Chapter 24 #2
His lungs ready to burst for lack of air, Nigel lunged through the haze and scrambled for his mask.
He pulled it on, breathing in, still not entirely trusting the filter to be effective.
He more than halfway expected to join Mortimer in death throes, but, somehow, he was spared.
The filter still worked, cracked though it was.
He breathed in raggedly, his body shivering with the shock of energy-siphoning.
It would take some time to recover the loss of that lifeforce.
But he didn’t have time.
Closing his eyes, Nigel searched inside himself, trying to discern if he still had strength enough for one spell.
Probably not the major incendiary spell he’d had in mind, but there was still a little something there.
Something he thought he could direct, as long as he hadn’t accidentally inhaled any severmist. It would hurt him to perform it, of course.
Might even kill him. But he should have enough. For one spell. One summoning.
But he had to find Luna first.
Mortimer’s thrashing form slowed to a few twitches, while his screams lessened to thick, wet-sounding moans.
Nigel glanced dispassionately at his fallen enemy.
Enemy. Strange. There was a time when guilt had made him think on this man with shame and pity.
He knew he had deeply wronged Mortimer. What’s more, he’d followed up that initial wronging by scarring the man for life.
He wasn’t some triumphant young suitor who had vied with a competitor for the hand of the same darling lady.
No—he was the interloper. The Other Man.
And he’d stepped into that role without hesitation, without a thought for what it might do to Mortimer himself.
Now, had he killed his one-time rival? Very possibly.
He hadn’t the heart to reach out and check for a pulse.
He supposed this made him a murderer. But then, he’d killed before, hadn’t he?
He’d killed Jastira, quite thoroughly. Disintegrated her body and banished her soul.
Yes, he wore the mantle of killer already.
So perhaps one more didn’t make much difference.
Besides, Mortimer had hurt Luna. And intended to hurt her far worse.
For that, there could be no mercy.
Nigel turned away from the now-still body, taking in the chamber into which the Dire Demon had tossed them.
The severmist was thick in the atmosphere, but he could still recognize where he had come: a summoning cell.
A circular chamber, designed specifically for the summoning of Dire Demons.
While it was possible for powerful sorcerers to perform summonings any time, any place—Nigel himself had summoned one in a hotel parking garage not that long ago—a summoning cell’s walls were inscribed with innumerable protection sigils to ensure that, if the sorcerer lost control of the demon, said demon couldn’t escape and wreak havoc on the world at large.
The fact that Mortimer’s portal had led them back to a summoning cell wasn’t all that unusual.
What took Nigel by surprise was the fact that he recognized this particular cell.
He recognized the sigils embedded in the stones.
Ancient sigils, written by long-dead hands in a long-damned language.
Only one place he knew of boasted sigils that old and that evil, that saturated in the Dire.
Nocturnus.
Surging to his feet, Nigel staggered, found his balance, and stood for a long moment, heart ramming in his throat.
Nocturnus! The Brotherhood had returned to Nocturnus!
Well, perhaps that wasn’t altogether surprising.
He’d heard rumor that the entire, twisted tower had been magically stolen and relocated to an unknown pocket dimension, much like he himself had stolen and relocated Garden.
A massive act of sorcery, likely committed by many sorcerers working in tandem.
The Authorities of Plym had already sacked it, leaving the place gutted of spellbooks and workings, but the tower itself was still rife with ingrained magic.
The fugitive sorcerers would have been highly motivated to take it back.
Nigel hadn’t actually believed the rumor. Even if he had, he wouldn’t have cared. He wanted absolutely nothing to do with Nocturnus or its denizens anymore. Not after the things he’d seen, not after the discoveries he’d made down in the dungeon depths.
Turning in place, Nigel searched through the haze until he spotted the door set in the thick wall.
Most likely the other members of the Brotherhood had transmatterported to other cells within the tower.
They would all be converging somewhere, eager to get on with their plans now that Garden’s key and their vessel were both in custody.
Nigel would have to move fast if he was going to thwart them.
Hastily, he activated the spell on Yorik Balthazar’s robe.
A Dark Sorcerer who knew what to look for might still be able to spy the subtle magic, but he’d like to think the Brotherhood were all so rattled by what had taken place in the granary, he might just slip by.
He pulled the hood over his head then approached the door.
His breath rasped much too loudly through the filter.
Damn. He was going to have to be careful about that or he’d give himself away entirely.
Nothing for it. Time to move.
Opening the door, he peered out into the dark hall beyond.
The only light source was a low red Dire torch, set in an iron fixture somewhere off to his left.
No thaumatic lights in Nocturnus, no indeed.
Only the most ominous, dull glow, sparking with motes of anti-glitter as it cast everything in an evil aura.
Nigel remembered relishing that very aura upon his first arrival at the Institute.
Now he found it unbearably gauche. Who were they trying to impress here, after all?
Voices echoed down the passage. Nigel turned, recognizing several of those voices as former associates of his.
“Oi! Gallowglass! You alive, old chum?”
“Yeah, Stormweaver. Gods-damn it, did you see what happened to Vexley? That damned wardsman put a bullet right through his skull!”
“Where’s Mrs. Anguish?”
“Damned if I know! I thought Harrow had her.”
Nigel watched the figures approaching, long shadows flickering in the glow of the Dire torch.
Hastily, he slipped down the passage until he came to the bend.
There he paused and looked back. Eight figures congregated outside Mortimer’s summoning cell.
It wouldn’t be long before they looked inside and discovered what had happened to their fellow sorcerer.
Their defenses were down at the moment, all of them a bit depleted after demon-summoning.
None of these fellows were as powerful as Mortimer, none of them had his natural defenses.
Even so, Nigel hesitated. He hated to give away his presence, but . . . if he had a chance to take down eight of them in one go . . .
Slipping a severmist bomb from his pocket, he hurled it to smash on the wall over Stormweaver’s head.
All the sorcerers cursed colorfully and ducked, their voices blending together on a theme of “What was that?” Then severmist filled the air, and a chorus of coughing, choking, and gagging followed.
Someone shouted, “Dash it all, are the ruddy wardsmen here?”
Silently, Nigel fled down the passage, found the stairway, and began a too-swift descent.
All around him, voices shouted in disorganized chaos.
That was one beautiful thing about Dark Sorcerers: they had absolutely no idea how to work as a team.
None willing to submit to the leadership of another, they could not organize themselves enough to put together a search party.
Not without Calista Anguish to bully them into compliance.
Robes wafting behind him, Nigel maintained a steady downward pace, moving like a phantom through the darkness of Nocturnus.
This old tower was said to be haunted, so he fit right in.
He and all the terrible, traumatic memories beginning to rise in his mind, all the little panicked voices screaming in the back of his head.
He remembered all-too vividly the last time he’d come down this way.
When the rumors had grown too intense, when Jastira’s manic behavior had become too volatile to ignore, when his suspicions had reached a fever pitch.
He had finally forced himself to make this descent.
Until that point, he’d kept to his own chambers near the top of the tower, where the air was clear, and he felt he could work his strongest magic.
Where he could deceive himself into believing he followed some high and lonely destiny, where he could imagine his view was clearsighted, not blinded by hubris or greed.
But eventually he’d gone down. Down, down, down. And faced the truth.
Faced the horrors chained up in dungeon cells, reeking of Dire and despair.
Faced the emaciated forms, almost unrecognizable as human. Begging. Pleading.
Jastira’s own kin—taken and abused as she worked out the details of her Spell of Tremendous Magnificence.
Jastira might be gone. He might have destroyed her body and sent her soul careening helplessly into the Void. But somehow he knew, with an iron rod of conviction planted in his very soul, that yet another one of her kin was even now down in those dungeon cells.
So he continued his spiral until he came to a certain evil-looking door, blazing with protective sigils.
Sigils which, at one time, he could easily dismantle.
But he dared not use his one spell for that purpose now.
If he found Luna—when he found Luna—he was going to need that spell to get them out of here.