Glamour of the God-Touched (4 page)

It was this hunger that was most definitely
wrong.

It was deep and chilling.

It was the haunting presence of an owl on
the hunt, the raw odor of wood fire in the open forest. It was the
sensation of bone scraping bone.

Arianna was still blathering on, blissfully
unaware of the severity of her accident.

She had chittered and chattered incessantly
on their way here. Garrick had merely nodded and grunted at certain
points while he fought the ache growing in the pit of his
stomach.

“I don’t know what happened, Mother. We were
walking along the path and I must have tripped over a root. Next
thing I knew, I was falling and falling. It was terrible…”

The hunger soared.

You have given,
a whisper echoed
inside his head.
Now you must take.

He felt…energy. Power. Desire. Fear rose
within the swell. His eyes grew dry, a film of sweat formed on his
upper lip, and he felt suddenly dizzy.

What was happening to him?

He tried to focus on what Arianna was
saying, but her words slipped away.

“…then I opened my eyes and saw
Garrick.”

She gazed at him with wonder.

“You don’t look good, son,” Arianna’s father
said. “Maybe you should go lie down?”

“Yes,” he tried to say, but he was uncertain
if the word actually left his mouth.

He had to get away.

Garrick didn’t know what was happening, but
he no longer trusted himself.

He staggered from the table to lie down on a
small cot in the back room.

For one blissful moment, things grew
quiet.

Then came movements from outside. Muted
voices rumbled through haze. Arianna’s father lit his pipe, and the
smoke’s odor burned like fine grains of sand against Garrick’s
mind. He tried to push them away, tried to clear his thoughts, but
the more he pushed the stronger each sense became.

“It’s about
time
you settled,
Arianna,” her father said. “I had nearly given up hope your dowry
would be claimed.”

Shayla, the youngest daughter, was playing
with her doll just outside the room. Garrick felt her curiosity,
sensed the questioning glances she cast his way. His head pounded.
Shayla’s doll seemed to peer around the cracked doorway. He
clenched his eyes to ignore her, but the vibrant beat of her heart
pressed against him.

Her life force was strong and pure.

He wanted it.

No!
He pressed his fists over his
ears.

He picked himself off the cot and staggered
out the back door, buckets and brooms clattering behind him. The
nighttime darkness was as thick as pudding. The fire in his belly
yearned for the pure life force of Arianna’s family in their cabin,
but he stumbled and ran into the night.

“Garrick?” Arianna called as she chased
after him.

Her sweet aroma tinged with energy and blood
tantalized him in horrible ways.

He wanted to stop. He ached for them, and he
could take them all. Arianna. Her parents. Her brothers and
sisters. He could devour them.

It would feel so good.

The idea scared him, and through it all, he
understood only one rational thought—he could
not
let
Arianna catch him.

He ran harder, crashing through the
nighttime forest.

Normally, the woods would smell of mildew
and dampness, normally the moon’s reflection would give the leaves
silver edges, but these sensations were muted tonight, colors
dimmed to grays and indigo blackness, odors blunted to blandness.
Garrick tripped, but somehow found himself still running. His lungs
ached. A supple branch sliced his cheek, but the wound did not run
with blood.

A small tavern loomed ahead, music and
laughter coming from within.

Arianna’s footsteps drew nearer.

He dashed into the tavern.

The door slammed behind him.

Tallow candles smoldered at each table,
casting thin shadows throughout the room. The handful of patrons
glared at him in sudden silence.

“Shut up!” he cried. “Stop looking at
me.”

Garrick threw himself into a dark corner and
breathed heavily. He buried his head in the crook of his arm.

A serving boy drew near.

He was beautiful, pure and fresh, his aura
salty.

For an instant, Garrick’s head cleared, and
he thought he would be able to control his need. For an instant
Garrick thought he would be able to warn the boy away. But instead
he looked up and his terrifying hunger drew a breath.

The door opened as he reached a thin finger
to the boy’s cheek. Arianna stepped through.

“Garrick?” she said.

A spark crackled from his finger.

The boy cried out.

Colors blurred.

Garrick’s hand burned, and an invisible fire
ran up his forearm and shoulder. Energy filled his chest. The smell
of honey and something wild became his entire world. Somewhere he
heard a scream.

Then it was done.

And he felt bloated.

Fresh blood welled from the wound on his
cheek, and a withered lump lay like clotted leaves where the boy
had once stood.

Townspeople stared at him with slack
faces.

“Garrick?” Arianna’s voice trembled, the
expression on her face contorted between horror and revulsion. She
turned and ran, leaving the door to rock back and forth in the
empty doorway.

“Wait,” he said, holding out a pleading
hand. “I didn’t mean…” His thoughts jumbled, but the look on
Arianna’s face had said everything.

He was an abomination.

He stood, gaping at the open space she had
left behind, and sensing fear from the gathering even before the
barkeep turned a pitchfork toward him.

“Demon!” a voice bellowed from behind the
bar.

More voices filled the tavern room.

“You don’t understand,” Garrick said. “
I
didn’t mean to do that!
”

“Kill him, Jeb,” another man called out in a
voice thick with ale.

Garrick crashed through the door to
disappear back into the forest.

The moon followed him as he ran.

The memory of the boy’s freckled face loomed
ahead, the vigor of the boy’s energy pounded inside his chest. He
ran until bile rose in his throat and he had to stop to retch. When
he was finished, Garrick sagged against an elm, panting for breath.
The tree’s bark bit into his shoulder. He felt the entire structure
of the wood, the slow power of leaves drawing sap from its roots,
those same leaves inhaling the damp nighttime breeze and sending
nutrients through the rest of the organism.

He put his head in his hands.

What had he done?

At least his hunger was gone. That much was
good. But now energy flowed in his veins like a river. His senses
felt overloaded. Blood pounded in his temples.

It was frightening.

You have taken
, the unearthly voice
rang inside his head.
Now you must give
.

Who was this voice?

This was all happening because of this
thing, this creature, or … Anger boiled inside him. He clenched a
fist and pounded the meat of his hand against the tree.

“Why?” he yelled at the voice, searching the
clearing for the source. “Why are you doing this?”

There was no reply.

This was his fault, though. That’s what
Alistair would say. He should have known better than to accept
power without understanding its price.

But it had been Arianna.

Arianna.

Was it only a few hours ago he had asked if
she would have him? All he had really wanted was to be worthy of
someone like her, someone beautiful and with a real family and real
roots. She was everything he had never had. Now he was
terrified.

Tears welled inside him.

The truth of that word struck him:
terrified
.

A few hours ago he had actually been
confident, but now everything was too big.

“Go away,” he said. “Please, just go
away.”

Villagers shouted in the distance, and the
oily aroma of burning torches wafted closer. The yapping of dogs
echoed through the woods. He had to get away—had to get rid of this
magic, whatever it was.

He clenched his fists while he listened to
the villagers clamoring for his head.

Alistair.

He needed to go to his superior mage.

Alistair would understand. He would be mad,
of course, but his superior would know what to do, and any
punishment Alistair would mete would be better than dealing with
this on his own.

Garrick turned and once again ran through
the woods.

As he ran, Garrick became one with the forest,
forgetting about the boy, forgetting about the pull of life force
at Arianna’s cabin, forgetting about the expression on her face in
the tavern.

He felt alive and in the moment.

The boy’s life force was pure and buoyant.
It made him stronger. It made him free to race, free to duck under
sycamore branches and leap over downed trunks.

The sounds of villagers faded into the
nighttime.

It was a long distance to Alistair’s manor,
but he ran the entire way, pushing through brush like a bolted
deer. Sweat rolled from his body and his breathing became hard, but
still he ran. Smells of liverwort and mushrooms swirled in his
wake, and the calls of animals echoed in the distance as he neared
the manor. He leapt over a row of thicket, thinking about Alistair,
thinking about how his superior would set this right and how then
Garrick could start all over again. He thought these thoughts over
as he ran.

Alistair would help him.

Alistair would know what to do.

He thought them once again as he crested the
final hill that led to his home.

It was only then that Garrick came to a
stunned halt.

The manor smoldered in the moonlight, its stone
surface reflecting a silver sheen against the black sky. A curtain
of gray smoke rose like mist to obscure the splintered fences that
had once circled the stables.

The horses were gone.

“Alistair?” he called as he walked
forward.

Charred grass crackled as Garrick crossed
the manor yard, its burnt reek laying heavy over the grounds. The
odor of magic ripped at his throat—a bloody essence laced with
metallic ammonia. Koradictine sorcery, he thought, his memory
flashing to the mage at the Ladle.

Could this be revenge of some sort?

Could the mage he soaked have done this?

The front door hung from a hinge like a page
half torn from a journal. The foyer was dark as he stepped through.
The boy’s energy surged inside him, responding to imagined threats.
He quelled it, drew his dagger, and stepped farther into the
building.

The hallway walls were charred. Melted
remains of candles dripped over their scorched sconces. The stone
floor was cracked and littered with debris. He and Kelvin had
cleaned these stones just last week. He remembered Kelvin grumbling
as he scrubbed. Garrick was the oldest of the apprentices, then
came Balti, Kelvin, and Bryce. Little Jonathan, at six, was the
youngest. He had arrived just this winter.

Where were they?

He stepped farther down the hall.

Once his eyes settled, Garrick realized he
could see as well as if it were daytime. The boy’s energy, he
thought, or rather, this strange magic he carried now—this
curse—how much had it changed him?

“Alistair?” he called again. “Balti?”

The reek of sorcery grew as he climbed the
stairs. An owl’s call came so clearly he thought the bird might be
in the stairwell with him, but a glance backward confirmed he was
still alone.

Jonathan’s room was empty, his cot in
shambles, his clothes scattered. A few pages of his lessons lay
littered on the floor.

The apprentices were all gone.

A pang of isolation overwhelmed Garrick, and
he had to force himself to think.

Alistair would have defended himself from a
position of power, a place where all his tools would be at his
disposal—downstairs, Garrick thought. Alistair would have made his
last stand in his laboratory.

He retraced his path to return to the ground
floor, then went down farther.

The stink of sorcery grew even thicker as he
descended, but it was a different smell. This was the cutting tang
of lemon, the odor of Lectodinian magic.

Lectodinian magic?

Mixed with Koradictine?

Impossible. Even an apprentice knew the
orders never worked together, yet there was no mistaking this for
anything other than Lectodinian wizardry, just as there was no
mistaking the magic above as Koradictine.

Could Alistair have gotten caught in
crossfire between the orders?