“Is that why you left?” she asked. “Is that why you’ve decided to live here these past five years?”
The Overlord paused as if considering a reply, but he looked aside instead, his face disinterested.
“I have no need for more Followers,” he said. “You were a mere child during the war, and you still glorify it like one.”
His words stung her pride like a poisonous dart the tribal Daksuns were said to shoot at wanderers of the Wilds in stories. Stories. Was that what she’d been looking up to all this time? Useless fables of exaggerated war heroes?
“Then what am I supposed to do with all that you teach me?” she asked, unable to hide the doubt in her voice that he may have decided not to teach her after all.
He was silent a moment.
“Let’s see how much you can learn first,” he said, the spark fading from his eyes as his shoulders sagged. He looked at the slim book on the table between them.
“Keep this one.” He slid the book back to her resting fingers. “Study it in your free hours. Take your time.” He drifted his eyes around the library. “I’ll teach you the basics, and then I’ll move onward, pass on as much as I can to you.”
Melaine frowned as she ran a finger along the bottom edge of the book. It was bound in leather and catgut, frayed a little with age. The Overlord spoke like an old man discussing a will, knowing he had little time left. But the Overlord was still a young man. And Melaine couldn’t help but think, he was supposed to be powerful.
Maybe he was sick. Melaine scooted back a little in her chair, but her bustle inhibited her instinctual attempt to put some distance between her and the man who might harbor some disease.
“I’m going to need my strength for that,” he said.
Melaine took a breath, her chest tightening. She understood what he wanted, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.
She gave him a nod and closed her eyes. She felt her magic humming beneath her skin. It seemed warmer somehow, like she had soaked up a sunbeam from touching the ancient yet living magic of the library door. A smile kissed the corner of her lips.
It faded as she reluctantly slipped her lace glove from her right hand. She set it neatly in her lap and started massaging her palms, working her magic to the surface. The warmth of her marrow burned through her bones and shot into her veins. She opened her palm, paralleling the high, pointed ceiling of the tower.
The warm, soothing magic abandoned her veins and left them frozen, its energy coalescing into a hard stone that started to rise from the skin of her palm. Her palm burned and prickled with pain as she pushed the lodestone from her body and cupped it between her hands. It glowed purple, swirling with magic until it deepened to a nearly black sheen.
She sighed with minute despair and held the lodestone in offering to the man across the table.
He reached out and took it in silence. He closed his eyes as if merely touching the lodestone was intoxicating and then brought it to his lips. He inhaled Melaine’s forfeited magic and, for a second’s time, she hated him for it.
But her hatred was limited by the knowledge that the Overlord wasn’t some crude buyer on the street who needed magic to commit a crime or stay awake long enough to enjoy some hedonistic activity or even a simple hard day’s work.
Her resentment withered further when she saw the immediate change her magic had upon the Overlord. When the stone dissipated into dust, he sat straighter, and his eyes gleamed brighter. Color returned to his cheeks and hands. He was a coiled spring, full of kinetic energy, waiting for a reason to unleash the powerful magic running through him.
Melaine immediately regretted her bouts of outspoken disrespect. She ordered herself to never forget who this man was and what he was capable of, no matter how weak he looked.
“True power comes from resourcefulness,” he said. His voice was still hoarse from disuse, but his breaths rattled less and his tone poured confidence. “If you have that, you can scrape up any magic around you, even if your bones are tapped, and find that you have more power than you think—more power than anyone else. You’ve already proven you’re resourceful, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“Aye, my lord,” Melaine agreed, her chin lifting a little with pride.
He chuckled. She couldn’t tell if he appreciated her gumption or was mocking her dignity.
“Other than lodestones, do you know any magic beyond household spells?”
Melaine paused. “I’ve never had time to learn anything else.”
“No need to be defensive, Melaine,” he said. “The best of us start from the lowest rung.”
A crease formed between her eyebrows. Was he implying that he had as lowly a background as she? The Overlord? She must have misunderstood.
“You say you are keen on becoming a Follower,” he said, either not noticing or ignoring her look of pointed curiosity. “Do you know what kind of spells my Followers used to perform?”
“Yes,” she answered with smoldering enthusiasm. “War spells. Dark spells. They helped you overthrow a kingdom.”
“You’re not shy,” the Overlord said with a wry smile. “That’s good.”
He stood, a firm hand still on his chair. His jaw tightened, highlighting a small, throbbing vein at his temple.
“Dark spells require dark thoughts,” he said, a subtle, dangerous edge in his voice. “They require a motive. The more powerful the motive, the more powerful the spell becomes. You have a strong motive overall—the desire to prove yourself and have a life worth living. But you also need to dissect the subtleties of your incentives. Find a specific motive for each spell, whittled down, but still a part of the whole.”
He flicked his gaze to a black, tapered candle on the table’s edge. “Light the candle.”
“That’s a household spell,” Melaine said with a frown.
“Light it with the intent to use it against someone,” he said, a subtle rumble in his voice. “Tell it to burn more than just the wick.”
“Near the books?” Melaine said with a raised eyebrow.
“These books are protected,” he dismissed with an impatient wave of his hand.
“Oh,” Melaine said, quelled. If those books could burn, she wouldn’t have to read them, but she accepted that fate and eyed the candlestick. She could light it with a sweep of her hand, but she tried to focus on what the Overlord had instructed. Light it with the intent to burn.
She swam through a river of reasons why she would want to hurt another person before her mind rippled toward certain people. A young girl who had tried to pickpocket her on one of her best sale days, a man who had tried to rape her at the age of twelve, and then her mind hit Overseer Scroupe. His grotesque, jeering face was galling enough to make a spark jump from Melaine’s hand of its own accord.
She felt the Overlord watching her, but she focused on her thoughts of Scroupe, what he had looked like in the Hole—a rotten apple core, in his red room with his yellowed smile.
She took a breath and propelled magic from her palms in one solid push. A bright red flame erupted from her palm like a volcanic spray. It swirled around the candle and snagged onto the wick. The fire stayed red, spewing sparks like angry, bloody spittle from the mouth of a feasting carnivore.
She stared at the flame in awe for a moment and then looked up at the Overlord. His eyes danced in the firelight, scanning her features with shrewd appraisal.
“You’ll do,” he said, with a touch of a smile on his lips.
“Yes, my lord,” Melaine said.
Lighting the candle was the most exciting thing about the lesson. The rest consisted only of the Overlord speaking and Melaine listening. He lectured more about deciphering motives and how to use them, how to harness a thought and turn it into action. His words were eloquent, and Melaine imagined how beautiful they must have sounded earlier in his life when his voice was smooth and strong and compelling enough to garner a mass of thousands in his uprising against the kingdom of Dramore.
After an hour or
two, he became distracted. He lost trails of thought mid-sentence and kept looking at the high window and the shifts in the shelves’ shadows as time passed.
“I have work to do,” he finally said, interrupting himself at a particularly interesting point of monologue that danced around the edges of blood magic. Melaine tried to hide her disappointment.
The Overlord rubbed his fingers together absently, and Melaine understood. He was itching to use the magic he had imbibed from her stone. For what purpose, she didn’t know, but she stayed her curiosity and nodded in obedience. She rose from her chair, hurrying to put on her glove. She’d forgotten to replace it in her excitement.
“Don’t forget the book,” the Overlord said.
Embarrassment heated Melaine’s cheeks, but she picked up the book from the table. She would have to read it. If the Overlord was going to get distracted after two hours of teaching a day, supplemental reading could be vital.
She chanced another look at the shelves filled with countless objects around the tower. She had tried to find a moment to ask the Overlord about them during the entire lesson, but she never found an opportunity that wouldn’t have involved insolent interruption.
The longer she’d sat amongst them, the stronger her awareness had grown—powerful magic arose in the air like invisible smoke batted about by conflicting winds, as though each individual object was its own flame.
They couldn’t be…
“Should I come back here tomorrow, my lord?” she asked, desperate to learn more.
He nodded, but his thoughts were elsewhere.
Melaine gave a small bow and approached the tall library doors. Their warm magic brushed her skin as they opened under her simple touch. She closed her eyes, reveling in the glow that filled her, and she smiled.
She could keep this magic. The Overlord had his lodestone for the day, and he hadn’t asked for more. For once, she could look forward to an evening in which the rest of her magic was hers.
No timepiece ticked in Melaine’s bedchamber, but the cool light of the moon and the tingling of her scalp told her it was the wee hours of the morning. Her body always felt different this time of night, lingering drowsiness paired with the edge of nearly recharged magic, along with the question of why she wasn’t asleep when she should be. What danger had woken her up?
She sat up in bed. The room was black, but the shroud was not heavy or oppressive. The dim light from the window wasn’t a savior but rather a gentle call to other times and places.
She felt comfortable. Safe.
Powerful.
She looked down at her fingers, assessing the potent magic coursing through the minuscule spaces between bone and muscle and veins within her wiry body. She rubbed her fingers together. An arcing spark of purple lightning leapt from her first fingertip to the second.
Melaine’s delight flooded into a smile. She hadn’t felt this strong since she was a child. Never before had she made so few stones for two full days in a row. Her magic bubbled within her, an ever-rising simmer of magic waiting to be used.
Yet she still didn’t know how to make the most of all the magic raging through her bones. Her lesson with the Overlord had remained theoretical and, aside from the candle, well, rather boring. Melaine itched to use her magic, not just think about it. She wanted to use it for spells other than lighting candles, purifying water, or mending stockings.
She had been struggling through the book the Overlord had lent her, which now sat on the floor near the bathtub. She’d tried reading it while bathing that evening, but the jumbled words and the warmth of the water had induced her to sleep.
Books. Nothing but paper and ink bound with leather but filled with powerful information that would remain untapped and useless if she couldn’t reach it. She hadn’t had enough time to practice under Salma’s brief reading lessons, which she had only begun a few months ago. The enormous amount of effort it took to read a single page was infuriating.
Why did her journey forward have to depend on a book?
Why indeed, when so many Insights sat in the Overlord’s library, waiting to be tapped.
Her certainty that the myriad objects on the library shelves were not ordinary trinkets, useless baubles, or exotic oddities had grown with every passing hour following their lesson. Why was he keeping them from her? The lessons contained in Insights were far more thorough than mere words could ever teach. Especially once he’d found out she couldn’t read, why had he not done the obvious and let her learn spells from the Insights instead? He looked so tired, why not let Insights do all the work?
Melaine nibbled the inside of her cheek, looking around her room, trying to decide if she should stay awake or lie back down. But then she stiffened. A low voice pushed against the walls of her dark room. It was crooning and plaintive as it trickled through her window, but the volume and pitch thumped against the panes with a manic lilt every few words. The words themselves were indistinguishable, but as she continued to listen, she deciphered a melody. A song tingled with a tiny stroke of magic as if its orator was trying to reach her from a great distance, or perhaps to reach anyone who would listen. That must have been what awoke her at such an early hour.
Her sense of comfort and safety dwindled. The Overlord’s ghastly guard statue and the ancient, whispering urn from the night before rushed into her thoughts. She debated rolling back over and going to sleep, safe within her bedroom walls, but the distant, muffled song poked at her ears. She doubted she could sleep if she tried.
Curiosity scrabbled at her mind as she sat in indecision. The song continued, and Melaine focused again on the powerful feeling of magic in her bones. With magic like this, she felt invincible. She could handle Highstrong’s secrets now.
She climbed out of bed. She summoned magic into her palms and ignited a small, purple flame. She cupped it in her hands and brought it to the candlestick on her nightstand. She dropped the flame neatly onto the wick. It caught hold with a small singeing sound and flared orange.
She collected her dressing gown—an elegant, brocade tapestry of a thing—and draped it over her chemise, tying it closed below her breasts, so it fit like a fine dress. The pastel, floral-patterned garment seemed such a useless luxury to never wear out of the house, but it was warm, and she couldn’t help but yield to the tentative concept of feeling beautiful. Not attractive—not tempting prey for lustful men—but simply beautiful for her own enjoyment. She shook out her soft, clean hair so it cascaded down the small of her back. She took the candlestick in hand and walked to the door.
She opened it a sliver and peered into the hallway. Three statues down the guard line, she could see the tip of the nose and chin of the fourth statue. The one that could move. At least, she hoped it was the only one.
She stilled her shaking hand and stepped into the hall, shutting the door behind her. Magic hummed beneath the surface of her hands, the Overlord’s hoarse voice speaking of motives and dark magic echoing between her temples. Her motives to lash out at the statue were strong indeed.
The statue’s face was obscured in shadow when she approached, as if it was drawn back, ready to pounce. The mystery of its current features and stance sent shivers down her spine. She averted her eyes, braced herself, and darted past. She skidded into the room with the dormant fire pit, letting out a quiet sigh of relief when the statue didn’t follow with its telltale grating noise of stone against stone.
The strange singing sounded louder now, but it was still muffled through walls of stone, drifting toward her on magical currents. She crossed the hearth room and entered the adjoining sitting room, where the song seemed to waft from the garden courtyard. She opened the courtyard door and headed down the outside steps, her feet hitting the shriveled grass as she listened.
The song was clearer now, but the voice was too slurred to make out the words.
She walked farther into the garden, around the edge of the stagnant pond that reflected the waxing moon. She hesitated when she reached the other bank. The
song was louder still, and her breath caught when she realized it drifted from the low, small archway in the stone wall ahead. The dungeons.
A warning knell in her chest told her to go back, to ignore the song. Who was to say it wasn’t another trick of dark magic, calling to her like the whispering urn had the night before? The dungeon was a labyrinth, Karina had said. The urn might well be the least of the evils those underground halls housed.
The song didn’t sound dangerous. The voice wasn’t the Overlord’s and was certainly not Karina’s. Yet it sounded familiar. How could that be? Melaine knew of no one else staying in Highstrong. The halls had been empty aside from herself and its two other occupants.
Melaine gripped her candle and the brocade of her dressing gown. Her instincts vied for control. Curiosity was a dangerous friend, but if another person did live in the keep, she couldn’t risk a stranger catching her unawares.
She licked her lips and ducked into the archway. She descended the long staircase, her breaths short and her every sense on alert, straining her ears for the haunting whispers of the shattered urn or the solid, grating sound of the swiveling statue. Nothing but the erratic song played through her ears, growing louder with each step. Soon, the magic that the song carried wasn’t the only reason for its volume. The source was close, the voice echoing through the dungeon’s halls.
She reached the bottom of the staircase, where the horizontal corridor waited for her to choose a path. She knew, with a residual shiver, that the shattered urn lay at a dead-end down the left-hand hall, its ashes scattered, assuming Karina hadn’t swept them away.
Melaine swallowed her nerves and turned right. The sconces were bare of torchlight like the last time she had wandered the dungeons. She held her candle high, analyzing every crack and corner and cobweb as she passed. The edge of a corner peeked out of the shadows, indicating a passage branching off to the left. The echoing, wordless song swirled within.
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