Scholar of Magic

by Michael G. Manning

  Will panicked as he realized then that Rob was already gone, and as the vampires tore and pounded on Tiny’s mailed body, the big man fell to his hands and knees, covering his last remaining friend. There wasn’t much else the warrior could do, and Will could feel the shuddering blows as they resonated through the big man’s chest and arms.

  Tailtiu was dead, and Rob, Tiny, and Janice would soon follow, all because he couldn’t bear to accept the loss of one friend. Will’s only consolation was that he would be joining his friends soon after their deaths, so he wouldn’t have to live with his shame.

  Will could still see, however, and in the weird, gray landscape painted by his heart-light vision, he saw the goddamn cat walk past. He was gazing out from under Tiny’s armpit, and the demigod simply stopped a few feet away and stared back at him. “Help us,” Will gasped.

  “This is what trusting the fae gets you. You’ve earned your fate,” said the cat, its voice easy to hear despite the other awful noises echoing through the warehouse. “Farewell.” And then Will watched as the furry bastard sauntered casually away.

  A faint whimper escaped Tiny’s lips, and Will felt a shudder go through his friend, but the big man only shifted his weight slightly and pulled his arms in further, trying to keep the enemy away from his smaller companion.

  They’re going to kill him while he’s trying to shelter me, thought Will. And the goddamn cat just shows up and insults me. A growl began to reverberate in the back of Will’s throat. He was wasting time and the opportunity his friend had given him. For the moment he was safe, and given enough time, he could do something better than whine in fear.

  Will didn’t have enough room to see his hand, as he was close to being squashed under Tiny’s chest. Fuck that, I don’t have to see, he decided, closing his eyes and imagining his hand as he began to construct a new spell. It came together in his mind with surprising speed, and he half wondered if it was just his imagination or if the spell was really there, but he didn’t have time for doubt. Drawing in his turyn, he invested it in the spell construct and released it.

  Once again, a searing, actinic light exploded across the warehouse floor, and six brilliant spheres spiraled outward. Howls sounded, and Tiny suddenly straightened his arms, as though a weight had been lifted from his back—or burned away, as the case might be. The massive warrior sat up, squinting and covering his eyes with one forearm. “Did you do that, Will?”

  Will nodded, keeping his own eyes firmly shut. “Do you see Rob or Janice?”

  “I can barely see anything, it’s so bright.”

  “Close your eyes until it fades. It won’t hurt you like it does the vampires, but too much could damage your eyesight. I’ll create a safer light in a minute.” But Will had a different priority. First, he constructed another one of Ethelgren’s Illumination spells and stored it within himself. He wanted to be ready. By the time he had finished constructing it, the light from the first spell was fading out, and he put together a simple light spell that would allow Tiny to see.

  Will got to his feet, but Tiny stayed seated, his chest heaving. “Can you get up?” Will asked.

  “I think so,” said his friend. “But give me a minute.”

  Will looked him over. Tiny’s mail appeared to be intact, and his helm was still on his head. There were deep scratches in the breastplate and backplate, but nothing had pierced it. There were a couple more lacerations across Tiny’s cheek, and Will could see that the capillaries around the wound had already turned black. What about me? he thought. He didn’t want to look. His overtunic and brigandine had been ripped away, and his chest and arms were bare. He knew without looking that he was covered in fang marks.

  Will summoned two blood-cleanse potions from the limnthal and handed one to Tiny. “Drink it or we’ll become like them.”

  Tiny nodded and downed the vial in a single gulp. Will did likewise, his eyes already scanning the gloom for Rob and Janice. He spotted Tailtiu immediately, lying ten feet away, discarded like a broken doll. He went and picked her up, then deposited her near Tiny.

  She was dead, so the action made little sense, but he did it anyway. Then he moved outward, looking behind pallets and stacks of goods to see where Janice and Rob might have fallen. He was scared of what he might find. Walking along the center aisle, he spotted a crumpled figure in one of the cross-aisles. It was Janice, with two small mounds of ash on either side of her.

  Her head was down and her knees up, while a faint keening sound came from her direction. “Janice, are you all right?” asked Will, knowing the question was foolish. None of them were all right. He summoned another potion from the limnthal and knelt beside her. “Drink this. It will stop the taint from claiming you.” Her head bobbed, and she took the potion with one hand, but she didn’t look up.

  Scooting away, she turned her back to him before drinking the potion. She was hiding her face, but Will still saw some of the potion dribble down her neck. Drinking without a cheek and part of a lip was difficult at best. And I don’t have a regeneration potion for her. What would happen to her? The type of wound she had suffered would permanently maim her at best. Without quick medical treatment she might die from the blood loss, or later from an infection.

  But would she be happy to survive such an injury? Will wasn’t sure how he would have felt in her position. “Can you walk?” he asked her. “I still have to find Rob.”

  She nodded, clambering to her feet and keeping her head down so that her hair covered her ruined eye and cheek. Will led her back to Tiny, who was standing and looking around nervously. A smile lit his face when he saw Janice with Will, and Will felt his own heart break a second time.

  Tiny couldn’t tell what was wrong with Janice, but she sheltered in his shadow, keeping her injury from view. Meanwhile, Will collected Tailtiu’s body, and together they made their way through the warehouse, moving toward the exit and searching for Rob at the same time.

  They found no trace of him, just more piles of ash. Once they had finished a rough search of the area, they left, for none of them had the reserves to continue searching further.

  And Janice. Janice needed proper treatment and the sooner the better. Blood trickled away from her face and soaked the front of her dress. After five minutes of walking, her knees buckled, and Tiny caught her. Lifting her carefully in the cradle of his arms, the big man never broke his stride. Will stayed with him.

  “There’s a healer at the college, right?” asked Tiny, his voice carefully controlled.

  “Yes,” said Will. “The Healing and Psyche Department runs the best hospital in the city. They can do more for her than anyone else.”

  “That’s good,” said Tiny gruffly. Will could see tears shining on his cheeks in the light from the streetlamps. “I’m sorry about Rob. I did everything I could.”

  “You saved us, Tiny,” said Will. “We can talk about Rob tomorrow. I can’t do it now. We have enough to deal with.”

  “Yeah.”

  They walked on, and as they neared the campus, Will couldn’t handle his guilt any longer. “Tiny, I’m sorry, for everything. This was my fault.”

  “Will.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  Will shook his head. “But…”

  “No buts. If you ever apologize to me about tonight again, I will beat you into next week. Do you understand? We did this for you. We did this because we believe in you, and whatever it costs us, in flesh and blood…” The big warrior’s voice choked for a moment, but he continued after a second, “…whatever it costs us, I have to believe it was worth it. So don’t you fucking dare take that away from me by apologizing. This meant something, so shut the hell up.”

  Will closed his mouth and bowed his head as they walked. It was a few minutes later before he spoke again. “Thank you.”

  Tiny nodded. “Same to you. No one asked you to stop those monsters, but someone had to.”

  The Healing and Psyche building loomed ahead of them. Unl
ike most of the other college buildings, there was always a light on at the front entrance, for nights just like that one.

  Chapter 25

  Doctor Morris sat across from Will, a pensive expression on his face. “It’s hard to believe what you’re telling me, but then again, I can’t imagine anyone intentionally covering themselves with bite wounds to corroborate a story like that.”

  Will was covered in bandages. The blood-cleanse potion had prevented the vampiric disease from taking hold, as well as stopped the wounds from festering, but they still hurt like hell. Other than dozens of punctures and small tears, the doctor had told him that he was in good health. He hadn’t even lost that much blood.

  Tiny and Janice, though, were another story altogether. The big warrior had only suffered a few claw wounds, but his body had been covered in bruises. Still he had insisted that he was fit enough to leave. Doctor Morris had other ideas, however.

  “Your friend will have to stay for a week or two. Most don’t realize how serious blunt-force trauma can be. By tomorrow most of his body will be black and blue and his kidneys will struggle to deal with all the blood being reabsorbed and broken down. That’s on top of the fact that his kidneys were also injured by the blows he received.”

  “But he’ll be all right, won’t he?” asked Will.

  The doctor stared at his desk for a moment, then answered, “Maybe. It’s hard to say for sure. We’ll be forcing him to drink as much as possible to help his kidneys work, but there’s a strong possibility that they’ll fail. If that happens…”

  Will knew quite well what that would mean, but he held onto hope. Doctor Morris knew a considerable amount that he did not and there might be magical means that Will had never heard about. “Is there a way to save him if that happens?”

  Doctor Morris grimaced. “There are forbidden procedures, but I’ll have no part of murdering innocents to harvest their kidneys. Aside from that, you’ll have to hope for the best.”

  “What about a regeneration potion?”

  “If you have one, give it to him now, or the girl. Either one could desperately use it,” said the doctor.

  “How bad is Janice’s wound?” He already knew it wouldn’t be good, but he hoped perhaps it might not be as terrible as it had seemed.

  “I managed to save most of the cheek so I could reattach it to cover the wound. The muscle is ruined and of course, her eye is gone. She won’t be able to move most of that side of her face after it heals. She will probably also have considerable difficulty drinking and speaking since she lost most of the lower lip. Her life isn’t in danger, but it will be difficult living normally after this. Her nose was ruined as well. I had to stretch the skin from the right side to cover as much of the wound as I could, so it won’t look…well, you understand.”

  Will’s vision blurred, and he covered his face with his hands. Despite what Tiny had said, he still blamed himself. Then he asked, “You said a regeneration potion would help, right?”

  “If you have one, yes,” said Doctor Morris. “But it needs to be given within a few days or it won’t work properly.”

  “Why?”

  “It regenerates flesh, but it doesn’t remove scars or revive dead tissue,” said the doctor. “If Mister Shaw’s kidneys die, the potion won’t revive necrotic tissue. Miss Edelman’s condition is less dangerous, but the same principle applies. If her wound heals as it is, the potion won’t reverse that. It has to be given while the body still remembers its proper form. Once it has healed, that will be what it considers its proper form.”

  Will nodded as the gears began to turn in his head.

  The doctor went on, “I’ll need to report all of this to the proper authorities. If there truly are undead monsters roaming the streets, the king will need to be informed.”

  “He knows already,” said Will bitterly. “But I have the address of the warehouse for him.”

  “You can tell him yourself,” said Doctor Morris. “You’ll have to stay here until the king’s men arrive to question everyone.”

  Will gave the doctor a hard look. “Do you really think you can keep me here?”

  “That’s my job.”

  “Your job is to take care of patients,” countered Will. “I will be leaving in a few minutes, to try and obtain the potions my friends need. If you want to help them, you’ll stay out of my way.”

  “If I actually believed you could do that, I’d be tempted to let you,” admitted the doctor. “But I know quite well there’s no possible way you could—”

  “Do either of my friends need any further treatment from you tonight?” asked Will suddenly.

  The doctor stared at him oddly. “No, my assistants will handle the dressing changes in the morning. For now, they’re sleeping. I administered a strong sedative so—” His words cut off as Will’s source-link spell connected, and a moment later he was paralyzed and his connection to his source was blocked.

  With that done, Will took his time constructing a sleep spell, and once it had taken hold, he released the source-link. He stood and summoned a spare tunic from the limnthal. It felt strange wearing normal clothes without his brigandine vest under it, but he had lost the armor at the warehouse.

  He left the office and waved to the nurses and other personnel that glanced at him on his way out. None of them tried to stop him, thankfully. Once he was outside, he recovered Tailtiu’s body from the bushes he had hidden it in. Cradling her in his arms, he began the walk home.

  As he went, he couldn’t help but consider how much he had changed. Just a year previously he would have been nervous as hell to carry a dead body across the campus. Now it hardly bothered him at all. He figured anyone that saw him would figure it was simply an unconscious person, and as unusual as that might be, he doubted anyone would have the balls to challenge him about it.

  In one sense it was a good thing, but it also reminded him of Dennis Spry. No one would challenge him either, and because of that he did terrible things to whoever he pleased. Will had no intention of becoming like that, but it made him acutely aware of how his current status could easily be abused.

  He received a fresh surprise when he got home. The front door had been torn from its hinges and now lay on its side beside the gaping doorway. The claw marks made it obvious what had happened, and Will’s blood began to boil anew. They came to take their vengeance, he realized, and then he felt a sudden surge of panic. Blake!

  For a moment he remained still, unsure what to do. He still held Tailtiu in his arms and he didn’t want to face yet another battle while carrying a dead body, but he also didn’t want to leave her outside, exposed to anyone who happened by. If the vampires found her, they might well steal the body simply to drain the last of her vital fluids.

  A voice saved him from the decision. “William? Is that you?” It was Blake, and as Will focused on the darkened doorway, he saw the manservant lean out from the parlor room, a crossbow in his hands.

  “Yes! Are you all right?”

  “Mostly,” said the older man. “It’s safe to come in. They were gone before I got back.”

  Will carried Tailtiu in and laid her on the divan in the parlor. Then he glanced at Blake. The man was sitting on the floor, a pained expression on his face. “What happened to you?” he asked.

  “I tried to go with them,” said Blake, seeming embarrassed. “But my body betrayed me this time. I kept up until we were halfway there, then I fell.”

  Will knelt and began examining the man’s leg.

  “I think it’s just a sprain or something,” said Blake. “But I couldn’t walk on it, though the gods know I tried. I finally had to improvise a crutch and hobble back here. Took me a little over an hour and by the time I got back… well, you saw the front door.”

  The bones seemed sound, but Will could see that there was considerable swelling around Blake’s ankle, though it was masked by the boot he still wore. “I think it’s your ankle,” he informed Blake. “But you should have taken off the boot. Now I�
��m afraid you’re going to lose it.”

  “The foot?” asked Blake sharply, his face lighting up in alarm.

  Will smirked faintly, feeling sad and relieved at the same time. “The boot. I’ll have to cut it off.” If only Janice’s wound had been so simple. He did as he had said, using a sharp knife to carefully slice the boot away, exposing the swollen ankle inside. Blake hissed in pain several times during the process, then louder when Will began rotating his foot and probing the swelling. “I really can’t be sure, but I don’t think you broke anything. A few days of rest and elevation should see you back on your feet.”

  “Damned rotten timing,” swore the manservant.

  “You can’t stay here, either,” Will informed him. “They may return, and I won’t be here to protect you.”

  “Where are the others?” asked Blake.

  Will grimaced, then looked away. It was difficult to say, but he managed to communicate the injuries they had endured using the bare minimum of words. “It was my fault, Blake,” he said at last. “I’m grateful you twisted your ankle, or you’d be in the same shape, or dead. I still don’t know what happened to Rob.”

  “Worrying about blame right now is a fool’s game,” said Blake. “The only one to blame when your friends are hurt is the enemy that did it. Blaming yourself does your enemy’s work for him.” He paused for a second. “You said you weren’t going to be here. Where are you going?”

  “Tiny and Janice need a miracle,” said Will. “So I’m going to go find one for them. I also need to return my friend to her family.”

  Blake had never actually met Tailtiu as herself. She had always been disguised as Selene. “Is she…?”

  Will nodded. “She’s been helping me with things. Now I have to explain her death to her mother.”

  “Are you sure she’s dead?” asked Blake, an odd sound in his throat. “I could swear she’s looking at us.”