Sorcerybound (World's First Wizard Book 2) by Aaron Schneider (best color ereader .TXT) 📗

“So, here you get to be a decent human and take care of the big picture?”

“I’m sure hoping.” Milo took one last bite.

“I guess if you're wrong, it’ll be too late,” Ambrose mused. “And at least you’ll have tried being decent.”

Milo nodded somberly.

“That’s the idea.”

9

The Hex

“Nothing,” Milo snarled, throwing the codex on top of the others. “Nothing!”

He stalked away from his desk then walked back to snatch up the opened envelope they’d retrieved from Lokkemand. Milo’s hand slid inside, and his fingers rested on the bone handle as Ambrose watched him from a chair he’d dragged over to the door. It was the third time Milo had magically “inspected” the knife, but each time made Milo’s hands trembled as he opened his senses to what lay beyond the physical.

The knife was possessed of magic, Milo was certain, but it was unlike anything he’d ever encountered. Energies simmered within it, but they were not the raw essence Milo had learned to manipulate. It was too active for that, possessing a nature that he at first compared to shades, but it was both more and less than that. It seemed to have a will or life of its own, where shades only had impressions and echoes of original lives, but the life and will was unidirectional, a myopic focus, unlike anything Milo knew in life.

And that focus was ruin.

Milo could feel the corruptive, gnawing potency seething hot and tight within the crude material of the knife like an infection in a swollen wound. Having felt it, Milo grasped the corroded punctures in Beli’s skin and the unhealing wounds on Rihyani’s arm. When flowing freely, such magical energies would lodge themselves in wounded flesh and render it as impotent and lifeless as salted earth.

But it didn’t flow freely, not now.

It was present but seemingly inactive, and even stranger, it didn’t seem to respond to Milo’s metaphysical probing. When he had first opened himself to inspect the blade and felt the potent conscious energies within, he’d withdrawn quickly, fearing it would try to infect him, maybe even form a bond like a shade. Yet, that hadn’t happened. The magical presence in the knife stayed within the confines of the weapon, seemingly oblivious or uninterested in Milo’s mind or his power observing it. Oddly, when he pressed as deep as he dared against the skein of the magic, he felt as though it was waiting like an expectant hound at the door.

When its master returned, it would spring to its unkind work, but until then, it waited, death roiling invisibly under the surface.

A fresh inspection revealed nothing new, and Milo let the envelope and its infuriating burden slide to the table.

“Is there some sort of experiment you could run on it?” Ambrose asked after giving Milo a heartbeat or two to stew in his deepening despair. “You know, exposing it to different ingredients or elixirs or whatever else, to show something.”

Milo shook his head and then threw it back to rake his fingers through his hair.

“I could expose it to everything in my lab,” he said, trying to keep his voice level and failing. “But there is no guarantee it will do anything I could understand, and there is a very real possibility it could touch off some sort of magical meltdown.”

“What would happen if you set that off?” Ambrose asked, eyeing the knife suspiciously.

“Anything from destroying the knife to setting off some sort of magical backlash that could kill me and possibly others,” Milo said, glaring down at his suddenly useless pile of codices.

When he’d first been given the texts, they had seemed like such a treasure trove of knowledge, but now it seemed like the treasure was in a currency that could not buy him the answers he needed. He needed a translator, someone who could show him where the connection was to his experience and this new magic. A guide or a teacher.

Milo’s eyes wandered to the hidden resting place for Imrah’s remains.

“Ambrose,” Milo began, moving to the door to check that no one was passing through.

Ambrose had followed Milo’s gaze before he’d gone to check the hall, and he stood up from his seat sharply.

“Are you certain that’s a good idea?” he asked, his tone making it quite clear what he thought about the situation. “It’s pretty taxing, and you still are going to need to get bled for the contessa soon. I’m not sure we have enough restorative.”

“This isn’t necromist work,” Milo said, stepping back from the door, satisfied they had the necessary privacy. “I don’t have the breadth of knowledge. I can’t even guess what this is.”

Ambrose shuffled to the concealing stone but stopped short of fetching the box.

“But if it isn’t necro-whatsit, what use is she going to be?” the big man asked with a scowl. “Isn’t that the only kind of magic her kind does?”

“True,” Milo said, nodding as he dragged out the box where they kept most of the necessary materials for managing the shade. “But she has lived in the world of the supernatural longer, and she could probably recognize what is going on, maybe give us a direction to go for finding answers.”

Ambrose’s mustache bristled and gave a fretful waggle.

“All right,” he surrendered, his face downcast. “But for the record, I think it is a dangerous waste of time.”

REMEMBER

The word was intoned, the tortured transformation occurred, and Milo stood in front of Imrah’s shade, now a patchwork of human and ghulish flesh held together by rippling strings of shadow.

“Oh, Milo,” it cooed in a layered voice that was human and ghul tongues speaking together. “I knew you would return to me.”

“Enough of that,” Milo instructed, the words driven by simple confidence rather than magical will. “Speak plainly, or you are going back in the box.”

He stared directly into the shade’s eyes as if it were a cur that needed chastening. He needed to convince the shade in whatever capacity it could