“Leander!” Timothy shouted.
The man reached up with both hands and slid back his hood so that it cowled about his neck. His shaggy mane of red hair and full bushy beard shone in the sunlight. But that gleam did not reach his expression. His eyes were dark.
Timothy slowed nearly to a stop, as though the breath had been stolen from his chest. He could not keep himself from remembering, all too clearly, the first time Leander had come through that door with an expression much like this one. On that day, the mage had come to tell him his father was dead.
“What?” he asked as Leander strode up the beach to meet him. Timothy shuddered and his shoulders slumped. “What is it?”
Anger passed across the mage’s features like the surf upon the shore, and then receded. Leander collected himself and gazed steadily at Timothy.
“I have not wanted to burden you with bad tidings,” the mage said. “Not here. Not until you returned to the world, to your father’s . . . or rather, to your home. But circumstances force my hand.”
Timothy saw that he was deeply troubled and reached up to lay a small hand upon the thick arm of the burly mage. “What’s happened?”
“Since the truth about Nicodemus was discovered—and I was made acting Grandmaster of the Order—relations amongst the guilds have only worsened. With their greatest enemy gone, you would think otherwise. Unfortunately, the Parliament of Mages has only grown less trusting of one another, fragmenting further. Suspicion is rampant. Accusations of espionage and treason to the Parliament fly daily. A constable has been appointed.”
Timothy frowned. “What is a constable?”
“A peacekeeper. A single mage given far more power than any one person should have and assigned the task of setting things right. A constable is the law.”
“But that sounds as though it should be a good thing.”
“It ought to be,” Leander agreed. “But the man they have appointed, Constable Grimshaw, is cruel and arrogant. He has waited for power most of his life, and now he that he has it, he means to use it. When your father feared that there would be those who considered you a monster, a freak, because you have no magic, Grimshaw was precisely the sort of mage he was worried about.”
Timothy shook his head. “You think he means me harm?”
“Not directly, no. But he will watch you very closely because he sees you and any being who is not a mage—not a member of one of the guilds—as somehow less than other beings. And also, as a threat.”
Leander hung his head a moment and took a long breath. His thick hair cast his face in shadow and curtained his features from the sunlight.
“Wurms, for instance, would be considered quite a threat. Constable Grimshaw has ordered his men to capture Verlis. They have imprisoned him.”
A dark anger passed through Timothy. His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. Sadness pierced his heart, but he did not try to fight it, for it only made him angrier.
“Take me to him.”
THOMAS E. SNIEGOSKI’S books for teens include Legacy, Sleeper Code, Sleeper Agenda, and Force Majeure, as well as the series The Brimstone Network. Together with Jeff Smith he writes the bestselling Bone novels, including Tall Tales and the Quest for the Spark trilogy. Sniegoski lives in Massachusetts with his wife, LeeAnne, and their French bulldog, Kirby. Visit him on the Web at sniegoski.com.
CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN’S YA fiction includes Poison Ink, Prowlers, and the Body of Evidence series of teen thrillers. Golden has also written and cowritten video games, screenplays, and a network television pilot. His original novels have been published in countries around the world.
SNIEGOSKI.COM
CHRISTOPHERGOLDEN.COM
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Jacket illustration copyright © 2013 by Andreas von Cotta-Schønberg
ALADDIN
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Also by Thomas E. Sniegoski and Christopher Golden
Dragon Secrets
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Ghostfire
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the authors’ imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First Aladdin hardcover edition April 2013
Copyright © 2004 by Christopher Golden and Thomas E. Sniegoski
Previously published as Outcast: The Un-Magician.
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Designed by Tom Daly
The text of this book was set in Bembo Std.
Library of Congress Control Number 2003110825
ISBN 978-1-4424-7312-6 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4424-7311-9 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-4424-5924-3 (eBook)
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