The Cost of Magic

by S T G Hill

  When he waved his hand, the top half of their transphere sliced away, disintegrating into nothingness.

  Without its protection, Ellie heard and felt the ominous rumbling the thunderheads above them let out.

  “He’s got control somehow,” Arabella said, her face a mask of strain as she tried to wrest the transphere away from him.

  “Screw this guy!” Matilda said. She brought her hands back, then shot them forward. Lightning lanced from her fingers.

  Darius Belt slapped it away.

  “We’re going down!” Arabella said.

  They drifted downward towards the flat roof of an office tower overlooking the Thames river.

  A police helicopter raced at them.

  “You are instructed to land now!” a voice blasted over a loudspeaker.

  Belt didn’t even spare them a glance.

  A thick, jagged bolt of electricity shot from the clouds. It blasted the tail rotor clean off the helicopter, which spun and careened its way down to crash in the water of the river.

  Soon, they settled on the roof of the office tower. As soon as they did, the transphere dissipated.

  I can’t ever get away from him, Ellie thought, her body locked in a fearful paralysis without the aid of any spell.

  The others looked the same.

  “You think I’ve never fought a dragon before?” Belt said.

  It was then that Ellie noticed the ragged tears and burns in his robe.

  Belt stood before them, shoulders heaving, his face dark. The air crackled around him.

  Everyone drew up together and Ellie felt it then: the fear and the defeat. It hung in the air around them as they regarded the sorcerer.

  “The girl is mine. Give her back to me now.” Thunder snapped with that final syllable.

  When Ellie looked up, the maelstrom greet her. Its black vortex churned above them, lightning crackling across its black surface in jagged forked tongues of purple.

  “She doesn’t belong to anyone,” Arabella said, stepping forward and putting a protective hand in front of Ellie.

  Belt sighed a heavy and disappointed sigh. “Arabella, you had so much promise. It hurts me that you’ve wasted it so. You’re sister has proved so much more useful.”

  “Don’t talk about her,” Arabella said, the air around her arms coruscating with sheets and sparks of power as she called on her magic.

  Belt ignored her. He fixed his eyes on Thorn, “And Thorn, your betrayal cuts me the deepest. You had only to come to me and my forgiveness was yours."

  “I don’t want your forgiveness!” Thorn defied him, “I know who you are. I know what you are.”

  For the first time during this exchange, Darius Belt smiled. It was a small smile, somehow mournful. “My child, you know nothing. Worse, you don’t even know that you know nothing.”

  “You’re not getting her!” Arabella said. She shot her arms forward and a hail of daggers shot from them at Belt.

  Belt made no move to dodge them. When they got close, they dissolved as though burned away to nothing.

  “This is not a game to me,” he said, “There is no cost I won’t pay. No action I won’t take. No one I will spare… Nothing!” he spat the final word as he raised his hands.

  The swirling of the maelstrom quickened. The hair on Ellie’s arms rose even as she smelled the acrid scent of ozone.

  Then, to prove his point, Darius Belt devastated the city of London.

  He raised his hands up high, bracelets of static crackling and hissing around his wrists. The seething inky clouds above responded as a living thing, agitating with anticipation.

  “Stop!” Arabella rushed forward. Thorn and Matilda followed a moment later, Ellie right on their heels.

  They all ran headlong into an invisible barrier, piling into each other.

  All the hair on Ellie’s body seemed to stand up at once. Her skin tingled with the pent up power building up around them.

  Even the nils could sense it. Air raid sirens wailed. Emergency vehicles sprang into action, their blue lights flashing all over the city.

  But it was all in vain.

  Any opposition against Darius Belt was in vain, which was exactly the point that he wanted to make.

  “Stop, please stop,” Ellie said, although she could barely hear her own thoughts over the cacophony around them.

  The tall building that they stood on swayed in the wind, its girders creaking, its tall, proud glass façade webbing with cracks.

  Then Belt looked at her, their eyes catching.

  It was the same look of pity that he’d given her just moments before he snatched the life out of Brenda and Walt Williamson with a casual wave of his hand.

  The look that said: I don’t want to do this, but you’ve made me. This is all your fault. Can’t you see?

  Arabella screamed beside her, though Ellie couldn’t hear over the sound of the storm.

  Thorn and Matilda attempted to break Belt’s shield, casting pure bolts of magical power at it, lightning, fire, ice. Anything they could think of.

  Nothing worked. Belt was too powerful, and they all knew it.

  And that’s why he did it, Ellie knew. To show them that he could do anything, could get away with anything.

  The city and the people in it were nothing but an object lesson to Ellie and the Resistance. And the Council? Ellie thought that Belt didn’t care much for what they thought of all this.

  That maybe it was an object lesson for them, too.

  For just a moment, the storm became utterly silent. The wind and the thunder choked off. The air raid sirens cried clearly. The police cars, the firetrucks, the ambulances, their sirens wailed from every corner.

  Only that terrible feeling of anticipation that made Ellie’s skin crawl remained.

  She shook her head at Belt, “Don’t.”

  He still held his hands aloft, the sleeves of his robes piling up around his elbows. Then he thrust his arms downward and Armageddon broke loose.

  The wind howled to incredible fury, tossing cars and vans like toddler throwing a tantrum.

  Thick, greasy bolts of lightning lanced downward, sparking off explosions and fires everywhere they touched.

  The black clouds themselves birthed massive funnels that ran amok over the streets.

  Buildings collapsed with thunderous, shattering booms. Fires billowed more pitch-black smoke into the air.

  Beside Ellie, Arabella collapsed, tears running down her face. Matilda had turned to watch the devastation with shock.

  Thorn continued pounding against the shield, literally, with his fists. Blood covered his knuckles.

  Ellie watched as the massive Ferris wheel, the Eye, detached from its place along the river bank, cartwheel an impossible distance through the air as though carried by some malignant hand, scythe its way into parliament, smashing the famous clock tower down into the churning water.

  I’m helpless all over again, Ellie thought, a strange and terrible calmness descending over her in spite of the carnage spreading out for miles around them.

  Thorn turned to her, saw the blank expression of shock on her face.

  He ran over, grabbed her by the shoulders, shook her with such violence that her head snapped back and forth.

  He screamed as loud as he could, but she couldn’t hear him. Not until he cupped his face in her hands and she felt the tingle of magic flow from them.

  “Do something, Ellie. Do something before he kills all of them,” Thorn said.

  She shook her head against the rough and calloused skin of his palms, “I can’t. You know I can’t. He won’t stop. Nothing’s going to stop him!”

  Then Belt began walking towards them, slowly. Despite all the wind, his robes and his hair remained perfectly undisturbed.

  The roof of the building seared beneath his feet, flame licking out around the soles of his boots with each step.

  “You could have prevented this,” Belt said, his voice outwardly calm but edged with the frustration and rag
e that had brought him to the decision to destroy an entire city to prove a point.

  “Stop, just stop it,” Ellie replied, pulling free of Thorn’s hands.

  She turned and squared herself when she faced Belt.

  Belt only shook his head, “You still haven’t learned your lesson. I won’t stop until you have.”

  “Ellie, do something,” Thorn laid a hand on her shoulder, “You took care of those sorcerers back in the main chamber. Do it again.”

  “That wasn’t me,” Ellie said to him.

  Belt nodded as though he understood. “She can’t do anything now. The Gem controls her power as well as its own. Only I can free them from each other. She knows this, Thorn… Thorn, there’s still a place for you by my side.”

  Thorn ignored him, “Then make it do something, Ellie. You have to stop this! You have to stop him!”

  I don’t know how, Ellie started to say, but then stopped.

  She looked at Arabella, tears still wet on her cheeks. She looked at Matilda, who gazed at the wanton destruction with an awful wonder. She looked at Thorn, whose pleading gaze twisted in her stomach.

  “I’m tired of being helpless,” Ellie said, more to herself than Belt or Thorn.

  Still, they both heard. Belt’s jaw worked, and the first signs of concern spread across his face. His powers of prognostication at work, Ellie knew.

  Ellie pieced it all together in her thoughts as quickly as she could. The Gem protected her when she was in mortal danger. Danger she couldn’t escape from.

  They couldn’t communicate directly, but there was a deep and shared bond between them.

  “We can feel each other,” Ellie whispered.

  Darius Belt’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly. He started forward. ‘There’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

  She recognized that, too. That tone of voice. It quavered the same as it had when Chauncy—Amenhotep—entered her bedroom. When Darius Belt recognized him for what he really was.

  It was fear.

  She made her intentions very clear. Not with words, but with feelings.

  But if her thoughts had been words rather than intentions, they would have gone something like this:

  Stop Belt and get us out of here—all of us—or I’m going to throw myself off this skyscraper.

  Angry pressure built behind her forehead. Her eyes felt like they wanted to pop out of her skull.

  The Gem didn’t believe her.

  “Fine, believe this,” Ellie turned and started towards the rusty railing that surrounded the perimeter of the roof.

  “Ellie!” Thorn said.

  “Stop” Belt cried out, whipping his hand up. The gravel that coated the roof twisted and swirled into manacles that tried latching onto her ankles. Ellie slipped away from the grasping loops.

  She needed to do it quickly before Belt could try again.

  “Ellie, don’t do it!” Arabella struggled to her feet.

  But Ellie grabbed the top length of railing and put one foot on the lowest one and looked down at the mayhem below.

  Cars and trucks and those big red double-decker buses snarled in a broken snake of shattered glass and twisted steel far below on the street.

  “Ellie, what are you doing?” Thorn rushed at her as he yelled.

  Ellie climbed up onto the top railing, which was barely wider than her heel. Dizzying vertigo swirled in her stomach and in her head when she looked down.

  It would take only leaning forward a little, she knew.

  The Gem knew as well. It raged a few moments longer within the bounds of her thoughts.

  She knew if she lived she’d have a terrible headache.

  Do it. Save us. Save them, Ellie thought.

  It balked. She sensed it, the disbelief like the angry buzzing of a wasp between her ears. That annoying sound that was almost but not quite language.

  Ellie couldn’t let this go on any longer. She couldn’t let Belt finish destroying the city. She couldn’t let him hurt Arabella and Thorn. Not even Matilda.

  So Ellie leaned forward.

  She experienced a moment of equilibrium right before the fall started. Another one of those awful pauses.

  The soles of her shoes began sliding off the flaking paint of the rail.

  Then it happened.

  Darius Belt had readied a spell of his own to save her, but didn’t get the chance to cast it. “Not now!”

  Even he couldn’t stop the combined power of Ellie and the Gem.

  She stopped slipping and some gentle force nudged her back into balance. Arabella ran to her.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” Ellie said absently. She didn’t really feel there. No, her thoughts mingled with the Gem.

  Then everyone on the roof gasped and dropped back, throwing their arms over their eyes. Intense white light covered Ellie’s body, though she could see just fine.

  The light shot away from her in thick bars, spearing upwards into the black clouds.

  The maelstrom stopped swirling and instead trembled. At the same time, Darius Belt dropped to his knees and clasped his hands to his head, his eyes squeezing shut.

  The bars of light pulled and pushed the oily clouds into a single ball that pushed and strained against it, but couldn’t get free.

  Ellie raised her right hand and snapped her fingers. The small, angry ball of destruction that hung over their heads snapped out of existence with an audible pop.

  And then the broken spell recoiled at Darius Belt.

  It smashed half of the roof off in its fury. Torn and twisted steel greet them in his place.

  “Is he dead?” Matilda asked.

  “No,” Ellie replied, though she didn’t know just how she knew. Only that she did. “I don’t think the Gem can bring itself to kill him.”

  The light surrounding her dimmed.

  “Why not?” Thorn said.

  Ellie didn’t answer. She sensed something else from the Gem. Not words. They couldn’t communicate truly, not yet. Only provide intention or feeling.

  And Ellie believed what the Gem made her feel could be summed up in a simple interrogative.

  Where?

  She wanted everyone to be somewhere safe. Somewhere far away from here.

  Their communication was imperfect and incomplete, but something happened. Not a breach portal, not a transphere, not winking. No means of travel so tactile.

  “What’s happening?” Matilda said.

  “I don’t know! Just hold on!” Thorn shouted, even though the rooftop of their skyscraper had gone quiet.

  “To what?” Arabella put in.

  Light built up around them.

  Then Ellie realized it wasn’t building up around them: they were the light.

  And then they weren’t.

  She blinked, one moment her eyes surveying a devastated city full of fires and toppled buildings.

  Then a den. A den with a nice, if old leather couch. The whole place smelled of fresh cooking. Pasta, Ellie thought.

  “Ellie?” Peter Pitarelli said, the TV remove falling from suddenly limp fingers.

  Chapter 33

  Darius Belt lay quietly beneath the pile of rubble.

  He could feel the places where the world had intruded on the vessel of his mortal coil. The broken bones in his legs, the hot but flagging rush of blood from innumerable cuts, tears, and gashes.

  The spots in his chest and stomach and neck where the broken lengths of rebar that stuck from the concrete like rusty talons had impaled him.

  He felt all of this but experienced no pain. At least, none that gave him any pause.

  No, Darius Belt experienced only a deep and abiding frustration mingled with the leftover rage that had led him to razing the city.

  Well, that and exhaustion. Perhaps foolishly, he knew, he’d called on much of the reserves of power granted him when he’d consumed the Staff of Tiresias.

  He’d need more, he knew. He needed it to find the girl again, who somehow kept slipping thro
ugh his fingers.

  How does she always manage to surprise me? Belt thought.

  He’d need the power to bring the Council back under his control, both the magisters who comprised the Council itself and its constituent forces.

  Though he’d nearly levelled everything above ground, he knew the Council headquarters had suffered no damage beyond what it incurred in the girl’s rescue.

  Belt needed power and needed it now. And he knew where to obtain some.

  It wouldn’t be as potent as what came from the staff. Nor as quick to recharge him, but his sense of prognostication told him that he had some time while Miss Ashwood and her Resistance withdrew and licked its wounds.

  He’d find out where they were in short order, using both his more prosaic resources at Panopsys and his magical operatives, in any case.

  Belt closed his eyes and called on the magic, feeling its ancient and familiar tingle as it suffused every sinew, every muscle and fiber.

  His torn flesh mended. The spears of rebar within him dissolved, gobbled up by the healing spell.

  The blood, black in the deep shadows of this temporary tomb, ran back into him.

  Then Belt opened a breach portal beneath himself, dropping through it so that he landed on his feet.

  As soon as the soles of his boots touched the grass of the rolling fields, he felt them. The leylines, conduits of magic through the world that converged at this place.

  They were weak, shadows of their former selves. But one day, one day soon, they would be restored. Better, they would be more powerful than they’d ever been.

  Belt hadn’t bothered to mend his tattered robes along with his flesh, and as he walked up along the road that the English had put in so that tourists could come and gawk at this place he received a fair few gawks of his own.

  “Excuse me? Sir? Are you all right?” a Brit with a clipboard and a walkie-talkie asked him, while groups of tourists pointed their cameras at him from behind the windows of the bus that had pulled up short to avoid hitting him.

  Belt paused a moment and looked at the man. The man recoiled, whatever small magical animus within him sensing something of Belt’s plan.

  “If anyone disturbs me, they die,” Belt told him.

  “Are you mental?” the man asked.