Scholar of Magic

Home > Fantasy > Scholar of Magic > Page 24
Scholar of Magic Page 24

by Michael G. Manning


  She chased after him as he stormed down the stairs to the ground level of the house. “Why?”

  “Because her blood is a drug to them. It will send them into a frenzy. They’ve lost control.”

  “The sun’s already down,” she protested. “There’s nothing we can do about it. If we go out into the streets, we’re liable to become victims too.”

  “Stay here,” he told her. “It’s a big city and there probably aren’t enough for them to come this far. Actually, go to one of the buildings. Find some sorcerers.”

  He passed Blake on his way to the door. “Where are you going in such a hurry?”

  “She’ll explain,” said Will curtly, throwing open the door. Rob stood outside, his hand raised to knock, an expression of surprise on his face.

  “Will! I found out—”

  “Sorry,” said Will as he pushed past his friend, breaking into a run.

  “You aren’t even wearing your armor!” shouted Blake from the house, but Will ignored him. He had his brigandine vest on, and that would have to be enough.

  Focusing his turyn, he increased his stamina and speed, allowing him to sprint across the campus at an impressive rate. He took note of his surroundings as he ran. It was dark now, the sun was down, and dusk was almost done, leaving only the faintest hint of light on the horizon. The sky was clear, though, with a crescent moon and plenty of stars. He adjusted his vision to take full advantage of the available light.

  His brain worked through the situation as he traveled. Janice was right—as usual, he should wait, make a plan, prepare himself. At the very least, he should stop and spend the ten or fifteen minutes necessary to change out of his clothes and put on his armor.

  But he couldn’t.

  Every time the thought of stopping entered his head, he saw Tailtiu’s broken body, heard the sick slurping noises, remembered the pain of their teeth, and then his legs pumped faster. At a normal walking pace, it would take twenty minutes to reach the warehouse. That was too long. Running, he could probably get there in ten.

  The school gate came into view, and when he was within twenty yards he shouted for Tiny’s benefit. “She’s in the warehouse!”

  The school guard looked up in alarm and puzzlement as Will ran past without slowing down. “Where are—”

  Will never heard the rest. He was too busy repeating his shout to Tiny. “They’re killing her!” From the periphery of his vision, he spotted the big warrior leaning against the wall to the right of the gate. He won’t be able to keep up with me, Will realized. Even without armor, Tiny was simply too ponderous to keep up with him at a full run. Fully clad as he currently was, his friend would be exhausted in a very short span of time. “Catch up with me as quickly as you can!”

  He put his head down and poured on the speed until it was all he could do to maintain his balance. Mentally, he reviewed the spells he had prepared earlier. Ethelgren’s Illumination and a wind-wall, he told himself. Good choices, but he would need a force-lance to get through the door.

  Will had continued practicing steadily over the past year, and he knew his limits. He could manage keeping two spells prepared and a third in his hand. At the risk of falling, he constructed the force-lance, but rather than hold it, he pressed it into his chest, to rest beside the two other spells. Without thinking about his actions, he formed a fourth spell, another force-lance, and kept it in his hand.

  Idly, somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized he’d passed another milestone, having three spells prepared and still being able to cast another, but he couldn’t spare the energy to congratulate himself.

  Despite his general level of fitness, the pace was beginning to wear him down. All his usual turyn was focused on improving his endurance, leaving nothing to address the shortfall now that his body was using more energy than he could draw. So he began to pull, expanding his outer shell and concentrating his turyn more compactly within it. It was something he had only done once before, at the dam.

  Arrogan had told him it was a more advanced technique, but he had no idea what the drawbacks might be. Would he exhaust his will and injure himself again? How long could he keep it up safely? He had no answers, but he tried to keep the intensity of his pull down to a lesser level than what he had used at the dam.

  He only needed a little extra, not his absolute maximum. Will’s lungs worked like a bellows as he ran, drawing in air to feed his burning muscles. The extra turyn flowed through him, and the burning began to recede as his body and turyn settled into a new equilibrium.

  There were still quite a few people on the streets and most looked at him in alarm as he blew past, easily dodging them in the dim light between the streetlamps. Many swore as he passed by, but he ignored them all.

  Pounding headlong down the streets, Will reached the warehouse in just under seven minutes from the time he had leapt up from the bed in his home. As it came into view, he slowed only enough to keep from slamming into it. At twenty feet, he unleashed the first force-lance, neatly blowing away the door handle, part of the door, and the bar behind it all. Now moving at a jog, he threw his shoulder into it and then he was inside.

  Even to his night-adjusted eyes, it was too dark to see, but he was adjusting his vision already, switching to heart-light and causing the world the shift into a colorless world of grays and blacks. He knew the vampires were cold, but that only meant they wouldn’t shine like beacons as living people did. They would still be visible.

  Moving down a long corridor, he turned a corner and walls disappeared on either side of him as the building opened up into the main storage room. Before him stretched a long aisle with piles of crates stacked in discrete sections on either side. Between the piles were smaller cross-aisles, and in the distance, he could hear the awful sound of the undead moaning as they lapped up Tailtiu’s euphoria-inducing blood.

  Nothing moved or approached him. Apparently, the feeding was so intense it had robbed them of their wits and senses. From what he had seen before, his aunt was in one of the corners, and from the sounds he was hearing, it was at the far end of the warehouse from where he had entered, either on the left or the right.

  Absently, he knew he should be afraid. He should be absolutely terrified. He had been the first time he had met one of the creatures, in the street in front of Laina’s home. Then he hadn’t had any real idea of what he was facing and seeing them had made it all the more terrible. By all rights he should be more scared now.

  Maybe it was the running, suggested the voice in the back of his head. His heart was already racing, so perhaps he couldn’t tell the difference now, since his fear couldn’t make it beat any faster. But in truth, in his mind’s eye, all he could see was Tailtiu’s stricken gaze as her mouth had issued an airy attempt at a scream.

  He was furious.

  Marching purposefully down the aisle, the sounds became clearer as he went. It was the corner to the right. By the time he reached the middle of the building, he began to see bodies sprawled in the cross-aisles. Vampires writhing in ecstasy, unable to control the vile pleasure coursing through their veins. Without stopping, he kept a mental count, ten, twelve, seventeen, twenty-five. He lost track somewhere around thirty-five, and after that he just tried to keep a rough estimate.

  When he reached the end and turned to the right, he had already passed a hundred, and ahead of him he could see a grotesque mound of bodies heaving to and fro. There were at least half as many more there in the corner, scrabbling with one another to try and reach the center of the pile. Some of those on the outside had given up and were now licking the stone floors, desperately trying to find one more drop of Tailtiu’s blood.

  The sight filled him with disgust, and rage bloomed in his heart, a red flower of hatred waiting to be released. Something moved behind him, and he turned. A vampire was standing a short distance away, staring at him vapidly with semi-curious eyes.

  Chapter 24

  Will’s force-lance removed the vampire’s head, causing a black foun
tain to spew upward from the stump of its neck. He turned back to the writhing pile of vampire bodies and strode onward, drawing more turyn in as he walked.

  He had only cast the spell twice before, during his practices, so he had a good idea of how much turyn to invest, but his anger wasn’t satisfied with such prudence. Once he was within fifteen feet, Will drew out Ethelgren’s Illumination and poured power into it. Closing his eyes, he lifted his hand above his head and released the spell with an inchoate scream, “Face the sun, you sons of bitches!”

  The world went white, and a hundred voices rose to the rafters in an unholy howl of inconceivable agony as the vampires began to burn.

  Will had known what to expect from the spell, though he had put more into it than perhaps he had needed to. The flesh of Tailtiu’s undead tormentors turned out to be exceptionally fragile under the unforgiving glare of Ethelgren’s masterpiece. Six globes of searing incandescence spun outward from his hand, spinning and twisting in a spiral pattern as they brought light into every nook and cranny around him.

  That was the genius of the spell. Rather than simply producing a single brilliant globe, it created moving spheres that would prevent any of the creatures from hiding in the shadows provided by crates, boxes, or other obstacles. The spheres moved outward, and the air was soon filled with the dust of collapsing corpses as they disintegrated into stinking ash.

  Another interesting feature of the spell was that the globes of light were intangible; they weren’t impeded by physical objects or walls. Standing close to a corner of the building, the spheres spent roughly three-quarters of their time and energy outside the building, but there were enough of them that there was always one or two inside. They followed their preset pattern, moving outward from Will’s position until the radius of the circle they traced was roughly fifty feet from where he stood. Then they gradually faded out. From start to finish, the spell lasted roughly a minute, and there was nothing left moving within the circumference the spheres had inscribed with their movements.

  Except Will, of course. Silence fell, and darkness returned as he slowly opened his eyes. In front of him was a mound of ash interspersed with clothing. Tailtiu’s body was nowhere to be seen, but he knew where she had to be. Wading into the ash, he found himself waist deep once he reached the center, and there his foot bumped into something solid.

  The stench was a tangible thing, a sweet yet acrid smell reminiscent of rotting meat. Ignoring his revulsion, he bent and plunged his hands into the mounded dust. It was too deep for him to reach her easily, and he was forced to bend farther, until his head and shoulders both went under. A moment later his fingers found her and he straightened gently, his hands under her arms as he pulled and backed out.

  They were fully in the corner now, and when he examined his aunt, he was aghast. She was covered in a layer of white dust, and her once-lithe form was naked and torn, covered with small punctures and tears where fangs had ripped her flesh. She seemed to have shrunk, and her weight in his arms was a fraction of what it should have been. Tailtiu was little more than a skeleton covered in broken skin and desiccated flesh. And she was still bound by long, iron chains anchored in the wood beams that supported the building.

  Anxious to free her quickly, his first impulse was to use the force-lance spell, but he realized that even if he held onto a chain before blasting it, the spell might not work. If the links didn’t part, the force of the blow might jerk the chain free of his hands and damage her limbs. There were better options.

  He quickly constructed a spell to alter the properties of steel, the same one he had used at the dam. There was plenty of slack, so he gathered the four chains together with one hand and released the spell, watching as the metal changed from dull brown to a matte beige color. Summoning his falchion, he shattered the links.

  Using the razor edge of his weapon on such a target went against every instinct he had gained when training as a swordsman, but he didn’t care. He would worry about getting the nicks out of the blade later. He started to put the sword away so he would have both hands to carry Tailtiu, but a new sound made him pause and turn his head.

  Not all the vampires were dead. A significant portion had been too far beyond the limit of his spell. Some of them were horribly burned and disfigured, some merely scorched, and a few were utterly untouched. There were at least twenty gathered together, watching him warily.

  At some point during his doings, his heart had slowed down, recovering from the exertion of his run. It leapt into a frantic rhythm now, and Will felt his mouth go dry. He had gone from anger to sorrow, and now he felt the beginnings of despair. Tailtiu was dead, his rush to save her had come to naught, and now he would likely join her.

  He kept the falchion and rose to stand over her, facing the mutilated monsters. He still had a wind-wall spell prepared, but the timing would be tricky. He needed another illumination spell, but it was probably too late for that. He tried anyway.

  Forming a spell without paying strict attention to the process was something he did quite often, but only with spells he had practiced for a considerable length of time. He tried distracting his enemies, but kept his eyes on his hand as he formed the runes to build another illumination spell. “Come to join your brethren in death?” he asked.

  The vampires were spreading out into an arc, and one among them spoke to the others. “He’s bluffing. He would have done it already if he could destroy us. He can’t even look at us.”

  Will heard the whisper of feet on the floor as they rushed toward him, and he glanced up in a panic. The spell he had been rapidly constructing trembled and fell apart. He tried to swing his sword, but one of them caught his arm in mid-swing—and then they were on him.

  The speed of their movements bruised him in a dozen places, not from blows, but from their haste to rip the clothing from his body. Sharp pains assailed him as teeth sank into his skin in dozens of places, his arms, neck, thighs, and a few seconds later, his chest and back. The shock of it all was so great he couldn’t even cry out. A miserable gasp was all he could manage, and then he could barely breathe.

  He tried to kick, punch—anything to get them off—but it was futile. They were too many and too strong. His attempts failed to do anything but create tears in his skin as he dislodged their fangs here and there.

  Then a light appeared, half-blinding him, followed by a woman’s voice. “Run if you value your lives!” The vampires released him in a panic, scattering briefly, and as Will collapsed to the ground, he saw Janice standing some twenty feet away, a shining light above her head. Two men stood with her, Rob on one side, while Tiny towered over both of them on the other side.

  Tiny rushed forward, and Will felt the man’s massive hands slip under his arms, pulling him upward. “Can you stand?” asked the big warrior.

  “I think so. Help her, not me.”

  Tiny glanced down. “She’s dead, Will.”

  “I’m not leaving without her.”

  His friend grimaced. “Stay on your feet then. If you fall, I’ll dump her and carry you instead.”

  A loud report echoed through the warehouse and Will looked up to see one of the vampires flying back, a hole in its chest. Rob watched the results with a look of hysterical triumph on his face. Will had taught him the force-lance spell months ago, but he hadn’t thought the other student had bothered to practice it.

  However, the fact that Rob had had to use the spell at all highlighted a different problem. The light spell that Janice had used had been of the ordinary variety. While it had frightened the vampires, it hadn’t actually done them any harm, and the exit was still a long way away. With twenty vampires still moving in the building, the door might as well have been on the other side of the world.

  They had just gathered together around Tiny and started to move when the rest of the monsters returned, clustering around them. “Stay back!” warned Rob, another spell ready above his palm. Will began drawing in turyn, trying to regain his strength. Meanwhile Janice was
beginning a force-lance of her own, while continuing to maintain the light spell that hovered above her head.

  The vampires didn’t wait. No longer afraid of the light, they rushed forward. Janice and Rob released their spells, sending two of the fiends flying back, but the rest swarmed them. Claws flashed, and a pained shriek came from Janice as Tiny dropped his limp cargo and tried to help her. Will heard Rob grunt, and he saw two vampires had seized his friend’s arms, pulling him away.

  He grabbed hold of his friend and shouted at Tiny, who was desperately trying to keep the others off of Janice. “Get close to me!” Will wasn’t able to drag Rob back, but somehow, Tiny seized Janice and managed to drag her along as he rejoined them. The four friends fell then, collapsing under the weight of their attackers.

  They might have been crushed under the weight of Tiny and his armor, but somehow the massive warrior rose to his feet again, despite half a dozen undead clinging to his arms and shoulders. Will readied his turyn and tried to adjust his spell so that it wouldn’t kill those he wanted to protect, but then, for just a moment, Janice’s face turned toward him as she struggled to keep from being pulled away, and he saw what had caused her to shriek a few moments before.

  Half her face was gone. Her left eye, the cheek below it, part of her nose, and half of her bottom lip were gone, leaving nothing but a ruin of blood, muscle, and exposed bone. The skin and tissue that had covered the wound now hung limp, like a bloody rag dangling from the side of her chin.

  Janice’s one remaining eye met his gaze for a split second, and he could see the pain and horror there. She knew she was hurt; she knew something was wrong, but she couldn’t yet tell exactly what had happened to her. The sight shocked Will to his core, and as he tried to release the wind-wall spell, his concentration wavered and the spell shattered.

  A moment later another pair of hands ripped her away. Janice’s spell faltered and the light died. Will screamed furiously, but he wasn’t quick enough to grab her hands. Tiny roared and began to charge, but as the light vanished, he found himself suddenly blind.

 

‹ Prev