Sorcerybound (World's First Wizard Book 2), Aaron Schneider [accelerated reader books .txt] 📗

He who was nothing will become everything!

Stalin's smile deepened into that of a man well content with his labors.

“You see, with a few words, I remind you of the truth you knew all along.” He beamed as the crash of symbols and rumble of drums heralded the refrain.

This is our final

And decisive battle;

Under the guardians

Man will serve in truth!

“Understand now that you are part of something grander and greater than you could have ever hoped for. Something much higher.”

Stalin’s words were not the rantings of a zealot or the bellows of a demagogue. Even as they rose over the anthem booming across the bewitched crowd, there was a quiet, reasonable conviction that infiltrated every ear and every mind before him.

“Listen to the song and remember—”

A piercing wail, wild and discordant, tore through the air, and Comrade Stalin faltered.

The organ crank turned, but for an instant, the anthem’s choir stalled as though the legion of voices was momentarily distracted, even as the instrumental chords played on. Stalin turned to look at the dwarf with a scowl, but the creature was glaring at the northernmost entrance to the square. The voices returned strong as ever, but in their absence, some of the conscripts had begun to look around, clutching their heads or drawing hands across their faces.

No one will grant us deliverance,

Not god, nor tsar, nor hero.

Pressure began to build in the air like the herald of a storm. In the dragging current of the anthem, it hadn’t been noticeable before the first cry, but now all felt it, though only one understood it.

We will win our liberation,

With our very own ha—

The ripping scream came again, and once again, the chorus lost time. The screech was quickly followed by its own feral choir, the sound of which seemed to unravel the chords of the anthem.

More conscripts began to shake awake, reaching out to glassy-eyed friends and neighbors beside them. Some they shook out of their stupor, some they didn’t. Some responded violently to the intrusion. Shouts, blows, and confusion began to erupt across the plaza, and the thin line of soldiers could no longer ignore the growing pandemonium. They waded in with the butts of their rifles and curses. A few opened fire.

The anthem surged back, instruments and chorus launching ahead as though trying to make up for lost time.

—up the furnace and hammer boldly,

While the iron is still hot!

And then all hell broke loose in the heart of Tiflis as an armored Rolls-Royce roared into the square, trailing a storm of shimmering, shrieking horrors.

24

The Red

“Was this what you had in mind?” Ambrose shouted as he cranked the newly christened “Rollsy” hard to the right to avoid a brawling knot of men.

“No,” Milo shouted as his will was taxed by maintaining the horde of spectral horrors, sweat beading his forehead. “Not exactly.”

Lapping around the Rollsy and forming in a wave behind them were ghostly apparitions. Some were skeletal horrors dangling etheric wisps of tattered garments and grave wrappings, their grinning face sending up wild, piercing cackles. Others were akin to the malformed shades of Milo’s experience, sloughing features drooping around moaning, hungry mouths. Like a tide of terror, they plunged into the square.

The people in the square, already unsettled, erupted into utter pandemonium.

Conscripts, soldiers, and the phantoms Milo and Rihyani had summoned fought, chased, raved, and generally created chaos. Milo caught fleeting glimpses of violence and madness as Ambrose sawed his way through the churning bodies like a sailor tacking a sailboat through unfriendly waters. More than once, a body thumped against their flank as stray bullets sang off their hood, and a few times, there was a crunching thump-thump as the Rollsy gave a small two-stage jump.

The reality of what was going on might have provoked a greater reaction from Milo, except so much of him was pressed outward that sparing time for his physical senses was hardly worth the effort. He could feel the magical power of Zlydzen attempting to smother what he and Rihyani were doing, and dear God, was he strong. Milo recognized that his magic was different from anything he’d experienced thus far, a brutal, mechanical sort of magic. Necromist magic was uniquely chemical, exciting elements and letting them do as the formula dictated, while the Art was singularly psychological, bending and shaping impulse and determination into reality. This magic, perhaps all dwarrow magic, was intensely mechanical, a grinding and relentless force that would carry on like tides rolling in and out to batter at them as long as someone kept turning the crank on that machine. He and Rihyani could keep pressing their wills, like two travelers leaning into a headwind, but if they didn’t find shelter soon, the wind would exhaust them.

That or I change the weather, Milo thought. Sparing what little he could of his awareness to squint through the windscreen of the Rollsy, he saw the shrunken figure at the street organ. Even given the erratic movements of the vehicle, Milo could tell the creature was glaring at him as it continued to turn the crank. Milo spared a further glance to see Comrade Stalin standing in front of the microphone, rigid and attentive, the man and woman behind him holding their positions flawlessly.

“We need to get to that stage,” Milo shouted and gritted his teeth as they slewed to one side hard enough the Rollsy rose on two wheels for one heart-stopping second.

“What do you think I’m trying to do?” Ambrose shouted before slamming his foot down on the accelerator again. “She’s got some heft, but if I try and plow through, we’ll just get clogged up.”

Milo understood and even thought distantly that they couldn’t just run over people. Not intentionally, anyway, since the majority in the square were prisoners, not enemies, even though some of them were doing a fair job acting like it under the dwarrow’s influence.

“Rihyani!” he shouted, twisting to face the wind-riding fey behind them. “We need to get to the stage.”

Rihyani looked