodemus from pursuing his dark intentions.”

Timothy felt as though he could not breathe. The shadows in the study seemed to deepen and he shivered, a new
chill seeping into the room. His suspicions had churned in his mind and gut ever since he had fled the citadel of the Strychnos, and his encounter with Nicodemus had only strengthened them. But now, to hear the accusation stated so flatly, so boldly, he shook his head.

“I don’t understand. What do you mean, ‘dark intentions’?”

Verlis swayed, serpentlike, gaze drifting a moment as though deciding how much he wished to say. At length he glanced up at Timothy again. “Nicodemus has greater ambition than he has revealed. Your father knew this, and opposed him, but only in secret of course. Nicodemus wants the Order of Alhazred to usurp the government so that he can destroy the other guilds and force their members to join his own order, to follow him.”

In that moment it felt to Timothy as though a great weight had been laid across his shoulders. He sagged, deflated. Moments before, he had determined to live courageously, and he would . . . he would. Yet it was difficult for him to let go of the hopes that he had held in his heart. His life on the Island of Patience had been one of loneliness and solitude. When Leander had brought him back into this world, he had cautiously allowed himself to believe that there might be a way for him to become a part of the society of mages, despite his uniqueness. That there might come a day when he could be happy here.

The truth was difficult to take: that he had been happier alone.

A low, trilling murmur came from Edgar, but the rook said nothing. Ivar reached out and laid a comforting hand upon the boy’s shoulder. Slowly Timothy looked up at the burning, fire eyes of the Wurm.

“How, Verlis? Tell me exactly what Nicodemus has in mind.”

*  *  *

The chamber of the Grandmaster was filled with a high, eerie whistling noise, as though whatever remained of the souls of the mages he had murdered were crying out in pain and despair. Leander had awoken and now stood at the center of the chamber. He raised his hands as though he might defend himself against these poor shades, these wraith creatures.

The old mage dropped the pretense of pleasantry, the smile disappearing from his face. His already pale skin grew ashen, and his eyes lit up with an uncanny glow that seemed to dim the other light in the room. Alastor hissed and began to creep slowly across the stone floor toward Leander, the hairless feline baring fangs that dripped with a pearly venom.

That whistling cry of sadness wrenched Leander’s heart, filling him with grief. Though they were but shades, he saw in the wraiths around him the features of mages he had known, members of other guilds whose acquaintance he had made. Some of them he recognized only from the records he had examined in his investigation into their disappearance for the Parliament.

Nicodemus stroked his long mustache, his slender body
now wreathed in a golden energy that buffeted him like a strong wind and raised him up off the ground. Even weakened, his magic was astonishingly powerful.

“Restrain him,” the Grandmaster said, his voice thick with revulsion and disdain, his upper lip curling. “Do not concern yourselves with being gentle. I won’t mind at all if you break bits of him in the process. But do not leech too much from him. He is mine.”

The coldness of that voice shook Leander deeply. With the wraiths that had gathered in the chamber all around him, there had been something unreal about the threat he faced. And in his heart, there had been a kind of surrender, a bitterness that made him feel as though he had no hope. Now he narrowed his eyes and wondered how much of that feeling was his own heart, and how much was some kind of magical control Nicodemus was attempting to exert over him.

The wraiths floated toward him, encircling him with no expression at all on their haunting features.

Leander drew a long breath, his massive chest filling, and his nostrils flared with hatred and the pain of betrayal. He reached up and slid the hood of his cloak over his head, the spells woven into the fabric casting his own body into shadow, so that he was barely more than a wraith himself.

“What is . . . no!” Nicodemus snapped. “Stop him!”

The wraiths wavered, but their senses were not limited to those of a human. They continued to gather around him, several darting forward with their shadow mouths open as
though they intended to rip his soul out with fangs of sharpened darkness. Yet it seemed to him that they were uncertain of his precise location, so perhaps the enchantment of his cloak was more effective than he’d hoped.

“You underestimated me,” Leander growled. “An error you often make. It will be your undoing.”

He dropped both hands in a slashing gesture, as if he could have carved the air with his fingers. But it was not the air that he was attacking. Nicodemus would have hexed the doors and windows of this chamber so that there was no hope of escaping that way. Leander did not waste the time to even attempt it.

“Eternal entropy,” he whispered, and a silver dust sprinkled from his outstretched hands onto the stone floor.

Instantly the floor aged thousands of years, the stone weakening, eroding, and the wood beneath it rotting. With a great, thunderous crack, a segment of the floor just under him gave way. The wraiths screamed in that soul chilling whistle and whipped after him, but Leander was falling, tumbling through the hole in the floor even as it sifted into nothing more than sand beneath him.

The wraiths clawed and bit him, darting in with shadow fangs, and where they drew his blood, he felt a cold unlike any he had ever known, and his bones went numb. But Leander would not stop.

As he crashed down into the chamber beneath the Grandmaster’s—the dwelling of several of his acolytes—he let the magic flow through him, buoying him, levitating
him just enough to keep him from shattering his legs. It slowed his fall, and in the eyeblink of a moment, before his feet would have touched the floor, he performed the entropy spell again. It was powerful magic, something Argus Cade had taught him, and which very few mages in modern times had ever mastered.