Removes magic

The wizard selected a book from the top of the unread pile. It was a huge volume, bound in leather, with a circular disk of azure mica mounted on the cover. Its pages were expensively gilt, and a red velvet bookmark hung from the bottom along the spine, looking like a flopping tongue.

The mage sat down at a nearby table, and Jodah began reading aloud about the growth of hereditary knighthood in the southern cities. That was when the new arrival began screaming.

At first Jodah did not understand what was happening. The mage sat down at the table, opened the book, and started to read. Now he was screaming and holding onto the book with one hand, waving it back and forth.

No, he wasn’t holding onto the book. The book was holding onto him. It had somehow grown teeth along the covers and had a firm hold on the mage’s wrist. The bespectacled wizard was now waving his arm frenetically, but the book would not relax its grip. If anything, it was trying to bite farther up the Wizard’s arm, using its bookmark tongue to drag itself forward.

Jodah was stunned for a moment but only for a moment. He leaped up and ran to the mage, who was now performing a one—man dance in the center of the library, his hand trapped in the book, blood spattering on the tiles around them. Jodah tried to grab the mage and wrestle him to the ground, to pry the book from him. He was rewarded by the mage slamming Jodah with the book itself, the spine catching him in the cheek.

Jodah dropped to one knee and cursed himself. He was trying a physical solution to a magical problem again.

Now he took a deep breath, effortless calling up the memories of his home. Then, as he had on the floor of the challenge arena, he unleashed a small, negating package of white mana.

The book stiffened, then dropped off the mage’s hand. Its teeth had vanished, its tonguelike bookmark just a bookmark again. The mage was still screaming, and he dropped to his knees, freed of his attacker. Nedda was there with some leaves pulled from one of her plants and a handful of berries. She shoved the berries past the mage’s lips and made him swallow, and that seemed to calm him down a bit. Then she wrapped the leaves around the streaming wounds. The leaves glowed with a greenish aura and stanched the flow of blood.

Others arrived, servants and a healer who took the mage out. He left the library under his own power, cursing in some language Jodah did not understand. Nedda handed the offending volume over to another servant, with instructions to put it in a secure place until it was investigated.

She turned to Jodah. “Did you cut the mana from it?” she asked.

Jodah shook his head and wiped sweat from his brow.

“I removed the mana entirely. It didn’t seem like something we wanted to see come back.”

***

The Gathering Dark, Chapter 13