by S T G Hill
Chapter 11
The study Ellie had seen through the breach portal was one of the private chambers of Darius Belt’s suite.
It housed many ancient and powerful artifacts, but none more dear to him than the black gemstone that sat nestled on a bed of velvet in a steel-banded strongbox behind Belt’s desk.
Belt stood with his back to the rest of the room, looking down at the gem. It darkled and glistered, and if he looked long enough he could see and sense the power shifting within its dark depths.
A lesser man could get lost in those depths. Many had.
“Why didn’t Thorn say anything to Cassiodorian?” Caspian asked.
“Thorn may not like me, but he knows better than to get in my way,” Belt replied. He stroked at his chin. “You are certain about the girl? Cassiodorian and Shaffir assured me her test results were mediocre. The very definition of an ab.”
Though, Belt thought, That might befit the Omenborn after all.
It was deliciously ironic, if true.
And after that strange outburst at the Magister’s Hall he’d suspected, but wanted confirmation. It didn’t do to act without absolute certainty. Not with so much at stake.
“I saw what she did. You should have seen her, Master,” Caspian said, “It was incredible. She swatted Thorn down like he was nothing at all. Actually, I thought she was going to kill him.”
“Hmm,” Belt said, “Then I am pleased that she didn’t.”
“Could she really be the one?” Caspian said, “I know what I saw, but the test is supposed to be accurate…”
“When I told you to go find her in Brooklyn, you told me it was Thorn who defeated you. It was her, wasn’t it?” Belt said.
Caspian looked away from his master, the blood draining from his face. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t certain, and—“
“And you didn’t want to tell me you were bested by an untrained girl. This is your last lie to me,” Belt said.
Caspian swallowed hard, daring a glance up at Belt. He knew better than to offer an apology. Belt put little stock in such things.
Belt reached out and stroked the edge of the polished oaken box in which the gemstone lay. He felt the pull of it, wanted to run his fingers along its glassy and eerily warm surface, but resisted.
One did not simply touch this gemstone. Not even one such as him.
She could, perhaps. If it’s true, he thought.
Jealousy stabbed in his chest, but he fought it down.
“The test has been an act of supreme hubris since its inception,” Belt said, smiling, “As though one could know the will and direction of magic with such a simple thing.”
Always eager to please, Caspian approached the desk practically shivering with excitement. “I could go get her if you want. Right now.”
Belt considered it. It would be the quickest way, true. But perhaps not the best. Suppose I am wrong? A rare thing, that, but possible. And it would undo so many things he’d done.
“Not you,” Belt said, “That band of Errants, the ones we located outside Berlin, bring them here.”
Errants served no organization or master but themselves and their own little tribes, jealously hoarding their magic to feed their addiction to its power. And occasionally raiding or stealing from other, more legitimate and established sorcerers and magical places.
Such as Sourcewell Academy.
“If she is who she might be, they won’t be able to get her,” Caspian said.
Belt closed the lid on the box. It hurt to look away from the gem, but he could no longer divide his attention.
“I don’t mean for them to kidnap her. If she is the Omenborn, she’ll defeat them.”
Though he did intend on bolstering their strength with the gem. Not by much, enough to withstand her fury a little longer if she was the one.
Not a decision he came to lightly, sharing the gem’s power with others.
“And if she isn’t?”
Belt sat down at his desk and pulled the quarterly earnings report for Panopsys up on his computer. There were more matters to attend to than magic, ones more prosaic but also important.
“Then she’ll die. She and however many others until Cassiodorian and the other teachers put a stop to it, anyway,” he said without looking away from the screen. “And Caspian? Bring those Errants here right now. I want them to attack tonight.”
It was true that Belt was a patient man, but it had been hundreds of years of searching. He didn’t want to wait any longer.
Chapter 12
Ellie sat on the bed in her room within the Vine Hall dormitory. The walls were cream-colored plaster, and on the day that Arabella had brought her to this place they had been bare.
That night, three months after her entrance examination, posters clung to the walls.
In one of her first classes, a professor called Master MacTavish had taught them all a simple bit of channeling to hang things without the need for nails or hooks or little sticky strips.
It had been the first bit of real magic that Ellie had learned, and she’d quickly gotten for herself several posters from the Sourcewell campus store.
She hadn’t been too picky; there was a poster from some British boyband she didn’t know, and two neat looking black and white ones from old movies.
The most important part had not been the posters themselves, but their hanging.
The charm that held them in place on her wall would keep them there, perfectly flat and without a single crease or drooping corner, until she willed them down.
Should I? Ellie thought.
She’d come back to her room with Thorn’s warning about leaving Sourcewell ingrained in her thoughts.
She also thought it would be easy to go. It was just a room, after all.
But it was the first private room she could call hers in as long as she could remember, totally different from the old bed pushed up against the wall in the den of Mr. Fichtner’s apartment.
The desk was full of books and pencils and reams of paper. All hers. The dresser was stuffed with clothes. Jeans and leggings and blouses and t-shirts.
All hers, all conjured up from the air by one of the sorcerers at the quartermaster’s depot or purchased with her student stipend (not a lot, but a real fortune to Ellie, who’d never before received an allowance) from the campus store.
Her body still ached from her duel with Thorn, and she wanted nothing less than to flop down on her comfy bed, snuggle in, and sleep for 20 hours or so.
Instead she’d come in and snatched the sheet from said bed, intending on turning it into a hobo’s bag with a few choice things from her room in it.
She wondered if she should maybe go to Magister Cassiodorian herself. Thorn had said that Belt could defeat the old sorcerer, but what did he know?
Ellie pushed herself up off the bed and slid the top drawer of her dresser open. Without really looking, she tossed a pair of jeans down onto the spread open sheet on the floor.
Then she pulled a shirt out. Then another.
“Ellie?”
She stopped and turned towards the open door of her dorm. She hadn’t bothered to close it, figuring that she’d be in and out.
Now Sybil stood in it. Her eyes were puffy, the makeup she’d put on early in runny streaks down her cheeks.
Ellie recalled how Thorn had yelled at her and then, pun intended, cast her out of the room.
Ellie had completely forgotten about her. But now she remembered.
The guilt of that forgetting joined all the other terrible feelings gnawing within the pit of her stomach.
“Hey…” Ellie started.
Sybil looked from Ellie to the disorganized pile of clothes scattered around the sheet on the floor.
Ellie held a tank top in one hand still.
“What are you doing? Are you leaving?” Sybil said.
Ellie almost lied to her. The girl who got into movies by tricking the ushers with old tickets, the girl who stole Butterfingers from the 7-Eleven, she w
ould’ve lied.
She would’ve made Sybil go away to make this easier.
“Yes,” Ellie said.
Sybil stomped into the room. Her eyes looked puffy and Ellie wanted to talk to her about Thorn, but she simply didn’t have the time.
“You can’t go,” Sybil said.
“I am, though,’ she replied.
Sybil rubbed at her eyes some more, sniffling through the motion. Ellie stopped long enough to grab a tissue from the box on her dresser and hand it over.
“No, you can’t. Do you even know how to get off the campus?” Sybil said, wiping first at her eyes and then at her nose.
That gave Ellie pause. She looked down into the opened middle drawer of her dresser, where a few haphazardly folded tank tops waited.
She pushed the drawer closed. She knew she couldn’t take everything.
“I have a way,” she said.
Thorn had a way, she meant. But she didn’t intend on bringing him up.
Sybil reached out and took the shirt away from Ellie, then placed it on the bed. “Ellie, I know things haven’t been the best for you here, but you shouldn’t go. I mean, what do you even have to go to? That Fickner guy who just used you for a check?”
“Fichtner,” Ellie corrected, “And I’m not going back there.”
At least, I don’t think I am. Thorn, where are you taking me?
“So you’re just… running away?” Sybil said.
Ellie had never wanted to spill a secret more than at that moment. Sybil was her only real friend on campus. They’d shared so much already.
Well, there was Arabella. But could you really be friends with a teacher?
“I guess so,” Ellie said. Some of the old Ellie came out here. She had to harden herself, she knew, or otherwise she wouldn’t be able to go through with it. “Can you go, please?”
“I shouldn’t,” Sybil said, crossing her arms, “I should go get whoever’s on hall duty tonight and tell them all this.”
I can’t go. I don’t want to go, Ellie thought. Pressure pushed at the back of her eyes. That pressure built when she saw how Sybil fought to hold back tears of her own.
He’ll find you, she heard Thorn’s voice in her head say.
Besides, Ellie figured that maybe if she just went away and didn’t do any magic anymore that might mean she wouldn’t have to be this Omen-thing anymore.
And that exhaustion from her confrontation with Thorn had by now settled deep in her bones. She just couldn’t take anymore obstacles.
“Please don’t tell anyone,” Ellie said, “I wish I could tell you why, but I can’t. So will you please just trust me?”
Then Sybil grabbed her up in a big hug. After a moment, Ellie hugged her back. Sybil was so thin, and smaller even than Ellie, and it surprised her how hard they hugged.
“Fel… Can’t… Breath…” Ellie said, only partially joking.
“Sorry,” Sybil said, pulling back. “You really would tell me if you could, wouldn’t you?”
Ellie blinked hard. She looked at Sybil through what seemed like blurry smudges on her eyes. “You know it.”
“Okay,” Sybil said, “Well, you better make it quick before Master Turnbull or one of the other teachers shows up on their rounds and sees you.”
Ellie knelt and started tying up her little hobo bag full of clothes. It was a bit too full, and she knew that Thorn would probably tell her to ditch a bunch of it. But she would refuse, she knew.
She stood and hefted the bag up, the soft lumps of cloth within bunching against her back. “Sybil…” she started.
The whole building shook. Some sort of violet –hued explosion blossomed outside the window.
The glass shattered.
Sybil screamed and turned away, arms thrown up over her face to protect against the shards.
One shard flicked by, its razor edge catching Ellie just below her eye.
The pain was hot and sharp and instant.
Then it happened again. A deluge of pure energy poured out from her chest.
Stop, she thought.
The torrent of shards heading for Sybil stopped mid-air and then fell down to the floor, where they shattered.
Other students poured into the hallway. People screamed.
Sybil turned around and looked with eyes so wide the whites were visible all around them at the broken glass all over the floor of Ellie’s dorm.
Then she looked up at Ellie.
Ellie wanted to do more. She knew that she should do more. But the power within her flickered, then snapped off.
She dropped to the ground, unaware that she’d been floating.
The cut below her eye stung and she sucked in a sharp breath. The blood ran in hot little trickles down her cheek.
“What’s going on?” Ellie said.
“I don’t know." Sybil replied. She stood in the doorway to Ellie's room, looking down at the glass, "What happened?"
"I don't know," Ellie said, "But we have to get out of here!"
The entire building shook again. The windows on the floor below theirs blew out.
And there was something else, below the screams, below the crystalline sounds of shattered glass clattering around.
It was laughter. Not just one person, but many. Ellie's hackles rose.
It wasn't just the explosions. There was something very wrong going on here. She could feel it. It roiled around in the pit of her stomach.
"Then let's go! Everyone's already running for the teledoors!"
Teledoor wasn't the official term for the portal doors found in many of Sourcewell's buildings, but most of the students called them that.
There were 20 students total on each floor of Vine Hall. And 18 of them ran towards the doors at either end of the hallway. Ellie caught sight of them as they sprinted by. A couple wore PJ bottoms, some of the girls, nighties.
The two upperclassman somehow both had their green robes on.
“We have to get out, come on!” Sybil said.
More windows exploded. The entire building shuddered and seemed to tip for a moment.
Ellie grabbed for her bag. When she picked it up, all her clothes tumbled out. She hadn’t finished tying it.
“Leave it!” Sybil said, grabbing Ellie by the wrist and hauling her to her feet.
“What’s happening?” someone screamed in the hall.
“We can get out if we can get to one of the doors,” Sybil said, dragging Ellie forward.
They reached the cusp of the door when the base of Ellie’s spine tingled.
Wrong wrong wrong wrong… The single word blasted through her mind. As well as something else.
A sense of impending danger.
“Wait!” Sybil said.
She grabbed Sybil and yanked her back into the room just as a powerful and painfully bright blast of energy consumed the hallway.
Suddenly all the screaming stopped. At least on their floor.
Purplish afterimage blobs swam across Ellie’s eyes. She and Sybil clung to each other, leaning against the wall just inside Ellie’s dorm room.
That tingle rose the rest of the way up her spine, climbing with cold fingers.
“What—” Sybil started.
Ellie clamped her hand over her friend’s mouth.
“Are they dead?” someone said. Their voice had a sibilant, snaky quality to it and some sort of European accent.
“No,” someone else, a woman, replied, “Not yet. We need to check if one is her.”
Ellie and Sybil glanced at each other. Sybil reached up and touched Ellie’s wrist. She realized she had her fingers pressed pretty hard into Sybil’s cheeks. Slowly, she took her hand away.
She didn’t think there was any danger of Sybil speaking now. All the blood had drained from her friend’s face, aside from the red marks where Ellie’s fingers had been.
“Who?” Sybil mouthed.
Ellie shrugged. Although she had a pretty good idea of who they wanted to find.
“She was suppos
ed to be stronger than this,” the first person said.
“I don’t care. Can’t you feel all the power here? Drain them,” the woman said.
Drain? Ellie thought.
She wanted badly to peek around the door and get a look at these people, but realized that was a terrible idea.
Then she saw the door to her room. Wide open, without any sort of knob on it.
Only you and some of the faculty can open it, she remembered Arabella telling her.
But would whatever magic that kept the door secure keep those people out there at bay for long?
Perhaps, Ellie figured, just long enough. Though she felt almost completely spent.
The problem was that she wouldn’t be able to grab and close the door without them noticing. And if they’d already destroyed part of the building and incapacitated her floor mates, who knew what else they could do?
She recalled the way Aurelius had moved them from one end of that corridor to the other in an instant. What if these people could do that?
“Stop!” someone shouted in the hall.
Ellie and Sybil recognized that voice and they looked at each other. It belonged to Ewan Caldwell, one of the two upperclassman who bunked on their floor.
Ellie liked him because he never called her an ab. He seemed focused on his studies, and even wanted to teach channeling at Sourcewell when he finished.
One of the attackers laughed, “Hello, little mouse. Why so angry?” It was snake-voice.
“Don’t kill him. His aura is so pure,” the woman said.
“I told you to stop!” Ewan cried out.
The air filled with static electricity. It danced across Ellie’s skin and prickled in her scalp.
I should get out there, I should help, Ellie thought.
But she was just so worn out. She wasn’t even certain she could go through with what she wanted to do next.
It’s all Thorn’s fault. If we both live through this, I’m going to kill him, she thought.
In the hallway, someone unleashed a wall of pure force. Ewan, Ellie figured. Then the spell shattered. Glittering shards of the spell raced back down the hall like horizontal fireworks.
Ewan screamed.
Snake-voice laughed, “Yes, squeak for me, little mouse.”