Heartless (Blue Fire Saga) (17 page)

“Let’s go, then,” Smith said. “Leave the spell in place and let the wizard know we were here. Dismantling it would give him even more any information about our abilities.”

Once again, Rome led the way. In just a few moments, they reached a large, freshly dug hole flanked by a tall pile of still damp dirt. Smith and Jones stopped about six feet from the pit, while Rome edged a few steps closer.

“This is the place,” she said. She dropped down into a squat and peered down into the hole. “I’ve never felt anything like this. It’s almost overwhelming.”

“Is it a grave?” Smith asked, thinking of the cemetery they had just left. “Or was something magical unearthed here?”

“I’m not sure yet. Perhaps it’s both.” Rome sniffed the air and moved her palms over the empty hole. “There is a complicated mixture of magics here, some of it extremely powerful. It’s going to take me some time to try to unravel it.”

“Any chance that whoever or whatever did this is still nearby?” Jones asked, his eyes carefully scanning the surrounding woods for any unwelcome presence.

“No, they are gone.” Rome stood up and slowly circled the hole. She pointed back toward the road. “Our wizard went that way. If he got into a car, I will not easily be able to follow him.”

“Let’s take a quick look, just in case,” Smith said. “If pursuit seems useless, we can come back and you can try to figure out what happened here. This hole is not going anywhere.”

Rome followed the trace of magic leading away from the pit.

“By the way, our wizard was almost certainly a waziri,” she said as they walked.

“A black waziri?” Jones asked.

Rome shook her head. “No. I sense no taint to his magic. It is clean, like of old.”

Smith and Jones both stopped, surprised by the news.

“I didn’t know there were any of that kind left,” Smith said. “I thought they had all been wiped out by their black brethren.”

“Apparently not,” Rome said. She continued on toward the road, stopping on the shoulder. “He got into a vehicle here. I could try to follow, but I would have to walk. We would never catch up to him.”

“There’s no sense trying to follow,” Smith said, gazing down the road. He turned back to Rome. “Let’s go back to the pit and see what you can learn.”

Rome nodded. “I agree.”

They returned to the empty hole. The two men again kept their distance, giving Rome space to work. She spent almost fifteen minutes circling the excavation, sniffing the air, fingering the dirt, even jumping down into the six-foot deep pit and testing the air and the dirt below the surface. When she was finished down there, Smith had to hoist her out by the arms. Once out, she circled the hole yet one more time.

At last she was done with her examination. She walked a few paces from the hole and leaned her back against the trunk of a thick tree.

“There were at least four separate kinds of magic in play here. A waziri, as I told you before, who expended a great deal of power. There was also black magic here, several different strands that I could detect, probably black waziri. Their power was not as clear or well-defined as the wizard’s. I’m not sure why.”

Smith made a face at the mention of the black waziri. “Are you certain they were black waziri? We’ve not detected their presence in this hemisphere before.”

“No, I cannot be absolutely certain—like I said, there was something off about what I felt—but from what I could sense, that’s my best guess.”

Jones spat onto the ground. “The black devils are the perfect example of why our brotherhood exists,” he said. “They turned from ordinary wizards to evil darkness, as all magic eventually must.”

“Well, it seems the wizard did some of our work for us,” Rome said. “I cannot say for certain what happened here, but it seems as if he destroyed at least two of his renegade brethren.”

A half smile curved Jones’ lips. “When we catch him, I’ll be sure to thank him before we destroy him.”

“You said there were at least four kinds of magic used here,” Smith said to Rome. “What else are we dealing with besides the wizard and the black waziri?”

“There was a witch here. I believe she cast but a single spell. What kind of spell, I cannot say. It was dwarfed by the power of the others’ magic.”

“There have always been witches in these parts,” Smith said, “so I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised that one was here. Can you tell whose side she fought on?”

Rome shook her head. “I cannot say for sure. I detected no hint of her being hurt or destroyed, so perhaps she aided the good wizard somehow.”

“And the fourth magic?” Jones asked.

“Ahhh, that one was the blackest of all. It stank of death, fear and anguish. I’ve never felt anything like it.” Rome closed her eyes for a moment, remembering everything she had sensed. “I felt it most strongly when I was down in the pit, but there was no trace of it on the surface of the ground. It’s as if the power was projected to this place, while the user remained far away. I don’t know how that is possible, unless he was somehow connected to the black waziri and was drawn here to help them.”

She paused, remembering a small detail from her examination. She grabbed Smith by the hand and pulled him over toward the hole.

“Lower me down,” she said. “I want to check something.”

Smith took hold of Rome’s wrists and lowered her gently into the pit. He watched as she spun around in a slow circle before smiling and raising her arms back up toward him. He lifted her from the hole.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Something I almost missed. There’s an aspect of the foul power present here that was also used on the stairs in the dormitory. Had that magic not been so faded, I would have recognized the connection sooner.”

“So one of the powers employed here was involved in the earlier reanimation?” Jones asked.

“Yes, in some way. And not just any of the powers—the most malevolent one.”

Smith nodded. “I think we need to make a much closer examination of the city and the college.”

“With so much magic at play, we will need to be careful,” Rome cautioned. “There is a limit to how many powers each of you can absorb at one time.”

“You’re right, of course,” Jones said, “but I doubt we’ll find all these powers working together against us. They are clearly enemies.”

“If we’re fortunate enough to come across all of them at once,” Smith said, “we can sit back and wait until one side is vanquished. Then we can deal with those who remain.”

“I can slough off the powers I absorbed from the vampire now,” Jones said. “Unless you think I should use them to spread a bit of terror and unrest first.”

He opened his mouth. A pair of sharp fangs extruded from his upper jaw and his skin seemed to grow a bit pale. With an easy leap, he bounded up onto a branch twenty feet above his companions. He balanced there for a few seconds before swinging back down to the ground.

“Their strength really is quite extraordinary,” he said after landing with a soft thud. “I wouldn’t want to apply this power in broad daylight, though. Even with the sun so low, I can feel it burning my skin.”

He gave his body a quick, vigorous shake, like a dog shaking water off its coat. The fangs disappeared and his skin returned to its normal color as he pushed the powers back inside him.

“I think you should rid yourself of the vampire essence now,” Rome said. “There’s no telling when you will need to absorb something else. You’d best be ready.”

“I agree,” Smith said. “If there are more vampires around, we can stir the populace against them when we have finished with these other powers. They seem to be by far the greater threat.”

Jones nodded. He closed his eyes and blew out a deep, slow breath. A dark, misty shadow floated out from his open mouth, quickly dissipating into the air.

“It is done,” he said.

“Back to town, then,” Smith said. He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “This might be fun.”

22. RESTORATION

H
igh in the mountains of Romania, the Necromancer’s foul mood was evident as he sat at his magical table with the black wizard Viktor and the two remaining novitiates, Jordan and Rafael. Five empty wooden chairs pushed tight against the huge round table bespoke of the losses he had recently suffered.

The Necromancer was a large man—if indeed the misshapen figure could be called a man—significantly bigger than any of his comrades, in girth even more so than height. He possessed a huge bulbous belly, and his hairless head was almost as round as a basketball. In the dimness of the room, the skin of his face and hands seemed almost white—a milky, deathly white more reminiscent of a corpse than a living human being. He had thick purplish lips, a broad, flat nose, and no eyebrows at all. As fearsome as the rest of his countenance was, his most frightening feature by far was his eyes. No eyeballs floated within their confines—no iris, no pupil, nothing. Just a flat, pinkish film. Despite his empty eyes, the Necromancer could see as well as anyone, although anything brighter than candlelight hurt his eyes.

He sat slumped in a high-backed seat that was more throne than chair. Intricate carved runes covered much of the dark, almost black, wood. The smooth surface of the table in front of him was fashioned out of a special, highly polished material that looked almost like black glass. Candles flickering in brass sconces on the chamber’s stone walls tossed pale illumination into the room, but none of the light reflected off of the top of the table. The dark surface seemed to swallow any light that struck it. 

On top of the table sat an urn fashioned from the same black material as the table. The round bottom of the container was almost a foot in diameter, while the neck tapered to an opening no more than two inches wide. Faint movement could be seen through its opaque sides, and a low hum seemed to come from inside.

The Necromancer’s three followers watched him silently, each unwilling to draw attention to himself by speaking. Viktor was pretty sure he knew what was going on, while the two apprentice wizards had no idea.

Finally, the Necromancer spoke. His voice was deep and gravelly, and his tone hinted at barely restrained anger.

“Behold all that remains of your four comrades,” he said, nodding toward the urn on the table. “I have managed to retrieve Andre’s essence, but that is all. Tomas, Makenzi and Matthew are gone forever, beyond reclamation even by me.”

A quick gasp escaped unbidden from Jordan’s throat. He was now the last remaining novitiate with any chance of becoming a waziri. Makenzi and Matthew were gone, and Rafael had already lost his master, Josef. Only the wizard who imparted his powers to an acolyte could perform the training necessary to bring the acolyte to his full powers—Rafael’s powers would remain frozen forever right where they were when Josef was destroyed.

Viktor shot his apprentice a withering glance before turning back to the Necromancer.

“Dominic again?” he asked.

The Necromancer’s empty eyes narrowed. “I do not know for sure. Some power beyond Dominic’s—beyond mine even—blocked me from seeing what happened when Tomas and the others were killed. But when the veil lifted earlier today, I saw Dominic destroying their essence. I fought him for Tomas, but I was too late and too far away, and so Dominic prevailed. I managed to wrest Andre from him, but that is all.”

“Can you restore Andre to us?” Viktor asked hopefully. It would be decades before Jordan became a full-fledged wizard, and Viktor did not relish being the only remaining black waziri until then, especially with the way things had been going lately.

The Necromancer leaned forward, resting his fleshy forearms upon the table.

“I do not know. I am going to try.” He shrugged. “If I fail, then Andre’s power will join the others within the table.”

Viktor shuddered, not wishing that fate upon his deceased brother. The table held captive the magical essence of several dozen waziri defeated by the Necromancer and the renegade waziri more than a century before. Viktor could imagine no more horrible, gruesome existence. Whenever the Necromancer called upon the power of the table, the eyes of the vanquished wizards rose to the surface. Those eyes were filled with terrible anguish, despair and pain.

The Necromancer clapped his hands twice. A buxom peasant girl dressed in a black corset materialized from the shadows in the corner of the room. A thick blond braid hung over her shoulder and across her left breast. The Necromancer watched her shuffle desultorily across the floor toward him. Her face was pretty but plain, and her blue eyes, which had once sparkled with joy, were dull and lifeless, the result of all the things she had seen and been forced to do in the year since she had been taken into the castle. Her name was Petra, but if he had ever known it, he did not remember it now. He did not expect the girl to last much longer, but that was no matter to him—the countryside was filled with similar girls. And when he had finally used her up, she would make a tasty meal.

Petra halted two steps from the Necromancer’s chair, keeping her eyes glued to the floor. No one met the Necromancer’s empty, disconcerting eyes if they could help it.

“Your wish, my lord?” she asked in a flat, toneless voice.

“Go fetch the newest male servant in the castle and bring him here immediately,” the Necromancer commanded.

Petra turned and departed the room, her step slightly less heavy than when she had approached the table. If the Necromancer noticed, he gave no sign. Viktor was not surprised by the increase in the girl’s pace—despite his exalted position, he too usually found himself more eager to leave the Necromancer than to approach him.

The Necromancer waited in silence for the girl to return, his empty gaze fastened on the magical urn in front of him. Viktor and the two novitiates remained silent as well.

When Petra returned, she was accompanied by a tall, strapping young man dressed all in black. His face was darkly tan under a shock of black hair—ample evidence that he had not been captive inside the castle very long. His eyes flicked worriedly back and forth as Petra brought him toward the Necromancer.

When the Necromancer turned his empty eyes upon the servant, the young man froze in horror. Though he had heard stories about the master of the castle from the other servants, this was his first encounter with him. None of the stories had prepared him for the Necromancer’s horrible stare.