The Cost of Magic (The Ethan Cole Series Book 1) by Andrew Macmillan

Author:Andrew Macmillan [Macmillan, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

One minute, Henry had been dragging his heavy heart through the streets, rejected and sulking. The next, a whirling vortex of fire and rock had appeared and picked him up bodily while announcing in a series of pictures that he had been summoned by ‘the armiger’. Man, they couldn’t half overreact, this lot. He’d tell them he knew he shouldn’t have snuck out the house. They couldn’t prove he was trying to run away.

He had been transported, along with the rock-and-fire thing, to a huge chamber. Cole was there, at a desk near the front, all glares and brooding eyebrows. Fuck’s sake, Dad. He’d only gone for a frigging walk.

A serious military type then guided Henry – okay, forced him – up some stairs, where he was led to one of a series of benches perched on a raised balcony above where Cole was. He was left to sit among some very unsavoury-looking types.

As he gazed around, sense melted, leaving Henry Millar in a puddle of nonsense. The place was insane. These crypto-fascists were some crazy, real-world, Lord of the Rings mega-fans, on serious industrial-strength acid. Henry wondered how it was he could know what The Lord of the Rings was but didn’t know who had given birth to him.

Banners hung from the ceiling, fluttering, full of tapestries of animals and people and weapons. There was every conceivable colour of banner there, as if a kid had dipped their fingers in their paint collection and drawn rainbow straight lines from the roof. It was a silent riot. The roof was a vaulted stone number, like a cathedral but more massive.

Writing ran inside the stones, around the roof and wavered in between, looking exactly like glass lines, or cut diamond, with occasional shades of ruby or sapphire. Henry had found himself inside the world’s only classy lava lamp.

The spectacle almost knocked the memory of Lucy from his mind, until his mind wondered how much she’d love to see this. No amount of rainbow marvel could lift the shade that settled on Henry’s heart then. He sighed, noticing again the scoundrels he was sat among.

These men were professional lunch-money thieves, and they glared at him. Prison would have felt safer, he was sure. The gruff professionalism of the soldier who had deposited Henry where he sat suddenly seemed like cheer and good banter. That solider still stood close by the rabble, thank God.

They were on a mezzanine. Two sloping rows of benches overlooked neat rows of benches below, with two tables at the front. It was a lot like a proper court room, if court rooms also had raised amphitheatre seats for a hundred judges at their front.

Cole and some tired and irritated-looking guy sat at one of the solid wooden desks at the front. A guy wearing full medieval armour stood in front of them, pacing. The armoured guy looked pissed off about something.

Three thrones sat above the tower of seats, stretching along the far wall in front of Henry. About halfway up the tower, sat a man, dripping arrogance.

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