Curse of Magic

by Michael Brightburn

  “I know you will.” I climbed down and settled in next to Sienna.

  The night was cool but not cold, and I lay there on the hard stone—we hadn’t been able to find any soil—listening to the sound of the stream that went through the center of the city, and to the faint sounds of far-off voices and music.

  As I drifted off to sleep, I wondered where they were coming from, and I imagined a great hall filled with happy, dancing people, people who still had their wives, who hadn’t lost everything. People whose kingdoms hadn’t been taken from them.

  People who never had kingdoms in the first place, and were happier for it.

  Then I fell asleep.

  36

  I woke to Vi shaking me.

  I jolted upright, nearly slamming into the lycanthrope. “She leave?”

  Vi shook her head, but her ears were twitching side to side, again doing that scanning thing. “The voices are getting louder. Much louder. And I can smell something now. I don’t know what it is, but…” She lifted her head up and sniffed the air. “Something bad.”

  “What do you mean, something bad?”

  “Shh. Do you hear that?”

  I listened.

  It didn’t take long for me to hear it. The voices and the music were now much louder. Almost as if they were coming from inside the city.

  “Where is that coming from?”

  Vi locked her yellow eyes onto mine. “Everywhere.”

  37

  I woke up Sienna and Trin to let them know what was going on, told them to stay put.

  Alva was still unconscious, unfortunately, and that worried me.

  She was still alive, breathing normally, but not awake, and hadn’t woken when I’d shaken her.

  Vi and I climbed back up onto the roof. Or I climbed. Vi jumped.

  From the roof I saw that there was no new trail of magic.

  The spell was still inside the inn, then.

  I looked around the town.

  I noticed there were lights coming from the pub across the waterway. I pointed at it. “I don’t remember those being lit when we got here.”

  “They weren’t just a moment ago when I went down to get you.” Her ears moved, pointing toward the pub, focusing in. “There’s voices coming from there. Not just there, though. From everywhere.”

  “It just started suddenly? How could people have snuck into the pub without you noticing? You can see it clearly from here.”

  “Maybe they didn’t need to sneak in. Maybe they were always there.”

  “What? We went there earlier. There was no one there.”

  “That’s not exactly true. We heard something. Music. Voices.”

  We had heard something, but that didn’t explain them just appearing. “What, you think it was an illusionist party and they all hid themselves when we arrived?”

  “I don’t know what it is. I just know that the voices grew louder, not gradually, but all at once, and no one entered the city. All the voices simply grew louder.”

  “At the same time?” I asked.

  “Yes. What should we do?”

  “We don’t appear to have attracted any attention from anyone. You hear anything coming from the inn?”

  She shook her head. “I’ll listen, but I haven’t heard anything so far. At least nothing that I can hear over all the other sounds.”

  “Right. We’ll wait here until we see the Breaker leave.” I crawled to the edge and looked down at Sienna and Trin.

  Trin was awake and alert, but while Sienna was awake, she was far from alert.

  “You two should come up here,” I whispered down to them. “Bring Alva.”

  Trin moved normally, but Sienna got up only slowly.

  She was lethargic, and reached for the building as though she were in quicksand.

  “On second thought, Trin, can you help her up?”

  “Um, sure. She doesn’t look heavy.”

  Trin gave her a boost up while I reached down and got my hands on her arms and helped her up.

  “How long can you go without connection to the earth?”

  She licked her lips and exhaled before answering. “Longer than this.” She licked her lips again, which seemed dry. “There’s something strange though. Here. I don’t know what… But I’m much weaker than I should be.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be leaving soon.” I hoped. I wasn’t actually sure. If the Breaker was sleeping, we could be here till morning.

  “You should take her out into the woods where she can recharge,” Vi suggested.

  “I’m not going to risk missing the Breaker.”

  “It’ll be fine. I’ll come get you. You can follow the magic.”

  Before I could reply, Vi’s ears twitched and her head snapped to the front of the inn.

  “What is it?”

  She put up a hand to silence me. After a second she said, “Footsteps. And I heard the door open. I think she just left.”

  I quickly but quietly climbed down from the roof and moved down the embankment to the edge of the apothecary, then peered around it.

  My stomach dropped at what I saw.

  I had expected to see the Breaker walking away.

  But she wasn’t. She stood motionless in the middle of the street. Looking in my direction. Staring at me.

  Despite the distance between us, I saw the smile on her lips.

  A smile I didn’t like at all.

  She wasn’t surprised someone was following. She had been waiting. She knew.

  Then she screamed, and I found out just what kind of place this town was.

  38

  All the pervasive, distant voices we’d been hearing fell silent at once.

  The town was dead quiet.

  The Breaker’s smile grew wider, then she turned and dashed off, a trail of magic appearing behind her when she was sufficient distance away for her own magic to no longer suppress it.

  Vi suddenly landed beside me, having leapt off the roof.

  Her landing was quiet, but in the silence that followed the Breaker’s scream, it was deafening and made me start.

  Before either of us could say anything to each other, her ears twitched again and her head snapped to the side, looking past me across the water.

  Then I heard it too, the door opening, and I turned to the pub where people now poured out.

  But no, they weren’t people.

  They were skeletons.

  They were the dead.

  Trin appeared beside us with Sienna, who was no longer holding Alva.

  Where was she?

  But then I saw Trin had her.

  Strange, I hadn’t seen her at first.

  Sienna looked dead on her feet.

  But not as dead as the people who were pouring out of the pub.

  As the people who now looked our way.

  I had mistaken them for skeletons, but they weren’t skeletons.

  Some still had flesh on their bodies. Pale, translucent, dead flesh, but flesh no less.

  No, not skeletons. But they were dead.

  We’d entered into a city of the dead without knowing it.

  We’d been led here by the Breaker.

  Led into a trap.

  An old rhyme I’d learned when I was young suddenly came to me.

  At the darkest hour of the night,

  when the world goes quiet and still,

  they come from shadows like a blight,

  they come for you and seek to kill.

  They never sleep or do what’s right,

  they’ll come and drain you of your life.

  And when they’re done you’ll be like them,

  you’ll be an empty, shattered shell.

  So beware the dead my precious one,

  for when your life is through and done,

  better to rot in the ground,

  than to rise up and wander round.

  But seeing them in the flesh was far more frightening than any children’s rhyme.

  “Gods be…” T
rin muttered.

  Sienna didn’t even seem to notice them.

  “Come on,” I said, hoisting Sienna into my arms and running in the direction the Breaker had gone.

  The three of us took off, me holding Sienna, Trin holding Alva.

  “They just crossed the bridge,” Vi informed us, looking back over her shoulder. “They’re coming after us.”

  A door on our side burst open as we passed and more dead came out.

  One lunged for us and just missed, going skidding off and sliding into the water.

  We passed another shop, this one with a forge out front, and just as I thought I hope one doesn’t come out of there with a sword, one did.

  It was also wearing a suit of armor.

  “This was a trap,” Vi said.

  “Yeah,” I said as we ran, feeling unusually light-footed. “I think so.”

  “She knew we were following her?” Trin asked.

  “Just… keep running.” I didn’t want to trip while holding Sienna, so I didn’t risk looking behind me, but I could feel them closing in on us.

  “There’s a lot more of them,” Vi said. “I can hear them. I can smell them now.”

  “Just follow the Breaker. She must have a way to get out of here.”

  “Unless she’s unseen by them,” Vi said.

  I risked a glance over at her. “What do you mean?”

  “Breakers can block magic, twist it. The dead are animated by magic of a sort. It’s what keeps them here. Maybe—”

  “They can’t see her,” I finished for her. “Damn.” If that were true… Well, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to lose the Breaker.

  I’d promised Trin I’d help her, and I kept my promises.

  Besides, I was pissed off at the Breaker now for leading us into a trap like this. Upset with myself for falling into it.

  I would catch her. Then she’d tell us where and who her bosses were, the ones who’d hired her to transport the spell. Then we’d go and kill them.

  Or Trin would kill them. It was her revenge to take, not mine.

  But first we needed to get out of this dead town alive.

  I felt relief wash through my body as my feet slammed into soil instead of stone as we exited the city.

  “There.” Vi pointed into the darkness.

  I squinted. “What?”

  “I see her.”

  “It‘s pitch black.”

  “Not to me it’s not. She’s on foot. I’m going to go after her.”

  “Vi, no. Wait.”

  But she didn’t listen.

  Her body grew, morphed, fur sprouting up the length of her arms, her face elongating, her legs growing long and thin and tendinous, and then she was off.

  By the gods she was fast when she wanted to be.

  She pulled away from us as though we were running backwards.

  I wasn’t familiar with Breakers. We had our own, but I didn’t know enough about them to know how it would affect the lycanthrope.

  I didn’t know if her power could make Vi turn back, perhaps arrest her healing ability.

  Breakers were no Dark, but we were similar in a lot of ways. They could twist magic just like we could, but they didn’t need permission.

  If she could somehow twist Vi’s transformation, we were in trouble.

  Using direct magic against a Breaker was foolish. It was physical attacks or nothing.

  Or outsmarting them somehow. Take them by surprise.

  But this was the opposite of that. She’d taken us by surprise.

  I wondered how long she had known we were following her.

  I wondered where her real destination was.

  Was it even in this direction? Or had she taken us on a dragon chase.

  No, I couldn’t use magic on her.

  I remembered the dead with the sword, and wished—

  That’s when I noticed the thudding against my hip, and remembered I did have a sword.

  The sword from the man who’d fallen from the sky.

  I started to reach for it, but then remembered I was holding Sienna and couldn’t.

  The sky was unnaturally dark, and trees covered the road, blocking out any little light there might’ve been.

  Then I heard a scream, followed by a snarl.

  “There’s nothing I can do against a Breaker,” Trin said. “If I try to Whisper to her… who knows how she’ll use that against me.”

  “Are we being followed?”

  Trin looked behind us.

  Then she picked up a burst of speed. “You might say that.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I suggest you don’t look back.”

  39

  I felt a slash across my back and stumbled, Sienna flying from my arms and landing in front of me.

  I was confused, disoriented, and everything was so dark and hard to see.

  But what I did see as I fumbled to regain my balance and face my attacker was the corpse in armor lunging for me.

  Having no time to do anything else, I phased.

  And screamed as freezing agony lanced through me as I passed through the dead man.

  “I can’t control it,” Trin shouted. She had stopped too.

  I could still hear Vi and the Breaker fighting up ahead.

  The armored corpse turned and lunged for me again.

  I drew my forgotten sword and got it up in time to connect with the sword of the skeleton as it tried to part my head from its accustomed place atop my neck.

  It withdrew and slammed its sword down again, over and over, and I was barely able to block each furious blow.

  I had been trained in the martial arts, but I was no warrior king.

  I blocked each blow, not able to move much as I had to keep myself between this dead thing and Sienna’s fallen body.

  Behind him, coming toward us, were hundreds more of his kind.

  But they were walking, not running. Had they been walking before?

  “Grab Sienna and get her out of here,” I told Trin.

  “And go where?”

  “Just get her out of here! Follow Vi and the Breaker.”

  “I’m not strong enough to lift her.”

  I kicked at the corpse as it drew back its sword for another hard blow, and it went stumbling backward and fell.

  I took the opportunity to leap forward and slam the short sword into the thing’s neck like it had tried to do me.

  Its head severed but the body started to get up.

  “Damn!”

  It still swung at me, but wasn’t as accurate now.

  Still far too accurate for my comfort.

  I dodged backward and it stumbled after me.

  When it got close I let it slash at me, then Pulled from myself and phased through it, though didn’t feel pain this time.

  But now I was behind it, and I dropped to my knees, swiping at the corpse’s, severing them and sending it tumbling to the ground.

  Then before it could right itself I slashed off the arm holding the sword and grabbed it.

  To my shock the arm still tried to move its wrist, angling the sword toward me. I choked up my grip on it so I was holding its hand so it couldn’t slash me, then stowed the short sword and wrested the long one from the dead hand’s grip.

  I tossed the arm down and then slipped this new weapon into my belt opposite the other, then quickly bent to pick up Sienna.

  The horde of dead were still coming, but slowly. At a walking pace.

  I didn’t know why they were walking, but hopefully it meant we could outrun them.

  A yelp came from up ahead, drawing my attention as I stood with Sienna once again in my arms.

  “Go,” I said to Trin, and hurried forward.

  Sienna stirred. “What’s going on?”

  “You’re awake. Thank the gods.”

  Maybe dropping her had been a good thing. We were once again on soil. Maybe that recharged her.

  “Can you walk?” I asked.

  She nodded and I s
et her down, though I didn’t stop moving forward.

  It took her a moment to get her feet, and I had to hold her up, but then she did and began slowly walking with me.

  Vi and the Breaker were moving ahead of us as they fought and I noticed a trail of blood on the ground.

  I hoped it was the Breaker’s, not Vi’s.

  What could a Breaker do against a lycanthrope? What ways could they twist and break her magic?

  I didn’t want to, but I had a feeling I would soon find out.

  40

  When we finally got close enough to see, it was worse than I’d expected.

  Vi had the Breaker pinned down on the ground, but she was seriously wounded.

  Chunks of flesh were missing and even in the dim dark, she looked horrible.

  In contrast, despite being the one pinned down, the Breaker seemed uninjured.

  Vi was using raw strength to pin her down, something she couldn’t Break, something she couldn’t twist and corrupt.

  The Breaker was struggling, trying to break free, but was unable.

  I dashed toward them to help Vi and drew the sword, ready to slam it through the Breaker’s skull.

  But I stopped just short, realizing I couldn’t—not if we wanted to find out where she was headed.

  Instead I put my sword to her throat. “Stop struggling.”

  My hands suddenly caught fire and I dropped the sword.

  Though the fire was only on my hands, my entire body lit up with agony and I screamed.

  Suddenly roots from the ground burst out, wrapping around my hand and smothering the fire.

  I looked and saw Sienna’s feet had turned to roots which dug into the soil.

  Then I looked down at the sword that I had dropped.

  Vi was still atop the Breaker, her blood soaking the ground around them as well as the woman below her.

  That sword was magic. Imbued. I hadn’t noticed.

  Idiot, I told myself. Using magic against a Breaker was just giving them a weapon.

  They had no magic of their own, and so if you wanted to defeat them you couldn’t use magic. Not unless you were far more advanced than they were.

  And this Breaker was clearly very good.

  And I was not good at all.

  Suddenly pain lanced through my hand as the roots turned to spikes and skewered it.