Sorcerer Rising (A Virgil McDane Novel) (44 page)

“Then what is the Arcus?” Diana asked.

“They’ve shown up three times now,” I said. “Always around the Arcus. It could be a bridge, a transport.”

“Even if that was possible,” Dorne said, “Why? What is their motive?”

I shrugged. “I don’t have the answer for that. Maybe to explore with. We’ve already seen evidence of a collection.” I jabbed my notes with my finger. “But this is what they recorded. And based on what I’ve seen, I am inclined to believe it.”

“We will see soon enough,” Diana said.

“What?” Dorne and I said in unison.

“We came all this way,” she said. “I intend on seeing what this is about.”

“Absolutely not,” Dorne said. “There is no way of knowing what is in there.”

“I have to agree,” I said.

She narrowed her eyes. “I would expect more from the both of you,” she said. “At least one of you.”

“If we are going in there,” Dorne said, “Than we need more time to study it.”

She stood up. “You have two days. Then we will be going in.”

Dorne was pacing around the cloud, watching it. Above, the morning sun shone through the hole in the cave ceiling.

It was just rising. Sleep had proven elusive.

I was studying one of the walls, going over the mural. “These weren’t simply ceremonies, religious stuff. I think these were experiments.”

“What?” he asked over his shoulder. He was staring into the cloud.

“Come here,” I said.

He tore his attention away from the cloud and joined me.

I pointed up at one of the images. “What does that look like to you?”

He looked closer. The image showed a monster, a four legged beast a hundred times larger than any of the little stick figures that surrounded it. Great fin like wings spread from its back and fire belched from its mouth. The next image showed another stick figure, his head shaped like a kraken. He was holding his hands up in the air and the beast was in some type of container or cage.

“That’s a dragon,” I said. “Specifically, I think that’s a WyrmLord. Creofax.”

“How do you know?”

I pulled a book from my pocket, one I had borrowed from Solomon. I opened it to a page I had dog eared.

“The timeline matches. Look.” I began flipping through the book, pointing to images up on the mural as I did. Solomon’s
book detailed some of the more powerful and notable pursuers of the Arcus. It started with a whole elven court, going through a whole list of powerful beings, skipped through Creofax and ended with Guildmaster Sentius.

I detailed the accounts to Dorne, pointing to a corresponding image as I did. I showed him the image of visitors from boats, armed with bows and casting magic, again somehow subdued by the kraken man. I pointed to the image of the dragon as well.

Lastly I showed him the image of the figure with a staff and robe. Lightning shone from his fingertips and above him a storm raged.

All the images showed the arriving party being subdued, always by a man with the head of a kraken.

Dorne rubbed his face. “This is disturbing.”

“I agree.” I continued moving through the images. I found something that might have been the Tuatha, complete with the Druidic rune. There was an image of a rampant mouth surrounded by vines, possibly a mandrake but it was hard to tell. Nothing about the Neanderthal or anything else we’d seen, but there dozens more images, only a few of which I recognized, spanning a dozen religions and some of the darkest corners of the world.

“What do you make of that?” I asked. The last image showed all the figures laid out in a circle in some type of temple.

When Dorne saw it, his face paled. He took a step back and turned away from me.

“What is it?” I asked. “Do you recognize that?”

“I…I cannot tell you about that,” he said, looking down.

I frowned. “You know what it is?” Then, “What do you mean you can’t tell me?”

“Virgil,” he said, looking back at me, his eyes pleading. “Do not push this.”

“Push this?” I asked, my voice rising. “If I’m reading this correctly, we’re in a shit storm of danger. This thing took down a Wyrm and a Guildmaster. We have a whole jungle filled with horrors and legends from across the world and the only people on this whole expedition who can deal with it are in this room! Just tell me.”

“It is Guild business,” he said.

My head was buzzing and my vision was red. I could feel the blood roaring in my veins and my hand felt like I’d tried to shove it through a brick wall. Fire burned up my legs, like I’d stepped on a live wire, and my teeth were clenched so hard my teeth hurt.

Dorne was lying on the floor of the cave, holding his jaw.

I took a deep breath. I hadn’t even remembered taking the swing, but it seemed to have been one of my better ones. I’d have never felled someone Dorne’s size otherwise.

I tossed the book at him. “Fine
. You go get Lancaster to help you then, Wizard. I won’t be marching into another hellhole while their secrets nip at my heels. I won’t come out of another world by myself.”

Then I left the cave.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“
We need to talk
,” Dorne said.

I ignored him, picking through my meal in front of the fire. We were going to need to start hunting soon. We were running out of the good stuff.

“Virgil,” he said, sitting down across from me.

“I don’t have anything to talk to you about, Wizard.”

“I have something I need to show you,” he said.

“What?” I asked, looking up at him. For just a moment I saw only the blue of his eyes, then I was standing at the edge of a great cliff with a drop that dizzied me.

Dorne was standing next to me.

“Son of a bitch, that is annoying,”
I said, still cupping my hands around my bowl. “What are we doing in your head?”

“I told you,” he replied, still looking out. “There is something I need to show you.”

He planted his staff in the ground and shifted it forward. I felt the ground beneath me begin to move. I looked over the cliff. There was no water, nothing but mist and vapor.

“Are we in the air?” I asked, covering my eyes as I stepped back.

“Yes,” he replied. “This island is my partition.”

I looked around, though safely away from the edge. There were glimpses of blue and green through the mist, forests and seas. But it wasn’t under us, or at least not only under us. Above was much the same, though I saw mountains as well.

Dorne must have noticed. “I have set the island on course. Time to show you what you need to see.”

He motioned and I followed him from the edge of the cliff. The island had several winding paths, each leading to small, brick cottages. He led me to a particular one and pushed the door open. It revealed a descending staircase that led several feet into the earth.

We made our way down. The staircase ended before a great stone disk. On either side stood a knight made of solid stone. At Dorne’s approach, they each took hold of the stone and rolled it to the side.

Inside was around chamber with several doors. In the center a single stand held a ring of keys.

Dorne walked to the center of the room and picked up the keys. I stayed at the doorway, my eyes wide, the breath catching in my throat. This was too much. These were the rooms the Guild had instilled in Dorne, all the knowledge he had accumulated in his career with them.

These were the rooms I had lost.

My eyes darted from door to door. Each held a symbol over the archway. One was four gemstones in the shape of a square, another had the symbol of an open book. In the back of the room was the largest door, the symbol of the compass over its arch.

Just like mine.

Dorne turned to me, staff in one hand, keys in the other. There weren’t as many on his key ring as mine, but several were made from different materials. I spotted one made from gemstone, another from bone.

“I imagine you have something similar to this in your own mind,” Dorne said.

I nodded, my eyes still wandering over the room. “Something like this. But the doors are gone.”

“That was the Brand,” he said. “Because you were deemed irresponsible with you power and the knowledge they had given you to wield it, it was taken from you.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

“I know. And what I am about to show you…” He paused, his eyes intense. “They would take my staff for this. They would Brand me, Virgil. But from what I have seen, it is something you deserve.”

He took a deep breath. “Do you know what a map room is?”

“A room with maps,” I said sarcastically.

He frowned. “Perhaps you have heard it called a charter room or your atlas, a compass room, the nexus, your center? Your third eye, your chi, maybe the crown chakra? A spell book?”

A shiver ran down my spine, my hair standing on end. I had hunted half these terms down, bribing and threatening the best of my ability. I had never learned what they meant.

He nodded, assured he had gotten through, and turned around. He walked to a room with a compass, the sigil of the Guild, and inserted a key made of loose soil. He turned the key and there was the sound of a complex mechanism moving throughout the door. After a slight pause, he pushed his shoulder against the door and nudged it open.

The chamber inside was a sphere with a central catwalk that extended from the door to a stand in the exact center. Underneath, the floor was a bowl shape. The walls all around were made of marble and a map had been painted into an elegant fresco. There were several blank patches, but at least half the sphere had been covered.

Dorne walked across the catwalk and stuck his staff into the center of it. Instantly, the gravity in the room suspended itself. I fought to keep myself upright as we both floated up off the ground.

Dorne spread his hands, a faint smile on his face. “Welcome to my mind.”

“What am I seeing?”

He floated down to the stand. I realized now it was a model of the island, with all the buildings and paths. It was built upon a large, glowing geode and floated in midair. “This is my partition.” He floated over to one of the walls, running his hands over the smooth stone. “And this is my mind.”

I looked around, things beginning to make more sense. “Your mind is a sphere, and we’re on the inside.” Everyone’s took a different form, much like the Aether. Mine was a barren wasteland, but it used to be woodlands. Sarah’s was all grassland, though it probably had more to it than that. Dorne’s was a hollow planetoid.

“Yes,” he said. He floated up toward the top. “This is the Heartwood. I have spent much of my life in these woods. They are a place of peace for me.” He floated back down, about midway between the poles. He pointed to a fresco of
stone worked labyrinths. “I draw much of my power, and my spells, from these mines. I have several constructs that work them, giving me the resources I need for my magic.”

“I’ve never heard of this room. What is it?”

He floated back to the stand. “This is a map room,” he said. “It is the first room they show you in the Guild, the one that comes most naturally.”

He closed his eyes and suddenly we were floating in the air, miles above his island. It was as if the paintings and models were suddenly real, all the way down to scale. The blank parts of the walls had been replaced by fog, the painting springing into real life.

“This is how you tame your mind,” he said. “It is our greatest secret, though I know most Sorcerers have some version of this. The mages who do not learn this technique rarely attain the level of Wizard or Sorcerer.

“And it is the reason they made the Brand. This is what it is supposed to take away from you.”

I was dumbfounded. Any time I left my partition, I had to hike across half the damn world just to get anywhere. And I was constantly, consistently lost. Paths rearranged, landmarks disappeared, monstrosities grew. Magic came from the mind, thoughts made form, and without any ability to chart my own mind, I had nothing to work with.

“The mind changes,” Dorne continued. “Without this room you can’t keep track of it.” He pointed to his southern hemisphere. “I’ve already seen half my mind change since we began this. Since I have learned…” he paused again, “Since I have learned more about the world.

“Without this room,” he said. “You can’t keep up. You’re either stuck, or lost. A world that can never change, or changes aimlessly.”

My mind reeled. This was what I was missing, what they had taken. This was the reason my mind was an atrophied, barren wasteland.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked. There wasn’t anything I could do about it.

“What you showed me in that book, it was a map room,” he said.

“So?” I asked. “You said the Guild didn’t have a monopoly on the idea.”

“But a map room is part of a partition,” he said. “Don’t you see? They have built a partition
in
the Aether.”