Witchmarked (World's First Wizard Book 1) by Aaron Schneider (my reading book .txt) 📕

arm and gently raised him to his feet. Milo was happy to find that despite everything, his legs still worked, though he was grateful Ambrose didn’t let go until he’d found his footing on the cushioned floor.

“Well, now that me and my charge are reunited, I suppose we can commence with introductions,” the bodyguard said in a genuinely jovial tone. “How about you two go first since we’re guests?”

“Um,” Milo interrupted, turning toward his best estimation of Ambrose’s position. “I can’t see a thing, and I’ve only got about four more matches left. Do we really intend to have this entire conversation in the dark?”

“I’m sorry, you’re right,” Ambrose said, and Milo heard his feet shuffle softly as he turned. “Perhaps our hosts can arrange to fix the situation. Seems only polite.”

The two creatures spoke to each other in their language, which sounded more sinister in a huddled whisper, especially since Milo realized they’d noiselessly slid past where he stood in the tunnel. The conversation lasted long enough that Ambrose gave a huff of irritation, shortly after which he heard some strange sounds.

There was a sound like rotten cloth tearing, then the rattle and clink of glass against glass. A second later, there was scratching like a dull knife rasping over bone. This was followed a heartbeat later by the distinctly unpleasant sound of snorting and hawking, then someone spat into something with a wet splat.

“Here,” Milo’s shadow said, and Ambrose could be heard stepping forward to take something.

Milo ached to ask his bodyguard how he was managing all this in the stygian tunnel, but interrogating his only ally in front of two monsters seemed ill-advised.

“What good will this do him?” Ambrose asked in a bristly tone.

“If he is what he claims he is, it should be a simple matter to catalyze the essence,” the other shadow replied curtly. “It is very fresh.”

“He came here to learn magic, sweetie,” Ambrose drawled. “You have to teach him how.”

Both creatures made a disgusted sound and then lapsed into a thickening silence.

“Put the vessel in its hands,” Milo’s shadow instructed, and Milo found himself gripping something hard and smooth except for a fine layer of grit across part of its surface.

Milo thought it didn’t feel like any container he’d handled before, but the texture of the surface was familiar, although he couldn’t place it. It seemed rounded and had two rough handles. As he held it, he heard small granules shifting within, and in a strange way, he detected a faint vibration or resonance coming from within. When he pressed his palms against the surface, he realized he was sensing the subtle movement, though it wasn’t through his fingers or palms. He knew it was there, as real as the dust beneath his digits, but it wasn’t physical.

A tremor of excitement and delicious terror raced through him, and he fought to keep from visibly shaking.

“Try to relax and do what they say,” Ambrose whispered. “And don’t drop it.”

“Call to the essence,” the she-shadow said. “Whisper the command ‘Light,’ then breathe over it.”

It seemed a strange, almost comical, instruction, but the thrumming presence between his hands beckoned him to try.

“Light,” Milo said as confidently as he could, then he blew between his hands as though coaxing tinder to life.

Like embers stirred by bellows, a soft viridian light spilled from three apertures in the vessel. The illumination filled the stony tunnel, for that was what they were in, and Milo nearly grinned like a babe after uttering its first word to doting parents.

The smile was snatched away as he realized the openings through which the light poured were the cavities of a goat skull’s vacant eyes and nose sockets. The handles were the horns of the beast

Willing himself to not drop the luminous skull, he looked up and saw his instructors. As he stared at the two nightmares given form, he wondered if perhaps he had been better off in the dark.

Milo’s first teachers were stooped, gaunt creatures, bent nearly double, so their knobby spines stood out along their backs, while their gangly arms hung to the floor. Their skin seemed like oil, dark but possessing a glimmering opalescent quality that made them seem like slimy creatures of the deep. Their outthrust heads on bowed necks were too elongated, narrow, and sharp to be anything but vaguely humanoid. Their eyes gleamed over a squashed snout of a nose and a nest of fangs.

Milo, gaping in revulsion, looked from one to the other, noting that the larger of the two held one arm curled against a sunken chest, the wrist a ragged stump. His stomach turned when he saw the severed appendage in her other clawed hand.

The smaller of the two, the one who must have been Milo’s abductor, stood a little in front of the wounded one, shielding her from the light.

When their glinting black eyes faced the light, they squinted in distaste, but when they looked at Milo, there was an intensity, almost a hunger, that made him uneasy. It was hard not to stare at their hooked fangs and remember that they had called him meat more than once.

“What are you?” Milo murmured, keeping the skull lamp steady in his hands.

“We are ghuls,” Milo’s captor said as it inched forward, eyes locked on Milo’s face. “And you are the first humans to have seen our kind and lived for centuries, if human you are.”

A defiant spark blossomed in Milo’s heart at the implication, and he stoked it until it rendered enough heat to drive back the grip fear had on the organ.

“Why would I be anything but?” he demanded, and the light surged in sympathy that made the ghuls recoil.

“We don’t know,” the wounded female snarled, her eyes narrowed to suspicious slits. “But no human has ever worked magic in the memory of our people or any of the shayati we have heard tell of. I would not have believed it to be true if I hadn’t seen it.”

“You travel with