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

one who looks human but is not, so it is not so strange to think there is some deception here,” Milo’s ghul said defensively, one gnarled finger leveled at Ambrose.

Some part of Milo felt sure this was a trick, a distraction to draw his attention elsewhere so they could attack or flee, but a sinking sense of dread and curiosity drew his eyes to his bodyguard.

Ambrose was glaring at the ghuls with an intensity that the monsters must have felt, and he refused to meet Milo’s eyes.

“I’m half-human,” he said by way of explanation. “On my mother’s side. I wasn’t joking when I said she was a shepherdess.”

The ghuls hissed and shrank against the wall of the cavern as one.

“Jurhumidon!”

“Son of Gamorrah!”

Befuddled by the strength of their reaction, Milo’s gaze darted between Ambrose and the recoiling ghuls.

“Simon, please help me out here?” Milo said, unable to keep the note of pleading from his voice. “What’s going on?”

“We cannot take you to our Bashlek, not now!”

“Ambrose?”

“Treachery! Did you think we would let you deliver this assassin to the heart of our tribe?”

“You can kill us now, Fallen One. We are ready to d—”

“SILENCE!”

The bellow came from Ambrose, but it was more than mere sound. Milo recognized it as being akin to the pressure he’d felt on the train when he’d met the big man’s stare. This was far more potent, a palpable battering force that drove Milo to one knee and sent the ghuls to huddling on the ground.

Milo felt a heat that did not touch his skin but his soul radiating from Ambrose, and despite the terror that filled him, he turned and beheld his bodyguard.

Ambrose stood in the tunnel the same as he would anywhere else, his jacket straining around his lumpy form, but he was more. Not just taller and broader, though the tunnel seemed to strain to contain him, he was suffused with an alien light that seemed to smother Milo’s pitiful skull lamp. He was a black sun bleeding enervating red light, a corona of crackling wrath surrounding his hands and head.

Eyes that had become bloody stars turned to regard Milo, and he saw strange twisting symbols form amidst the dancing flames swaddling Ambrose’s hands and face. They were writing, words of living flame.

Milo could read them if he wished.

If he dared.

Across gulfs of infinity, a voice whispered a promise.

Milo’s heart seized in his chest and his hands flew to his face, unwilling and unable to bear what he saw. The skull lamp fell to the matted floor, and its light winked out. Mercifully, the world returned to darkness.

It was some time before Milo found the strength to grope for the skull. To his uncomfortable surprise, he saw as the light returned that both his monstrous instructors and his terrible guardian remained. Ambrose was just Ambrose again and the ghuls were no longer cowering, but it was a long, strained moment before anyone said anything.

“So,” Milo murmured, slowly meeting the eyes of all in attendance, “I believe we had somewhere to be and someone to meet, right? Perhaps we should just get going.”

7

A Threshold

It took a little more cajoling to get the ghuls to comply, and from the onset, Milo could tell it was a ruse. If Ambrose even sniffed, they twitched and cowered.

On they went, down the woolly-floored tunnel, the two ghuls loping in front, just at the edge of the illumination cast by the skull lamp. Milo’s legs had begun to stiffen from the bruising treatment they’d received earlier, but he kept up well enough. An arm’s length behind him strode Ambrose, quiet and brooding.

The passage wound slowly down into the earth until Milo was certain they had to be several stories deep. The thought of so much earth pressing down around them, not to mention the company he was keeping or their destination, had Milo feeling very small and very vulnerable as he walked through the dark. The tender yet venomous glow of the goat skull in his hands seemed a small comfort as they marched on.

After a time, the ghuls began to whisper to each other so softly that Milo couldn’t tell if they were using their blasphemous language or not. He thought about demanding they speak words everyone could understand, but he reminded himself that he was going into someone else’s territory—their home, even.

He decided it was probably wiser to be diplomatic.

“Is it much farther?” he called, squinting at the ghuls’ dark, iridescent forms.

They were inky puppets moving across a black curtain, distinguishable only by their movements.

“We will come upon the first gate within the hour,” the female ghul, the one related to the Bashlek, called back. “Once he learns what walks with us, he will seek to stop us, but I think I can persuade him to let us pass.”

“The court after that will be another matter entirely,” Milo’s ghul warned. “It is already a wonder they were convinced to allow a human, much less a celestial mutt.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t mention anything about my pedigree,” Ambrose called from the rear. “No need to waste our time and yours with arguments with some gatekeeper.”

To Milo’s startled surprise, the two ghuls stopped dead in their tracks, turning as one to look first at Milo and then beyond at Ambrose, who came up behind his ward’s left shoulder. For five long seconds they stared at the big man, then made an awful bubbling sound like blood from a torn throat. Finally, they clacked their fangs together.

It took Milo and Ambrose a moment to realize the awful noise was laughter.

“There is no gatekeeper,” the royal ghul remarked as the mirth subsided. “Only the gate. You must remember that among the shayati, things do not work as they do among mortal men.”

Milo and Ambrose exchanged concerned looks and might have asked more questions, but the ghuls had begun to move again.

“I am not sure if that was meant to be a threat or not,” Ambrose whispered, addressing Milo directly for the first time since