Magical Intelligence, page 31
“Aidan!” Turning, Myra slammed shut the door in Aidan and Kady’s astonished faces. The heat of the doctor’s attack crackled over her back and up her arms, stopping to dance menacingly upon the doorway.
Lost to the agony, Myra felt James’ memories melt into her own, flickering through her psyche in kaleidoscopic fashion. Myra forced her way through, holding on to herself, her memories.
The door. The door was locked. No, the door was unlocked. Myra remembered the key, recalled seeing it as she and her companions had approached the room in cautious silence. Something of its dark promise had stuck in her mind as she had listened to Addair’s ramblings to James’ corpse.
“Lock it! For the love of all that is good, lock the door!” she screamed.
Myra felt more than heard the click of the bolt. She saw the truth of it in Aidan’s pale face. She did not need Mind Speech to warn him and Kady back. She simply set her gaze and listened for Addair to take his next shot at her. When he did not, she slowly turned ’round to meet him. Meet the man who she hated above all else. The false mage who’d killed James.
“And who are we? Someone who has power when they oughtn’t. Grit on the lens. A fly in the ointment. Or, if you’re me—” Addair grinned and allowed his features to flicker through a series of different aspects. Race, age, and sex—clay for an expert potter. “If you’re me, you’re a prize. One who elected to be locked in here with me.”
Myra inclined her head, silently standing her ground.
“Don’t they love you enough to want you back? To rescue you from the likes of terrible me? Isn’t that how your team works?”
A shadow of a memory prodded her, and Myra’s eyes flicked to Addair’s hand. “How did you get that scar?”
Surprise colored Addair’s features, and he made a show of covering the thready red scar burned into his wrist. With the motion, it put him at a disadvantage, and Myra leapt forward to disarm the Mien-caster. Like his countenance, the move was a feint. Myra found herself with two unforgiving hands wrapped ’round her neck. They squeezed, prompting the room to flash light then dark to her fear-stricken eyes.
“Who are you?”
“I’m—” Myra croaked and struggled futilely, giving him her weakness.
He released her, pushing Myra away and leveling his weapon at her once more.
“I’m Myra Wetherby. Agent of Magical Intelligence.” Myra stepped to the side, quick as Kady and deft as James. Without looking, she grabbed for the electrified wand and thrust down hard with her elbows, catching Addair across the wrists. Something snapped. She whirled, breaking another of the doctor’s bones with a sideways blow to a knee.
And, as she had hoped and prayed, Kady’s gift was available for Myra’s use.
Materializing into the hallway an instant later, Myra whirled breathless and triumphant upon the prison of Doctor Silas Addair. Turning, she thrust his electrified wand into the handle of the metal door, jamming it so that the power flowed without ceasing.
Aidan and Kady both caught Myra as she stepped backwards, stumbling in her shock and terror. “James.”
She hadn’t thought of James. Of the body and of the honor due M.I.’s fallen agent.
Sparks, blue and white and blinding, glared against the bars of the tiny window and peered through the cracks at the door jamb. Addair’s wand crackled and spit, a most unforgiving jailor. And through it all, the wails of M.I.’s one-time natural philosopher screamed his last breaths.
“Leave him. There’s none of James within that body now.” Aidan gave Myra’s shoulder a gentle pull, turning her away from the horror of Silas’ death sentence.
“We see to the living first,” Kady added in her own hard logic. “We’ve Julius to think of, and you’re the fastest route to him.”
Not wanting to look away, not wanting to seem as though she was running from what she had both started and finished with respect to Silas Addair, Myra simply closed her eyes and tried to find her Empathy so as to locate Griggs. What she saw within herself startled her.
James’ magic, mingled with Myra’s own, was darker than she would have ever thought it when viewed from the outside. There was light. But there was, too, an anti-light. And it was not lesser. Not nearly. It distracted Myra from her own gift, and she opened her eyes, shaking her head. “I cannot feel anything.”
“Come. Let’s away from . . . this.”
Myra nodded, unwilling to explain to her friends that Addair’s screams and the crackle of his power would follow her everywhere from then on. Horror like that was not easily set aside or walked away from.
But then, the Empathy came easily after all. In fact, it seemed as though Julius’ own voice could be heard echoing through the quiet, dark corridors of Broadmoor. Myra looked up to see patches of brightness lighting the walls from somewhere around the corner.
Three wands were raised in unison. Myra, Aidan, and Kady skidded to a halt as Stephen and Robert came round the corner, supporting Julius Griggs between them and carrying ord lanterns. With a cry, Myra felt her dead heart leap within her. She ran to the trio, noting with quick eyes both what was wrong and not wrong with M.I.’s informant. A mangled ankle, wrinkled and stained shirt, and a clotting of blood further darkening his mop of hair seemed to be the worst of it.
“They tell me you’re not what you seem to be, Myra.” Julius’ voice worked, if only in breathy bursts. Myra revised her assessment of his health downward, adding in the probability of cracked ribs . . . or worse. He was quick to reassure her. His idiotic smile was no worse for wear, and this he fixed upon Myra with generosity. “I like that in a gal.”
She rolled her eyes. “You do know that it was Benjamin with whom you’ve been corresponding, yes?”
Stephen’s eyes were upon Myra. “Addair?”
“Dead,” Kady volunteered with almost too much eagerness.
Julius looked to the Kinetic. “And his men?”
“Scattered.”
“The ones here,” Aidan was equally quick to remind them.
“Laurel.” Julius’ statement was not even a question. That he likely knew something of Addair’s plans for the Ways-walker was evident in the pain which lanced across his face.
Accordingly, Aidan was pointed in his answer, “Next on our list. We figured her safe enough after she was abducted from Grafford House and proceeded here first.”
Julius nodded. “The rest of you he wanted dead. But her . . . she was key to his plans. A new generation of wizards with immunity to Violectric Dampening. Mages like he was trying—unsuccessfully—to create through his experiments. Mages without madness in them; ones he could control.” He paused, darting nervous eyes around the team. He was clearly fearful of voicing his next question, and this he gave to Myra herself: “James?”
“Silas got what he wanted there.” Myra set her jaw to the tears that threatened and found they retreated at her command.
Stephen still had questions of his own, and these he voiced as they walked back towards the entryway. “Laurel. What was he planning to do with her?”
“Develop another elixir, I believe. One based on the same principles used for his first cure for Violectric Dampening. A new formula to replace that which he had developed from Florence’s—”
“Gift. Using blood magic, yes.” Robert stepped in and forced a redirection of Julius’ explanation. “We don’t need a history lesson.”
Stephen nodded, pressing further, “Were they taking her here?”
“I believe this was not the sole place Addair felt comfortable. He had an estate just southwest of here—a pledge of loyalty from of one of his Children. Close. I believe it was there he was to take her, near but not so much as to raise suspicion. He did, as you gather, presume total victory and did not anticipate Myra being one of your kind.” Again, Julius flashed his quirked smile to Myra, this time adding the benefit of a raised eyebrow.
“Yeah, well,” Myra brushed past the uncomfortable compliment, “you’re welcome.”
Taking off at a run, Myra hurried to Benjamin who was still administering to those injured in M.I.’s first incursion into Broadmoor. He smiled at her as she approached, but his heart was out of it. He seemed heavy, more grounded than usual. He turned back to his work, murmuring, “In a minute, Thales. Then we can go. We must undo what we can.”
“Myra, can you seek her with your Empathy?” Robert had caught her up. The rest were close at his heels.
Myra turned to him. She had already considered that difficulty. “Yes and no. It’s as though Laurel is both everywhere and nowhere.”
“She’s in the Ways.”
“I can feel her in here”—Myra lifted a hand to her chest. Laurel was in the Empath’s heart; in her magic—“but she’s not close; I can no longer use her gift.”
“But if we were to get close? Close enough for your Empathy to sense her corporeal self?” Benjamin joined the conversation. White-faced, the hospital orderly to whom he had been tending stared at the group of people standing over him. No one bothered to explain, nor did they bother to hide what it was they were up to. Wands were produced, sparks igniting on tips.
“It’s very likely our only chance for now,” Myra agreed to the wisdom of the plan.
“You’ll have greater spread if you fly upon the Ways that fuel the TurnKey.” Sometime during the exchange, Aidan had found a cleaning cupboard. He held out a broom to Myra. “The rest of us can ride below on Robert’s horses.”
“I’d . . . I’d rather not chance it alone,” Myra admitted weakness at long last. “I can only share my gift with one, spent as I am. Who of you wants to fly with me?”
Chapter Forty-Three
The trick of flying, Myra found, was in not thinking at all of what one was doing while they did it. And with Aidan beside her and the press of Laurel’s distress somewhere in the dark below, Myra found distraction enough to find the first edge of the Ways that lived in the air far above the ground and ride it upon little more than a broom meant to sweep a hospital floor.
The Ways. Onion skins upon the aether. Layered worlds.
And within which layer does Laurel wait? Myra wondered, seeking Laurel’s nearness with her gift.
Perhaps none at all. The darkness of James’ magic echoed in Myra’s chest, a weight that threatened to send her crashing from the sky. She meditated upon the loss, trapped in it.
In the end it had been as simple as the snuffing of a candle. He was simply gone, had been there one moment and was now empty and still. All that noise and fuss, followed by absolute silence. An unmaking.
And for what? It wasn’t sacrifice. It wasn’t even murder. It was . . . a waste. A complete and utter waste. A life of service, cut down without ceremony or care. In his final moments, James had broken. Fractured. Is that how M.I.’s adversaries had felt? Had he ever done to others what had been done to him? Even having ridden within his soul, Myra was unsure of this last. James had been hard. Unbreakable.
A lie.
The warm buzz of Aidan’s Triewes settled around Myra like a mantle of sweet comfort. Come, fly with me, it said. Do not lose yourself to this soul-wearying grief, this loss of self. It is a fear that destroys a mind. An unraveling, an antithesis of self. James lives on in the truth of the world.
Pulling herself at last from her dark ponderings, Myra fixed her eyes on the handle of her broom, finding that, at last, the sight of the ground far below her did not make her sick or dizzy.
Aidan has more skill traveling in the Ways of the TurnKey than he owns to. I wonder if he realizes that such modesty is perilously akin to a lie. She sent out her compliments along the thread of power that connected the two of them and marveled at how vast tracts of land were made small as she and Aidan flew over the countryside.
It made sense now, where maps came from. But it had Myra wondering how such were made without the aid of magic. Her education spoke up, answering for her. Magic had been used thusly. DMI’s origins were the Department of Topography and Statistics, after all. To hear James tell it, all they had done in the early stages of the second Afghan war had been to redraw the maps, mile by painstaking mile. Myra’s heart faltered.
James. How could he be dead?
Tears gathered on Myra’s cheeks, slipping over and down her chin. Rain for the fields below.
They slowed, Aidan came close alongside, reaching out and signaling to Myra with a squeeze of his hand that they had reached the furthest point where Laurel’s captors might have come. The blur of magic lessened, grew transparent, more akin to frosted glass in the wintertime than the rushing of a waterfall. Myra gasped, fearful that they might tumble to the ground, luckless angels.
Vengeful angels. Myra realized that her Voice was available to her, should she need it. Which meant they had located Laurel after all. Looking downward into the darkness, she cursed the fact that they had had to attempt such a rescue on a moonless night. Granted, with the enemy AethCaster’s cloud cover still holding sway, such assistance as moonlight would have been rendered useless.
Squinting, Myra could see next to nothing in the black on black of the life-sized map below. Patience won out as her sharp eyes parted the veil of magic surrounding her and Aidan. Here and there a late-night illumination still held comfort for the traveler, tiny points of yellow light, dulled by distance. It reminded Myra of how far up they were, and she fought the urge to scream. She swallowed the impulse with difficulty, grateful when Aidan again squeezed her hand, reassuring and solid. He would not let go. He would not let her fall.
Using the guide lights of sparse civilization, she could almost make out the thin ribbon of road winding through the forests and fields.
“We have to get closer.” Or at least that’s what Myra presumed Aidan said. To her eyes it seemed he merely mouthed the instruction, his words cruelly snatched away by the whirling wind and magic around them.
Together, they shimmied low as they dared. Too far and they would fall below the magic which held them aloft. Myra crinkled her brow in concentration, seeing nothing but a world of darkness made darker by their terrible urgency and the horrors they had left behind but minutes prior.
Laurel was down there. And close by. Myra was certain of it. She tried her Voice again, able to reach the others now that she and Aidan were nearer the ground. Everyone, I can use Laurie’s gift from here.
Beneath her, the riders converged, called by Myra, an arrow pointing towards victory. She and Aidan followed the diminutive clouds of dust with eager eyes.
There. On the road far ahead rumbled a carriage.
Aidan pulled close to Myra, this time making sure he was heard. “Go.”
Together, they shot through the heavens, speed blurring the magic. Myra’s eyes watered with their efforts, and her skin tingled. It was as though invisible ghosts tugged at anything left exposed and twisted any loose article of clothing.
They neared the carriage. Myra breathed deep, quelling a memory from what seemed like ages ago. A hearse, driven into an alleyway under cover of night. A driver, foppish and endearing in his dishevelment. A corpse, victim of James’ magic.
But Laurel was alive. She had to be.
A spark of light blossomed from the end of Myra’s wand. A beacon to call the team. Laurie, we’re coming.
Something heavy slammed into Myra and sent her spinning out into the black sky. “Aid—!”
Luck more than presence of mind allowed Myra to keep her wand as she tumbled end over end towards the growing ground. Grasping hands clutched fruitlessly for a broom no longer there, and bereft of its stable presence and Aidan’s guidance, Myra could not right herself before dark trees rose up to meet her.
With a shriek, Myra burned frantic magic in one last gasp of effort to save herself from a broken neck. A shield of protection, fractured and yielding, blossomed around her. The oak tree into which she had fallen took much of the damage otherwise meant for her. Leaves and branches passed in a slowing blur. Ducking, Myra tucked her head into her chest and braced for contact with the hard dirt.
Every part of her body screamed at once. Pain. Never-ending pain engulfed Myra, and her lungs and heart spasmed in heroic effort to continue pumping. But, jumbled as she was, nothing seemed to be working right.
Panic rose within Myra, confusing lungs that already were refusing to draw air. Closing her eyes, Myra prayed for a quick death and found steadiness in the gentle whirl of sparks against her closed eyelids.
The pain receded, became separate aches and throbs vying for attention.
The impact with the earth had robbed her of breath. It was just as it had been for Kady when Myra had taken the Kinetic by surprise during combat training. She concentrated on breathing shallowly. Air in; air out. Better.
She moved to sit up and found that she could. Nothing was broken. Maybe.
Myra looked about her, seeing little more than trees and an old, narrow path. The half-buried stones of the road gleamed eerily in the light of her still-illuminated wand, ancient witness to her tumble from grace.
She was alone.
“Myra Moore. Or was it Wetherby? I never could get your story straight.”
Scrambling to her feet, Myra hissed as she discovered that certain parts of her were quite a bit more injured than first thought. Her left ankle refused to support her fully, and several ribs screamed fractured protestation as she prepared to meet he who had spoken such haunting words. “Who are you?”
Where are you? The latter question was more pressing, but Myra dared not voice that ignorance. Not into the face of such menace as she felt from the unknown assailant. She pointed her wand in what she believed was the correct direction, its bright spell wavering in her shaking hands.
A hooded and cloaked figure stepped out onto the road. The man had a wand of his own. With an ominous crackle, the mage’s weapon sparked to life and shot its broken lightning straight at Myra.
With a spryness that surprised even her, Myra spun to the side, lifting her own wand in battle. Lightning answered lightning. The hooded figure was forced to give ground.
Both put up their wands, the enemy mage out of mocking admiration and Myra from exhaustion that she prayed he did not see. The hood was moved back, revealing dark hair, swarthy skin, and a nose that looked like it had been broken more than once in its lifetime. White teeth—distinctly even and bright—flashed as he broke into a mad chuckle at Myra’s expense. His eyes, however, held no mirth. Myra could see as much, even at the distance of the twenty-odd paces at which they stood apart.
