The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) by Brad Magnarella (best business books of all time txt) 📕

The eyes staring up at me were large toadstool-filled sockets. Dark, wet growth had erupted over the rest of his face, reminding me of the wargs. I eased forward again, staff held up. Black mold glistened in the light, making it appear as though the growth was crawling over him.

“What in the hell happened to you?” I whispered.

The casting circle around Lazlo was for protection. He’d been trying to defend himself. But against what? Something stronger than him, evidently—and Lazlo had been a Third Order mage. My gaze moved back to his body. Bared teeth showed through Lazlo’s decayed lips.

If only he could talk, I thought, then stopped.

Lazlo had had a barn cat, a tough gray tom named, well, Tom. During my final month here, I’d found Tom in a corner of the barn one day, his mouth open, tongue out. When I nudged him with my shoe, his body was as stiff as a board. I told Lazlo the bad news. He simply nodded and wrapped Tom in a towel that I assumed he would bury him in. The next day, though, while I was loading hay from the barn, a thick, purring body swiped my legs. I looked down and there was Tom: dusty gray coat, cloven right ear, and one hundred percent alive.

I sprinted inside and told Lazlo.

“It was not his time,” my mentor said.

“Not his time?” I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. “Tom wasn’t sick yesterday, Lazlo. He was dead.”

“Yes, but that was my fault. Not his.”

“Wait … you resurrected him?”

“I shouldn’t have put the rat poison where he could get to it.”

“How?” I pressed.

The magic we’d practiced to that point had involved basic invocations. But resurrection?

Lazlo’s lips tensed in what was the closest he ever came to smiling. “One day, Everson.” Which was his way of saying it was an advanced spell for which I didn’t have the necessary experience.

“Well, that day’s today,” I whispered now, grimacing at the idea.

I still lacked the experience, to be honest, but I’d read enough books in the decade since to understand how resurrection worked. For someone as long gone as Lazlo, I couldn’t hope for much, maybe a few seconds of life, but if it was enough for him to tell me who had killed him, I would be closer to understanding what was happening, who I could trust. And if Lazlo had resurrected Tom, he would have the necessary spell ingredients.

I wheeled toward his shelves and began unstoppering old vials and sniffing their contents. Fennel … yarrow … I was looking for moschatus, a rare oil. On the top shelf, I found it. I re-stoppered the vial and began looking through his moldy collection of books until I found a familiar tome that focused on the dead. I had the same tome in my own collection. I flipped to the section on resurrection.

The next half hour involved reconfiguring the casting circle and preparing Lazlo’s body with the moschatus oil.

At last, I stood outside the circle.

“Cerrare,” I said. Energy coursed through my sword and closed the circle. Consulting the book, I began incanting in an ancient tongue. Cold energies swirled throughout the room. I trembled from them as well as from a deeper dread around what I was doing. Restoring a decayed form to life, however briefly, felt wrong on so many levels. Also, except for in exceptional circumstances—and with prior approval—the Order forbade resurrections.

What if the rule is to prevent communication with sacrificed magic-users? the voice whispered inside me. A voice I no longer suppressed. I would know something shortly.

“Vivere!” I finished.

I watched Lazlo’s body, a part of me hoping it would remain still, that the spell wouldn’t take hold. I was violating a law of nature, which may have been the actual reason behind the Order’s prohibition. But I steeled my mind, reminding myself that I was doing this for a magic-using community that could be in mortal danger. I doubted Lazlo would object. He—

I broke off mid-thought and stiffened. Had Lazlo’s jaw just shifted?

I leaned nearer. His bared teeth parted, releasing two scratchy words. “I … hurt.”

“Lazlo?” I said, my own voice barely a whisper. “Lazlo, it’s Everson.”

His body remained still for so long, I thought I’d lost him again. But then his top arm trembled as though trying to lift his wasted hand. His jaw shifted again. “Everson?”

“Yes, Lazlo,” I said, kneeling and placing my hand over his. I tried to ignore the wet feel of the fungi and tissue. It was like he was being slowly digested. “What happened?”

“Leave,” he said.

“I need to know what happened to you.”

“I’m in … the pit.”

“The pit?”

“In … him.”

“Who?”

“They’ll … take you … too.”

A shudder passed through me. “Who? Lich? The Front?”

His head shook, though whether in a tremor or to say he didn’t know, I couldn’t tell.

“My hair,” he rasped. “Take it … find me.”

I nodded quickly, cut a wisp of his dark hair with the sword, and placed it in my pocket.

“Leave,” he repeated in what sounded like a plea. I imagined his cloudy wolf-torn eye staring into mine, though on his corpse there was only the cluster of toadstools. “They … they’re coming.”

“Is Lich alive?” I asked.

“Hurts,” he mumbled. The trembling in his wet hand ceased.

“Lazlo?” I asked, giving him a light shake. But the resurrection spell was spent, the magic expired. My former mentor was a fungus-riddled corpse again, his soul returned to whatever plane it inhabited.

In the pit? I thought. In him?

Had Lazlo meant Lich? That would jibe with what Connell had told me—how Lich was sacrificing souls to feed his efforts as well as to sustain himself. But Lazlo could also have been cast into the pit by Marlow and consumed by Dhuul. Hence, “in the pit, in him.”

They’ll take you too, Lazlo had said.

Who were they?

Above me, the rain fell harder. Wind shrieked past the doorway to the cellar. It was only when the wind died again that I realized the cellar