“Nothing to tell.” Thing looked down at Nulthir’s thin and drawn face. “Why doesn’t he wake? I call, but he doesn't answer.” Thing leaned into her, needing her strength. “It’s like when the demon took him. I almost couldn’t pull him back then either.”
This was far more words than Thing usually strung together aloud. Mentally was another story. He could chew your ear off mind-to-mind, but he wasn’t a fan of speaking aloud, probably because mind-talking had been the easiest and best way to communicate with the human child who’d adopted him. Now, that child was grown and possibly dying. They needed a way to help him, not secrets.
Amal shifted uncomfortably as a flash of red caught her eye. It was the remnants of that bespelled blanket. Over by the window, Mixie, Yarn, Dale, and Furball were winding those remnants into balls for later use. If only there was time to weave it back into something. That blanket had come in handy until it had caught on one of the flying buttresses and unraveled.
While that little group worked by the pale light filtering in through the slit window, the rest of her family of owl-monkey-cat creatures was in another room keeping the grandkids busy. Maybe she ought to send one of them to fetch a healer.
“No. No healers.” Thing clutched her more tightly to his side, and his wings draped over them like a feathered cloak.
Amal rubbed her beak against his and held him while he called his friend telepathically again. What if this time Nulthir couldn’t bounce back? He'd never needed much beyond food, sleep, and companionship. What if his magical half had needed more than that?
A bright flash dazzled her eyes, and a loud pop of displaced air startled Amal as Furball appeared. He squealed in alarm as he fell several feet onto Nulthir’s chest before Amal could grab him. Furball rolled to his fur-hidden feet, proving the kit was okay and crawled into the warm hollow of Nulthir’s breast pocket to sleep.
Before he disappeared into it, Thing leaned down and put himself beak-to-beak with his wayward grandson.
“He’s just a baby,” Amal reminded him. A very furry baby who kept disobeying orders.
Thing ignored her. “No teleporting. You promised.”
Furball squeaked something that might have been a confirmation, then scrunched down until only his little cat ears showed. Before Thing could say anything else, Nulthir opened his eyes. They were pitch black, and his face contorted in pain.
Furball popped out of his pocket like his furry rump was on fire. Thank the Creator, it wasn't. Amal looped her prehensile tail around the bedpost to anchor her as she leaned down to collect the startled kit.
"Shh, it's alright now. I've got you," she cooed as she stroked his quivering back between his stubby wings.
Thing jumped onto the bed ready to engage in a psychic battle to get his friend back. Amal hoped that wouldn't be necessary. Black magic was insidious. It corrupted those who used it. What did it do to those it had infected?
Amal glanced at her numb wing. Its feathers had blackened after that strange magical attack last night. Other than that, she felt fine. But for how long? That darkness was spreading through the rest of her. How long before she wasn't herself anymore?
She shoved those fears to the back of her mind. Worrying wouldn't do anyone any good. Thing had enough on his mind right now. He didn't need to shoulder her troubles too, especially if he was plotting something. She glared at his back.
Will he be okay? Furball asked so tentatively Amal almost didn’t hear him. He pricked his little cat ears up and listened for a response.
Grumpy Gramps will fix this, Amal thought, deliberately using the nickname her mate hated. For all their sakes, she hoped she was right about that as she cuddled Furball close.
Who're you calling grumpy? Thing turned his head one-hundred-and-eighty degrees so he could raise one tufted brow. But it had the intended effect. Furball chortled, and Thing switched his attention back to the young man he was trying to help. Come back to us, Friend Nulthir. Dark magic doesn’t become you.
Amal hopped off the bed to clear the area of gawkers. Most of their extended family stared at the psychic confrontation on the bed until Amal shooed them into the next room—all except Crispin. As the oldest of her and Thing’s kits, he knew Nulthir almost as well as Amal did. She handed Furball off to his mother, Mixie, and shoved her daughter into the other room then touched the rune to swing the door closed.
More runes sparkled on the door. They would protect the others if the worst happened.
“What can I do?” Thistle poked her head out from under a chair.
That explained how she’d had missed Thistle. Clever girl. Amal liked Crispin’s mate more and more. “Bring water and maybe some bread. It’s been hours since he’s taken either of those.”
Thistle nodded and reached up with her prehensile tail to grab a rung on a ladder back chair piled high with armor. She swung up onto the pile and used that to boost herself up onto a dresser via its partially open drawers. Nulthir never closed them because they made a convenient staircase, and the little ones liked to jump into his sock drawer.
Thistle poked her head into that drawer to check for grandkids and gave the all-clear sign before summiting the dresser. All the little ones were safe in the other room. Good.
Three panes of silvered glass reflected a pitcher and a dark smudge around Nulthir. That smudge gathered itself into a grotesque mockery of a head as Thistle reached for the pitcher of water.
“Thistle!” Amal shouted.
Her adopted daughter turned and squawked at the disembodied head reflected in the glass. “What is that?”
“Dark magic,” Thing said aloud, because his mind was engaged elsewhere. “It hides from our eyes, but the mirror reveals all. I asked Nulthir to put that spell on it after…” he trailed off.
“The demon incident.” Crispin shuddered and hopped off the deep windowsill. Behind him, dawn paled the sky.
Because dark magic was an inversion of light magic, it was difficult to see even with mage sight. But it couldn’t hide from a reveal all spell. Amal noted the rune painted on the looking glass. There was one in each corner of the three panes. How had she mistaken it for a decorative design? This place was making her soft.
“What do we do now?” Thistle asked.
“We get the dark magic out of him any way we can,” Thing said grimly. His beak was set and his mind too. He bent all his power on a telepathic call to his dearest friend.
"How do you take magic from a warlock?" Amal paced. She needed something to do.
"Nulthir is a channel." Crispin shrugged, as if that should solve all their problems.
Did it? Amal considered that.
“What does that mean exactly?" Thistle shifted the pitcher. "Where are the cups?"
"In the other room probably. But to answer your other question, channels pull magic in and shape that magic into spells."
"Might that be a possible solution?" Thistle gave Nulthir a speculative glance.
“I don't think so. If he channels that black magic into a spell, it might destroy us all.” Amal climbed onto the bed using her tail since one of her wings was still numb.
“Then we should avoid that.” Crispin batted a red ball of formerly spelled thread with his hands. He kept his claws retracted, so they wouldn't catch on the thread.
"I second that." Thistle looked worriedly at the face reflected in the mirror. The creature who was trying to take over Nulthir’s body was a grotesque misshapen thing made of shadow and probably evil too, judging by its reflection.
Thing reached for his friend's mind again. His determination to break through whatever was preventing Nulthir from hearing his mental call bled through their bond.
Amal extended a hand to stop him, but she was on the other side of the bed. "What if that dark magic infects you too?"
Then you'll have to save us both. Thing winked at her.
Only if you tell me what you're hiding from me, featherhead, Amal sent back then said aloud, "I hope you know what you're doi
ng."
Always, my sky-dancer, always. And there was that devilish twinkle in his eye again. Thing could be so maddening at times.
You’re not invincible, you know. Even your mind has limits, Amal sent to him, but he wasn't listening to reason anymore. Tread with care, my heart.
There were some places even his mind shouldn’t go. As Thing stiffened and his raptorial eyes glazed over, Amal feared this was one of them.
Chapter Two
Darkness lay heavily over everything, weighing Nulthir down, but he staggered on hopefully to somewhere. He had to get back to his friends. He just didn't know where they’d gone or where he was. But he had a nagging feeling, he wasn’t anywhere at all. “Thing? Amal? Crispin? Thistle? Furball?”
No response, not even an echo, and that was peculiar since he now lived and worked under a mountain. How could his friends have gotten so far away they couldn't hear him? Or was he the problem?
They'd been right there a moment ago when he’d used the last of the wild magic to recast the float spell on that blanket. Nulthir couldn’t believe he still had it. Laughter bubbled up, but it tasted bitter. Either Thing, Amal, or one of their kids must have grabbed it before they’d escaped from Avenia, the treehouse village deep in the enchanted forest where he’d grown up. Where were they?
Nulthir hadn't felt this alone since he'd met Thing. He wasn't the most psychic human who’d ever walked the earth, but Thing had more than enough of the mind gift to reach him no matter what. So why couldn't he hear his friend?
Maybe something in this darkness was blocking Thing's call. Nulthir squatted down but his fingers encountered the same cold stone that was everywhere under Mount Eredren. Was he still somewhere in the prison? Or worse, lost in his own mind? Because that would explain the lack of echoes and the sinking feeling in his chest.
Ahead, the darkness thinned, and a lighter spot amid the gloom blossomed. Maybe that was the exit? Nulthir staggered toward it. "Thing? Is that you?" Nulthir headed for that bright spot until it took on a matronly shape. “I don’t believe in ghosts.” He swiped a hand through the woman-shaped wisp of smoke running toward him.
She caught his hand and glared up at him. Nulthir stared down at his mother in horror.
“What you believe matters little in this place.” Her hooded eyes branded him a traitor for not acquiescing to her machinations like a good son ought.
“What are you talking about?” Nulthir tugged his hand but couldn’t free it from her iron grip. Mother had always been wickedly strong. She'd brought seven sons and six daughters into the world. Nulthir was the seventh son and the youngest of thirteen children, lucky him.
“You can’t escape your fate.” Her long bone-white nails dug into his hand. Blood welled in the half-moon cuts she made.
“You’re not here. I left you in Avenia.” And Avenia was enough leagues away that not even she could reach him magically. Nulthir pried her fingers apart until he could escape her grasp.
His mother threw her head back, and her fangs flashed as she laughed. They were a terrifying new addition. What the hell had she been up to since he'd left? “You can’t escape me. Blood is power, and you’re the blood of my blood, bone of my bone. Ashes to ashes, my son, until you're dead and dusted, you belong to me.” She licked the blood off her nails—his blood which she’d drawn with her claws.
“Thing! Where the hell are you?” Nulthir put the full weight of his need into that shout. Thing had helped him defeat his mother once. If she was back and not just reaching out from afar to take advantage of a bad situation—wait, that had to be it. Nulthir had worked with more magic recently than in all the months since he'd left home. His mother must be using that to zero in on him.
After all, magic was the life-fire of the universe, and magic users could get very bright when they worked magic. That must be what had happened.
“It’s your magic,” a still, small voice said as if imparting a great secret. “The darkness cannot take you if you don’t let it. Fight it.”
“Who said that?” Because it wasn't his mother. She wanted him to embrace the darkness, not reject it.
Nulthir glanced behind him. Two pale beams of light intersected for a moment. In their comforting glow, the darkness peeled back, and he saw himself pale and gasping for breath on the bed in his flat under Mount Eredren. Thing was beak-to-nose with him and staring into a pair of unfathomable black eyes. There were no whites left. Dark magic was taking him over.
"That's not me. Thing, help me." Nulthir turned away from the sight.
“If you let it take over, it will. But only if you let it. Fight it, and it cannot win,” that still, small voice said.
Behind Nulthir, a brilliant cross pulsed. It wasn't a symbol he recognized, but Nulthir felt its power, and it was good. “Who are you?”
"A friend to those who fight the darkness. We'll meet again, someday soon. Until then, fight until there's only light left." The voice and the glowing cross faded from sight, but both lingered just on the edge of perceptibility. Nulthir wasn't alone against his mother.
“What do you want with me?” he asked her. It was the one question he hadn't had time to ask the last time they'd clashed. But then, she'd been trying to stuff a demon into him.
“For you to become my dark star, as cold and sharp as winter, as deep as a moonless night and as terrible as the quakes that shake the earth." She licked her lips in anticipation. "You take that darkness in like I taught you. You cross the line twixt light and dark, good, and evil. Power lies on the other side, son. Take it back to your dear old Ma. Become a dark flame in the Eternal Shadow’s forge.” Her hand landed on his wounded shoulder where Crispin had accidentally gored him. She squeezed that wound, drawing blood.
“You’re not really here. You can’t be. You’re not that powerful.” Nulthir wrenched her hand away from him. It faded into a wisp of smoke, and so did she because she was just a figment of his fractured mind. “I broke your power when I sent the demon you summoned back to hell.”
“But you’re still dimming just as I planned. I wrote it all on your skin, every spell, every step to become my dark champion. You can’t escape that. It’s already begun.” His mother grinned in triumph.
“What do you mean I’m dimming?” Even as he asked that, Nulthir felt the import of that word. Dimming was a bad thing for a magicker of any stripe, and it sent a cold shudder through him. That meant his magic was changing from the light he’d always worked with to the darkness she’d always planned for him to wield.
Nulthir turned his mage sight on the root of his magic and gasped in horror. That flame inside him was guttering. Its light was streaked with black, and that couldn’t be good. Magic was light, so was life. Its opposite was death, or was it?
“You can’t escape your fate,” his mother said as the gloom evaporated to reveal the bark-covered wall of his closet-sized room in the family treehouse in Avenia-on-the-Boughs.
The treehouse groaned as the boughs of the enchanted tree bearing it aloft shivered in the wind. Sap rushed in the great tree's veins and under it, the soft thrum of the ancient tree’s magic beat a slow rhythm. Nulthir missed that damned tree. Oh, how he hated living and working underground so far from everything green and growing.
"This isn't real." Nulthir crushed the red coverlet in his hand. The one he'd inked with flight runes when he was small and flying seemed like a grand adventure. This was just a comforting memory from a time before his life had gone to hell.
A small black hand appeared as Thing climbed onto the bed. “She will not win. Don’t even think that,” Thing chided him, and Nulthir was never so happy to see the owlish cat creature who was his oldest and dearest friend.
“You heard what she said?”
Thing gave him a look. Of course, the owl-cat had heard. “She’s not here. She’s just a memory. She said all that stuff before when that demon tried to possess you. Your mind is just replaying it.”
“Then how did I end up back here?” Nulthir
gestured to the room. It was where he’d grown up with Thing, and those years had been happy until they’d ended on his twenty-first birthday. Thing raised a tufted eyebrow as if the answer should be obvious. “You brought me here? Why?”
“So, I could reach you. Every heart has a home. This is yours, and I’m part of it. I have power here.” Thing puffed his chest out in pride and invited a caress.
Nulthir obliged him. “Because I trust you?” Thing bobbed his head. “What do we do now? You heard what she said. Her plan is written on my skin. I can’t take my skin off. It’s kind of attached to me.”
“We'll find a way, but you must wake up. We need you conscious.”
“How? I’ve been trying to wake up from this nightmare, but nothing happens.”
The bed vanished, and Nulthir was standing again. This time, he was wearing an old but well-padded leather jerkin over his guardsman uniform. Thing sat on his shoulder, his feet—claws carefully retracted—gripped the large rings sewn into the epaulets.
Thing pointed, and everything faded to gray then a fuzzy orange light. “He’s back.” He was a black blur against the orange one.
"Oh, thank the Creator," Amal said from somewhere nearby.
"What now?" Crispin appeared to his right and laid a gentle hand on the gauze covering his wounded shoulder.
“Now, we must keep him here.” Thing elbowed his son out of the way.
"How do you plan on doing that? You heard what my mother said. I didn't escape her plans for me. I only delayed them." Nulthir punched the mattress in frustration.
All those months of wandering and hiding, and they'd all been for nothing. Tears burned his eyes, but he didn't care. He was twenty-two, and that was too young to become a monster.
Thing patted his arm. "Don't despair. We'll find a way." I didn't save you just to lose you. Have a little faith in your friends.
That dangerous twinkle was back in his friend's eye. Uh-oh, Thing was up to something. Only time would tell if that something could save him, but Nulthir trusted his winged friend. "Do what you must."
Wayward Magic (Magic Underground Anthologies Book 2) Page 57