The Darkest Magic by Morgan Rhodes
As the head sunk heavily into the sack, all Maddox could think of were the times he went to the market with his mother. She would pick ripe melons and gourds, then toss them over her shoulder without a glance, knowing that Maddox was ready with a basket to catch them. He’d never dropped a single one.
Swiftly, they left the square and made their way to the nearest stretch of forest, where they’d made camp the night before. Camilla started a fire with flint from her pocket, while Barnabas hunted for a rabbit for their dinner.
Maddox sat on a fallen log and stared at the sack.
What had he been thinking suggesting such a horrific thing? Accidentally raising a full graveyard of corpses from their resting places was strange and unnatural enough, but doing it to a severed head? On purpose?
Doubt, that familiar yet unwanted friend, came to sit next to him.
Soon Barnabas returned with the game. “Do we even know what his name is?” Maddox asked hoarsely as he approached.
Camilla nodded as she poked at the half-cooked rabbit on the spit. “It’s Alcander Verus,” she said.
“Alcander Verus,” Maddox repeated, nodding.
“If you’re having second thoughts . . . ,” Barnabas began, but then stopped himself. “Well, I’ve been wondering whether there’s another way to find out that wicked creature’s weaknesses, but I’ve come up blank. What we need are the answers that live in that head.”
Maddox nodded. “No need to worry about sounding like a father now. Or are you so sure that I’ll fail that you find yourself less concerned about how I’ll fare against the dark magic?”
“What troubles me most, my young friend, is that I don’t think you’ll fail.” There was a sense of gravity and worry to his words that Maddox couldn’t ignore—and that made him certain he wasn’t joking.
Playing with life and death wasn’t a game.
And his power, should he be able to harness it, would be impossible to fully comprehend.
“If this works,” Maddox said so softly he doubted the others could hear him, “I could bring my mother back to life.”
Barnabas said nothing, but Maddox heard his breath catch in his throat.
Camilla came to sit next to Maddox and gently took his hand in hers.
“Look at me, sweetling.”
Maddox forced himself to meet her troubled gaze.
“I know you miss your mum,” she said. “As much as I miss my own, I’m sure. It’s a shame Damaris is gone. But she’s gone to a place beyond here, a wonderful place of peace and light. She’s had some time now to settle into that place of paradise, and to attempt to wrench her out of there now . . .” Camilla shook her head. “You’d be bringing back something else. Something as dark and twisted as the spirits you’ve faced.”
“But how do you know that for sure?” he said, his voice breaking. “That paradise beyond this world—isn’t that just another old legend?”
“Many legends only become legends because the stories are true. Death is nothing to tamper with, even if you have the means within you to switch life for death. Even this”—she glanced at the sack—“is a dangerous use of your magic.”
He was hit with a sinking feeling in his chest, because he knew deep in his heart that Camilla was right. For a moment, just one wonderful, hope-filled moment, Maddox had thought it might really be possible to bring his mother back to life.
Maddox allowed a second wave of grief to tear through him, bearing the pain silently and stiffly, before it receded like a cold tide on an icy shore.
“The rabbit is nearly ready,” Camilla said softly. “First we’ll eat, then we’ll discuss this more.”
“No,” Maddox said. “No more discussion. I want to do it now.” Camilla nodded quietly and gazed at him with serious but supportive eyes.
Summoning as much bravery as he could, Maddox untied the canvas sack. He reached in slowly, his fingertips grazing a patch of dry hair and a cold scalp. His skin crawled, and he pulled his hand back a bit. Bracing himself again, he reached in further. He got a strong grasp on a handful of hair and pulled the head out. He held it up. There it was, the scribe’s head dangling before him, its expression slack, its eyes open and glazed. Staring.
“How do you feel so far?” Barnabas asked.
“Like I’m going to be sick.”
“Understandable.”
Repressing a retch that rose in his throat, Maddox placed the head down on the ground, where the firelight flickered warmly against its grayish complexion.
Maddox breathed in, inhaling a mix of mossy forest and roasting rabbit, and tried to find his focus. He’d found that his magic tended to work best when he was angry or frightened or whenever his emotions were otherwise elevated. Right now he didn’t feel much of anything. Sickened, uncertain, sad, and numb didn’t seem to be the right ingredients.
But the magic was still within him. It was him. And there were many roads to take to access it.
He forced himself to think of Goran, ending his mother’s life in a crimson trail of blood. He let his hatred for that cowardly assassin, his need for vengeance, flow through him in a fiery rage.
There it was: a quiver, a chill, racing through him, and then a shadow creeping into the periphery of his vision. As soon as he spotted the shadow, he let his hatred for Goran guide him toward the magic, drawing it into a ball of darkness, molding it into the shape his strange instincts told him he needed.
His racing thoughts grew quiet, and a somber stillness slid through him like thick, icy sludge, filling his veins, his heart, his mind.
For a moment, there was only his magic; everything else in the universe ceased to exist. He took this magic, which he’d condensed by now into a swirling, smoky ball, in his hands and pushed it toward the scribe’s head.
Wake up, Alcander Verus, Maddox thought in an echoing monotone filled with all the power and strength he didn’t normally feel. Wake up and talk to us. Tell us what we need to know.
The ball of shadows burst into dozens of spidery wisps. As they separated, they flew right into the corpse head, entering through its eyes, nostrils, mouth, and ears. And then they disappeared.
All was still and quiet. Maddox watched, trying to will the head to reanimate but not trying to scare the effect away by hoping too hard. So he watched.
And watched.
And then watched some more.
“Maddox?” Barnabas asked after quite some time.
Maddox tore his gaze away from the head to glance at him. “What?”
Barnabas didn’t reply right away, but he shared a concerned look with Camilla, his jaw tight.
“How do you feel?” Camilla asked Maddox evenly.
“Fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Am I sure?” Maddox frowned. “Of course I’m sure. But I need to try again.”
“No,” Barnabas said. “That’s enough for tonight. More than enough, I—”
The muffled sound of a grunt rose up in between them, causing Barnabas to stop midsentence.
Maddox craned his neck, eyeing the dark forest around them. “What was that?”
Camilla’s eyes grew wide as she stared at a spot on the ground. “The head . . .”
Maddox shot his gaze back to the severed head. “Did it just grunt?”
“I—I think so.”
Barnabas drew closer, crouching down next the head. “I don’t know. Perhaps there’s just a warlog nearby, digging up night grubs.”
Then, in a quick fit of motion, the scribe’s eyelids fluttered.
Maddox stopped breathing.
The eyes shot wide open and began darting from side to side.
And then the head began to scream.
Barnabas jumped up from the ground, staggering back from the head and covering his ears. “Make him stop, will you?”
“You’re asking me?” Maddox shouted, also on his feet now. “I haven’t any idea how!”
“Oh my! Do something! Maddox, stop him!” Camilla’s lopsided gaze da
“Why do you think I can do something?” Letting out a long, shaky breath, Maddox tried to summon his composure. “Hey! Head, listen to me. Listen to me! Stop screaming!”
The head stopped screaming.
Barnabas nodded in relief. “Well done.”
“Wh-wh-what?” it sputtered, eyes still darting and clearly struggling to understand why its neck wasn’t doing its job of turning. “Wh-what’s going on? Where am I? Who are you?”
Twisting her hands in front of her, Camilla took a step closer to it. “Greetings, Alcander. My name is Camilla. This is Barnabas and his son, Maddox.”
Its eyes widened. “I . . . know those names. You’re the rebels who attempted to trick the goddess! The rebels who put thoughts of traitors in her radiant and glorious mind!” The head cleared its throat and took on a very smug expression. “You are all hereby arrested in the name of Valoria, goddess of earth and water. Oh, this is wonderful! How well I will be rewarded when she learns I have apprehended you all.”
“So far delusional thinking seems to be the main side effect of your resurrection spell, Maddox,” Barnabas said with a nod. “Interesting.”
“Resurrection spell?” Alcander repeated. “What in the goddess’s blessed realm are you talking about?”
“Do you remember what happened to you?” Maddox asked, though he was barely able to focus on anything the head was saying because—it had worked!
The head was awake. It was talking. It might be delusional, but it definitely wasn’t dead.
Alcander frowned. “What do you mean, boy?”
Maddox grimaced. “I mean . . . um, how do you, ah, feel right now?”
“Why, I feel just fine. Certainly, I’ll admit to being a bit rattled—I’ve just had a rather horrid nightmare. But those are quite normal for me, I’m afraid, due to my large and active brain. I’m always creating stories, you see. After all, I’m a scribe—the goddess’s personal scribe.”
“Yes, we know,” Barnabas said, his arms crossed over his chest. “Tell me: What was your nightmare about?”
Alcander scowled at him. “You’re rather rude for someone who’s just been arrested for treason! But I suppose we do need something to talk about during our journey back to the palace. In this terrible dream, Her Radiance had been fooled into thinking I was planning to betray her.” He paused and glanced at Camilla. “I assured her I would never, ever do such a thing, but she didn’t believe me. Before I knew it, the guards had their filthy hands on me and were hauling me out to be executed in front of a most bloodthirsty crowd.”
Alcander fell silent.
“Oh my, that does sound like a horribly frightening nightmare,” Barnabas said, clearly taunting the poor scribe. “What happened next?”
“Well . . .” Alcander frowned deeply. “Next, one of the guards took me to the execution block. There was a man who wore a black hood and carried an ax—the executioner. And then they forced me down to the block . . . and the executioner stood over me . . . and then he . . . and then he chopped my head off!”
Barnabas nodded. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but . . . that wasn’t a dream.”
Alcander just looked back at Barnabas, blinking with confusion. He looked next to Camilla, and then his gaze finally fell on Maddox, who returned his befuddled expression with a squeamish one.
“It’s true,” Maddox told him. “I’m sorry.”
“The executioner chopped off my head,” Alcander said flatly.
“Yes.”
“Bah!” Alcander scoffed. “What absolute nonsense!”
Alcander began to laugh, on and on until tears began to stream from his squinting eyes. Then he looked down.
And he started to scream again.
“Oh!” he cried, eyes to the sky. He was still crying, but not out of laughter anymore. “Oh, radiant goddess—I am dead. I’m dead! It wasn’t a nightmare—this is real! How could you do this? To me? Your most loyal and trusted and obedient servant?”
“Because she’s evil,” Barnabas said bluntly. “And guess what? You’re going to help us destroy her. She did suspect you of being a traitor. Said she saw it in a vision. Ha! What a laugh. Eva was the only immortal who was capable of having visions of the future. Valoria can do nothing more than sleep and hope for dreams.”
Alcander blinked rapidly, his anxious whimpering slowing to a stop. “Wh-what did you say? That I’m going to . . . help you?”
“You know her,” Maddox said. “You know her weaknesses.”
“I don’t know anything about her. You think what she tells me is the truth? Like your father just said, the woman is full of lies. There’s no way to tell what is real and what is not. Oh, I hate her. I hate her so much I could kill her with the force of my anger!”
“Now that’s a much more helpful way to talk,” Camilla said, nodding.
“No, it’s not,” Barnabas replied sourly. “He just admitted he knows nothing that can help us. This was a waste of Maddox’s magic. Let’s throw the head into the fire and be done with it.”
“Wait!” Alcander exclaimed. “Wait just a moment now. Let’s not be hasty, good sir! Did I say I don’t know anything? I know plenty. I worked closely—intimately—with the goddess for a very long time. I was her closest friend and confidant. Clearly, you have sought me out with”—he looked at Maddox this time, a shadow of fear sliding behind his eyes—“your rather impressive necromancy. Yes, the goddess told me about you and what you could do. What she wanted you for.”
“And what’s that?” Maddox asked, his throat tight.
“To use you as a weapon, of course.”
It wasn’t a surprise, but all the same, the thought of it made Maddox’s stomach churn.
“She can’t have him,” Barnabas growled. He grabbed Alcander by his hair and picked him up. “We’re done here.”
“No! Please! I want to live!”
Barnabas scoffed. “Don’t misunderstand your current situation. You’re not alive. You’re a severed head that can talk.”
“You’re wrong! I am alive. I feel alive! I am clearly a bit . . . lacking at the moment.” He paused, and then his eyes filled up with tears once again. “Oh, goddess, why?” he wailed. “My body! I miss my body! But I do know where it would have been buried.”
Barnabas glared at him. “And tell me: How does that help us?”
“When I prove useful to you—when I’ve earned redemption in your eyes by helping, as you’ve requested, put an end to Valoria—the boy will use his magic to reunite me with my body.”
“But I—” Maddox began to protest.
Barnabas put up his hand. “Is that so?” he said. “All right then. Give me a piece of information that we would find useful, and perhaps we can negotiate the terms of your continued existence.”
“Very well,” Alcander said nervously. His eyes moved rapidly from side to side as if he were scanning the interior of his mind. “Yes, I have it! Rebels are famous for being secretive, of course. But you can always count on a certain type of rebel who is willing to give up information for coin. There are traitors on both sides.”
Barnabas kept glaring, his brow furrowed more deeply now. “Go on.”
“I know that your goal is to locate the heiress to the throne. Valoria has known about this plan for longer than you might think. When she first got word about it, she began seeking information about Princess Cassia. And she found her.”
“I don’t believe you,” Barnabas snarled.
“It’s true!”
“Tell me more.”
“Agree to the deal and I will.”
Barnabas held the head over the fire. “Tell. Me. More,” he repeated.
Alcander shrieked. “Fine. Fine! Three years ago, the family that took in Princess Cassia was killed, but the princess escaped. She hasn’t been seen or heard from since. But I know where she is!”
Barnabas pulled him away from the flames, but only a few inches. “Wh
“I will personally lead you there.”
Barnabas grimaced and went to shove him back over the fire again, but Maddox caught his arm.
“No,” Maddox said. “Don’t hurt him anymore. He’s suffered enough.”
“Seems we disagree on that.”
“He says he’ll help us find Princess Cassia. His word is good enough for me.”
“Is it? Well, consider me far less trusting than you.” He went silent for a moment. “Still, if what he says is true . . .”
“It is!” Alcander insisted.
“What do you want me to do, Barnabas?” Camilla asked.
Barnabas cast a look at the witch, his brow drawn in thought. “I’m going to need you and Sienna to keep close to the palace while we’re gone and stay alert to any information the rebels can use.”
Camilla nodded gravely. “Of course.”
Barnabas looked back to Alcander, his fist still gripping him by the hair. “You have one week to prove your usefulness to us. One week—or you go into the fire and stay there. For good this time. Agreed?”
Alcander’s frightened face flooded with relief. “Agreed.”
Chapter 10
BECCA
She dreamed she had golden feathers.
And sharp talons that gripped the lowest branch of a tree.
Her eyesight was incredible—she easily spotted a mouse-like creature slipping through the grass no fewer than twenty feet away and a little black beetle crawling up the trunk of a neighboring tree.
Curious to learn more about what it was like to be a bird, she tried to move her wings, but they didn’t work. She huffed and strained with effort, but nothing she did could make them budge. She was stuck on the tree branch. All she could do was observe.
She craned her flexible neck toward the water, and her heart leaped at what she saw: a young man kneeling next to a river.
Maddox.
He was shirtless, wearing nothing but wet trousers as he washed his beige canvas tunic in the water. His feet were bare; a pair of leather boots sat on the shore nearby. Maddox might only have been a year older than Becca, but he certainly didn’t seem like a boy. He looked taller than she remembered, with broader shoulders and lean, defined muscles.