Scholar of Magic

by Michael G. Manning

  It was like finding a rough spot on your tooth with your tongue, impossible to forget. Once he had latched onto the knack of it, he was able to launch the bolts at will.

  But the master vampire had anticipated him after his previous surprise attack. The creature was moving with some kind of mobile shield protecting him. The force-lances scattered impotently away from it.

  Will ducked sideways between two looming piles of wooden crates that were just beginning to catch fire, hoping to buy himself some time. But he couldn’t stop coughing. Androv would find him in seconds.

  Not that it mattered. Spells had failed him. He was utterly inferior to the vampire wizard in every regard. Magic, usually his greatest tool, was about to be his undoing. For a moment his mind flashed to all the people who he would miss. Selene, his mother, Tiny, Janice, his half-sisters, and perhaps even Mark Nerrow—then the man’s face brought an idea to him.

  Will summoned a small object from the limnthal and placed it on the ground in front of him. Then he summoned a second and took five steps back, waiting and coughing. One might be enough, but the second was his insurance against failure.

  Seven feet away, Androv rounded the corner like a vengeful ghost. He was close enough to see Will through the smoke, and the vampire’s eyes lit with triumph, seeing the end of his chase.

  Will put the point-defense shield directly in front of the vampire’s chest, forcing him to stop exactly where he wished, then his eyes dropped, and he fired a force-lance at the vial at Androv’s feet.

  The vampire’s reflexes were too fast for a human to comprehend, and if it had relied on them Will’s gambit would probably have failed. But Androv was a wizard first and foremost, and he trusted his magic more. He blocked the force-lance with a point-defense shield and started to grin at the human who had been foolish enough to try and trap him.

  His smile vanished as the second vial of alchemist’s fire, the one Will had thrown, landed beside the first, shattering and exploding into raging white flames. The fire swept over the master vampire, clinging to his clothes, and a moment later the second vial exploded as well, adding to the conflagration as the monster screamed and howled in wounded fury.

  Will backed away, and his foot stepped on something, causing him to stumble. Looking down, he saw the object of his quest, Ethelgren’s Exhortation. Snatching up the rod, he stored it in the limnthal and started running. His coughing was getting pretty bad by then, and his heart was beginning to pound strangely in his chest—never a good sign.

  Circling back, he found the exit and saw Alexa crawling across the floor, trying to reach her burning master. He summoned a third alchemist’s fire and tossed it at her for good measure, then he ran for the stairs.

  The smoke was worse there, for it was billowing outward and climbing upward with him. He was staggering before he reached the top, and he fell to his knees when he reached the maintenance room. Crawling forward, he looked around and was grateful to see that the soldiers had woken the maintenance man, for the room was empty.

  He started to climb back to his feet, but the air was much clearer close to the floor, so Will settled for a determined crawl. The rest of the soldiers seemed to have retreated from the building, for as he reached the hallway, he saw that there was no one in sight. The smoke above him was a thick cloud now. Only a foot or two of air just above the floor was still clear enough to breathe and his lungs were still spasming with the smoke he had inhaled in the basement.

  Leaving the central stairs, Will headed toward the front entrance, but he wondered if he would make it before the smoke overcame him. I defeated an evil master wizard-vampire, only to die crawling out of a burning building. Typical.

  His hope died when he came to the end of the hall. In the smoke and confusion, he had gone the wrong way. Now he would have to crawl back in the direction he had come. He wanted to scream in frustration, not that he had the air to do so. He started crawling back, but he knew he wouldn’t make it.

  Then two massive feet appeared on the floor in front of him. A giant hand caught the back of his tunic and another gripped the waistband of his trousers. Tiny was there, and with Will hanging between his two hands like a toddler caught doing something terrible, the big man began to run, stomping through the hall.

  Trying to hold his breath, Will saw that the big man had a towel wrapped around his head. That’s a good idea, he thought. I should have done that too. Might have made it easier, at least for a while.

  A few seconds later, Tiny kicked open the main door, and Will was blinded by the sunshine. Fresh air flooded his lungs, kicking off a fresh round of coughing, which eventually resulted in Will losing control of his stomach. Still grateful, he vomited onto Tiny’s boots, then passed out.

  Chapter 39

  Someone was leaning over him. Having experienced similar situations in the past, Will decided he must be in bed somewhere. He remembered being rescued. With luck it might be Selene come to chide him for his foolishness. Blinking, he tried to focus on the face.

  His eyes finally did their job, and he was disappointed to find it was Doctor Morris looking down at him. “Of all the luck,” he muttered.

  “It seems the spell was effective,” said the doctor. “You’re breathing much better now.”

  “There are spells for this?” asked Will suspiciously.

  “For many things,” said the doctor. “They aren’t perfect, but with the right knowledge and the right magic, at the right time, we can do a lot, even without fancy things like regeneration potions.”

  “But I could have taken a regeneration potion,” said Will stubbornly.

  The doctor leered at him maliciously. “Yet you didn’t, and you passed out. If your enormous savior hadn’t broken the doors down getting you in here, you would almost certainly have died from smoke inhalation.”

  Despite his mother’s training, Will didn’t really know much about injuries involving fire and smoke. “I was in the clear when I passed out,” he countered confidently.

  “It’s about more than just getting fresh air. Smoke is poisonous, and your blood was already circulating the poisons through your body and brain,” explained Doctor Morris.

  “So, I should have used a universal antidote potion,” said Will snippily. “I have a few of those too.”

  “And yet you still didn’t take one before passing out.”

  Will deflated, accepting defeat. “Fine, Doctor. I owe you one this time.”

  Doctor Morris laughed, straightening up and stepping away. “See that it doesn’t happen again!”

  “You shouldn’t tease someone who just saved your life,” said a female voice from the other side of the bed. It was Janice.

  Will turned toward her, fearful of what he might see, so he went immediately for humor to defuse the blow. “Tiny, is that you?” he asked, hoping his tone sounded playful as his eyes locked on Janice’s face.

  If he had seen her from a distance, from the wrong angle, he might have mistaken her for an old woman, for the hair on one side of her head was shockingly white, utterly devoid of color. It created a stark contrast with the brown hair that covered the other two thirds of her head, but it wasn’t ugly.

  Her eyes were what sent a jolt through him. Her right eye, the one that had been spared, was still hazel, but the left eye, which had regrown, was now an icy blue. There were also fine silver lines that traced where the skin had been torn and mended, but for the most part her cheek and nose were smooth and unblemished.

  In short, Tiny had told the truth. While Janice would never be mistaken for ordinary again, she was still lovely, and that beauty had been enhanced by the exotic strangeness of her dual colorations. “You look good,” he said suddenly, forgetting his joke.

  Janice smiled, tears in her eyes. “You look like shit. There’s soot and smudge marks all over your face, not to mention your hair.”

  “My hair?” He lifted a hand to explore his head. His scalp seemed to be fine, but it seemed that a large portion of the hair was
gone on one side, burned down to within an inch of his scalp. He had no memory of being burned, but it wasn’t too surprising considering what he’d been through. At least now he had a haircut to match his missing eyebrows.

  Tiny entered the room, catching the end of the conversation. He ran a hand through his own short military cut. “I think you’ll have to go short for a while, like your betters.”

  Will chuckled. “Probably.”

  “You shouldn’t have gone in there,” said Janice. “I warned you that the relic wasn’t usable anyway. You nearly got yourself killed for nothing.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” responded Will. “I found it on my way out.”

  “How?” asked both of his friends simultaneously.

  He spent the next few minutes explaining what had happened and describing the fight in the basement, though he did his best to downplay the sheer terror he had felt, and the hopelessness of fighting such a powerful wizard. It didn’t matter anymore anyway. Androv was dead. Now they just had to worry about the ordinary monsters.

  As he finished, his two friends glanced at one another, then as if by mutual agreement, Janice told him, “You’re so full of shit.”

  “Huh?”

  “There’s no way it was that simple. I know you. It must have been twice as bad as that,” she explained. Tiny nodded in mute agreement.

  He sighed. “Well, it was little worse than that, but it all worked out. The bad guys are dead, and I’ve got the relic.”

  “Which you can’t use,” said Janice.

  “Says you,” Will replied, glancing at his ring. “My advisor says otherwise.”

  “Advisor?”

  “My college advisor,” Will said deflecting the question.

  “That makes no sense.”

  Will rose from the bed, and though his throat felt a bit sore and his head swam a bit, he was otherwise fine. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, then realized his clothes were gone. He glared at his bare feet. “Not again.”

  Tiny guessed his thoughts. “The boots are fine. The rest of your clothes weren’t fit for a beggar.”

  “That’s my second set of clothes in as many days. At this rate I’ll be forced to go naked by the end of the week.” Ignoring their laughs, Will used Selene’s Solution to clean himself, then summoned a spare tunic and trousers from the limnthal. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have used it in front of them, but he was done hiding it, from his friends at least. They watched him intently, but neither of them asked what he had done.

  They’d seen too much weirdness around him already.

  Rising from the bed, Will left, and though Doctor Morris protested mildly, he made no attempt to detain Will this time. After a short walk, they arrived at his house, where the workmen were hard at it once again. The front door was in working order, so he entered in the usual fashion.

  Tabitha was the first person he encountered, and she studied him as he walked down the hall. “I liked your hair better before,” she announced.

  “It wasn’t intentional,” said Will wryly. For some reason Tabitha always improved his mood. Nothing dark or ominous could survive in her presence. “Where’s your father?”

  “Upstairs,” she replied. “He and mother are sleeping. They weren’t able to sleep last night, so they’re finally catching up on their rest. Why?”

  It was getting late in the day, but Will had come to a conclusion. “I’m kicking you out.”

  “What?” His half-sister looked at him in confusion, and the looks from Tiny and Janice were similar in tone.

  “Just for the night. You’ll be safer in your own home. You can come back in the morning. I’ll cook breakfast.”

  “But our house…,” began Tabitha, pausing in midsentence. “Oh.”

  Laina stepped into the hall from the parlor. “He means our bolt-hole.” She focused on Will. “Is it really that unsafe here?”

  Will nodded. “It’s going to get worse, and they can enter the university grounds at will. I’ve become a target, and they know quite well where I live. No one would think to hunt for you in the ashes of your old home.”

  “What about me?” asked Blake, hobbling in on his sprained ankle.

  “Hopefully, the baron will be kind enough to accept you and Janice as well.”

  “Along with Armand and Nellie,” Tabitha informed them. “It’s going to be crowded.”

  Laina glanced at Tiny, then Will. “Very crowded with these two along.”

  It was tempting, so tempting. After what he’d been through in the basement of the still-burning Artifice building, Will wasn’t sure how he could be considering anything that might bring him face-to-face with yet more vampires. But he was. “Tiny and I won’t be joining you,” he told everyone.

  No one said anything for a moment, and Laina in particular looked thoughtful. Lifting her chin, she responded, “Darla and I will come with you.”

  “You don’t even know what I’m going to be doing.”

  Laina’s eyes grew stubborn. “I know you need help. Just look at you!”

  Will ignored her. “How is the renovation going?” he asked Blake, moving over to face the man.

  Laina tapped him on the shoulder. “I’m not done talking to you.”

  Blake looked at him nervously, then glanced over his shoulder.

  “I’m done talking to her,” said Will. “Tell me about the basement.” The look of alarm on the manservant’s face warned him, and he barely ducked in time to avoid Laina’s swing at the back of his head. He gave Laina an annoyed look and then took Blake by the arm. They moved away several feet.

  His half-sister paused when she saw a spell forming in his hand, and before she realized what it was, he had surrounded Blake and himself with a force-dome. Smiling sweetly at Laina, Will slowly turned around, putting his back to her. “Now tell me what you were going to say.”

  Blake shook his head in disbelief. “That girl is going to skin you alive when we come out of here.” When Will didn’t respond, he finally answered, “The basement isn’t finished. There’s still a lot of masonry to be done, but the cage is in already.”

  “Cage?”

  “It’s hard to anchor chains when they’re meant to hold something as strong as a vampire. The steel might be strong enough, but whatever you anchor them to has to be just as solid. In an earthen basement with only support pillars, there isn’t much that can provide the sort of strength you need. However, there was an exotic animal dealer in the city a few weeks back and I managed to secure a bear cage that was meant for him.”

  “A bear cage?”

  “It’s solid. The ends are all lap welded. It’s meant to be on a wagon, for transport, but with some work we were able to get it in the basement. I’m pretty sure that if you chain a vampire up inside it, he won’t be able to get free. If he did manage to break the chains, he’d still be inside the cage.”

  Will nodded. “Good thinking.”

  “As far as your workshop, that will probably take another couple of months. They’re still excavating, and that will take…”

  He waved a hand. “I never asked you to do that, but thank you. By the time it’s done, this crisis will hopefully be over. I’ll have to use the laboratory at the Alchemy building for what I need in the present.”

  Blake kept glancing over his shoulder and Will finally asked, “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t think people are supposed to be that color,” said Blake.

  Will turned around. Laina had turned an odd shade of red-purple and seemed to be speaking loudly in his direction. He could almost make out the words through the force-dome. Mark Nerrow was behind her, also shouting it seemed, though primarily at his daughter. Tabitha stood a good distance away, apparently enjoying the show. Oddly, Will felt jealous of them all. He and his mother had never really argued. What would it have been like to grow up in a raucous household with siblings?

  He looked back at Blake. “How about the pig?”

  “Already tied up out back. I’ll miss
her. She’s been taking care of all the scraps since yesterday.”

  Will winced. “You shouldn’t have gotten attached. You know the plan for him.”

  “Some would say the same about you,” Blake pointed out.

  “I feel like a lamb being led to slaughter most days,” he agreed. “Get ready for noise.” Will dismissed the force-dome.

  Strangely, everything was quiet. The baron had left, presumably to get his things together for the evening. Tiny and Janice were in the parlor, talking with one another, and only Laina was left in the hall with him. “You’re getting help whether you want it or not,” she announced.

  “Fine. Can you bleed a pig?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Have you ever bled a pig?” asked Will. “I need to feed a vampire, but I’m not sure whether I should bleed the pig first or just toss them in together.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The pig out back,” said Will. “The basement renovations. Do you want to help me feed a vampire so I can harvest alchemical ingredients from it?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Talk to me when you’re serious, but if you try to leave, I’ll be right behind you.” She turned and walked away, projecting the body language of someone who had just won an argument.

  Will shrugged. I guess she told me. Heading outside with Blake, Will went to the former cellar while Blake fetched the pig.

  The entrance had been widened considerably to allow the cage to be moved in, but otherwise the cellar wasn’t much changed. The cage itself was eight feet in length, and four feet wide and tall. Long, heavy chains led from each corner to the center, where they were piled up. There were eight chains in total.

  Thinking about what he intended to do made him feel queasy, but Will had done worse in the past. The vision of Arlen Arenata rose unbidden in his mind, followed by the inevitable cold revulsion that always accompanied her memory. He had bled her much as he intended to do with the pig. He shook his head to clear it. It’s a pig, not a human. That didn’t help much, though. She was a pretty shitty human, whereas this pig is probably a pretty decent pig.