by Logan Jacobs
I closed the door behind me and pulled down my hood as I made my way further into the room and tried to think of where I would hide my illegal books in a place like this. My eyes flicked down to the wooden floor, and I remembered that Cuvier had claimed to have found the blood magic book in Emeline’s room beneath the floorboards. None of them looked like they could come loose, and there were no indications of enchantments along the floor. Wherever Cuvier had hidden the evidence of his dabblings with dark magic, I was certain that he would have laid some protective enchantments around the area.
I circled around the office a few times, lifted the top of the desk, checked beneath the cushions of the armchair, even poked around in the ashes of the fireplace, but I found nothing, not even a scrap of paper. Anxiety began to well up in my chest. I was keenly aware that we didn’t have much time. Eventually, someone would come this way and wonder what Aerin, Lavinia, Lena, and Maruk were doing in this corridor. Maybe they’d buy Aerin’s excuse that they were waiting for a professor, but it was just as likely the rest of my guild would be told to move on. Eventually, Cuvier would return, and if he suspected that anyone had been snooping around as I was, he would be quick to destroy the evidence of his crimes. That was, assuming he hadn’t already.
As the thought occurred to me, my stomach sank. Were Emeline and Etienne’s deaths meant to be the final loose ends to be tied up? Could Cuvier have already rid this place of any sign that he’d ever practiced blood magic?
I leaned against the bookcase with a groan. That was it, wasn’t it? I’d been here looking for something that wasn’t here to be found. Frustrated, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I couldn’t get too discouraged now. Maybe I couldn’t find evidence of Cuvier’s guilt here and now, but there would have to be another way.
My sense of hope reaffirmed, I opened my eyes again, and that was when I saw it. The telltale shimmer of a protective enchantment along the row of books at the bottom of the shelf. I hadn’t noticed it earlier with the glare of the sunlight on the polished wooden edge of the shelf, but at this angle, it was as clear as day.
My heart raced in anticipation as I knelt and touched the row of books to dispel the enchantment over them, and Lena’s words from the previous night echoed in my mind.
“Hidden in plain sight,” I whispered as the shimmer fell away, and the orderly row of what had moments ago appeared to be boring legal texts were revealed to be ancient grimoires and scrolls. I pulled out one of the books and opened it to a random page. It showed an illustration of a man in apparent agony. Blood poured from his eyes, nose, ears, and mouth, and a mage stood by, his arms outstretched. The text below the illustration described a means of healing oneself by extracting the blood of a victim.
Despite the grim nature of what I’d just discovered, I smiled. This was it. This was exactly the proof we needed. Now we’d see how Cuvier liked being the subject of an anonymous warning, one delivered directly to the High Mage of Ovrista, Eamon Maderel, himself.
Just then, I heard voices and footsteps out in the hall.
“Wait, sir!” Aerin cried.
“How dare you!” a man’s voice responded. “Let go of me!”
Before I could so much as pull up the hood of my invisibility cloak, the door swung open and Alphonse Cuvier entered. He was tall and thin, with pale, hollow cheeks and a long, straight nose. His dark eyes were set deep in their sockets, and combined with hair and eyebrows so pale blond as to be nearly white and a thin-lipped gash of a mouth, they gave him a sort of skeletal appearance.
The mage locked eyes with me immediately, and as his gaze went to the book in my hands, his face contorted into an absolutely murderous expression.
Aerin, Lavinia, Lena, and Maruk appeared behind him just as he tried to rush at me, and Maruk grabbed him by the collar and hauled him back. They stumbled back against the door, and I saw Cuvier’s mana flare up.
I raised my hand to block the imminent spell, but Cuvier was insanely fast, and before I was able to quell his mana, he cast his spell. There was a burst of red light, and we were all thrown back away from the mage as if by an explosion.
I gritted my teeth against the sudden pain in my chest as I pulled myself to my feet and did a quick mental assessment of my condition. My chest ached, and my heart was pounding rapidly, but it seemed Cuvier intended to knock us back rather than do any serious damage.
The mage had fled to the center of the room as soon as he’d gotten away from Maruk, and his chest heaved as he looked us over and took in our weapons, and there was something manic in his eyes.
“I can’t imagine what sort of trouble you all came looking for in here,” he said with a sneer, “but I can assure you, you’ll get far more than you bargained for coming at me like this.”
“You’re the one who’s out of your depth,” I told him. “We know you’re a blood mage, and we know you tried to frame Emeline and Etienne and have them executed. I wonder what Eamon Maderel will think of that? I expect he won’t be pleased.”
“Are you threatening me?” Cuvier demanded. “Because if you are, then I would simply have no choice but to kill every last one of you. Unfortunate, of course, but seeing as I’m acting in self-defense, who could blame me?”
Suddenly, the mage threw up his hand toward Maruk, and his mana sparked up and turned a deep red. I moved to counter it, but Cuvier’s magic was the fastest I’d ever witnessed, faster than the ogre, faster even than Brennon had been. His mana reached his hand before I even had my arm all the way up, and Maruk cried out in pain and staggered forward as cuts began to appear all over his skin as if he was being sliced up by an invisible knife. The orc moved his shields into a defensive position, but they couldn’t stop the magic that was already cutting him open.
“Maruk!” Aerin cried and moved to aid the orc as I returned my focus to Cuvier, a knot of fury coiled tight in my chest. I held my hand out toward the mage and closed it sharply, and the blood red spark of Cuvier’s mana dipped like a candle flame in the wind. The mage’s whole body jolted as though he’d been electrocuted, and he stumbled back with his hands held out for balance.
I gritted my teeth as I curled my fist tighter, and Cuvier’s mana flickered dimmer in response to the motion. His eyes went wide as he choked out a strangled cough and reached for his chest, and his panicked gaze passed from Lavinia, who stood with an arrow nocked to her bowstring, to Lena and Aerin where they were attempting to heal Maruk’s wounds before it moved to me. I saw the light of realization burn in the mage’s dark eyes.
“You...” he gasped out, his voice hoarse. “You can’t be... No. This is a trick. None of the manipulators survive to adulthood, we made sure of it.”
“Oh, shut up already,” Lavinia growled, and she released the arrow that she’d had ready.
It should have struck the old mage right through his throat, but Cuvier moved with impossible speed to dodge it, and the arrow only grazed the side of his neck before it thudded into the wooden desk behind him.
The mage’s thin lip curled as he reached up and touched the wound on his neck, and his eyes darkened when he examined the blood on the tips of his fingers.
As astonishing as it was for him to have dodged the arrow to begin with, what happened next was even more unbelievable. Though I could feel him trying to resist my influence, I still had control over Cuvier’s mana, yet, as he held up his bloodied hand and turned to Lavinia, the droplets of blood came away from his fingers and swirled in the air around his hand.
I clenched my fist so tightly it hurt, and Cuvier’s mana dimmed even more, but as he splayed his fingers out in a sudden gesture toward the ranger, Lavinia cried out, and a bright red gash appeared on her cheek.
I realized with a spike of icy fear that he wasn’t using any mana now. He couldn’t have been because I still quelled it. Cuvier hadn’t simply dabbled in blood magic, he’d mastered it enough that he could cast spells with the power of blood alone.
My hand began to tremble with the effort it took t
o control Cuvier’s mana. His will was stronger than any other mage or creature I’d encountered yet, and I almost thought I could feel the fire of his mana burn against the inside of my closed fist as the mage fought against my influence.
Cuvier seemed to sense it, too, because the look of shock on his face morphed into a proud expression.
“No matter,” he spat. “You’ll die here and now, and all will be right in the world again.”
The heat in my hand surged up as Cuvier took a step toward me, and I was forced to release the hold I had over his mana.
I fumbled for my dagger just as the twang of Lavinia’s bowstring sounded, and one of the ladona ranger’s dark arrows arched forth and pierced the mage in the chest. Cuvier stopped and stared down at the arrow, startled, for a beat, and then he laughed and turned to Lavinia with a cruel sneer.
“You think you can kill me so easily?” he taunted, and as he spoke, he gripped the shaft of the arrow and began to pull it out of his chest. “I am one of the greatest mages this world has ever seen. I cannot be killed by the likes... of... you.” He panted around the words as he yanked the arrow free, the wood and the barbed tip slick with his blood, and tossed it aside as if it were nothing more than a minor inconvenience.
The barbs had torn open a jagged wound on his chest, and crimson blossomed over the front of his gray robes, but he didn’t topple over as he should have, as any normal mortal creature would have. Instead, he dragged his hand across the wound and smeared it with blood, and as he flung his hand out toward Lavinia, the ladona ranger gasped and stumbled forward with her hand on her chest.
Blood began to drip from between the ranger’s gloved fingers, and her red eyes were wide with shock and fear.
“Lavinia!” Fear and fury washed over me as I pulled out my dagger. The mana blade formed at the end of the hilt as I lunged for Cuvier, but the mage was fast, and he caught my wrist before could I bring the blade down.
His dark eyes shone with a wild light, and he bared his teeth in a bitter grin as we grappled. Beneath the tear in his robes, I saw that the wound on his chest had vanished, and there was nothing left to suggest it had been there at all except for the torn fabric and the blood smeared across the mage’s skin.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lena and Aerin move to attend to Lavinia and Maruk, and Cuvier’s dark gaze flicked over to them.
“It’s too bad you never had a good teacher, boy,” the blood mage sneered. “Someone who could have told you how dangerous it is to allow such distractions into your life.”
He kicked out sharply at my shin and twisted my knife arm behind my back as my knee buckled, and I cried out. Cuvier started to say something else, but I reared back and slammed my head into his face, and we both crashed to the floor.
My dagger flew from my hand as I sprawled across the floor, and Cuvier moved to kick it away as I reached for it. His nose was bent at a grotesque angle and streamed blood over his lips and chin, and his eyes shone with murderous rage.
I lunged for the blade again, and Cuvier grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me back, and he yanked the invisibility cloak away from my shoulders as he did so. I wrestled one arm free and brought my elbow back sharply into his face, and I was rewarded with the sound of crunching cartilage and a howl of pain from the mage as he was forced to release me.
As I grabbed the dagger again and whirled to face Cuvier, bright, hot pain exploded over my face, and I felt my nose break as a surge of blood flowed into the back of my mouth.
Cuvier sneered at me as he swept the blood out from beneath his nose with the back of his hand, and I lunged for him again.
Again, he tried to grab my wrist to stop me, but I was expecting it this time, so I twisted my hand as I pulled my arm back sharply to break out of the mage’s grasp. He had only a moment to look surprised before I plunged the dagger into his throat. The spark of mana in his chest exploded outward and outlined every blood vessel and nerve ending in the mage’s body as he convulsed. Then he was still, and I was left with a feeling like static on my arms and blood dripping from my broken nose.
My mana blade flickered out as I leaned back onto my knees and exhaled a shaky breath of relief. The moment wasn’t to last, however, because a second later, the door to Cuvier’s office was flung open and half a dozen gray-robed archmages, led by none other than Eamon Maderel himself, rushed into the room.
The mages’ faces paled as they took in the scene before them. Lena and Aerin crouched by Lavinia and Maruk as they healed them with potions and mana, and me, kneeling in front of the bloody corpse of one of their most esteemed colleagues.
Maderel stepped forward with barely a glance at the others, his icy gray eyes instead trained on me.
“What,” he demanded in a low, cold voice, “has happened here?”
I exchanged a glance with my guildmates as I pulled myself to my feet and ran my sleeve under my nose to wipe away the worst of the mess, but my voice was still thick with the blood in my nose and throat as I answered.
“Cuvier attacked us.” I walked over to the book I’d first found, picked it up, and brought it over to Maderel and the other archmages. “He was practicing blood magic.”
At first, Maderel didn’t look at the book, and he kept his flinty gaze locked on me. My heart slammed against my ribs, but I forced myself to remain calm and hold his stare as I held the book out to him.
“See for yourself.” I swallowed thickly, and the smell of my own blood made my head spin. “There are more on the shelf.”
One of the other archmages stepped forward and examined the book that I held open in my hands.
“That’s Cuvier’s handwriting in the margins,” she said softly, her tone tinged with horror. “By the gods, that’s his handwriting.”
The other archmages shifted so that they could get a look as well, and they gasped and murmured among themselves when they saw the proof with their own eyes. Finally, Maderel broke the stare and took the book from my hands. His expression was inscrutable as he studied the page, then reached out with long fingers and flipped to another. No one moved, and I barely breathed as he slowly, thoroughly examined the pages, until at last, he closed the book with a soft thump.
“I suppose,” Maderel said slowly, “given that the five of you have just apprehended a dangerous blood mage, we can ignore the question as to why you are here in the first place, just this once. Consider it your reward.”
“There’s something else,” I said quickly as I sensed that we were about to be summarily dismissed and wanted to take advantage of Maderel’s gratitude while we could.
Maderel raised a brow in question.
“The panthera mage who was imprisoned yesterday, Emeline Solé, she’s innocent,” I told him. “Cuvier framed her because she discovered him practicing blood magic.” I took a deep breath. “The charges against her should be dropped, and she should be set free. It’s only just.”
Maderel studied my face for a moment before he responded, and I hoped he couldn’t hear the wild pounding of my heart.
“As it would happen,” he said slowly, without taking his eyes off me, “she is already gone. Her brother came here last night and managed to break her out. I will drop the charges of blood magic against her if that is what you want, seeing that she is innocent, but I’m sure she’s long gone by now. And as for her brother, he slaughtered five guards and murdered Archmage Alistair Brennon. Despite what you’ve done here, that I cannot forgive so easily. Should Etienne Solé ever return to Ovrista, he will have to answer for his crimes.”
I released the breath I’d been holding and nodded. I knew it was no use arguing now, but Etienne was safe at Yvaine’s with Emeline, far from Ovrista. If there were still a way we could help him, too, I would find it.
“Thank you, sir,” I said earnestly.
Maderel arched a brow and looked from me to Lena, Lavinia, Aerin, and Maruk behind me. “You’d all best get down to the infirmary,” the archmage said. “We shall deal with the rest
of the mess here.” His steely eyes flicked over to Cuvier’s bloody body as he said ’mess,’ but his expression was as unreadable as ever.
As the other archmages began to gather up the other blood magic texts from Cuvier’s shelves and deal with the body, the one who had first identified Cuvier’s handwriting in the book I’d shown them came over and helped Aerin, Lena, and I get Lavinia and Maruk to their feet.
“Come with me,” she said gently. “I’ll take you all down to the infirmary.”
Between Lena’s potion and Aerin’s healing magic, neither were any longer in critical danger, but they were both pale and obviously shaken, and their skin still bore faint traces of the wounds Cuvier had inflicted upon them.
We gathered our things and stepped out of the office to give the archmages room to do their work. Aerin stopped me in the corridor to wipe some lingering blood away from my face, and I heard the soft chime of bells as the healer pressed her hands to my cheeks, and her healing magic flowed through me. Immediately, I felt better, but as I touched the bridge of my nose when Aerin stepped back again, I could feel the slight indent of a scar where the skin had broken during the fight. That was unusual. Aerin’s healing had never left behind scarring before.
As if she guessed my thoughts, the elf squeezed my shoulder sympathetically.
“It’s the best I can do, I’m sorry,” she said softly. “These wounds don’t heal the same as others.” These wounds, meaning the wounds inflicted by blood magic.
The archmage who was leading us to the infirmary paused and looked back. “Come along, now, all of you. We’ll see that you’re all taken care of.”
I was too exhausted to argue, and even if I might have preferred to just go home, or to go to Yvaine’s to tell Emeline what had happened, I knew Lavinia and Maruk deserved to be cared for properly in the infirmary. They looked as tired as I felt, and their complexions were ashen.