“What?” Milo frowned, still glaring at the door. “That we’ve been here less than two days and these creatures have already tried to kill us twice?”
“Well, there’s that.” Ambrose nodded before looking at Milo with twinkling eyes. “I was more pondering you saying ‘we’ were going to clean this place up.”
Milo turned from contemplating the door to the chaos that had claimed most of the common room: spilled food, upturned crates, scattered cookware, and of course the black sand that seemed to be on everything.
“You’ve an ear for detail, Ambrose.” Milo sighed as he bent down and scooped up a wayward tuber from the floor.
“All part of the job, Magus,” Ambrose said with an officious sniff. “All part of the job.”
12
A Development
“For the next time,” Imrah said the next day as she handed him a black cane topped with a raptor’s skull. Milo didn’t know which bird of prey it was, but judging by the size, it would have been an impressive creature.
As soon as Milo’s hand closed around the smooth shaft, he felt the energies thrumming within. When Imrah released her hold on the cane, he felt the sudden weight and realized it was not made from lacquered wood, but from polished black rock. It was not as unwieldy as it seemed at first blush, but Milo did expect that if he failed to use magic effectively in the next attack, he could just beat his assailant to a pulp.
“So, you just had a skull cane lying around?” Milo asked, lowering it to give the floor a good tap. It was a little tall for a traditional cane, but he found he liked it more the longer he held it. It had heft physically and magically, and it felt reassuring in his hand.
“It was a gift for my late brother,” Imrah said, looking at the staff. “He never had a chance to use it because he tried to depose my father before he was ready. I thought you could put it to use.”
Stunned by her bald statement about family matters, Milo felt strange for so jauntily inspecting the item earlier. He told himself ghuls must think differently about such things because Imrah didn’t seem any more sour than usual, but he was still eager to change the subject.
“So, this would be classified as a fetish, correct?” Milo asked.
“Are you asking me or trying to show me that you did the reading?” Imrah replied as she led him toward the center of the platform they’d used the day before. The stone tables had been rearranged and the assembly of items on them had been reduced to a few orderly collections of containers.
“More of the last, I guess,” Milo admitted. “But I suppose it never hurts to ask.”
“If only that were true,” Imrah said, and Milo noted the tremor as she laid her hand on the table in front of her.
“Is everything all right?” Milo inquired, shuffling up next to her right-hand side but not looking directly at her.
Imrah frowned, and her lower fangs slid free of her thin lips with the gesture, but then an angry light sprang into her eyes, and she turned to him with a scowl.
“No, it’s not,” she answered tartly. “My pupil was attacked yesterday by regressive reprobates, and when he was assaulted, rather than using magic to defend himself, he fired a gun like an ignorant human.”
What had first seemed like an expression of affectionate anger on his behalf had transformed so quickly into a rebuke that Milo felt his head might start spinning.
“How was I supposed to use magic?” he replied, doing his level best to sound curious and not irritated. “I had nothing to do it with. The only magic I’ve ever consciously done has been with the skull lamp, and that was spent from that Contest thing.”
Milo near cried out when Imrah snatched his arm and raised it in front of his face. One barbed nail plucked at a vein, causing a tiny red jewel to bloom on his skin.
“As long as you have this,” she hissed, dabbing the end of her claw in the blood, “you have something to do magic with.”
Milo twisted his arm away, but Imrah had already let him go and turned back to the table.
“You wanted me to bleed on the thing?” he asked, incredulity curdling his tone.
“A few drops of blood on the Si’lat would have catalyzed it,” Imrah growled impatiently. “A creation as simple as the one that attacked you might have been disapparated like a minor shade or even usurped so we could learn who sent it.”
Milo stood, trying to master his anger, but also, as much he hated it, seeing her frustration. Besides any embarrassment Milo had caused her by emptying a clip into a Si’lat, she’d missed out on the chance to discover who was trying to kill Milo.
“I’m sorry,” he said, the words coming out limp and hollow, but not angry. “I didn’t know or at least didn’t think about it that way.”
“Of course you didn’t!” Imrah snarled, and Milo braced himself for more of her spleen. “How could you? You are the first of your kind, and I didn’t teach you that.”
Stunned by what sounded like a confession, Milo missed a beat before recovering enough to speak.
“Wait, you aren’t mad at me?”
Imrah looked at him and made a disgusted noise.
“Did I say I was?” she asked, scornful of the suggestion.
Milo let out a bemused, spluttering breath.
“I just thought,” he began as he crossed his arms, and then stopped as he fought for words. “I mean, you seemed, uh...angry about um...something.”
Imrah nodded and reached over to a small chest in the left-hand table.
“I am angry,” she said, flipping open the chest to draw out a fistful of gray sand. “But not at you. Your ignorance of life among our people is excusable, but mine is not.”
“What do you mean?” Milo asked as she let the powder spill into a small stone mortar, beside which lay a bone-handled pestle. Though this was far finer and lighter-colored stuff than the black grit from last night, Milo couldn’t pretend he wasn’t anxious at the sight.
“I mean, for a long time, too long, Ifreedahm and all the other outlying ghul communities of the Underworld have been embroiled in petty rivalries and wasteful acts of assassination and sabotage. My father set me to this task, and I should have expected this and planned accordingly.”
The she-ghul selected a few delicate bones and deposited them in the mortar. She began grinding the brown remains with one hand while with the other, she drew a thin dried plant stem from an open jar.
“So, what can we do now?” Milo asked, feeling a strange sense of responsibility to shake Imrah out of her melancholic self-deprecation. He told himself it was because she needed to stop moping and teach him, but as he stood watching her prepare this new formula, he admitted he was beginning to like her.
“Prepare you,” she replied staunchly before holding up the bowl of crushed amalgam in front of him. Milo could feel the barest tingle of magical potential coming from the bowl.
“Spit,” Imrah instructed, and after inspecting Milo’s reluctant offering, raised the bowl again. “More.”
After providing enough saliva to make his mouth feel dry, Milo watched her mix the spittle and ground dust into a grainy paste.
After that, she dabbed a claw in the mixture and turned toward Milo.
“Where is that going?” he asked, leaning back as her hand strayed toward his face.
“On the lids of your eyes,” she muttered distractedly as she strained upward. “Now, bend your head down and hold still.”
Milo took a deep breath and forced himself to hunch forward and hold very still. Willing himself not to even breathe as it was applied, he waited as she dabbed a thin layer of the gunk across his eyelid. Then, with her cold carrion breath sliding across his face, she intoned something in magically charged Ghulish. A prickling sensation spread across his eyelids and then his eyes, making him wince, but he kept his hands from pawing his face. A second later, the prickling subsided and he couldn’t feel anything on his eyes.
“Open your eyes,” Imrah said, and when Milo did, a breathless curse of amazement tumbled
out of his open mouth.
The world had been reborn in brilliant shades of darkness and twilight.
Ever since coming to Ifreedahm, the smokeless fire of the azure braziers and green hearths had kept the darkness at bay, but only enough so that everything was in perpetual dusk. Milo could see well enough to move around, but everything was cast in stark lines, and the shadows were deep, almost solid barriers. Now, though the colors had not changed, Milo could decipher between the shades of unlight, a nameless palette of blacks and grays so fine and yet so definite that he could decipher everything as clearly as though it were broad daylight, or perhaps even better.
Turning this way and that, he beheld the towering spires of the citadel and then the manors in the city below. It was like he was seeing the capital of the Underworld for the first time.
“Is this how you see the world?” he asked, marveling at the fierce but beautiful architecture of the citadel again.
“More or less,” Imrah said, and though he wasn’t looking at her, Milo could almost hear the satisfied smile tugging at her mouth. “At least it should keep you from groping for so much ugly light.”
Milo nodded and then noticed that the lights did seem a touch harsher. Not painful, just unpleasant to look at.
“Why have the lights at all?” he asked, turning back to his teacher. “And is this permanent?”
Imrah had set the mortar and pestle aside and was busying herself with combining several ingredients on a bronze tray.
“Because ghuls are not the only beings to frequent the city,” she answered absently. “Even now, my father is meeting with fey envoys who will see him by those lights, though admittedly, the pix don’t need such accommodations.”
Her assembly done, she turned back to Milo.
“And no, it is not permanent, but you will learn to make your own soon enough. First, though, we need to go about waking up the rest of you. Don’t worry, none of this should be too painful.”
* * *
By the end of that second lesson, Milo was not sure human and ghul tolerances for pain were comparable, but he was sure that it was worth it.
It was like he’d been sleepwalking through the Underworld since he’d been dragged down those steps, but now for the first time, he was awake. The paste for his eyes−a combination of candle-wick ash, moonflower stalks, spit, and bone meal, he reminded himself−had only been the beginning. There was a salve for his ears that rendered him able to understand any language, even Ghulish, and a wafer that, once dissolved, allowed his speech to be understood by any creature, even the undead and beasts. After that had come a fetish worn as a pendant that when anointed with a drop of his blood and worn around his wrist, let him sense magical energies that were within arm’s reach more quickly.
“If there is magic in your food or drink and you didn’t put it there, it would be wise to abstain,” Imrah had warned.
She showed him the ingredients necessary for all she had done or made for him, having him transcribe the formulas onto parchment and then repeat them to her. She told him that once he began to make these things on his own, he would detect the resonances in them and should be able to supplement them with his own tailored ingredients. Just as some of the ingredients were not responsive to Milo’s intuitive probing earlier, he would learn that some responded much more powerfully or precisely than others.
Why that was, Imrah wasn’t sure.
“There are theories that it has something to do with a combination of fate and celestial alignments.” She shrugged as though the subject didn’t interest her. “Others suggest it is personal experiences and the Magus’ psychological reactions to them. For example, you seemed quickest to detect those that were charged with the emotions resulting from fear and direct tragedy. The theory would be you’ve been shaped by tragedy and fear, so that is what responds to you.”
“Fear and tragedy,” Milo mused, subconsciously letting his hand slide to the folded tarot card in his pocket. “I think that’s not too far off.”
“In the end, it doesn’t matter.” Imrah sighed, not seeming to notice Milo had even spoken. “Things are the way they are, and they don’t seem likely to change.”
Despite being drained mentally and physically by the magic experienced and formulas learned, the last part of the lesson had been Milo’s favorite. Imrah had instructed him to take up his new skull-topped cane, and in a process that was uncomfortable at first and intuitive afterward, she had him place his hand on the avian skull and then placed her sharp grip over his. She reached inside the skull and down into the rod of stone it was mounted on, prodding the alchemical agents preserved within with little pulses of her will.
She showed him what could be called on to produce light, what could be coaxed to produce flame, and what would provide the strength and speed to wield the weighty fetish as a weapon. After that, she had him try, still with her hand over his, to more precisely feel what his will and magical ability were doing. He was clumsy and weak by comparison, but with guidance and coaxing, he managed to quicken each of the alchemical processes.
“In time, you may find new uses, new variations, but for now, these should serve you for facing future assassination attempts. Now, let’s try you out.”
From there, she had stalked to the center of the circular platform, where a small black circle was inscribed. Crouching, she pricked her tongue between two fangs and spat the blood onto the stone.
“RISE, MOVE,” she commanded in magic-compelling tones that hours ago would have just been more Ghulish hissing.
In response, there was a shudder throughout the platform, and four blocks of stone rose from the floor, forming square pillars. Those pillars, nearly twelve feet in height, began to move slowly around the perimeter of the platform. Standing as he was toward the center, it was like being in the midst of a giant machine, like an engine or a watch.
“Are they on tracks or something?” Milo asked, marveling at how they moved so smoothly and without the sounds of grating stone.
“They move because I tell them to,” Imrah answered, giving him a disgusted shake of her head. “And now you will too.”
The simple exercise was then explained: she would point at a pillar and tell him light, burn, or strike, and it was his task to do so.
“Sounds simple enough,” he said and instantly regretted it as a wicked smile spread over Imrah’s face.
Within a minute, he was wiping sweat out of his eyes.
Producing light was the easiest, of course, but even that required focus since Imrah was not satisfied unless the light struck the pillar squarely. The pressure of her insistent commands and the moving pillars threatening to slide away before he could bring his faculties to bear was very frustrating, and that frustration was the enemy of focus.
From there, things only became more complicated and dangerous with the burning and the striking.
Despite what he had thought, channeling the necessary essence to ignite flames from the skull was more difficult than it had been during the Contest. Not being fueled by mortal danger was part of it, he was sure, but also the construction of the skull and the ingredients’ reactions within the leering cane topper played into it. Tightly channeled twin bolts of flame could be launched from the eye sockets, streaking out with blinding speed and force to strike and score stone. Driven with blunt force, the beak of the skull would open and a torrent of fire would emerge, like those Flammenwerfers he’d seen some of the Federated regiments using to clear trenches. The first time he discovered this, he’d missed twice with the flame bolts against his chosen pillar. In his anger, he bore down with his will, then nearly fell over in shock as an inferno emerged from the end of the cane.
“Control,” was all Imrah had said before repeating which pillar she wanted to be burned.
Activating the physical enhancements of the fetish was even more terrifying.
First, it was a very different feeling than light or fire, coaxing the essence inward instead of outward, and second, the sensat
ion of it working was very distracting, complicating things further. When he called on the alchemy within the cane to share its power, it rushed in with a burning chill that made his skin feel as though he was suffering a terrible fever across his entire body. It was not the empowering sensation he’d expected, and the first few times, he was so struck by the nauseous, shivering sensation he’d almost fallen over and adopted the fetal position.
For all that, when he finally moved, his body responded with amazing alacrity, and he sprang half a dozen feet in one stride to deliver a blow that powdered a hunk of stone the size of his fist. Despite the heavy blow, the polished stone shaft didn’t show a single sign of distress or damage.
By the time he finished, he was puffing and blowing, but also grinning from ear to ear. This was just scratching the surface of what he had to learn, and it was incredible. True, a firearm could do much the same without nearly as much mental effort, but that wasn’t the point. With a little bit of stone, bone, and whatever dwelt inside the skull cane, he’d conjured fire and given himself the ability to move with inhuman quickness and might. He could appear utterly harmless before springing into lethal action in the space of a thought...as long as he kept his focus, of course.
He imagined Colonel Jorge could find something useful for an agent like him to do.
As they walked back to their apartment, Ambrose muttered about his plans for the meal and whined about his dwindling supply of alcohol, but Milo’s thoughts were elsewhere.
In his mind’s eye, he imagined himself stalking through the dark, misty streets of Paris or London. No longer the ragged, lanky product of a war orphanage and rebellious criminality; he saw himself as an agent provocateur, dangerous and dapper. With utter confidence and a suave wardrobe to match, he would move through enemy territory, sowing chaos and disruption. Skull-topped cane tapping across the pavement in challenge, he’d busy himself befuddling enemy agents and dispatching threats to the German Army. By the time the Federated and Colonial regiments arrived, he’d be waiting to hand them the keys to victory before setting off on another daring adventure.
World's First Wizard Complete Series Boxed Set Page 14