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

even a token allotment of soldiers filled his belly with ice, but there was nothing for it. They were done.

“Go,” Milo said, and every eye swung toward him.

“What?” Ambrose and Lokkemand hissed together.

“Go,” Milo repeated, straightening and meeting every man’s gaze in turn. “You’ve done your duty and then some. This War will keep taking more and more until there’s nothing but ashes and bones, but those bones don’t have to be yours today. Go.”

“This isn’t a rout, damn it,” Lokkemand began, his voice struggling to stoke the anger implicit in the words. “This is a reasonable retreat.”

Milo nodded, hoping the sincere sympathy he felt was conveyed by his voice and face.

“I believe it,” he said, turning to look the captain in the eye while addressing the courtyard. “I may not like him very much, but I do believe at bottom that Captain Lokkemand is a good man and a responsible officer. If he says it is time to leave, then it is your duty to do so.”

A heavy quiet fell across the courtyard as men weighed their motivations and wrestled with their souls. Milo could read in their faces that some of them came up wanting, but he met their stares with the same unjudging expression.

“Go,” Milo said one last time and turned to enter the fortress.

“What will you do?” Lokkemand called after him.

“What I intended to do all along,” Milo said without turning back. “My duty.”

19

The Broken

Using the Art on a fey seemed to be both easier and more difficult than Milo had expected. Rihyani’s will was more accessible to his efforts than Ezekiel’s had been but also more reactive. His probing attempts at her slumbering will were met with a powerful resistance that he imagined was habitual.

She was unconscious and so pale she seemed ethereal stretched out on the cot, her whole body sinking in on itself. For a creature who was nearly eternal, it was a chilling thing for Milo to see and think she looked old. It seemed wrong.

Upon seeing her this way, Milo had made a hasty play at her will and been rebuffed so quickly her nurse barely had time to climb out of his seat beside her.

“Are you going to wake her up?” Brodden asked, seeming to have aged ten years since they’d left him a few days ago.

“No,” Milo said, looking away from Rihyani for a second. “I’m not sure she can be woken up, and I don’t think she needs to be.”

“If you say so.” The medic sighed, settling back into a chair. “I don’t understand how she’s still alive, to be honest. It seems like will alone is keeping her here.”

“You might not be wrong about that,” Ambrose said softly as Milo turned back to Rihyani.

“I’ll need you to not interrupt me now,” Milo explained between steadying breaths. “You may see or feel strange things, but whatever you do, don’t distract me.”

Brodden shook his head and fell silent.

Milo pressed his will outward again.

The second brush of his will against hers was met with as much resistance as before, but rather than simply withdrawing, he pushed harder. He felt her will manifesting as suggestions of terrifying fates and lonely ends clawing and yowling to keep him at bay, but he turned the tables by instituting his own visions of bringing joy and resolution to those dire guardian visions. It was imperfect, and more than one magical insinuation pierced through, making him break out in a cold sweat and clutch his hammering chest, but he held fast all the same.

She could batter his mind with terrors all she wanted. He needed to reach her.

Her initial defenses diverted, Milo pressed out more and felt the response of her will against his own, a kind of static spark of psychic energy as contact was made.

Rihyani, can you hear me? he called to her, shaping words only she could decipher through the Art. They weren’t just words but sentiments, fragments of thoughts and feelings, the likes of which he could never have explained. As the marquis had explained, it came intuitively to him.

Milo? came the soft, almost brittle answer. You have learned the Art.

Milo felt a weight slide off his chest. She was still there, or at least enough of her to hear and respond to him.

The marquis taught you? she asked.

In a way, Milo thought to her, uncertainty quavering in the communication. I’ll explain later, but first, we need to release you from the hex.

Milo could sense the psychic sigh sliding from the fey’s mind.

Yes, I do think I’m coming to the end of my resolve to resist, she replied, a response disturbingly nonchalant for what it portended. You found the release for it?

Yes, Milo answered eagerly, stretching out to take her hand in his, trying not to recoil at how cold her flesh felt. It may seem crazy, but you must forgive Ezekiel. His curse is rooted in his inability to forgive himself and let himself die, so you must forgive him to break the hex’s hold over you.

There was a long silence, and only the trembling throb of Rihyani’s will in his supernatural awareness kept Milo from assuming she’d died.

Rihyani?

That will be difficult.

Feelings and images flooded through Milo’s mind, visions of Ezekiel’s sneering, cackling face with a bloodied knife flickering in his hands. Fear, pain, and hatred accompanied the images, and through Rihyani’s senses, Milo relived their duel between the trees in a single heartbeat and felt her soul-wrenching anguish not only at the death of her centuries-old companions but their desecration at his hands.

“Rihyani, please!” Milo cried, breaking the connection the Art provided for a moment to keep himself from becoming lost in the onrush of her will.

His eyes had slid out of focus, but in that breathless moment when he pulled away from her, Milo saw blood dribbling down his arm. Sympathetic wounds had opened along the same line as what Rihyani had experienced.

“Milo?” Ambrose rumbled at Milo’s shoulder, not quite daring to rest a hand on