Glamour of the God-Touched (5 page)

Was this magewar?

Gripping the dagger, Garrick continued
downward. Fear crept over him like the touch of a snake.

He pushed open the door.

The destruction within was complete—tables
overturned, wood splintered, crystal broken. Alistair’s ceramic
bottles were shattered and their contents strewn about. The walls
were cracked and charred with massive black blotches.

Alistair lay across the room in a pool of
congealing blood, his robe torn, his eyes still open but fixed with
a glassy stare. There was no breath in his superior. That much was
clear. Probably hadn’t been for some time now.

The boy’s life force surged inside Garrick,
seemingly drawn to the empty shell of Alistair’s body.

He thought of how he had saved Arianna and
the creek bed.

Could he do it here?

Could he save Alistair? Could he bring his
superior back from the dead?

The idea grew like a weed.

He sheathed his dagger and reached
inward.

New magic rose, wild and out of control, so
much more powerful than anything Alistair had taught him. Images
and half-formed concepts grew in his mind, but the harder he worked
to merge them to a single focus the more mercurial they became. The
energy crested, and he felt like he might be ripped apart from the
inside. He could not wait.

He touched Alistair’s temple.

Life force burned through his body.

His muscles stretched.

He might have screamed, but the power
rushing through him made it impossible to tell. The burst knocked
him to the stone floor. A stabbing pain flared from above his
elbow, and he heard a great crack.

Then silence fell like a hood.

Garrick lay flat on his back, his elbow
blazing with pain. His sight, so crisp a moment ago, had now gone
dark.

He moaned.

A soft sound came from the distance—a robe
rasping against the stone floor.

“Superior?” Garrick whispered, already
sensing something was wrong.

The room grew frigidly cold. Alistair’s
voice wailed in pain.

Garrick looked over his shoulder and saw a
pair of incandescent orbs floating in the blackness. They were
Alistair’s eyes. Those blazing orbs of crimson fire were his
superior’s eyes.

Alistair stood and towered over him, those
eyes blazing red. He spoke magic in a wavering, ethereal voice.
Then he pointed a single, glimmering finger right at Garrick.

Elman was drained.

The Torean mage was dead, his manor razed,
and his apprentices captured—but the fight had taxed him further
than he wanted known. His legs burned like they had run all day,
and his chest and arms felt like they had been stretched at the
rack. His mind was numb.

So he assigned the Koradictines to guard the
rear and ensure the apprentices did not escape.

The
slaves
, he corrected himself, the
children ceased to be apprentices as soon as they had been
captured. He had assigned the Koradictines to ensure the
slaves
did not escape.

It was a task even a Koradictine should be
able to handle, and it should serve to keep them out of his
business for the evening.

Elman rubbed his eyes.

He was no fool. He understood what was going
to happen to those slaves.

These slaves would be herded into a camp
with others, then marched to the deserts of Arderveer, home of
Takril—the most powerful Torean wizard alive—to be offered as a
gift. When this gift was accepted, however, it would likely destroy
what little remained of the Torean House.

Then the Lectodinians could finally turn to
the task of cleansing the world of its Koradictine blight. Despite
his fatigue, Elman grinned. That time could not get here fast
enough.

The clopping of hooves drew near, and
Oldhamid appeared at his side, his eyes glistening in the
moonlight.

“The superiors will be pleased, no?”

Darkness hid Elman’s smirk. “Yes, the
superiors will be pleased.”

“I think it is important we report our
successes together.”

“Fear not, Oldhamid. You will receive proper
credit for your part.”

Oldhamid was silent a moment, then nodded
and fell back.

Wonders of all wonders, Elman thought—a
Koradictine who took a hint.

One of the slaves whined.

“Quiet,” a Koradictine mage said, drawing
his sword. It was a bit dramatic for Elman’s taste, but achieved
the desired effect.

Garrick pulled himself toward the stairs, but
his elbow flared with pain.

He knew Alistair’s magic. The bolt of energy
his superior was preparing would be powerful enough to bring the
manor crumbling down upon them both. Garrick groped in the darkness
with his one good arm, hoping to find something he could use as a
weapon. His fingers closed on a lab book.

He winged it at his superior, but the tome
fell short.

Alistair whispered the spell’s final
syllables, and reached his hand forward.

Garrick braced for pain.

A clap of thunder shook the floor, and a
green bolt snaked from Alistair’s fingertips. But instead of pain,
Garrick felt another essence, a strong, quicksilver aura that
appeared in the chamber, but seemed to be just out of sight no
matter where his gaze fell.

He felt power.

He smelled Torean wizardry more dense than
the most arcane of Alistair’s experiments.

Then there was darkness, and an eerie
silence where he had expected thunder.

The pain in his elbow was gone.

He could breathe without difficulty.

Alistair shuffled away, moving to climb the
stairs.

Garrick rose gingerly to his feet. He wanted
to understand what was happening, but things were moving too fast.
He followed his superior at a distance, moving by force of will
alone.

He felt it beginning then—the hunger coming,
a hollow craving like acid in his belly, the same craving that
haunted him after he had given life to Arianna, the same ache that
had driven him to take the serving boy’s life.

Alistair ambled through the building with a
grinding lurch. His back was hunched, and his head hung at an odd
angle. One arm was a bony stump, the other dragged his burnt staff
behind him. When he came to the moonlit yard, he surveyed the
remains of his manor—took in the charred stone, the gaping hole in
the far wall, and the smoldering stables. Then Alistair loosed a
wail that started low before building to a high-pitched scream.

A putrid cloud of green mist rolled over the
field.

Garrick’s stomach boiled with nausea. He
fell to his knees, wanting to wretch but finding nothing to bring
up.

Then Alistair was gone, and the green mist
was fading into the darkness.

The hunger returned fully to him, then,
perhaps even deeper than before. It was a presence, a force foreign
to his way of thinking, yet so embedded inside Garrick that it felt
like a second skin.

He felt weak.
His eyesight blurred.

You have given
, the voice said.
Now you must take
.

“No,” he murmured.

He crawled, fighting this voice in some
distant hope that he could get away.

“No,” he whispered again, his throat raw
with pain. “No.”

Garrick woke facedown.

The sun was high above, and he was baking in
the grass. The sight of the crumbling towers of Alistair’s manor
gave him a sense of emptiness. The front door swung in the random
breeze with a discordant moan.

He was alone.

His muscles whined as he stood up. The
sensation of all-consuming hunger hit him then as if he had dived
into cold water.

Food.

Nothing else mattered. He needed food.

Garrick limped across the field toward
Alistair’s pantry as quickly as he could. He kicked Bryce’s dagger
as he stepped into the building. It skittered against the flagstone
floor with a hollow clatter. He found dried venison and stale rye
bread, and ate voraciously until he could eat no more. Only then
did he turn his mind to what had happened last night. Only then did
he think about saving Arianna’s life, killing the boy, and crawling
away from Alistair’s broken manor to pass out on the yard.

It was over.

Alistair was gone. Balti, and Kelvin, and
the rest.

Gone.

He was alone again.

It wasn’t fair. These were the only words
that would come to him. Not fair. He pounded his chest and screamed
out loud. It hurt, but at least the pain was real. He screamed
again.

Yes, he had wanted power. He wanted to be a
mage. What apprentice didn’t want that power? But he had never
wanted this, never wanted to kill or maim, or to feel such
pain.

“I’ve had enough,” he yelled. “Do you hear
me? I’ve had enough!”

His forehead flushed with sweat, and he felt
something at the edge of his perception—an essence that was not
quite heat. Bodies. The exotic taste of…cinnamon? People. He sensed
people outside the manor. Four separate presences moving. Walking
toward him.

He went to the window.

A detail of Dorfort’s guards approached from
the southern hill, each with a long sword that flashed with the
sun. One had an unstrung longbow strapped to his back. Another wore
a helmet made of pounded bronze.

The guards’ arrival was no coincidence. The
blaze at Alistair’s manor was probably enough to color the
nighttime horizon, and if the fire itself hadn’t been visible, the
curtain of smoke rising against the morning sky would be. Either
way, he felt his hunger rise as the guards drew near.

He also felt a more familiar panic, a more
human fear.

He had seen it before. These guards would
need a culprit, and there was no more simple story than that of an
apprentice gone rogue. If they found him here, they would blame
him.

The men spoke.

Their words were unintelligible, but the
tone of their voices vibrated inside his chest. He closed his eyes
and tried to ignore the memory of the rotting heap of flesh that
had once been a serving boy. Wild magic droned in his ears, gaining
power with each moment.

You have given
, the power whispered.
Now you must take.

“No,” he whimpered, feeling darkness grow
inside him as the guards came forward. “I won’t do it.”

He lurched out the back door, pain burning
in his chest, intending to run. He was halfway across the manor
yard when he sensed more guards. They had surrounded the manor—he
felt four more ahead, and another four to his right.

“Halt!” a voice came.

Garrick had nowhere to go. His hunger surged
and he fell to his knees.

No
, he thought.
Go away
.

“Who are you?” a rough voice came to him as
if it was spoken from everywhere at once.

Garrick looked up to see a man standing
between himself and the woods, feet firmly planted, his three
compatriots coming into the area to encircle him further.

You have given
, the voice urged
again.
Now you must take.

“I said, who are you, boy?”

It took all of Garrick’s self-control to
avoid reaching out to the guard.

It would be so sweet, he thought. So sweet.
It took all of his self-control to avoid reaching out to the
guard.

“Alistair’s apprentice,” Garrick managed to
reply.

“What have you done here?”

“Nothing. I’ve done nothing. It was like
this when I came home.”

“It’s a mage’s castle, Captain,” a second
guard said. “No telling what goes on here.”