Halfway (Wizards and Faeries) Read online

  Temet felt tears on his cheeks at the memory of the girl. Where was she now? Had she forgotten her old life yet?

  The Ten Ring was still there, thumbing through more memories. Enraged, Temet gritted his teeth.

  “You steal children, you brainwash everyone else to be afraid of us… and now you won’t even leave my head alone? Get out of my head!” he screamed. There was no use hiding his true feelings anymore; they had seen everything. “Get out of my head, you monsters!”

  With a rush of desperation and anger brought on by the memory of the girl, he fought the sleepy barrier.

  He went too far.

  Before he realized it, he had shot past their attacks, their mental defenses, and their present thoughts… all the way to their memories. The tables had been turned.

  The Ten Ring realized this and fought to hide their memories, which were a jumble of images and thoughts Temet felt lost in.

  One thing stood out from all of their minds.

  He saw an image of a high black arch, spells laced around it. Gringwell and the other wizard who had saved him stood near it, pouring even more spells onto it as the Ten Ring stood by, still wearing their cloaks, as anonymous as Enforcers.

  So that was what Gringwell and his companion had been in the Ten Ring’s tower for, Temet realized. They were building something with the Ten Ring. Something secret.

  What was it?

  The Ten Ring fought him harder. He retreated from their minds, their onslaught too strong for him. Apparently this had been a great secret he had stumbled upon.

  But before they beat him back, three words were pressed upon his mind: Portal To Space. An image of the airless void of space, scattered with stars, flashed through his mind.

  Space? Why did they want to travel to space? Space was a black void with no air.

  …No air. That meant no atmosphere! None of the wizards knew why, but atmosphere hampered Magic. So Magic in space would be unlimited!

  Temet retreated further. He had only meant to fight back, not to jump headfirst into their memories. Even though the archway intrigued him, he allowed himself to retreat from their minds completely.

  He was not a monster.

  …Magic outside the atmosphere? That was ridiculous. There was no way to breathe and live outside the atmosphere, so death would be swift to any power-hungry wizard who thought space would give him unlimited power. Unless they had found a way around that…

  “I am sorry for the intrusion into your memories, Ones-Who-Hold-The-World-Together,” he said, feeling false. “I did not mean to go that far in, only to repel your onslaught. I you wish, I will—”

  “You must die!” one of them hissed.

  So an apology was not an option. They still preferred murder. The Portal to Space must have been an incredible secret.

  Temet leaped out of the pool of light and ran for the door. A minor spell guarded it, but he batted that away, threw the door open, and ran.

  The Ten Ring were going to kill him! Already he heard their shouts.

  He ran further down the hallway. Where could he go?

  A bolt of magic shot past his head, singeing the hair near his ear. It hit a wall, leaving a large burn mark.

  An icy web slammed down in front of him, blocking the hallway. The contribution of some other irate Ten Ring wizard. Quickly, he shot a hole in it. Too small. Summoning more Magic, he blasted another hole and crawled through it, the ice too cold on his hands.

  Then the real fighting began.

  He wasn’t sure how many attacks there were or even how he fought them. He just did, his mind blank. No emotion; it would just get in the way. Flying knives at his heart, firebolts, skin-eating chemicals. No emotion, just repel them. He cast them aside.

  Snakes, attempts to stop his heart from afar, poison gas. The poison gas burned his nostrils, sending him coughing. It took all his strength to neutralize it. The Ten Ring weren’t even trying to be subtle anymore.

  He felt sleepy again. No. They had him once; he was leaving them for good this time. With a huge effort of his will, he broke though the sleepiness. If he survived this, he would have to work on getting better at defending against sleep-attacks.

  Temet ran. He was almost to the door. How would he escape? The platform had defective air masks!

  Throwing open the door to the air outside air, he ran to the edge of the platform. Such a long way down.

  He could see the Ten Ring approaching. Some of their hoods had been thrown back in the fight, revealing their half-veiled faces.

  They were normal. Not freakishly tall and scary, not with booming voices. They were wizards, just like he was. Wizards whose ambition would turn them into murderers if they succeeded in killing him. He could see them coming towards him, still hurling spells, their mouths twisted in snarls.

  Turning, he dove off the edge of the platform.

  The wind rushed past his face, colder than a splash of water. The white ground was rising up to meet him.

  He felt calm. There was nothing left now, nothing at all. What reason did he have to live?

  His eyes slowly closed.

  The image flashed through his mind: a woman, hair ice-blond like his own, asleep in a bed while a man in dark glasses held a strange piece of equipment over her head.

  She stirred fitfully, as if in pain.

  He recognized Duke Von Chi as the man… he’d seen pictures of him before. But the woman… ice-blond hair like his own, the same nose shape…

  Could it be Cemagna?

  Was she alive?

  Temet slammed a cushiony barrier of Magic down in front of him, softer and more yielding than a net of feathers.

  He hit it with the speed of a firebolt, nearly breaking it, but it held, easing him to the ground instead. He panted, lying facedown in the snow of the forest.

  But he was alive.

  Temet jumped to his feet. The snow-covered trees were all around. He had to get to the city and find Cemagna. Why was she with the duke? How long had she been there? Whatever Von Chi had been doing to her did not look wholesome.

  Brushing the snow from his robes, he took off his black scarf and ripped the silver moon-eye pin from it. The moon-eye he had been almost proud to receive when he had been accepted into the Wizarding University.

  Then, wrapping the scarf warmly around his neck, he hurled the pin as far as he could and headed for the city.

  I’m not part of the Order anymore, he told himself. They have failed me. My purpose, now, is only to find Cemagna.

  Chapter 17

  Cemagna

  I followed Ormas as he quickened his pace through the snowy forest.

  He stopped to look up at the sky, where the sun had risen at last. It had been a long, cold night of trudging through the forest and I was exhausted.

  “It’s warming up,” he said to me. “We have to go faster, Cemagna. Snow and ice can melt in this sun.”

  “Very correct, my son. Luckily for me, I realized that far before you did.”

  Duke Von Chi stood there, hands in his coat pockets, expression unreadable behind those dark glasses. “My son, why did you take her away from me? She has such promise for my research.”

  Ormas stepped in front of me. “You can’t have her. She’s not a toy or an experiment. She’s a person.”

  “Move out of the way, Ormas.”

  “No. You’ll have to kill me to get to her.”

  “If that’s what it takes.” Von Chi raised his hand and Ormas’ body flew to the side to crash into a tree trunk. Head first. Had he killed Ormas? Had he really just killed his son? I turned to run to Ormas but found myself encased in an invisible material, unable to move. The duke had trapped me. I felt myself beginning to panic, sweat forming on my palms. Ormas lay there, motionless.

  What was I doing? No! I could use Magic too; I had done it with the Enforcers!

  Focusing, I used Magic. I punched a hole through the duke’s invisible prison and slipped out, running towards Ormas. He couldn’t be dead. H
e couldn’t be.

  The duke was in front of me before I had even taken a few steps. He threw a fiery blast of Magic at me, but I redirected it easily. I could do Magic, too! He wouldn’t defeat me!

  I thrust a burst of fire at him. It hit him in the face, weak enough only to send his dark glasses flying.

  I stared at his eyes.

  They were a blank, empty gray, no pupils. The same color as his watery army.

  “How can you see?” I blurted before I could stop myself.

  “I can see excellently. This is simply a side-effect of my… work.”

  Oh. So messing around in people’s heads and trying to copy their Magic into himself caused creepy eyes. “Perhaps you should stop your work before it gets worse.” I stared at Ormas, my lover for such a short time. He still did not move. His chest wasn’t lifting or falling—he wasn’t breathing. “He’s dead,” I whispered. “You killed him. You killed your own son!” I cried, feeling tears filling my eyes. Ormas was dead, the only man who had ever been affectionate to me. The only one who had ever kissed me and made me feel safe. Dead.

  A smile spread over the duke’s face, made creepy by the sight of his eyes. “Oh, Cemagna, he’s not the one I want. He was only a soft-hearted child. You are what I want.”

  Then he did something I had seen only once before but knew immediately. He threw a handful of white powder into the air. It was the same white powder Aylward had used to render us all unconscious when he had kidnapped Temet.

  I held my breath, but it was too late; I had already inhaled the powder. My knees felt weak, and I felt myself hitting the cold snow face down.

  As I awoke, the first things I noticed were that I couldn’t move and that there were lights in my eyes.

  “We meet again, Cemagna.”

  I blinked, my vision clearing.

  I was lying strapped down to a padded table, lights shining down on me. Across from me stood Von Chi, standing in front of a table upon which lay a variety of instruments.

  I tried to turn and look around, but my forehead was strapped down too, with a leather strap.

  But I knew where I was. I was in the duke’s experiment room.

  “You never helped me find Temet. You said you would.” I wasn’t afraid, and that surprised me. I only felt anger. “Instead, you drugged me and did stuff to me when I was asleep. What kind of duke are you? I mean, I know I’m not really your subject, being from a different country and such, but I don’t think that made one whit of a difference to you. Do you do this to your own people, too?”

  “You talk too much,” he said. “So how did you find out about my experiments at night?”

  “I woke up with pinpricks in my head. Bleeding. That’s not exactly subtle of you, you know.” I stared at his eyes, at the creepy blank gaze he had caused himself.

  “I’ll have to perfect that.” He turned to his table and began rummaging. “I assume you know what I’m going to do, then.”

  I was nervous, as anyone strapped to a table by a madman would have been, but I forced myself to continue speaking. I had been cowed most of my life, and it had to stop.

  I tried to ignore the sound of metal-scraping-metal that was coming from the duke’s direction.

  “Not really,” I said. “I’ve only heard hints. You’re a scientist of some sort and you study Magic. And you know I’m Halfway.”

  “I’ve spent most of my life replicating Magic I found in others, but I’ve never had a chance to study a Halfway before, someone who can blend human and faerie Magic to create something better.”

  “You weren’t born with natural Magic abilities, so you artificially make yourself have them.”

  “Correct.”

  “Well, you won’t find anything. It’s in my head, and I don’t know how it works. My Magic is erratic at best, anyway.”

  He was still rummaging on the table. “I’m not sure if I believe you. I think I’ll learn your secrets myself. I really don’t want to do this to you, Cemagna. You really were such nice company, even asleep.”

  I struggled, shivering. Why was it so cold in here? The metal buckles touching my skin were even colder.

  “If I knew how Halfway Magic worked, I’d tell you. But I don’t. I actually, really don’t.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  He was rubbing something on his hands. “I haven’t had someone to experiment on in a long time. Many years, actually. The Order keeps them all locked up tightly. It was lucky for me that you came along. Now I can continue my research.” He turned towards me, holding a strange-looking instrument with several mirrors and a smoky glass sphere at the center.

  “How is torturing me going to help you get the answers you want? I can’t tell you things I don’t know.”

  He held the instrument over my face. “This isn’t torture. This is only the first step. I am going to discover the limits of your abilities. No matter how much you’ll try to hold it in, eventually you’ll lash out with your abilities full force.”

  That was when the pain began.

  Chapter 18

  Temet

  The moment Temet reached the city, he pulled his hood up to hide his face. If there were any Wizardly Order Enforcers about who recognized him… well, best not to think about that. The Enforcers could be… harsh with anyone who disobeyed the rules, and at that moment, that meant him.

  He suppressed a shudder at the thought of the Enforcers. They were a division within the Wizardly Order given almost unlimited authority to track down rogue wizards or anyone thought to be a threat to the Order. The Ten Ring’s angry dog. That’s what they were, and they enjoyed their work too much. Even most ordinary wizards became nervous around them in their anonymous, faceless robes.

  He hurried faster towards the duke’s palace.

  The gate was locked, but a quick burst of Temet’s Magic opened it rather violently. He stepped through into the garden, surrounded by sculpted shrubbery covered with a layer of snow that had already begun to melt. Past the garden he could see a partially enclosed courtyard, paved with bricks. He ran towards it, seeing doors under archways—a way in.

  He froze as a woman’s scream reached his ears. Cemagna?

  There were two doors on opposite sides of the courtyard—which one? Where was she?

  “I hadn’t expected to see you for years yet, but here you are. Welcome home,” said a voice from behind him.

  Temet turned slowly. Before him stood a man in robes too big for his skinny, emaciated body. The face was gaunt and sickly, but the eyes shone with life.

  “Who are you?” asked Temet.

  “You don’t recognize me? I’m the man who single-handedly changed your life forever. I’m Aylward.”

  “You!” cried Temet, hardly daring to believe this frail creature had once been the healthy man who had stolen him from his home. But the face—he recognized him now. It was Aylward. “Who are you—what are you? Everyone at the Order said you were dead before we even met. And I saw you die, too. How are you alive?”

  “I’m not alive in the normal sense of the word, but I am alive.” Aylward smiled. “I’m glad to see you again. You look well.”

  “None of that,” Temet snapped. “Who are you? Why did you bring me to the Order? I could have lived in peace with my family and the Order would never have found me! They tried to kill me!”

  “Yes, yes. That particular incident wasn’t part of the plan. My apologies; I did not realize they’d view you as a threat.”

  “What?” Temet felt his blood boiling. “What do you mean by that? This was a plan?”

  “Yes, actually, all of this was. You were as much the duke’s experiment as Cemagna is right at this moment. We wanted both of you—one who grew up without training, as Cemagna did, and one who grew up with the best training of all—the Order. That would be you. Von Chi’s known about you from the beginning. I’m sure he will find studying the differences in Magic between you twins enlightening.”

  “You work for the duke?” Temet spat.r />
  “Of course. He did give me life, you know. I did die a long time ago as the Order told you, but the duke had a way of resurrection. It’s not perfect, as you can see,” he said, motioning to his frail body, “but it worked on me. Actually, I was the only one it worked on.” He laughed. “He presented me with a choice—work for him or die again, permanently this time.”

  “How did you know about us?”

  “I helped Nessy escape from Von Chi when she was pregnant with the two of you. I helped her hide in that house on the cliff. In return, she promised that if her children could manifest Halfway Magic, she would give them to the Order.”

  “Nessy would never have made that promise!”

  “Oh, but she did. The Order is far better than Von Chi. What she didn’t know was that she was playing right into his hands by making that agreement.”

  “You stole a ship and staged your death in the storm so I’d go to the Order without anyone having to know about you.”

  “You’re too clever.”

  He heard another scream, a louder one. Aylward was wasting his time; he had to get to Cemagna!

  “Well, I’m not going to be your experiment, Aylward. I’m going to find my sister, and we’re going to leave you and your experiments—and whatever else your twisted minds want to do to us—far behind.”

  “I don’t think that will happen.” Aylward reached one emaciated, pale hand up. He snapped his fingers.

  Immediately dull gray figures leaped forth from the two snowy puddles on either side of him and grabbed Temet by the arms.

  Temet screamed and the dull figures exploded into raindrops.

  “Impressive,” murmured Aylward.

  “Aylward, last chance. Stop this insanity.”

  “Insanity? No,” he shook his head, lank hair flying. “We need you, Temet.”

  “For what?”

  “To finish our work. Don’t you see? This is important to the future of the city, of the whole of the world. You and your sister—the duke has stacks of unfinished notebooks! You and Cemagna would be his life’s crowning achievement.”

  “I still think being alive is more appealing.”