Marzi winced and moaned. Andor struggled to grab her hand, but Faruk tightened his grip.
Fritz stared at Faruk, willing his face to remain stolid. “I thought the animal attacks were Borya’s doing, but when Marzi told me he and Hanja were allies, I realized the attack on her didn’t make sense. It had to be another player with his own agenda.”
The Czar stood up shakily and reached for Faruk. “Get me out of here.”
Faruk opened his hand, and the Czar slammed heavily in a chair. Ropes slithered up his legs and twisted around his wrists and ankles.
“I’m sorry, my liege,” Faruk giggled maniacally. “We still have some unfinished business.”
“Was Borya responsible for Perrin?” Fritz asked.
Faruk sat down cross-legged on the table. “You really want to go back that far?” He rolled his eyes and swung his feet out in a crazed, childish kick. “Ok. I guess since you’ll all be dead soon, it won’t hurt.
“This all started years ago with Borya. I was a six-year-old boy when General Nicholaus approached the old goat and told him he wanted to be the Czar.” Faruk twirled his finger at the tethered leader. “In exchange for an act of regicide, he would reward him with a lot of money. Of course, Borya didn’t want to chance being found out, so, in true Borya fashion, he made me do it.”
“You?!” Vivienne gasped. “You were just a kid.”
“Yeah!” Faruk laughed. “A little kid that no one would suspect. But, I couldn’t figure out how to do it. The death spell was way too complicated for a six-year-old, so Borya used mind control.”
Faruk tilted his head to look at Fritz. “That first kill was a sloppy combination of magic and mind controlled combat that nearly killed me; but, what doesn’t kill you …” he trailed off. “Anyway.” He snapped back to the present. “The new Czar Nicholaus was so impressed, he offered Borya a lot of money to use me for similar activities.
“Borya kept experimenting with mind control, except the spells weren’t written that clearly, and they hurt when he tried them … terrible, excruciating pain! Also, I wasn’t lying about Borya being mean. He actually broke my collarbone—when I was six—for not memorizing complex spells.” He burst out laughing.
“The mind control and the training hurt so badly that by eight, I was doing the killing on my own.” He looked at the shocked reactions of the apprentices. “As a kid! I know, right? Messed up! But you know, after a while, killing kind of grows on you.”
Gelé shook her head. “Faruk, I am so sorry. I had no idea.”
“Well … after Borya made me kill the old Czar, I felt so guilty, I tried to run away. Borya was always at the school in those days, so I ran into the woods and ended up near a little creek. That’s where Perrin found me—his fellow apprentice—a little six-year-old boy, crying by the creek behind the fields.
“He saw my broken collarbone and healed me. I started crying and confessing and accidentally told him that I was being mind controlled to do bad things. I was terrified Borya would catch me, so I traveled back home.”
Faruk stared off into space. “Perrin was very nice to me. But Borya saw my healed collarbone, broke it again to find out who healed it, and I spilled the beans about telling Perrin what I’d done to the Czar.
“The next time I saw Perrin in the garden, he began asking me questions about Borya’s mind control. I didn’t realize it at the time, but he’d seen me travel home from the creek on school property. That must have tipped him off about the old enchantments not working anymore. He also asked some of the older apprentices about the school magic while we were in the garden.”
Faruk crossed his chest. “I promise, I was going to keep all of that a secret, but Borya could tell I was hiding something and … well … you all know Borya. He’s not one to leave loose ends lying around. He convinced me to tell him everything. And so, he learned that Perrin knew about his wicked schemes.”
Faruk scowled in the direction of his injured master and wrapped his arms around his knees, the memory still raw in his mind. “And after he broke several of my fingers, he followed Perrin to the woods one night and killed him.”
Faruk swung his head in a long, exaggerated arc to where Boroda and Fritz sat, huddled on the floor. “Sorry about that, Boroda.” He brightened suddenly. “Anyone want to kill Borya? I won’t stop you, and nobody here would blame you.”
“Why did Borya disable the school’s enchantments?” Fritz asked.
“Beats me.” Faruk shrugged. Then he burst out in erratic laughter. “Get it? Beats … me? Because Borya beats …?”
He cut the joke short and let out a long, contented sigh, then leaned back and tucked his knees under his chin. “I was a smart kid, though. I listened and paid attention. That’s how I found out his plan to double cross the Czar and take the Central Kingdom for himself. He also had plans to kill everyone in The Order.”
“Borya was going to destroy The Order?” Vivienne asked, confused.
“Not destroy,” Faruk corrected. “Kill. He was obsessed with something called ‘The Divine Convergence.’ Oh Watcher, if I have to hear another drunken tirade about that …” He giggled. “After he’s dead, I guess I won’t.”
Faruk began rocking back and forth. “As I grew, I could no longer count on my status as a child to protect me, so I became the person you all call,” he stood and bowed with a flourish of his wrist, “the Black Wizard.”
Faruk looked around the room with a wild stare. “Because I wear all black and I am—wait for it … a … wizard!” He shook his head and rolled his eyes.
“So, this whole time, I was doing all the work. I did all the killing, plus I kept my grades up at school—and I got sick of it. I decided to turn Borya’s plan against him and, who knows, maybe take command of the Central Kingdom for myself, or at least cause a little chaos and screw things up for Borya.
“When I learned about morphing blends, I just knew I was onto something, so I experimented … a lot. I wasn’t really sure what to do with it until I traveled in some clothes from storage, and there was a moth in my new clothing.
“Sound familiar?” He cackled. “That’s how I got the idea to travel in morphed animals. I only needed the right timing to attack everyone and cause a little fight among family.”
He sat back down on the table, grabbed a small piece of cheese from a nearby plate and popped it into his mouth. “And that brings us nearly to the present!”
Faruk clapped his hands. “I was just going along, murdering people occasionally, trying to keep Borya off my back, when I met our dear schoolmate, Prince Nicholaus, and the plan practically plopped into my lap.”
The Czar struggled against his ropes. Faruk sauntered over to the bound regent and squeezed his cheeks.
“Nicholaus was too perfect! He was conceited, self-conscious, and dumb as a brick. So, I decided to learn mind control.”
Faruk began listing off steps on his fingers. “I was going to foil Borya’s plan by causing a war in The Order. I was going to put Nicholaus under a mind control spell. I was going to kill the current Czar—a beautiful irony, if you ask me—then that would leave me as the actual ruler of the Central Kingdom.”
“You’ve been studying mind control all this time?” Marzi asked weakly.
“Since the eighth grade. It was a humble beginning—bugs and spiders—but I quickly graduated to mice and rats.” The rat on his shoulder responded with a squeak and scurried down his arm. He held it in his hand and scratched the rodent’s belly. “Rats are my favorite. They’re opportunistic little scavengers.”
He sat up and pointed at Fritz. “You were the wild card,” he said at a volume so loud that everyone jumped. “When you knocked Nicholaus down at school, I knew you were on a different level.
“But when the Czar told me and Borya who you were and that you had a brother, I knew I had a winning strategy to end it all. I didn’t know you were eavesdropping. That was rude.”
“And what strategy was that?” Fritz asked flatly, but ev
ery last bit of his attention was focused on his hands. He traced the paralyzing spell from memory with movements so small they were barely noticeable. Only a few shapes left, and he could cast the counterspell.
Faruk smiled in fiendish glee. “Powerful people are so predictable, aren’t they? I told Nicholaus that I was a wizard and wanted to help him take over the throne.”
Faruk looked at the Czar again. “I swear, your son sold you out for the price of potatoes, basically. You really did a bang-up job raising him.”
He turned to the apprentices again. “All he wanted, at first, was for me to humiliate Drossie. So I started with the rats at school and ended with the attack in the woods—just to prove my mettle, you understand.
“Nicholaus was impressed and agreed to let me ‘serve him.’ He got a little ahead of himself when his boys started getting handsy with my girls here, and that’s when Andor beat them senseless.” Faruk feigned a bow to the constrained giant.
Andor was still pinned to the ground and completely unaware of anything being said. He craned his neck to see Faruk’s lips, but the spell held him too tightly.
“Nicholaus complained and wanted Andor humiliated, too. He threatened to call our arrangement off if I didn’t come through. I figured Andor was only mentally two steps above a trout, so I mind controlled him—maybe you all remember?” Faruk twirled his finger, and a bright dress spun its way around Andor’s body.
Andor stared at the dress, confused. He reignited his struggle, but Faruk tightened his grip, and Andor scratched the stone tiles, struggling for breath.
Faruk’s eyes darkened. “In the meantime, Drossie, I was trying to figure out how powerful you were. Our first encounter in the garden made it obvious that you had no clue about magic, but you were too old to have recently snapped.
“I occasionally listened to your conversations through the mirror in the school library, and when I heard you tell Marzi you were going to Edward’s house, I got a little nervous. I followed you that night and saw you talking with Richard. Then, when you ran to the cave in the woods, the very cave where Borya had killed Perrin, I knew you were also very close to discovering the long-buried secret and potentially ruining my years of planning.”
He tipped an imaginary hat to Fritz. “You won that fight fair and square.”
“The rat was a mistake on my part—I see that now. But in the end, I learned a lot about you, too, so the fractured jaw was worth it.” Faruk began to swing his legs again. “I was also impressed when you figured out the Minerva Mooncup connection. I had been visiting her for years, not as Faruk—but as the apprentice Finuala.”
He winked at Fritz. “She’s hot, right?”
Fritz could only shake his head. “You’re insane.”
“When I discovered the right morphing blend, Minerva wanted to sell it, but I threatened her with an excruciating death if she ever told anyone about it. A bit much, I know, but I was excited. Then, after you found her, and I heard you and Marzi planning a return trip, I had to kill her. She knew too much.”
The rat, who had perched on his shoulder again, stood and shrieked.
“I have to say, Drosselmeyer, you do have the Watcher’s luck about you. You survived my ape and my super rat invasion—I’d been breeding those guys for a long time—and you survived the attack at Minerva’s the second time …”
He walked over to the Czar and kicked him with his toe. “Then this idiot gets all insecure, kidnaps your brother to control you and stop his generals from throwing a coup, and throws a party.”
The Czar cried out, more from fear than pain.
“And when you crashed that party, Drossie …” Faruk whistled and punctuated his words. “You. Crashed. It. Hard. I’ve killed a lot of people and consider myself pretty good at it, but your artistry …” He thumped his chest with his fist in a show of admiration and respect.
He sighed a loud, long sigh. “Your insane infatuation with your family, though, nearly cost me power and a LOT of money.”
Fritz laughed. “All of this for power and money? That’s it?”
“You say that as if power and money aren’t everything,” Faruk said, hopping back up on the table and swinging his legs in uneven arcs. “I’m finished with being hurt, Drossie. I’m done being controlled by others. I’m tired of being treated like a rat—always serving at the whim of people with more wealth and power than me. I’ve carried this curse long enough, and I think it’s time for the nobility to feel the agony of what I’ve had to endure.”
He stopped swinging his legs. His visage hardened, and his eyes gleamed. “When I have all the medallions, I will make sure that every noble and his family feel my torment. I will be king, not of rats, but of the world, and all will writhe at my feet.”
The rat on his shoulder squeaked on cue and scampered to the table.
Fritz shook his head. “How many people will you kill to accomplish your vision?”
“How many have you killed to accomplish yours?” Faruk shot back.
“I was protecting my brother,” Fritz snapped.
“And I’m protecting myself.” Faruk stood slowly to his feet. “I don’t have a brother. I’m all I have.”
“You had us.” Fritz motioned to the nearly catatonic apprentices.
Faruk shook his head. “The Order poisoned us like they poison everything. We’re expendable to them. They knew it, and we knew it. No sense getting close to someone who could be dead the next day for disobeying an order.”
Fritz breathed deeply and kept his mouth shut.
“For a moment earlier today, I wondered if we could be a team …” Faruk’s voice trailed off, and he stared into space. “But it was foolish to think so. We aren’t family. We will never be family.”
He paused, then a wide, wild grin spread across his face. “Speaking of family.” He lifted the Czar from his chair and held him, suspended in the air. “Nicholaus sends his love, and before you get all mad about your son selling you out and letting me kill you, don’t worry—I’m going to kill him, too.”
The Czar struggled, eyes wide with terror.
“And that thing you have about boys … ugh.” Faruk shivered. “You deserve this.” He slowly moved his hands apart.
The Czar shook violently, screaming like a mad man, as his skin ripped down the middle of his body and pulled away from his bones. Pieces of muscle and tendon clung to the fascia, and Faruk dropped the Czar’s body into the pool of his own blood.
Gelé cried, and Vivienne held her.
Faruk turned to the apprentices and Boroda. “Now for you all. And don’t worry, because you are my friends, I’ll make your deaths quick, and then I’ll kill your wizards …”
He stared into the air like he was figuring an arithmetic problem. “And I think that means all the medallions are mine …” He pondered then shrugged. “We’ll see. First things first. Let’s kill Borya.”
Fritz jumped up and threw a beam of magic at Faruk.
Faruk blocked the attack as if he were batting away a fly, hit Fritz with a powerful wall of magic, and knocked him back into the pillar.
Fritz groaned, and his vision blurred. He tried to roll over, but Boroda tapped a finger.
“Not yet, Drosselmeyer. Wait,” Boroda whispered, lips barely moving.
“Storing up your energy while I prattled on!” Faruk yelled. “Smart thinking, Drossie. This is why the other apprentices followed you into battle.” He swept his hand, and Franz appeared in his arms.
Franz glanced around, frightened by the sudden change of setting, dropped the toy sword in his hand, and tried to pull away.
Faruk wrenched his arm and pressed the tip of a knife to the little boy’s neck.
“The memory spells on this little boy are amazing.” Faruk lowered his cheek next to Franz’s, grinning at the boy’s attempts to pull away. “A fighter, too, just like his brother.”
“Tell me what you want, Faruk,” Fritz begged. “Do what you want to me, but don’t hurt him.”
Faruk looked at Fritz, no mirth left. “Kill Borya.”
Fritz stayed still.
Faruk pressed the knife tip right below Franz’s ear. A small trickle of blood ran down his neck, and he began to cry.
“Ok!” Fritz yelled. “I’ll do it!” He looked down at Boroda, who nodded once.
Fritz turned to look at the barely conscious wizard lying at the back of the room. He lifted the head of The Order from the floor. Borya cried out in agony as his broken body shifted. Fritz closed his eyes, thrust his arm at Borya, and a sword launched from a dead guard’s hand. It punctured the wizard’s chest.
Borya began to shake, his body pinned to a pillar, his feet dangling inches off the floor.
Staring at Fritz, Borya fought to take a final breath. “The Divine Convergence will destroy you all.”
His head fell forward, and he died.
The medallion around Borya’s neck began to glow. Beams of light shot out from the charm, and it vaporized.
The same beams reappeared around Faruk’s neck. His back arched, pulled upward by an unseen force. The knife in his hand dropped to the floor.
As soon as the blade left his neck, Franz ran from the floating body and hid behind a pillar across from Fritz.
Andor sat up, free from his restraints, then froze when he saw Faruk bathed in light and wearing Borya’s medallion.
Faruk opened his eyes and looked at his hands. He flexed them and looked at Fritz with an evil glint. “Well, Drosselmeyer, looks like I’ll be king after all.”
“King of the rats,” Fritz spat.
He jumped out from behind the pillar, but Faruk was faster and more powerful now. Before Fritz had raised his hand, Faruk conjured a spell and lifted him from the floor.
Fritz hung in space, powerless to resist.
“Goodbye, old friend,” Faruk whispered with a surprising air of authenticity. He reeled back and cast the spell formed in his hand.
Drosselmeyer: Curse of the Rat King Page 27