Sorcerer Rising (A Virgil McDane Novel) (32 page)

With that work done, we made sure we had everything we might need and moved toward the Aether. We climbed into the tree and stepped into the mist.

Just like the Walter Cloud, I felt the mist play over my skin. But this time the tendrils were hungrier, wrapping around me, trying to pry into my aura. There was a tingling sensation over my skin, then deeper. It ran through my muscles, through my bones. A slew of smells and tastes assaulted my senses. For a strange, unsettling moment I had the strongest feeling that I was hearing and seeing flavors and scents, then the mist parted and we were through.

James shuddered beside me. “That was unpleasant.”

“I’ve had worse,” I said. “We’re good.”

I looked around, but Sam wasn’t in sight. That would have been way too easy. We were in what looked like an orchard that stretched as far as we could see. The trees were spaced out too neatly for it to be a normal forest. They looked like olive trees with thick black trunks but had wide crowns with long, spidering branches. No leaves adorned the limbs, only seed pods.

The sun was in the sky but the light was dim, set at a natural dusk. The air was cooler and dryer, a stark contrast to the thick jungle heat.

“I was expecting worse,” James said, looking around. “I don’t see anything.”

“Don’t let that fool you,” I said.

“Come on,” he said. “It’s just trees, I don’t even hear birds singing.”

I grabbed him by the arm, making sure he was facing me. “We are in the Aether now,” I said, getting in his face. “This world is no longer bound by anything, anything, that you know. You need to understand this now. There are worlds where time flows backwards, worlds where the earth is alive. Worlds made of energy and light, where fire doesn’t burn, where lightning is solid. I have seen worlds ruled by lizardmen, birds…” I shuddered, “…spiders.”

James pushed my hand off, but not aggressively. “Alright, you don’t have to be dramatic. Let’s look around and I’ll be careful.”

We moved through the orchard in what seemed to be a northerly direction. There was a path, which seemed to best route to follow since we were choosing at random. I studied the trees as we talked. From a distance they seemed relatively normal, but up close they were certainly odd. They
weren’t covered in bark, but a leathery, moist carapace. Small pits speckled the trunk, opening and closing with a wheezing sound.

Worst of all, the seed pods twitched as we walked past them.

“Hold on,” I said. “This will just take a moment.”

“What?” James asked.

I walked up to one of the trees, watching it carefully as I approached. “I want to make sure we learn from this. Hopefully we can get something useful from this fiasco.”

“We don’t have time to study it,” James said.

“Studying is what happens later,” I said. Then to myself,
Al, incoming.

I placed my hand on the soft, sticky bark of the tree and concentrated. The Guild had whole branches of study dedicated to working with the Aether. Most of that knowledge was lost to me, but I know from gossip that they call this the Art of Breathing. What I had done in the warehouse was Exhaling.

This was Inhaling.

I took a deep breath, sucking air into my lungs. I focused on the tree, looking Deeper as I did so. I kept inhaling, long after I should have been able to. My vision pierced the boundaries of reality, peeling back layer after layer until I could see the framework, the very fabric of what made up the tree
represented as little motes of light.

Then I reached out with my mind, and began to take those motes of light apart.

The tree began to dissolve into mist, orange and green smoke seething from the tree and funneling into my body. I continued to Inhale and the smoke began to thicken, huge chunks of matter breaking away from the tree until everything was gone. When I was done, a ten foot pit remained in the ground where once the tree had stood.

James was giving me a wild look.

“Never seen anyone do it, huh?”

“No,” he said simply. “I’m a city boy. What’s it like?”

“It’s like a headache,” I said. “At first anyway. It feels like a migraine the longer you hold it, like a pressure right in the center of your forehead. I’ll have to get rid of it after a few days, or it will be too much to bear.”

“What if you don’t?” he asked. “It breaks out?”

“No,” I said, thinking of the Nidians that occupied my mind. “That’s what the Guild says to scare people away from sorcery. The strain isn’t from trying to keep it inside, it’s from trying to keep it from getting too deep. Too long and it becomes a part of you, ingrained into your mind. You can still bring it out but you’ll never get it all and there’s no telling what it can do to you.”

He looked around. “I don’t think I would want this part of me.”

“I’ve had worse,” I repeated.

We found Sam an hour later. He was in an empty field where the woods stopped. They didn’t thin, they just stopped, a line of trees as far as we could see and then freshly tilled earth. He was walking up and down rows of dirt, bending down every twenty feet or so to stick his fist in the dirt. When he was done, he gently pushed the dirt back over the hole and moved on.

“Sam!” James shouted, excited. The doctor either didn’t hear him or ignored him.

I put my hand on James’ arm, giving him a cautionary look. “Not too fast. We have no idea what’s going on here.”

We approached him slowly. “Sam?” I asked hesitantly. “Whatcha doing?”

Again, no reply. He was repeating his task over and over, sweat running down his body. There was no telling what had happened in the hour he had been in here. I had heard the tales, but I had never seen one in person.

“Sam, buddy,” James said, crouching down in front of him. “We gotta get you out of here. You look like shit!”

Then I noticed his hand.

“James…” I said quietly. “Get back.”

Blood and pus dripped from the doctor’s fingers and the whole hand was nearly unidentifiable. As he bent down he reached his jacket and pulled out a scurrying, buzzing insect. It was a couple inches long with large black wings and a massive inch long stinger. It looked like a cross between a wasp, an ant, and a beetle, all hard carapace and sharp ends. It thrashed and buzzed as Sam handled it, driving that wet stinger into his skin over and over. Wherever the barb landed, the skin swelled and reddened, yellow puss and black blood oozing from the wounds.

He never registered the pain, his eyes distant. He simply placed the creature in the hole and covered it with a small handful of dirt. The row of holes continued as far as I could see and another row waited beside it.

I looked to my left and grew queasy. It wasn’t the mounds of dirt that went on and on, it wasn’t even the small, black saplings that had sprouted from those mounds. What made me queasy were the small black shapes that crawled up and down the plants, in and out of the small pits that had formed in the trunks.

He was planting seeds.

James took a step forward, and before I could stop him, grabbed Sam by the shoulder. He cursed, yanking his hand back quickly. Sam stood, recognition finally dawning on his face. His shirt was thick with blood and there was a rippling motion under the cloth. I could just make out a buzzing sound.

“Something stung me!” James said. A sore was already forming on his palm.

“Hello, Virgil,” Sam said, smiling. One eye was feverish with excitement, the other stared off to the side, cold and dead. “Hey, James. What brings you to my farm?”

“We came to get you, Sam,” I said slowly. “Do you know why you are here?
”

A look of confusion crossed his face. “You know, I sure don’t. We were…” He frowned. “We were in Africa weren’t we?” He looked around. “We’re not in Africa now. How did that happen?”

“There was an accident,” I said. “You’re hurt. We need to get you out of here. Can you tell me what happened?”

He looked around. “I-I don’t know. I was with you…the werewolf attacked. And…I was farming. My father was a farmer you know…” He looked at the trees. “He had the most amazing orchards…wanted me to…”

He looked down at his shirt and gasped. “My God! I’m hurt! I don’t feel…I don’t feel anything.” He looked up at me, horror filling that one eye. “Virgil, what’s going on? What’s wrong with me?”

He took a step forward, but I drew my gun from the shoulder holster. He stopped, panic filling his eyes. “What’s going on, Virgil?” he shouted again. “James?”

James was backing away. Sam fell to his knees. He looked down again, at his hands, at the hole at his feet. He tore open his shirt.

Behind me, James puked.

Sam’s whole body was riddled with dime sized holes. They weren’t wounds, though they were bleeding plenty. They looked more like the pits in the trees, wheezing as they opened and closed. Blood dribbled from the holes, but that seemed to be more from the rough treatment they were getting.

Bugs were crawling in and out of him, like wasps on a hive. Sam looked at me, horrified. It was an expression that would haunt me for the rest of my life, worse even than the source of his horror.

“Virgil,” he said, his voice raspy. His skin was starting to break apart around his face, underneath a shiny, black carapace. “Please, you have to help me.”

“I will,” I said, raising my arm until the gun was level with his face.

I could hear the scurrying again, not from the nightmare in front of me, but the nightmare inside. From memories I had spent years trying to keep at bay. I could see the webs, the men and women twitching in their cocoons. They looked at me like Sam was now. Pleading. They were husks, kept alive by a magic so putrid I had burned it from the world.

“Please don’t leave me like this,” he begged.

I don’t leave people behind.

One way or another.

“I am sorry, my friend,” I whispered, pulling the trigger. I didn’t stop until the gun clicked empty.

I fell to my knees, shaking. Blood roared in my ears. Everything was too bright, too vivid. My skin was itching, itching all over. I dropped the gun, digging my fists into my eyes, anything to block the images.

I found myself in front of a door, in my keep. The door was dusty, the torches unlit. Cobwebs hung from the corners.

No.

Something rustled on the other side of the door, followed by a low moan.

No!

The door’s knob swiveled, dust falling from the beams as something large and heavy hit it from the other side. I backed away, shaking. A soft whisper crept through, a young woman, in pain, asking….

“NO!”

I looked down in surprise. My fist was lodged in the earth, the ground blackened. All five rings were glowing, and I could see the talisman even without looking Deeper, a web of red-gold light against my skin.

As quickly as it appeared, it faded away.

I wiped my eyes, flexing my hand. I hadn’t thought of that room since Nidia, had tried my best to keep that memory locked tight, shut away.

James’s dry heaving roused me. I took a deep breath and dragged myself to my feet, taking in the situation. The orchard was coming to life. A wave of black was crawling from the trees, the buzzing so intense I could feel it in the ground.

All of it was between us and the gateway.             

I grabbed James, jerking him to his feet. To his credit he was coping rather well, relatively speaking. But I knew shock when I saw it, and worse, this would all be wearing on his partition. I was good, but it had been hastily built, and this was all way, way too much. We needed to out of here before his mind failed, before the orchard found something else to latch onto.

We drew up to the tree line. The insects hadn’t noticed us yet, but had formed a lethal black carpet on the earth. Everywhere the seed pods of the trees were unwrapping themselves, hard carapace and gossamer wings unfolding to reveal the horrid little beasts beneath.

If this had all be a controlled environment, with me right next to the gate, I would have been fascinated. But it being the situation it was, I drew Abigail and loaded in two red shells My last two.

Abby girl
, I said.
I know this is unusual, but we need something a bit different, okay? I’m gonna need everything you got, both barrels, and then some. That good?

I am always up for new things, Virgil,
she replied.

The orchard was boiling now, the bugs beginning to take flight. James sank down to his knees as I aimed the shotgun, concentrating on what I needed.

Fire was beyond me now, though it had once been the basis for most of my magic. Maybe Tiffany was right and the Guild hadn’t been the one to take that from me. All I knew was I hadn’t seen the source from which I drew my fire in years. I was burnt out, couldn’t cast it, control it, or touch it. The light show a moment ago had been the first time I’d seen it in years.

But there were few who knew more about fire. I tapped into the reservoir of knowledge Abigail had, the codex of formulae she contained and the various principles she used to transform these raw elements into pure energy. I tapped into that, adding what was needed to get the desired effect, then channeled raw will into the spell.