The Diviner: Journals of Evan Tailor Book Two, page 1
The Diviner
The Journals of Evan Tailor: Book Two
Tobias Begley
© 2022 Tobias Begley
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
To my mother, who’s been with me through thick and thin
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
INTERMISSION: DRAVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
INTERMISSION: OSHEEN
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
SHORT STORY
CHAPTER ONE
Summer School
I was fairly sure that I was being tortured. That Tara, the hidden Archmage, master of divinatory and luck-based magic, and my mentor, had betrayed me.
And the summer had started out so well, too. I’d had a lovely two weeks relaxing with Aldvarri and Osheen back in the capital before we had returned to take some summer courses: Intermediate Scrying and Intermediate Foci Creation for me, and some sorcery classes for Osheen. Even the majority of my summer classes had gone well. They were less stressful than the normal year’s workload since they each only had a final project, rather than a series of tests.
For the final project of Tara’s class, I was supposed to construct a spell that would allow me to view a specific book from Yesgol’s library while staying inside her hidden room, and while not using word-based information magic to guide the search.
If I could have used information magic, it would have been easier. I could have run a spell to look for the contents of the book and then told the spell to display that.
As it was, I was failing. Over and over again.
“Scrying is an important skill,” Tara said gently. The Archmage was sitting across from me, her legs crossed, staring down at the spell I was using to scry with.
“I know that, but scrying still doesn’t make any sense. Information magic is neat. Clean. Logical. This runs off thematic connections and ideas,” I bemoaned as the mirror I was using as a scrying display flickered, then stopped displaying the image in favor of becoming an ordinary mirror once again.
“Sympathetic connections are the basis of a great deal of higher-level Witchcraft,” Tara said calmly. “I think you’re just upset that you’ve failed for the fifth attempt in a row.”
She was right, of course. I’d gotten too used to being good at divination spells the previous year, and even though I was going into Journeyman Information magic, that didn’t mean I was a master of all divination. Not yet.
I took a deep breath and drew out a new spell on the floor with a bit of chalk. I started with the spells around the mirror again, which would display the image of whatever I was scrying. Then I added in the lines for sounds to emit from the mirror, and then, finally, the conceptual link.
Since Tara had hidden my copy of A Most Practical Guide to the Creation of Enchanted Artifacts, this should have been easy. I had spent a lot of time with the book, and I even had a cloak enchanted with a veil spell artifact I had copied from the book. On top of that, I already knew the general location of the book—the library.
I set the cloak to be one reference point, then myself to be the other. Then I picked up a book I had grabbed from the library a few days before and set it out to be a third reference point. Finally, I sat down and began the long chant to call in power from the world around us and activated the spell.
With all of that done, an image of my Practical Guide flickered onto the mirror.
Annoyingly, the image was so close up that I couldn’t see anything but the cover. Not even an inch of the surrounding area showed.
I focused on my mental picture of the Practical Guide. The feel of its pages, the scent of the old spells and parchment, and the spidery handwriting.
“Good,” Tara said. “Now pull back the image so you can see where it is.”
I did my best to project a mental image of the book but slightly farther away. Once again, the image flickered and then died. I let out a long, exasperated sigh.
“I don’t get it. What am I doing wrong?”
Tara smiled softly.
“You’ll figure it out. This is a common block for developing scryers.”
That wasn’t very helpful. I knew she had a reason, but I didn’t know what that reason was. She could have chosen it because it was contraband, and she thought it would be useful for me to learn to scry things outside of the law. It could have been because it was a grimoire, and the ability to scry books of magic could be incredibly useful. Or it could be a reason that I hadn’t even thought of yet.
As the midday bell rang, I stood and sighed.
“Thanks, Tara,” I said quietly. She nodded.
“You can do it. Think about it conceptually. And don’t worry too much yet. You do have until the end of the week, after all.”
I nodded, then headed off to my second summer class.
My Intermediate Foci class was much, much better than I’d expected. To my surprise, Travis had spent almost the entire summer lecturing, rather than practical practice like he had the first year.
Considering how he’d only denied to lecture a few times during Novice Enchanting, it was a stark change of pace.
On the downside, I hadn’t been able to make any significant advancements in my practical use of foci.
On the upside, I had significantly advanced my understanding of enchanting, as well as the application of specific spells and the use of components—most of which I would be able to translate to my work with artifacts as well.
That, combined with the theory books I’d been able to afford from his list, meant that I was actually feeling fairly confident about taking Artifacts in the fall.
On my way up the spiral stairs, I was joined by Victoria. The short, dark-haired girl was probably the most creative enchanter of my age I’d met.
“Afternoon,” she greeted me. “How’d your final project for divination go?”
“Terrible”—I groaned—“I’m even using components to help focus the spell, and it still won’t work properly. How’d your own sorcery class go?”
She let out a frustrated sigh of her own and balled her hands into fists.
“I literally can’t do it. It’s about adjusting dome spells on the fly, and I can’t build a foci capable of doing that.”
“Why would your professor give you a test that you’re incapable of completing?” I asked, a frown tugging at the corners of my lips.
“It is a class designed for sorcerers,” Victoria responded. “It’s a core skill for them. But I’m taking the class more to learn the mechanics of combat spells than anything.”
“What do you need to do?” I asked, curious. The back of my mind was running through the possibilities of how to manage the task.
“I need to be able to form a dome that can grow or shrink to either be a bubble around me or a larger shield around a group. It needs to be able to allow people of my choice to pass through it but not permit anything else.”
I nodded slowly. There were two impossibilities there—being able to shift the size of the dome and being able to allow certain people to pass through the dome.
“If you linked a divination spell to the permissibility aspect of the force dome, you could allow anyone who meets the definitions of an ally to pass through but not allow anyone who doesn’t,” I said consideringly. “I could help write out the divination portions, if you could handle the actual force dome bits.”
“It… may,” acknowledged Victoria. “But how would I adjust the size of the dome?”
“I don’t know how. But you could prepare multiple different force domes and swap between which one yo u’re channeling Aura to.”
Victoria gave me a considering look, and a grin slowly spread across her face.
“You’re right. If I used a staff made from one of Yesgol’s branches, I could probably get five or so sizes.”
Her grin was infectious, and I smiled back at her.
“It sounds like it could be a pretty impressive staff. It seems like something that would be at least an Adept-level foci.”
“I will be going into Adept foci in a few weeks. I’d love to have already produced something of that quality,” admitted Victoria.
I shot her a startled look. I had been under the impression that she was going to be in the Artifact track like I was.
“You are?”
“You aren’t?” she asked, an equal look of confusion on her own face.
“I’m taking Intermediate Witchcraft, Intermediate Artifacts, and Journeyman Information Magic.”
I didn’t mention that I was going to be continuing my scrying lessons with Tara as well since I wasn’t entirely sure if her allowing me to take a fourth course was strictly allowed.
“Really? Why Intermediate Witchcraft?” Victoria asked.
“I’d like to be more well-rounded and able to do more with my magic.”
“Makes sense, I guess. For my part, I’m doing Adept Foci, Intermediate Artifacts, and Seth’s more advanced combat course.”
That made a certain amount of sense. Given the lightning gauntlet and general interest in sorcery that she had, her being a combat mage was hardly unexpected.
I was pulled out of my thoughts as we arrived in Travis’s classroom. He was using the same empty room as last year, though the chalkboard had reappeared for several of his lectures and lessons.
It was gone today. Instead, he stood in the center of the room, arms crossed. As soon as I crossed the threshold, he waved a hand and used a glyph to shut the door behind me.
“I’m sure all of you are wondering what your final project is going to be,” Travis said without preamble.
The people around the room shifted nervously and nodded. I even saw Jerimiah Heenling looking a bit uncertain.
“Create a focus item that impresses me,” Travis said flatly.
That was it? I supposed that I shouldn’t have been surprised—he had done something very similar during the school year.
I had mixed feelings about the project. On the one hand, I had been wanting to make something for Osheen for a while now since I realized that I mainly used my magic to make tools for myself, rather than for my friends. On the other hand, I’d already promised to help Victoria with her own project. I wasn’t sure if I would have the time to build something properly impressive and do that as well. If I did put a lot of work into helping Victoria, my own project would likely turn out half-baked. If I didn’t, then I’d be breaking faith with Victoria.
“Can we work together?” asked George’s cousin, Jerimiah.
Travis favored the noble with a rare smile.
“I would suggest it. You may have groups of up to three.”
That did solve my problem of keeping my promise to Victoria, even if I felt bad about not being able to get anything for Osheen right now. It was still high on my priority list, though.
As people broke into groups, Victoria and I turned to face one another. She had a broad grin on her face.
“Alright,” I said, rubbing my hands together, “let’s get to work.”
CHAPTER TWO
Scrying
Designing a spell that would allow for the detection of friends or foes was actually much easier than I had expected, and I had it done within a half-hour.
I walked over to Victoria.
“Done already?” she asked, a surprised look on her face.
“I am,” I said with a nod, then laid out the spell array I had drawn out in front of her. “All you need is a drop of blood from anyone who you want to define as an ally. Spread it into the array when you cast it, and they’ll be registered as a friend. Anybody else will be marked as a not-friend.”
Victoria took a few moments to study the spell.
“This won’t work at all,” she said after a moment of silence.
“Why not?” I asked with a frown.
“Unless I’m seriously misunderstanding the way the spell works, it won’t be able to be modified after its cast. Anyone who’s marked as a friend will always be marked as one, and you won’t be able to add anyone new either. It isn’t like I know who I’ll be up against for the finals. In a real-world situation, it would be terrible.”
I frowned and looked at the array. If I’d still had my consumer glove, then being able to remove people from the list wouldn’t have been a problem, but I wasn’t going to be the one removing or adding it.
“How does a Sorcerer’s spell normally decide who’s a friend and who’s a foe?” I asked.
“It doesn’t. The Sorcerer just reshapes the spell to fit the situation.”
That was annoying, and it certainly wouldn’t work for our case since we could only store one spell in each layer of the foci.
“I may be able to make it into a list that you can remove or add things to?” I said uncertainly. I was certain I would have been able to do so in a divination ritual – adding things like extra runes to search for was common. But doing it on the fly within a focus was more complex.
“Even then, it wouldn’t be perfect,” Victoria said with a frown.
“How long do you expect it will take to set up each of the layers of the dome that you want?” I asked. I needed to know what sort of time frame I was working with.
“They won’t take long at all. Perhaps three or four hours each, and I want to have six layers. It’s the extra foci that works to bind them all together and make them passable to friend or foe that I’m worried about. That’s going to take at least two days, and that’s without whatever additions you make to allow it to detect friend or foe.”
I grimaced. That was a shorter time frame than I would have liked, but it couldn’t always be helped. I would just need to figure out something sooner, rather than later.
When the class ended, I said my goodbyes to Victoria and headed out to the classroom Osheen had. I hadn’t technically been invited to take the class, but Armond didn’t seem to mind me sitting in to watch.
I found a corner away from the sorcerers and continued to work on the problem of the force dome staff, only half paying attention to watching Osheen. His final seemed to involve using Sorcery to juggle half a dozen balls of fire with his eyes closed. He was able to consistently juggle five, but forming the sixth flame would cause him to lose control.
Inadvertently, my eyes slid over to watch Lyn, the only other person in this class who I knew. She had already managed to hold her own knives in a juggling pattern, and so Armond had moved her onto mixing spheres of force in with her knives, which she seemed to struggle with.
I let out a sigh and turned back to my work. Once the class was finished, Osheen walked over and sat down next to me, his hand resting on my leg as he did. He let out a contented sigh as he took a long sip of water from a canteen.
“Hey, get off, you stink of sweat,” I said, wrinkling my nose in mock disgust. Osheen chuckled and took another sip of water before he responded.
“I didn’t even work up a sweat. It was a mental examination, not a physical one. What exams did you get?”
“Scrying test and creating a foci that will impress Travis,” I said as I packed away my books. “How about you?”
He looped his arm with mine, and we headed upstairs towards our room.
“Well, you saw that one. And I’m guessing Victoria told you about adjusting domes without touching our allies?” Osheen asked. I nodded, and he continued, “My third exam is an essay about what sort of style we are going to adopt, as well as providing at least four different spells to work with our style.”
“Style?” I asked, a bit confused. “Like training to be an assassin or a melee warrior?”
“Sort of. But there’s more to it than that. For example, King Thomas is famous… or, I suppose, was famous for his speed and frequency of attacks. Each of his attacks was small enough to deflect, but he could call a thousand of them in a single second.”
I nodded—the king had layered the battlefield with dozens of medium-sized force bolts when I’d fought him.
“Contrast that against my father. He uses a scorched earth policy. He may only call one attack in the time it took someone like the king to call a hundred, but the one attack my father calls is extremely powerful.”
