Magic Zero Read online

  Sheridan closed the door with a tiny click and disappeared into the servants’ back steps, moving more quietly than he ever had before.

  * * *

  They came flying down upon SkyHaven with the sun at their backs. Timothy guided the gyrocraft with Ivar crouched again behind the pilot’s seat. Edgar glided silently upon the drafts that swept up from the ocean below. Verlis had gratefully accepted the loan of a golden sword that Timothy took from his father’s estate. The metal was precious for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that it was nearly as resistant to magic as Timothy himself. The Wurm beat his massive, leathery wings, and as he flew, it was clear that the talons on his feet were just as deadly as those upon his hands. The golden sword gleamed in the sunlight as they all descended toward the floating fortress.

  The wind whipped past Timothy’s ears as he guided the gyro. Far below he saw the shadows of his strange little assault force distorted across the sun-tipped surf. They could have tried to enter through Timothy’s workshop window, or even the opening of the aerie underneath the floating citadel, but they could not travel underwater and the sentries would have spotted them too easily in these obvious approaches. Verlis had tried to convince them to wait until nightfall to try to retrieve Leander, but Timothy was not about to wait. His friend might be dead by then. Given the boy’s insistence, Ivar had recommended that they make a long circle out to sea and come in from the ocean side of SkyHaven. It made sense. The sentries would be expecting an approach from shore, not from the open ocean. They would also attack from a great height. Even if there were sentries watching the ocean side, they were not likely to expect an attack from directly above.

  Or, at least, that was Timothy’s hope.

  Verlis flew beside the gyro, with Edgar out in front of the craft, black wings like a stain of darkness upon the daylight. They drew nearer, and now Timothy was able to see the turrets and fortress walls of SkyHaven much more clearly. The courtyard lawns and gardens were green and dappled with brightly colored flowers. Several people wandered the grounds. For a place that harbored such sinister industry, it was a picture of peaceful beauty that reminded him never again to judge anything by appearance alone.

  Alhazred mages patrolled the external walls and several were perched atop the towers of the central structure. He whispered silent prayers to the spirit of his father and whatever higher power might hear him, hoping that fate would be with them, that the alarm would not be sounded too soon.

  Timothy thought about cutting the power to the rotor and propellers, letting the Gyro glide in, but there were too many variables, and silence was only going to carry them so far. He needed the maneuverability the gyro had when its blades were spinning.

  Almost the moment this thought had entered his mind, he saw Edgar dip one wing and reverse direction, black feathers shining as the rook sliced the wind, circled around, and took up a flight position just beneath the gyro. They had worked this signal out beforehand; the bird had reached the outer edges of the magical charms Nicodemus had put in place around SkyHaven. Enchantments that would alert the residents of the floating fortress. Wards that might keep enemies out.

  But they would not keep Timothy Cade out. They would not even register his presence. Within him was a null space in the magical matrix. That would not help Verlis and Edgar, but the Wurm had strong magic of his own and felt sure that he could shatter SkyHaven’s defenses and lead Edgar in behind him. Timothy did not share his certainty, but they had no other choice. Leander’s life was in the balance. If Verlis believed his magic was strong enough, well . . . they were about to find out.

  “Ivar, put your hand on my shoulder,” he instructed.

  The Asura warrior did as he was asked. Timothy felt certain that his null space would extend to Ivar as long as they were in physical contact, just as he was confident that the gyro would not be detected with him at the controls. His touch disrupted magic on contact. And if Ivar was in contact with him . . . well, that was at least a far surer thing than hoping the Wurm could crack SkyHaven’s defenses.

  Verlis snorted furling black smoke and dove through the air, wings outstretched, falling into place just behind the gyrocraft. Timothy could not see the magical barrier, nor even sense it, so he kept his focus on the towers of SkyHaven below and the sentries that he could see. Those on top of the towers wore dark purple robes, a kind of uniform that marked them as the most elite of the Grandmaster’s acolytes.

  Timothy narrowed his gaze. Atop a turret toward the back of the fortress—a portion of SkyHaven he had never been allowed to enter—there stood a figure quite out of place: a girl in a long, gauzy green dress with ghostly pale skin and flowing, bright red hair. Almost unconscious of doing so, he tapped the controls of the gyro so that its course would take him down past her.

  “We have passed through,” Ivar said, the voice close behind Timothy’s head, reassuring in his ear.

  The un-magician nodded intently. Contact with him had worked. Edgar and Verlis might not be so fortunate. But it was time. A small shred of hesitation lingered in Timothy, but he brushed it away. Leander’s life was in peril. And it was too late, in any case. They were in. He refocused on the sentries and pushed the controls of the gyro hard forward, causing it to lose altitude with such speed it was as though it was falling from the sky.

  Behind him there came a roar of savage pain.

  “What—,” Timothy began. He glanced once over his shoulder and caught sight of Verlis. The Wurm had his black fangs bared and fire was issuing from his mouth along with that bellow of agony. Sparks of magical power danced around his body as though he had been struck by lightning. His wings furled inward and he began to fall.

  “Timothy!” Ivar snapped. “Eyes front!”

  The boy whipped his head around just in time to pull the controls up. He had been diving too fast, too long. The gyro had built up downward momentum and it shuddered as he forced it out of that descent.

  Everything was happening too quickly now. Verlis had been snared by SkyHaven’s magical protections. So much for his confidence. Though the Wurm’s magical intrusion had caused some sort of disruption in the fortress’s defenses, for Edgar had flown close behind Verlis and passed through unaffected.

  In his peripheral vision Timothy saw the turrets of the fortress all around him. He had nearly crashed the gyro into one of them, and even now he was lower than the tallest of them, weaving in among them. Several sentries were glancing upward now, searching the sky.

  A swarthy mage rushed to the edge of a tower roof and was pointing at Timothy and Ivar in the gyrocraft, shouting something, his face flushed red with alarm. The scowling mage contorted the fingers of his right hand and reached out as though he might claw the air. Bruise-black light formed around his fist and arced out at the gyro, but it dissipated harmlessly even as it touched the flying machine. Ivar still had his hand upon Timothy’s shoulder.

  “Don’t let go of me,” Timothy told his friend.

  “No,” Ivar agreed. “Not yet.”

  The rest of the sentries were focused on Verlis, and Timothy wanted to turn to look as well, but he did not dare for fear of crashing.

  “Verlis will have the power to free himself, or he will not. There is nothing you can do now. Keep your eyes ahead. Stay to the plan,” Ivar instructed him, giving his shoulder a squeeze.

  Timothy nodded. The plan had been mostly his, after all, and he knew it was a good one. In fact, it was the only one. Not very subtle, but they had not had time for subtlety, not with Leander in jeopardy. Timothy had sent Edgar to fly to Leander’s and speak to the man’s navigational mage, who had confirmed leaving him off at SkyHaven and not yet having received a summons to return. That was all the confirmation they had needed.

  “Caw! Caw!” Edgar cried, and the rook flew out from beneath the gyrocraft and darted upward, toward the red-faced mage who had tried to attack them. The man put up his hands, startled by the sudden, vicious offensive of Timothy’s familiar, and Edgar claw
ed at him, throwing him off balance, keeping him from further magical attack.

  As Timothy veered the gyro around the central tower, he saw Edgar beat at the mage with his wings and drive the man off the roof. The mage tumbled end over end, arms waving wildly, a blur of blue light forming around him as he tried to weave a levitation spell to let himself down more gently.

  Most of the sentries were still focused on Verlis, and Timothy didn’t blame them. The Grandmaster’s elite guard were all young enough that they probably had never seen a Wurm before. To them Verlis was a monstrosity. Those leathery wings and the fire pluming from his ferocious maw were a horrifying sight the very first time. Timothy turned the craft around enough that he could see Verlis now, struggling to stay in flight. In that moment, he realized something. The crackling magical lightning that had jolted the Wurm was diminishing.

  “He’s through!” Timothy cried triumphantly. “Nicodemus’s wards hurt him, but he’s through!”

  The sentries had noticed as well. They knew that at any moment Verlis would have completely shaken off the effects of passing through the magical barrier, and would attack them. They were shouting to one another, preparing to destroy the Wurm. Verlis bent his head and dove, gliding on his massive wings, dipping sideways to fly around the curving wall of a tower so closely that the sentries had to lean out over the edge even to get a glimpse of him.

  Edgar swooped down to attack the sentries, drawing their attention away from the Wurm.

  But from the tower opposite, Verlis was a clear target. Timothy pressed the control forward slightly, and the Gyro accelerated, practically lunging across the space between turrets. Other sentries had noticed him now, and they were launching magical attacks, but none of them with any more luck than the first. Crackling energy surged up from guards in the courtyard below, and bolts of murderous sorcery flew like arrows from the wall sentinels, but Timothy and Ivar went unscathed.

  He pointed the nose of the gyro at the tower ahead. For a moment the two purple-robed sentries stood their ground, but then they dove aside to avoid a collision. At last letting go of his grip on Timothy’s shoulder, Ivar leaped off the back of the gyrocraft, wielding a short, ironwood fighting staff. The sudden shift in weight on the craft made its nose dip downward, and the main rotor on top of the gyro whined as it sheared off the right arm of the other sentry.

  Blood spattered the gyro and Timothy as well, drops of it filming on his goggles. He ripped them off, his stomach convulsing at the sight of the blood and the screams of the injured man. The mage would heal himself, Timothy was sure of that. Somehow he would heal. That was what magic was for, wasn’t it?

  Yet he could not stop the cold, numb feeling that settled in the pit of his stomach. He had had grand visions of slipping in and snatching Leander and getting out. A grand adventure. But there was nothing simple or innocent about this. Not when he had a man’s blood on his face.

  He heard Verlis roar again and turned in his seat to see infernal flames belching from the Wurm’s gaping maw, liquid fire that engulfed first one, then two more sentries atop a nearby tower. Timothy felt his spine go rigid.

  “Caw! Watch out, Tim!” Edgar cried.

  The rook cut across his path. Timothy snapped his head around and saw that his familiar was warning him away. Once again only a split second tug on the gyro’s controls prevented him from crashing into a wall. As he soared he glanced around, and there she was. The girl was perhaps twenty feet from him, standing at the edge of a low tower. Her green dress whispered as the wind rustled it. She was young, not much older than Timothy himself, and yet as she cocked her head to one side and regarded him, her cascade of red hair blowing in the wind, she seemed almost ancient. She beckoned to him, gesturing toward a door in the tower.

  Who are you? Timothy thought, distracted.

  As though he had shouted the words to her, she raised her hand and beckoned to him again. Timothy was piloting the gyrocraft away from her, still under attack. Ivar’s voice carried across the sky, and he glanced over to see the Asura warrior leap from a high turret to the fortress wall, where several guards had begun to tear bits of stone from the wall and hurl them at Timothy. He jogged the gyro controls to the left and barely avoided one such attack, but then Ivar landed on the wall, scrambled up it with eerie agility, and began to fight the guards with his bare hands.

  Sentries on another turret began to flee as Verlis roared fire at them. One jumped off the fortress and two others quickly dropped down onto the steps that ran around the side of the turret, to a door set into the wall several feet below.

  At last Timothy brought the gyro around again, his gaze sweeping the upper reaches of SkyHaven. Only then did he realize that the girl in the green dress was gone. He frowned, slowing the gyro. She had beckoned to him. Why?

  Then he saw the other set of stairs that went around the outside of that tower, and the door they led to that was still open, only darkness and shadow waiting from within. They had planned to fight off as much resistance as possible and then land, going right through the huge, ornate double doors that led into the main living area of SkyHaven. As long as they stayed together, with their unique attributes, Timothy felt they would have a chance. But now this . . . this new approach . . . had presented itself.

  What if it’s a trap? he wondered. But then he felt foolish. If the Grandmaster expected them to return, he would not have relied upon a single, mysterious girl gesturing to Timothy from atop SkyHaven.

  Nearby, the rook was diving maniacally at another sentry. Edgar clawed at the man, who fell but managed to grab hold of a ledge. The bird left him dangling there and beat his wings against the air, turning to look for more resistance, more prey. Timothy knew that Edgar would be as anxious by now as he was. They were taking too long. They did not want to be up here if Nicodemus made an appearance. There was nowhere to hide.

  Then he spotted Verlis. Fire trailed from the Wurm’s jaws as he swooped down at several mages who had either fallen or been on the ground to begin with. One of them held his ground, performing a rapid spell that erupted from his hands in silver bolts that were likely to cut the Wurm’s scaly hide as easily as they did the air. Verlis brought the golden sword around in front of his body, deflecting the sentry’s magic.

  The mage who had dared to fight was engulfed in a blaze of magical power, the very spell he had tried to use on Verlis. In moments, he was nothing but ash, as Verlis headed toward the double front doors of SkyHaven’s core.

  “Caw! Caw! Let’s go, Timothy!” Edgar cried as he kept pace with the gyro through every turn and jog the boy’s navigation caused.

  “No. Let’s try that way!” he told the rook, pointing at the stairs on the side of the tower, where the girl had stood. He gestured toward the open door. “Fly down and tell Verlis. We’re going in that way.”

  To his credit, Timothy’s familiar did not ask why, did not question this change in plans. The rook simply cawed and darted amid the jutting turrets, diving down toward Verlis.

  Timothy swung the gyro around and spotted Ivar clinging to the side of another tower. Atop it was one of the last sentries who had not been driven off or killed. The thin, extremely tall man pointed a single finger down at Ivar, and scarlet light sparked there. He was chanting something—more screaming it than chanting—and Timothy did not have to understand the words to know that Ivar was in serious trouble.

  Biting his lip, Timothy pulled up on the controls, causing the gyro to rise up swiftly toward the mage, hurtling toward him. With a jerk to the right he spun the gyro sideways. In his fury and the concentration of his spellcasting, the mage did not look up immediately. When he did, it was just in time for his eyes to go wide as Timothy knocked the gyro into him and sent the man tumbling backward off the wall, cursing as he plunged toward the ocean far below.

  “Ivar, come on!” Timothy called.

  The Asura leaped out and grabbed hold of the axle that supported the wheels of the gyrocraft. Timothy struggled to compensate for the su
dden addition of weight, and in a moment he had them hovering above the turret where he had seen the mysterious girl. Ivar let go, dropping down and rolling out of the way so that Timothy could land. Even as the boy did so, Edgar cawed and alighted upon Ivar’s shoulder. Verlis landed with feral, deadly grace, golden sword at the ready, wings folding tightly against his back.

  Following a single gesture from a mysterious girl, Timothy at last led them into SkyHaven, intent upon keeping Leander Maddox alive and upon revealing the dark secrets of the Grandmaster.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A numbing cold had enveloped Leander Maddox. His body was like ice, but where Nicodemus touched his chest there was fire. The Grandmaster’s touch siphoned the magic right out of Leander, and his life drained along with it. Darkness encroached at the edges of his vision. The wraiths whispered in his ears, some of them still crying in their high, mad voices. Leander felt weakness closing his eyes. He blinked to keep them open but could not. Several times he seemed to drift away to a place of absolute night, only to feel a fresh burst of searing pain in his chest as Nicodemus sucked more power from him. His eyes popped open, and though what little he could still see was out of focus, the old mage’s pink, glowing eyes were there, staring at him. The grin that split his face was gleeful.

  But it faltered.

  In the midst of the fog that tried to drag him back down into darkness, Leander saw a tremor go through the Grandmaster. A look of uncertainty shuddered across Nicodemus’s face.

  Leander mustered the last of his strength to strain against the grasp of the wraiths that held him. He forced himself to smile. His voice was weak, his throat raw, but he made himself speak.