The Void Mage (The Familiar and Mage Book 2)

by Honor Raconteur

  “Vee has a partner, a man named Chinnadurai Franklocke,” Nora explained, rapid-fire.

  Sherri blinked. “I know him. Or at least, I’ve heard of him. Marksman? Supposedly one of the best in the world.”

  “That’s him,” Nora confirmed with an easy bob of the head. “He and Vee have been partners for the better part of five years—”

  “Nearly six,” Vee interrupted thoughtfully.

  Nora ignored her and kept going. “—and I keep telling her that Chi’s in love with her, but she doesn’t believe me. Of course, if she saw the way he looks at her when he thinks no one is looking, I wouldn’t be having this argument.”

  Vee looked more than ready to change the subject so I hastily interjected, “But Vee doesn’t think you’re right. Why, Vee?”

  Grateful to have a third party with an open mind, Vee focused on me to respond. “Because he hasn’t made a move. In the beginning, the first few months of our partnership, I honestly thought Nora might have a point. But I realized quickly that I’m not really his type—I mean, really, does any man want a woman over a foot and a half taller than him?—and yes, he’s flirting, but flirting is how Chi communicates. He doesn’t mean anything by it. I mean, seriously, he flirts with you, too.”

  “He does,” I had to admit. “But mostly he does that to rib Bannen.”

  “I think he flirts just to tease me. Or maybe it’s habit by now, I don’t know. But see, Chi’s one of the most straightforward people that I know, so if he really felt that strongly about me, then wouldn’t he have done something by now?”

  “Umm.” I made the noncommittal sound because I honestly didn’t want to agree with her (Nora was right after all) but I didn’t want to start an argument. Mentally, I aimed a kick in Chi’s direction. Idiot. He’d missed his timing and now Vee had closed that possibility off as she didn’t trust in it anymore.

  Someone needed to light a fire under that man. I volunteered myself to do it.

  Lauren, apparently the kind of soul that hated tension, thoughtfully changed the subject. “So Rena, now that you two are officially on the same page, are you planning on a long engagement?”

  Jerked back to the center of attention, I had to blink to switch mental tracks and respond. “Oh, no, hopefully not. Z’gher apparently has superstitions about auspicious days and which one would be appropriate for weddings, so we have to check with a priest first to choose a good luck day. But we’re hoping for something in the near future.”

  With nothing but women at the table, the discussion quickly fell into wedding traditions and such, which carried us through until Bannen came looking for me, wanting to dance some more. I abandoned the plate and went with him, frustrated that I couldn’t possibly tell him anything in the middle of the party as I couldn’t communicate without yelling.

  Tomorrow. I’d find a moment tomorrow to tell him. For now, I had a handsome man to dance with. I shouldn’t waste the opportunity to enjoy it.

  To say that I was anxious this morning would be a vast understatement. Anxious wasn’t even the right word. Scared, nervous, determined, spiked with adrenaline—all mixed up in a complex knot. I hadn’t even tried to eat breakfast, just downed two hot chocolates that my handsome familiar fetched for me. I think he squirreled away some into the Mule as well, specifically for me and Vee, because he was a sweetheart that way.

  We all stood and gathered more or less in formation on the road leading into the barrier. I tangled my fingers together in a knot to keep myself from fidgeting, my weight shifting uneasily from foot to foot. Because Maksohm was merciful, he hadn’t gotten us up at the crack of dawn, as we all needed as much rest as we could get before facing today. Considering the party last night, it was something of a miracle that everyone was up and awake at this hour. I knew more than a few kept dancing till midnight.

  None of that festivity had carried over into the morning light. The mood lingering around us lay heavy and tense, people openly checking their weapons, their grimoires, petting their familiars in an absent fashion that reassured both man and beast. I’d been introduced to everyone at some point last night, of course, but now I could properly match up familiars with their mages. We had quite a variety of familiars in this group—owl, monkey, mini-dragon, a komodo dragon (my mind still boggled over the size, I didn’t know they got that big), tiger, and even a unicorn. And those were rare.

  The unicorn turned and met my eyes for a moment, crystal blue in that white face, and deliberately gave me a wink.

  I smiled and winked back. Awww. Tristan was a nice unicorn. Hopefully he was in my camp so I could swap some stories with him. He’d been very fun to dance with, although of course you had to watch for the horn.

  We’d be fighting all day until we reached a location that would work as a base camp. At least, we hoped it would. No one had seen the inside of that barrier in two hundred years, after all, so our plans were based around some very old topographical maps. Supposedly, an outcropping of rock, like a miniature cliff face, sat some distance in, close enough to count as a ‘mid-point’ to Toh’sellor. Having a natural buffer to guard our backs would make it easier on the shield bearers, so we all hoped it was still there, and not destroyed by the ravages of time and stupid minions. If not, well, we’d just have to find some other spot and make do.

  Maksohm clapped his hands loudly. “The barrier is going to drop in a moment to let us through. Remember, double time it, we don’t want this down any longer than needed. If you’re injured, immediately throw up the red handkerchief you have, don’t try to ignore it. We estimate it will take eight hours to reach the spot for base camp. Are we ready?”

  A wave of sound came from the teams like a war cry, which startled me. I didn’t realize people were this pumped up about it. Even the familiars cried or roared out their readiness.

  “Good!” Maksohm’s smile had a feral glint to it. “Rena?”

  Bannen leaned in, a solid length of warmth against my back and shoulder as he murmured near my temple. “Ready?”

  The nerves hadn’t left, but knowing that I could move soon helped. “As I’ll ever be.” I moved ahead a little, just enough that I didn’t have people blocking my line of sight, and I took in the minions in the area. They had thinned a little after our first foray inside, but of course more had congregated here in the last few days. I took them all in with my magical sight, so that their physical structures were overlaid with the glowing schematics that made up their substance. I had quite the mix this time of former trees, bushes, birds, raccoons, and I think that used to be a mongoose. A really large, strange mongoose.

  I spoke a spell that had become far too familiar and they vanished in a trace of dust and wind, as if they had never been, like a sigh of regret.

  Maksohm lost no time in snapping out the order, “Now, Agent Silas, let us through.”

  The barrier dropped and we all jogged through, mages, familiars, and one Mule going inside an area known for nothing but death and destruction. It felt even more eerie to me this time than it had the first and that said something. Strangely, though, my nerves settled because at least in here, I knew what to expect, having done it before.

  Before the last person even cleared the doorway, our mobile shields snapped up. Each team had their own shield, of course, with a second mage casting individual shields over their non-magical teammates. Nora and Maksohm did it so smoothly, so efficiently, that it looked seamless even to my eyes. It was a testament of how much they’d worked together that they could do that without even a word spoken between them. I had vague hopes of the shields cutting down on the rotten, putrid smell of decay but no luck. Ah, well. With the shield up, my focus narrowed to clearing out every minion I could see and keeping track of Bannen.

  I realized that he thought it his job to keep track of me, and it was, but I felt better knowing his position.

  Ours was the only group with only two familiars, and one a staff, so Bannen didn’t really have any familiar to coordinate with. Instead, Yez seem
ed to fill that role, defending me on the left while Bannen took the right, Vee and Chi bringing up the rear. I had to yank my eyes away from each of them more than once, caught up in the elegant way they moved, swift and deadly like armed dancers.

  At least the shards I’d cleared out hadn’t reformed. That felt like a small victory. I’d half-feared they’d just regenerate, like some bad horror story. The situation remained bad enough as it was. One would think, after being around the shard and fighting through every variation of minion possible, that I would get used to the sounds of fighting. The splintering of wood, loud and raucous enough to sound like a ship’s hull splintering, the dull thunk of weapons hitting flesh, the piercing, agonized screams of the dying, but some part of me still flinched from it. I didn’t let it slow me down, didn’t let it dull my reactions, because I couldn’t afford that kind of cowardice. I had dozens of people relying on me.

  But today would haunt me for the next few months in my dreams. I knew it.

  We moved at a steady pace, relentless, ruthless, and eventually I stopped noticing the amazingly prevalent smell of decay and dust. I think my nose shut down out of some sense of preservation, as I stopped smelling anything after a while. How long had we been in here? It felt like decades but a glance toward the sun showed it couldn’t have been more than a few hours.

  Bannen fell back a moment, fingers brushing over my wrist—his own way of checking in with me and assuring me that he was fine—before he stepped back out and into the fray. I appreciated the gesture as being in here seriously unnerved me. Seriously, did anyone actually expect to sleep tonight? Because I did not see that happening.

  The land here pitched and rolled, coming up and down, reminding everyone silently that we stood on top of a mountain. There was no direct view of anything, not even as we started toward the valley floor. The trees and vegetation were all gone, of course, used to make minions, but plenty of rocky outcroppings remained to obscure sightlines. I almost felt like we stood near a desert, but the color wasn’t right. It didn’t have the light tan, earthy color of dirt drained of water. This looked almost grey, an unhealthy, abnormal tone that silently spoke of something unnaturally leaching everything of value from it. Right now we had nothing but rocks on both sides, which kept the minions off of us, but I could hear Bannen mutter darkly about ‘fatal funnels’ and that made me even more uneasy.

  “Chi, I can’t see ahead more than ten feet.”

  “I can’t either,” Chi responded tightly. “I hate it; being stuck on the ground without a good sight line is a gross and icky feeling, I don’t know how you people stand it. Vee, my love, give me a quick boost?”

  She turned, caught him just under his waist, and launched him up to a nearby pile of boulders. Chi landed with catlike grace, kneeling, one hand flat on the boulder in front of him to keep him balanced. “Uh-oh.”

  We all stopped dead because if Chi sounded worried? Then the world might be ending.

  “Chi, report,” Maksohm demanded, staring in vain in the direction Chi faced.

  “That’s the biggest sarding monster I’ve ever laid eyes on.” Chi swallowed hard, leaning forward as if straining to get a better look. “Vee, you remember that idiot in Hamblin who took that cocktail mix of potions?”

  “The one that grew to be almost a story tall, built like a weight-lifting hunchback? Hard to forget him,” Vee answered casually enough but she looked disturbed. “Why?”

  “This thing looks like his long lost daddy. As big as that guy was, this one’s about ten feet taller, more muscle and he looks like someone killed his dog, shacked up with his wife, and pissed on his shoe for good measure. Rena, can you come up for a second?”

  It was probably inappropriate for me to get excited by this invitation. I beamed up at Vee. “Can you toss me up?”

  The whole group snorted on a laugh, some more obvious than others. I flushed but didn’t back down. Alright, so perhaps I also thought being tossed around be Vee would be fun.

  “I’ll catch her,” Chi promised, putting his bow carefully aside. “One, two, three, up!”

  Vee caught me with one arm, and with considerably more caution than she used with Chi, threw me up. I had a brief few seconds of feeling weightlessness, air rushing around me, and my stomach dropping out, then Chi’s arms caught me tightly, drawing me in.

  “Fun, right?” he asked with a knowing smirk.

  “It really is,” I agreed happily. “I’m finding more opportunities for Vee to throw me. This just became a thing.”

  He threw his head back and laughed.

  As fun as that was, I didn’t forget why I’d come up to begin with. Turning, I carefully shifted my knees so that I could twist about without losing my perch or upsetting Chi’s balance. I didn’t need his pointing finger to spot the problem.

  Deities. That was a behemoth of a monster. “Wow,” I managed around a dry mouth. “I really don’t like the look of that.”

  “Can you see how to destroy it? Is it close enough?”

  I shook my head instantly. “Three thousand, four hundred and eighty-two feet away. I’m nowhere near close enough. The distance is deceiving here. If it’s constructed the same way the minions are, then we shouldn’t have too much of a problem, I can destroy it easily enough. But my concern is…see how long the arms are? They’re disproportionally longer, almost like a monkey’s arms.”

  Chi nodded, still sitting close enough that his chin brushed my hair, so that I felt the motion more than saw it. “I see it. I have a bad feeling those arms can cover about fifty feet.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right. He might very well be able to strike us at the very distance I need to stand in to destroy him.” I sent up a prayer that wasn’t the case. While I prayed, I also hoped that this was the only giant minion we’d have to face, because even this one would likely mean casualties we couldn’t afford.

  “Any chance we can avoid him?” Maksohm called up.

  “No,” Chi stated with a grimace, “because he’s literally in our way. Unless he decides to meander some other direction before we get there, we’ll have to deal with him.”

  “We have to deal with him anyway,” Yez declared sourly. “I, for one, will not be able to sleep tonight knowing that thing might wander by while we’re all snug in our bedrolls.”

  An excellent point. I whole-heartedly agreed.

  Bannen cleared his throat and gave our team leader a winning smile. “Maksohm, I’m for taking it down and breathing easier, please and thank you.”

  Maksohm let out an irritated breath. “I second that motion, unfortunately. Alright, Yez, pass the message back of what we’re seeing.”

  I could hear Yez giving the details of everything in his patient, neutral tones. Some of the teams at least were close enough to us to be able to see what we did, but not the others, not with the way the trail had twisted in on itself. They’d no doubt be anxious to get their own eyes on the situation once they came through to this vantage point. Chi leaned in and asked in a low murmur, “How close do you have to be to actually use your magic, Rena? I know you said you have to be fifty feet away to see what you need to do, but once you’ve seen it, do you have to stay that close in order to actually work your magic?”

  I turned that over in my head for a moment. Sometimes I forget, because Chi was such a joker, that he was a senior MISD agent for good reason. “No. Once I know what to do, I can be farther away than that. Not by a lot, I still have to see enough to aim my magic. Technically, though, I could work my magic from here and destroy that thing, if I knew how.”

  He blinked at me, jaw dropping a little. “You seriously don’t have a range?”

  “If I can see it, if I know how to hit it, I can destroy it.” I maybe preened a little under his open regard because it was fun impressing him. Chi’d seen a lot in his lifetime; blowing his mind was difficult to do, and I liked managing it. “With as many disadvantages that I have with my magic, range is not one of them.”

  “Maksohm is so
going to trick you into signing up later once he hears that,” Chi informed me with a dazzling smile.

  He could try. I loved the agents we’d worked with; the director, not so much. But this didn’t seem the time or place to have that particular argument. Besides, I had a feeling that he was right. If Maksohm had his way, we’d be signed on before I even got a honeymoon. “I’m assuming you asked this for a reason?”

  “Yup. But I’ll explain on the ground. Let’s get back down.”

  Vee either heard him or knew what he would suggest to do next, as she stepped forward, offering me a hand down. I took it, a little gingerly, as no one just dives headfirst off a ten foot drop.

  Chi flipped head over heels with a whoop, landing gracefully on the trail below, little eddies of dry dust swirling around his boots.

  Scratch that, no one sane just dives off head first. Not that I expected sanity from Chi. Vee caught me easily enough and sat me on my feet and I gave her a quick grin. “Thanks.”

  “I have a thought,” Chi intoned in grand, rolling tones. “Rena says she doesn’t need to stay within fifty feet of something in order to destroy it. She just needs enough time to give it a good once-over before she can back up.”

  Maksohm’s head snapped around. “Truly?” he demanded of me.

  “Yes.” I shrugged when I got looks of disbelief, silent demands of why I only mentioned this now and not before. “Every other time, we would have had to fight our way back out, and there wasn’t any point. I still need an uninterrupted line of sight to the target.”

  “Ah.” Maksohm grimaced agreement. “I do see your point. Alright, continue, Chi, I’m sure you had a point to make or some grand scheme that will give me heart failure.”

  “Only a little heart failure,” Chi promised soothingly. “The beast ahead of us has these ridiculously long monkey arms, we’re thinking he can smack us with them even if we try to stay fifty feet away. So I say, we dart in, let Rena get a good look, then dart back out, to a safe enough distance that she can work her magic and we don’t go squish.”