A dull impact caught Alex in the stomach, and Finder let out a sigh of satisfaction as Alex was thrown to smash against the side wall. He felt something deep inside him let out a pop, and he gasped, clutching his side as his eyes blurred with pain. Frost coated the wound, but it seemed that Malachi was employing a type of magic that his blood wouldn’t wholly defend against.
“Got you,” the old wizard said, flexing his fingers. He rose to his full and considerable height, black hair floating about his head. “I should have done this sooner. It has been so long since I had the privilege of hunting one of your bloodline,” he said.
Alex let out a cough, his whole body tingling with pain. He brought a shaking hand out in front of himself, and a shivering blade of anti-magic wobbled into existence. He stared at the tremulous blade and knew he wasn’t going to win this fight.
But he didn’t have to; all he had to do was buy time.
“You just hunt wizards now,” Alex spat. “Isn’t that right, Malachi Grey? The infamous Finder, turned upon his own.”
Malachi stiffened, and something in his features distorted. His face grew hazy and indistinct, his hands clawing at the air as he let out a soundless moan of anger, his whole form shuddering.
“I do what I must,” he said, the words smooth with practice. “I protect the world.”
“You kill young men and women,” Alex snapped, taking a step forward, kicking away a strand of ivy that attempted to encircle his foot.
Natalie’s magic had begun to let off a dull hum, but Finder didn’t seem to hear it. He moved forward, his focus on the skull in Alex’s hand.
“I am Malachi Grey,” he said softly.
“Of Spellshadow Manor,” Alex finished. “You hunt down your kind for a heartless master, and you deliver them to their graves.”
The ghost snarled, shaking his head, bursts of magic tearing the air around him.
“I find those with magic—”
“And kill them.”
Alex’s words hung in the air. Silver light blazed in a bonfire around Natalie, who was going through a complex series of hand signs, the ivy unable to pass into her circle of power. Finder’s head hung low, his hands limp at his sides.
“You don’t know,” he said. “You don’t know the choice I had to make. The choice that haunts me beyond my death.”
His head came up, and now his eyes had vanished, replaced by maggot-worn holes, his hands little more than bones. “Are you so noble?” he asked hollowly. “Do you think you are stronger than I am? Smarter? I have waited all my death for one to kill me for my sins. Will it be you? Do you have a better solution?”
Alex hesitated. His blade of anti-magic was fizzing as it pressed against Finder’s magical aura.
“Solution to what?” he asked, uncertain now. Why were the students being killed? Would he finally have an answer? Not if he killed Finder now…
Finder reached out, his pale hand closing around Alex’s sword. Frost hissed and popped into the air, a stream of ghostly snow pouring to the marble floor.
“A solution to what we made,” replied Finder.
Alex opened his mouth, but Finder spread his hands. Ice flowed out across the floor, jagged spikes of glistening cold spearing up toward him. Alex deflected one with his hand and cried out in pain as the combined cold of the ice and the magical impact left a ragged scar of frostbite on his wrist.
“You forget,” Finder said, stepping forward. “Even if my magic is a pale, ghostly mirror of what it once was, I have killed far better than you, boy.”
Alex threw himself aside as another wave of ice slid across the floor, only to be caught by a shockwave. Again, the force tore through his resistances without as much as a flicker of cold. Alex smashed to the ground, rolling to his knees, thinking hard through his shock and fear.
Finder was doing something—something he, Aamir, Natalie, and Jari hadn’t thought of. What was it? How was he getting through to him so easily? Alex watched as the man’s hands churned the air in front of him, and braced himself against another wave of energy, followed by two whizzing spears of ice.
If Finder had been able to see Alex properly, it might have been over in that instant. However, the man was blind, forced to aim wildly in the direction of his own source. Alex held the skull as far from his body as he could as he dodged and weaved through the man’s magic, trying to think, trying to figure out what he was doing.
A thunderous boom sounded, and an old lord’s head spun from its statue to smash against the floor. Shards of stone spun through the air, and one glanced painfully off Alex’s foot. He groaned, looking down just in time to dodge another wave of ice. Finder was coming down on him hard, his mane of hair tossing in his magical energies.
“Yes!” the old man cried. “This is how it was always meant to be! Just you and me, Breaker, until one of us is in the lake.”
He spread his hands, and Alex finally saw something. A blur in the air where the man’s hands had been. A little twist, and then the shockwave tore out.
In an instant, Alex understood.
Finder wasn’t attacking him directly with anything other than the ice. Like the statue that had hurt Alex when it had fallen, Finder was causing disturbances in the environment, making shockwaves designed to push Alex around without any magic in them at all. While their magical source may have imparted some power, they washed straight through his resistances.
Another wave, and Alex found himself slammed against the wall, the breath erupting from his lungs as he slumped down to the floor. Finder stalked up, his tattered robes swaying in the wind, looking down at the skull. He opened his mouth, then winced, spinning back to where Natalie stood.
The girl’s eyes were closed in focus. Silver light spilled from the floor all around her as sweat poured down her brow, and she clapped her hands together, the light building to a brilliant flare. Finder snarled, making his way toward her.
Alex watched in horror from where he lay. He couldn’t get there in time to stop Finder from interfering with Natalie’s spell. Alex bashed the skull feebly against the ground, but it was as though the thing were made of steel. He looked on as Finder stalked toward his friend, swallowing hard, trying to stumble to his feet.
He wouldn’t make it. He knew he wouldn’t. He slumped to one knee, feeling something cold brushing against his side from the inside of his jacket. A faint, magical pulse. The screwdriver he’d brought along for no more than simple comfort.
In a moment of desperation, Alex reached down, tore the little device out of his pocket, and hurled it as hard as he could at the back of Finder’s head.
Impossibly, it worked. Finder, sensing its presence, spun, one hand coming up, a look of puzzlement crossing his face as he batted the small device away with a flux of power.
That moment, however, was all Alex needed. He jumped at Finder, his anti-magic void sucking at the air around him, hungry for magic.
“Alex!”
Natalie’s scream was accompanied by an eruption of power that circled both Alex and Finder’s heads. Natalie stood, one hand outstretched, the intricate silver circle at her feet seeming to carve itself into Alex’s eyes.
“Give me the skull!” she yelled.
Alex spun, bowling the skull across the floor toward her. Finder reached for it, his mouth twisting in a snarl, but Alex lashed out with a foot, spearing into the ghost’s essence with his anti-magic.
Natalie let out a yell as she seized the skull and drove it down into the silvery light at her feet. With a crunch, it smashed apart upon the marble. Alex watched, stunned, as Finder’s head splintered, then disintegrated into a cloud of gray mist, the ghost staggering back a step.
But Finder still had one last attack in him. He reached forward, his hands touching the air, and Alex thought he saw the twist of magic forming there. A shockwave. He didn’t need to look at Natalie’s tight face, the sweat dousing her brow, to know she wouldn’t be able to withstand much more, and at this short a range, Alex didn’t know if
he could either.
Mustering the last of his energy, he formed a splinter of void and stabbed it straight into the center of the little knot of magic.
“Ah,” said a disembodied voice.
The magic popped, and then vanished. For a moment, everybody stood perfectly still. The ghost, his hands still raised to form his spell. Alex, his chest heaving, the needle of grayish nothing flickering at his fingertips. Natalie, her face drawn, her knees shaking.
“So this is how the world ends,” Finder said softly.
Holes began to appear all over the ghost’s body, bursting open as he slowly lost the ability to keep his form together. He reached for Alex, who recoiled instinctively, but it was as though Finder’s hands were shackled. They shuddered, then snapped back, drawn toward the dilapidated statue upon his altar.
With a crackle of magical energy, the air where the ghost stood seemed to splinter, leaving a visible wound in the fabric of the world. A wave of force roiled out from the place, smashing the statues of the crypt against the walls and sending stones tumbling down over the skulls on their neat pieces of white cloth.
Then everything was still.
Alex was dimly aware of a soft noise as Natalie fell to the ground. He turned, staring with wild eyes at where the girl lay upon the torn stone, eyes closed, cold sweat prickling through her clothes. Fearing the worst, Alex scrambled to her side, dropping to both knees, and reached out to shake her.
“Hey, Natalie.”
She didn’t respond. Was she even breathing?
“Natalie.”
One eye opened slowly, a grin breaking out over her pale lips.
“Got him,” she croaked. “Told you I could do it.”
Alex let out a relieved laugh.
“Yeah,” he said. “You did.”
The room around them was in ruins. Statues lay shattered and broken, bits of bone and marble scattered all over floor. The long strands of gray ivy hung limp now, seeming almost dead in the wake of Finder’s passing. Alex and Natalie huddled together amid the wreckage, taking a moment to catch their breath.
“Aamir,” Natalie said eventually. “We must check on the duel.”
Alex bit his lip. “But we’re already there, remember? We can’t show up twice.”
Natalie shoved her way to her feet, and Alex caught her as she tottered unsteadily to one side.
“Then we will have to make sure nobody sees us. We’ll hide or something. I don’t know…but I can’t stay here.”
Alex, anxious to see how Aamir was faring, thought he understood. He tugged Natalie’s arm over his shoulder, his body aching, and the two of them limped their way from the crypt. Alex’s side continued to stab with pain, but nothing felt terribly out of place. All the same, he grimaced as he walked.
The sunlight of the gardens was almost blinding after the shifting shadows and darkness of the crypt. They both paused as they emerged, letting out twin sighs of relief that the rest of the world was, somehow, still there. The horizon beyond the wall showed hills, speckled with bell towers.
“Where was the duel?” Natalie asked. She sounded tired beyond all reach of rest, but her eyes were hard. She hung heavily on Alex’s shoulder, gripping him tight.
“Main lawn,” said Alex, remembering the words of the second-year earlier that morning. It was almost impossible to believe that a scarce couple hours had passed. They had probably only been in the crypt for fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes. Alex tried to imagine how long his longest duels with Aamir had gone. Eight minutes? Ten? Combat was a short, violent thing. Aamir could be…The duel could have finished already. He wrapped his arm tightly around his exhausted companion.
“We need to get going.”
Chapter 39
Alex had expected to hear a tumult of noise as they approached the main lawn of Spellshadow Manor, the very place where Finder and the Head had met on that fateful day all those years ago. However, the grounds were strangely silent. Natalie and Alex apprehensively eyed the gathered crowd as they stuck to the shadows along the wall.
Their clones were standing at the back of the crowd. Clone-Alex was staring back toward the manor, while clone-Natalie was watching whatever was happening on the lawn. On an instinct, Alex ducked out from the shadows to wave at himself, and the clone spotted the gesture, a smile spreading over his features.
The image reached out, tapped clone-Natalie’s shoulder, and both trotted away from the crowd to join their originals. The clones were identical, save for the real Alex and Natalie’s injuries. The crowd of watchers didn’t even notice the two going.
“Hello,” said clone-Alex, in Jari’s voice.
Natalie eyed it distrustfully. “Hello,” she answered.
“We were supposed to wait for you,” said her clone, also in Jari’s voice. “Wait for you, and then allow you to replace us when you arrived.”
Alex nodded gratefully. “We’ll be doing just that, then.”
He almost yelped as his clone gave an all-too-familiar smile, then burst into a little puff of light. Natalie’s clone softly exhaled, then followed suit. In an instant, both had vanished.
Natalie stared at the glimmering residue that was all that remained of their doubles.
“Did that disturb you as much as it disturbed me?” she asked, her mouth twisted.
“Almost definitely,” muttered Alex, tugging her forward. “Come on. It looks like it isn’t over yet.”
They found Jari waiting for them at the crowd’s edge, his face gray and his hands shaking. He didn’t speak as they approached, just gestured them in. The little crowd of the forty or so students of Spellshadow Manor parted for them, letting them go to the front.
A large white box had been drawn onto the wild, twisted grass. The stones and debris had not been cleared, and the iconic gray vines still wove through the battlefield, glistening with the previous night’s snow.
Aamir lay upon the ground, his back against the base of a shattered statue, his chest heaving up and down. Before him, looking as though he was out for an afternoon stroll, stood Professor Derhin.
The man was dressed in a long robe that reminded Alex of the classic images of wizards he had seen in his childhood, vials of alchemical liquids hung across his chest in a bandolier. He wore a wide-brimmed hat that hung low, hiding his eyes, and heavy leather boots that glowed with a quiet magic.
Alex was about to comment on the ridiculous getup when Derhin shifted, and a blazing line of lightning tore the air, striking the ground beside Aamir with a splintering crash. Alex blinked, and then he understood.
In the long robe, Aamir couldn’t see Derhin’s hands. With the low hat, he couldn’t use his eyes to determine where the man was aiming. Aamir, in his long gray jacket, was offered none of the same protection. He made a gesture, but Derhin sidestepped it before it was even completed, giving the impression that the spell fell wide.
“He’s making an example of him,” Jari said, his voice cracking with panic. “I knew he would be strong, but this…this isn’t fair. This isn’t a duel; it’s an execution.”
Another shift of Derhin’s cloak was all the warning Aamir got before two more bolts of lightning ripped the air asunder, sending a roll of thunder through the hushed crowd of students. The earth on one side of Aamir erupted, but the second bolt sliced his cheek, and Aamir screamed as a red cut appeared on his face, little lines of electricity crackling over his body.
With a stab of fear, Alex understood why Aamir and Natalie had only ever fought over a bottle. With Spellbreaker blood, Alex would only have been chilled by that spell. Aamir, however, was almost incapacitated, his fingers convulsing as his spine went rigid.
Derhin took a predatory step forward, easily sidestepping a blast of fire that whipped from Aamir’s hands.
“This is the fate of those who disobey the system of Spellshadow Manor,” Professor Derhin announced, tipping his hat back to stare Aamir directly in the eyes before turning his gaze on the assembled students. “Th
is is what happens to those who think they know better than their superiors.”
Aamir slammed his hand into the dirt at his side, and the stone at Derhin’s feet exploded. The man leapt aside, his body unnaturally light, landing atop the remains of a nearby statue. He looked down at Aamir, then made a sharp gesture that Alex wasn’t familiar with. He rasped angrily, and then Aamir gasped as the air was ripped from his lungs. He struggled, one hand clutching at his throat, the other limp at his side.
Had Natalie not been injured, Alex would have been unable to keep both his friends from the battlefield. As it was, he managed to get a hand on Jari’s wrist just before the boy launched himself into the fray. His eyes burned cold, bloody murder, his skin clammy to the touch. At Alex’s grasp, he turned an angry glare on his friend.
“Don’t stop me,” he hissed. “I am not watching while that monster kills my friend!”
“And I’m not watching while he kills you,” Alex said. He could barely choke the words out of his mouth.
Jari’s eyes were wet with tears as he looked back. Derhin drifted lazily down from his stand, landing in front of Aamir, who continued to struggle in the grass.
“Poor fool,” said Derhin. “Poor, sad, weak—”
He cut off. Aamir had spun, and, with what seemed to be the last of his energy, grabbed a nearby strand of the graying ivy and whipped it at the professor. Derhin’s cloak rustled as he made a gesture, but his magic burst around the hurled vine. As though it were hungry for magic, the end of the creeper spun around his ankle and held fast.
Aamir sucked in a breath and pulled. Derhin let out a cry of anger as he toppled to the ground, his hat flying off. He reached to the bottles at his chest, pulling one free as Aamir staggered to his feet, ripping out the cork and downing the contents.