AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I give you Corrigan Blight, ladies and gentlemen: a guy who can blast you to bits with fiendish magic one minute and then have you falling all over yourself thanking him for saving your life the next.
Yeah, I know, that describes me, too.
The soldiers dispersed, ready to go and hunt down any wonderists they could find, leaving us to resume our journey back to our tents to collect our gear. We’d got barely twenty yards before yet another contingent of soldiers had caught sight of us and were preparing to take us prisoner. This lot didn’t look like they’d fall for the same trick.
‘Now where was I?’ Corrigan asked me.
‘You were saying something about us needing to recruit more wonderists on our way north?’
‘Ah, right,’ he said, fingers twitching as he smirked at the soldiers, preparing to cast a spell that would leave more piles of ashes on the ground. Evidently, he was feeling much recovered. ‘The old bunch were okay, but for this job, we’re going to need to recruit some real nasty bastards. . .’
Chapter 10
Blood Magic
Darkness still enveloped the encampment by the time Corrigan and I reached my tent. Unease had spread like magefire through the ranks, soldiers and camp followers alike increasingly terrified that this night would be the last for all of them. Rumours about Ascendant Lucien’s demise had already begun to give way to reports of Archon Belleda’s troops rallying in preparation for an attack. That Lucien’s enemy already knew he was dead and his troops in disarray didn’t surprise anyone: a camp this big has almost as many spies as it has fleas. The good news for us was that Belleda’s invasion would cause all kinds of problems for the justiciars.
Auroral Law is similar to the jurisprudence of your average civilised nation– assuming said nation happens to favour pompous sermonising and a self-defeating morass of criminal procedures. You see, a Glorian Justiciar can’t just prosecute any old case in whatever order pleases them. No, they’ve first got to produce the Hierarchy of Transgressions, in a specific sequence, with those crimes deemed most heinous by the Lords Celestine at the top– things like singing blasphemous songs during consensual orgies or proposing scientific explanations of the universe– and then working down to less egregious offences, like murdering your wife in cold blood.
Where the Glorians would stand on the Lords Celestine’s chosen representative’s nemesis decimating his now leaderless troops was anyone’s guess, but for sure it would keep them busy a while. Things would get even more complicated if Belleda had been smart enough to keep a few of her Auroral wonderists in reserve, as even Glorians aren’t immune to Auroral magic.
‘Grab your gear and let’s leave this shithole to the Devilish,’ Corrigan said. ‘I’ll keep watch.’
I’d pushed aside the flaps and slipped inside before I remembered that I’d set spell knots in place when I’d left earlier that evening. The fire was out and the temperature had plummeted so far that it was even colder inside than out. That was not a great sign. The stench of the recently dead was also a reliable indication that something had gone badly awry.
Damn it all,I thought miserably.I told them not to leave the tent. What fresh hell have I added to my conscience this time?
I needed light, but light is a tricky spell to cast if you’re not attuned to luxoral magic. Summoning illumination out of thin air may seem trivial, but from a physics standpoint, it’s no less a violation of natural law than conjuring fire or lightning. What is easier, however, is binding the radiance of an existing light source to an object whose substance will then, over many weeks, be gradually consumed by the spell. I happened to carry just such an item on my person: a piece of wood no larger than my little finger carved in the shape of a candle. I groped in my pocket, heaving a sigh of relief when my fingers closed around it, thanking the gods it hadn’t fallen out back at the tavern or been consumed in the cataclysmic storm Corrigan had summoned.
I flicked my thumbnail over the carved wooden wick to reawaken the spell. It was barely brighter than an actual candle,but that was more than enough to reveal the first pair of bodies lying at my feet.
‘Get that away from me,’ came a voice out of the darkness. It was female, hoarse, and full of loathing.
‘Galass?’I peered down at the two dead soldiers on the ground. Their weapons were still in their hands. There were no apparent wounds on their bodies, but even in the dim light I could see the crimson sheen coating their skin, as if someone had dipped their corpses in red paint. Blood was slowly dripping out of their mouths, eyes and ears, and I was willing to bet that if I bothered to look, the rest of their bodily orifices would be similarly leaky.
‘What happened?’ I asked, holding up the candle.
‘I told you to get that light away!’
A wave of sickness passed through me– no, not sickness. Something worse. I turned my hand over and saw tiny droplets of blood oozing up through the pores of my skin.
‘Galass, whatever you’re doing, stop itnow.’
‘Or what?’ she asked scornfully. ‘You’ll use your demon-bought magic against me? Well, guess what,Silord?’ The light emanating from the wooden wick in my hand flared, the colour changing from soft yellow to an unnatural scarlet. There were more bodies strewn about the tent like discarded dolls, each one covered in that distinctive patina of drying blood. ‘Turns out anyone can make deals with the Devilish.’
I saw her then, some ten feet away from me. She was the same girl I’d left here hours before: young, slim, pretty without being soft. She was still garbed in the pure white obliviate’s gown Lucien had dressed his ‘gifts’ in. There wasn’t so much as a drop of blood on the silk. Only Galass’ hair had changed, the dark tresses now a radiant scarlet as bright as the flame of my charmed wooden candle.
I should have cast one of my remaining Infernal spells that very instant, something that would maim or kill her before she could take me down. Failing that, I could have shouted for Corrigan so he could blast her and save my conscience the trouble.
Instead, I stood there, trying to imagine what sequence of events had brought us to this calamity.
Part of the explanation was right in front of me: a pair of circles created from the same spell-sand I’d wiped away when I’d ended my communion with Tenebris.
‘Oh, Galass, what have you done?’
Someone had managed, without theyearsof training and practice I’d spent developing my skills, to re-form the circle and repeat my ritual.
Inside the first circle lay a pale, perfectly preserved corpse that now looked even younger than its eleven years. Fidick was still breathtakingly beautiful, even in death.
