The Enchanter (Journals of Evander Tailor Book 1), page 37
If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.
“Of course,” she said with a smile, and I headed down the stairwell. My feet were pounding now, and I ran to my room. I was glad my room was also high in the branches of the tree because if I’d been down in the communal area, I’d have had twice as long of a walk. I made it to my room and wrote out a short letter.
Dear Ligature,
I do not know if this will be relevant. Indeed, it may be worthless. But I believe that there is something strange with King Thomas. I examined him with the help of my familiar, and I saw a veiled black smear in his Aura. It may have just been Archmage Chantal, which is why I didn’t report it. Today, after the tournament, however, it was not him who met with us. It was Archmage Chantal and a body double, made from one of his Guards. I don’t know where he has gone, but with this strange behavior, I fear the worst.
Regards,
Evander
I folded the note in two, then swirled my Aura in the method that I had memorized when I’d received their first message.
Once again, the knot in my Aura unraveled itself and opened into a space the size of a breadbox. I slipped the note in and stopped channeling Aura, and it winked closed. I sat in my chair, bouncing my leg in a jittery motion, not sure what to do. I couldn’t do anything.
No, I could. I was a powerful diviner. Probably the best in my year. And I had access to information that almost nobody else did. And I had seen the runes that the consumers had used to break apart magic.
I had built the spells to help me search the library a long time ago, and over the semester I’d stocked up on a few of them, just in case I ever needed them, even improving them plenty in my time with Tara. I felt like it was obvious now that I was thinking about it. But…
I pulled out a sheet of paper and drew an altered version of the spell. Rather than looking for an exact phrase, it would look for one of the runes that I’d copied down from the consumer. It needed a much bigger range, too. I wasn’t going to be able to get the half-mile that had been requested, but I should be able to get it to cover a solid third of Yesgol. I pulled out the notecards that I’d built over the semester and studied them. All of them were ready to activate, which meant they were brimming with power.
Normally, transferring power from one spell to another wasn’t a good idea. But the twins had been able to do it, thanks to their link. With spells of virtually the same type, written by the same person, however, I thought that it should be safe enough.
I added the notecards onto the spell, and then I drew out the lines to funnel their power into my new, bigger spell. I wasn’t sure that it was going to be enough. If it wasn’t, then I’d destroyed my notecards for nothing. But I could rebuild them, and if my hunch was right, then I may be able to find the summoning array…
I chanted out, faster than I ever had before, then tucked a paper and inked pen into my pockets. It would blot in my pants, but that was the least of my concerns right now.
I clutched my searching spell and ran to the stairwell. I knew that the spell wouldn’t be in the main trunk. There would be too many people who could stumble in and discover what was going on. It could be down in the labyrinthine roots of the tree, or it could be up in the branches. The roots would have the advantage of sitting next to a thousand other spells and summoning, making it blend in, but that would also make it likely to be discovered. The branches were more abandoned, apart from a few lonely resident halls like mine.
I activated the spell, and I felt it rush out into the world around me, looking for any runes that matched the consumer’s alien ones.
I waited one heartbeat, then another. Then a breath. Then another. Just as I was starting to convince myself that I had gotten myself worked up into a frenzy for nothing, my spell glowed. It pulled me across the branches, into an area that I’d never seen before. It was filled with abandoned rooms, full of dust and cobwebs. There was a hazard sign in front of the branch. There had been an alchemical reaction gone wrong inside, and it was a hazard to enter. Given the dust on the hazard sign, I was pretty sure that the place had been forgotten entirely.
I leaned down to look at the floor. Were there disturbances there? I thought so, but I wasn’t sure. I flicked open my third eye to check for wards, but since I didn’t see any, I stepped in.
I wished that I hadn’t used both charges of my cloak. The king may have been able to see me anyway, but it would have been a comfort and would have deterred any guards that he had set out.
My paper led me to the back of the dusty corridor, to a room at the end with a closed door. The Ligature had to learn about this.
I pulled out the pen and paper from my pocket and started to write a note to the Ligature.
But before I’d gotten anything written, I heard the loud click of a hammer being pulled back on a pistol.
“Now then…” I heard a voice say from behind me, “what’s this?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Summoner
I froze and slowly raised my hand. I turned, still moving slowly, to see Phillip.
I was sure that it was Phillip, the Druid that had roomed with Osheen. He looked older now, though, and he’d taken out his piercings. There were four familiars bound into his Aura. One was the Fae power of the grimalkin that I’d seen so long ago in the library. Two of them had the smokey, oily look that I almost thought was from the Starless Night, like consumers, but it wasn’t quite as exotic or as…slimy.
Demons. I’d never seen one, but they had to be a pair of demons from the Fallen Void.
The last wasn’t a demon, but I almost wished it was. It looked like it was from the Starless Night, similar to the consumers, but it was far more powerful than even the two demons.
If that wasn’t enough, he had four stars floating over his head. He was only a single arch-star away from being a full-blown Archmage of his own. An involuntary shudder ran through me, and I had to force myself not to take a step back.
For Phillip’s part, he looked almost as surprised as I did.
“You’re the Roark kid’s friend. I remember you. You had a powerful Fae familiar summoning scroll,” he said in surprise.
“Yeah,” I said quietly.
“You’re trying to stop us?”
“No,” I said honestly. I was going to leave after I reported it. Phillip’s lips thinned.
“Then why were you outside of the summoning room?” he asked.
“I just was tracking the magic from the Starless Night, and it led me here. I wasn’t planning to even go inside, I promise.”
“How?” Phillip demanded. “The teachers here have been trying for days. I’m pretty sure that the diviner girl almost succeeded. I had to use Stkril to break her spell.”
I used one finger to point at the spell that I’d used, which had fallen onto the ground alongside the pen and note.
“My spell is there.”
Phillip summoned his consumer to keep an eye on me as he bent over to look at it. I thought it was a consumer, at least. It looked like one, but it was the width of three men, and it had developed a trifecta of eyes lined with sharp, aster-like teeth at the center of the tentacles.
Phillip examined the spell for a few moments, then grunted. He walked past me and opened the door. The tentacles of the consumer started to come at me to push me into the room. I didn’t need any prompting, however.
The room inside was open to the sky above, and it was about half the size of the arena that I’d been in not long ago. On the floor was a top-notch summoning circle, inlaid with gold, and there were hundreds of components laid out across it. The king, the real one, was sitting in a chair, one leg swung over the other. He looked up as we came in.
“Phillip,” the king greeted, “what’s the meaning of this?”
He didn’t even seem threatened, upset, or even angry. He didn’t build a spell to threaten me with—he was probably fast enough that he didn’t need time to build it.
More than anything? He just seemed annoyed like someone walking across a just swept floor with muddy boots.
“I caught this one sneaking outside the room. He was about to write something down.”
The king rose and walked over, then looked me up and down.
“You’re the one who fought my veil. Your will was stronger than I expected. You nearly saw my nephew here.”
I didn’t say anything, and the king frowned.
“Speak!” he barked.
“Yes, sir. Thank you,” I responded.
He frowned. “Why were you outside the door? And how? Phillip assured me that he’d stopped every attempt to find him thus far.”
I repeated my explanation, and Phillip passed the king the paper. He examined it and looked up at me.
“How did you find these runes? My father spent hundreds of thousands finding information on deep realms like this.”
“The leakage of the summoning has been putting consumers into the forests. My familiar is one of the rare few that gave me the ability to see magic.”
“I see. And that put you ahead in class enough to learn a spell of this quality.”
“Yes, sir.”
The king drew his scepter from his Aura and pointed it at me.
“Now then, for the real question. Have you told anyone?”
I felt the power of the scepter’s mind magic slam into me. I opened my mouth, and the words spilled out. It reminded me of when I’d been under a truth potion. But I could still choose my words, and the king had chosen his very poorly.
“I haven’t told anyone about this,” I said truthfully. I hadn’t told anyone about the room yet. I wished I had.
The king’s scepter vanished back into his Aura, and he turned to Philip.
“Shoot him. We can’t afford to indulge your familiars right now. The extra power they got from his life could throw you off for the summoning.”
Phillip pushed me out into the hallway and closed the door.
“Please don’t do this,” I begged. He gave me a grim smile, then raised his gun, leveled it at my chest, and shot me.
I collapsed to the ground, and in my third eye, I could see a flicker of brown Aura around me. I must have been delirious from the pain.
Was there anything I could do? I couldn’t do anything to save myself. I didn’t have the faintest understanding of how to use healing magic.
If I couldn’t heal myself, could I take out the king?
No. I was an enchanter, and I had already used all my tricks.
I reached out in my mind to say goodbye to Oracle, and then I paused. I was bleeding out on the floor, not thirty feet away from the most powerful and elegant summoning circle that I’d ever heard of.
Normally, when you cast a summoning spell, you have to be exact. Summoning circles all look similar, but they all have unique rune combinations. Get a rune wrong, and you’ll either summon the creature with no protection, or you’ll summon something worse.
I didn’t care if I summoned something worse. In fact, I hoped I did. I only knew one summoning spell, the one for Oracle, but I’d spent so long practicing it that the chant was burned into my brain. And I knew for a fact that summoning spell attracted the attention of a Fae Queen.
So with the last tendril of my Aura, I reached out and touched the circle, reaching through the floor so that the king couldn’t see—he was an Archmage after all. My vision blacked out from extending my already depleted Aura that far, even in a thin tendril. Then I whispered, “Oculi vero qui voco nomen tuum et vos fascinavit…”
The first time that I’d cast the spell, it had taken me fifteen minutes. This time, I had the advantage of an entire years’ worth of spellcasting practice, as well as a severe lack of caring if I messed up or not.
When I finished the chant, I expected to hear a cry of outrage from the king or the roaring of some Fae beast. Instead, I felt the world go liquid around me. I could have been dead, I wasn’t sure.
Then I woke up. I thought for a moment that I had been transported on top of Yesgol because I was facing open air, thinner than it was on the ground, with branches at the corner of my view. Then I noticed that I wasn’t on rough wood or even the polished interior of Yesgol. I was on a luxurious carpet, thick and shaggy, the color of fresh cream. I got to my feet, and the scene got even weirder.
The carpet led up to a throne, on which a woman sat. She wore a cloak of silver feathers that reminded me of Oracle’s and a white silk dress. On either side of her were soldiers, with the bodies of humans but with deer horns and owl wings. As I sat up, the woman on the throne made a soft, cooing sound.
“Welcome, mortal,” she said. Her voice was soft, but I could hear it with no issues. It was melodic, almost hypnotic. That immediately made me think of the scepter, and I set my will against it.
“Thank you,” I croaked out, “but…if I may be so bold, and pardon me if this is an offense, my lady, where am I?”
I didn’t know her, but she had to be powerful. And there was no harm in being polite. She rose from her throne and walked over to me, then took her arm in mine. I had to stop myself from jerking away from the hold as she walked to the edge of the branch. She gestured out over the lands below.
I wasn’t in Yesgol. I wasn’t even on Cré. All around the tree, animals flew. There were moths ranging from the size of my pinkie nail to the size of my entire arm, being hunted and eaten by silver owl creatures that looked all but identical to Oracle. There were brass-colored bats sleeping in alcoves, and golden foxes played on the branches.
The land below was massive, and there were no towns as far as I could see. There were forests, far-off mountains, and clouds overhead. On one of the clouds was a castle, which was the only sign of building I could see at all.
“Can you not guess?” she asked.
“The Fae Sovereignties. Your court, in particular. I was pulled in when I tried to get your attention.”
She released me then, and suddenly, she was back on her chair.
“Half true, but close. I brought your mind here. Only a tenth of a second has passed in your world. Now, please”—her voice dropped to a predatory purr—“why did you call the Silver Queen?”
My mind worked double-time. An audience with a Fae Queen represented both a massive risk, but it could potentially net me more than anything I’d hoped. I strained to remember what I could about the Fae.
They didn’t like iron. They couldn’t lie, but they could deceive. They loved deals, and they loved to cheat mortals, but they respected a shrewd bargainer. This one couldn’t be too bad since the Liturgists had made a deal with her.
“I’m a Liturgist,” I started, and she nodded, so I continued. “I was trying to stop the king from calling a great power into the world, something from the Starless Night.”
“And why should I help you? What do I gain?” she asked.
I wasn’t a good actor, but I did my best to affect shock. “Is it not obvious? The Ley Lines to Yesgol are currently under their control. If he summoned a powerful destroyer, would it not be a simple matter for it to come here and attack you? I’m certain you could defeat such a being, but it would be costly.”
She waved a hand as if to dismiss me. “You flatter too much and speak of things you don’t know. But you are right. Technically. It could be a threat to me.”
I said nothing, and she sat there staring at me. I said nothing. I was excellent at that, and even if I didn’t know if I could outlast a Fae Queen, I wasn’t going to go down without giving it a real shot.
We stood there for what felt like ten minutes, my mind doing everything I could to dredge up every bit of information I could about the situation before she cracked a smile.
“Is that all, manling?”
“I thought that we could work together. For your own interests. If you were to come forth, kill the two who are working on the summoning, you could prevent your own potential loss of assets. More than that, the king and Phillip have taken control of the ley lines—meaning that they aren’t being controlled by the same forces that once controlled them.”
She leaned forward some.
Since I had her attention, I pressed on. “I believe that they’re channeling the power into the summoning. But if you were to take control once you got rid of them, you could take control. Something as powerful as a ley line has innumerable uses.”
“Pray tell what uses they are?” she asked.
That was a slight problem. I didn’t want to admit open ignorance—I had a suspicion that she’d use that against me—but I couldn’t fake it either.
“Does an ant need to understand how to use a kitchen to find the scraps of food?” I responded, and she let out a tinkling laugh and clapped three times.
“Very clever, mortal. But I won’t go to fight your king. To leave my tree undefended would be unwise. But…”
She tilted her head to one side in a very owlish fashion.
“I will grant you the power. For a price, of course.”
“Please pardon my rudeness,” I said, “but the power to do what, exactly?”
A smile crept over her face. “My, my…you are a quick study. The power needed to kill the king. Then, once he’s dead, you will call me once again, and I’ll take control of the ley lines.”
I was sorely tempted to say yes immediately. In fact, I started to, but a few things stopped me.
“I won’t be any use with a bullet wound in me, and my items powerless.”
“Consider your body and your items restored,” she said amicably.
“And the king’s assistant is quite powerful as well, in his own right.”
“I won’t give you more power. Both for your sake and mine. Your mind would burst if you held more of my power than I was going to give you.”
Fine. That left the matter of payment.
“And what would the price be? Outside of the ley lines, of course.”
The Silver Queen gave me a predatory smirk that sent a chill down my spine.
“A favor, to be paid at a later date.”
I didn’t want to do that. The Fae were infamous for asking for seemingly innocuous favors—like asking for chicken feather within the day, only for you to find out that all of the chickens in a thousand miles had mysteriously vanished.
