The Necromancer Trilogy - Black Magic

Chapter Eight - The First Gatekeeper

Blue gave Sophie a cursory nod when he returned to the tree house, his eyes unfocused, barely registering that she was awake and improving.

“They had Adele.”

“Yes, we know,” Sophie said, as gently as she could.

Blue’s eyes were burning. “They’ll be torturing her.”

“It’s possible,” Sophie allowed.

“We’re getting her back. Now.”

“Blue,” Sophie protested. “We’re in no shape to…”

He cut her off. “This isn’t up for debate, Sophie. Adele is the priority now.”

“More than David and Gus?” Sophie couldn’t help feeling irritated.

“Yes!” Blue cried. “No. I mean…dammit, Sophie! We need to get her out!”

Sophie winced. “Blue, I have a broken arm and throbbing head. You look a mess. The Yales might be strong but they’re just kids. They haven’t done this sort of thing before.”

“We can handle it,” David promised.

“But…”

“We can handle it,” he repeated, angrily.

“They can handle it,” Blue said, smugly.

“Oh, shut up,” Sophie groaned. “Blue, this is a suicide mission.”

“Don’t be silly,” he said, smiling. “We won’t all die.”

Mountains towered in icy, uncompromising peaks, sliced apart in knife-edge ridges and sheer cliffs. Steep slopes of sparkling snow were constantly one step from avalanche. Clouds looped from summits like bridal veils, the mountains themselves clothed in misty silk.

 The four stood shivering on the side of the mountain, none of them dressed for snow and biting wind. Their precise location was unknown. David wasn’t even sure they could say what country they were in.

  It had all been going so simply, he thought regretfully. They had been going to the place where Blue’s Adele was being kept, to save her from evil. It had sounded so easy, so straight-forward, a chivalrous quest for some unlikely knights.

 Then had come the feeling like ice-cubes down your spine, a cold knife to your throat, a frozen rainbow in your brain, and Gus’s eyes had opened wider than planets. Blue was the only one not to feel it. David felt it stronger than any of them.

 What had it been, that feeling of being too close to something cold and deadly? David guessed, there and then, that it was a reminder. Just for a minute, something had flashed by them to say, “Remember what you are here for.”