Sorcerer Rising (A Virgil McDane Novel) (13 page)

“You will have to take things very slowly,” I said. “Take it from someone who knows. After what you have been through, you will need time to recover.”

“What about the ones who did this?” she asked. She didn’t sound afraid. Not in the slightest. Her dark eyes reflected the tempest brewing on the outskirts of her mind. “Won’t they try to finish what they started?”

“Gather your strength before you worry about that. The Cathedral is the perfect place to rest. No one will be able to harm you there.”

She stood, shrugging off my coat. “Thank you again. I will take your advice into consideration. Will I see you around?”

“You will,” I replied.

She nodded. “Good. I wish you the best of luck on your trip.” She paused, thinking. “And the bird was right. I am not a real nun.” She leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss on my cheek.

I smiled. “Sweet dreams.”

Her eyebrows knitted together in confusion. “What?”

I placed my fingers gently against her forehead and pushed her backward. I dove forward and caught her just as she slipped backwards off the bench. Temperance’s shriek was more than worth it.

“Virgil!” Solomon shouted. I ignored him, holding the back of Sarah’s head gently as she drifted to sleep.

“What are you doing, fool boy?” Temperance shouted.

I was back in the real world, back in the Cathedral. I picked the slight woman up in my arms, grunting as I did so. She wasn’t quite as slight as she looked. A healthy…uh, bone structure and solid muscle made sure of that.

“How long were we gone?” I asked.

“Gone?” replied Solomon, blinking in confusion. “You looked at her for only a few seconds!”

Longer than I had thought then. “We need to get her in bed. She’s going to be out for the rest of the day.”

“What did you do to her?” demanded the Mother Superior.

“Besides restoring her to sanity, I ensured she gets a good night’s sleep.” I gave her an impatient look. “Where is her bedroom? She’s not as light as she looks and I have, contrary to what you think, been working very hard for the past five seconds.”

They led me to her bedchamber and I tucked her in. Temperance rushed me and Solomon out shortly after that, slamming the door in our faces.

“Are you alright?” Sol asked.

I leaned against the wall and rubbed my temples. My head was pounding and I was beginning to shake, the exertion taking its toll. “I’m fine,” I replied through chattering teeth. “Take care of her. Don’t let her use her power and definitely don’t let her leave.”

“I was not planning on it,” he said. “What did you see?”

“A corpse,” I replied. “Whatever happened to her all but destroyed her mind. The person she was, is gone. She’ll have to work on being the person she is and see where that takes her.”

Solomon shook his head sadly. “I had hoped she would recover. Is there nothing we can do for her?”

“Let her rest,” I replied. “The next day or two are going to be harder on her than the last two weeks. But it’s something she needs to do before moving forward.”

“Thank you, son,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “I cannot bear to think what state she would be in had you not intervened.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. That was a mistake. Had I not been leaning against the wall I would have toppled over. Once I regained my balance I continued. “She would have gotten to this point by herself. No doubt. I just saved her a few steps and a lot of time.”

I believed it too. Al had been wrong. If he had paid more attention to what we were seeing and less to her ass, I think he would have realized it as well. Anyone who could build a partition like that and survive what she had survived had some serious talent. And none of it had been Guild training, not without a Guild Hall. She was self-taught and self-taught meant Sorcerer.

“Thank you for your help,” I said, pushing those thoughts aside. I patted my jacket pocket where I had stowed the stack of books he had given me. “Between these and Sarah’s warning maybe I’ll actually get something out of this.”

“Be careful,” said Sol. “You will be traveling with a group again, venturing into unknown territory. Do not get careless.”

“You think I would let people get hurt? People I was hired to protect?”

Solomon shook his head, his face stern. “Not in the slightest. The worst trouble you have ever gotten yourself into wasn’t for your life; it was for others. I do not see you risking another’s life. I see you dying for that life, dying to avenge it. Do not be foolish.”

“Fatalistic of you. Should you hear my confession before I leave?”

He smiled broadly. “My son, God sets limits on all of us. For something that far out of my bucket you’ll have to talk to him directly.”

I laughed.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

It was late evening
when the cab dropped me outside the Mare City Botanical Gardens. The moon was out and rain was beginning to fall.

I took a deep breath. My last errand. Tomorrow, I would be looking at the Arcus first hand. It was going to be a dangerous journey, but what I was about to do was more dangerous still.

I made my way through the gate, ignoring the security guards on patrol. It was kind of reassuring to visit a place guarded by normal guys with guns instead of Dark Things or gargoyles or anything else weird. Just normal, average mercenaries with precision weaponry and a license to kill.

Of course, that was because Priscilla took care of her own arcane defenses.

I greeted the young woman at the front desk who reluctantly took me to see Priscilla. I hadn’t made an appointment or anything. She always knew when I was coming anyway.

The receptionist escorted me to a greenhouse in the back. She opened the door, ushering me into the room and closing it behind me.

There was no light, only the moon filtering in from the panes above. It was one of the smaller greenhouses, apparently meant for growing roses. Dozens of them, in every imaginable color, filled the room.

Priscilla Araneus was pruning one of the rose bushes, her hands deftly cutting a blossom from the stem. Her long caramel colored hair cascaded down her back in fine ringlets, shining in the moonlight.

She lifted up the rose, inspecting it. Even from this angle, I could tell she was smiling. She truly did make a gorgeous woman, almost like a rose herself. She was tall and lithe, her skin the color of chocolate, and just enough curves to be able to show them off.

And show them off she did. Even in the garden she was dressed in a yellow sundress of fine silk. A slit rose up from the hem, showing a fine expanse of thigh. Thin straps and a low neckline did little to conceal the rest of her figure. A red rose was tucked behind one ear.

She turned around to face me, her full, strawberry colored lips curled up in that teasing way that always caught a man’s attention.

And her eyes reflected green in the moonlight, reminding me why ancient man felt so inspired to discover fire.

“Virgil, how are you doing?” Her voice was regal and dignified, lacking the accent of so many in the area. All the while her eyes studied me, bright lanterns in the dim greenhouse. I had seen a variation of those eyes in my dreams for the past four years.

Except they always came in sets of eight.

“Hello, Priscilla. It’s good to see you again.”

“Is it?” she asked, her voice uncertain. “You wouldn’t have come here if there were not a reason for concern.”

“Aw, I didn’t know you cared, Priss.”

She frowned, and her voice lost some of its dignity. I did that to people sometimes. “Do not call me, Priss. I hate it when you call me that. My name is Priscilla. Priscilla Araneus. You may call me Priscilla or Miss Araneus. Not Priss.”

I held up my hands, smiling. “Alright,
Miss
Araneus.”

She sat down on one of the stools, the flower still in hand. “
And I care very much,” she said, her voice becoming warmer. “I know why you came.” She wound a lock of her long, golden hair in between her fingers, her face troubled. It was a vulnerable expression and she made it look good. Really good.

“I want you to stay away from this,” she said. “Walk away.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “How do you even know what’s going on? You couldn’t, not this quick.”

She looked at me like I was stupid. “You have b
een hired to chase the Rainbow, hired by Cyrus Aberland himself. You have already been to meet his team and of course, you have already been to the Cathedral, though I need not have pulled any strings to decipher that. How is Solomon?”

I stared at her a moment. I hated it when she did that. “You’re very well informed, as usual. He is fine. I’ve done stuff like this before, you know,” I said, getting the conversation back on track. “Hell, the place I dragged you out of is worse than just about anything I can imagine.”

She smiled sadly. “You know as well as I that my home is but one of the evils that this world holds. People have escaped from Nidia. People with less power than you and in worse situations.”

“What’s your point?” I asked.

“Virgil, wherever this leads, it has consumed more powerful men and women than yourself.”

“I know that,” I said. “Sol had some very detailed reports. I’ve been reading all about everyone who ever went after the Rainbow.”

“What do you plan on doing? How is it that you think you can lead anyone into this kind of danger?”

That struck a nerve. “There is more to me than my magic. And I have been doing stuff like this without my magic for four years.”

“Fine, but do you know the caliber of those that chased it?” she asked, her eyes sharp and intense. “Guildmaster Sentius. One of the WyrmLords, Creofax?”

I was taken aback. That was something different altogether.

She continued. “That’s just the tip of the iceberg, Sorcerer. The Guild may be hesitant but they aren’t the only power in this world. Drakul sent an emissary, the Order of the Ring sent several knights. Goblin tribes, elven courts, the Fay, not to mention every government in the world. The list goes on from there. Did you know that?”

The books had hinted, but I didn’t know the details. “No, I didn’t but-”

She interrupted me. “Do you know what they found?”

“They didn’t find anyth-”

She interrupted me again. “They either found nothing or did not come back at all!” She held up a finger, pointing it at me. “But the ones who found nothing did not do it easily. They traipsed through Africa, South America, Antarctica. Everywhere you can imagine before finally giving up and turning around.

“Do you know how many people were lost before they gave up?” She picked up a
thick manila envelope that was next to her and tossed it to me. “That is not a complete list. Only the people I could find any information on.”

I started flipping through the pages. God, Priscilla had more contacts than I knew. I hadn’t seen most of these names in Sol’s books. I recognized only a few of them. James Lithroy, a big game hunter. Killed by a lion totem while chasing the Arcus. Richard Renlow, bounty hunter. Killed by tribesman while chasing the Arcus. Elven champions, knights, seers, Fairy nobility, shamans, witches, werefolk. You name it. Just about everyone had sent someone at one point or another. All killed while chasing the Arcus. The list went on. And on. A long, long way. And these were just the ones who had died during the journey. None of them had been killed by whatever was at the end. The causes of death were everything from disease and the elements to animal attacks and magic.

I had been in the wild before, led expeditions lasting months. But not on this scale. From what she was telling me, some of these parties had traveled across each and every one of the continents before giving up. Even with the use of technology and magic, with resupplying before setting off each time, it would wear on the people involved.

“That is not all,” she said quietly. “I know this man, this Aberland. You cannot trust him. He is more than what he seems. He is dangerous.”

I thought about the look in the man’s eyes. She didn’t have to tell me that.

“I can take care of myself,” I said.

She stood. “Why must you be so stubborn? Let go of your pride!”

“It’s not about my pride,” I said. “If we are prepared, and believe me, I will be prepared, than we can do this. I can do this.”

“I can give you the money if that is what it is about!”

For a moment I saw red, heard nothing but the throbbing of my own heart. I slammed my fist on the counter, knocking over one of her plants. “Do not ever offer me your fucking charity!” I grabbed the pot, piling the dirt back in. “The last thing I will do is be under your thumb. I have given my word anyway.”

“You agreed already?” she hissed, her eyes dangerous. She grabbed my arm, her nails digging into my skin through the thick material of my coat. “Without even looking into it? Do you even know who you will be guiding?”

“Mostly,” I replied. I sighed, covering her hand with my own. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t have a choice. I need this, Priscilla. The money, the business. I need to do something! Anything!”