Free Changing Of The Guard (Book 6) by Ron Collins Page B

distance away, a trail of blood running from his head to form a clotted pool in a bowl-like depression at his side.
    Garrick groaned.
    His hunger stirred. It strained against him, drawing him toward Will’s life force. It urged Garrick to stand, to walk, to crawl, to do whatever it took to absorb this fresh power. He bottled that hunger, though, he was stronger that it now.
    It laughed at him from its depths. It would have its way sometime, he knew. But that sometime would not be today.
    He crawled to the boy’s side.
    Will’s breathing rattled in his chest. His skin was clammy, but he was alive.
    “Braxidane!” Garrick yelled aloud. “Braxidane!”
    His superior could help if he wanted, but the planewalker had made it clear that the cost would be too great.
    Actions and consequences.
    Yes, he thought.
    He knew what Braxidane could do with his actions and consequences.
    He looked for anything that might help. He rummaged in the debris, his strength coming back in bits as time passed. If he could find something that would get him back to Existence, he thought. Anything. But the city was a wasteland, and with no store of life force Garrick didn’t think he could make it to Existence on his own.
    Will groaned.
    The boy’s eyes flickered open. They were dark and dilated.
    Garrick tasted bile. Ettril was right about one thing.
    This was his fault.
    Sunathri. The Dorfort dead. Darien struggling at the helm of the Freeborn—they all happened because he had been too afraid to take his role when he should have. And even now that he had agreed to take the Freeborn, he saw his reasons had been faulty. He had chosen to lead the order to spite Braxidane and the planewalkers, rather than from any real desire to help. Yes, doing so could ensure Adruin was free. But Garrick could not lie to himself. He had decided to take the Torean House purely so he could stand in the way of the planewalkers.
    He cursed his short-sightedness.
    It was all his fault.
    And now Will lay here dying because Garrick had been too protective to teach him enough magic to defend himself—even a simple bolt of energy might have been enough. “Garrick, sir,” Will whispered, his teeth flashing white in the gloom. “I’m glad you’re alive.”
    “I say the same for you. And you can still drop the
sir
, all right?”
    Will swallowed with a bird-like movement. “I’m not sure … for how much longer I’ll make it, though.”
    “None of that, now.”
    “My belly hurts,” Will said. “Inside.”
    Garrick’s hunger twisted like a caged tiger as he felt the pain in Will. He needed to get the boy home, or heal him, or face the fact that he was going to watch Will fade away before his very eyes.
    His hunger moved inside him like a shark.
    It gave him a thought that scared him.
    He had grown comfortable channeling the wild energy from Braxidane’s power through the gates of his standard sorcery, but he had never tried it the other way around, he had never used standard magestuff to drive his hunger. Could he use magestuff as he used life force? Ettril was dead now. The gates to the plane should be open. And if he was right about the essence of the two magics being the same, it might work.
    He had no other ideas.
    He set leverage points, and opened his link. Energy poured over his gates. He thought back to the beginning, back to Arianna lying in the wooded creekbed as he poured magestuff into her. It hadn’t worked then, but it was different now—his hunger was there inside him, and rather than merely dousing Will’s wounds with pure wizardry he latched this stream of standard magic into his hunger, and then called on the hunger to rise. He drew more mage stuff into him, overloading his body, filling the repositories that fueled his standard magic and letting the rest pour through his body.
    Braxidane’s dark magic pulsed. He kept pushing. Heat rose. The hunger grew to a boil.
    Finally he dropped the gates that controlled the intake all together,