Sorcerer Rising (A Virgil McDane Novel) (25 page)

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

I walked into James’s tent
five hours later, cranky and uncomfortable. It was too early and sleep had been elusive. Tiffany’s words were running through my mind and my arm was a mixture of soreness and itching. With my talisman put back together, it was healing better than expected but far from comfortably.

James was pacing the room. Dorne and Lambros were present as well and all of them were standing around a single man. I recognized him as one of James’ men; he was holding his head in his hands, shaking it back and forth.

“About time,” James said. “Let’s get this little show on the road.”

I frowned. “What’s going on?”

“We caught this man, and a dozen others, sabotaging our equipment,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“They doused the Everburn on two of the trucks, removed the faraday reactors from several of the jeeps, and trashed half our food.”

“Why?” I asked.

James sneered down at the man. “That’s the rub, isn’t it? This is one of my best men. The other twelve were my workers, my security.”

“Sir,” the man said, “I don’t know what happened. I had nothing to do with any of this. I went to b-“

James stopped pacing in front of him. He drew his gun from its holster. “One more sound and I put a hole in your head.”

The man’s jaw shut so quickly I heard his teeth click.

“James,” Lambros said, putting a hand on his arm. “You can’t shoot the man.”

“I don’t know, Diana,” Dorne said, his arms folded in front of him. He was looking at the prisoner but they shifted to me as he said, “I have no patience for traitors. This is how we would do it.”

I glared at him and started to say something about Wizards with big mouths, but James interrupted me.

“These are my men, Lambros, and
this is my responsibility. I won’t let this type of thing to happen under my watch.”

“You picked a bad man,” she said, placing a hand on his arm. “It happens.”

He shrugged her off. “Not with my men.”

“I love shooting people as much as the next person,” I said, “but how about we try and figure out a little bit more first.”

James looked from the man to me, tapping his gun against his hip. Finally, he holstered it and sat down. “Steven. You’ve been with Aberland since the beginning. We came on together. Why’d you do it?”

Steven looked around the room, but remained silent.

“Pretty sure you can talk now, Steve,” I said.

“Like I said before, Jim, I don’t know what happened.”

“You’re saying that you and twelve other men,” James said slowly, his eyes closed, “sabotaged all our equipment, spent hours with tools, taking things apart, breaking things, and you don’t remember a damn thing?”

“I know it sounds crazy,” Steven said. “All I remember is going to bed and-“

Suddenly, Arne and Tiffany stormed into the tent. “Virgil!” she hollered. “You have to see this!”

We’re in the middle of something!” James shouted.

I ignored him. “What’s going on?”

“I have detected a series of anomalies within the Walter Cloud,” Arne said. “But I cannot make out their exact nature.”

Tiffany pushed past him. “Look,” she said, grabbing me by the back of the neck. She looked Deep into my eyes and suddenly I was seeing a world of grey, as it were an etching. More than that, I could feel the cool morning air as the sun rose, feel the vibrations in the ground. She was showing me her little sentinel’s point of view.

The image cleared, focusing in on the edge of the world. An edge that was steadily moving closer. Where once before the ground had been a good ten feet away, now it was only a foot, and steadily receding.

It was all dissolving into mist.

Without words, I guided Tiffany, swiveling the plant’s view to follow the mist. My stomach dropped. The mist was heading toward the Arcus!

And it was pouring in from every direction.

Suddenly the ground gave way under the plant, and the vision disappeared. We reeled away from each other as the vision died.

“What was that?” she asked. Her eyes were wide, too dilated, and she was holding her head.

I grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out of the tent, my gaze fixed on the Arcus. Sure enough, mist was pouring in from every direction.

“Damnation,” I whispered.

“What?” she asked.

“The world’s coming apart,” I said.

“What are you talking about?” Dorne asked, following behind us. “That’s impossible.”

“I agree, nevertheless, it seems to be happening.” I thought back to the void, the encroaching nothingness. “I think the Arcus is destroying the Walter Cloud.”

“I saw it through my spell,” Tiffany said. “The edge of the cloud is receding.”

Suddenly, a sharp pain shot through my temple. I grabbed my head, screaming. Beside me, I could hear Tiffany and Dorne doing the same. It lasted only a moment before fading but was excruciating while it lasted.

I looked at her, the fear in her eyes confirming what I feared.

“You felt that?” we asked at the same time.

It shouldn’t have been possible. The Walter Cloud had just lashed out at my keep, had tried to breach my mind, tried to breach all of our minds. The only thing that had kept it from happening were our partitions. The pain had been because we weren’t expecting it. Hell, it was the Walter Cloud, who would?

I looked at Dorne. “Don’t tell me you didn’t feel that.”

To his credit, he came to the same conclusion I had in moments. “It’s turning back into Ae
ther.”

Every mage worth their salt had a partition. Anyone a mage brought into a cloud was prepared in a similar manner, a temporary partition set up to guard them against the Aether.

But we hadn’t set up anything for any of these people…

“We have to get everyone out of here!” Dorne said.

All around us people were thrashing about, grasping their heads. Without a partition, their minds were vulnerable. The Aether was hungry, prying apart their minds for tidbits to feed and grow on.

I watched as a tree dissolved into mist, becoming purple gaseous water vapor, then reform into a griffin and sail off into the sky. Before it had made it twenty feet it dissolved once more, again floating toward the Rainbow. Again it reformed, this time becoming a rock. It dissolved again, then exploded in a fireball that flashed for miles. Once more it was mist, moving toward the Arcus.

Clouds formed and unformed in the air, lightning flashing through the sky. Rain and hail, toads, insects, blood, fire, everything you could imagine began to fall. The ground lurched, cracks running through the soil while the sun shifted from blue to red, then to yellow, growing and shrinking through each color.

“We have to get the hell out of here!” I said.

“All our equipment…” Dorne said. “We have only a few vehicles to spare.”

Everything was chaos. James rounded up all his men, the ones who had sabotaged our equipment included, and set to work repairing anything that would help. To make matters worse, the other camps joined us in our disarray. The dozens of expeditions that had set up camp around the Arcus had been sabotaged as well, and most of their vehicles were similarly broken down.

James got two of the freight trucks rolling while Dorne and I unloaded their cargo. We loaded in everyone we could and took off for the gateway.

Tiffany, Steven, Alfred and I ended up in a jeep together. Dorne and James had each taken one of the freight trucks, while the other camps followed behind us.

The last I saw of the Arcus was the earth around it dissolving, becoming something else entirely. Arms and tentacles, talons and all sorts of other shapes began to reach up from the ground. Some of it dissolved again and floated into the Arcus but more of the shapes dragged themselves up, moving in our direction.

All around us
, the world was coming apart. Aether was the most volatile substance in all Creation, the essence not just of life but all matter. Mages absorbed the Aether, letting it mingle with their own personal aura, giving it a framework with their mind that allowed them to create and manipulate the world around them.

But a
cloud, a world in the Aether was far too powerful to control or harness. It was wild and untamed, always hungry for something to give it substance and form. Now, this cloud was going through an identity crisis.

Alfred screamed suddenly, grabbing at his face. Without warning, he burst into flames as if he’d been soaked in gasoline. Beside him Steven screamed, slapping at Alfred with his hands, anything to extinguish him.

And of course, Alfred was the one driving.

I yelled for Steven to grab the wheel but it was too late. We swerved from the path, careening toward a boulder on the side of the hill. Before we could collide, the rock disappeared in a puff of purple mist. We passed through the mist and ran up on the hill. The last thing I saw was Alfred’s burning form as we sailed through the air.

I woke up with Tiffany blowing into my mouth. I enjoyed that for a moment before my memory came back. I sat bolt upright and was greeted with the image of the jeep, upside down and now aflame, Alfred’s charred form crushed in the driver seat.

“Oh, good, you’re alive,” Tiffany said.

I had a witty retort primed and ready but the sound of gunfire cut me off. Steven was taking cover beside a rock, firing into the woods at darting, shadowy figures.

I dragged myself to my feet and grabbed him. He jerked around, his eyes wild with fear, anger, despair.

I looked Deeper, not much, just under the surface to establish a bit of a contact. We didn’t have time for a full blown partition, but he needed to be under control before he manifested something major. Or burst into flames. God, I was never going to get that image out of my mind. Or the smell.

“Steven,” I said slowly, quietly. His eyes were wide, darting back toward the woods. “I can’t do much for you, and for that I am sorry. I know you have a whole world pressing down on you, and I wish like hell I could build something that would protect you, but I can’t. The only way we’re going to survive this is to get out of here. Do you understand?”

He was shaking and it took a moment, but finally he nodded. Kudos to Aberland and James in their recruiting, sabotage aside.

“I can help out for a bit though, to get you out of here,” I continued, looking Deeper. “Think of your favorite toy growing up. A stuffed animal, a toy car, a gun. Whatever it was that made you the happiest. Focus on it. Put it right in the forefront of your vision. Picture everything you can about it, every sense you can remember. But do not imagine, do not fill in any details. Picture it exactly as you remember it. Above all, do not think about anything else. Okay?”

He nodded again, this time quicker.

“Virgil!” Tiffany screamed. The forest was becoming louder. Also, it was becoming less forest. Here and there the woods were dissolving, springing into jungle, snow, desert, lakes and ponds, every imaginable vista and environment.

I heard the jeep explode behind us. The fire must have reached the Everburn core, pushing the boiler way beyond its capacity.

It was chaos around us, and half of it wasn’t even the Aether. Everyone was making a mad dash for the gateway. Most of them weren’t from our group and it didn’t look like anyone had noticed what had happened with Alfred.

I looked back at Steven and my sight picked up something else. On each side of his temples was a purple spot, like an iridescent fingerprint. My eyes widened, and I Deepened my sight. It was a fingerprint, ridges and all.

Then Tiffany grabbed me, dragging me to my feet. Things, bubbling and amorphous, were crawling up the path towards us, a climbing, shape shifting avalanche of horrors.

We ran down the path. I was limping a little bit, pain surging through my ankle. Probably from the crash. I pushed forward, there was no time to worry about a sprain.

A roar bellowed from the woods to my left, an eerie clicking from the swamp that had formed on my right. The sky lit up as a bolt of lightning struck Tiffany. I was thrown back by the thunderbolt, with only enough time to see her throw up her arms.

I blinked on the ground, my ears ringing. Slowly, my vision came back. I picked myself up off the ground and was amazed to see her still standing, surrounded by a nimbus of green life, her hands still held above her, the muscles along her shoulders and neck tensed. The light began to lose its intensity and I swear, the whole forest grew right in front of my eyes. I saw a tree trunk grow a whole foot in diameter as the green light drained from her.

She looked at me, green eyes, literally, glowing with intensity. For a moment, I felt a violent attraction to her. My face flushed, my heart thumping faster in my chest. There were other reactions as well, reactions I pushed away as they were not really appropriate at the moment.

“That was amazing,” I said.

She let out a slow breath, the last of the light fading. “Photosynthesis is amazing,” she replied. “I just stole the idea.”