The Cost of Magic

by S T G Hill

  Just beholding it like that twisted terrible fingers around her heart, as though what she witnessed was a crime against nature itself.

  "This belonged to the last of them," Belt said, "The last of their light in this world."

  Her eyes ached with pressure when she tore them away from the jagged horn to look at Belt, "You killed it, didn't you? Because you wanted its power."

  "I have done many things. Terrible things. But always because they needed to be done," he gripped the remains of the horn in one hand and held it beside her face, "Now hold still. Its magic is strong. When it clarifies the power of the Gem in your mind, you will hear the voice. You will tell it to leave you."

  Already she sensed a hum inside her mind. As though the Gem resonated with the horn. She heard them then.

  Heard the first whispers. Indistinct for now, but they were there.

  They waited for her.

  "What if I don't?" she said.

  Belt looked at her like a disappointed parent looks at their child. "Then I will find every last person you ever cared about and... convince you. Understand it will hurt me, as I care for some of the same people. But I will do it all the same. Is that what you wish?"

  Ellie cast her eyes down. "No."

  "Then hold still," he said. He lifted his other hand up and held it close to the opposite side of her face. The air around her head thickened.

  Belt closed his eyes. A small frown line appeared between his brows.

  The whispers changed.

  Ellie... Ellie... We are the same...

  No, Ellie thought.

  You must choose.

  Ellie frowned. She didn't know it, but every muscle in her body went stiff. The straps of the chair bit into her wrists and ankles.

  Choose what? Ellie thought.

  The whispers began again, but before they could continue that heavy air around her face disappeared. The whisper became nothing but a buzz, then a low and unpleasant pressure just behind her forehead.

  She opened her eyes to see Belt turned partway around, staring intently at the door to his laboratory.

  He turned back to Ellie, "Your friends have made a grave mistake."

  "What? What are you talking about?"

  Then the room shook. Everything shook. Long cracks appeared along the white walls. Somewhere beyond the door, someone yelled.

  Belt put the horn back into the box, the lid clicking shut. "We will resume shortly."

  Then he threw a breach portal into the air, its sharp edges singing as they sliced open a doorway into reality.

  Ellie saw only a radiant purple flash of magic before Belt disappeared into it and the portal closed behind him.

  Ellie slumped against the chair, wrists and ankles aching where the straps pressed into them.

  What am I supposed to choose? How am I supposed to choose?

  She closed her eyes and wished herself anywhere but there.

  She wished as well that no one had come to try and rescue her. Didn't they understand that she was doing this for them?

  Then the door to the laboratory opened. Ellie's stomach twisted. She thought she had more time before Belt returned.

  "Ellie, it's you!"

  A tingle of shock ran up her spine and she opened her eyes.

  Arabella Thrace, wearing a red trench coat, stood in the doorway.

  Chapter 29

  She hurried into the room, both hands glowing as she looked from side to side to check for danger. "Are you hurt? Did Belt hurt you?"

  Ellie didn't answer. She kept blinking, wondering if this was some trick of Belt's. Or of the Gem's. But every time she opened her eyes again Arabella still stood there.

  Satisfied there was no ambush, Arabella came to her. She glanced at the box containing the unicorn horn, which hovered quiet and still in the air right where Belt left it.

  Then she ran her hands quickly over Ellie's body, and Ellie felt a vibration in the air as Arabella checked her for injuries with her magic.

  "We don't have much time," Arabella said, "There are too many powerful sorcerers here to do much but make a distraction."

  "I didn't think I'd ever see you again," Ellie said, her voice small.

  Part of her knew that this was a mistake. They shouldn't have come after her. But the rest of her wanted out of that chair, out of that lab, and away from Darius Belt. Wanted it more than anything.

  Arabella glanced at her, then back down to the straps holding her in place. "I'll have you out of these quickly."

  She tried them, but the buckles holding the straps down held fast. "Belt did these himself, didn't he?"

  Ellie nodded. She kept looking at the open door out into the hall, expecting at any moment for Belt himself to stroll on through.

  Her mind flashed to her bedroom on that awful night. To the memory of the Williamsons slumping over.

  She thought of Belt's promise to use everyone she cared for suffer until she did as he asked.

  The whole world seemed to rumble. Dust shook from the ceiling to coat everything in a fine layer.

  "Hurry. Please hurry," Ellie said, squirming against the straps.

  Sensing her nerves, Arabella also looked back. "Don't worry. I'll get you out. You're safe now."

  Her hands glowed hot and bright when she grabbed the strap holding Ellie's ankles in place. A sharp, meaty smell filled the air when the strap started to burn.

  Arabella snarled, lips pulling back from her teeth in an expression of terrible beauty. "Come on!"

  The strap snapped with a sharp crack. Ellie winced when the blood flooded back into her toes and the soles of her feet with the sensation of a thousand prickling needles.

  "Just one more," Arabella said.

  She grasped the strap with both hands. The leather crackled and smoked immediately from the heat of her grip.

  Ellie gripped her hands into fists, heart trying to pound its way out through her throat.

  They both focused so intently on the task that neither noticed the door to the laboratory open, the noises of the pitched battle outside briefly becoming louder.

  “Almost,” Arabella started.

  Then a glowing fist grabbed her by the neck and threw her away.

  “Arabella!” Ellie cried out, her mind already anticipating the crunch Arabella’s body would make against the hard, unyielding wall of the chamber.

  But Arabella recovered, her expression changing from surprise to concentration. Her whole body glowed, and the momentum that carried her through the air died.

  She came to a stop and then floated down to the floor, where she confronted her attacker.

  “Master Belt thought someone might try and get her,” Caspian said, smirking around his words.

  Both his hands glowed with a pulsing red fury.

  “We don’t have to fight,” Arabella said, “Just get out of my way and no one will get hurt.”

  Ellie looked from one to the other, then down at the final strap holding her to the chair. Arabella had burned most of the way through it.

  She squirmed, hoping for the sudden snap that would free her. “He’s dangerous! Watch out!”

  Caspian spared her a glance, “Be quiet while the grownups talk.”

  He cast one hand at her and glowing loops of power shot from his fingers. One wound around her face, covering her mouth. A new band wrapped around her legs and then a final one reinforced the burned strap.

  They tightened. Ellie tried to hiss through her teeth, but nothing got through that magical gag.

  Arabella looked at her, “Don’t worry, Ellie, you’ll be free soon.”

  Caspian didn’t wait for her to finish. The glow around his right hand reshaped itself into a cruelly-curved blade.

  He threw his left hand out at her, a blinding cloud of fog springing from it even as he leapt at her.

  Arabella ducked in time to avoid the slice of that blade.

  Caspian caught hold of her arm with his left hand. Immediately, forks of red lightning wrapped around her flesh
like barbed while.

  Arabella screamed and dropped down to one knee. Caspian grinned, raising his bladed fist up high so that its terrible light turned the white walls of the room pink.

  No! Stop! Ellie thought, groaning helplessly against the gag while she struggled against her bonds.

  Let me go! Give me my magic! I have to save her!

  The pressure in her forehead built, and that thing she knew now was a voice buzzed, but she couldn’t understand it.

  Caspian stabbed the tip of the blade at Arabella’s face.

  She snarled and snatched at it, her own hand glowing. She caught the blade, the point of it trembling just in front of her eye.

  “Oh, you’re good,” Caspian gritted his teeth, “But not good enough.”

  He tightened his fingers around Arabella’s arm, that barbed wire lightning digging in as well. She hissed, and the cruel tip of the blade drove closer to her eye.

  “Darius Belt taught you so much about magic,” Arabella said, “But he never taught you the most valuable lesson.”

  “Just shut up and die,” Caspian said, his smirk turning to annoyance when his attack didn’t succeed right away as he’d anticipated.

  “He never taught you that there always… someone… better than you!” Arabella shouted, pushing herself up to her feet.

  Her left arm exploded with white light, shattering the painful chain of lightning Caspian had wrapped it with.

  Caspian staggered back, the broken spell recoiling against him.

  But he couldn’t get away: Arabella still gripped the blade encasing his right hand.

  Ellie slumped with some small portion of relief. Her eyes watered and she blinked against the sting of it.

  “There’s no way!” Caspian said, shock and anger twisting his pretty face.

  He tried to punch her with his left fist, but Arabella caught it. Her hand glowed around his knuckles.

  When she squeezed, Caspian gasped. Ellie winced when she heard the grinding of his bones.

  Caspian let out a wordless, high pitched cry.

  “I’m still the Kinesist Prime for Sourcewell Academy, boy,” Arabella said, “I think you need some reminding of that. Down! Get down!”

  Caspian rallied some courage and snarled at her. The light of magic spread across his body and he forced every last ounce of power into trying to drive the tip of that blade into her.

  “Down, I said!” Arabella replied with a snarl of her own.

  Then she bore down on the blade. The magical weapon shattered, crystals and shards of light bursting out from it as though it had been made of glass.

  This time when the spell recoiled, Caspian caught the full brunt of it. It slammed him backwards, but Arabella held him tight.

  She held him by the wrist and throat and forced him down to his knees. Pure panic and fear flashed across his face, his snow-white hair only amplifying his paleness.

  “You’ve done a lot of terrible things since the war started, Caspian,” Arabella placed her face close to his, “Don’t you think it’s time you paid for it?”

  Ellie squirmed at her bonds, at once happy to see Caspian getting what he deserved and panicked that someone else, like Darius Belt, might step through the door.

  “Well?” Arabella said. She tightened her hand on his throat so all he could do was gasp, his eyes bugging out of their sockets.

  They swivelled to Ellie, begging her to make it stop, to make Arabella stop.

  Only, Ellie found that she didn’t want Arabella to stop. She knew that she should, that Caspian deserved more than a quick death in the midst of battle.

  But he was there when Belt killed the Williamsons. They weren’t given mercy.

  Caspian’s binding spell dissolved, the magical bonds disintegrating in a shower of sparks. The final leather strap also snapped, and Ellie sprang up from the chair.

  Arabella noticed, and in doing so loosened her grip somewhat on Caspian’s throat.

  “Ellie, it was me… it… was me,” Caspian said.

  “What?” Ellie said, hurrying over.

  “…Freed you… from… chamber… mask,” he managed before Arabella tightened her fingers around his windpipe again.

  Ellie remembered instantly. That strange masked face that peered in at her through the round porthole in the door to the amplification chamber.

  She remembered the sound of the lock clicking, and of the straps that held her to that chair relaxing.

  And she remembered how when she stepped out of the room she couldn’t find who’d freed her.

  She didn’t know why Caspian had helped her get away, only that he had.

  And that softened her heart. A little.

  “Arabella, we can’t,” Ellie said. “We need to get out of here.”

  “What did he mean when he said that?” Arabella said, suspicious.

  “I’ll tell you later. Please, just let him go. Trust me,” Ellie said, “Before he gets some reinforcements.”

  All three of them glanced at the door out into the hall, where more flickers of magical violence could be seen.

  “You’re right,” Arabella said, “But we can’t have him following us.”

  “Belt will stop you—” Caspian started.

  Before he could finish, Arabella grabbed his face in both her hands. Her hands glowed, and for a moment that pale glow surrounded Caspian’s whole head.

  When it stopped, she let him go and he collapsed bonelessly to the side, out cold.

  “That boy has a vile mind,” Arabella said, looking at the palms of her hands as though she wanted to scrub them with steel wool.

  A particularly loud crack of thunder sounded outside the laboratory, bringing their attention back to the situation at hand.

  “What do we do now?” Ellie said.

  “We go with them,” Arabella replied, nodding towards the door. “But first…”

  Then she hugged Ellie. Hugged her tight and close. Ellie hugged back, fiercer than she intended.

  She hadn’t realized just how low she’d sunk. How hopeless she was. Not until hope shone its light over her once more.

  They parted with reluctance.

  Ellie looked back at it in time to see Thorn, Matilda, and Ira step through it, all of them wearing their colored trench coats. All of them covered in dust and dirt and streaks of blood, some dry and some fresh.

  Thorn glanced at Ellie and Arabella, then down at Thorn.

  “He’s still alive,” Arabella said.

  “Shame,” Matilda replied. A large scorch mark blackened the left shoulder of her trench coat. “I could fix that in just a sec.”

  “We have to get out of here. The Council forces have already forced most of the other squadrons to retreat,” Thorn ignored Matilda’s offer.

  Arabella took Ellie by the hand and led her towards the group. Arabella paused and looked at them. “Where’s Moira?”

  Moira, Ellie thought, remembering the short girl from the park shed.

  “The Magister from that Chinese academy caught her in a Vampire’s Polygram,” Ira said, looking right at Ellie, “She panicked. It drained her body of every last drop of energy faster than the thirstiest Errant could’ve. She’s dead.”

  Ellie’s stomach tightened. The blame was plain on Ira’s face. Just as it had been when he showed her that image of his brother. His dead brother, killed in the destruction of Corinthus Academy on the west coast.

  “Ira…” Thorn started.

  “There’s no time for this!” Arabella said, “We have to get out of here while we still can. Please tell me you got Belt’s distraction in place.”

  “We did,” Thorn said, seeming for just a moment there to Ellie like the prized pupil of Sourcewell that he used to be, “But he’ll deal with it fast.”

  “Distraction?” Ellie said. What did they do that could distract Darius Belt from his goal? From her?

  Matilda grinned, “Yeah, it’s—”

  Something heavy slammed into the wall beside the open door, sending a
spider’s web of cracks throughout the structure.

  “We have to get to the central hall!” Thorn said, ducking down, “It’s the only way in or out of this place!”

  “I’ll distract them! Go!” Ira said, standing up from the crouch he’d assumed at the crash.

  He put one hand against his temple and held the other hand out.

  Ellie’s breath caught when she saw them. A group of those same Ophidian snake men she’d seen and fought in the Trial seemed to congeal from the very air in front of them.

  The group, their scales glistening and liquid-looking, their weapons sharp and glinting, hissed and slithered out into the hallway.

  Someone screamed. Then the yelling started. Spells flew wildly through the air.

  “Go! They’ll figure out their illusions quickly!” Ira said, grimacing with the effort, “I’ll be right behind you.”

  Thorn grabbed Ellie’s other hand and led them all to the door.

  “Make this count,” Ira said to her as they passed by him.

  “I’m not hurt! I can run!” Ellie said, jerking at the grips they had on her wrists as they rushed out through the doorway, out of Belt’s lab and into one of the myriad hallways of the Council headquarters.

  “Just keep up!” Thorn said, releasing her. Arabella also released her, but with more reluctance.

  They ran around massive scars and gouges in the marble floor, the wounds in the building already hazy with magical fallout.

  She risked a glance over her shoulder and saw a cadre of blue-robed sorcerers hurling lightning and fire at their snakey attackers.

  They all stopped when something in a level above them roared so loud that the entire structure trembled. Ellie’s stomach turned to ice.

  “What’s that?” she said.

  Matilda grinned, “Belt’s distraction. Sounds like it still has him occupied.”

  “But what is it?” Ellie said, wonder temporarily hiding the blind panic beneath it all.

  “Watch out!” Thorn shoved Ellie to the side as they rounded a corner in the hallway.

  A bar of fire passed over her face close enough that she flinched away at the heat. It tore a gouge in the wall behind them, filling the air with a terrible sharp burning odor.