The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1)

by Brad Magnarella

  Chicory hadn’t told me that part of the story. Because it’s a lie, I reminded myself.

  “So, yes, Lich did die, but not at the hands of the Elders. He rose as an undead being, a demigod, in full possession of Whisperer magic. And with that magic, he slaughtered his eight siblings.”

  “Bullshit,” I said, unable to help myself.

  He ignored the remark. “No more Elders. No more Order.”

  “Then who in the hell have I been working under for the last ten years?”

  “Lich,” Connell said. “After destroying the Elders, he used the same magic to create the illusion that the First Order continued to exist. Then, assuming various guises, he murdered the representatives of the Second Order, those with direct access to the Elders. From there, the Elders existed in name and legend only, a legend Lich could manipulate to his, and Dhuul’s, ends.”

  “So you’re saying that all of the creatures I’ve captured and sent back were illusions?” I fingered the place where a nether creature had torn off a chunk of my right earlobe.

  “No, Everson. The work of everyone who served under what we believed to be the Order was very real. Beings do exist in the nether realms, the lesser ones seeking sustenance in our world, the greater ones hungering for dominion. Much of the critical work of the Order actually continued.”

  “And that helps Lich how?” I asked skeptically.

  “In two ways.” Connell stood and began pacing the room, hands clasped behind his back. Something in the way he carried himself bothered me. “First, it acts as a distraction, keeping magic-users like us busy. We don’t question what we’re being told to do, nor by whom. That has given Lich freedom to devote himself to building the portal between our world and Dhuul’s. Second, the practice and experience we obtain grow our power. And—”

  “That doesn’t make any goddamned sense,” I interrupted. “Why would Lich want magic-users to become powerful enough to challenge him?”

  “Oh, they never get to that point. He only lets them grow powerful enough to sacrifice them. The lion’s share of their power goes to the portal while a quotient is entrapped in a glass pendant that sustains Lich himself.”

  I blew a raspberry with my lips. “Like other magic-users aren’t going to know their colleagues are suddenly missing.”

  “Even under the policy of compartmentalization?” he asked, one eyebrow raised. “And let’s not forget the zero-tolerance policy. Magic-users are hit with enough warnings and threats in their early years that were any of them to learn about the execution of a fellow magic-user—or told they were up for execution themselves—they would hardly be surprised. Terrified, yes, but not surprised.”

  I couldn’t keep myself from revisiting the numerous warnings I’d received over the years. But that didn’t explain Grandpa, an old and powerful mage. His death had been an accident, stepping into a street at the same moment a bee happened to sting an approaching driver. He hadn’t been sacrificed or had his soul harvested.

  I was going to say as much, then remembered something the vampire Arnaud had told me shortly before I blew him apart. I kept close tabs on your grandfather since his arrival in Manhattan, he’d said. He was behaving quite curiously, performing work far beneath his station. A stage magician and insurance man?

  Almost as though Grandpa was trying to hide his abilities from someone. I broke off the thought when I realized Connell was watching me intently.

  “Yeah, nice story so far,” I said. “There’s only one problem. If Lich the Great and Terrible created this perfect artifice, fooling everyone, how in the hell do you know about it?”

  “Your grandfather,” he said.

  I stiffened. “What about him?”

  “Asmus Croft was a scholar in Europe, a brilliant man.”

  “A scholar?” I’d never heard anything about that.

  “Yes, of mythology. Interesting how you followed in his footsteps without ever knowing. In any case, in his early days as a wizard, Asmus took a great interest in the history of the Order. He learned everything he could about it, going back to the earliest records. That had been Lich’s role in the First Order: penning its history and protocols, its first spell books. After overthrowing the Order, Lich took many guises, but he kept up the history. He gave an account of the rebellion, and his own role in it, but reported that it ended in his death and the closing of the seam to Dhuul. The falsehood was not only to evade suspicion, but to enact harsher punishment for magic-users who committed any number of infractions. Lich set up wards to spy on them. Thus began the regime of warnings and executions.”

  That was actually consistent with what Chicory had told me about the Elders taking steps to ensure nothing like the rebellion would happen again. Careful, Everson, I warned myself. Probably exactly how Whisperer magic works, grafting lies onto what one already accepts as truth.

  “But Asmus was exceptional in languages too,” Connell continued. “He developed an expertise in what would later become the field of linguistics. Though Lich had altered his penmanship in composing the post-rebellion history, your grandfather saw similarities in the diction between that history and what had come before. He began to ask questions. Not aloud, no—he knew better. The questions he posed were to himself: What if the rebellion had succeeded? What if Lich had destroyed his siblings and not vice versa? What if this Dhuul was directing what everyone believed to be the Order? With those questions in mind, your grandfather simply observed. What was said, what was done, what was promulgated down the ranks. He did this for many years, continuing his work as a scholar and wizard, never letting on what he suspected but becoming more and more convinced of it. When the regional enforcers of the Inquisition grew bolder in their threats against European magic-users, he requested guidance from the Order, and this was where Lich slipped up.”

  I caught myself leaning forward slightly and sat back.

  “The Order advised your grandfather to ally with the vampires to confront the threat,” he said.

  “What was wrong with that?”

  “It went against the Order’s entire reason for being,” Connell replied. “Saint Michael sired children to combat the offspring of the Demon Lords, which included vampires. For hundreds of years, the Order had never wavered from that position.”

  “Yeah, but this was for survival.”

  “Saint Michael forbade his children from warring against humans. Again, it went against their reason for being. But now, just like that, two of the central tenets on which the Order was founded had been altered.”

  “How would that have been advantageous to Lich?”

  “Your grandfather believed Lich saw war as the best chance for the long-term survival of magic-users. The longer they lived, the more powerful they grew, and the more of that power Lich could channel into his portal. Thus, the more powerful he would become.”

  “Then why did my grandfather fight?”

  “He saw the fog of wartime as an opportunity to meet with other magic-users in secret. That was how he met Marlow. They compared stories on their experiences. Both of the mentors who had inducted them into the Order had been put to death for one violation or another. Other magic-users shared similar accounts concerning their own mentors. It was there, during the war against the Inquisition, that your grandfather, Marlow, and several others formed a rebellion to defeat Lich. It would take time and resources. Lich had been building his portal for centuries, after all. Several magic-users faked their deaths during the Inquisition, Marlow among them. They came here, to the Refuge, where they discovered Elder books and began the work of stalling Lich’s progress. Following the Inquisition, your grandfather feigned a serious head wound and claimed he’d lost much of his own power. He requested and was granted a release from the Order. Lich had no more use for him. Keeping a low profile, your grandfather worked between worlds, gathering information and resources out there, supplying it to us here.”

  I thought about Arnaud’s claim that Grandpa had stolen and stashed magical artifact
s during the war. Connell’s version of events seemed to fit that, but suspecting Whisperer magic, I pushed the thought away.

  “His daughter eventually took over that role. Your mother.”

  “I don’t want to hear anymore,” I said, standing. His account was filling in too many gaps, and doing it too neatly. I could feel my mind beginning to bend to the logic, the magic.

  “Are you sure?” Connell asked.

  Two automatons entered the room, carrying the clothes I’d arrived in as well as towels and a basin of clean water. They set everything on the foot of my bed and departed silently.

  “Tell me this,” I said in challenge. “Since you know so much, how did I end up here?”

  I stepped into my boxers and tossed away the gown.

  “To answer that, I have to go back to your beginnings. You were born here, beyond Lich’s and Dhuul’s sight. Lich killed your mother without knowing who she was; your grandfather had seen to it that she never joined the Order. You were placed in your grandparents’ care, and through veiling spells, they ensured Lich remained ignorant of your existence.”

  I pulled on my shirt. “I thought you said he was a god.”

  “A demigod,” Connell corrected me. “And a distractible one, thankfully. Obsession with power does that to a mage. When you turned thirteen, you entered your grandfather’s locked study.”

  I turned and looked at him. How did he know that?

  “Asmus told us,” he said, reading my expression. “And it concerned him greatly.”

  I remembered how Grandpa had pulled me from the closet that night and sliced my finger with the cane sword. I remembered the grave look that had come over his face when I told him how I’d entered, by uttering a Word of Power.

  “In order to keep you from Lich’s sight,” Connell continued, “your grandfather suppressed your power with plans to train you in adulthood. That never happened, of course. When he died, there was nothing to hold back your power. It awakened and began to manifest once more. And it manifested of all places in Romania, in the domain of a Third Order magic-user.”

  Lazlo, I thought.

  “He would have communicated with what he thought was the Order. From there, Lich would have probed your magic and determined who you were—not just the grandson of the late Asmus Croft, but the son of Eve and Marlow. It became his plan to turn you against Marlow, since you would have access to him. But he had to wait until you were powerful enough. The vampire Arnaud sped up that plan by telling you about his encounter with your grandfather regarding your mother.”

  They killed her, he’d claimed Grandpa had said. Had Grandpa been talking about Lich and Dhuul? No, I thought firmly. He meant the members of the Front. Stop listening to this man.

  I sat to tie my shoes.

  “You began looking into your mother’s death, sending inquiries to the Order. Lich became concerned when you attempted to contact a gatekeeper. He would have followed you to the mystic, Lady Bastet, and then killed her to keep you from discovering a truth he couldn’t manipulate. He then arranged the scene in a way that would compel you to investigate, to believe Marlow was responsible. By taking the vial of blood you’d given the mystic, Lich indebted you to the Order.” Connell air-quoted the word with his fingers. “He set you up for a punishment that would mean being sent here. Are you beginning to understand how the regime of warnings and threats work? The residue he left on the cats—”

  “Led me to Marlow,” I cut in defiantly.

  “—led you to wherever Lich wanted you to go,” he finished. “It was Lich who spoke through your cat, pretending to be Marlow. Only when you arrived here did he have the spell actually lead you to Marlow.”

  How in the hell did Connell know so many details? Had he drawn them from me during the five days I’d been out? Was he in my head now?

  “We know these things because of your demon,” he said.

  “Thelonious?” I blurted out.

  “No, he’s not with you enough. I was referring to your cat.”

  I shook my head. “There’s no way Tabitha is working for you.”

  “Of course not,” Connell said with a chuckle, as though he knew her as well as I did. “Not willingly, anyway. Tabitha inhabits a cat’s body, but she also resides in a shallow demonic plane. A plane we’ve been able to tap into. Most of what she sees and hears in your presence, we can access and decipher.”

  “Then how come you didn’t know I was coming?” I challenged.

  “The energy around the safe house had a scrambling effect. We could no longer interpret what we were picking up on Tabitha’s plane. We didn’t know you were being sent so soon.”

  I found another hole in Connell’s account. “If I was so important to Lich’s plan, why has he allowed me to take on such dangerous work?” I was thinking of all the close calls I’d had over the years.

  “Did he allow it?” Connell asked. “Consider the times you were ordered to stand down or that someone intervened directly on your behalf.”

  I thought about Chicory showing up to save me from the druids in Central Park. It was the same night he’d ordered me off the demon cases.

  “The rest of the time,” Connell said, preempting my next challenge, “you were aided by Whisperer magic. Coming up with a solution, often a lifesaving one, at just the right moment.”

  “That’s called a luck quotient. All wizards have it.”

  “Is that what you were told?” Connell asked, the genuineness in his tone rankling me.

  I rounded on him. “You’re telling me there’s no Order and that’s why no one’s coming. That’s the argument you’re going with, right? Fine. I can use it too. There’s no Lich. Want to know how I know? Because I destroyed your book, and look…” I peered over both shoulders. “…no Lich.”

  I crossed my arms smugly. Checkmate.

  “He already came,” Connell said calmly.

  “When I was out?”

  “No, before.”

  “Before?”

  “Everson,” he said, looking at me gravely, “Chicory is Lich. It’s one of his guises.”

  I uncrossed my arms, unsure now what to do with them. For a disorienting moment I was sitting beside Chicory in his car after the druid encounter. The Order can seem like an abstraction sometimes, he was saying, but when it comes to their mandates, they’re rather black and white. Trust me. I’ve had to take care of two wayward wizards this month already.

  I remembered how dark and mercenary my mentor’s eyes had looked.

  “Forget it,” I said, shaking off the memory. “You’re never going to convince me of that.”

  “My job isn’t to convince you,” Connell said. “It’s to give you enough information so you can investigate the claims for yourself. You need to decide whether what I’m telling you is true.”

  “I know what I saw.”

  “You saw what he wanted you to see.”

  I was barely aware of my fingers massaging the spot where Chicory had mashed his thumb. I felt a ghost of the pressure that had manifested behind my eyes and deep in my ears.

  “If this crap you’re telling me is true, why the hard sell?” I asked. “You killed him.”

  “Destroyed his form,” he corrected me. “And only because he’d activated the powerful enchantment inside your blade. No, the being that is Lich can only be killed by destroying the glass pendant in which he stores his claimed souls. Naturally, he keeps the pendant hidden. His new body is forming beside it as we speak, coalescing from the magic within. He will be back soon.”

  An involuntary shudder passed through me. “Are you done?”

  “For now, yes.”

  11

  I followed Connell and Arianna down the steep steps of the palace to where the rocky hill flattened to the plain. Arianna had returned everything to me, including my sword and staff, claiming to have purified them of Whisperer magic. I carried both in my hands and kept a charge of energy around my prism. Neither of my escorts seemed to mind, which bothered me.<
br />
  When we arrived on the plain, Connell whistled and one of the mastiffs hustled over, tongue lolling. I looked the dog over carefully as it sniffed me and then trotted beside us, escorting us toward the forest. It wasn’t acting like a warg, but that could be illusory too, I reminded myself.

  “To avoid additional holes in our realm,” Connell said, “we’re sending you back the way you came through.”

  Or are you taking me into the forest to sacrifice me? I thought.

  But they’d already had plenty of opportunities, and that bothered me, too.

  Soon, the trees took us in. Not the dark, fungus-riddled trees I’d arrived through, but a healthy growth of what looked like oak and spruce. After several more minutes we arrived at a small clearing.

  “Here,” Connell said, stopping.

  As I arrived at the center of the clearing, he and Arianna stepped back.

  “Do you have any more questions?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “I’m sure you’ve been wondering about your father,” Arianna said. “He visited your bedside while you slept. He is anxious to meet you and for you to meet him, but only when that is what you desire.”

  I had been wondering about him, of course, but I didn’t let it show on my face. The man had killed my mother. I’d seen it, experienced it. The horror stuck like barbs around my heart. Even so, Connell had done his job. He’d managed to plant enough doubt in my head that I had no choice but to investigate his claims. Try to figure out what in the hell was going on.

  “Are we going to get this party on, or what?” I asked impatiently.

  “There is one more thing,” Connell said. “Once Lich reconstitutes himself, he’s going to come after you. Whether to seduce you anew or end you, I can’t say. He got what he wanted by sending you here. The Elder book contained powerful magic to keep Dhuul from the world. Its destruction did not weaken our stronghold here so much as increase Dhuul’s, and thus Lich’s, power. Knowing you have spent time with us, Lich will see you as a threat.”