The Diviner: Journals of Evan Tailor Book Two, page 5
A moment later, my veil faded from around me, and I let out a sigh of relief.
“Who’s hurt?” Osheen asked, looking around. I shook my head. I’d only been of mild use in the fight compared to everyone else, but that had left me in very little danger. Victoria’s defenses had left her low on Aura, but otherwise, she was unhurt.
Emilia, Finnalir, and Osheen had some burns and cuts, but Emilia had the skill to be able to heal them once she had recovered some Aura.
Draven, of course, hadn’t even ripped his suit. If I hadn’t been able to see magic, I would have suspected that he had enchanted the suit with some sort of mending function.
“We got lucky,” Finnalir said. “I think they expected the three mages fighting Draven to have dropped him fairly quickly. None of the ones we fought had more skill than an adept despite having had the power to form an arch-star. Shock troops, most likely. Disposable soldiers meant to keep us tangled up.”
He glanced at me and gave a grimace.
“I have an idea that Draven was the real target here, not you, Evan. Not to mention, the sorceress fighting Osheen clearly had orders not to kill him—probably didn’t want to risk angering his father.”
I didn’t know why he was apologizing for that. I was more than happy to not be the real target.
“You as well, Finnalir,” Draven said. “Killing the son of a foreign dignitary would have been far too large of a slight for Zheren to let go. Now, what are we going to do with the bodies?”
We decided to tie up the mages who had attacked us with some rope that Finnalir was carrying. Since the force user I had fought was presumably alive and in town, someone would come for them eventually. We moved away from the corpses that Draven had left and the magma titan’s vessel and decided to take a break until all of us had recovered. As I sat next to Osheen, wrapping one of the thin cuts a flying dagger had left on his arm, I noticed that Emilia was similarly fussing over Finnalir.
“I’d say we ought to go back and grab the loot. But who gets what?” Victoria asked curiously. I felt my stomach twist in on itself as she asked. Loot? Three people were dead, and she wanted to loot their bodies?
They’d been trying to kill us, but even still…
“I’d say that you or Evan should be the one to get loot from the destroyed magma titan’s vessel,” Finnalir said. “The vessels of extraplanar beings often leave behind useful materials, and as witches, you two can make the most use out of them. I suppose we could try to sell it and split the money, but that would be more trouble than it’s worth.”
“That’s something I’ve always been confused about. Oracle can fade in and out of my Aura, and calling him out drains my Aura. How does that work?”
“I would assume you summoned your familiar, rather than finding it in the wild?” Draven asked. I was surprised that he didn’t already know, given that he’d identified Oracle’s species of Fae. Maybe he was just being polite?
“Yes,” I said.
“That’s the most common and safest method,” Draven said. “While monsters do occasionally wander in through ley lines or mage-crafted portals, that can be a tragic and slow death. They need the native magic of their home plane to sustain them, and existing in ours slowly saps their reserves. A few, like Phoenixes, are able to survive by continually recharging their Auras, but it’s rare. More frequently, they run out of power and die or slip back through the ley line they came in from and return home. Bond to one of these, and you’re best off returning it to its home reality, reverting it to a summoned familiar.”
I was surprised to hear remorse laced in his tone as he spoke. He’d killed three people without blinking, but he felt bad about random monsters dying?
“A summon, however, essentially creates a vessel of crystallized Aura out of the bond between you and the familiar, as well as ambient natural Aura in the world. When you call up your familiar, you’re summoning their consciousness into the vessel and bringing the vessel into reality. When a familiar is killed, their consciousness returns to their world, but their vessel is destroyed. The longer a familiar bond remains undamaged, and the stronger the familiar, the more their vessel retains a measure of independent power, acting more efficiently, with increased power. It’s rather akin to the increase of Aura density that mages experience, in fact, or how some plants and stones are able to soak up the world’s ambient Aura and become magical—like blue blood-cap.”
He reached into his pocket and removed a handful of items. There was a shard of ice that glowed softly blue, a strange silvery-white crystal, a chunk of metal that seemed to be almost amorphous in his hands, and a stone riddled with cracks, red light spilling out from its heart.
“I took these from the vessels of the ones I killed, as well as the magma titan. I have no use for them. While I could give them to the ritualist houses subservient to House Luis, I’d prefer to hand them to Victoria and Evan. As for the human bodies, I do not believe they were carrying anything of value.”
“I wasn’t planning on looting the humans, just the vessel fragments of the familiars,” Victoria said, looking vaguely sick at the idea.
I let out a sigh of relief, but my mind was in overdrive. Draven had gone to the effort of taking these fragments, and yet he was handing them to us? The people who had attacked him had been three stars, and the magma titan clearly had been something special—probably a particularly strong familiar. So why would he give them to us?
Bribery. That was the most logical answer. I didn’t know why he was going through all of the effort to get me to work for House Luis, but this was probably an attempt to engender goodwill and make me accept his offer.
I wasn’t planning on it, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t accept these parts. Besides, I had an idea for them.
“Do you have a preference, Victoria?” I asked.
“The force crystal and amorphous iron for sure,” she said without hesitation. “I was planning on making some good force armor, and they’re both usable for that.”
I nodded and took the magma stone and ice shard from Draven’s hand with a nod of thanks.
It was perfect. They’d be solid components to build a booster for Osheen. I still wasn’t sure how to make them yet, but I’d figure it out. I’d also peruse the Practical Guide and see if it had any existing boosters, see if I could modify one of those.
We spent a while yet camping, and at sundown, as Emilia’s aura refilled, she stood and cast a body rune spell on each of us, checking for injuries and healing any that she found.
“You’re just lucky none of you are hurt enough that I need to use rituals,” she complained as she healed a burn on Osheen’s arm. I raised an eyebrow at that and tilted my head. Seeing my confused look, she explained.
“I was in the healing track my first year. Healers usually use a mix of rituals and body sorcery spells to heal.”
“I thought a rune bond limited your ability to use rituals?” I asked.
“Sure”—she nodded—“I can’t do anything along the lines of Victoria or you. But I can do rituals that heavily feature the body rune. That’s how I transitioned, actually. I had to do a lot of the design myself, of course, and it took most of the year working on it. Finnalir was actually a huge help there. Most of the body modification spells in Paerús are more useful for combat efficiency, but Zheren’s higher number of mages meant he was able to get a lot more literature about spells to transition.”
She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek as she spoke. Finnalir blushed, barely visible in the dying light, and waved his hand dismissively.
“It was nothing, I just had my mother send me over some reference texts for her to look at. Anyone could have done it.”
As Emilia started to contradict him, I smiled and leaned into Osheen, finally starting to relax for the first time since the battle itself.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Entering Zheren
The next morning, we set out at a much faster pace than previously, and the rocks slowly became more and more dusted with snow as the tree line vanished behind us. With the trees gone, my heart raced, and sweat broke out over my brow. Osheen’s gentle hand served as a beacon for me, keeping me moving one step at a time as we crested the mountain and arrived at the Zheren border… and the Grande Ward.
The Grande Ward was a sight that was impressive enough to shock me out of my panic-induced state. I had expected a series of flat sheets of force, all layering against one another, acting as a wall between us and them.
Instead, it looked like a puzzle of force triangles, interconnected in three dimensions across at least ten layers, towering up into the sky and then stretching out over the country. Even from our vantage point atop the mountain, and the cities and towns I could see below us, I couldn’t see the end of the dome.
It seemed to stretch on forever, maybe blanketing the entire country.
On top of the fact that there were ten layers of defense, there was another set of three interconnected layers. Judging by the way it seemed to interfere with the movements of the snowflakes and wind, I guessed that it had to be some sort of weather ward.
And I couldn’t see any obvious power source, carved ward lines in the stone, or anything of the sort. It may have been buried underground, but I had no way to check.
I was sorely tempted to open my third eye, but I wasn’t sure my mind could handle it. The first time I’d opened my third eye, I’d nearly blacked out from the pain, and that was in Yesgol. Yesgol had a lot of magic, but this…
A few moments later there was a shimmer as a veil dropped on the other side of the ward. A group of three soldiers with muskets and swords appeared, along with a tall, skinny crane of a man, clutching a hefty tome in his hands.
“Finnalir, son of Princess of Selt?” one of the guards asked—a broad man with a large mustache.
Finnalir stepped forwards and raised his hand.
“I am.”
“We’ll need each of you to swear a compact to verify your identity before we can let you through,” the guard said. “Then we have visitor’s identification papers for Archmage Luis, Evander Tailor, Osheen Roark, Emilia Elden, and Victoria Traith.”
It took us a few moments to swear the compacts to the guards, but once all of us had done so, the mustachioed guard nodded to the skinny mage, who rifled through his book, then began to draw out a circle on the ground. It didn’t resemble anything I’d seen before, and it seemed to largely be designed to interact with existing magic, almost like the divination component I’d used in Victoria’s staff.
I glanced at Victoria, wondering if her greater level of experience with sorcery spells would explain, but she shook her head.
Was it abjuration then? Magic designed to interact with other magic?
It took a few minutes, but eventually, the ritual was finished, and it opened a door-sized hole in the ward.
“Hurry, though,” the witch said, snapping shut his reference book. “It’ll only hold open for about a minute. Less probably.”
Finnalir had already walked through, with Draven right on his heels. Emilia went next, then Victoria. Osheen squeezed my hand and gently pulled me through.
Then, we were in Zheren.
The first thing I noticed was how similar it was to Paerús. Cold mountains that overlooked a dozen towns and a city in the distance. Even though we’d had to pass through the strongest ward I’d ever even heard of to get there, the geography of the world didn’t care about human borders.
There was something else as well, not unlike the strange tingling I’d felt when first visiting Yesgol. I wasn’t sure what it was, though, and my third eye didn’t reveal anything out of the ordinary.
I was broken out of my thinking when one of the guards cleared their throat and spoke.
“We’d best head on. There’s a camp not too far from here where you can hole up for the night, and then the next town shouldn’t be more than a day’s walk. You can take a train to Selt, and Archmage Luis can travel from there to Estlite.”
We agreed and made our way to the military camp, where we were given a set of tents. Osheen and I shared one, as did Finnalir and Emilia. Victoria was given one to herself, while Draven didn’t need one.
I was surprised at how small the camp was, though. The military town on the opposite side of the border had been easily a small town, with inns and good stores. This was more like a small camp of a few hundred soldiers and mages.
Conversely, magic seemed to be everywhere. It wasn’t as strong as it was in Hallowbrooke, but even this random camp near the border had a set of wards around it. They didn’t appear to be anything impressive to my third eye, only a touch more complex than the one that George and Jerimiah had constructed in our first-year final, but even still, it was more than the entire town on Paerús’s side of the border had.
As we made our way towards civilization, the trend became more and more apparent. The train had two layers of wards—one on each compartment and one over the train as a whole. Most of the nicer businesses had alarm wards as well.
As we were headed on the train towards Selt, I looked at Draven, who was relaxed, eyes half-lidded.
“Is Paerús magically barren, somehow?” I asked. “While Hallowbrooke has more magic than the town we left, it’s the only place like that in Paerús. I knew that they had more mages than we did, even if they had fewer Archmages.”
“Most of the noble houses have far more magic woven into them than even Hallowbrooke does,” he answered.
“That isn’t an answer,” I responded.
Draven smiled a predatory smile. I’d gotten used to seeing sharp teeth, hanging out with Sarai as much as I had, but his vampiric fangs still unnerved me some.
When we finally arrived in Selt, I was firmly convinced that there was something wrong with Paerús magic. I didn’t know what, but there was something going on. I’d certainly talk about it in my report to the Ligature.
As we debarked the train, I was surprised to see Draven step off the train with us—as was everyone else.
“Your mother,” he explained, looking at Finnalir, “was the one to set up the arrangements with the current prince of Estlite. It’s the least that I can do to pay my respects. I’ve brought her a gift, in fact.”
I stared hard at him, not entirely sure his gift wouldn’t be a poisoned dagger. After all, the only reason that he had agreed to throw his support behind the peace efforts was for his personal power. Now that he was inside Zheren, he may be planning to take down the Grande Ward from the inside, then plunge the whole nation into war.
“I’m not planning on attacking her,” he said with a sigh as he tucked his hands into the pockets of his suit jacket. “If I wanted to do that, I would have simply assisted the Heenlings and their cabal with their goals.”
That may be true, but it also may not. I didn’t understand the mechanics of the Grande Ward, but if it was easier to destroy from the inside, and I was the one who was in charge of destroying it, I’d try to figure out a way to sneak someone inside.
But the same logic I’d used when he asked to join us came into play. If he wanted to do something, there wasn’t anything I could do to stop him.
As we walked through the streets of Selt, I couldn’t resist the temptation to keep my third eye open.
Everywhere there were tiny bits of magic.
Even on the lamps, I could see tiny spells anchored into them. Every single lamp was an artifact. None of them were strong—they put out less power than an average burner enchantment would. All they did was light the lamps when the sun went down, then turn them off again when the sun rose.
I supposed that was the benefit of having ten times as many mages as Paerús. Back home in the capital, we’d just employed lamplighters to do the job, but automatic lighting sounded incredibly convenient.
I wondered how they managed to get enough Aura storage crystals for something like this. The cheapest, most basic stones that I’d been able to purchase to work for my assassin’s cloak spell had cost me almost fifty crowns each.
Even if they were able to use smaller, lower-quality crystals, since the effect was so weak, it still would have to cost tens or hundreds of millions of crowns—or whatever the Zheren equivalent was—in crystals alone. Even more in labor costs to turn that pile of crystals into usable artifacts.
All that money for a bit of automatic lighting.
I glanced at the businesses and was surprised to see that more than half of them had wards on them. Most of them were a simple blend of wardcrafting and divination designed to create an alarm, but there were also a few that were slightly more complex.
“Evan!” I heard someone say, and I glanced up.
“Hm?” I asked, looking up to see who had asked before blinking in confusion.
We stood in front of a three-story-tall brick building, with oak and glass doors. It looked vaguely like a general governmental office—the kind of place where a pickpocket may be given their fine, or where you could order new identification papers if you lost yours.
Everyone else had already stepped inside, but I was still on the street, staring at the different buildings. A disgruntled-looking guard was standing at the door with her hand extended.
“Your identification?” she asked.
I fished around my bag for a moment and passed the papers I’d gotten at the camp to her. She examined them, then nodded. I took them back and stepped inside.
“Why are we here? Do we need certification?” I asked curiously.
“Were you listening to Finnalir at all?” Osheen asked as he slipped his hand in mine.
“… No, I was looking at the streetlamps,” I admitted.
“We’re meeting his mom,” Osheen said as we navigated up a staircase.
“She’s here?” I asked, mildly confused why a princess would be in an administrative building.
“She is,” Finnalir said, cutting into the conversation. “The title of prince or princess isn’t as important here as it is in your home. There are eleven princes and princesses, but we don’t have a king. Did they ever figure out who was going to take the throne in Paerús, by the way? I hadn’t read anything about it.”
