Sorcerer Rising (A Virgil McDane Novel) (49 page)

Runes, symbols I still didn’t recognize, there was a whole room dedicated to that this wasn’t it, played down the surface of the wood. It was a powerful tool, an engine for churning a Wizard’s magic, a window into his map room to focus his power. Beyond that, it was the status symbol of the Guild.

Of a Wizard.

I frowned. I wasn’t a Wizard and had no desire to return to that. This room had been taken from me and that just shouldn’t have been possible. It was how they taught though, always preparing to take their knowledge back. They focused on all the things I loved, knowledge, power, money, but to the extent that they had forgotten why they were pursuing them in the first place.

I took a deep breath and broke the staff over my knee. Both Al and the
pilgrim let out a startled cry. I ignored them.

“I am no longer a Wizard,” I said. “This does not make me one. I am a Sorcerer.” I focused my mind again, and the piece shattered in my hand, splinters flying away as the wood carved itself into a foot long wand.

Underneath me, I felt the ground rumble again. I looked at the map, its image burning into my mind. For the first time I saw my mind as a realm under my own control. I focused on the map. Curves and lines burnt themselves into the wand, forming a cylindrical pattern of the map into the wood.

I found BlackThorn’s lair,
where I had spoken with him just weeks ago. I shook my head. It was buried into Mulciber’s base, where his tentacles could burrow deep into its core.

“Good,” the pilgrim said. “I have been generous today, but I have another gift.” He drew an old, weathered matchlock from his belt. It was a foot long, made of black wood and blue, polished iron. The match chord burned a cold violet and a similar light emanated from the delicate scrollwork in the grip.

“This is Oath Maker,” the pilgrim said, flipping the gun around to present me the grip. “It is a powerful spell.”

I took the gun from him. “Why are you doing this?”

The pilgrim smiled again. “Because, Sorcerer, I have plans for you.”

And just like that he was gone.

“Well,” Al said, “I’m sure that won’t come back to bite us in the ass.”

“Get back to the keep,” I said, checking over the spell. I looked Deeper into it, peeling back the symbolism to see the actual framework. It was a network of violet, purple, and blue, a web of power so intricate that all I could make out from the cursory examination was it was powerful. “Get the room back. Make sure everything is secure. I’m going to take care of BlackThorn.”

“You might need help,” he said.

The ground rumbled again. That wasn’t just
Mulciber. That was reality. “I need you to get the keep ready. Make sure it is in as good a shape as possible and gather up as much power as you can. I can deal with BlackThorn but after that, we’re going to have to contend with everything else.”

I walked out of the room and to the edge of the volcano. Cracks of brilliant golden-orange light, shone through the ash.

I pointed my wand. Failure was not an option. I focused my mind, harnessing my power.

And then I frowned, lowering my arm. It hadn’t taken me more than a minute to forget that lesson. Failure was always an option. Sure, I had Dorne and everyone’s else’s life probably relying on my getting
my shit together, and who knew what else riding on stopping the crazy squid people, but sometimes you get dealt a bad hand. It was about playing that hand and refusing to fold.

I thought I hadn’t given up. I kept taking work, fought for charters, did things that I was ashamed of, even worse, did things I was ashamed to say I was proud of. But inside, I was just delaying the inevitable. Everything was just a scramble to get more so I could scramble harder to get more, etc.

And I had hated everything, myself more than anything else, for that.

I pointed the wand again at the volcano. This wasn’t about avoiding failure.
Sarah had already told me I was going to fail. It was about moving past failure. About making my failure mean something.

I pictured my failures. Sam and Tiffany and Diana, probably James and maybe even Dorne. There were other people who had died, in the Walter Cloud, against Gulo, against the kraken, people who had trusted me to know what I needed to know. To be what I needed to be. I had allowed a world to be consumed and even now our lives hung in the balance.

I pictured my successes. I had discovered a cloud, two if you counted this one. I had made a wish at the foot of a Djinn, was wearing the Seal of Solomon, had seen the Leviathan and fought a kraken. I had the blessing of a dragon and been berated by…well, I still hadn’t an inkling as to what the hell the pilgrim was. I had fought tooth and nail, braved hell and back, to protect those in my care. I had failed, but I had tried and I would have given my life to save any one of them.

And I thought, for the first time, why I did all this. I thought of my uncle’s office, the man who had taught me just about everything I knew, and all the things I wanted to see.

And I was going to do more. I remembered the visions I had seen when I touched the Aether. I didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t and barely remembered them besides, but God as my witness, I was going to try and find out.

The mountain was my power, from a metaphysical standpoint. It was the fuel for my spells, fire or otherwise, and the framework for most of my magic. But it was a symbol, it was all a symbol. That was a mage’s first job, to find the thing that would give him his power, his heart, the keystone to everything he could do.

And this was mine. My drive, my curiosity, my passion. Everything I loved and hated and dreamed of, what I desired, the good and bad that was the center of my subconscious.

I held the wand over the mountain’s core. Red light shown from its depths, my fire responding to my need, my purpose. Wind blew up from the core, blowing off my hat, tossing my coat back behind me. It blew away all the smoke and ash, revealing a bottom of solid, black stone. Tiny cracks of light had spread, the whole mountain on the precipice of eruption, but they could just as easily cool and harden again.

I took a deep breath, dug both my feet into the earth, and directed every ounce of will I had into the volcano.

“I am Virgil McDane!” I shouted. “I who have been called Wizard and Sorcerer and I am the master of my own mind.
Mulciber, I bind thee!”

And the volcano answered me. The cracks splintered apart, violent red light shining through. The earth roared and heat, greater even than the dragon’s great spirit, washed over me. The ground buckled, roiled and then exploded upward. Fire and magma belched up from its core; cold, black stone melting like ice as liquid fire roared up from the core of my being.

I braced myself and focused on the top of the wand. Smoke and dirt began to swirl like a tornado, followed by fire and stone, swirling in a mixture of golden-orange vapor. The full fury of the volcano bore down on me and I inhaled it, funneling it into the tip of the wand. The scent of oak replaced that of sulfur, the wood glowing like a shard of the sun.

Fire filled me, consumed me, flooding my being.

I dropped my arm, taking a step back, watching as the volcano continued to erupt. I’d had my fill. Mulciber was mine and always would be.

I walked back into the map room and placed the wand at
Mulciber’s base.

I appeared right before BlackThorn’s lair. I peered down into the tunnel, then up at the mountain
. He had been under the volcano this whole time, my bitterness and anger rooted into everything I had ever been and wanted to be, sapping me of everything I was. I had been here just months ago, at the root of my own power, and had been unable to see it.

I took a deep breath. I had people to save.

Abruptly, for the first time in four years, the sky stopped raining ash.

“BlackThorn!” I boomed for the second time in recent memory.

Again, two purple lanterns lit up at the end of the tunnel. A deep laugh resonated up from the pit.
At long last, Sorcerer, you come for the right reason, asking the right questions.

“One warning only,” I said. “Get out.”

All around me the earth rumbled, great fissures spreading in the earth. Black tendrils poked up from the ground, acres and acres of sharp, stinging tendrils. BlackThorn himself slithered up from his hole. His long serpentine body was thick as a redwood with black, shimmering scales that ran down his body. Long, pointed tentacles grew from his body like roots, flailing hungrily at the air.

His head, big as a bus, was filled with rows of sword length teeth. A great cowl, like that of a cobra, inscribed with sigils and r
unes spread behind him. He stared down at me with laughing eyes.

Your fireworks leave much to be desired
, he said.
I am unimpressed.

“So be it,” I said, holding the wand forward.

This was my mind. I was its master, had spent years of training and discipline to sculpt my psyche into a tool, an engine. I was its mechanic, I was the artist that molded it into the landscape before me.

I pictured the core of
Mulciber. The wand smoked, light emanating from its tip.

The earth rose up
beneath me, a column of stone that carried me a hundred feet into the air.

BlackThorn writhed beneath me, a thousand tentacles and stingers and claws all intent on me. I pointed the wand forward, a single beacon of light against a writhing mass of darkness. “No,” I said, freezing everything in place. “You have no authority here. Leave!”

BlackThorn roared in defiance, a deafening blast that blotted out the eruption above. He reared up to his full height, ripping great chunks of stone and earth from the ground.

“I release you from your bind,” I said. I felt the power he offered slip from the ring. I was going to replace it with something else anyway. “Thrice I command you, BlackThorn, you are hereby exiled. Whatever form you take in my mind, it will not be this one.”

I pointed the matchlock at him. He fought against his bonds, diving at me, seeking to engulf me. I pulled the trigger and the hammer released, the cold violet flame touching down into the pan. There was a sound, a crack of silence as the gun’s shot stole the very sound from the air, an eruption of purple smoke and flame, and a single, purple ball tore through the sky. It cut a streak through the air, cutting through BlackThorn’s eye and shearing off the whole side of his head.

He flailed in the air, his roar dying in the light of
Mulciber.

Then, with a flick of my wand, the world lit on fire. Fire and light, enough to illuminate the whole sky, erupted from his lair, from every crack and fissure he had torn in the earth. Above me the sky thundered, the ashen clouds forming a dark storm filled with lightning. The earth shifted, rumbling, and finally everything exploded around me.

The eruption blinded me to everything. It swirled around me, lifting me off the column. I floated through the air, a being of fire and sent a lance of energy tearing through the worm. I watched as he sunk into the flame, roaring in anguish and fear and rage.

Thus for the second time, this time in death, did I bind BlackThorn.

A storm had cleared Sarah’s mind. Flame would clear mine.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE

I appeared in the keep
. In the distance I could hear Mulciber as it continued to erupt.

“Algernon!” I bellowed.

Al came out of the keep. He took one look toward Mulciber and laughed. He threw his arms around me and we laughed together as my power burned its way through my mind.

“Alright,” I said. “Fun time’s over. I need spells. Do we have any of the old ones?”

He nodded. “I kept all the old designs, but you’re going to have to take this slow.”

“Why?” I asked. “Things may be looking good in here, but I don’t think it’s looking too good out there.”

He held up his hands. “Slow down. We can’t just plug in the old spells, not with all the changes that have happened in your mind. There’s no telling how Mulciber has changed, let alone the rest of your mind.”

He lead me into his workshop. He had thrown everything aside and pulled out an old scroll case. He pulled out a slanted table, like the type an architect would use, unrolled one of the scrolls, and threw it over it.

The scroll showed a complex diagram, one I recognized deeply. Lines of orange and red played across the surface, long strings of equations dancing in between the lines.

Studying the spell, I felt my heart sink. Without prepared spells, it was very, very difficult to sling energy around. There was so much that had
to be prepared and put together that doing it on the fly produced varied, and possibly dangerous, results. The landscape of my mind had changed so much, most of the spell wasn’t salvageable.

“Give me the pen,” I said, holding out my hand. Al produced a silver blade from his leather apron and handed it to me.

I took a deep breath and went to work. “I’ll erase the runes,” I said, rubbing the silver against the scroll and removing the burning lines there. “They don’t mean anything to me anyway.” I connected lines, using Al’s square for measurements. “We’ll tie in Mulciber and guestimate for power levels.” I scribbled out a quick equation. “I’m tying in the knowledge I gleamed from Abby in the orchard.” I had a sudden feeling and pulled from my pocket a fine red scale. Without thinking, I knew it to be Creofax’s blessing made whole. I added it to the spell.