35. Chapter 35 #2
Elessan had stepped back, his jaw slack. He’d opened a deep cut in Brooks’ bicep. The tissue gaped, but instead of blood, bits of ebony mist wafted from the wound, dissipating like tendrils of fog.
He was bleeding…shadows.
What in the name of the mages had the inquisitor done with the grimoire? The hairs on the back of her neck prickled like a ghost had passed by.
“What’s goin’ on?” Zadé called, glancing up from the pile of unconscious bodies she’d managed to collect at her feet.
“I don’t know!” Elessan said. “But it’s not looking good!”
That was an understatement.
“Brooks did something, a spell from that book!” Aliya said as Jalius snapped the shackle locking one of her ankles to the chair. One more to go.
“What, exactly, did he do?” Elessan asked, daring to sneak a glance at her before turning his attention back to Brooks.
She shook her head as Jalius aimed the poker at the final lock. “I don’t know! He said something, the flames turned black, the air prickled, then everything went dark until you burst in.”
Jalius raised an eyebrow. “Said some words? You can’t be more specific?”
Elessan grunted as Brooks collapsed to his knees.
The shackle broke free. Aliya’s magic flooded back to her in a heady wave that left her head spinning and her ears popping. She clutched the chair arms to steady herself. “Woah.” She inhaled, the scent of ozone mixed with blood and ash filled her nostrils.
Elessan grabbed Brooks’ hair with one hand and yanked his head back, exposing his throat.
Brooks’ magestone flickered black.
The same gem she’d shattered a few minutes earlier. Her face still burned with the cuts from the shards.
The tip of Elessan’s blade settled beneath Brooks’ jawbone and sliced.
Tendrils of dark mist bled from the wound. Aliya stared, her eyelids stretched wide.
Brooks’ outline faded, as though shrouded in fog before collapsing and spreading across the floor in waves of blackness.
“Everyone get back!” Elessan’s words held a faint tremor as he scrambled away, waving at the vapor with his sword as if he could dissipate it with simple air currents.
The cloud pooled, swirling at the center until a few moments later, it coalesced and re-formed into Brooks. The last bit to form was the magestone in his forehead.
“Valek!” Elessan swung his blade again.
“Destroy the gem!” Aliya yelled, giving voice to some instinct struggling for recognition in the back of her mind.
Redirecting his attack, Elessan brought the pommel of his weapon into the jewel.
It shattered with an explosion of darkness that caused the flames in the hearth to flicker then reform.
“By Abaddon…” Elessan muttered.
He stumbled backward as Zadé lunged forward, tackling Brooks to the ground and pinning his arms to his sides. “I got ‘im, Elsan! Lock ‘im up!”
Was there any point? He appeared solid enough to throw in shackles, but with what she’d just seen, Aliya wasn’t certain he’d stay that way.
She glanced around the room. Most of Brooks’ soldiers—her soldiers before they deserted—were dead or bleeding out. The few still upright were on their knees, hands over their heads.
Pressing her lips together, Aliya glared at the traitors.
“Your Majesty,” Jalius stepped into view, breaking her line of sight. “Tell me what Brooks did.”
She blinked at him. “I told you already. Weird words, power, fire, then darkness.”
Jalius rolled his eyes. Grabbing both of her shoulders, he shook her. “Specifics. I need details.”
It had all happened so fast…she didn’t remember the exact phrasing. Human magic, with its chanting and strict rituals, had never been her strong suit. Licking her lips, Aliya glanced around the room as she searched. Eyes locking on her target, she pointed. “That book! He used it.”
Dragging the grimoire over, Jalius motioned to her. “Which spell?”
Chewing the inside of her cheek, Aliya flipped through the pages until she came to the one covered in bloody handprints. Furrowing her brow, she sounded out the unfamiliar language. “Umbra vael, keth-ra nu—”
A warm hand slapped over her mouth, cutting her off. “No! Do not read from the text!” Jalius hissed. “You do not know what you may conjure!”
She blinked. Conjuring was illegal, for good reason. One could summon any manner of beings, from unwilling people to servants of the underdark to full-on demons.
Shaking his hand off, she craned her neck to get a better look at the volume lying on the ground in front of her. “Is that what this does? Conjure things?”
Jalius leaned closer, studying the spell before them. “Always assume a dark grimoire has the ability to do such.” He shook his head. “This should’ve been burned in The Purge.”
“The what?” She studied the gnome and the bloody parchment in her hands.
Jalius glowered, his upper lip wrinkling in distaste. “It’s not important right now. It happened centuries ago when the elder mages realized how dangerous conjuring was. They eliminated anyone with the talent for it, along with their grimoires and magical artifacts.”
Aliya swallowed and glanced up, meeting Elessan’s eyes.
He shrugged. “It was well before I was born, or started spending any time in the human realm.”
“Princess!” Zadé said. “What’cha wanna do with this one ‘n th’ other prisoners?
” She held Brooks by his hair so he faced her.
Someone had put his hands behind his back and slapped on some standard-issue handcuffs.
It was too bad they’d ruined the antimonite ones…
whatever Brooks had done to himself, the magic-neutralizing restraints would have had the best chance of counteracting it.
A gag tight enough to split the Arcane Inquisitor’s lips was rammed between his teeth and tied at the back of his head.
She nudged her broken shackles with her toe. “Is there any way we have another set or two of these lying around somewhere?”
Jalius chewed on his inner cheek and hummed. “Perhaps. They’re rare, hard to make. If we did have any, they’d likely be in the Master Artificer’s lab.”
She nodded. “Send someone to retrieve them.” Her focus drifted from Brooks to her traitorous guards. “Stick them in the dungeon with the others until they tell us what they know. Then we can try them for treason.”
Elessan stepped up to her side. “And Brooks?”
Aliya opened her mouth, paused, then closed it again as she glared at the Arcane Inquisitor where he was splayed on the floor. She wanted to execute him then and there. It would certainly make things easier, but it felt… hypocritical, somehow. “Everyone deserves a trial, don’t they?”
Elessan shook his head. “Perhaps before he escaped custody, killed a bunch of guards and mages, stole the Whisperers, infiltrated your castle, took hostages and turned your nobles against you. He’s a traitor, and traitors don’t get trials. They’re executed.”
She sighed, conceding the point. “I’m not sure we can kill him. I mean, you slit his throat and he poofed into fog, then rematerialized like nothing happened.”
Elessan crossed his arms, tilting his head as he studied the man. “There’s got to be a way. Either we need to wait until the spell wears off, or find a way to circumvent it.”
Brooks threw his head back and laughed through the gag.
Zadé kicked him in the gut. “What’s so funny? Yeh lost, and yer noble friends abandoned yeh.”
Brooks curled over, wheezing.
“Put him in the oubliette, too, once we get the antimonite on him. Under triple guard,” Aliya said. Three men ought to be enough to keep Brooks in check, as long as he wasn’t able to get free of the anti-magic shackles.
It was too bad they didn’t have a room made of the stuff.
Wait…
She turned to Elessan. “In the dungeon… there was a huge cell with an iron door the prisoners said Malkov kept a shadow dragon behind.”
Zadé shuddered, mumbling something in Elven about cursed lizards.
Aliya furrowed her brow as she peered at the other woman before turning her attention back to Elessan. “If that room could contain a shadow dragon, I don’t see why it wouldn’t hold,” she paused and waved one hand at Brooks, “whatever he’s done to himself. Right?”
Elessan shrugged and glanced at Jalius.