Linala glanced at Osmund and stepped forward. “His physical form was destroyed in a battle with a scion of the Shadeslayers a few days ago. Even knowing his name and his type, we can’t locate him.”
Mirel pursed her lips and nodded. “Enki the chanori.”
She walked over to one of the half circles and examined it for a second before shaking her head. She went to another and repeated the gesture. At the third, she nodded and stepped up to the edge. She closed her eyes, and her robes shimmered. Wings emerged from her back, and a sword of light appeared at her side. She rose a few feet into the air, and glowing yellow runes appeared on the ground, completing the circle. Other runes appeared in the air. Jez had seen Sharim use something like that, though he still didn’t know how it was done. Some of the runes, both on the ground and in the air, were spinning slowly. Jez thought there was a pattern, but he couldn’t quite see it.
“Amazing,” Linala said. “It would take me all day to craft a circle like that.” She chuckled. “Now there’s a fair bit of arrogance on my part. I doubt I could craft something like that if you gave me half a year.”
The pharim began chanting, but it had a peculiar cadence, and Jez found himself lulled into listlessness. He knew that if Mirel said his name, he would be hard pressed to avoid coming to her. He sensed power suffusing the area. Mirel’s control was so fine, only the faintest trickle leaked into the air, but even that was enthralling. After a few minutes, she lowered her arms, and the runes faded. She met Jez’s eyes and shook her head.
“I could find no sign of a chanori named Enki.”
“Then, he’s really not there,” Linala said. “I had hoped he just hadn’t recovered enough for my magic to locate him.”
“Your skill is significant,” Mirel said as she shook her head. “You should’ve known that was not the case.”
“I knew, but I also hoped.”
Mirel gave her a slow nod. “Ah yes, the prerogative of your kind. Have you considered a tactic other than going to the library?”
“Like what?” Jez asked.
“Like bringing the Library of Zandra back to the mortal realm.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
For several long heartbeats, Jez just stared at her, only dimly aware of everyone else doing the same thing. Mirel cocked her head, seemingly unable to understand their shock. Jez tried to speak, but his mouth had gone dry, and it took a few seconds for him to work moisture back into it.
“Can we do that?”
“Of course. Why would you not be able to?”
He glanced at Linala, but she seemed content to let him speak. She had spoken of being able to summon the fires of the abyss, so obviously, beings weren’t the only things that could be summoned, but an entire library?
“But Gayel put the library there. We can’t stand up to the power of a high lord of the pharim.”
“You’re forgetting the fact that Gayel is a pharim.”
“No,” Jez said. “I don’t think I am. That’s the problem.”
Mirel narrowed her eyes. “The library was built by humans. He could skirt the rules in taking it because the library was about to be destroyed, but he cannot stop a human from calling it back. That would be interfering with mortal choice, and he would not be capable of that if he wished to be.”
“How would we do such a thing?” Linala asked.
Mirel raised an eyebrow. “The same way you would summon anything else. You know its name. You know where it is located. Craft a ritual and summon it.”
She gaped at the afur. “I have no idea how to craft a circle powerful enough to summon something as massive as a library...” Her voice trailed off, and she looked to Jez. “What was it made of?”
“What?”
“The library. What was it made of?”
The question caught Jez off guard, and it took him a second to gather his thoughts.
“Stone, I think. I didn’t really pay attention to the walls.”
“Yellow stone,” Mirel supplied. “There was a fair bit of iron in the structure as well.”
“Stone and metal.” She spoke more to herself than to anyone else, but she looked up at Jez. “How many floors?”
Jez gave Mirel a helpless look, and she smiled. “Four stories up and two below ground level.”
It went on like that for a long time with Mirel patiently answering whatever Linala asked as she tried to puzzle out the construction of the proper circle. Jez wondered why Mirel didn’t craft the working, but when he asked, she pointedly reminded him that she wasn’t a human and that Gayel would have no trouble stopping anything she did.
It wasn’t long before Linala realized they would need a circle far bigger than the ones they had in this room, and this was no mere task that would take a few hours. To further exacerbate the situation, there was nowhere to put a new building of that size, and space would have to be made. As for the circle itself, it would have to encompass the entire Academy.
At Balud’s command, the Academy was emptied, though few knew why. Then, a few trusted students aided the masters in the construction of the massive circle. Runes were carved into the buildings to strengthen it, and Linala’s students ground the white sand into the rock. It was a painstakingly slow process, and in the end, it took nine days to craft it. It would’ve taken even longer if Mirel hadn’t been there, correcting any mistakes they made. Linala went on and on about the complexity of the circle and how it was utterly beyond her ability. On sunrise of the tenth day, Mirel walked the edge of the circle, along with Jez and the Masters.
“It will do,” she said as she came to a stop in front of the gates to the Academy grounds.
Jez knelt down and examined the runes that glowed on the massive stone walls. It looked like little more than a tangle of lines to him, though if he squinted and cocked his head a little, he thought he could make out the symbol for earth. Other runes were scattered on the buildings, but according to Mirel, those weren’t part of the circle. Rather, they would strengthen points of fracture. She had explained what it was that could be fractured, but the explanation had gone over Jez’s head.
“This will take a lot of power, won’t it?” Linala asked as she touched one of the runes. It pulsed beneath her fingers.
“Yes, a significant amount. That’s why we have the points of convergence.”
“Points of convergence?”
Mirel rolled her eyes and indicated a point several feet away where a dozen lines intersected. Each glowed with a slightly different color, though they became uniformly orange where they met. “Places where other mages can stand to join their power to yours.”
“You mean a contingent?”
“A contingent is only of use if the ones you’re sharing with have strength in the dominion you need to use. No, this is something entirely different. This works best if each of those at a point of convergence has strength in a unique dominion and has the freedom to use their power.”
Linala let out a low whistle. “I didn’t know such a thing was possible.”
“Much knowledge was lost when Zandra burned.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t have been lost if the pharim had been willing to teach us.” Linala narrowed her eyes. “Or the afur.”
“Gayel cast me from the Keep of the Hosts for interfering with mortal choice, human. Do you imagine I would be so quick to repeat the error? What would the punishment be if I did it a second time?”
“Then why are you helping us now?”
“Perhaps I finally tired of hoarding knowledge. Perhaps I am simply tired of this existence, and I am willing to take whatever punishment comes of it, if there is anything at all.”
Linala gave Jez a sidelong glance, but he could only shrug. She let out a breath. “Where are the points of convergence?” Linala asked.
The afur narrowed her eyes. “You drew them.”
“At your instruction.”
“You drew a circle without knowing what you were doing?”
“I followed the instructio
ns of one millennia older than I with more knowledge than I could ever comprehend.”
“And you assume I can be trusted?”
“You are an afur,” she said. “More than that, you were a Lightgiver. We don’t have many records from when your kind walked openly among us, but those that do agree that those who fell from the Lightgivers cannot lie.” Mirel inclined her head. “Will you stand in one of the points of convergence? You’re stronger than anyone else here.”
“I dare not. My power would make the summoning be something other than mortal. Pick your strongest.”
Mirel briefly told them where each of the points of convergence were and which one was attuned to each dominion. Linala looked at Balud.
“The Masters then?”
“No,” Besis said before the chancellor could respond. “Not me. Jezreel.”
“But he’s just a student,” Linala said.
“I’m nowhere near as skilled as you are, Master Besis.”
“This isn’t about skill, Jez. This is about power, and in terms of raw power, you’re stronger than I am.”
“As I suspected,” Mirel said. “You’re no ordinary human. A human does not have the memories I saw in your mind.”
“I’m a limaph,” Jez said before she could reveal any more.
“Those memories are too coherent to be the fragments passed down through a hundred generations.”
Jez shrugged and tried to appear nonplussed. “We’re not sure how many lines I come from. I don’t have any living family, so I can’t find out.”
She stared at him for several long seconds. “No,” she said.
“This isn’t relevant,” Besis said. “We should get on with the summoning.”
“What about the weakening of the barrier?” Linala asked. “Won’t summoning something this big weaken it further?”
Mirel shrugged. “The weakened barrier is the only reason you’ll be able to find what Gayel wished to hide.”
Linala nodded and the masters scattered. Besis walked with Jez as they moved to the convergence point attuned to protection.
“You’d better not change,” Besis said. “That might corrupt the working just like Mirel’s power would.”
“Are you sure I won’t do so anyway?”
“From what you’ve told me, Sariel has said you’re completely human. I wouldn’t want to risk it with a change, but we should be safe enough as long as you stay human.”
“I still think you should do this. I couldn’t even have made it past your barrier if the imps hadn’t weakened it.”
“That was a matter of knowledge, not of strength. Believe me, inside a decade, you’ll outshine anything I can do.”
They reached an intersection of lines like the one Mirel had shown them. It lay near the eastern edge of the Academy where a series of blue lines connected right next to the wall. Jez stood at the point where they intersected and waited. After a few minutes, faint light pulsed along the lines of the circle. They tugged at him, and he felt like he was being stretched out. He let out a deep breath and released his power into the circle. The lines forming the point of convergence flared to life as energy ran through them.
He could just see the area on the northwestern edge of the Academy, a place they had cleared out to house the library. The air above it rippled and twisted. It seemed to part, and Jez’s breath caught in his throat.
The creature that stepped out of the hole was at least fifty feet tall and so dark it seemed to suck the light from all around them. It looked like a massive wolf that stood on two legs. It was entirely black aside from its eyes. Twin points of pasty whiteness that made Jez think of a rotting corpse scanned the area with a hungry look. The summoning circle went dark as Jez’s power snapped back to him. He barely noticed though. His eyes were locked on the creature.
“That’s no library.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Besis snapped his hand forward, and a whip-like band of light lashed toward the creature. Though it was at least two hundred feet away, Besis’s working sliced into the shadow. It didn’t do any good, though. The shadows congealed around the tip, and darkness ran back toward him along the whip. The protection master cursed and released the working just before the darkness reached him.
“Go.” His hands were already crafting another working, and he didn’t look at Jez as he spoke.
“But...”
A golden arrow streaked forward, leaving a flaming trail behind it. It embedded itself in the wolf, though the shadow creature seemed not to notice. The arrow burned for a second before exploding, but the wolf didn’t even flinch.
“I don’t know what that is, and I don’t know what kind of binding will work, but you have something that will work regardless of what that is.”
Jez glanced down at his newly forged sword, but that wasn’t what Besis meant. He stared at the wolf for a second. A trio of balls of light impacted the wolf as it stepped over the wall and into the healing district of the Academy grounds, but it had no more effect than the previous bindings. Jez nodded and reached within himself to tap the power of Luntayary. Wings emerged from his back, and a crystal sword appeared in his hand. His clothes transformed into sapphire robes. The power no longer burned him as it might have, though he couldn’t hold much more without damaging himself.
He spread his wings and leaped into the air, covering the distance in the space of half a dozen heartbeats. His sword sliced into the creature, cutting through dark fur that hadn’t been visible from afar. The attack released a gout of sulfuric smoke. The wolf raised its head and let out a cry that sounded like thunder. It shook the ground all around it. Fina, who’d been at a point of convergence nearby, fell to the ground. A second later, Ziary dove out of the air, his flaming sword burning as bright as the sun. He drove his blade, point first, into the creature’s head. It barely flinched. Jez zipped through the air and stabbed it in the bottom of the jaw. The creature tore its head free of the blades, ripping holes in itself. The smoke was so thick Jez couldn’t see.
Light flashed as the smoke burned away in a fire so hot it singed Jez’s skin. Ziary was in the air next to him, surrounded in a whirlwind of flame. He threw his hands forward, and a great blast of fire enveloped the creature’s head. Jez raised his hands, pulling water out of the air and forming bands around the creature that were stronger than steel. With a jerk, he pulled the wolf to the ground. It slammed against the earth so hard cracks spread out from the point of impact.
As one, pharim and scion rushed down, driving their blades into the creature’s neck, just behind the head. Their blades impacted within the inky darkness. The wolf expanded and contracted several times. Then, it exploded, filling the area with solid shadow that faded a second later, though a chill remained in the air. Both Jez and Ziary floated downward. As soon as they had their feet on solid ground, they shed their forms and appeared to be nothing more than ordinary humans. Something touched Jez’s shoulder, and he jumped and turned around. Mirel stood right behind him with a smile on her face.
“You’re no limaph.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
For a second, Jez just gaped at her. She wore her wings and yellow robe, and the light she shed made the obsidian of the ground and the nearby buildings shimmer. Jez looked around. Fortunately, no one else was close enough to hear, though Fina and some of the destruction students rounded a corner onto the street they were on and started jogging in their direction. They had, at best, a minute of privacy. Jez said the first thing that came to his mind.
“Yes, I am. I’m just like Osmund.”
She glanced at Osmund and shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. His weapon did little more than distract it. He could never have beaten a void beast on his own, but I think you might have won even if he hadn’t come to your aid. Though I don’t know how this could be, you’re a pharim.”
Jez lifted his hand. “This is human flesh.”
She sniffed and frowned. “Your flesh was burning. I can still smell it.”
>
Though the chill left behind by the creature was swiftly fading, Jez shivered. Osmund narrowed his eyes.
“I thought you said that wouldn’t happen anymore.”
“I said it would happen less, but that’s not the point. I just have more blood of the afur than you. My flesh can’t contain it.”
“A clever lie,” she said. “It comes so easily to you. You must’ve been using it for a long time.”
Jez almost denied it, but the deadpan look on Mirel’s face told him it would do no good. He let out a breath. “Nearly two years now.”
“I take it the masters don’t know?”
“Besis does. None of the others do, though.”
“And you do not wish them to?”
Jez looked over his shoulder. Fina would probably be able to hear the answer, but there was nothing to do about that. “No.”
“Very well. I will respect your wishes.”
Master Fina was barely breathing heavily as he came up to them. Some of his students were a little red-faced from the exertion, but none seemed injured. Fina himself bounced up and down like a six-year-old boy who’d just gotten a new toy.
“By the seven, I’ve never seen anything like that. That was a void beast.”
“A small one,” Mirel said.
“Small?” Osmund asked.
Mirel nodded. “You don’t want to see a large one. There are those who consider void beasts among the most terrible creatures ever to exist. They’re not far wrong.”
Jez took a deep breath, but it just confirmed his suspicions. He hadn’t smelled a demonic presence during the fight. Now, he just caught the verdant scent common to the district of healing, but there was no hint of sulfur.
“They’re not demons,” Jez said.
“No, they are...” She pursed her lips. “It’s difficult to explain. Your language doesn’t have the right words. At the beginning of the universe, creation was given shape and form, but you can’t shape something without moving at least a part of it away from where it was. The void beasts come from the places where creation was removed.”
Lightgiver Page 10