Page 35 of Wizards & Weavers (Cozy Questing #1)
Chapter
Twenty-Five
Braiden rose the following morning feeling uncommonly refreshed. He must have slept so soundly, snored loud enough to wake the dead — certainly enough to emit those residual arcane vapors that Augustin kept going on about.
Augustin wasn’t there. Braiden curled his fingers, only a little disappointed to discover that his hand was resting on its own underneath the covers. Perhaps the wizard had risen earlier, newly motivated by the promise of even greater elementals and even more whistle stones to loot.
That more or less turned out to be the truth, as Braiden discovered shortly after performing his morning ablutions. The Wizard of Weathervale was already inhaling a bowl of something at the dinner table, eating enthusiastically as a bleary-eyed Elyssandra picked at her plateful of nuts and berries.
“Morning,” Braiden greeted, unsure of how to gauge his party’s mood on this particular morning.
“And a fine morning it is,” Augustin said, mouth still half full of his breakfast. “We made oatmeal. It’s lovely with a bit of sugar. There’s more in the pot on the stove. Help yourself.”
Elyssandra narrowed her eyes, ruffling her hair in one hand. “ He made it, mind you, clattering and banging in the kitchen so early in the morning. I mean — thank you for making breakfast, Augustin.”
Braiden held back a little laugh. Never did he think that Elyssandra would grow weary of her wizard hero, but as Braiden was slowly learning, the man was more like the wind and weather than any of them might have expected.
Temperamental, yes, and impulsive, as likely to build into a brisk gale as he was to peter out into a light breeze.
Not that this was a problem, really. For every little quirk that Braiden found annoying about Augustin Arcosa, he was finding one or two new things to like about him, too.
“Yes,” Braiden said, smiling as he pulled up a chair. “Thank you for making breakfast. Will Warren be joining us, or is he already outside setting traps, somehow?”
“Believe it or not, he’s still asleep.” Elyssandra waved vaguely toward the still-shut door of the cottage’s newest room. “Keeps asking for five more minutes. That bed of his must be so lovely.”
Augustin hardly noticed when she threw him the briefest of dirty looks. Again Braiden had to hold back his laughter.
“It looked very comfy,” Augustin said between mouthfuls. “The petals must be so soft and velvety.”
“Oh, they are,” Elyssandra said icily, disguising her mood by filling her cheeks with fruit.
An hour or so later, with fuller bellies and a fully awakened Warren, the four filed back out into the cavern. Braiden folded his arms around himself, again grateful that he’d decided to bring a sweater, wishing he was back in bed and under the covers again.
He held out a hand, a glowing bead of magic already forming on his finger when Augustin reached for his wrist and lowered his arm. The wizard shook his head.
“We are all very grateful for the scarves that you knitted us yesterday,” Augustin said, “but I don’t think any of us will want a repeat of you fainting from expending so much magic. I was very worried.”
Elyssandra rubbed her forearms and stamped her feet to keep warm. “He’s right. It was very kind of you, but we’ll have to make do. We all need to preserve our energies for whatever lies ahead.”
Warren hopped from one foot to the other, already miserable, but he forced a smile for Braiden. It felt so unkind to deprive his friends of what little he could offer, but they had a fair point.
Also, Augustin had very explicitly said that he was worried about Braiden fainting. Elyssandra and Warren cared too, of course, but it mattered that Augustin was so specific. It was nice to know that the wizard cared that much. Braiden tried not to look so smug.
“Then shall we get going?” Warren asked. “It’s freezing out here. The sooner we finish, the better.”
‘“Agreed,” Braiden said, already taking a step when Augustin held up one hand.
“Hold,” Augustin said, closing his hand into a fist. “Do you feel that? Something is different.”
Elyssandra went perfectly still as they studied the cavern, her eyes like the clearest set of emeralds. She pulled down her cowl, her ears faintly twitching. “You’re right. Something has changed here.”
Warren’s nose wrinkled, and then his ears twitched, too. They crooked and turned this way and that, pointing off into the chamber, swiveling like a pair of dowsing rods. But in search of what, exactly?
And then it hit Braiden like a frothing wave, a cool, tingling sensation of invisible force. It felt like the wind, except that it blew eerily in reverse, sucking, beckoning, grasping at the air with unseen fingers.
“There,” Warren said, pointing at the end of the cavern. “It’s hard to make out from here, but right there. A large crack in the wall.”
And there it was, an imperfect sliver in the ice, a new crevice in the rock wall that was tall and wide enough to fit a man. From afar, it reminded Braiden of something sinister — the strange iris-like mouth of a lesser elemental, or the eye of a snake.
“Curious,” Augustin said. “The trembling and thrashing of our colossal elemental friend must have caused more damage to this place than we realized. And to think it had intended to use its enormous strength against our very bodies.”
Braiden shuddered. “And you still want to hunt them down to find more whistle stones?”
Augustin raised his nose with a defiant sniff. “Absolutely. The same way I’m going to walk right into that crevice and find whatever it is that’s radiating this alluring force.”
The cavern truly had changed, though Braiden knew he could be forgiven for missing the finer details. He was far too busy being unconscious, after all.
The colossus must have dislodged more icicles from the ceiling in the heat of battle, so many of them falling and piercing the ground like great, frozen thorns. Rubble and debris traced a path toward the new crevice, strewn haphazardly across the cavern floor.
Some of the icy coffins had been crushed in the fight, too. Pieces of ancient skeleton and chunks of ice lay scattered where the elemental had stomped on them.
It seemed silly, feeling sorry for these long-dead strangers, but Braiden couldn’t help himself. These were people of Aidun, once, perhaps even from a time when Aidun wasn’t called Aidun. It wasn’t right to desecrate or disturb the dead.
And the dead seemed to agree.
A large piece of bone clattered of its own accord. More rattling sounds followed as a series of smaller bones wriggled in grisly procession from under a pile of broken ice.
Braiden yelped. Elyssandra shrieked. This was no trick of the light, no horrible prank pulled by anyone in their party. Braiden would have known to look out for a strong gust of wind, the howl of a conjured gale. Still he looked to Augustin for an answer, frowning in accusation.
The wizard held up his hands. “This isn’t me. Look. This isn’t my magic.”
And Augustin was telling the truth. Braiden didn’t know everything about the various schools of magic, but Granny Bethilda had given him hints of what to look out for.
Fire magic was easy enough to identify, the practice of pyromancy filled with flashy flames and explosions. Ice magic was easy, too — just look for telltale signs of frost and an unnatural chill in the air.
But the eerie light that drew pieces of a skeleton together like a marionette’s strings, the sickly tendrils that bound the bones into a singular shape? This was the ghastly green of necromancy, the dark and horrifying magic of the dead.
Faster and faster the magic spun, the pile of bones swirling and stitching in a hideous vortex of ancient ivory and ghostly green.
“Ybura preserve us,” Braiden stammered. “It’s one of the undead.”
Elyssandra grabbed a handful of Braiden’s sweater and twisted, pulling against him for comfort. If she pulled any tighter, she would hopelessly stretch the sweater out forever. Augustin waved his fingers, crafting a cautious spell, his teeth clenched as he beheld the bizarre resurrection.
Warren gripped his staff in both hands, keeping the bravest face of them all. He bore the ideal weapon for fighting the undead, after all, perfect for breaking skulls and cracking bone.
The skeleton leapt to its feet with a screech. It whirled in a terrified circle, the sightless sockets that once held its eyes burning with motes of pale greenish light.
“Where?” the skeleton shouted. “The undead? Where?”
The hairs on Braiden’s body bristled, his nerves slowly fraying. Elyssandra kept pulling on his sweater. That was starting to fray, too. Did this creature simply have a twisted sense of humor? Didn’t it know?
“We have to get out of here,” the skeleton shouted. “I didn’t sign up to fight zombies and ghosties. Look at me. My hands are shaking.”
The skeleton lifted fleshless fingers to its face, its bony knuckles knick-knocking with genuine terror. And then it finally understood. Its cry of horror curdled Braiden’s blood.
“I’m dead!” the skeleton wailed. “Oh, merciless gods, to condemn me to an afterlife as nothing but a pile of bones. But if I’m dead, and this is what lies beyond the veil — why do you have skin and meat?”
The skeleton was speaking to everyone in the cavern, but a building horror in Braiden’s gut told him that the twin specks of ghostly flame in its eye sockets were focused on him. The skeleton reached out its bony hand. It hobbled forward on creaky, frost-encrusted feet.
“Give me some of your skin,” it rasped.
A fresh wave of terror ripped through Braiden’s body. He stumbled backward, knocking against Elyssandra. She let go of his sweater and hurried to the back of the group with a frightened yelp.
“You don’t need all of your flesh. Gimme.”