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

Fighting his natural urge to throw up a rough front, Milo only nodded, and in his most sincerely inquisitive tone, asked her, “What is the tradition of the Merry Fellows?”

“It was once an informal but well-respected collaboration between certain humans and what we fey call the Folk, what you might call supernatural beings.”

“What the ghuls call ‘shayati,’” Milo offered.

“Precisely,” the contessa agreed, giving him a smile. He was embarrassed by how giddy it made him feel.

“When one of the Folk finds an exceptional human,” the fey continued, “they determine if that human can be trusted with knowledge of our existence. If they can, a bargain will be struck for their mutual benefit. Rare even in the days before such dark times as these, it is a credit to your commanding officer that he was chosen, though I’m not so certain he feels the privilege outweighs the burden at this point.”

Fazihr’s human voice called from up ahead, almost blasphemous in its volume, “We will be nearing the gate soon. After that, it will not be long to the sentry post, and then the surface.”

“That’s a lot quicker than I expected,” Milo mused with a frown. “It seems like it's only been an hour or so if that.”

“Ghul tunnels are enchanted to speed travel,” Rihyani replied with a shrug as if it were not particularly surprising. “Why else would they be carpeted in mort-scalp?”

“Mort-scalp?” Milo breathed, feeling his mouth go dryer with each cushioned step.

Ambrose muttered a string of profanity that involved multiple saints performing rude and anatomically unfeasible acts.

“Every time I think ghuls can’t get worse,” the bodyguard growled at the end of his irreverent tirade.

“My apologies,” Rihyani said, turning to look ahead once more. “I assumed your instructor had explained that.”

“That must be part of day three’s lesson.” Milo sighed, trying not to wince with every step he took across the hairy floor.

For a time, they lapsed into silence. When it seemed that the contessa was about to slide forward again to rejoin her own kind, a sudden thought struck Milo.

“Why the ghuls?” he asked and realized with a cringe the question had been loud enough to echo up and down the tunnel.

“What do you mean?” Rihyani asked, though one look at her face told Milo she knew exactly what he meant.

“What I mean is,” Milo began, carefully modulating the tone and volume of his voice, “there are obviously other Folk. I’ve read about different kinds in one of the books Imrah gave me. My question is, why send me to the ghuls first?”

Rihyani’s expression became fixed, a mask that betrayed nothing as she stared ahead in thought. When her golden pupils finally returned to him, he felt a quickening in his heart that was neither fear nor excitement, but something in between.

“There were many reasons, some practical to the nature of the task and some to the reality of the world.”

The answer informed him of nothing, and again Milo had to stow his inclination to become belligerent.

“I am not sure I understand,” he said apologetically before pressing in. “It might help if you could be more specific.”

Again the mask and again the penetrating look.

“One factor is how ghuls exercise their magical nature,” she said, her words chosen with surgical precision. “Ghul magic is of a kind most closely related to common human concepts of science. Ingredients, formulas—those sorts of things. We who were willing to consider the possibility of a human capable of magic felt that their methods might be the best for you to learn.”

“But that’s not the only reason,” Milo said, his certainty driving the question out of the statement.

“That wasn’t the only reason,” Rihyani agreed, and without seeming to quicken her pace, she slid back in line with her fellow fey.

They passed the gate, the massive bone creature letting them pass without comment, and made their way up a gradually sloping corridor. Then more silent trudging, until a quarter of an hour from the gate, something in the environment altered.

Milo noticed it first as a change in the fey in front of him.

The fey did not walk through the world, they strode in the way he thought kings and princes of bygone years might have. Yet not long after passing the gate, Milo saw their stride became a stalk, every ounce of their grace and poise becoming predatory. Even the bronze colossus, whose head seemed about to scrape the ceiling of the tunnel, moved with the coiling gait of a massive feline.

Milo wasn’t the only one to notice it.

“Something’s up,” Ambrose whispered at his shoulder, and a backward glance told Milo the big man was holding his Gewehr in both hands across his body.

“What is it?” Milo murmured, one hand reaching for the pistol at his hip. He felt the tremor of magic in the hand gripping the skull cane.

“Not sure,” Ambrose answered with a sniff and a twitch of his mustache. “But our fairy friends seem concerned, and there’s a smell on the air that I don’t like.”

Taking his own sampling of the air, Milo noted that there was something decidedly caustic. It was nothing so distinct as a smell, more of an irritant or a tickle in his nostrils and at the back of his throat. A few minutes later, the smell had grown to a chemical stench on the air, like someone had set cleaning products on fire.

If you could burn ammonia, Milo thought, it would smell like this.

A prickle of terror rolled up Milo’s spine and he turned back toward Ambrose, not caring that he could practically feel the blood draining from his face.

“Could this be some kind of chemical attack?” he whispered, fear sharpening his voice.

Of all the horrors of the war he’d been braced for, the threat of horrors concocted by some sadist in a lab coat had always struck him as one of the most sinister. Bullets, bombs, and shells to rip, blast, and obliterate were more honest and acceptable. A caustic fog that ate