Legacy of the Mad Mages Read online

  Lucas was immediately forgotten for the moment.

  6

  “What? How?” Darien demanded. Shakes tucked some

  “I think you said yesterday that everything was medieval magic stuff?” Sparks tucked a strand of blue hair behind his ear and grinned. “You were right, there, Caroline, but it’s even more than that. Everything here is somehow connected to the Order of the Hazel.”

  Three pairs of eyes blinked at him in various stages of confusion.

  “What?” Caroline finally managed to ask.

  “Look.” Shakes pointed to the inkwell photo. “This is said to have belonged to Cithril the Elder, right? Well, he was one of the Mad Mages— they called themselves the Order of the Hazel because of the association of the hazel tree and wisdom. They thought that they were after knowledge, but were no better than bigoted jerks, so I’m not going to mourn his loss. Still, he was a big name in alchemy and did make some important connections that helped develop current theories. Guess it shows that very few people are all bad or all good. Still…”

  “Shakes. Get on with it!” Darien rolled his eyes. “We can have a debate about the morals of historical figures later. Right now we have thieves to catch.”

  Shakes startled. “Oh! Right. Anyway,” He moved on to the drinking supplies and the knife. “These were all found at sites connected to the Order of the Hazel mages in some significant way. A known stronghold and a popular meeting place. The enchantments on the coin and the comb were cast right in the middle of the whole thing, and could have been cast by Order of Hazel mages—”

  “I really hate referring to them that way. It makes them sound legitimate and respectable,” Darien interrupted. Shakes grimaced and nodded.

  “Not to mention it does a major disservice to hazel trees,” Darien added drily.

  Caroline silently agreed. It made sense. Both their points did.

  Shakes “Yeah. Sorry. Anyhow, even though there’s no evidence one way or the other, they still show examples of enchantment casting at the time. A really good forensic historian mage could probably get a good look at casting techniques and such if they were willing to damage the spell while researching it.”

  Caroline hummed with interest. “I think I see where you’re going with this. Whoever is doing this is going after objects that could be connected to the Order of Hazel—” Shakes cleared his throat and Caroline grimaced an apology.

  “Sorry. The Mad Mages,” Caroline said, staring over the photos. “So what else in the display case at the mansion is from that time period?” She pulled out her phone to bring up the website, but Shakes waved his hand at her.

  “There’s a piece of a broken pan balance there, and a couple of weights that went with it that was found in a pile of rubble from one of those popular meeting places I mentioned. Um…” he glanced at the tablet in his hand. “In France.”

  “I know the war was basically going on all over Europe, but I always sort of think of the Mad Mage Wars being British,” Caroline sighed. Shake nodded, and Greg grunted. Caroline realized that he had stopped bouncing his rubber ball some time ago and glared at the photos now.

  “You okay, Greg?”

  He let out a long sigh and shrugged. “I just can’t help thinking about all the paranormals that were used as lab rats for those psychopaths. I know exactly how they must have felt,” he said quietly.

  Caroline reached over and put her hand on his arm, wishing she could ease some of the old pain. Greg slid his arm through her hand and took her fingers in his to squeeze them in thanks.

  “Are you empathic?” Shakes asked, his head tipped to the side and studying Greg, who looked up to meet his eyes.

  “Not particularly, to my knowledge. But I was a lab rat.” Greg let go of Caroline’s hand, stalked over to the snack machine and stared through the glass.

  “Huh? What do you mean?” Shakes frowned. “I mean, I know your kind is rare…”

  Greg snorted a rough laugh but the sound held no humor and Caroline flinched. He stabbed at the buttons on the machine and it whirred to life, a large chocolate bar clunking into the delivery slot.

  “Greg was rescued from, well, from a lab of sorts as a child,” Caroline said, trying to gloss over most of what she knew was a painful series of memories. “It was a bad situation, and it gave him a unique insight into victims’ mindsets.” She turned back to the photos hoping to change the subject. “So, these items—”

  “Man, no wonder you’re so good with the victims, then,” Shakes said. “What happened? Who had you? What happened to your parents?”

  “Shakes!” Caroline glared at him, warning him silently to drop it. She could tell that Shakes was just curious and a little excited— he loved to know as much about everything as he could— but she also knew that Greg was reaching his limit for questions. He clearly hadn’t meant to start a conversation with his quiet comment on the Mad Mage’s morals.

  “But Caroline, don’t you want to know what happened? Who would kidnap a child like that? I assume from what he said that whoever it was tried to figure something out about manticores, maybe about his venom, if I had to guess. Did you ever find your parents again? Were they okay when—” Shakes stopped talking abruptly when Greg growled, his voice shifting enough to sound like a badly tuned brass section, and stalked out of the room, slamming the door on his way out. After a moment, Darien sighed and shook his head at Shakes, and followed Greg, much more calmly.

  “I… I didn’t mean to upset him… I just...” Shakes stared at the door. “Maybe I should go after them?”

  Caroline sighed. “Give him a little time to cool off, then I’d suggest a major apology. It was a traumatic event in his life, Shakes. You can understand that, can’t you? He really doesn’t like to talk about it. I do know that right after he was rescued he saw a therapist for years. He says that it took probably a year or so before he started telling her anything at all, let alone anything about his time in captivity. It was even longer before he gave any real information to the agents that rescued him and were working on the case. Fortunately, he didn’t need to talk to them much at that point since the asshole in charge of that facility was well and truly nailed to the wall even without Greg’s testimony.”

  She sighed again and grimaced. “I know that you were just being curious and excited, but I can promise you that needling him for details of his very traumatic experience isn’t a good way to be friendly. You need to come up with a massive apology, and never ask about it again. If he wants to tell you, he’ll tell you.”

  Darien slipped back into the room and frowned at Shakes, disappointed. “Come on, man. Really?”

  Shakes hung his head. “I just got excited, I guess. I’ll think of something.”

  “The agents who were working on that case followed up every lead they could. Every loose end and thread leading to or from that compound was thoroughly followed up. It was a massive investigation, and anything you need to know is in the unsealed part of the file. Anything you don’t need to know, you don’t need to know.” Darien sighed and scrubbed his hands over his head and dragged them down his face, leaving his hair ruffled like a purse dog before the groomer gets them. “Greg headed out to take over watching the museum for me since I’m on desk duty until tomorrow at least. Stupid concussion.”

  “Even vampires take some time to heal when they’re not feeding direct from the source,” Caroline said. “And you, sir, weren’t hurt anywhere near bad enough for me to offer. You can just heal up normally like anyone else.”

  “I didn’t ask,” Darien said primly, and settled down in a chair next to the table. “So… where were we?”

  “I believe we were discussing the evils of the Mad Mages and the Mad Mage War.,” Caroline said. “I have to admit I don’t know much about it. History was never my best subject, and of course, I only learned the scrubbed version of the story.”

  “Yeah. Well, the short version is that there were a lot of events leading up to the all-out war, most of which wer
e about paranormals trying to rescue other paranormals from the Mad Mages in one way or another,” Darien sighed.

  “It…. It was pretty ugly, it’s true. So much of human history is, I guess, but this is one of the standout times, like World War Two, but longer. The so-called Order of Hazel mages were a group of almost exclusively human and elf mages who started out trying to add bits and pieces of paranormal magic and culture into their own spells in various combinations. There was no oversight back then or anything. No International Consortium of Mages or anything like that. Very few laws even touched on magic, though there were a few. Still, they were only patchy and location-specific, and they mostly dealt with serving the local lord or king or whatever. The various Popes tried a few handwaving attempts to unify some sort of rules, but again, they were more political than moral laws,” Shakes sat back in his chair and looked around before realizing that he didn’t have a drink. He got up and headed to the soda machine and slid a dollar into the slot.

  “You sound like you did some research on this,” Caroline commented.

  “Eh, some. I’m a nerd, and history is one of the things I nerd out about.” He shrugged and his soda hissed as he twisted the cap. “I read a lot of history books for fun, though the Mad Mage War isn’t one of my personal focusses. I prefer Pre-Colombian history these days. There’s some fascinating work being done on Mayan ruins, and translating the—”

  “We can talk about Mayan culture another day. I bet it’s really cool, but right now we need to focus, Shakes. We’re on the clock, remember?” Caroline pointed at the chair he had just left and watched him slide back into it.

  “Okay, but if you really want to listen to me talk about it, there’s a really cool exhibit up n DC until August that I’d really love to see again,” Shakes said, his excitement clear in his voice.

  “Sure, but later. So the Pope didn’t have much luck with the mages?” She prompted.

  “Nope. But like I said, it was mostly political. It didn’t really have anything to do with using rituals or spells from paranormal cultures since, after all, being a vampire,” he nodded to Darien, then gestured vaguely at himself, “or a naiad had nothing to do with whether or not someone was a Christian.” Shakes shrugged.

  “So what happened?” Caroline asked. “The story I learned is that someone prince’s girlfriend was captured and imprisoned and died under the sloppy magical care of one of the Mad Mages, which set off the whole thing.”

  “Well… in a manner of speaking that’s true,” Darien spoke up now. “Except that the girlfriend in question wasn’t kidnapped, she ran away to join her Mad Mage lover and used the story to lure her betrothed into a trap. In the ensuing battle, the betrothed— who happened to be a prince among the pixies in France— was captured as planned, but she herself was killed in the fighting and her mage lover lost his damn mind.”

  “Yeah,” Shakes shuddered. “He kept the pixie prince in a cage in his lab, and her body, too, and after three days tried to use the prince’s blood, along with his own and some from another paranormal he’d captured to resurrect his dead lover.”

  “Woah. He was a… oh what’s that word? A necromancer?” Caroline felt her own eyes widen in shock. They never taught this in her history class.

  “Yeah.” Shakes shuddered again. “And the worst part is that he was successful.”

  7

  Caroline’s mouth flapped open and shut, not sure what words to form. Darien huffed out a humorless laugh.

  “Yep. World’s only recorded example of successful reanimation of a corpse. It didn’t go quite as well as he planned, though.”

  Caroline shivered. “Do I want to know more?” The whole idea was more than a little terrifying.

  “Probably not any of the details. Frankly not even I want to read about that, and I want to know everything about everything usually,” Shakes said, his own face grim. “Let’s just say that while the body regained life, the woman’s spirit, her soul, did not come back. She wasn’t mindless from what the stories say— her brain worked as well as any of the rest of her physical form and I guess she had some access to her memories somehow. I don't understand either magic or brains well enough to guess about that, but… The stories say that she wasn’t evil, she wasn’t good, she just… was. And since she was already dead, weapons didn’t have much effect aside from the damage. The pain didn’t mean much to her.”

  Shakes shuddered, his face looking very pale. He dragged in a deep breath a minute later and finished the story. “She wasn't unkillable or anything, fortunately, but since she couldn't feel pain in any way that we understand it, and she was already dead anyway, it took a lot of effort to stop her. It… it ended badly for everyone involved, but the remainder of the prince’s forces managed to destroy the creature and burned every part of the corpse until even the ash was burnt. They then dug up whatever was left of the fire, and all the soil that it had sat on, and sailed out into the deepest part of the Atlantic that they knew of, and dumped the lot overboard with many prayers and purification spells. The pit itself became a bit of a pilgrimage spot for a short time.”

  “Gross. I’m glad nobody managed to try to make a sword or something with the ash from burning the zombie’s corpse. Because the last thing we need is a cursed zombie corpse weapon falling into some lunatic’s hands. And you know that’s exactly what would happen, and it would turn up next week while we’re still hip-deep in this mess.”

  Darien and Shakes both groaned and nodded their agreement.

  “Yeah. Not that anyone has any idea what would happen if part of a reanimated dead person was used as a spell component, I think nobody wanted to risk the chance of finding out, and honestly, I am deeply grateful for their foresight. We have several reliable eyewitness reports about the whole process. I think the people who were involved knew that it was going to be important information somehow. They didn’t even want to pour it all into a container and drop it overboard in one chunk. The crew who sailed the stuff out there opened the barrel that it was in and shook it all out so the whole ocean could purify each particle. Then the barrel itself was broken up and tossed overboard,” Shakes said.

  “Good to know.” Caroline knew she was staring, wide-eyed, at the tech specialist.

  “Yeah. The thoroughness of her destruction has reassured generations of paranormals,” Darien agreed. “Still does, like Shakes said. However, her choice to lure her betrothed into the Mad Mage’s trap, and the prince’s death at the hands of her Mad Mage lover is what sparked the all-out war. The pixies started leading battles against Mad Mages and their supporters, and the whole of Europe ended up fighting against them, as you know from your own history classes, even if many of the details were skipped.”

  Caroline thought back. She remembered a vague reference to a delegation to the Pope which included several royal emissaries from several European courts, but she realized suddenly that the only ones named specifically were human. There were representatives from the English, the French, and the Germans that were always referred to. It makes sense, really. Caroline thought. Most of us at school considered them the Big Three from the Middle Ages until Italy took over during the Renaissance. But there was always a mention that 'many elves also attended' the meetings.

  “So, it was a mix of human and paranormal royalty that met with the Pope?” She asked.

  “Yep,” Shakes nodded. “Even the elves were there, and they hadn’t had much to do with it all until then. Politically speaking, anyway. I guess the German elves had discovered several of their own mages with shifters and pixies in cages in their workshops during some quibble or another and realized what that all meant. A couple of the leaders of the Mad Mages were elves or had elf apprentices. Since the elves themselves are ambiguously connected to their own magic in a way we still don’t quite understand, they felt that it was essentially treason against their own kind to ensnare and enslave other paranormals. It got really divisive amongst the elf clans, I understand.”

  Shakes grimaced.
“Yeah. Turned out a much bigger number of elves were allied with the Order of the Hazel than they’d originally thought. Some elf nobles were deposed and replaced, governments got pretty shaky for a bit. It was pretty messy, from a political standpoint.”

  The room fell quiet as they all reflected on the horrors of the whole thing. Darien and Shakes, of course, knew a lot more about the details of history than Caroline did. She, however, knew a lot about what Greg had lived through as a child. Once he had told her the basics of his childhood last autumn, he had been telling her more about the tortures he had endured. If the Mad Mages had similar practices, Caroline was glad that Europe had risen up against them. Good riddance.

  Nobody should be treated like a science experiment like that. And they definitely shouldn’t be used for parts.

  “So…” Her voice cracked and she had to clear her throat and try again. Darien got up and went over to the counter to fuss with the coffeepot.

  “So, um. As horrifying as that is, what does it have to do with this case?” She asked. Darien pushed a button and the machine gurgled to life. The warm smell of coffee slowly crept through the room.

  “Well, all these artifacts are somehow connected to the Mad Mages. What good that will do anyone, I’m not really sure.” Shakes grimaced.

  “Wait…” something tickled the back of Caroline’s mind. She frowned, then took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, closing her eyes and letting her mind wander a bit.

  “Elves!” She said, suddenly sitting up.

  “What?” Shakes looked at her like he wasn’t sure what to say. Darien just leaned against the counter and waited.

  “This,” she waved her hand over the photos. “This whole stupid mess feels a lot like when Darien and I were kidnapped. Remember?” Caroline looked at Darien, who nodded slowly.

  “They had been starting to steal artifacts,” he said. “They only had a couple of things when the team went in to rescue us, but they found a pretty interesting list in the room they were using as an office. Most of the things they wanted were related to the founding of towns and local governments in that area, but we never did find out why they wanted those things.”