The Silver Mask (Magisterium #4)(55)

Only now he was Verity, getting ready to die. Aaron had told Call about fearing he would die on the field like Verity had, a Makar sacrificed to the good of the Assembly of Mages. But it was Call who would die like that. Call, who the Assembly hated.

He was Verity and Constantine both, somehow. He thought about them as he marched ahead of the Chaos-ridden, Havoc at his side. He could hear their whispers in their strange dead language. They were asking him for instructions, asking what he wanted.

His flank was approaching the Assembly mages from the west. He could see Alex closing in from the east — Alex, wearing the silver mask of the Enemy of Death. He looked inhuman in it, half ghost and half monster. Call heard Alex shout and saw the Alkahest flash copper in the air as Alex gestured for his Chaos-ridden to attack.

They burst forward around him, and the Assembly traitors — all of whom had been put under Hugo’s command — surged forward, too. Only Aaron didn’t move. He stood where he was, a lone dark figure, the forgotten once-Makar, like a stone in the middle of a river as the Chaos-ridden streamed forward around him.

They slammed into the eastern flank of the Assembly mages and there was screaming. Call looked in horror for Tamara and Jasper, but he couldn’t see any students among the fighters. He hoped they’d been pushed to the back of the lines, where they’d be protected.

There was no longer any cleared earth between the two lines of fighters. There was only pandemonium — Jasper’s father exchanging bolts of sharpened ice with Master Rufus. Master Rockmaple fending off several Chaos-ridden with a curving alchemical sword. It sliced into their bodies and they collapsed and lay twitching.

Ravan hovered, wreathed in smoke, in the air above the Assembly mages, trading bursts of fire with Anastasia. Part of Anastasia’s uniform was scorched black, but she was holding her own.

“Call!” It was Alex shouting, furiously, over the smash and crash of the battle. “Call, attack!”

Call took a deep breath. He knew what he had to do. With the Chaos-ridden under his command, Alex’s side might be able to overwhelm the Assembly’s mages. Without them, it would be much harder for Alex to win.

Call drew on the magic of the void to bind his will to the Chaos-ridden under his command so that they would understand his wishes fully. “You, who I have created!” he called. “Dance!”

Immediately, like a flash mob, they carried out the synchronized moves Call willed. They kicked up their legs and spun around, moaning in time to a melody no one else could hear. They threw their hands in the air. They boogied. They got down.

It was totally ridiculous. It was so ridiculous that for a moment, everyone else paused. Even the elementals seemed curious.

A few mages even laughed.

But Alex wasn’t laughing. He looked absolutely furious.

“You idiot!” he shouted, flying toward where Call stood. “You’ve made a fool out of me for the last time!”

The silver mask caught the light and Call saw his own reflection in it. Then Alex pulled it off. Underneath, his face had gone red with rage. The Alkahest gleamed on his other arm and Call had no doubt what he was planning.

At least Call was sure his Chaos-ridden were occupied and would be for a while. He had willed enough magic into his commands that they would be hard for Alex to disrupt, but it had left Call depleted even before the fight started. And given how his magic drained faster since he’d given away part of his soul, beating Alex wasn’t going to be easy.

Still, he didn’t need to survive to win.

Using his power, Call ripped a hole into the void. He could feel the Chaos there, cold and oily and pulsing with the promise of enormous power.

Alex brought up the arm holding the Alkahest and pointed it straight at Call. Call tried to draw on chaos, to send it at Alex, but he was too slow.

Havoc got there first.

The Chaos-ridden wolf leaped at Alex, biting down on his metal-covered wrist. The beam that should have hit Call hit him instead.

“Havoc!” Call shouted. But the beam had smashed into Havoc’s chest, lifting the wolf into the air. Havoc’s body went limp and he hit the ground hard.

Call stopped thinking about magic, about wars, about anything. Pushing past the pain in his leg, he lurched toward Alex and punched him in the face.

The older boy staggered back. His lip was split and he looked more surprised than anything else. Call’s knuckles hurt. He’d never hit anyone before.

With a sneer, Alex slammed the Alkahest into the side of Call’s head, sending Call sprawling in the grass of the field. He could see Havoc’s body, sprawled in the field a little distance from him. The wolf wasn’t moving.

Call stood as Alex aimed the Alkahest again. And then Aaron was there, wrenching it off his arm. The two of them struggled, hanging on to opposite ends of it.

“Chaos-ridden!” Alex shouted. “To me!”

Crawling to Havoc, Call covered his wolf’s body with his own and called on chaos again. It spiraled around him, dark with promise.

He fed it with rage. Rage at Master Joseph for taking his choices away, for kidnapping him and forcing him to be Constantine. Rage at death, for taking away Aaron. For taking away his mother. For taking Havoc. For leaving him with a torn black gaping hole of loss in the middle of his heart.

He fed the chaos with rage and loss, with grief, and finally with fear, the fear of his own death, fear of what lay on the other side of his sacrifice.