Free Magic Without Mercy by Devon Monk Page B

bit,” Shame said. “He’s got some sorting to do.”
    Shame had knelt and taken off his boots and was stuffing his socks into them.
    “What the hell are you doing?” I asked, glad to havesomething else to focus on, but also wondering if he had gone as crazy as Zayvion.
    “Checking the wells,” he said. “What the hell do you think I’m doing?”
    “Getting naked for no reason?”
    “While that is always a pleasant option,” Shame said as he stood, “there’s no time for naked. Yet.” He tipped his head down, inhaled, then exhaled, as if setting himself to a heavy weight. He paced across the floor, working a very slow counterclockwise circle toward the center of the room where the patterned woodwork flowed into the symbol that marked where the well of magic swelled far below.
    I’d seen him walk this way once before, back at the Blood well, moving as if he were walking on rice paper and trying not to tear it, as if there was a far-off sound that he could hear. It was meditative, a pure focus on magic that didn’t flare and move like most magic. No, this was more like Shame attuning to magic, making himself a grounding rod, a tuning fork.
    But every step he took drew something from the floor, leaving behind black scorch marks. Death magic. He was drawing energy from the floor. Maybe even from the well or the earth around and above us.
    Was he tasting the magic? With his feet?
    Shame inhaled a quick breath in a soft
ah
as if he had just figured a lock. And then he strode straight to the center of the symbol, faced the door we’d come in through, and lifted his arms above his head, shaking his wrists a little so that his coat sleeves settled comfortably.
    “Step back a bit,” he said.
    I did so.
    Shame called magic from the carvings in the ceiling, drawing it down around him like a very light rain. Except the rain didn’t fall all the way to the ground. It got toabout shoulder level, and then a pulse of light in the center of his chest—the stone that Terric had accidentally embedded in Shame to keep him alive—absorbed the magic.
    After a couple seconds, Shame drew his hands down and traced a Disbursement glyph. He was going with a short, quick pain. The Disbursement glyph flared and wrapped up his arm, hugging there like a purple leech and digging deep. I figured it was muscle aches.
    He drew a glyph for Open, which hovered about three feet in front of him. He poured just a small bit of magic into it, and before the glyph was completely closed, he pulled a line of it with him as he turned to face the wall. He repeated the Open glyph, caught the edge, keeping it open as he turned, connecting it with the next glyph, turned to the next wall, did the same, and repeated the process on the last wall.
    A circle of glyphwork, of spells, hung midair around him, glowing a soft yellow, each glyph connected to another. A very intricate and beautiful Open spell.
    Shame was facing the door again. The Disbursement on his arm had grown to three times the size, each spell he cast bloating it and adding to the price of his pain.
    He didn’t seem to notice. No one really noticed Disbursements. If I couldn’t see magic with my bare eyes, I wouldn’t even give it a second thought.
    Then Shame tipped his left palm open and up, and used his right hand to trace a new spell over the top of it. This spell was black fire. He blew across his palm like blowing a kiss, and the black spell caught on the edge of the Open spell and burned through it, consuming it faster than a lit line of gunpowder. It crackled from one Open spell to the next, gaining speed.
    Shame was breathing hard, holding his concentrationon that black burning spell while the purple Disbursement sent out shocks of pain through his body.
    The black spell zinged through the last Open, and exploded in a lash of black smoke tentacles in front of Shame’s face.
    “Fuck it all.” Shame took a deep breath, got about halfway through a lungful, and wiped his face with