Awakening Camelot: A Wizard's Quest (Awakening Camelot Duology Book 1)

by Dan Wingreen

  Eallair grinned and pulled back like he was going to leave, but then ducked back into the window. "Before I go, can I ask you one thing?"

  Aidan licked his lips. "Okay," he said warily.

  Eallair cocked his head slightly. It caused a few stray strands of hair to fall over one of his eyes, and Aidan had the sudden, obsessive-compulsive urge to move them out of the way, shove them behind his ear or something. He was so busy berating himself for it that he almost missed the question.

  "Have you ever been happy?"

  Aidan blinked, the hair forgotten. "What?" he asked.

  "Have you ever been happy?" he asked again. "I mean, truly happy. Has there ever been a time in your life when you didn't have anythin’ weighing you down, no obligation or appointment, no worry, or fear. A moment of pure and total bliss where everything was perfect in your world and nothin’ could touch you. Have you ever had that?"

  What kind of question is that? Of course I've been happy! I… But even as he was opening his mouth to say just that, he suddenly realized he couldn't think of a single time in his life when it was true. Not since he was a small child, at least, and that didn't really count. It was easy for children to be happy; the world was still a place of wonder and excitement for them. A place where they were safe and loved. He closed his mouth slowly and frowned. That couldn't be right. He just needed to think harder.

  So he did.

  He still couldn't think of a single thing. The only thing that even came close was when he was helping the kids as the WA meetings, but even that wasn't perfect. There was always a tiny cloud over everything he did because he knew the kind of life all those kids were going to have. He could tell them it wasn't that bad; that they could have a life that was good enough. But that was it. Good enough. Not that bad. Which, he suddenly realized, was a perfect description of his own life.

  Not as bad as it could be, but not great. Not perfect.

  Not happy.

  When he didn't answer, Eallair gave him another one of those sad smiles. "That's what I thought," he said quietly. "One last question. You don't need to answer it, but, just think about it, okay?" He didn't wait for Aidan to respond before continuing. "If you live in a world where, despite livin’ by the rules and doing everythin’ you were ever supposed to do, you've never been happy once in your life, don't you think it's a world that needs to change?"

  And with one last smile and a wave, he walked away, leaving Aidan alone in the carriage with his thoughts.

  Chapter 4

  It was an alley this time, dark and oppressive between two buildings that seemed to stretch up into the sky forever. Aidan stood in a tiny circle of blue light, frozen in terror. Every few minutes, something shifted in the darkness; a sound like bone being scraped across concrete piercing through the otherwise silent night. Or maybe that was the darkness itself, moving and scraping along the edges of the alley, like a river filled with the aftermath of a massive flood. There weren't even any carriages going by, though he was standing on familiar cobblestones. He didn't know how he got there, or where he had been going. The only thing he knew was he couldn't leave the light or something horrible was going to happen to him. The light was safety. The light was security. It was all he'd ever need.

  And it was going out.

  Slowly, but steadily, the light dimmed and changed until it was the sickly purple of a bad bruise, mottled and dark. Aidan needed to move, the light wouldn't protect him for much longer, but there was nowhere else to go. Almost as if it knew what he was thinking, the bone scraping sound got louder, more constant. More eager. Something was coming towards him. He looked around, panicked, for another source of light, another safe haven, but there was nothing. He felt there should have been. Or maybe there was, but he couldn't see it. Or it couldn't see him. Or worse, he'd already passed it and now he could never get back.

  The light flickered…and went out.

  Aidan was plunged into a deep, all-encompassing blackness that should have been impossible in the middle of a city. Terror clawed at him, tearing through his very being like a desperate, cornered animal, but right as he opened his mouth to scream the light came back, brighter than before. The sick color quickly turned to true purple, then back into a healthy, strong white-blue. Aidan almost collapsed in relief.

  He was safe.

  And that was when the arm reached out from the alley. It was thin, skeletal, with tight, dry skin that flaked off as its fingers stretched towards Aidan. It passed through the light, never even slowing down, and just before it grabbed him, he heard a dry, raspy cackle mocking him for ever thinking he was safe. The light had only been holding him there until the creature was ready for him. The surprisingly strong fingers slid around his wrist, and pulled him out of the light into the writhing darkness…

  Aidan woke up screaming.

  He flailed, trying to reach the lamp by his bed, but he was tangled in his sheets. He screamed louder, frantically struggling to free himself. His heart was pounding as he finally ripped an arm free from the suffocating blankets and scrambled around in the dark trying to find the light switch. He found it and flipped it, then twisted the tiny knob next to the switch, turning it up as bright as it would go. Steady, white-blue light filled his small bedroom, banishing the darkness. He kicked himself free from the rest of his covers and sat up, pulling his knees to his chest and raking his hair away from his eyes with trembling hands. Only when he looked around at every inch of the room and saw that it was free from any kind of skeletal horror did he finally begin to calm.

  Nightmare. It was just another nightmare. He took deep breaths and clenched his hands, trying to stop his shaking.

  Oh Merlin, that one was horrible.

  He shuddered as he remembered the awful texture of the thing's hands and its terrible, rasping laugh. The worst part of it, though, was feeling his safety being torn apart, ripped away, and shown to be nothing more than an illusion. It resonated with Aidan in a way most of his nightmares didn't.

  Of course it does. That's pretty much been the theme of the past week, hasn't it?

  It wasn't just that, though. Most of his dreams, nightmares or not, faded after he woke up until he could only remember impressions; fragmented bits of scenery and feelings that slipped through his fingers like fog when he tried to recall more. This one was still crystal clear. He remembered every second of it. One of those nightmares. He'd had many of them over the years, the ones that stuck with him no matter how much time passed. They'd been about a lot of different things, but mostly they were about the dark room. The room he'd been dreaming about since his first days in the DMS training dorms. The room where he was always dead, but still somehow horribly aware and waiting for something in the blackness to notice him…

  He shuddered again.

  Yeah, there's no way I'm getting back to sleep tonight.

  He checked the clock on his nightstand on the off chance that it was almost morning, but it read 2:13. He sighed.

  It took him a few more minutes to gather up enough courage to slip out of bed and grab a blanket, and another few after that before he could open his bedroom door and scamper out into the rest of his apartment. He turned every light he had all the way up until every shadow was banished and Aidan's eyes ached from the brightness. He curled up on his living room chair, threw the blanket over his shoulders and wrapped his arms around his legs, settling in for another long night.

  One good thing about the nightmares, at least I don't feel stupid about this until the morning.

  At least it had been a long time since he'd had one this bad. But that raised the question—why now? If anything, it should have happened after he was attacked, when he so terrified he couldn't even leave the apartment. He expected it then. Tonight though, he hadn’t even thought he was going to get to sleep, since everything Eallair had said kept running around in his head, driving him crazy.

  Aidan scowled. That definitely wasn't what he wanted to think about. Not after the hours he spent with his thoughts
churning like a storm swept coastline, with Eallair's words haunting him. It was traitorous to even hear those words, let alone…what? Consider them? Give them weight? Think they might be true? Aidan had the horrible suspicion it wouldn't have taken much more to convince him to go with Eallair on his crazy quest. That maybe he already regretted that he wasn't.

  Traitor.

  Aidan squeezed his eyes shut and tried to push the thoughts from his head.

  Cold, dead fingers grasping at his flesh, pulling him into the darkness, laughing, always laughing…

  His eyes snapped open and he let out a frustrated noise.

  I can't even have one second of peace? Seriously?

  If his mind was a person, he would have gladly beaten it to death.

  Fine, if I'm gonna be forced to think of something, I might as well finally get this terrorist nonsense out of my head.

  Because, really, what the hell was even up with not being able to dismiss terrorist nonsense as terrorist nonsense? So what if he wasn't happy? If he was lonely? Did it really matter if he'd had all his choices made for him? If he could have made them himself, would he have chosen differently? He told himself firmly that it didn't matter. Things were the way they were for a reason. Who was he to think maybe they should change just because his life wasn't anything to write home about? Why should he want to change things to make himself happy at the expense of everyone else's happiness?

  Except…that was the problem. It wasn't just that he was unhappy. It was that he couldn't really remember ever seeing anyone happy. All the wizards he'd ever met were withdrawn, timid, always looking over their shoulder and scared of slipping up; or they were sullen, terrified teenagers trying desperately to adjust to a life they never wanted. Even Carl rarely smiled. And it wasn't much better for all the sorcerers he'd ever met. They were either scared of him or, if they didn't know he was a wizard, they just seemed…dull. Like an old, washed out painting. None of them seemed to take any real joy in anything. They just existed. The only people he could ever remember seeing genuinely happy were children too small to know any better.

  Well, there was one sorcerer who wasn't anything like that…

  But Aidan didn’t want to think about him, and he most definitely didn’t want to emulate him. If going around setting things on fire and getting into fights with cops—guys pretending… Screw it, they were cops—was the way to be happy, then happiness wasn't something Aidan wanted to see spread across the world.

  Safety. Security. The comfort of knowing every day was going to be just like the one before it. Those were the things that mattered.

  But what if things could change? What if safety and security could coexist with choice and freedom?

  But, what if, maybe. All I have is doubt when I used to be so damn certain…

  The only thing he knew for sure was he hated that stupid sorcerer for ever making him so unsure.

  Except he didn't.

  Aidan sighed.

  This is gonna be a long night.

  ◆◆◆

  "Take two," Aidan muttered as he looked up at the DMS building the next day.

  He'd finally fallen asleep a little before five in the morning, his mind still uneasy and undecided. He'd slept in until the afternoon, grateful he didn't work on weekends. He really didn't want to have to deal with getting his labor check docked for being late in addition to everything else. He'd also ignored the three messages Carl had left on his crystal ball about missing the WA meeting the day before. There was no way he could have even tried to explain why, and he wasn't confident enough in his lying abilities to come up with an excuse, not with the strange directions his thoughts kept taking. Maybe he'd have something by next week.

  In the end, the only thing he'd been able to decide for sure was that he really needed to renew his license. If he was going to sit around and think disloyal thoughts all day, he at least needed to be registered first.

  It was a windy day, enough so that Aidan had to constantly push his hair out of his face as he made his way up the steps onto the landing. As he approached the building, he couldn't help looking up at The Window. It had been repaired. Despite his best efforts, he felt a pang of resentment. The same magic that could fix an exploded window could just as easily fix a broken light or a faulty heater if the DMS would just send repair sorcerers out to the Wizards' Quarter more often… Great, I can't even turn it off when I'm right in front of the freaking DMS.

  There were still big black scorch marks on the building itself though. Which really wasn't too surprising. Magic was very weird about what it could and couldn't be used for, especially repair spells. For instance, it could be used to fix a book if someone tore it out of the binding, but it couldn't be used to bind the book in the first place. Hence the reason Aidan had the world's most boring and mind-numbing job. Sure, there were machines that could bind books automatically, but like many complicated contraptions that ran on processed magic they were finicky and required a lot of time and attention. It was much easier, and cheaper, to have wizards do it by hand even though it was less efficient and left those wizards with stiff, aching hands by the end of the day.

  Pushing those thoughts away—something he was becoming familiar with, if not good at—he pulled open the door and went inside.

  It was surprisingly uncrowded for twelve in the afternoon. The large lobby was almost entirely open, with a reception desk taking up half of the wall that all but bisected the floor—even though most days there was only one person manning it—and a bank of elevators off to the right. To the left and right of the reception desk were two hallways that led back to some staircases and the rest of the first floor, which was mostly taken up with some legal offices and a food court. Aidan walked up to the chest-high desk and took out his license. The blond lady sitting behind it barely glanced up at him from the newspaper she was reading.

  "How can I help you today?" she asked in a bored monotone.

  "I'm here to renew my Wizard's License," Aidan said. He put his license on the large desk, standing up on his toes so he could push it in front of her before signing in on the logbook lying open to his left.

  "Sign in on the—oh." She shrugged and picked up his license. One of the only things he liked about getting renewed was dealing with sorcerers who were totally unfazed by him being a wizard. It was refreshing. He finished signing in just as the telltale chiming sound of an incoming crystal ball communication rang out in the empty lobby. The lady handed his license back with a disapproving frown, probably about how close to the expiration date it was, then reached over to the ball on her desk. Aidan tuned out whatever conversation she was having as he put his license away. When he was done, he turned and walked towards the elevators.

  "Wait!" He turned around in time to see the receptionist shoot out of her chair and hold up her hand. Aidan frowned slightly and looked around. There was no one else around so she had to be talking to him, but why did she suddenly look so worried? "C-can you wait here for a second, please?"

  Aidan stopped. "What's wrong?"

  "Um…" She looked around nervously. "Just…"

  Aidan looked around too, but there was no one else in the lobby with them. So what was there to be scared about? Was it…him?

  Just as he was about to ask, there was a soft ding from behind him. He heard the elevator doors opening and the receptionist's expression melted into a look of relief. Aidan turned around just as seven men, all wearing either crisp suits that screamed "DMS agent" or the dark gray uniform of the police, rushed out of the open elevator and surrounded him. A second later, two more elevators dinged and even more agents poured out, taking up positions around the first group until he was surrounded by two rings of official looking people. Almost as one, they all raised their hands and bright blue light burst into life in their palms. Aidan froze.

  "Stay where you are, wizard!" the man in front of Aidan shouted. "You're under arrest!"

  Aidan's stomach dropped.

  Oh shit.

  ◆�
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  Aidan swallowed nervously and fought the urge to look at the floor.

  It was hard, though. Harder than it probably should have been because he'd already looked at every wall, the ceiling, the metal door, and the heavy stone table in front of him for what seemed like hours. After being arrested he'd been dragged up to the fourth floor and into an interrogation room, shoved into a chair—also made of stone—had his shoes and socks taken away, then was promptly left alone.

  As far as interrogation rooms went, it wasn't exactly what Aidan had expected, but it wasn't the dank torture chamber Eallair had made them out to be either. The walls were white and freshly painted. The single light attached to the ceiling bright and strong, but not uncomfortably so, with the normal faint blue glow of healthy witch light partially absorbed by the walls. The stone furniture was odd, but other than being uncomfortable there wasn't anything sinister about it. All in all, it wasn't a room that inspired much terror.

  Except, Aidan's bare foot had slipped on something wet as he was being led in.

  The room also smelled too sterile, like someone routinely used too much cleaning magic. But if that was the case, then the floor shouldn't have had anything for him to slip on. The floor was also a bit disconcerting. He could tell from how it felt and the quick glimpse he got as he was being dragged in that it was stone too, but that made no sense. The building was made of wood and concrete, not stone. Only the oldest parts of the city—most of which had been assigned to the Wizard’s Quarter—were still made of stone or brick instead of the more easily repairable concrete. So why would they give this one room a stone floor? Did all the interrogation rooms have it? Or just this one? And why?

  All Aidan knew was, if he looked down and saw bloodstains, he didn't think he'd ever be able to stop screaming.

  Strangely, as scared as he was, all he wanted to do was sleep. It was boring, being in a bland room for hours with nothing to do except worry about why he was there. Not to mention exhausting. As hideously uncomfortable as the chair was, he thought if he curled up in it he'd fall asleep immediately.