Magic Zero Read online

“Yes,” the Grandmaster said, noticing Timothy’s focus. “I thought you might like that.” With a wave of his hand Nicodemus opened the door and led them into the small yet elegant foyer of a suite of smaller rooms. A door to another room stood warmly open and the Grandmaster went through it, gesturing for the boy and his mechanical man to follow. Edgar leaped from his shoulder and glided inside the bedchamber to perch upon a bureau of dark wood.

  “Not bad,” the bird croaked.

  Timothy was shocked to see that his satchels were already there.

  “Get acquainted with your new surroundings, my boy,” Nicodemus said, stroking Alastor’s head, the hairless feline still draped over his shoulders. “I’ll send someone to fetch you as soon as dinner is served.”

  Then the Grandmaster departed and the door slammed closed behind him as though a great wind had blown it shut.

  Timothy sat down upon the large, four-poster bed and glanced around the room, shivering, for it was strangely cold there. Though he had Sheridan and Edgar for company, he felt more alone at SkyHaven than he ever had on the Island of Patience.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  No matter how hard he tried, Timothy could not sleep. Carefully, so as not to disturb Edgar, who was perched atop the headboard of the bed, the boy threw back the bedclothes and padded toward one of the room’s large windows. He chanced a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure the rook hadn’t awakened. Edgar remained still, eyes closed, his perfectly streamlined head lowered to his feathered breast.

  “Timothy?” asked a hollow voice from beside his bed.

  The boy’s finger shot to his lips. “Quietly, Sheridan,” he whispered. “We don’t want to wake up Edgar.”

  Sheridan shuffled away from the wall with a series of soft clicks and whirs. The mechanical man’s eyes shone eerily in the darkness, and Timothy could hear the faint, sibilant sound of steam hissing from the release valve that protruded from the side of his head.

  “You’re right about that,” the machine said, the volume of his voice lowered significantly. “An unrested Edgar is an irritable Edgar.”

  Timothy nodded knowingly and smiled at his companion. Sheridan was the boy’s greatest achievement, the ultimate example of his mechanical aptitude. Certainly, he had built all manner of fabulous mechanisms, but in the creation of Sheridan, Timothy had built much more than that. He had built a friend.

  “Are you all right?” Sheridan asked with concern in his metallic voice. “Why aren’t you asleep? Nicodemus has a big day planned for you tomorrow, and you’re just as grouchy as Edgar when you don’t get your rest.”

  The Grandmaster of the Order of Alhazred planned to introduce Timothy to the masters of several other guilds in the morning, to prove that he was neither threat nor abomination. Just a less-than-ordinary boy who wanted to be left alone. Timothy was nervous. That was one of the things keeping him awake. “I’m okay,” he told his friend softly. “Go ahead and shut yourself down for the night.”

  “Don’t stay up too long,” Sheridan cautioned before reversing his direction and returning to his place against the wall. “Good night, Timothy.”

  “Good night.”

  Timothy turned his attention to the sprawling estate outside the window. The celestial illumination cast by the night sky’s myriad moons filtered through the magically conjured windowpanes, and cast the boy in a strange, rose-tinted light. He reached out to touch the window and the magical pane began to waver, and then was no more.

  “What?” Timothy whispered, taken aback. He pulled his hand away, and the window reappeared. Timothy reached to touch the spell-glass again, and once more it wavered to nothing. Now he understood. His touch disrupted the spell that kept the windowpane in place.

  Cool night air rushed into the room and Timothy sighed. “Of course. Magic.”

  The boy leaned his arms on the cold stone of the sill and peered out into the night. The castle fortress and all the lands of the estate hovered weightlessly hundreds of feet above the dark, churning ocean. There was a beauty to this bit of extraordinary levitation, and yet there was a terrible power in it as well.

  Timothy gazed down into the cold waters, grateful that his propensity to interfere with the validity of magic was very limited. Magic did not work on him, and his touch could disrupt it, canceling it out, but only if he actually had contact with the spell itself, with the substance of magic. He could not imagine how horrible it would be if that antimagic effect radiated beyond his touch, canceling out the work of a navigation mage driving a carriage, or even worse, undermining the spells that held SkyHaven aloft.

  Timothy shuddered. He was learning to live with being an anomaly, a blank place on the matrix of magic that made up the world. But there was no one else like him anywhere, and this knowledge made him feel very, very alone.

  He glanced at Hito, the farthest and smallest of the moons, hanging white and cold like a sphere of ice, and wondered at the mysteries beyond it. There had been a moon like Hito above the Island of Patience, but it had been alone in the sky. A simpler heaven above a simpler world. A pang of sadness washed over Timothy as he thought of the tiny island he called Patience. His father had made a home for him in that other world to keep him safe from this one. Gazing out that window, Timothy looked across the ocean to the radiant majesty of the lights and spires of the city of Arcanum on the far shore. Fear me, this new and awesome world seemed to say, and Timothy had no choice but to oblige.

  The winds off the water picked up, bringing a raw dampness that hinted of storm. Timothy rubbed his hands across his arms to drive the chill from his flesh. He could hear the distant sounds of the horses in the stables below, carried on the wind, made nervous by the approaching storm. Timothy thought of Ivar, forced to stay in the stables with the animals. Nicodemus treated the Asura as though he were less than human, and though Ivar assured him it was not important, Timothy felt that it was. Ivar was his friend. It didn’t seem right that he should be kept apart from other people because of who he was. Timothy wondered how it would be with the guild masters tomorrow, and he suspected that their treatment of him would help him understand how Ivar must be feeling, down there in the stables.

  They would be afraid of you, his father had warned, and from fear nothing good can come.

  “I’ll be a freak,” Timothy muttered, returning to bed. There was a spark and sputter from the window spell as the crimson panes of magic reappeared. And not a moment too soon, for the storm had arrived.

  The boy listened to the threatening rumble of thunder out over the ocean—and the sound of something else, much closer. He stopped beside his bed and checked on Sheridan and Edgar. The mechanical man was motionless and the bird was still lost in sleep. But there was something, a queer feeling that he was no longer alone.

  He gazed about the room, inspecting every darkened nook and cranny, and was about to chastise himself for such childishness—when two ominous figures suddenly materialized before the windows where he had just been standing. The boy stifled a gasp as he looked upon them. They were dressed in cloaks the color of dried blood, one slightly larger than the other. Their eyes glowed like tiny pinpricks of fire within the darkness of the hoods.

  “Who—who are you?” he stammered. “What do you want?”

  “Silence,” the larger figure hissed as his pale, spidery hands emerged from inside the darkness of his cloak. “You do not ask questions of us.”

  Timothy could see that the tips of his fingers were blackened and charred. His father had told him of such men, reckless spellcasters who tapped too deeply into the natural magic of the world, who channeled more magical power than any ordinary mage could contain. An archmage could wield such power, but in others it corrupted the flesh. The charred fingertips were only one sign of such indulgence. And only one sort of mage risked such corruption.

  More assassins, Timothy thought, an icy chill upon his flesh.

  “Our masters have deemed you dangerous—too dangerous to live,” said the smaller figure. He al
so removed his hands from within the folds of his cape, exposing fingers burnt black.

  Timothy’s mind raced as he heard the large figure begin to mutter a spell. It sounded like the angry drone of an insect trapped within a jar. A crackling blue energy began to flare about his blackened digits. Timothy dove onto the bed as a bolt of energy struck the spot where he had been standing. Fragments of the hardwood floor exploded into the air, awakening Edgar with a start.

  “Caw! What’s going on here?” the bird squawked as he flapped his large black wings. “Don’t you know I need my beauty rest?”

  “Not now, Edgar,” Timothy snapped as he rolled across to the other side of the bed. He could hear the drones of the second assassin as he, too, prepared to cast a killing spell.

  By then Edgar had noticed the hooded figures with the blackened fingertips. “Nimib assassins,” the bird croaked. “Sound an alarm! Nimib assassins at SkyHaven!”

  The massive rook took flight, the beat of his wings slapping the air. Cawing, he dove at the intruders, avoiding their attacks as he aimed his talons at their faces, distracting them for precious moments.

  Using Sheridan for cover, Timothy flicked a tiny switch on the back of his friend’s head to activate its audio sensors.

  “Sheridan,” Timothy hollered into one of the funnel shaped receivers protruding from the side of the machine’s head. “We need your help!”

  Timothy looked away from the still inert machine as Edgar’s shrill cries filled the bedroom. Again the rook was diving at the assassins, using his wings to beat at them, his talons to claw at their faces.

  “A little help would be appreciated,” the rook screamed as he evaded his attackers’ flailing arms.

  A blast of magic went wild, hitting the wall just above Timothy’s head, and a rain of powdered stone fell down on him.

  “C’mon, Sheridan!” He rapped on the metal man’s head with his knuckles. “I know you’re in there. Wake up.”

  Edgar cawed, a wordless shriek, as his tail feathers were singed by an explosion of greenish flame. The rook landed on the floor, fanning his smoldering backside with one of his wings, and the assassins returned their attention to their primary task. Their purpose was clear. They were here to kill Timothy, here to murder the un-magician.

  As the sorcerers moved closer, the boy had no idea what to do. Frantically his mind raced, he looked around and his eyes fell on the rumpled bedclothes on his bed. Without even thinking, he reached down, snatched them up, and dove at the assassins, covering them in a makeshift net as he fell to the floor. The killers struggled beneath the multiple layers as Timothy climbed to his feet.

  “Hurry, Timothy! We’ve gotta go!” Edgar squawked, flapping his wings above the bed.

  “Sheridan, wake up!” Timothy exclaimed as he ran for the door.

  The mechanical man suddenly sprang to life. His eyes blazed brightly as he looked about the room. “Yes? What’s the ruckus?” he asked, confused, his electronic brain still dull from his time deactivated. His servomechanisms buzzed and hissed with steam as he strode away from the wall toward the pile of thrashing covers. “Is that you under there, Timothy?”

  “No, Sheridan!” the boy cried from the door. “Over here!”

  Before the mechanical man could respond, the writhing bedclothes were engulfed in a supernatural fire that consumed the makeshift trap, revealing the enraged Nimib assassins beneath.

  “Oh, my,” Sheridan said, startled. He began to back away from the furious killers, whose hands crackled with arcane power.

  “What manner of beast are you?” the larger assassin bellowed, one long finger pointing at the machine, dark magical energy sparking around his hand. His eyes blazed more brightly beneath his hood and in a glint of light from the killer’s own glowing magic, Timothy thought he saw the gleam of several rows of sharp teeth.

  “It is one of the boy’s creations,” said the other. “It is as our masters told us: Cade’s offspring creates life with gears, cogs, steam, and springs.”

  “Another abomination,” said the larger of the assassins as he extended his black-tipped fingers. “It, too, will die this night.”

  No! Timothy bolted toward Sheridan, Edgar squawking wildly above him. As if in slow motion, he saw the magical energies gather at the tips of the Nimib assassins’ fingers, like fat droplets of water. Timothy screamed in defiance as he threw himself into the space between the deadly sorcery and the machine man.

  The spell struck the boy square in the chest, dissipating on contact. Timothy stumbled backward, away from the assassins, and he crashed into Sheridan, the two of them tumbling to the floor.

  “It is done,” Timothy heard one of the killers say with finality, and wondered what he meant.

  The boy climbed to his feet, gazing at his chest where the sorcerous energy had struck. He touched the area, which tingled slightly from the warmth that the blast had generated before it had been disrupted. He did not want to think about what it would have done to him if he was vulnerable to such an attack.

  “What wizardry is this?” the smaller one whispered, staring at his own hands for some defect that might have interfered with the potency of their spellcasting.

  “Impossible,” growled the larger one. His hood had fallen away to reveal a pale, older man, his face adorned with the black tattoo of a dragon. “Warriors and kings have fallen before our skills.”

  “It is as our masters feared,” said the other, voice hushed with fear as he pulled his cloak tighter around him, as if to warm himself from a sudden chill. “The boy cannot be cursed or hexed. Magic cannot touch him.”

  The assassins were so bewildered they seemed almost to have forgotten Timothy was there. He reached down and hauled Sheridan’s metal form up from the floor. “Come on,” he said, “while they’re trying to figure out why I’m not dead.”

  They ran for the door. Edgar was frantically beating his wings against it, but the rook did not have the magic to open it. Timothy gave it a shove and it swung wide. He raced into the murky, candlelit hallway. From behind him, Timothy heard a loud whistle of steam. He spun to see Sheridan paralyzed in midstep, glowing with mystical energy, dark, ugly light as purple as a bruise. Sheridan’s face was capable of little expression, but over the years Timothy had learned to read it well. At that moment, there was only regret on the mechanical man’s features.

  “I hate to be a bother yet again, young Tim, but—”

  The older assassin smiled a yellow grin. “The boy is immune to our dark magics, but perhaps his own creation could be used against him.”

  In unison the Nimib began to chant. Their eyes flashed, and the aura around the mechanical man turned from a bruised purple to an icy blue.

  “Oh, my,” Sheridan said pitifully as his metal frame began to tremble and clank. “Something is most definitely wrong here.”

  Edgar perched on Timothy’s shoulder in a panic. “We have to get out of here or we’re done for,” the bird warned.

  The boy kept his eyes on Sheridan. Constructed to be a helper as well as a companion, the mechanical man was equipped with all manner of tools—tools that had the capacity to be used for harm. And the Nimib had control of him, so now it appeared that Sheridan was going to be used to harm him.

  “I’m so sorry, Timothy,” the mechanical man said helplessly as he lunged forward, swinging fists like sledgehammers. A buzz saw blade on a spindly arm sprang from the machine man’s chest, whirring as it sliced toward him.

  Edgar squawked with surprise, taking flight as Timothy dodged quickly to one side. The saw cut a gash across the doorframe, narrowly missing him. The boy scrabbled along the ground, avoiding the swinging hammer arms that whisked past his head, and a blowtorch whose spitting flames nearly set his hair afire. Timothy reached out to lay a hand on Sheridan’s leg. It was a risk, but he had the idea that perhaps his—curse—could be used as something other than an impediment.

  His fingers touched the cool metal of Sheridan’s leg as he rolled to one side to av
oid a fist that could very well have crushed the life from him. The effect of Timothy’s contact was immediate. The mechanical man stopped his destructive actions, the spinning blades, hammer fists, and blowtorch returned to the proper compartments in his body. The spell was broken.

  “Oh my, that feels much better,” Sheridan said with an exhausted metallic sigh.

  Timothy scrambled to his feet and dragged Sheridan into the hall. Seconds later, the assassins emerged from the bedroom in an explosion of supernatural fury. Bolts of crackling magical energy erupted from their bodies, reaching out like tentacles.

  “Cade!” the dragon-faced assassin bellowed. “You cannot elude us forever!”

  Timothy could feel the electric tendrils of magical power snaking above their heads as they fled down the long, darkened hallway toward the stairs. “Go, go, go!” he shouted, pushing Sheridan along as Edgar glided above them.

  He chanced a look back to see how closely the Nimib were following and was chilled when he found that they were almost upon him. Timothy was startled to see that the smaller assassin’s hood had fallen away to reveal a boy only a few years older than himself. A tattoo of a crescent moon adorned the left side of the snarling boy’s face.

  “If we cannot slay you with magic,” proclaimed the older Nimib, “there are other ways.”

  The assassins reached inside their robes, and from within the folds, each produced a curved, gleaming dagger. Timothy increased his speed, pounding toward the stairs, certain that his immunity to magic would do nothing to stop a sharp blade from cutting him open.

  At a landing below, the stairwell turned sharply to the right. Timothy was in the midst of a frenzied descent behind Sheridan, whose eye-lights illuminated the path ahead, when a stocky shape appeared from the darkness below to block their path.

  “Caw! Another one!” Edgar croaked.

  The unknown figure grunted in response and Timothy knew immediately who it was. Ivar climbed the final step onto the landing, into the light thrown by Sheridan’s eyes. The warrior held an intricately carved wooden staff in his hand, a weapon he had brought over from the Island of Patience.