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

him a determined nod and then a subtle wink. A hearty cheer or slap on the back couldn’t have been more encouraging.

Magus and bodyguard looked into the marquis’ face, jaws set and shoulders squared.

“We accept,” Milo said.

The marquis nodded and then raised his long arms straight out to either side.

“Very good.” He smiled, raising his face toward the moonlight beaming through the windows high above the looming shelves. “Now, for this next part, I ask that you please remain very still. It can be confusing, but please don’t move.”

Milo’s expression changed from bemusement to shock as the room began to spin around them. Faster and faster the room revolved around them, all the more frightening for their silence as images of ladders, walkways, and shelves flashed by. Soon the room was an eye-watering blur of colors and light, so Milo fixed his attention on the fey standing in a cruciform posture at the eye of the soundless storm.

“You are both doing very well,” the marquis said as the lights around them began to change color. “Almost there now. Just remember to not move. I’d hate for you to hurt yourselves.”

Moments later, the spinning room came to an abrupt stop, and Ambrose gave a muffled heave and managed to stagger a dozen paces away to be sick in a convenient decorative vase.

Milo felt a flutter of nausea, but it was not so severe that he didn’t realize they were no longer standing in the library.

They stood in a tall, narrow corridor where one wall was set with a series of portals that looked out over the marquis’ dining hall. The noble’s guests danced, and drank, and sang, and drank some more in what was fast becoming a bacchanalian revel below. The fact that the creatures engaged were alien combinations of beatific creatures and Boschian nightmares only made the scene more surreal.

Milo stood staring down for a moment, doing his best to block out the sounds of Ambrose hawking, spitting, and cursing. They were clearly in a gallery overlooking the hall, but Milo had stood on the floor below and couldn’t remember seeing any such gallery.

“This wasn’t part of the manor when we were down there earlier,” Milo said, turning back to the marquis. “Is it invisible from below?”

The fey shook his head, a smile teasing the corners of his mouth upward.

“No, but that isn’t a bad idea.”

Milo stared at the marquis, then gaped at the structure that stretched the width of the hall and was decorated to match the rest of the manor.

“You don’t mean to tell me you fabricated all of this out of thin air on a whim?” Milo asked, unable to keep the heady mix of incredulity and awe from his voice. He’d known fey magic was different from that the ghuls practiced, but he struggled to believe it was so much more powerful as to create such vast, complex structures with what seemed like very little effort. Milo’s head spun with the possibilities.

“Not as you might imagine,” the marquis began. “The first thing you must understand about the Art, which is what we fey call our magic, is that it is tied to our will, which is itself tied to our very natures as creatures of will.”

Milo blinked like an owl at noontime, struggling to understand the fey’s words.

“You just will things into physical existence?” he said, his tone approaching flabbergasted. “You think them, and they are real?”

The marquis laughed, and though it was a kindly sound, Milo could tell he was getting more wrong than right.

“We need to clarify two things,” the marquis said, raising two clawed fingers demonstratively. “First, will and thought are not the same things, particularly among the fey. Will in the sense I talk about is an interwoven matrix of identity, intent, and desire. A thought is fleeting, a series of reactions to stimuli either internal or external. Will is fundamental and enduring, a consistent declaration.

“Second, something does not have to be physical to be real. The greatest disservice done to your kind was when many of you came to believe that only things that are real can be weighed on a scale or measured with little notched sticks. Just as lamentable was when you forgot that belief can be as tangible as water and stone.”

Milo clamped his hand over his forehead and massaged his brow.

“So, this gallery is real but not physical,” Milo said slowly. “And you made it with your will, not just because you thought about it.”

The marquis smiled.

“Yes, in its simplest form, that is true,” he said. “But I think we’ll need to back up a step.”

Milo nodded, bewildered but striving to remain hopeful.

The marquis stepped back and gestured to himself with a wide sweep of his elongated arms.

“Every fey is whatever they will themselves to be,” he explained. “What you see of me is what I wish you to see of me and the truth of what I am that I reveal to the world. You may have noticed that amongst the fey, there seems to be little homogeneity in form, and you’d be excused for thinking the likes of my servant Bakbak-Devi and the butler who brought you to the library were different species or breeds of fey, but that simply isn’t the case. Each of us is what we will, the pixie-formed sprite dancing on lily pads or the jotun king as huge as a mountain.”

Ambrose, a little paler than before, had rejoined them and was alternating between staring at the marquis and the fey on the dance floor below.

“So those are all fey, just fey, and they can be whatever they want?”

“Yes, they are all fey, but no, not whatever they want,” the horned aristocrat said patiently. “Wants tend to be transitory, symptoms rather than causes. The will of a fey like Bakbak-Devi is bent toward being a powerful, watchful guardian. He will not become the pixie or the swan-bride because that is not who he is.”

Milo nodded and swept a hand