The Wizard in Black Read online

  The Wizard in Black

  Book Three of the Sacrosanct Records

  M N Jolley

  For Sarah,

  I didn’t intend to kill your namesake, it just kind of happened that way.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Questions for next conversation:

  How many of us are there?

  Is there any magic you can teach us that nobody else knows?

  Is there a way I can contact you if I need help?

  How many more do we have to kill?

  • Private notes, taken to the presidential archives after [Redacted]

  “I said, give us all your money, girl, or nobody gets hurt!”

  “I’m not sure you have considered all the outcomes of that statement,” Adelyn pointed out, smirking wryly from her saddle, elevated over the trio of outlaws.

  The bandits had only one gun between the three of them, and it was apparent that their leader didn’t know how to use it. It was clear that they hadn’t planned for what to do if his gun didn’t scare his prey into submission. Adelyn wasn’t scared in the slightest, because they couldn’t come close to hurting her.

  She liked having power.

  She had raised a shield as soon as the outlaws had blocked the road. As long as she kept it up, their revolver posed no more threat than a wadded up newspaper. No doubt, if the bandits had known of her magic, they would have stayed home.

  The outlaw furrowed his brow in confusion, his voice muffled from behind a bandanna. “What?”

  Adelyn didn’t bother explaining her correction. Instead, she looked over to David and asked, “Didn’t your man say we’d be a measure safer if we took the circuitous route up the river instead of going by train?”

  David was in the process of soothing his horse, Ace. The poor beast couldn’t see the shield any better than the outlaws could, and it was smart enough to know that a gun meant danger. To her question, he shrugged and signed, ‘Does this count as danger?’

  Adelyn smirked and shook her head. “I suppose not. Would it be appropriate to let them go, or do you have a responsibility to take them in?”

  Pursing his lips, David considered and then nodded.

  “This here is David,” Adelyn announced, facing the outlaws and jabbing her thumb towards her friend. “He’s an officer of the law. Being only some four miles away from the river depot, you’re going to be heading there with us.”

  One of the other outlaws, the one with an old rag for a bandanna and a chipped piece of bronze for a sword, swore loudly.

  “Keep your temper!” Their leader shouted, trying to quell the fear of his two companions. “Peace officers don’t scare me!”

  Adelyn shrugged. She was feeling a bit giddy. It wasn’t that long ago that a few outlaws on the road would have sent her into a panic, and she was relishing the freedom and power that she had to completely ignore the threat. “I’m not suggesting you be scared of his badge. However, it wouldn’t be foolish to be scared of my magic.”

  The third outlaw swore this time, louder and more colorfully than his companion had. “We’ve gotta get out of here!”

  “Not so fast,” Adelyn said. “We’ve got to take you—”

  Something tapped her on the chest, making her rock back in the saddle. Before she could look down to see what it was, she heard a clap of thunder echo across the countryside.

  Her chest felt hot and wet, and she could feel spirit pooling in her shirt. Or, rather, it wasn’t spirit that was pooling, it was blood, the spirit was just a byproduct.

  It wasn’t until she looked down and saw the thumb-sized hole in her shirt that she realized she’d been shot.

  “David…” she started, and then the pain finally caught up with her.

  David was out of his saddle in a heartbeat, hands twirling in the air as he struck out a blast of wind towards the nearest of the bandits. The shot hadn’t come from them, though, Adelyn hadn’t seen their leader shoot, and the echo had come from too far away.

  Which meant there was a sharpshooter out there, firing rounds that could go through her shield. Drawing power from the blood on her chest, Adelyn called out a word and poured that power into her shield, reinforcing the barrier and building it up against further attacks.

  Another thunderclap followed before the last one could finish echoing, and Adelyn felt something punch her in the belly with the force of a hurled stone. She had no doubt that if she hadn’t built up the barrier a second prior, that impact would have gone clean through.

  The outlaws proved remarkably brave given the circumstances, which was the only positive thing that could be said for their performance. The two with swords had David flanked, and he looked vulnerable with only a dueling hook to fight with, but they didn’t realize that he could track their movements even when they were behind him. One charged straight into a kick, and the other swept their sword so wide and slow that David didn’t even have to parry before responding with an offsetting blow that swept him off his feet.

  They finally got the idea when their leader shot three times at point blank and every bullet was blocked by an angry red flare of light. They turned and fled, and David didn’t give chase, instead turning with a spin and throwing his own substantial power behind Adelyn’s shield.

  The third thunderclap in as many seconds was accompanied by no pain or particular sensation. Adelyn didn’t think she’d gone numb, so their shield had to be strong enough that it was protecting from the sniper fire.

  ‘Are you okay?’ David signed, clipping his hook back onto his belt.

  Adelyn looked at him as though he’d asked if she was a dragon. “No!”

  A fourth thunderclap.

  David reached his mount, but didn’t yet get into the saddle. ‘Can you ride?’

  “I think so,” Adelyn said, looking down at her red shirt in confusion. It had been white a minute ago, before being stained thick with blood. “It’s a lot of blood.”

  ‘Heal over it, then,’ David signed. ‘Quickly.’

  “Right,” Adelyn mumbled, staring at the injury in alarm. “Uh… runes. I need runes.”

  Nodding, David began to dig through his bags for the right tool. Anything would do, it just needed Sacrosanct runes for healing to be carved or drawn onto it. David had a book for just such occasions, but it took him time to fish through his bag and actually locate it, and in those seconds Adelyn was already feeling her strength sap and her head grow dizzy.

  “Hurry,” she urged.

  David’s expression tightened and he nodded, but his thoughts were clear without needing to be said aloud. He was going as fast as he could already.

  The book he produced was an old journal full of handwritten notes, the pages wrinkled from water damage but no less legible. He flipped a few pages in, scanning it to ensure it was the right set of runes as he crossed to Adelyn and pressed it into her bloody hand.

  ‘It will stop the bleeding,’ he explained, pointing a finger at the Sacrosanct words written at the bottom of the
page.

  Adelyn tried not to stain the pages with a finger as she held the book in one hand, but she could do nothing for the cover. Using her excessive supply of blood, she charged the book full, readying it for a spell.

  Focusing on seeing her wound scab over, she chanted the Sacrosanct words in a basic spell. It stung for a moment, and she felt tired and weak when it was done, but the bleeding had stopped.

  So had the shooting.

  “Do you think he’s gone?” Adelyn asked, looking around.

  David shook his head, walking to the edge of Adelyn’s shield and crouching for a moment, running his fingers through the grass and retrieving something.

  ‘They know we have a shield up,’ David explained with a few quick signs. ‘We need to get to the depot.’

  Rotating his hands in a circular pattern, he signed out the words necessary to adjust the shield, pouring even more power into it and adding additional layers of protection, making it triple thick and harder than steel. More important, he took control of the barrier’s position, making it mobile and able to stay with them as they rode.

  Hopping into the saddle, David looked at Adelyn. ‘Keep your head down and stay behind me. I can’t keep this shield up forever.’

  “It’s bullets,” Adelyn started to say. “Why—”

  Something hit the shield and exploded with a loud bang that was followed by another thunderclap of rifle fire. Adelyn had been working to refine her sense of magic, her ability to feel power trembling in the air, but she didn’t need refined senses to feel how much power the shield had burned in deflecting that one shot. Her old shield would have been destroyed like so much tissue paper.

  Adelyn didn’t need to be told twice. David was already repairing the shield, reins held in his teeth as he started galloping forward on Ace. Her own horse, Butler, wasn’t quite so well trained as David’s war mount, but it took little urging to convince him to start fleeing.

  The agitation of riding sent spikes of pain through her chest, but everything felt like it was still working. She could breathe, and her heart was still pumping, and the bullet was too high up to have put a hole in her belly. The danger wasn’t that she’d die from the wound, it was that she’d pass out and fall out of the saddle.

  Another round slammed into the shield with the pop-boom of the bullet, gouging out a chunk of their protection. She still couldn’t see the shooter, but she counted the time between bullet and echo like it were a thunderstorm and realized they had to be at least a mile away.

  That didn’t sound right, but the black fog at the edge of her vision made it difficult to remember why. Shooting from that far didn’t seem possible, not with any accuracy, especially not with enough force to punch through her shields.

  She winced and put a hand on her wound, gritting her teeth and leaning into the saddle, urging Butler to go faster. There was no cover for miles. Their only hope was to get to the boat depot, or out of range, whichever came first.

  “How far?” Adelyn asked, the question hopelessly vague. She wasn’t even certain what she was asking. How far to the city? How far until they were out of range? How far could David go with the shield up?

  David gave her the courtesy of a confused look, but was busy pinwheeling his arms to keep the magic flowing and couldn’t sign a response. If he’d had a voice, the situation would have been the same, except he’d be chanting the Sacrosanct words instead of signing them, and he’d still be too occupied to respond.

  The spill of blood into her shirt had stopped, she still felt more lightheaded than she had a minute before. Whether that was due to exhaustion or internal bleeding, she didn’t know, but the fact remained that she was going to have trouble riding soon. She could make it a mile longer, maybe two, but that was it.

  She started to shout to David, but the boom-clap of rifle fire cut off her first shout, and she had to try again, jerking on Butler’s reins to slow down. “Stop!”

  David didn’t question the shout, grabbing his reins in one hand and tugging back. Ace reared up, and he spun to face her, briefly abandoning his shield to sign, ‘What?’

  “I can’t keep going to the depot,” Adelyn shouted. “Where is the fire coming from?”

  He bit down on his lip hard enough to draw blood, brow furrowed in thought. Adelyn thought he’d picked up the nervous tic from her, but he also needed the blood to keep powering his shield.

  When David didn’t answer for several moments, Adelyn thought he was trying to figure out why she wanted to know, but then another boom-clap echoed across the plain and he nodded with confidence, tilting his head forward and to the left.

  “Let’s go,” Adelyn said, spinning Butler and snapping the reins to move.

  They galloped across the plain. Though not as smooth as the road, ranchers ran their cattle through there and kept the grass chewed low, and there were no rocks or tough scrub to trip up their flight. David’s strong but undiscriminating shield flattened the grass in front of them in a wide ring, further easing the path for their horses as they ran forward at full speed.

  Adelyn closed her eyes and trusted Butler to keep them charging forward. She was already tired, and she had to focus—David was too busy with their shielding to focus on his sixth sense.

  When the next shot came, she felt the spirit splatter against their shield like a brittle glass bead breaking against stone. She could feel the spectral trail of its approach, and turned Butler slightly, making their attack even more precise.

  More important, the boom of collision and the echo of ignited gunpowder were almost simultaneous. They were close.

  David’s shield made it hard for her senses to extend further, to see if she could feel the flicker of power that would accompany any living person, the shooter included. It was like trying to distinguish a shadowy figure standing behind a brilliant lamp, and though Adelyn tried to squint with her sixth sense and see past it, it was a struggle to make out detail.

  Clamping down her jaw and fighting through the pain that accompanied every rumbling hoofstep, Adelyn watched and listened for another shot to ring out.

  They rode for thirty seconds and nothing came.

  Not wanting to ride too far, Adelyn reined up and stopped, clutching her chest and looking around. “You see anything?”

  David was hesitant to stop, but didn’t want to leave her behind. Spinning his horse in a circle, he looked around, shaking his head and leaving his shield so he could sign, ‘The shooter has a veil.’

  Adelyn’s eyebrows jumped up her face. If the shooter had a magical veil to keep them hidden in the field, that meant they were either a sorcerer or they had a sorcerer with them. “How do you know?”

  David held up a shining ball clutched between thumb and forefinger, letting her get a good look before he signed, ‘Silver bullet. Sacrosanct carved on the side. Someone is copying the Red Shot.’

  Adelyn swore, tasting iron at the back of her throat. Whether it was from the sudden exertion or the bullet wound in her chest, she wasn’t sure.

  ‘They ran when we charged,’ David signed, spinning Ace around to face the road. ‘We should get moving. Are you badly hurt?’

  She almost said, “I don’t know”, but then she realized she could check. Focusing her sixth sense inward, she felt for spirit leaking out in her chest where it didn’t belong. If she was bleeding internally, it was only a little.

  “I think I’ll live,” she said, tugging on Butler’s reins and starting a fast but more restrained gallop back towards the road.

  They kicked up a dust cloud running back to the road and making their charge towards the dock. David kept up his shield, but once they had rode a mile and no shots had come, he allowed the barrier to wane a bit, and Adelyn took a turn keeping it charged with spirit.

  The plain was eerily silent save for the wind that was still whistling across it. It had seemed peaceful ten minutes before, but now it felt ominous, knowing that there was someone out there with a gun and a desire to kill. She almost missed the so
und of gunfire, because at least then she had been able to know where the shooter was.

  Her horse was working up a lather before they could see the river, but despite her hesitation, Adelyn knew they couldn’t afford to stop. The longer they were out there, the more likely it was that the sharpshooter would find a new spot to start firing from. She dug her heels into Butler’s sides, spurring him forward with more vigor.

  The river wasn’t big by local standards, but it was as wide as Adelyn had seen since they were by the coast. The depot that they were riding towards, meanwhile, was only a shack and a small dock, but to Adelyn it was a fortress. Unless the sharpshooter could see through walls, they’d find some refuge in there.

  David put his fingers to his mouth and whistled loudly as they came within earshot. Adelyn saw the door swing open, and an old man stepped out, first with a friendly wave, then with a concerned stance as he saw them ride in with a terror.

  “Get inside!” Adelyn shouted. “Leave the door!”

  Either the man heard her, or he just had the same idea. He left the door standing open for them but ducked inside, apparently feeling it wise to get out of the way of whatever was coming.

  David put on an extra measure of speed for the last hundred yards, then pulled back and guided Ace to a sudden stop, leaping off the back of the saddle and moving to help Adelyn down.

  “I can handle myself,” Adelyn said, but she accepted the help and inhaled sharply at the stab of pain that accompanied jumping down.

  David held out his left hand flat and made a fist with his right, moving it in a circle to sign.

  “Basement!” Adelyn shouted, translating as they staggered together into the little shack. “Do you have a basement?”