Malediction (Scars of the Sundering Book 1) (39 page)

"Is
everything all right out here?"

"Stupid
Kale and Edric!" Delilah extracted herself from the pile and picked up her
grimoire. "I return with news, and they're in the middle of the floor
doing… something!"

"We
were wrestling, Deli. Edric said even with my wings, no drak could pull down a
dwarf who braced himself."

Edric dusted
himself off and stood. "It wasn't a fair contest. Yer sister
interfered."

"I had
you. You were going down even before she ran into us!"

Pancras
tried to ignore their bickering as they continued to argue whether or not Kale
won the contest. He turned to Delilah. "You have news?"

She held the
grimoire aloft. "I did it! I actually learned something from this
book!"

The news
didn't surprise Pancras, but Delilah's enthusiasm about it did. "I should
think an ancient tome like that holds many secrets in its pages."

"Earth
magic, Pancras. You don't understand. This isn't like reading a set of
instructions. It showed me how to make spikes of rock erupt under my
enemies!"

“Earth
magic? Are you sure? I thought it was lost during The Sundering.”

She set the
book on the table and opened it. Pancras leaned forward to examine it. Instead
of finding arcane text, however, he saw swirling patterns and eddies that made
no sense to him. Even a brief glance threatened to cause his head to throb and
vision to swim.

"Does
it always look like that?" Pancras had never encountered a tome so
ensorcelled, but he trusted the Earth Dragon would not pass on a gift if it
were harmful to Delilah.

"Until
you learn how to concentrate and look at what the pages are trying to show you."
She turned the page to show him another set of swirling, shifting symbols. He
blinked and looked away. He put his hand on her shoulder. "I'm sure you
will unlock all its secrets in time."

His eyes
returned to the grimoire, as if drawn to it.
A tome of lost magic—
The
bell on the food lift rang, signifying the arrival of another dinner time. For
a brief moment, Pancras considered returning to work, but the tight rumble in
his belly reminded him he had been working nonstop since breaking his fast
earlier that morning.

Dinner was
dominated with bravado from Edric. It was obvious to Pancras that everyone had
been indoors for far too long. He wished for some way to speed up time or alter
the weather so they could be on their way again; yet, what awaited him in
Muncifer filled him with trepidation. Traveling on the open road was one of his
least favorite activities. Almeria, snow, and political scheming wore him down.

He put the
final touches on his fetish before turning in for the evening. The ritual to
infuse it would start tomorrow. He hoped the draks and the dwarf would allow
him some uninterrupted peace for however long it would take.

Chapter 20

The next
day, Pancras kicked them all out after breaking their fasts. He handed each of
them twenty talons. "I need to be free from all interruptions for rest of
the day. I don't want anyone coming in here until after dusk!"

"What
are we supposed to do all day?" Kale dropped the silver coins into his
pouch with a satisfying jingle.

"Drink,
gamble, go to the market. I don't care!" He shut the door and locked it.

Edric
counted the coins in his hand, put them in his pouch, and saluted as he left
them. "I know just the place. I'll come back with triple his money!"

"Fat
chance of that." Kali snorted and shoved the coins in her pouch. She
looked at the drak twins. "Well?"

Delilah held
up her book. "I am going to study."

"Oh,
come on! We have all day and sixty talons between the three of us." Kali
pulled on Delilah's arm. "Don't be boring."

Delilah
dropped her handful of talons into Kale's hand. "Sixty talons between the
two of you. You'll thank me when I unlock magic that will enable me to teleport
us all to Muncifer with the snap of my fingers."

Kale grabbed
his sister. She pulled against him, but the combined might of Kale and Kali
kept her in place. "You really need to stop touching me, both of
you."

"Deli!
Take a day off! There's so much of Almeria we haven't seen yet."

Delilah
shook herself loose. "Go jump off a tower!"

Delilah's
suggestion gave Kale an idea. He ran to get in front of her. "If I jump
off the wall, will you come with us?"

"What?
Are you insane?"

Kale spread
his wings and shook his head. "I've been practicing." It was a lie,
but Delilah didn't know that. He climbed up on the wall, holding onto a column
to steady himself. A gust of wind threatened to catch his hat and blow it off,
so he handed it to Kali. "I'll be back in a flash!"

The snowy
ground seemed much further away now that he stood above it, about to throw
himself off the palace wall.
I can't back out now. I'll look really stupid.
He stepped away from the column and shuffled sideways to give himself enough
room to spread his wings to their full span. Kale inhaled the brisk morning
air, the chill lingering and burning his lungs.

Then he
jumped.

For a
moment, Kale fell, the ground rushing toward him, promising to envelop him in
powdery white fluff before thrashing him against the unyielding ground. A gust
of wind caught his wings and stretched the leathery skin like sails on a ship.
His fall turned into upward flight. As he gained altitude, Almeria lay before
him. Like a relief map painted white, he saw the zigzag of the city streets,
the walls separating the districts, and the plains beyond the walls of the
city.

People in
the streets looked up and pointed. He waved and banked, wheeling around to
return to the palace. Flapping his wings propelled him upward and gave him more
altitude, but despite his elation at being able to fly, he felt tightness in
his back and fatigue in barely-used muscles. The discomfort made the palace
seem miles away and as he flapped, he descended, unable to maintain altitude.

Kale plowed
into the snow drifts in the palace garden, sending a plume of white powder into
the air. He tried to tuck and roll, but his speed was too great, and he tumbled
through the cold precipitate. He stopped when he slammed into the base of a
snow-covered fountain, looking up at a frozen waterfall of ice pouring from the
cherub's vase like a moment suspended in time. The snow hissed and steamed as his
body melted its way to the ground, leaving him in a soggy, muddy puddle.

* * *

Delilah and
Kali watched wide-eyed as Kale jumped, dropped, and then soared above Almeria.
Kale waved at someone below. Delilah imagined it was probably a person in the
street who noticed the creature flying above was clearly not a bird. She was
surprised the guards in the watchtowers didn't shoot arrows at him. He turned
back toward the palace and plummeted.

As he fell,
Kali ran for the stairs. Delilah followed, watching her brother crash into the
ground and send up a cloud of snow. They stumbled and almost fell down the
stairs in their rush to reach Kale, only pausing long enough for the guards to
open the palace doors.

When they
reached him, Kale was seated in a puddle of mud at the base of a fountain. His
wing tips drooped as he rubbed the top of his head.

"Are
you hurt?" Delilah offered him a hand and pulled him up.

"Not
really." He looked down at his muddy feet and shook off the muck.

"I
brought your hat." Kali giggled and handed Kale his feathered hat. He put
it on his head and sighed.

"I
almost had it there for a minute."

Delilah
wanted to berate him for being irresponsible enough to jump off the palace
wall, but since she was outside and that was what he wanted in the first place,
she reconsidered.
It may have been foolish, but he got what he wanted.
She settled for patting his shoulder. "I'm sure you'll figure it out with
practice."

"I
guess I should practice more while there's still snow, huh? I imagine crashing
into the ground once it all melts will hurt a lot more."

"Yes,
but not today." Delilah pulled up the hood of her cloak. "You wanted
me outside, so here I am. Where are we going?"

Kali put her
arms around the drak twins. "I know this place in Old Town. It's run by a
drak, and she makes the most amazing pies. Meat pies, sweet pies, you'll be in
Cybele’s Pastures with one bite."

* * *

With the
draks and Edric out from underhoof, Pancras relished the quiet. He briefly
considered bathing and spending the entire day drinking wine in front of a
crackling fire but decided to be true to his purpose and complete the fetish.
It was crucial to their plan to expose Prince Gavril, and he didn't want to be
the weak link in the chain.

Shutting the
door behind him, Pancras approached his makeshift workbench and set the fetish
upon it. Aesthetically, it revolted him, and the more he looked at it, the more
it resembled a dried-up piece of excrement. The art of creating an
aesthetically-pleasing fetish was not something in which Pancras was skilled;
he crafted magic, not art. However, it needn't look pretty to do its job.

Infusing a
fetish with the precise arcane energies to function properly was a
time-consuming and pain-staking task. Pancras picked up the fetish and held it
like one of the hollowed-out, painted bird eggs artisans sold at Muncifer's
spring market. Closing his eyes, he concentrated. Despite his best effort,
Pancras did not feel the threads of arcane energy.

His eyes
snapped open, and he chuckled as he picked up his rod. He was not yet
accustomed to consciously holding his arcane focus. Pancras closed his eyes and
tried again.

Arcane
energies flowed through his focus and into him. Pancras spoke the words of
protection under his breath as he directed the energies into the fetish.
Concentrating on the intonation of repetitive words while directing energy
could be uninspiring, but Pancras found the repetition relaxing. He knew his
goal, and he knew what steps to take to achieve it. That sort of certainty made
the minotaur confident and motivated.

The words
became a mantra for Pancras. He felt the magic swirl and twist around him, pouring
into his focus, through him, and into the fetish. Protective abjurations felt
bright, clean, and pure. On the periphery, Pancras sensed darkness.
Probably
from all the necromantic research I've been doing.

Though his
eyes were closed, he perceived colors as he worked the magic. Gold, silver, the
azure of a clear sky. Darkness seeped in at the edge of his vision, like claws
reaching from behind him. The darkness clouded his vision, and a haze blotted
out the colors of the abjuration with which Pancras attempted to infuse the
fetish.

Pancras
chanted the words louder, hoping to drown out the hiss that now accompanied the
dark haze. A miasma of shadow filled the room, coalescing from the magic he
drew together. Burning eyes stared at him from the mist, and shadowy claws
reached for his throat.

With a
strangled gasp, Pancras stopped chanting. He staggered backward, clutching at
his neck as the eyes followed him, boring into his head.

"You
have resisted too long, Necromancer. No more."

Pancras
coughed and fell to his knees. An icy chill crawled down his back as the shadow
enveloped him. In his hand, the rod turned to ice, freezing the flesh of his
hand. He cried out, choking, gasping, and tossed the rod across the room. It
clattered to a stop against the far wall. The shadowy mist vanished as Pancras
collapsed and darkness took him.

When he
regained consciousness, his head rested on a pillow, and a blanket covered most
of his body. He groaned and rolled over. His bed had been stripped of pillows
and blankets, and Kale sat on its edge, fiddling with his puzzle box.

"Oh
hey, you're awake. We found you on the floor. No one was strong enough to get
you into the bed, so we just covered you up there."

"What
happened? What time is it?"

Kale set
down his puzzle box and hopped off the bed. He helped Pancras into a sitting
position. "Mid-afternoon, I guess. We were hoping you could tell us what
happened. Delilah and Kali went to find a healer."

"Mid-afternoon?"
Pancras rubbed the crick in his neck. Sleeping on the floor gave him a bevy of
aches and pains in muscles he didn't often use. His head felt like an army of
dwarves marched inside his skull. "Only a few hours, then."

Kale
snorted. "It's been a day since we found you there."

"Oh."
Pancras crawled over to his bed and used it to pull himself up. He looked over
at his workbench. The fetish, now twisted mass of blackened goo, sat on top of
it. Hesitant to touch it, he retrieved his rod from its resting place on the
floor. "How did this get here?"

"I
don't know. Except for the blankets and pillows, we left the room the way we
found it. Don't you remember what happened?"

Pancras
thought for a moment. The last thing he remembered was being glad for the peace
and quiet and starting the ritual to create the fetish. He looked around the
room and shoved the rod into his belt. Save for the ruined fetish, everything
was as he remembered. He shook his head.

"Nothing.
Something must have gone wrong, but I have no idea what." He rubbed the
base of his horn and staggered out into the parlor. Kale followed him.

"Have a
seat. The girls should be back with a healer soon."

Pancras sat
in an armchair. He realized he felt cold as the warmth of the crackling hearth
heated his bones. Wisps of fragrant smoke wafted from the fire, and he noticed
the curling, black remnants of an aromatic sachet someone had tossed into the
fire.

"Where's
Edric?"

Kale climbed
into the armchair his sister normally claimed. "He said he was going down
to the public baths. Kali was using ours, and he didn't want to wait."

Pancras
leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He was certain the ritual he
attempted was correct.
Perhaps I made an error constructing the fetish?
The warmth of the fire lulled him into a fitful sleep and he next awoke to a
human poking him.

"Well,
he's not dead."

Pancras
rubbed his eyes and yawned. The throbbing in his head lessened, and when his
eyes were able to focus, he saw the human priest, Arnost, peering over a pair
of thin spectacles at him.

"I can
see that." Delilah shoved Arnost to the side and wiped Pancras's chin with
a rag. "You had us worried. How do you feel?"

Pancras
yawned again and stretched, narrowly missing Kale's head as the drak ducked
under his arm and looked up at him over the side of the chair. "Not bad,
actually." He stood up. "Yes, pretty good. Did I sleep long?"

Kale offered
him a goblet of wine. "No, just a few hours. This time."

"Let's
not be hasty." Arnost took the goblet of wine before Pancras could drink.
"Your scaly friends said you were unresponsive when they found you. That
is a matter for some concern."

Pancras
waved his hands, dismissing Arnost's concern. "I was trying to make a
protective fetish. It's been a long time since I've performed abjurations. I'm
sure it's just backlash from a miscast, nothing more." It sounded
reasonable to Pancras. He didn't recall ever forgetting the event of a miscast
before, but he was older than the last time one occurred.

Arnost held
up the golden lyre, the symbol of Apellon, from around his neck. He chanted in
a low voice, waving the symbol over Pancras. The minotaur curled his lips and
stood, but Arnost pushed him back down into the chair.

"I
still sense darkness within you. It is most unnatural."