Sorcerybound (World's First Wizard Book 2) by Aaron Schneider (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📕

Looking into the inscrutable pavilion where the marquis sat unmoving even as his guests filed past, staring into the swirling smoke, Milo wasn’t certain of anything.

16

The Intrigue

“To the marquis!”

The cry went up for the fourth time and the entire dining hall answered in kind, then the fey downed their various horns, flutes, chalices, and goblets. It seemed that the marquis’ guests were eager to celebrate their host, even if he wasn’t present. Milo and Ambrose had been ushered in by a corvid butler in the wake of the other guests, but even as they were shooed in by the black-feathered servant, the marquis did not emerge from his tent. Now nearly an hour into the drinking and toasts, the lord of the manor had yet to make an appearance.

Milo ground his teeth as he glared at the drink in his hand, a crystal flute filled with dark wine. The shade of the vintage reminded him of Rihyani’s eyes, and that only made the waiting worse.

“Why do you think they laughed?” Ambrose asked in a low voice as he stood with Milo toward the back of the dining hall. While the magus brooded, the bodyguard had watched the graceful, glowing fey moving amongst each other, suspicious of every elegant gesture. It seemed he’d decided they were in no immediate danger.

Milo shrugged, telling himself to control his temper but feeling as though he could hear the dripping of Rihyani’s blood from cursed wounds.

“Maybe they think it’s cute how much you care for her?” Ambrose offered as he watched an amazonian fey stride by, muscles rippling beneath her slit corset and skirt of studded leather. At her heels scampered red hounds the size of ponies with black spines running down their backs. Milo couldn’t shake the thought that their jowled faces looked a little too human.

“What do you mean?” he asked distractedly as a small man scuttled by, suspended three meters in the air on a quartet of spider legs. The man’s face was flushed and his suit coat was liberally stained with wine, or what Milo hoped was wine.

Ambrose stepped back to avoid being skewered by one of the chitinous limbs and cleared his throat.

“I mean, they might find it odd that a man, a human, that is, has such strong feelings for one of their kind?”

“Are you suggesting,” Milo began, hearing the edge in his voice and not much caring, “that I want to save her for a reason besides the debt we both owe her and her usefulness to our mission?”

Ambrose frowned, his eyes scanning Milo’s face before he went back to watching the crowd.

“No, I don’t suppose I am.”

“Good.” Milo grunted and then spotted the butler from earlier across the hall. “Huh, did he just try to get our attention?”

“Who?” Ambrose asked, but then the raven-like servant locked eyes with them across the hall and motioned them over with a black-pinioned arm.

“Seems the old crow wants to have a chat,” Ambrose said, adjusting his rifle over his shoulder. “Shall we?”

Milo nodded, and as quickly as the crowd allowed, they made their way to the butler, who stood watching them with large, dark eyes set into his sharp, pale face.

“My master asks you to attend him in his library,” the butler cawed softly. His head twisted at the end of the question as he thrust his beaky nose forward.

“Lead on,” Milo said, handing his undrunk wine to a passing server.

The butler bobbed once and led them on a winding path through the corridors of the manor. Uncomfortable memories of the tunnels in Afghanistan began to surface as they followed the raven-like fey down dim passage after dim passage that all looked very much the same, devoid of decoration. They passed simple dark wood doors and intersecting passages, but the former were always closed, and the latter looked identical to what they’d already walked down.

It was a shock when the butler came to a door that looked very much like all the others and paused to wave his hand much in the same way Bakbak-Devi had at the iron gate. The door swung inward and the birdlike footman hopped aside, bowing his head as he gestured them in.

The simplicity of the door did not prepare Milo for what lay within. He had been expecting a room, even a large room with several shelves of books and maybe a desk and some sitting chairs.

What he stepped into was nothing less than a temple to the written word. Shelves twice Milo’s height swept around the vast circular space, and above them, walkways circled the room and gave access to even more shelves. Above those was a third layer of shelves. Rolling ladders hung from each shelf, and emblazoned on brass plaques were the categorical divisions and subdivisions of the books enshrined upon the ornate shelves of mahogany chased in burnished brass. Scattered across the polished marble floors were overstuffed chairs and plush couches, with small tables complete with what looked like table lamps, except instead of flaming wicks creating tiny islands of light, they had what looked like captured stars sat inside the glass bulbs.

Seated next to one of these tables was the marquis, who stood upon their entrance.

He was as tall as Beli at three meters but far more svelte. His appearance was stretched further by a pair of backward-swept horns that grew from his brow. The thick horns shone a steely shade of gray that was quite striking above his long countenance of milky skin. He wore a suit that might have been in fashion a hundred years ago, a Regency tailcoat ensemble of rich cream. Most everything seemed sized for a smaller creature, the collar not quite rising high enough to cover his long neck, while the coat and the trousers came to just past his elbows and knees respectively. In many ways, his whole form seemed stretched, yet he moved with easy fluidity Milo had come to associate with fey.

“Welcome,”