Trials of Magic

by Thomas K. Carpenter

  "Your mother and I had a talk about you and Natalie last night. I'm not sure you can go over there unsupervised," he said.

  "But she's my best friend," said Aurie.

  "You can keep in contact over the internet, using whatever you kids use these days," he said.

  Tears flooded to Aurie's eyes, but the real Aurie didn't feel sadness, only forgotten shame as she remembered this moment.

  "But why?" asked vision Aurie.

  Her father glanced to Pi before resolving to speak. "We know you two were practicing magic. It's just too dangerous without a patron."

  "But the other kids do it, too," she said.

  As the words came out of her mouth, the real Aurie shrunk inside, and not because of the heavy sigh her father had just given her.

  "And other kids get hurt all the time. Even if nothing tangible happens, it's a bad idea. You have to learn to control yourself first before you can control such power; otherwise, the faez will drive you mad," he said.

  The echoes of the professor's comment hit her in the chest like a spear. She felt stuck to the spot.

  "So until you've earned our trust back, you're grounded. You can use the time you'll be spending at home preparing for your piano recital. It's only a few days away," he said, then went back to the bacon.

  It felt like someone had tied ropes around her gut and was cinching them tighter. Aurie went into the living room. Pi stuck out her tongue, then followed her into the next room, taking position on the opposite couch.

  A fit of rage claimed Aurie. Why did she have to relive this day again? Couldn't she have visited a happy memory like when they'd gone to the beach in Florida and they'd built castles using wet sand, then at night they'd eaten fresh seafood at open air cafes?

  The rage turned to an ache that went all the way into her bones as she was forced to sit on the couch while her father was in the other room. She wanted his approving gaze, his laughter and smile, but all she'd gotten was his disappointment in her.

  When her mother got home, Aurie was too busy sulking to notice until she heard a snippet of the conversation waft into the living room, snapping her upright.

  "I picked up that book of charms you were talking about. Most of them are pretty useless, but there are a few gems," said her mother.

  "What about the remaining switches to finish the construction? Do you have those?" he asked.

  "Someone will be delivering them tonight, Kieran. We've got everything now. We're prepared as we're going to be," she said.

  Her father's voice lowered, and Aurie had to strain to hear.

  "I'm just worried, is all. Since the both of us are going, and the curse," he said.

  "Which we've prepared for. Our solution will work. Have you spoken with Dr. Hothwitz?" she asked.

  "Aye. He's quietly lining up candidates for the Rod. Only the most pressing ailments until we understand its capabilities. There's a young boy who might not last until the end of the week who could desperately use it," he said.

  "Then we'll go tomorrow morning," she said.

  "Are you sure?" he asked.

  "What's the point in waiting any longer? We're as ready as we're going to be," she said firmly.

  "What if it's not there?" he asked. "It wouldn't be the first time that a tomb had already been looted."

  "Then it's not there and we start looking somewhere else," she said. "We can't wait until everything is perfect. Sometimes you just have to trust yourself and take a leap of faith."

  "You're right, Nahid. You're always right, but I'm just worried," he said. "I know you do this stuff all the time, and I always worry when you leave, expecting that you'll never come back, but this time seems much worse. That curse is serious business, much more dangerous than anything you've ever faced."

  "I know. Which is why you're coming with me. It's going to take the both of us to bring back the Rod," she said, then a moment later she added, as if she knew it was the last moments of her life, "Dooset daram."

  "I love you too," said Kieran.

  Their voices lowered to the point that Aurie couldn't hear anymore.

  Aurie reeled in confusion. She didn't remember this conversation at all. Was it real? Or was this something she wanted to hear based on the tomes she'd been reading? Maybe the professor was right, and she was controlling the vision, making herself see something that had never happened.

  Her nose itched, so she scratched the end with a fingernail. As her hand moved, Aurie realized she was fully in control of the vision. She tested it by standing up and moving towards the kitchen. A faint looking Aurie was still seated on the couch. Aurie had broken away.

  But she felt a tension on her like pushing on a spring. The further away from the vision Aurie she got, the higher the tension.

  Her parents were still whispering in the other room. She wanted to hear what they had to say. She knew it was something important, but each step towards them increased the pressure by double.

  Or was that really what she wanted? Was it just a desperate need to see her parents alive again? Is that what this investigation into the Rod had become?

  Aurie forged into the kitchen, the resisting force becoming unbearable. Her parents were speaking quietly, nearly nose to nose, while their hands were entwined. If she could have a picture of that moment to take back, it would have lightened the darkness in her heart.

  Aurie spoke before she remembered that it was only a vision. "Don't go."

  Like a bubble popped, the vision collapsed around her, sending her back into the real world. She staggered at the sudden dislocation, vertigo whirling through her head. Aurie fought back the rising bile in her throat. The golden speckles of faez sparked with annoyance upon her return. Aurie had upset the room of truth.

  Outside, the professor's grim countenance was confirmation that she had failed again. Aurie took her seat, pulled the tome to her chest, and hugged it as she contemplated the memory of her parents.

  Why can't I see the truth? she asked herself. How much of that was real?

  Every day since her parents had died, Aurie had wanted to go back in time and fix it. Every day she wanted to erase her mistakes so that her parents would live. Every day she was beset with the guilt that came with never being able to make it right. No matter how many times she sacrificed for her sister. No matter how many jobs she'd taken to keep Pi fed and warm. No matter home many times she held her sister as she cried to sleep at night in some random foster home.

  Nothing would ever bring them back. Nothing would ever let them wrap their arms around her, squeeze her tight, and tell her everything was going to be okay. Nothing would fix the unfixable, erase her mistakes, give her and Pi the lives they had before the accident.

  Nothing would ever be the same, and it was Aurie's fault. Even being successful in Arcanium had lost its meaning. Why should she enjoy the Hundred Halls when so many kids had been deprived of their lives when her parents had died?

  Aurie knew of only one way that she could ever even come close to fixing what had happened. She had to complete the task that her parents had been about to embark on. She had to find the Rod of Dominion.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The doors of the Glass Cabaret closed behind Pi, leaving her on the busy street as cars rumbled past, windshields glinting in the Saturday afternoon light. She turned the ornate box over in her hands, hearing a faint noise as the object inside hit the soft sides. Radoslav had seemed distracted, which had been fine by her. The more she learned about him and the Cabal, the less she liked the arrangement with the city fae.

  She wasn't entirely sure he was a part of the Cabal, as the maetrie weren't known for interfering with human affairs. They had their own politics to deal with between the three courts. Radoslav had no known allegiance, but that didn't mean he wasn't connected to one of them secretly.

  It left her feeling like a pawn in the larger game, a problem she was going to rectify, starting with the ornate box. Pi hurried to an alleyway, where she'd left a pile of magi
cal investigative tools in a backpack hidden behind a dumpster.

  Last time, when she'd delivered the box to Celesse D'Agastine, Pi had learned that Radoslav put a time signature on the box that would notify him how long it'd taken to deliver it. She wasn't sure how much of a delay would make him suspicious, a few hours at best, so she had to hurry.

  Pi pulled out the scanning disc that she'd borrowed from the initiate labs in Coterie, and after whispering a spell, waved it over the ornate box. The air around it bloomed into colors like a flower garden had burst into existence. Each color represented a different spell. The layers of protection bothered Pi. Either Radoslav was just naturally paranoid, or the object in the box was particularly valuable.

  She pulled a pair of welders goggles out of the backpack and slipped them on. They were slightly too big and hurt the bridge of her nose, but Pi ignored it and pulled the box into view.

  She'd enchanted the goggles to maintain the investigative spell while she teased apart their purpose. There were five separate spells: the timer on delivery, a lock that was keyed to Radoslav and the recipient, an anti-scrying enchantment, a nasty defensive spell, and a final one that was so entwined with the others that she couldn't determine its purpose. The final spell was like a thin webbing that connected the others. She guessed that it was there to keep the other spells from mingling and causing unintended effects, a known issue with layered enchantments. After testing the amount of energy in the fifth spell and learning that it was only a small amount, Pi decided to attempt breaking into the box.

  She pulled another item of her design out of the backpack: scaffolding to suspend the box by its six corners. The scaffolding cube had enchantments on it to keep the magic of the box tamed until she could unravel it. The idea was much like applying crosswires to a bomb before clipping other wires while defusing it.

  With the protections in place, Pi went to work. The five entwined enchantments made for difficult work, especially because she didn't want to eliminate them. If she delivered an enchantmentless box to the third Cabal member, they would become suspicious.

  Pi poked and probed the defenses, looking for a way to stretch them so she could open the box. After thirty minutes of determined study, she decided to give it a try. It felt like she was pulling back elastic webbing, using spells as her hooks and connecting them to the cube scaffolding.

  Crouched in the alleyway behind a battered blue dumpster, the first few minutes went as expected. It wasn't until she tried to unentangle the defense spell and the thin webbing that things started to go wrong.

  As she unhooked them, a chain reaction started to form. Like lightning in a massive thundercloud, the magical energies pulsed with danger. Pi tried putting it back to the original position, but the energies continued to propagate, headed towards a disastrous conclusion.

  Pi yanked the stasis bag out of her backpack and threw the scaffolding containing the box into it, freezing the chain reaction for the moment.

  "Shit," she muttered, realizing that she'd screwed up royally.

  Once the chain reaction had started, she'd understood the purpose of the fifth spell. It had low energy because it was only a trigger. The remaining power came from the other spells, especially the nasty defensive one.

  The stasis bag could delay the reaction, but only for a short while, no more than twenty minutes, she guessed. She had to solve the problem or it would trigger. She thought about abandoning the box, and fleeing the city, but an innocent bystander might get hurt. Nor did she want to give up her position in the Halls.

  As the cars went rumbling past the alleyway, Pi squeezed her face in her hands, mentally reviewing the five spells to figure out a solution. She manipulated them in her mind as if they were a Rubik's Cube and she were preparing to solve it. It wasn't long before she realized there was no possible way to get past the enchantments, at least in the way she'd originally planned.

  Throwing everything, including the stasis bag containing the box, into her backpack, Pi took off at a run. She found a blue police phone and put a spell on it so she could call a different number: the one inside the Arcanium initiate ward.

  "Hello," she said when a girl on the other side answered. "Can I talk to my sister, Aurie? It's an emergency, like fast."

  The sounds of doors opening and closing came through the phone until she heard her sister's voice.

  "Pi? Is everything okay?" asked Aurie.

  "I need your help. Can you meet me at"—Pi pictured the train lines crisscrossing the city and figured a location on the way to her destination—"that stop by the gondola station shaped like an onion?"

  "I'm not supposed to be out in the city," said Aurie. "How urgent is this?"

  "Really bad," said Pi.

  "Okay, I'll be there," said Aurie.

  "Thank you. Please hurry," said Pi, and hung up. A few passersby gave her strange looks because she was on the blue police phone. She ignored them and took off at a run to make the next train, which was about to leave.

  She slid through the doors and found a seat away from everyone else, peeking in her backpack to check the stasis bag. The energies were building up, but still manageable.

  By the time she reached her destination, the bag was barely holding it together. When she ran off the train, Pi started shouting her sister's name to locate her.

  After a frantic minute, she found Aurie, grabbed her hand, and went running towards the nearest bathroom. A few businesswomen were milling around the sinks, checking their makeup or clothing when they crashed in.

  "Everyone out, now," said Pi.

  "Excuse me?" said a woman in a power suit. She looked like a CEO straight out of central casting, with hair that made her look like a cobra.

  Pi produced a ball of flame in her fist and showed it to the woman, who quickly changed her tune.

  "You girls are crazy," she said, leading the pack out of the bathroom while pulling out her cell phone. She'd be most certainly calling the cops. Pi might have been concerned, except that if they failed to contain the box, the police would be the least of their worries.

  Aurie put an enchantment on the door to keep anyone else from coming in, while Pi checked the stalls, which were thankfully empty.

  "No time to explain why, but I need your help defeating these enchantments," said Pi, dumping the stasis bag on the dirty tile floor.

  Aurie pointed at the goggles on Pi's face. "Do you have another pair?"

  She shook her head. "I wasn't planning on this taking two people. Can you do something?"

  Aurie whispered to her fingers, then placed them against her closed eyes. When she opened them, they were completely shimmering blue, even the whites.

  Pi explained the plan in hurried phrases. Her sister nodded along.

  "Ready?" she asked, holding the stasis bag as if she were going to dump out a pack of angry badgers.

  Once she removed the scaffolding cube, Pi had to clamp down on the enchantment before it got away from her. Then she let Aurie take control, freeing her up to manipulate the spells. It was like doing open heart surgery and defusing a bomb at the same time.

  The work was delicate. Pi had to tease apart the webbing, stretching until she could hook it to the scaffolding. After a few tense minutes, Pi finally defeated the enchantment. She was free to open the box.

  While holding her breath, she lifted the lid. Inside the gilded box lay a gallium coin covered in runes.

  "What the hell?" said Pi, underwhelmed.

  "That's all it is?" asked Aurie. "Why did you need to get into this box?"

  "Let's get out of the bathroom and I'll explain on the way. I'm sure that lady called the cops," she said.

  Pi memorized the runes on both sides, then closed the box and slipped the enchantments back on. When she was finished, she examined the spells to make sure there was no sign of tampering. She shoved the stasis bag, scaffolding, and goggles into the backpack before they left the bathroom.

  They were back into the crowd when a group of three police
officers came running up to the bathroom to bang on the door.

  "Fix your eyes," she told Aurie before they got on the next train.

  On the way, Pi told her sister about the boxes, the Cabal, and Radoslav, including all her concerns.

  Aurie sat quietly for a moment before saying, "You should give up Coterie."

  "No way," said Pi.

  "Everything you've told me about them isn't good. Why do you want to be a part of that?" she asked.

  "They're not all bad. Ashley's a good friend, and Professor Augustus, though misguided, has been trying to help me. There's good and bad everywhere, Aurie. Coterie is no different," she said.

  Aurie squeezed her lips together and cast her gaze askew. "I'm not sure about that, but I can't make you quit."

  Pi took a good look at her sister. The dark bags under her eyes had their own bags they were so heavy.

  "Are you okay? You look like you're not sleeping," she said.

  Aurie's lip twitched. "I'm fine. Just doing a lot of studying."

  Pi knew it was a lie, but she didn't want to press her sister, not after she'd come to her rescue at a moment's notice.

  "Mine's the next stop," said Pi, reluctantly. "I miss seeing you."

  They stood up as the train neared the station, the rapid clacking slowing.

  "I miss you too," said Aurie, who wrestled with her words before continuing. "I'm working on some things I learned about Mom and Dad's death."

  "Aurie, you need to let that go. You didn't do anything wrong," said Pi.

  "It's important, Pi," said Aurie, looking her straight in the eyes. "If I ask for your help, can I count on you?"

  The train lurched to a stop. They grabbed the nearby pole to keep from falling over.

  "Of course, anything. I'm there for you," Pi said as she moved towards the open door.

  Aurie gave her a terse wave as the door closed. Pi regretted she hadn't gotten a hug from her sister. She could have used it.

  The destination was a few blocks away from the train stop in the fourth ward. When Pi came to an empty lot, she checked the address twice, wondering if she'd gotten it wrong.