“Thank the gods,” he whispered.
Then he snapped his head up and stared at Carlyle. “But the evil remains. Here in SkyHaven. The black-hearted wizard made me his puppet, but I won’t let him harm anyone else. Where are they all now? Timothy and his friends, Cassandra, Caiaphas?”
A flicker of concern went across Carlyle’s face, and then he frowned. “You need to rest. I shall have the kitchen prepare you some broth and perhaps a bit of poultry.”
Worry creased Leander’s face. His pulse quickened and he rose from the edge of the bed, towering over Carlyle. “Where are they?”
Carlyle glanced away from him. “You must understand, Professor. Mistress Cassandra—now Grandmaster Nicodemus—learned that before your behavior had turned so erratic, so cantankerous, you had been searching through the archives of SkyHaven. She sent the sav … the Asura, to search for you. Ivar never returned. Now that Timothy and Caiaphas have returned, the entire fortress is searching. Only a short time ago, that damnable rook appeared to tell the boy that a … a secret passage had been found. He and Cassandra both went immediately to investigate, in hopes of finding the Asura. They are in the lower levels of SkyHaven, even now, in the tunnels.”
The news staggered Leander. He brought a hand up to cover his eyes, and his legs weakened beneath him. Shame and guilt burned within him. This had all happened because he had let down his guard, allowed himself to be taken by surprise. He had simply not had the strength to defend himself, to fight off the evil influence.
“Oh Argus, my old friend. I am so sorry,” he whispered. “You would have been stronger.”
“Professor?” Carlyle said.
Leander stood up straighter. “Brace yourself, my friend, for a shock. The thing that possessed me was a servant of Alhazred. It would seem that, after all this time, the wizard is still alive. And the worst rumors we have heard of his nature have proven true.”
“As we suspected,” Carlyle said grimly. “When we evicted the presence that had been possessing you, it was in the form of a mudtoad. Alhazred’s familiar was such a creature. I … I have difficulty accepting that the founder of this Order could be a creature of such darkness, but I turned a blind eye to the horrors perpetrated by Cassandra’s grandfather. I will never make such a mistake again.”
Leander had barely heard him. He stared at Carlyle. “They knew Alhazred’s evil lingered, and still, they went into the secret passages?”
“The Asura is missing,” Carlyle said gravely. “You know Timothy better than anyone. You don’t honestly think that any danger could frighten him away if he believes one of his friends in peril?”
“Foolish boy!” Leander thundered.
Carlyle flinched, but he had the grace not to point out the obvious. It was not Timothy with whom Leander was so furious, but himself. Leander did not know if he would ever forgive himself, but such self-indulgence would have to wait. Alhazred had been hidden away in secret tunnels in SkyHaven’s belly for generations. From what Leander had been able to piece together, the ancient mage had been little more than a husk himself, his body for all purposes dead but his spirit lingering. It had taken great magic, enormous amounts of power, for Nicodemus to restore him.
Nicodemus had been stopped. The wraiths he had enslaved, the spirits of dead mages under his control, had been freed. But it was too late. He had gathered enough magic, enough of the life aura of other mages, to resurrect Alhazred. Enough so that when Nicodemus’s own body had been destroyed, his spirit had been able to force itself into the body of his familiar, that hideous cat. Now Nicodemus and Alastor were one, a monstrous thing. Far worse, Alhazred was back, and whatever insidious horror he had planned, it would have been set in motion by now.
The question was whether he had left SkyHaven. Leander doubted that he had. The history of Arcanum, of all of Terra, was that of arrogant mages vying for control of the guilds, and later of Parliament. And none had ever been more arrogant than Alhazred.
“He is still here,” Leander said, snatching up his cloak where it lay draped over a chair by the bed. “Timothy must not go near him. Alhazred is just as clever as he is cruel. He will find a way to destroy the boy. That must not happen.”
Leander started for the door, but he was still weak and became disoriented. He paused a moment, swaying, breathing deeply to clear his head. Then he shook it off, anger building within him, and his fingers flexed at his side. Magic began to gather in his fist.
“Professor, you must not go. You are in no condition—”
“Then who will face him?” Leander barked, whirling on him, trembling. “Who? Yes, the Parliament will oppose him, but how long before word can reach them? How long before they believe it? You know as well as I that they will deny the truth until they are forced to accept it. By then, Timothy will be dead.
“By then, we may all be dead.”
With those words he stormed from the room, still unsteady on his feet but without any hesitation at all. The time for hesitation had long since passed.
Ivar’s words still echoed in that vast, stone chamber. Columns of masonry were all about the enormous room, as though they supported all of the fortress above. It was oppressive there, claustrophobic to think that the weight of SkyHaven pressed down upon them.
“Run for your lives,” Ivar had said.
“I will not leave you,” Timothy told him.
Together, he and Cassandra helped the warrior rise to his feet. He was weak and his skin drawn tight and dry. Even the black tribal markings that slid across Ivar’s skin seemed to have paled, the pigment faded, but Timothy thought that might just have been the brightness of the room.
The ghostfire.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands of souls, trapped in spell-glass spheres and lanterns throughout this sprawling chamber. This dungeon.
“We must go,” Ivar replied, wetting his lips. He shuddered as he took a breath, but then he separated himself from them, forcing himself not to be their burden. He blinked slowly and shook his head to clear it. “Now. We must go now.”
Cassandra was barely paying attention. Timothy glanced over to see her staring at the corpses on the ground. Mages, most of them withered, their skin like parchment paper, some of them little more than skeletons with wisps of flesh and hair remaining.
He grabbed her hand and she flinched as she spun to stare at him.
“Let’s go.”
Her eyes were wide with sorrow and fear, but she nodded. The three of them started back the way they had come. Some of the strength had returned to Ivar, and he crouched slightly as he walked, on guard against an attack. Timothy wanted to ask him what had happened, who had done this to him, but if they had not yet drawn the attention of the evil in that chamber, he did not want to give their presence away now. And, in truth, he felt he already knew the answer.
A cold certainty settled upon Timothy’s heart as he gripped Cassandra’s hand more tightly and they moved beneath an arch propped up by two of those stone columns. They were being watched. There was no way they were leaving this chamber safely.
“Ivar,” he whispered, glancing at the Asura.
The warrior only nodded in confirmation of Timothy’s fears.
“Foolish boy.”
The voice seemed to come from the ghostfire itself, from the souls of thousands of dead mages, from every lamp and lantern in that vast subterranean chamber.
Timothy and Cassandra spun around, searching for an enemy, for any sign that they were to be attacked. Ivar only froze, listening, all of his senses attuned, waiting for what would come.
“You see the dead arrayed around you. Some of them were the most powerful mages in their guilds. Yet you think that you can face me? You should never have come here. It will only mean suffering, now.”
“What are you doing down here, Alhazred? What do you want with me?” Timothy called, his voice echoing back at him.
But the other voice did not echo. It came from everywhere at once.
“You were beneath
my notice, but then you disrupted the work that Nicodemus conducted on my behalf. Grimshaw was supposed to remove you, yet you defeated him as well. I’m impressed. But now you must be removed from this game.”
“Game?” Cassandra shouted, her cheeks flushing with anger and her eyes flaring. “This is a game to you? All of these mages dead?”
“Quiet, little girl. You’ll be taken care of soon enough,” the insidious voice sneered. “And these others … unfortunate, but sacrifices were necessary. I needed their power to restore myself, and to give me the strength I need for what’s to come.”
Something moved in the chamber. There came the rasping noise of something being scraped across stone. Each and every one of those columns seemed to hide an enemy now. Each and every one held a threat, and Timothy shielded his eyes from the brightness, trying impossibly to see past them.
“Ivar,” he whispered. “You’ve got to blend. Make yourself unseeable.”
“I cannot. Not now. I have not the energy,” the Asura replied, his voice so low that it seemed a hush just beside Timothy’s ear, though Ivar was several feet away.
“For what?” Cassandra called into the chamber, and the echo came back to them. “What do you need all of that magic for?”
“This is only the beginning, don’t you see?”
And with that, he emerged. A figure that was little more than a shadow carved from the brightness of the ghostfire stepped from behind a column up ahead, between them and the exit. Timothy blinked, and the image quickly resolved.
Alhazred floated above the stone floor. Blue fire danced in the palms of his hands, and even in that small flame, Timothy thought he saw faces. The souls of dead mages. He had thought he had imagined seeing them before, but now he knew that whatever Alhazred was doing to them must have roused them somehow, focused them. All ghostfire was comprised of such souls, but somehow in Alhazred’s presence they were aware. Timothy wondered if what had focused them was fear.
The wizard’s eyes burned blue as well. He was hairless, his flesh gray—at least what little of it was visible. For, other than his hands and his head, there seemed nothing of substance to him. Only shadow. His cloak was patterns of gray upon gray, dark upon dark, and where it hung open, there seemed only deeper shadows.
Timothy held his breath. Courageous as he had become, in that moment, the un-magician was terrified.
“I did not arrange all of this to leech borrowed magic from a handful of pitiful fools,” Alhazred said, his voice still seeming to issue from every flicker of ghostfire in that chamber, from every corner, every sconce and sphere.
The wizard smiled, and Timothy clutched Cassandra’s hand tightly and they took a step backward. Ivar did not move.
“I want all of the magic,” Alhazred rasped. “Every bit.”
Timothy had forgotten that other sound, the scrape upon stone that had come from behind them in the chamber, hidden behind one of those columns. Now there came a hiss like water seared by fire. Cassandra cried out and lifted her hand, summoning a spell. Timothy spun just in time to see the monstrous cat-man, that strange hybrid of feline and mage that her grandfather had become.
“No!” Timothy shouted as he lifted his hands to defend himself.
The creature had disappeared in the Yarrith Forest. He had no idea how it had come to be here—through Nicodemus’s magic or Alhazred’s—but when he saw it, all the breath went out of him. He had not known how to tell Cassandra the terrible news of her grandfather’s transformation, but he had thought he would have more time to find a way. Now he wished he had told her sooner, but it was too late.
The cat-man was easily taller than him now, and it hissed even louder as it brought its claws down, raking Timothy’s arms and drawing blood that spattered the stones and the monster’s fur.
Then it was on top of him, driving him down. Timothy’s head struck the floor, and for a moment he was lost to darkness. When his eyelids fluttered and he regained awareness, Cassandra was pulling the cat-man away by the fur on its head with one hand, and in the other there shimmered a golden sphere of magic, a combat spell that would blast the creature across the room. The cat-man twisted around to hiss at her, threatening with those claws, and she got a close look at its face for the first time.
In those feline features, the cat-man’s true identity was plain to see.
“Grandfather!” Cassandra gasped.
“Yes, a lovely reunion, is it not. The Nicodemus family, together again.”
Timothy struggled and grunted, forcing the cat-man’s arms away from him, but he managed to twist just enough beneath his attacker to see Alhazred, wondering when the mage would strike.
But Alhazred had moved only a bit closer and was making no move against Timothy and Cassandra. He did not have to. The wizard of shadows floated above the stones, blue fire still dancing in his eyes and his right hand … and in his left, he clutched Ivar by the throat. The Asura had dropped to his knees. Golden light seemed to flicker from his skin and run up Alhazred’s fingers.
“Oooh, that’s nice,” the wizard said, and sighed. “That’s very nice.”
Edgar perched on top of Sheridan’s head, talons barely able to cling to the metal without sliding. His black feathers ruffled, wings fluttering almost unconsciously. His patience had worn thin. “All right, that’s it!” the rook announced. He cocked his head and stared at Caiaphas. “We’re going in. I don’t have a clue what’s going on down there, and I try to give the kid as much space to make his own mistakes as I can, but you two just got back from nearly getting killed. That’s what happens when he goes off without Sheridan and me. So there’s not going to be any more of this waiting-around crap.”
A puff of steam hissed from the valve on the side of the Sheridan’s head, ruffling Edgar’s wings further. The rook cursed under his breath, but when Sheridan spoke, he listened.
“Something terrible is here in SkyHaven. This is not the first time this place has revealed its hidden secrets,” the mechanical man said, his tone far colder and harder than Edgar had ever heard him. “After today, there will never be secrets in SkyHaven again.”
Edgar cocked his head and gazed at Caiaphas. The navigation mage was not officially a member of SkyHaven’s staff because he was personally employed by Leander. Still, the acolytes that surrounded him seemed to look to the mage for leadership. They had all given a wide berth to Sheridan, suspicious even now of Timothy’s creation. And they were certainly not going to do anything at the command of a bird, no matter whose familiar he was.
“Mistress Cassandra instructed us to stay here,” Caiaphas said. “But this one time, we cannot obey our Grandmaster. There has been far too much tumult in our Order of late. She and Timothy have been gone too long. We must go to their aid.”
“That is precisely what you must not do,” bellowed a voice that echoed along the stone walls of the corridor.
Edgar cawed and took flight, startled into the air by the voice. He glided in a quick circle, wings outspread, and came face-to-face with Leander Maddox, lumbering down the hall. The massive mage’s face was pale and drawn, but there was a light of determination in his eyes and magic crackling at his fingertips. So intense was his expression that Edgar beat his wings, trying to get out of Leander’s way.
“Grandmaster!” Caiaphas said.
“No longer, old friend. Merely ‘Professor’ once more,” Leander said quickly.
Edgar landed on Sheridan’s shoulder, wings still fluttering, and regarded him. “So you’re not crazy anymore, I take it? Not going to try to kill anyone today?”
“None of my friends, at least,” Leander replied darkly, gaze darting into the wizard’s laboratory, where the bookcase had been torn away to reveal a hidden passage. Then he whipped his head around and stared at Sheridan and Edgar.
“Timothy is in terrible danger. He faces an evil unlike anything he has ever encountered. Cassandra is a powerful mage, and skilled for her age, but our enemy is too strong. The two of you will want to join
me, I know, but you cannot help. Not here. Timothy will only be frightened for your safety, and that will make your presence more dangerous than your absence. Go with Caiaphas.”
The former Grandmaster turned to his navigation mage now. Above his blue veil, Caiaphas’s eyes sparkled with determination and strength.
“You must hurry back upstairs and find Carlyle,” Leander told him, his gaze darting from Caiaphas to the nearest acolyte, and then taking all of them in. “Parliament is being notified, even now. After what I did to Lord Romulus under Alhazred’s control, I am sure he will be among the first to respond to our summons. Parliament will send combat mages, and they must. But we at SkyHaven—the Order of Alhazred—we must take precautions. If the worst should happen, and Timothy, Cassandra, and I should all fall, the rest of you must keep the evil contained within the fortress until Lord Romulus and the Parliamentary forces arrive.”
Edgar cawed softly, wings fluttering. He shook his entire body. Sheridan hissed steam.
“But—” the bird began.
“Go, now!” Leander snapped at them. “If you wish to serve your friend and master, this is the best you can do for him. And the rest of you, your Grandmaster’s life is at stake, but so is everything you know. Not only the Order, but every guild, the entire Parliament of Mages. Go!”
With that, Leander stormed into the wizard’s laboratory and through that hidden entrance, disappearing down the stairs on the other side.
“You heard Professor Maddox!” Caiaphas snapped, urging the acolytes on. “We must go!”
They started back the way Leander had come. Edgar expected Sheridan to follow, but the mechanical man did not move. The rook cawed softly.
“Do you not trust Leander?” Edgar asked. “The evil presence has been evicted from his—”
“No, that is not it,” Sheridan replied, voice as soft as steam. “I suspect he is right. If this villain is so powerful, we would be of little help, and if we distract Timothy, that could be fatal. But if you don’t mind, Edgar, I’d like to stay right here and wait. If the worst happens … well, I shouldn’t like to be too far away from him.”
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