Page 58 of Reluctant Wizard

“I don’t know.” Cillian sounded steadier. “I can just sense the archive sending out a kind of call. Who knows who’s being signaled?”

“Can you shut down the alarm?”

“Maybe… with time, I could—”

“We can’t count on the luxury of time,” she said, cutting him off with what she recognized as Elal ruthlessness. Papa would be proud. “What if you fold up the Phel stacks again—will that stop the alarm?”

“Possibly.” He sounded dubious. “Even then it might be too late, if they’ve already been alerted.”

“We have to take the chance. Fold up those stacks again.”

“But we need that information!” He glared at her in frustration.

“And we’ll get to it later,” she answered, marveling at her own calm. Nice to know she didn’t turn into a frightened, gibbering mess at every sign of threat. “For now, we need to protect those stacks and that information. Hide it all again—and alter the lock so only you can access it.”

“Good idea.” He heaved a sigh. “I hate to ask, but…”

“My magic is your magic,” she said, squeezing his hand and pouring more into him. “Work fast.”

He did work more rapidly this time, knowing what he was about, seeming more confident, despite the gaffe of not thinking about the archive being tagged with an alarm. Frankly, she should have thought of that, too. They could exchange recriminations later. Cillian’s magic lanced out with black and white precision, clicking efficiently. Somewhere on the periphery of her wizard’s senses, she heard a vast groaning, the sort of sound you’d imagine a roomful of shelves packed with heavy tomes would make if you folded it like origami. She wasn’t sure, however, if she actually heard a physical sound or if it was a synesthetic perception of Cillian’s magic. Tense, she waited for it to cease.

A moment later, he sighed again, this time in relief and nodded an answer to her questioning look. “It’s done and only I have the passkey.”

“Great, let’s move.” She tugged him out of the chair, relieved that he complied this time, grateful to be able to physically release some of the fierce need to flee. Or fight. Fleeing sounded much better. “If someone is coming, I don’t want to be here when they arrive. At least we know those stacks are secured against further tampering. No one’s getting into them without you.”

That was the wrong thing to say. Cillian dug in his heels. A stricken look crossed his face. “Oh no! That was a terrible idea that I coded the spell to only me. What if something happens to me? Those texts will be lost forever. I have to—”

“You have to get a hold of yourself,” she told him crisply, pulling him along. “And we’ll make sure nothing happens to you.”

He nodded miserably, unconvinced, but at least moving. “But what if—”

This time he stopped himself on a gargle of horror. Alise couldn’t blame him, as the shadows between the towering stacks resolved into the slinking forms of hunters.

The creatures had been designed to instill horror, deliberately made into monsters by the houses that combined their magic to create them. Alise had been seen hunters before, though never this close, at the siege of House Phel. In her classes, however, she’d read about the abominations in the wizard-only texts.

A conglomeration of numerous animals, shimmering with various magics, the hunters sported the long jaws of a jackal filled with rows of fangs. They moved with the loping grace of weasels, their paws tipped with hard, curved talons. They also possessed a rudimentary intelligence—some more than others—and were nearly impossible to kill. Chopping them into pieces too small to be a threat worked best, but even then they sometimes reassembled themselves.

A moot point anyway, since neither she nor Cillian wore any weapons to attack with. She’d been prepared for all that evading and eluding should Gordon Hanneil show up, not for fighting hunters hand to hand. Still, the hunters typically went after familiars, not a high-level wizard, student though she might be. She should be able to handle this.

And so, she stepped forward, putting herself between the hunters and Cillian.

“Alise,” he gasped, grabbing her shoulder.

She shrugged him off with a sharp gesture and a glare. “Hide. Run. I’ll handle this.”

“I’m not leaving you!”

She tapped her temple. “You are the sole repository of those records.” She pointed forward, the warrior spirits she’d had on hold becoming visible. “This is my forte. You keep saying so.”

Turning her gaze firmly forward, she nevertheless sensed his hesitation. Then, thankfully, he slipped away. Cillian would know the labyrinth of the archives better than anyone. He would be safe, if only to ensure the preservation of the stacks he’d hidden away. Putting him out of her mind, Alise focused, drawing ruthlessly on her magic—and on a few more spirits she’d kept on hold.

The lead hunter advanced, jaws agape and dripping. Unlike the stories she’d heard of the hunters pursuing her friends, these didn’t comment or give instructions. She counted five of them—and none that she’d seen peeled away after Cillian. Likely they’d been tasked to kill anyone opening those stacks, which meant whoever enchanted them to that purpose had anticipated an archivist. Not an Elal wizard.

One of her warriors leapt, swinging its ethereal sword. As she’d counted on, the hunter in its path ignored the spirit as immaterial, just like the animals that made it up would. The sword condensed just enough upon contact to sever the hunter’s head from the body. The long-muzzled head tumbled to the floor with a satisfying thud, spewing black blood, the jaws snapping futilely from a point too distant to bother her. The temporary surge of triumph at that small success faded immediately as the hunter’s body, of course, kept advancing on her.

Along with the other four intact hunters.

Maybe she’d been overconfident. Too late now. Using her magic to control both warriors, she also summoned a group of fire elementals, mentally apologizing to the archivists and promising that she wouldn’t let the flames spread. Feeling as if she worked multiple puppets with both hands at once, she set the warriors to attacking the advancing hunters. Then she unleashed the fire elementals to burn.

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