World's First Wizard Complete Series Boxed Set

by Schneider, Aaron D.

  “Oh, Percival Astor is at my home waiting for you to depart,” the marquis said with a shrug as though just thinking of the answer. “He negotiated his own bargain with me, but he agreed that his errand was less time-sensitive than yours and so agreed, quite graciously, to allow you both to depart first.”

  Ambrose’s head whipped around with neck-popping velocity.

  “Bargain?” he snarled. “I thought you said that if the magus passed your test, you would be on our side?”

  The marquis’ ungulate eyes glittered as he showed his teeth in an uncomfortably predatory smile.

  “I did, and I am,” the fey said slowly, as though explaining something to a child. “But as I said already, the Americans seem quite separate from the entire struggle between the Shepherds and the Guardians. Their goals are far more nationalist and thus far less consequential.”

  Milo studied the fey, feeling an uneasy twist in his stomach.

  “What did you give them, and what was the price?” he asked hoarsely, his mouth suddenly dry.

  The marquis shrugged, then flapped his hand as though the question was a pestering insect.

  “A map and a little bit of information,” he muttered. “And in exchange, I requested the use of Mr. Boucher for my own purposes. You saw how that went.”

  Milo slumped against the door of the Rollsy.

  “What?” He groaned, a hand running over his face. “So, it was all an act? A setup?”

  An angry growl rumbled out of Ambrose’s throat, and the hood of the Rollsy was slammed down.

  “Hardly.” The marquis scoffed, refusing to show even a trace of concern at both men’s reactions. “Nothing happens in these mountains and for miles beyond that I don’t know about, so it was not hard to understand why you’d come. Once the Americans bumbled their way into an audience, it was clear what I needed to do. Neither of them knew what I planned, but Ezekiel’s confidence in his invulnerability combined with Percival’s disdain for his partner made it an easy thing to broker. I’m quite sure neither of them expected things to work out the way they did.”

  Milo and Ambrose took a moment to process the revelation, and when done, they shared a defeated stare. What could they do now?

  “You’re a dangerous creature, Ochopintre,” Milo said, the priest’s name for the fey odd on his tongue as he turned to regard him.

  “Not the words I’d use,” Ambrose added sulkily as he shuffled his way to the cab.

  “Then isn’t it a good thing I’m on your side now?” the marquis asked, eyes and teeth gleaming.

  “Could be worse.” Milo sighed as he moved aside to allow Ambrose to clamber into the cab and shuffle over to the driver’s seat.

  “Oh, most certainly.” The marquis chuckled, and there was something in the sound that reminded Milo of the baphometian horror he’d seen in the gallery.

  “Since you’re so well-informed, I suppose you’re aware of what’s coming to Georgia,” Milo said, unable to keep the petulant irritation from his tone.

  The marquis’ expression sobered, and he nodded slowly.

  “A son returned to the land where his iron was mined,” the fey said, his eyes growing distant. “But he’s bringing something or maybe someone he didn’t have before. His metal is brittle, but driven by the machine of his ambition, he could grind his home to kindling to light another fire.”

  Milo started, knowing much was soaring past him but not having any idea where to start.

  “Prophecies and riddles aren’t nearly as useful as intelligence,” Milo remarked dryly. “As our ally, wouldn’t it be useful to be a little clearer?”

  The marquis sighed and shook his head as he gave Milo a pitying look.

  “That depends very much on what you are looking for,” he said. “In truth, I know little more than you do, I imagine. A name maybe, but I can give you more than that, though its value is far more to you personally than to struggles between factions.”

  Milo's hands knotted into fists as he ground his teeth at the perpetual teasing tone of the fey’s revelations. Arms locked stiffly at his side and heels grinding into the earth, he looked at the marquis with jaw set and eyes fixed.

  “I’ll have them both, please.”

  “His born name is Ioseb Besarionis dzе Jugashvili, though he goes by Joseph now,” the marquis said. “And though he has never met you, his effect upon your life has been profound even since you were a child and you watched as the wind was on fire.”

  Milo’s heart kicked hard in his chest, but he refused to give the insufferable fey the pleasure of seeing his reaction.

  “Is that all?” he asked, locking each syllable into the vault of his memory.

  The marquis nodded.

  “Thank God,” Ambrose groaned from the driver’s seat before turning the key.

  The Rollsy’s engine turned over, and Milo turned with unseemly haste to climb into the cab. He raised a foot to mount the running board, except the running boards weren’t where he’d left them. He barked his shin on the metal rail, emitting a burst of profanity at the same time that Ambrose uttered his own curse.

  The Rollsy’s heavy metal frame floated above the earth as though it were making a go at imitating a zeppelin.

  “What the devil?” Milo spat as he bent to rub his abused shin.

  “Nothing so dramatic,” the marquis replied with a sniff.

  “What did you do to my car?” Ambrose shouted as he gripped the seat and door of the Rollsy with bloodless fingers.

  The marquis stepped forward and ran his claws tenderly across the vehicle's battered hood. The tempo of the engine’s rumble slowed to an appreciative purr. Milo felt a soul-deep buzz of static that, after a moment of reflection, he imagined was evidence of the marquis’ will working upon his own.

  “I did promise to make certain you’d return to the contessa in time,” the marquis said archly. “I provided you with a glamour to make certain you reach her quickly as long as you don’t dawdle.”

  Milo stared at the Rollsy and then looked at the fey.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “Illusions convincing bodies and souls that things are or aren’t happening is one thing, but making us believe we’re flying can’t make us fly, can it?”

  The marquis bent double and laid a long hand on Milo’s shoulder.

  “Oh, you’d be amazed what believing something can do,” he said, his words a whisper that brushed Milo’s mind. “And no one said that men and the Folk were the only wills you could bend. Once upon a time, men knew mountains slept and rivers raged, so would it not serve me to seduce gravity?”

  With that, he raised up and looked over Milo at Ambrose.

  “Gear determines altitude,” he explained. “Everything else should be fairly familiar, but remember to not dawdle.”

  Mind racing but not needing to be told a third time, Milo climbed aboard the Rollsy, with the marquis’ voice behind him.

  “I expect we’ll be seeing you very soon, Magus. Take care, and keep an open mind.”

  Milo sank into his seat and saw the fey had vanished.

  “Should I be concerned about all this fey business being mostly illusions?” Ambrose asked, eyeing the gear shift nervously.

  “Try not to think about it too hard,” Milo said and quickly added, “Especially when we're in the air.”

  * * *

  The mountains rolled beneath them like rocky waves breaking in shades of white and slate as they rose from a green sea. The majestic vistas passed beneath them, and had speed not been so vital, Milo would have liked to savor the beauty.

  When first leaving the Lost Vale, Ambrose had refused to put the glamoured Rollsy in anything but first gear, which put them twenty or so feet off the ground. Eventually, Milo was able to cajole and taunt Ambrose to rise higher with needling jabs at the big man’s pride. In third gear, they’d risen to several hundred feet off the ground, and it was just as well because they soon spotted a burnt-out farmstead on the horizon, a smear of soot and cinders on a h
illside.

  Milo’s stomach slithered into a tight coil behind his ribs, and he shouted to Ambrose over the whistling wind.

  “Higher,” he called, jabbing a thumb upward. “We need to get higher.”

  Ambrose’s face was pale tinged with green, but he nodded and shifted into fourth gear. The previous ascensions had been gradual, but this final gear was too ambitious for such gentleness. Both men were flattened against the seats as they rocketed up, stopping only once they were what must have been thousands of feet up. It took a minute or two before either of them did anything but breathe before they unclenched.

  His heart hammering, Milo hung his head out over the cab door and surveyed the land below, stretching out in a perspective he’d not experienced since the zeppelin in Afghanistan. God’s-eye-view he’d heard it called, and if that was so, Milo decided that explained a good deal about the deity. The world was beautiful but detached, and cold was all around.

  Milo pushed the morose thoughts aside as he saw that the burnt farmstead was not an isolated incident. Winding like a ribbon of destruction unfurling south, Milo saw other homes and hamlets that had received similar treatment. The once-picturesque dwellings and settlements were now smoldering black blots on the landscape, throwing up choking plumes of smoke.

  “Dear God,” Milo muttered, oblivious to the irony of the exclamation as he sank back.

  “Looks like Joseph already found his way home.” Ambrose grunted next to him, his face purged of color. “Wonder where he’s going?”

  Milo willed himself to look again at the devastation’s path.

  “South,” he said stiffly. “Towards Tiflis, maybe.”

  Ambrose nodded and gingerly applied his foot to the accelerator.

  “Good,” he wheezed, looking for all the world like he might pass out, vomit, or both at the same time. His knuckles stood out like great white knobs on the wheel. “Means he’s not headed for Shatili. The contessa should still be safe.”

  “And Lokkemand will be furious.” Milo groaned, feeling dark despair well inside him. “I was away when the enemy arrived. I’ll be lucky if he doesn’t shoot me on sight.”

  The Rollsy growled a little louder as its driver applied his foot. From this altitude, the earth stretched out in imitation of the maps Ambrose had copied, making navigation a trivial concern.

  “One bridge at a time,” Ambrose said slowly. “Let’s save the contessa, and then we can worry about what Lokkemand will do.”

  Milo shook his head, feeling the black waves lapping at him again. His situation seemed impossible, and even though he’d known this was a possibility, he’d desperately hoped that it wouldn’t come to pass. What had started out seeming to be the only right answer had devolved into another trade-off, a measure forestalling eventual collapse.

  What good was saving Rihyani if it resulted in the usurpation of an entire country and the dissolution of Nicht-KAT? Didn’t that put him in the same spot as before? No, it was worse, he realized, much worse. The selfishness implicit in the thought sickened him, but he couldn’t shake it. He couldn’t think of any other thing he could have or would have done, but that only made things worse.

  He was playing a rigged game, and knowing that only deepened his disgust at his circumstances, and more intensely, his inability to escape them.

  There was nothing he could do to escape the fact that he wasn’t enough, that he—

  “Stop it!”

  The words tore themselves from Milo’s throat with such force that Ambrose jumped, and his foot came off the accelerator.

  “What the hell was that?” Ambrose shouted, but Milo was too busy to notice.

  He was gripping his head and compelling his magical awareness inward.

  The tide of despairing, suffocating thoughts had been in his own mental voice, but they were not his. They’d sprung from some cavity inside of him where something nested, subtle and clinging, but they were not his thoughts. Unbidden, he remembered that moment when the marquis’ “gift” of experiencing the Art had nearly overwhelmed him and he’d been aware, for an instant, of something sharing the space of his consciousness.

  Who are you? Milo asked the darkness within him and felt a shiver race through as he felt the toothy smile behind the answering voice.

  You already know, my wayward pupil.

  “Magus?” Ambrose called, inching his way across the seat to give Milo a shake. “You’re making me nervous.”

  Milo felt the darkling awareness recede inside him at Ambrose’s touch and words, but he knew it was biding time, not retreating. Gooseflesh rippled across Milo’s body, and it was all he could do not to reach down and rip his flesh with wild, clawing hands.

  “Milo?” Ambrose’s voice was almost pleading. “What is it?”

  The magus ran a hand across his brow where icy sweat had sprung, then stared at the dampened hand as though fearing it would twist into a ghul’s claw or worse, the unnatural spidery talon of a shade.

  “Imrah,” Milo murmured, fighting to get the words out as he kept his gorge in. “Her shade. It’s inside me.”

  Ambrose swore long and bitterly, then collapsed in the driver’s seat.

  “One bridge at a time,” Milo offered hollowly, but he couldn’t bring himself to grin at the joke.

  Ambrose rolled his gaze back to Milo, and there was nothing but heartache in his green eyes. Milo, allergic as he was to pity, was uncomfortable under the weight of the stare, but neither of them had the strength to break free of the shared stare’s gravity for several heartbeats.

  Ambrose finally turned away, head shaking, as he straightened and drove his foot down on the accelerator.

  “Let’s go save the girl before we plummet to our deaths,” he growled.

  “One bridge,” Milo murmured as the wind pulled across his face and hair, the two words a feeble candle against the dark inside of him.

  It was better than nothing.

  * * *

  Their descent to the courtyard of Shatili was as disruptive as the sight that Milo and Ambrose witnessed once they sank out of the sky. The soldiers dropped their burdens on the cobbles of the courtyard, at least one crate splitting and spilling its contents, while they stared at the settling Rollsy.

  “What are they doing?” Milo asked as he rose in his seat.

  Ambrose carefully peeled his hands from the wheel, and with a steadying breath, he reached down and turned the key off, and the tires settled with a turgid thump. The engine was still clunking to a stop as Ambrose looked around, the first trickle of color rising into his cheeks. His face curdled as though he were smelling something foul.

  “Looks like they’re packing up to go,” he said before throwing his shoulder against the cab door. “Where are you boys going?”

  The soldiers blinked and gaped, then they exchanged sheepish looks and set about gathering up what they’d dropped in their shock.

  “Was everyone struck deaf after we left?” Ambrose shouted as he slid out of the cab. “Don’t tell me you are all so busy that you can’t hear me.”

  Milo joined the big man on the cobbles, then took a quick look around and noticed more than one sour glare from soldiers attempting to appear busy. Whatever had happened since they’d left, it was certain that any allies they might have had before seemed to have had a change of heart.

  “We need to find Rihyani,” Milo said softly, but his words were lost on Ambrose, who stepped forward with an angry stomp.

  “Where do you think you are going?” he demanded, hooking a thumb toward the ravaged countryside they’d passed over moments before. “The enemy’s at the gates, and you’re going to slink off with your tails between your legs?”

  One of the soldiers struggling with the burst crate rose and shook a jagged spar of wood at Ambrose.

  “We’re escorts, not a bunch of commandos,” he snarled before throwing the broken plank down in front of the big man.

  “You’re soldiers, aren’t you?” Ambrose shot back, kicking the plank away di
sdainfully. “Or did your manhood freeze off during the winter?”

  “Ambrose,” Milo began, but a premonition of something coming at him had him twisting around in time to see Lokkemand’s fist coming for his face. He dodged back and away from the crushing blow, so it took him in the chest instead of the jaw. The strike was like a mule’s kick, and Milo was thrown backward. His back struck the hood with a sound like a gong.

  “You’ve ruined everything!” Captain Lokkemand bellowed over the echoing note of Milo’s impact.

  Ambrose, moving with shocking speed, spun and leveled his rifle at the raging captain.

  “Touch him again, and I’ll empty your skull all over this courtyard.”

  Lokkemand’s gray eyes were molten silver with ecstatic rage, but he checked his advance as he looked down the long barrel of the Gewehr.

  “One word and you’ll both be dead in a traitor’s shallow grave,” the captain snarled, sweeping an arm at the soldiers across the courtyard. With that single phrase, the muted embarrassment of the soldiers was transmuted into the crackling tension of promised violence.

  “That’s going to make little difference to you since you’ll be dead,” Ambrose said in a chillingly calm tone before raising his voice so everyone could hear him. “I’ve got five rounds in this clip. Any of you so much as calls the magus a name, I drop him and then four more. After that, you’ll probably have me, but know five will die with me.”

  No one moved, and for a moment, no one even breathed. Simon Ambrose did not need to lie, and every man there knew it.

  Trying to steady his thready breathing, Milo climbed back to his feet as he looked around the courtyard. His chest ached abominably, and his heart still felt like it was trying to catch up with the beats it had missed after the impact. Despite this distraction, he could plainly see the dueling instincts of fear and wrath in every soldier’s eyes around them. None of them wanted to be responsible for Lokkemand’s death, much less their own, but Ambrose had a gun in their commander’s face. Every instinct honed in the mud and blood of the War told them unequivocally what the only answer could be.