Archon's Hope: Book III of 'The Magician's Brother' Series

by HDA Roberts

  "You've seen the dog, he'd have to come with me."

  "Ah, on second thought..." she said with a grin, squeezing my fingers again.

  She drank some of her syrup, leaning back in her chair.

  "I love this place. It radiates a sense of homeliness, does that make sense?" she said.

  "Magician," I said by way of an answer.

  She smiled, "And speaking of magic," she said, leaning back in again, "you told that little blonde of yours that you love her yet?"

  I almost did a spit-take.

  "How would you know about that?" I asked, shocked, though this is Tethys, I probably shouldn't have been.

  "The way you talk about her," she said simply, "Tell her, Mathew. Don't waste time, trust me on this one."

  "I don't want to ruin what we have," I said softly.

  "It's a risk, but it's one worth taking. And also I want this started so I can be a sympathetic crotch to lean on when it goes belly up."

  "That's more like it," I said, grinning broadly.

  "Hey, I missed the last relationship implosion, I'm not missing the next one," she said, stroking my fingers in a rather distracting way.

  "You wouldn't take advantage like that."

  "Good, good, keep believing that," she said, moving my hand up again so she could brush her nose and lips against it.

  "You are evil," I said, but there was no heat in it, and I couldn't help but smile at her.

  "I prefer to think of myself as decency-challenged," she replied, "but it's like I've told you before, I am a very patient woman, and I think we both know where this all ends."

  "You realise that I haven't forgotten that you're gay, right?"

  "I keep telling you that gender doesn't matter!" she said with a pout.

  Worst mistake in our game, telling me that the love of her life had been a woman.

  "Sure," I said with a shrug and a wink.

  "I will mount you right here, maybe that'll convince you!" she said, standing up.

  "You could, but what would Kandi think?" I offered.

  "Who do you think keeps pushing it?" she said, leaning in towards me.

  "So, it's Kandi that's interested? Rather proving my point there, Tethys."

  "Sometimes you are so frustrating!" she said, grabbing my shirt.

  "That's not going away, it's part of the family DNA. And you know that you won this particular game of ours some time ago, right?"

  "What?" she asked.

  "About... fifteen minutes after we met, you won. I'm in your pocket, I come when you call, I sleep in your bed, you come to my home. You won. The game isn't necessary anymore."

  "Just like that? I win?" she asked, stepping in closer, "After everything?"

  "Of course you won, you know you won," I said, cupping her face.

  "I always thought you won," she said, grinning evilly, "I do what you tell me, I spy for you, I fetch your gruesome magic ingredients for you, and I don't take advantage at all. Well, a lot less than I should."

  "So, what, we call it a draw?"

  She sighed theatrically before wrapping her arms around me again.

  "Fine, draw," she said, "but I like playing with you, Mathew, and yes, I do mean that to be as dirty as it sounded."

  I snorted and the hug ended. I shook my head at her, "You hungry? I have soup."

  "You know I don't eat food for its nutritional value, is it good soup?"

  "My Father made it, he knows his soup," I said.

  "Well, I suppose Kandi will be hungry," she said, rolling her eyes.

  I started making lunch and she watched me while I did, not that it took much doing.

  "So you know, and I'll deny it if you ever tell anyone I said it, I love you a little bit. Not in a strange, moo-moo eyed, dribbling wreck way, just the way you love somebody you miss when they're elsewhere."

  "You know how I feel about you," I replied, "I told you what the Severing would have done."

  "Yes you did," she replied, kissing my cheek, "for someone so strange, you make those around you feel surprisingly normal."

  "Bit of a backhanded compliment, but I'll take it."

  "Good. And so you know, I fully expect to be living in this house with you one day. A century, three tops," she said.

  "Good to know somebody thinks I won't be a monster by then," I said, stirring the chicken soup.

  "Please, the way your conscience works, and the way that little blonde of yours has you wrapped around her little finger, you'd be more likely to turn into a tiny purple dragon named Beatrice than the next Dark Lord," she said.

  "Must they call it that?" I asked, "It makes me sound like a Palpatine wannabe."

  "No, no Dark Side for you," she said, twirling a finger at me, "I will spank you so hard the second you even look at Black Magic."

  "And how do you know I wouldn't enjoy that?"

  "Matty, don't say things like that to a succubus unless you mean it, I'll make a scene," she said, suddenly pressed up very hard against me, her nose against my ear.

  "Not interrupting anything, am I?" Kandi said as Burglar dragged himself in and flopped down in his basket with a heavy thump and a doggy sigh.

  "Yes. Go play with the busses," Tethys said, biting down gently on my ear.

  "Easy you," I said with a shiver, "Soup's ready."

  "You made soup?" Kandi asked, bouncy and beaming.

  "My Father," I said, ladling out bowlfuls for her and Tethys.

  "Your Dad cooks?" Kandi asked, smiling widely, "My Dad was good for two things, drinking and punching."

  "If you point me in his direction, I can turn him into a squirrel for Burglar to chase," I said.

  We all sat back down at the table.

  "You can do that?" Kandi asked.

  "Technically? Yes, just need a squirrel and the offending parent. Legally, absolutely not, and I'd never do such an abhorrent thing," I said with a wink.

  "Ooh, when he winks, I get a tingle," Kandi said.

  "It is fun to look at isn't it?" Tethys said.

  I heard a whine and a doggy head landed on Tethys lap.

  "Oh no, no, no, no. I don't do livestock," she said, trying to shoo Burglar, "Go away."

  "Aw, come on, Boss, he only wants to be your friend, don't you Mister Furry-pants?" Kandi said, rubbing his head.

  "What did you call my guard dog?" I asked.

  "Please, he couldn't guard a doghouse, could you, Snookums?" she said, scratching him behind the ears.

  "Seriously, he is a big, bad, dog... and he's rolling around on the floor again," I said.

  "Yes he is!" Kandi said, rubbing his belly again as Tethys and I both slapped our foreheads.

  They finished their soup, and we talked some more, catching up, mostly, nothing heavy, nothing overt. Kandi kept trying to turn Burglar into a lapdog, and none of us have the right lap for that. I thanked them for coming, meaning it. I hadn't realised just how much I was dreading being alone, but Tethys and Kandi had made it so much better.

  Eventually they hugged me hard, and went off to corrupt ballerinas. Burglar whined for a solid fifteen minutes after Kandi left. I had to give him half a bag of dog biscuits before he'd settle down.

  But my birthday wasn't bad, after all, rather nice actually. It made me forget Des' problems, at least for a little while.

  Chapter 3

  My parents came back, subdued and unhappy; Des hadn't enjoyed his birthday. He still hated me with a fiery passion and would happily kill me if he ever saw me again. They had to put Spelleater Manacles on his wrists to make sure he wouldn't blast his way out.

  But we had another birthday for me, with cake, presents, cards and a family dinner. This was the first birthday I'd celebrated without Des, and it felt... wrong, like it was missing something important, can't imagine why that was.

  The remaining holiday passed quickly and quite pleasantly. I spent time with my parents, who seemed to recover their cheer as time passed. I kept in touch with my friends, walked my dog (who I think still missed
Kandi) and actually lived the normal life I'd been craving more and more in recent months.

  But eventually, the first Sunday of September came around, and it was back to Windward Academy for me.

  It had suddenly turned cold, and the frost was still on the grass when I arrived, dressed in trousers and a t-shirt with a grey fleece over the top. The school was filling slowly, maybe a third of the students were back, including Bill, one of my best friends. He was standing next to me, his hands in his pockets. He was taller than me, and only getting more so as time went on, broader too, but still a little gangly. He had dark hair and wore an almost perpetual smirk along with his jeans and leather jacket.

  "This is going to be a mess," he said.

  "Huh?" I asked articulately.

  "Shadowborn turning up, crazy Magicians wondering around the place, a lot of them hating your guts," he said, "and let's not forget the imminent fifth Archon."

  "Thanks, Bill, great pep-talk, as always," I said with an exaggerated eye-roll.

  "You want pep, call Courtney. I'm here for realism," he said, his voice serious enough to make me snort, which then set him guffawing.

  "I know, I couldn't keep a straight face, either!" he said, slapping my shoulder.

  We wandered around the school, seeing it like it was brand new again. This was our last year; so we were finally seniors! Upper Sixth form; top of the pecking order. Well, not me, but other people in our year, anyway. We were soaking it in, that sense of the final hurdle, the cusp of the real world.

  And then a stranger ruined it.

  "Hey! Little people, I need my bags moved," said a sneering voice.

  "Well, that lasted about as long as I thought it would," I said as we turned to see who had picked this latest fight.

  "Twenty-five minutes. I got to feel like a big shot for twenty-five minutes," Bill complained.

  New kid. Tall, handsome, annoyingly buff, made Bill and I look like sloths (well, we are sloths; but we didn't like being reminded of it). He had to be about our age, dressed in a designer suit, Armani, I think, black with a dark purple shirt, a matching tie and a platinum tie clip. He had a strong chin, dark, somewhat empty eyes and was perfectly groomed. He was glaring at us from next to a limousine, a small pile of bags next to the boot.

  "I said move my bags," he said.

  "No you didn't, you said you needed them moved, entirely different thing," Bill replied.

  "Also we're not porters," I chimed in, "and nobody else here is, either."

  "Just move the bags," he said, taking a step towards us, "unless you want an education in manners."

  Bill and I started laughing again, holding each other up as the new guy, let's call him... Tieclip for the moment, went pale with rage.

  He called Magic. Shadow Magic. A lot of it. And suddenly I wasn't laughing anymore.

  "Behind me, Bill," I said, calling my Will and moving between my friend and the Shadowborn.

  Bill complied as Tieclip called his shadows. They were flickering and weak, badly affected by even the pathetic light poking through thick clouds, and that blocked by buildings and trees. That was the weakness of other Shadowborn. Their powers are tied to the shadows, any light makes them weaker, sunlight almost completely shuts them down. Not so much me, but I'm a Sorcerer.

  Tieclip wasn't.

  I called a shield of Will, power intensive, but almost impossible to break by brute force. And his weakling shadows smacked into it and did nothing at all. He didn't even have enough strength to surround the whole dome.

  I called light and my hand glowed, the flare growing into a sunburst that banished his shadows and sent him reeling. It felt... astonishingly easy. Not so long ago, before Des cast my Severing spell, using Light Magic was difficult, uncomfortable even, now it was just like any other type of energy.

  Tieclip fell back against the car and slipped onto his arse, hands shielding his eyes, his face scrunched up in pain.

  I let the spell go, and the light drained away.

  "Alright," I said, putting some steel into my voice, "I'm Graves, I'm a Shadowborn. I'm also so far out of your weight class that you and a particularly slow toddler pose about the same threat to me."

  I walked towards him, shields ready, my shadows in every crevice, ready to go if they were needed.

  "If I see so much as a flicker, a tendril, an extra dense bit of shade come from you, I'll rip your powers clean out of you, do we understand each other?"

  "Screw yo-" he started, but I raised my hand and the shadows inside his body expanded and hardened. He gasped and gurgled.

  One of the benefits of having an ancient tome of Shadow Magic at your disposal is that you learn all sorts of interesting tricks. Normally a Shadow Mage has to be in contact with any shadows he's playing with, but the Shadow Codex showed me how to do it remotely. This was the first time I'd used it inside another person. It was kinda fun...

  "What was that?" I said nastily, putting a hand to my ear, "I thought you said 'Yes, Sir', is that what I heard? Nod if it was. Continue choking if it wasn't."

  He nodded, vigorously.

  "Very good," I said, releasing my grip and allowing him to collapse to the ground, breathing deeply, "now, let's hear it for real. Do we understand each other?"

  "Yes, Sir," he said, crawling backwards, a look of terror on his face.

  I'm not normally so harsh with strangers, even the ones that annoy me, but something in his magic... it just repulsed me. There was something truly ugly in his power, something that made me want to rend and tear at his flesh. It was taking every ounce of my self-control to let him go, to not use everything I had to pull him apart.

  "Come on Bill, we've got things to do," I said, turning on my heel.

  We'd drawn a crowd, many people pointing and whispering.

  "Hey!" said another snooty voice from behind us. This one was different. She had power, oh so much power.

  I turned and had a set of shields in place even as the girl started calling up Earth Magic. I felt the ground shake as the Sorceress started glowing with it. She had to be his sister, she was beautiful, stunning, really, with the same dark shade as Tieclip, but her features were softer, though her eyes were piercing rather than vacant, the same colour as his.

  "Who the hell do you think you are?" she asked, "Nobody touches my brother. Nobody!"

  She was a high-end Sorceress, dangerous, but not too focussed, her link to the Earth was sloppy, her magic wasteful. That didn't mean she couldn't accidentally knock down the place if she got mad enough, though.

  "Maria, that's Graves!" the boy said, still gasping hard.

  "He's in daylight, Dari," she said, her eyes narrowing, "and he's dead."

  "He doesn't work like that!" he wailed.

  "Very true," I said, calling my shadows, which spread out from me, covering the ground out to twenty metres in every direction, strong, barbed, and heavy, "Still want to do this?"

  Maria glared at me, but let her magic go.

  "You've just made an enemy of the Hellstroms, Graves," she said, "We won't forget that."

  "Oh shut up," I said, releasing my shadows. She blanched, her face contorting in rage, as I walked away, gesturing for Bill to follow.

  The crowd was glaring at the new people. Say what you like about our school's fickle populace, they don't like brats any more than I do. I made it maybe half a dozen steps away from the Hellstrom siblings before the other shoe dropped.

  "Mister Graves," Hopkins said from behind me.

  "She is always there when you do something bad," Bill whispered.

  "And I can still hear you, Mister Hedrin," Hopkins said with exasperation in her voice.

  "Sorry, Miss Hopkins," he said with a gulp.

  "Cathy said she'd be here about now-ish, why don't you go see if she needs a lifting arm?" I suggested.

  "Sounds good," my friend said before scuttling off at speed.

  "I can explain most of that," I began.

  "You usually can," she said with an exaggera
ted sigh, "Alright, what did this one do?"

  We walked and I explained. She shook her head indulgently until I came to the part where I explained how much the little bastard repulsed me. She stopped suddenly.

  "Explain that to me; in detail," she said, her eyes boring into mine.

  "Like... like looking at him makes me sick. It's as if the sight of him triggers a kind of... primal need to eradicate him."

  She swallowed, "That's not good. That almost certainly means that Darius Hellstrom has been using the Black. That's what repulsed you. Black Magicians don't play well together for exactly this reason, that's why there's only ever one really bad one at a time. When a Black Magician crosses paths with another Shadowborn, it tends to be... unpleasant, worse if they're both Black Magicians. Your power set is very proprietary, it doesn't like competition, and it hates corruption that isn't in its own host."

  "Terrific," I said, turning away.

  "That's not all, until his transformation is complete, and he goes Shaadre, he is so dangerous to you. If he's using the Black, and you've made him an enemy, he'll use it on you. And at that point there's every chance you'll get some on you, and that's the whole game."

  Kill him now.

  Whoa. I shook my head, blinking hard. Where had that come from? It wasn't even words, almost like a concentrated burst of emotion leaving me with no doubt as to meaning, and it didn't come from me.

  "What?" she asked.

  "Nothing," I said, wondering if I was going insane.

  "Just tell me, Matty. When has keeping things secret ever worked out well for you?"

  "Fine. It was like a whisper, I've heard my shadows before, but this was different, like a distinct emotional presence, and I didn't hear words, but the meaning was clear anyway, it's very hard to explain."

  She suddenly went very, very pale.

  "That is just not a reassuring look," I said.

  "In the Shadow Codex, have you come across anything about Shadow Elementals, yet?" she asked.

  "Once or twice, they're supposed to be harmless," I replied a little defensively.

  "They are, unless they feel threatened... or their master is."

  "I haven't bound any elementals, I swear," I said, putting my hands up.

  "Oh really? And that Air Elemental that follows you around?" Hopkins asked.