The Magi Menagerie Read online

  Content Warning

  The following work contains elements that some readers may find uncomfortable. These include active scenes of religious and ethnic hate crime, bullying, death, and physical parental abuse. One character is a survivor of past sexual assault, though the actual events are implied and not explicitly shown on page.

  © 2021 Kale Lawrence

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by EnchantFire Books.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First Edition

  ISBN: 978-1-7365125-4-8

  Cover design by MoorBooks Design

  www.moorbooksdesign.com

  www.kalelawrence.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  The Magi Menagerie

  Chapter One The Order of Babylon

  Chapter Two Visions of the Magi Master

  Chapter Three New Beginnings

  Chapter Four Quietus

  Chapter Five The Headmaster

  Chapter Six The Courier’s Message

  Chapter Seven A Broken Vow

  Chapter Eight Premonitions

  Chapter Nine Arrows of the Watchers

  Chapter Ten Not Enough Time

  Chapter Eleven Beyond the Bend

  Chapter Twelve Fire Signs

  Chapter Thirteen Transmissions

  Chapter Fourteen The Shahmaran

  Chapter Fifteen A Blemish in Time

  Chapter Sixteen Lessons and Revelations

  Chapter Seventeen An Unlikely Ally

  Chapter Eighteen Official Business

  Chapter Nineteen According to the Stars

  Chapter Twenty Doomsday Consultation

  Chapter Twenty-One Perdition in Elysium

  Chapter Twenty-Two Haunted

  Chapter Twenty-Three Details on Deadline

  Chapter Twenty-Four Terror Befalls Belfast

  Chapter Twenty-Five Aftermath

  Chapter Twenty-Six Resistance

  Chapter Twenty-Seven Irrevocable Moral Obligations

  Chapter Twenty-Eight A Future to Stand Behind

  Chapter Twenty-Nine Souvenirs from the Past

  Chapter Thirty Harland and Wolff

  Chapter Thirty-One Andromeda Eridian

  Chapter Thirty-Two Emergency

  Chapter Thirty-Three Final Piece of the Trap

  Chapter Thirty-Four Late Night Caller

  Chapter Thirty-Five Beyond Our Understanding

  Chapter Thirty-Six Architect of Dreams

  Chapter Thirty-Seven We are the Stars

  Chapter Thirty-Eight Under the Watchful Eye

  Chapter Thirty-Nine The British Museum

  Chapter Forty Unfinished Reports

  Chapter Forty-One A Dangerous Night

  Chapter Forty-Two The Great Escape

  Chapter Forty-Three Coming to Peace

  Chapter Forty-Four Theories

  Chapter Forty-Five The Last Location

  Chapter Forty-Six Sweet Dreams

  Chapter Forty-Seven A City Burning

  Chapter Forty-Eight The Shahmaran’s Revelation

  Chapter Forty-Nine An Altered Course

  Chapter Fifty My Story Without You

  Chapter Fifty-One Constantinople

  Chapter Fifty-Two Enter the Cave of the Shahmaran

  Chapter Fifty-Three Betrayed

  Chapter Fifty-Four Unlock a New Magic

  Chapter Fifty-Five One Brave Step

  Chapter Fifty-Six Unstoppable Forces

  Chapter Fifty-Seven A Grave Mistake

  Author Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  For Sara,

  who showed me I could do impossible things.

  Chapter One

  The Order of Babylon

  With precise graphite strokes, Ezra Newport constructed his dreams. Like an ancient tower piercing the clouds, Ezra manifested buildings beyond the likes of the European cities that had served as his backdrop over the past decade. But none of them could ever compare to the municipalities of his mind. Carefully, as if he were building the monument from tangible things, he assembled shapes, lines, and archways until they spilled from the parchment. Illuminated by the soft amber glow of the wall sconces, jarred only by light vibrations from the locomotive’s journey along the tracks, Ezra’s creations breathed a life of their own. A life reminiscent of his former Ottoman home, basking in the Constantinople sunlight.

  Satisfied with his work, Ezra signed his name beneath the structure’s foundation.

  Ezra Newport. March 2, 1906.

  Ezra glanced upward, grinning at his mother who had long since given in to sleep. Her head rested against the compartment window. A section of long, dark hair spilled from her headscarf, twisting downward around her golden broach pinned above her heart.

  The sharp call of the train prompted her eyes to flutter open. Leyla drew in a deep breath and righted herself in the seat.

  “Get good sleep, Anne?” Ezra asked.

  “As decent as one can get on a train,” his mother drowsily replied. Her brown eyes scanned the compartment. “Where is your baba?”

  Ezra shrugged, setting his pencil bag and notebook on the empty cushion beside him. “He said he wanted to speak with someone several carriages down.”

  “Oh?” The inflection in her voice contradicted the uneasiness in her eyes. “That’s curious.”

  Ezra studied his mother’s face as she retrieved the timepiece she wore around her neck. Leyla consulted the hour and tucked it away into the high collar of her blouse. He knew the crease between her eyebrows only appeared simultaneously with troubled thoughts. But the façade she wore like a mask could only obscure so much for so long.

  “How close are we to Belfast?”

  “We’re nearing Portadown Station,” his mother stated. Refocusing her attention, Leyla smiled when she noticed the sketches beside him. “I see you’ve finished another masterpiece.”

  Ezra proudly surveyed his work and handed her the notebook. “Belfast Royal Academy better have an engineering program in the curriculum.”

  Pride glimmered in his mother’s expressions. She handed the sketches back to him. “Yes. Your talent is bound to turn a few heads.”

  His sense of accomplishment faded. “Will this be the last?”

  “The last what, canım?”

  “The last move.”

  A heaviness pulled at her weary features. Perhaps the façade was lifting.

  “My love, you will be eighteen in seven months. When you are a man, you will decide for yourself the direction of your steps.”

  Ezra smiled in understanding and allowed Leyla to take his hands in hers. He wasn’t certain whether the jostling of the train or unspoken emotion caused her fingers to tremble.

  “Your baba and I will always have a...a desire to keep moving,” she continued. “But I promise you, no matter what, we—”

  Her voice trailed off, distracted by a flutter of motion behind the window’s condensation. After squeezing his hands, she rose at attention from her seat. “Stay here, canım. I shall return.”

  Ezra nodded obediently as his mother approached the compartment door.

  When time itself screeched to a dreadful halt.

  A blinding white light illuminated the compartment then faded just before a concussive shockwave sent the scene around them into oblivion. Reeling in confusion, Ezra found himself lying prostrate in a barely conceivable jumble of his former surroundings. Splintering glass shattered around him. A warm stream of a substance—oil? Blood? —t
rickled down his forehead and along the corner of his mouth. Ezra wiped it away with the sleeve of his coat, cringing at the crimson trail left behind. His equilibrium—as much as he tried to control it—spiralled in a vicious vortex, rendering it nearly impossible to get his bearings.

  "Anne?" he croaked in Turkish. His voice, hardly louder than a whisper, was drowned out by the infernal ringing in his ears.

  Reaching for the compartment door handle to pull himself to his feet, Ezra recoiled when he noticed the door had been smeared with cruel red streaks. Smoke billowed throughout the walkway, choking him as he navigated on hands and knees through the devastation.

  "Anne?" he called again.

  "Ezra!"

  His mother was within arm’s reach, but the look in her eyes seemed dangerously far.

  Ezra crawled to her side where she lay gasping for air. His stomach contorted into knots at the sight of a dark, liquid halo surrounding her headscarf.

  "Let's get you out of here," Ezra insisted, attempting to prop her up into a seated position. He frantically looked around for any sign of his father. "We need to find Baba!"

  "Shhh," she insisted, shakily reaching up to her son's face. "Don't worry about us. Flee. Get as far away from here as you possibly can."

  "What are you saying?" Ezra said, wondering if somehow his brain had lost all ability to comprehend language.

  "Your baba and I knew this day would come," she whispered, tears swimming in her eyes. "They have found us. They have found you."

  "Who? Who has found—" Ezra began but was silenced when her complexion faded to a ghastly white. He hesitantly followed her gaze over his shoulder.

  Distorted by smoke, an inky black shadow materialised at the end of the walkway. The figure plodded toward them with an uneven gait, accompanied by ominous, mechanical whirring. But when the being finally stopped, and the smoke cleared just enough to expose his anamorphic features, Ezra could not bring himself to move.

  "By the Order of Babylon, you are hereby commanded to follow and obey," his deep voice warbled through some type of amplification apparatus. His breath's condensation—or rather, steam—fumed from the steel grates around where his mouth should have been.

  Ezra's own breath faltered as the orange light from nearby flames illuminated the figure's head. Slits in his mask revealed rugged skin and dark shadows beneath an organic eye, but the other portion consisted entirely of an intricate web of gears and piping. While at one time, the figure might have been an ordinary person, whoever now stood before him was nothing close to being human.

  "We shall not!" his mother barked defensively, feigning a physical strength Ezra knew she lacked. "We will never yield."

  "Hmm," the shadow mused. "So be it, Magus." A snap of his fingers sent ruby sparks into the haze and, upon deteriorating, revealed a massive cobra. Its thick body slithered across the wreckage and advanced straight for Ezra.

  "Ezra, go!" cried his mother as a deluge of glass fragments rained upon them.

  Crab-walking backward, Ezra manoeuvred as fast as he could away from the serpent, but it navigated the debris as if nothing stood in its way. The reptile snapped its jaws centimetres from his leather shoe, a fierce wrath in its eyes.

  "Leave him alone, devil!" yelled Leyla, summoning what strength remained to kick at the snake with her boot.

  Almost in slow motion, the cobra turned its fiery eyes toward his mother and bared its fangs as if overjoyed to set a course for its new target.

  "No!" Ezra screamed in terror. "No, no, no!"

  The cobra paid no attention to his pleas. It struck in one sickening flash, almost too fast for the eye to comprehend. As it withdrew, Ezra choked back arduous smoke—and a wave of tears—as his mother reflexively reached for her neck.

  Narrowing its eyes as if perversely satisfied by the work of its venom now coursing through her veins, the cobra turned back to Ezra.

  Trembling, Ezra tried to move but could not persuade his petrified limbs to cooperate.

  “Go, my love!” Leyla rasped. “Go!”

  Using his elbows to help pull him down the corridor, he furiously attempted escape. If the half-man, half-machine could grin or show any form of expression, Ezra imagined he was elated beyond measure at the persistence of his pet. The mysterious being advanced, his boots ravishing the ashy remains of pencil-sketched architecture.

  “Where is your father, boy?” demanded the figure. “Tell me!”

  Ezra could barely breathe as the figure hovered above him. A true vision of the Grim Reaper. The last thing Ezra saw before his vision faded was the cruel twinkle behind the mask of the stranger.

  Chapter Two

  Visions of the Magi Master

  Jonas van der Campe awoke with a start.

  Heaving heavy breaths, his fingers fumbled for the key on the oil lamp mounted to the wall above his nightstand. Golden light bathed the bedroom in a soft essence, shedding a momentary sense of relief over his heightened nerves.

  "Just stay calm,” Jonas muttered to himself as he untangled his limbs from his bed linens. With every panicked heartbeat, vexation set in. He never had to talk himself down from a proper nightmare. As a child, perhaps. But as a thirty-year-old Magus? He was stronger than this. "Pull yourself together, now."

  The horrific carnage of the train accident troubled him more than any dream typically would. Jonas could feel in his bones this nightmare was real. And it wasn’t the first time he had witnessed cruelty at the hands of the Watchers.

  Without wasting a second, he pulled a robe around his night clothes and hurried from his cellar flat up three flights of stairs to the rooftop garden. The moment the glacial March air washed over his face, he sighed in relief and closed his eyes to bask in the clarity of daybreak.

  "You’re certainly up early, Cousin," spoke the soothing voice of a young woman sitting underneath a vine-covered trellis. Still in her nightdress, Kierra McLarney’s bare feet grazed the rug beneath her as she allowed the swinging bench to sway in the morning breeze.

  Jonas swallowed the trepidation forming in his throat.

  Kierra waited for his reply but turned when silence answered instead. Her features morphed from complacent to uneasy.

  "What’s wrong? Bad dreams?”

  "The whole thing. Ghastly. All of it," he stammered, searching for his usual voice of reason. "Kierra, I feel the tides are shifting."

  "How do you mean?" She motioned for him to join her on the bench.

  Jonas sank beside her and stared at the purple glow crowning the horizon. The images burned across his consciousness were not the only things troubling him. The timing—

  God. The timing could not be any worse.

  With worrisome storms brewing in his mind, Jonas reached into his robe pocket and retrieved a small logbook, right where he had left it after the previous evening’s stargazing. Flipping toward the centre, he ran a fingertip over the pages and froze, his fears confirmed by the hasty ink.

  “What, Jonas?” Kierra asked, her features becoming increasingly troubled.

  “The State of the Stars at the turn of the new year hinted at something concerning in our near future,” he summarised, his eyes racing across the penmanship. “When I observed the stars the evening of January first, I noted a strong planetary presence within Aquarius. Both Saturn and Mars battled for dominance within the Great Water Bearer.”

  “Concerning, indeed,” Kierra admitted. Strands of light red hair obscured her face, rippled by the wind.

  Jonas closed the book, his palm caressing the soft leather cover. Such disturbances within the Magi’s constellation suggested more than a mere harbinger. It sang of transformation, an irreversible shift in destiny. “It did not make sense then, but now...” his voice trailed off, battered by internal tempests. “We will undoubtedly find ourselves challenged by fiery aggression from our enemies. And I think I might have just witnessed the igniting spark.”

  Kierra remained silent, anticipating his explanation.

  "In my dr
eams, there was a boy," Jonas said, his voice distant.

  "A boy? One of my students at the academy?"

  "No. At least, not yet. He’s an immigrant,” Jonas recalled. “All I know is that he—or his family—are important to them. Beyond the usual means. I cannot explain it, but I know they are important to us, too. Crucial to the Magi’s existence. Right now, at this very moment in time."

  Kierra’s eyebrows knitted together while she digested the information. "So, this is not just about the Order of Babylon?"

  “Something even darker than that.”

  Kierra hesitated as Jonas folded his hands together in nervous contemplation. "What should we do? Should we alert the Magi Administration?"

  Jonas lowered his eyes from the horizon to the oil lamp sitting on the floor beside them, completely bewitched by the dancing flame. Even with the Gift to control fire, the flames taunted him with their flickering movements. It was far too similar to the ones he had just witnessed devouring a vulnerable passenger train only minutes before. Letting the scene dissolve into a fading echo, he met his younger cousin's gaze.

  "I shall send them a telegram this morning,” Jonas insisted, drawing his robe closer around himself for warmth. “We must wait for further instructions from the Council. They will know what to do.”

  Despite the confidence in his voice, the flame inside the oil lamp teetered on the edge of extinction.

  Chapter Three

  New Beginnings

  "Your final destination, Mr. Newport?" came the voice of the magistrate.

  Staring into the depths of his teacup, Ezra did not even notice the anticipatory look on the Irish official’s face. Two days had come and gone in a whirlwind of whispered condolences, medical evaluations, and an onslaught of questions for the reports. Foreign memories and phrases tumbled from his lips, about mechanical beings and serpents. Despite his insistence, the authorities wrote it off as the ramblings of a weary mind. Every conversation began with sympathy and ended with a statement of pure astonishment that he had even survived the ordeal.

  But just how he survived, how he escaped the horrors of that night, confounded him. In fact, it haunted him.