“Don’t step on the runes,” Elaine reminded him. She pointed her wand at the closest statue, but seemed unwilling to try anything. “The magic is changing, pouring downwards …”
She sucked in her breath, sharply. “The pocket dimension,” she hissed. “It’s practically built from raw magic. The Witch-King is sucking the power down into his tomb.”
Johan whirled around. Raw magic was flickering over the coffin, dancing pulses of blue light that reminded him of the wave of magic Deferens had unleashed on Ida. He gritted his teeth as the runes started to glow brighter than ever before, shaping the magic that would return the Witch-King to life. Elaine threw a spell at the nearest statue, a blasting curse that should have smashed it to atoms, but the spell came apart long before it touched the stone. Inch by inch, the statues advanced, pushing them deeper into the chamber.
“The runes are breaking up spells,” Elaine said, sharply. “Take my hand …”
A statue lunged forward and grabbed her. Johan let out a yell and jumped for her, only to be caught by another statue and dragged backwards. A cold hand grabbed his neck and lifted him into the air, turning him around so he could see the glowing coffin. Elaine managed to work a spell, but all that happened was that the air shimmered faintly before the magic was absorbed into the Witch-King’s runes. Johan reached for his power, then stopped. It was hard to control it without Elaine.
He kicked out at the statue, to no avail. Elaine was struggling frantically, but the statue held her firmly. Her wand dropped from her hand and hit the ground; a statue, moving with surprising speed, picked the wand up and snapped it. Elaine kept struggling until her captor froze, holding her firmly in place. Johan’s captor locked solid seconds later.
A cracking sound echoed through the chamber. Inch by inch, the coffin was starting to open as the magic poured forward. Cold fear ran through Johan’s mind as he realised they’d failed, that they’d made a deadly mistake. They should have blasted the coffin the moment they’d recognised what it was, although he suspected the runes would have kept it safe. But it was too late. The Witch-King was rising …
… And he was going to deal with them personally.
He reached for Elaine’s mind, trying to touch her one final time. But the bond refused to work properly. He could sense her presence, but no more.
“I’m sorry,” he called, as something started to rise out of the coffin. “I love you!”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Elaine was utterly petrified as the Witch-King rose from the grave.
She felt her body locked by fear, her eyes unable to look away. She’d expected a decaying body, one animated by the sheer force of the Witch-King’s will, but instead there was a glowing skeleton, wrapped in blue fire. Raw magic, she realised numbly; the Witch-King had drawn on the magic of the pocket dimension and used it to reanimate his body. He climbed out of the coffin slowly, moving with a slowness that convinced her that he had indeed been immobile for nearly a thousand years.
He’s learning to reuse his body, she thought, frantically. This wasn’t the handsome man who’d talked to her as she lingered on the verge of death, but something utterly inhuman. And yet, she knew him to be human. But he will spend the rest of existence trapped in that monstrous shape.
The Witch-King stretched out his arms. Elaine felt the statue’s grip on her loosen, before it crumbled into dust and she fell to the ground. Johan let out a curse as he hit the stone floor; his captor had collapsed too, along with the others. Elaine looked at the remains of her wand, then started to stand upright. The Witch-King paid her no mind as she started to inch over towards Johan. Did he recognise the danger? Or was he so confident that he could handle the two of them united?
The bonds weren’t so developed in his time, Elaine thought. They’d come later, along with many other forms of high magic. He may not know half the magic I know, even if I can’t use it.
She froze as the Witch-King turned his head to look at her. Blue fire flared where his eyes should have been, mocking her. His bony hand reached out towards her, wrapped in blue fire, then pulled back as he gained more control. Elaine had to look away as the light grew brighter, stumbling backwards in horror and dismay. The Witch-King took a step forward, then another. She thought, for a moment, that he was taunting her, giving her the illusion that she could escape, before realising that he was still relearning how to use his body. The ground shook – she sensed a final flare of magic, high overhead – and then settled as the glowing runes started to wink out, one by one.
“Elaine,” Johan shouted. She turned to see him running towards her, his clothes covered in dust. “Take my hand!”
Elaine reached out and grabbed hold as he pulled her backwards to the gate. Touching Johan felt immensely reassuring, even though she knew they’d made a deadly mistake. The Witch-King eyed them both through glowing blue eyes, then advanced forward. Elaine reached for her magic and threw a curse at the Witch-King, followed by a prank spell that had caught many more powerful magicians than herself off-guard. Both spells stuck the Witch-King and vanished in the fire surrounding him.
His mouth lolled open, then closed slowly. Elaine stared, then allowed Johan to pull her through the gate as the Witch-King made a strangled sound. He was learning how to talk too; it wouldn’t be long, she was sure, before he could start giving orders in person. Darkness fell over them like a shroud as they pelted up the corridor, but an eerie blue light followed them as the Witch-King walked after them. He didn’t seem to be hurrying, she realised numbly; he hadn’t even tried to stop them. They simply weren’t important to him.
“Link our minds again,” Johan insisted. “We can stop him together.”
Elaine nodded, even though her mind was gibbering on the verge of panic. She knew, all too well, just what could happen to both of them. They’d lost, she thought; the Witch-King was free, walking slowly back to Ida. She could collapse the tunnels around him, but he had more than enough magic to burn himself free. Blue light flickered around them as the Witch-King walked into view, advancing with more confidence as he relearnt the skills. It wouldn’t be long before he could speak too.
She held Johan’s hand, then reached out and touched his mind. He touched her back, his fear merging with his determination to make up for their mistake by stopping the Witch-King; power surged around them both and lashed out towards the advancing lich. Light flared around him, the passageway melting as the magic pulsed though it, but the Witch-King was untouched.
He made a coughing sound. It took Elaine a heartbeat to realise he was laughing.
“Your magic is like mine,” he said. His voice was so harsh that it was hard to make out the words, but Elaine thought she got the gist. “Do you really believe I could be beaten as easily as your pathetic stunted brother?”
Elaine felt Johan’s shock as the magic faded away. He’d been able to do almost anything he’d put his mind to, once his powers had appeared. She’d seen him burn through invulnerable wards, turn someone into a real rat, steal a magician’s magic, burn bridges to ash and raise a firestorm that had defeated the first attack on Ida. And yet the Witch-King had shrugged off his attack as if it were nothing. No, less than nothing.
The Witch-King didn’t strike back. He just kept walking forward, driving them back as his magic pulsed on the air. Elaine saw statues falling apart as he drained the magic from them, coffins exploding as his gaze fell on them; she feared he would raise an army of undead before realising that he was drawing power from the preservation spells. Johan was on the verge of panic; Elaine bit her lip, grabbed his hand and summoned his power again, directing it at the ceiling. The roof melted, burying the Witch-King in molten rock. She hoped – prayed – it would be enough to stop him, but it exploded outwards seconds later. He kept walking forward, untouched.
“There has to be something we can do,” Johan said.
“Maybe,” Elaine said.
She’d never tried using the bond to analyse magic before, but she couldn’
t think of anything else. Looking at the Witch-King with her normal sensitivity was like looking into a brilliant sun. But when she merged her powers with Johan, she saw the magic that bound the Witch-King together, a complex array of spells in perfect working order. She’d never seen anything as clever, not even when she’d started rebuilding the defences of the Great Library. The Witch-King had the advantage of perfect spellwork as well as ancient power.
And yet … something was nagging at her mind.
“You will all fall before me,” the Witch-King informed her, calmly. “You have failed.”
Johan pulled his hand free, his hatred surging forward. Elaine barely had a second to brace herself before he lashed out with his power, his hatred sizzling on the air. The Witch-King seemed unmoved, but the tunnels started to shake violently, rocks and dust dropping from the low roof. Elaine swore as Johan threw more and more power into the attack, then tried to grab hold of him. The Witch-King did … something and she felt herself hurled away and straight into a stone wall. Dust was falling from overhead in a steady stream; she could feel tiny earthquakes shaking the ground. He was on the verge of bringing the whole tunnel system down around their ears!
Johan, she thought, trying to pick herself up. Her legs weren’t functioning quite right; it took her several seconds to realise that they’d been cursed, cursed in a manner no one had seen for nearly nine hundred years. No one else would have a hope of breaking the curse. It was so dangerously subtle that even she had problems handling it.
Johan turned … and then the Witch-King knocked him back down the tunnels and out of sight. Elaine cringed as he turned his gaze on her, blue fire burning brightly in his eyes; she expected nothing but death. She was a threat to him, a threat he couldn’t allow to remain in place; she cancelled the curse and staggered to her feet, hoping she’d have a chance to make her escape. But there was so much dust falling from above – the ground was still shaking – that she could barely breathe, let alone see. She was trapped …
The Witch-King waved a hand, dismissively. Elaine braced herself for death – or a curse that made the earlier curse look harmless – but nothing happened. Instead, he turned away and walked down the corridor, dismissing her. Elaine stared after him, then tried to sense Johan through the mental link. But he’d unleashed so much power that all she could sense were flashes of emotion, blindingly powerful. There was no way she could reach him. And then a handful of rocks fell behind Johan, cutting her off from the passageway.
She looked up. The roof was slowly starting to collapse.
Gritting her teeth, she turned and limped up the corridor, trying to call out to Johan as she moved. She hated the thought of leaving him – she had no idea what would happen to her if he died, given how closely they were linked – but she couldn’t stay where she was. Johan’s mind seemed confused, twisted between life and death, hatred and rage. She called to him again and again, but there was no response. And then she heard something cracking overhead …
Elaine forced herself to run as rocks fell, hammering down all around her. But it was far too late. Something struck the back of her head and she plunged into darkness.
***
Johan knew he’d made a mistake the moment he tried to draw on his hatred. He wanted the Witch-King dead – deader – but he hadn’t understood, not really, that the Witch-King was actually more like him than Elaine. Given years of proper training – and centuries of planning, alone in the darkness – the Witch-King had to be capable of fighting him on equal terms. No, not equal terms; superior terms.
He struggled to rein in his anger as it spiralled out of control, slashing into the stone and hacking it apart. It was sheer damn luck the catacombs hadn’t collapsed completely; vaguely, he remembered Elaine saying something about the mountains being solid stone, incredibly hard to mine. Dust swarmed though the air; he coughed, clearing his throat, as he saw blue light approaching him. The Witch-King seemed unstoppable.
He called Jamal a stunted magician, Johan thought, clenching his fists. It was possible the Witch-King meant that Jamal had lost his powers, but Johan had a nasty feeling he didn’t. If the Witch-King regarded Jamal as stunted, even when he’d had his magic, it suggested all sorts of nasty things about the Witch-King’s own powers. But Dread stopped me with a rock to the head.
“You have no idea how to use your powers,” the Witch-King said. He stopped, standing a bare metre from Johan. The blue fire surrounding him didn’t seem to warm the air. “I can teach you.”
Johan felt a flicker of temptation, which he ruthlessly squashed. Elaine … was, at best, knocked out, somewhere on the other side of the rock fall. The Witch-King might have killed her … he suspected, intellectually, that if she died he’d die too, but he didn’t know for sure. It wasn’t something he wanted to test, either. The Witch-King had hurt Elaine badly, steering her life so he could use her as nothing more than a tool, and he was damned if he was betraying her.
“I wouldn’t trust your lessons,” he snarled, finally.
“Your appearance is odd,” the Witch-King said. “I believed I had taken steps to ensure that all wild magicians died before they could use their powers.”
“My father refused to kill me,” Johan said.
“Indeed,” the Witch-King said. “A most perplexing decision.”
Johan stared at him. “You’d kill your own son?”
He knew the answer as soon as he’d framed the question. The Witch-King had buried himself for a thousand years, using mental influence to shape and change the society he’d left behind, just so he could rise into glory. Of course he’d kill his son. There couldn’t be anyone related to him left! Even if there were blood descendents, the Witch-King wouldn’t feel any particular loyalty to them.
“Your existence made your family vulnerable,” the Witch-King stated. He turned his head from side to side slowly, studying Johan. “Your father should have disposed of you.”
“I think you underestimate the love a father has for his son,” Johan snapped.
“Your father allowed you to be tormented for seventeen years,” the Witch-King pointed out, smoothly. “One or more of those pranks could easily have killed you, if there had been a tiny mistake. That isn’t love, or concern. That’s the sign of a man unable to take the hard decisions.”
Johan swallowed. He didn’t want to believe it, yet he had a nasty feeling the Witch-King was right. His father hadn’t killed him, but he hadn’t done anything to stop Jamal either, at least until Jamal had finally managed to get into real trouble. Even then, he hadn’t managed to do anything effective. Jamal had remained the same bullying asshole he’d always been right up until the day he’d died. Maybe their father hadn’t dealt with the problems Johan’s existence had caused, but he hadn’t dealt with Jamal either. Johan’s blood ran cold as he wondered, grimly, if his father had hoped there would be an accident.
I could have died, he thought. He started to shake as he remembered all the near-disasters, all the times he could have lost his powerless life. And father’s hands would have been clean.
The thought chilled him to the bone. Jamal’s idea of fun had been downright terrifying, but the younger siblings had been worse. Not out of malice, although he’d hated spending time as a doll or a pet, but out of sheer ignorance. They could have done something fatal without ever realising what had happened. Hell, their father could have wiped their memories of the accident and told them that Johan had fled the house for good. None of them would miss him enough to start looking for him.
“He should have killed you,” the Witch-King said.
“But he didn’t,” Johan said. He reached for Elaine again, but felt nothing. Was she dead? Or was the Witch-King interfering with the bond? It had surprised him the first time, after all. He wouldn’t let it be used against him again. “I’m still alive.”
“That is a matter of opinion,” the Witch-King said. He held out one flaming hand. Johan leant backwards, unwilling to risk touching the raw magic. Even he
knew it could be very dangerous. “Swear your oath to me and I will teach you how to use your powers properly.”
“No,” Johan said.
“You will almost certainly kill yourself,” the Witch-King said, dispassionately. He didn’t seem particularly concerned, although Johan had the odd sense that it was a genuine offer. But then, if he swore an oath, he would be trapped. “Don’t you want to live?”
“Not with you,” Johan hissed. Elaine? What had happened to Elaine? “What did you do to her?”
The Witch-King shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“Yes,” Johan said. Rage flared through him; he drew on his power and threw it at the Witch-King, trying to wipe him from existence. The power grew stronger and stronger, but the Witch-King remained unmoved. His survival only made Johan madder; he gathered everything he could and pushed it at his enemy. “I want you dead!”
The Witch-King made a gesture with one hand. Johan had only a moment to recognise the spell before a strange calm descended on his mind. His rage was literally snuffed out of existence. It was a calming spell, he recognised numbly; he’d had similar spells cast on him more than once, when he’d been a child. But this one was so strong he literally felt nothing beyond a dull sense of his own existence.
“It is far too late for that,” the Witch-King said. He turned his gaze towards a tunnel leading away from Ida. “Come with me.”
“No,” Johan said. It was hard to remember why he shouldn’t listen to the Witch-King – the numbness was seeping into his thoughts – but he forced himself to think of Elaine. And yet, the more he thought about her, the harder it was to remember why he should care. “I won’t …”
The Witch-King crooked a finger. Johan felt himself picked off the ground and pulled along behind the ancient sorcerer as he walked onwards, through a tunnel that actually went further and further under the ground. He tried to break free, but it was impossible to care about what was happening, even though he knew he would be killed. The tunnel widened suddenly, revealing a rapidly darkening sky … was it really night-time already? It had been midday when they’d descended into the catacombs …
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