Wizardborn (World's First Wizard Book 3) by Aaron Schneider (read me like a book txt) 📕

a building that might have been familiar from that night the wind was on fire, but then he’d look down another alley or side-street and realize they were all beginning to look the same.

“That part of the city might not even be standing now,” Milo muttered to himself, then looked to see if the words elicited a turned head from the soulless in the bed with him. To his morose disappointment, their masked faces continued to stare through him, hands on their rifles.

He made another abortive attempt to see if his will could ferret out something from them, but again there was nothing. They were meat, bone, and various tissues, continuing to exist only because no one had told them they were dead. Even the Soviets in Georgia hadn’t been this expunged from humanity. The reality of what Zlydzen could do chilled him, not only for its effect but also the complete mystery of its means.

He’d interrogated Rihyani and Imrah on the way back from Georgia about dwarrow magic, but they were hardly more knowledgeable than he. Dwarrow magic tended to be tied to the creation of physical objects, similar in some ways to ghul necromistry, but that was the end of their understanding. Dwarrow made items or devices that worked wonders and horrors, and it seemed none knew how they worked except them.

Milo wondered if Roland, who was working with Zlydzen, could shed light on the conundrum. The thought of asking him seemed ridiculous, then Milo’s wrists clinked as the truck rolled over some detritus, and he remembered his interrogation of Ezekiel Bouche. Perhaps, when he finally absconded from this place, Roland would come with them. They’d captured one warlord out from under his army, hadn’t they? Why not another?

He thought of Roland bound before him as Milo conjured the images of shades to claw and scourge his flesh. The magus nursed the venomous flame of that thought until the vehicle’s lurching stop drew his attention.

He looked up and saw a rusted wall nearly five meters tall looming before the truck, with coils of razor wire like fraying curls across its top. Set in the center of the wall was a gate of iron latticework, overlaid and intertwined as though someone had taken sections of wrought iron fence and welded them together. As the gate swung open and they passed through, Milo saw that was indeed what the gate was made of.

The ramshackle gate closed behind them, then the truck was rolling down a wide road of crushed rock. On either side, tin-roofed pavilions and open-sided garages were alive with bustling bodies and scattered sparks as gas-masked men and women in coveralls worked on various metal projects.

Milo’s nightsight elixir was beginning to fade, but the gray of the coming dawn gave him some help, though it didn’t do him much good. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out what they were building. It wasn’t weapons or parts for any vehicle he’d ever seen. More than anything, what he saw mostly was rods of metal being fastened together in vaguely plantlike or maybe even floral patterns. Milo shifted to try to get a better look, and the shackles gave a sharp rattle as he played out the short chain. The soulless all swung toward him, rifles coming to their shoulders.

Milo decided that the construction efforts would have to be one of the things he’d ask Roland about.

His eyes swung back to the fort, and in front of the truck, Milo saw a smooth-sided column reaching skyward. Following the stony trunk upward, he saw a plinth at the top where a one-winged angel stood with an arm upraised as though calling the earthbound mortals below to behold some miracle. The other side of the statue had been reduced to blocky broken angles with a few trailing spurs of twisted metal. Despite the mangling, something about the statue was familiar. As Milo stared up, they passed beneath its shadow, and a chill raced through him.

He felt the icy wind, that breath of the cruel winters of Northern Russia that came on so quickly. As he stared at the angelic sentinel, his mind was hurled back in time.

He was holding Momma’s hand and huddling close to her against the chill.

Someone was talking to Momma, a man with a voice as cold and biting as the wind.

“And we still cling to such superstitions. Bah! Angels and crosses, and God! A real Russian doesn’t believe in such foolishness as God!”

He didn’t like the man. The man could sound nice when others were around, but with Momma, it was always like this. He also didn’t like the man’s frowning mustache and scheming dark eyes.

He pressed his face into his mother’s coat.

“It is not that we don’t believe in Him, Soso,” Momma said softly. “It is that we hate Him—hate Him because He first hated us.”

“And yet we are surrounded by all this?” the man demanded, pointing up at the angel.

His mother laughed, and it was like bells chiming through the wind, taunting and yet beautiful.

“Didn’t Dostoevsky say it best? Love is not the same thing as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.”

The man shrugged and turned to walk away, toward the palace.

The chill retreated, and Milo realized where they were: the Winter Palace.

A moment later, the palace hove into view over the truck as it began to slow, and he understood that he was correct, at least in part. They were at what was left of the Winter Palace. Stalin’s forces had not been kind to the resplendent enclave, and in the time since then, there had been only cursory attempts to restore portions of the sprawling structure to use. The entire west wing was a bare-beamed ruin, stretching out like the blackened skeleton of a fallen giant amidst the rubble of its fossilized flesh. The central hall was in better condition. Its many broken windows had at least received the attention of boards and nails to