A Spell for Shadows: Rosewilde Academy of Magical Arts

by Marie Robinson

  I set the book down and let my hand drift to his waist. Odd, the stark difference that I was suddenly aware of. The firmness under my hand when I touched him, versus the softness I felt on Amelia when I touched her. Yin and yang, sort of.

  Isaac parted from me, slowly, but kept his hands on my hips, his fingertips curled into my uniform shirt. “It’s old and new,” he said quietly. “That’s the best kind of thing, I think. And maybe… maybe Amelia is what we were missing before. Glue, to hold us all together. I think I love her, you know. And I still love you. And Lucas. And even… gods help us all… even Nathan in a certain way. Different, but still there.”

  I hadn’t seen Lucas standing. He put a hand on my shoulder, though, coming around from behind Isaac, and gave me a long, affectionate stroke down my back, a touch speaking of familiarity from long ago. “I’m angry still,” he said. “A little. But that doesn’t mean I want you to leave, Hunter. So… stay? Not just here, in the library, obviously. I mean… you know.”

  Inside, some bit of wall that I hadn’t realized was still there crumbled. It had been around for so long, after I kicked parts of it down—well, all right, after Amelia bulldozed over parts of it—that it had just become part of the landscape. It wasn’t until another brick tumbled down that I realized it was still there, and that there were parts of me still in shadow because of it. My throat constricted, and my eyes burned a little.

  “I… I have missed you both,” I breathed around the lump. I pulled Lucas to me.

  And stopped, as the lights around us dimmed. Lucas looked up, curious, and his eyes widened.

  Before I even looked to see what had surprised him, I knew what it was. His lips and hands began to move at the same time, and I started casting before I looked up to see what was coming down on us.

  The Shadow Entity streaked down from the ceiling, smoky tentacles shooting out to grab us as a filthy mockery of a face emerged from the smoke, shrieking a bloody fury.

  Hunter

  I recognized the words and gestures Lucas made the moment I saw them, and the three of us stumbled back as we each took up part of the containment spell that we’d used at the circle and in the dining hall. The library filled with the sounds of shouted spells and wailing as the shadow twisted around the leg of the table and shot up from the ground toward me.

  The last word of the spell left my lips, and the shadow poured over an incandescent wall of light. Before the light even faded, though, cracks began to appear faster than we could mend them, even chanting the spell together.

  Lucas and Isaac circled around the cube of space that held the shadow, their hands moving in sync, their chant rhythmic and fast. When I could finally see them, I matched my pace to theirs, but the field was still breaking down with each attack. I tried to ignore the primal panic trying to convince me to run as fast as I could to anywhere this thing wasn’t.

  We moved together, creeping back toward the bookcases, but all of us knew the same thing. The moment we stopped casting, that thing would come after us and there was no way we could outrun it.

  “Denbora motela da!”

  I glanced long enough to spot Mara emerging from between two bookcases, hands raised, each one locked in a mudra that she twisted slowly as though against something, her jaw locked, her eyes focused and determined. “One of you do something, and quickly,” she growled.

  Inside the containment field, the shadow had slowed, its thrashing happening as though it were caught in something thick and viscous. Time itself, probably, given Mara’s specialty.

  I risked dropping my part of the containment spell. There was a slight delay as time inside Mara’s spell caught up, but the cracks spread in slow motion across the surface of the cube. There was Amelia’s banishing. But as I tried to recall the words, my brain fumbled around for the right inflections and all I managed was to stammer through part of it as my arms flopped in the wrong gestures.

  “Quickly,” Mara warned. Sweat broke out on her forehead, and her arms had begun to shake. She couldn’t sustain the effort of holding time for very long.

  My thoughts raced, sifting through everything I knew, every possible solution, scrabbling for something out of the box...

  The box. The containment spell could hold it. Which meant that the shadow was in one phase—it could be held, pinned, trapped. It was at least partially physical, and apparently constrained to some extent by time. As the cracks in the containment spell began to glow with the warning that it was about to shatter, I muttered the first line of a wind spell, hands lifting and twisting as I pushed magic out and into the air around us.

  A breeze picked up in the room, growing steadily as I fed it, until papers were blown off the table. Then books opened, and pages began to flap in the twisting gale. The containment spell shattered, shards of compressed space flying apart slowly as they dissolved. By the time the backlash reached Lucas and Isaac, they were as ready as they could be with the time delay, and both staggered only a few steps back as they protected themselves from the whiplash of magic twisting on itself.

  The wind grew strong enough to knock over chairs and rattle the table. I pressed down on it with my will, crushing the forces tightly around the shadow as it expanded beyond the broken containment spell toward us. Where the wind hit the threshold of Mara’s spell, there was a horrible ripping sound that assaulted our ears.

  “Let it go!” I called over the cacophony, between two repetitions of the spell’s words. Mara either heard me, or reached her limit, because she dropped her hands and sagged. The sound of wind-shear was replaced by the howling of the shadow entity.

  I brought my cupped hands together, pushing the rotation of the sphere of wind hard enough that the air itself became opaque. Inside it, the shadow filled the space, its scream vibrating as the sphere closed and sped up.

  “How long can you keep that up?” Lucas yelled.

  To get the wind up to speed I had to quicken the pace of the spell. Between repetitions, I shouted words at him. “Not... forever... figure... out... something... else...”

  It was working, for the moment. Each time some of the shadow managed to press through, the barrier of wind swept it back into the vortex, which was now down to the size of a basketball. It wobbled, and keeping it both rotating and in one place required different intentions that were quickly fatiguing my mind. Magic burned raw over the meridians in my hands, and they were starting to go numb.

  Isaac began Amelia’s banishing. He had to start twice, but the second time, he managed to time the stomping and arm flapping to the words of the chant, picking up his pace as his confidence grew and his movements became more intentional. Sharper.

  Lucas watched him for a moment, like a child waiting to jump into a game of double dutch until Isaac started from the beginning again. He joined in. Amelia had done it on her own, with one attempt. Maybe it was her summoning talent that made that possible, or that she’d simply practiced more. Whatever the case, I reached my limit on their third repetition.

  The wind sphere wobbled. A chair went flying. There was a high pitched whistle, and I missed a gesture when I couldn’t feel my thumbs.

  The sphere lost its shape as the spell failed, and with a crack like short-lived thunder all that concentrated kinetic energy burst out in all directions. Wind struck me in the chest, throwing me back against a bookshelf as it rocked, and began a slow fall.

  The shadow, at least, had suffered as well. It’s smoky form was torn apart by the wind, spreading out over the study area and into the bookshelves.

  Lucas and Isaac pushed against the howling wind as they clapped their hands together at the same time. The words and the sound of their final gesture were swallowed up by the gale, but the magic of the banishing struck the shadow entity as it attempted to concentrate itself back into the dark cloud it had been before.

  For a split second, it hung in the air, loosely in the shape of a person—a head, two arms, two legs. It twisted in the air, shrieked at us, and then gave a final thrash bef
ore the banishing forced it back through the dimensional fabric and into it’s astral or etheric hidey hole. Before it disappeared, though, I could have sworn I recognized its face, even twisted like it was.

  The wind died. All around us, bookshelves had tipped, books littered the ground, and loose pages drifted in the air as they began to settle.

  “When I said to do something,” Mara grumbled as she pushed herself to her feet, “I did not mean destroying my library, Mister Webb.”

  I opened my mouth to complain about that, but... the library was a disaster. “Uh... sorry, Mara.”

  “Elementalists,” Lucas rasped. “Every problem is a nail for you people, isn’t it?”

  I stared at the space where the shadow had disappeared, replaying the moment in my mind.

  Isaac righted a chair, frowning. He looked up at me, and then at the same spot in the air over the table. “You saw that too, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It looked... like it had the shape of a person.”

  “Not just any person,” Isaac said, grim as he looked around the ceiling and the shadows between fallen bookshelves.

  Maybe I hadn’t imagined it, then.

  “I didn’t see anything,” Lucas said.

  “I did,” Mara muttered. She scowled. “That thing looked like Mister Crowley.”

  Isaac nodded. And that’s what I’d seen as well.

  Lucas’s brow pinched as he surveyed our faces. “What? But it... well then what the hell does that mean?”

  “That they’re more than just connected,” I said quietly. “That thing didn’t just hitch a ride with Nathan back here. It’s part of him.”

  Amelia

  “No,” I growled as Nathan and I quickly began to escalate from ‘argument over a point of theory’ to ‘shouting match with improvised weapons’, “what I’m saying is that according to Notes on Alhazred’s Madness none of the lesser Abyssal beings can exist here independently. We already know it’s connected to you somehow, so it makes sense that—”

  Nathan barked a laugh and waved dismissively at the journal I was now white knuckling. “You’re talking about incorporating reference points beyond the scope of time and space into an array predicated on location and timing,” he said, his ears and cheeks already red from shouting me down. “You’re wasting your time on that nonsense, they’re notes on Alhazred’s madness! You can’t possibly trust that material as literal.”

  “Obviously I’m not taking it literally, you asshole, I’m interpreting what he’s saying and applying it to… to… agh!” I threw my hands up and almost hurled the journal at him. “You’re so fucking sure of yourself, you won’t even—”

  “Children!” Hayes snapped, looking up from where she’d put her face in her hands to massage her forehead. We both stopped shouting. I bit my lip, suddenly embarrassed for letting it get out of hand like that. “Miss Cresswin, if you please, lay out your hypothesis in a calm and straightforward manner. Mister Crowley—not a word.”

  Nathan snorted, folding his arms over his chest as he paced away from us, shaking his head. When he finally turned around, he wore a look of utter disdain and impatience.

  I took a breath and held up the journal. “Bertram Freud talks about Alhazred’s experience with a possession, which he believes happened when he attempted to commune with one of the Outsider Gods—the Gatekeeper. The manifestation that Alhazred talks about, in his roundabout way, matches the description of the shadow entity, which made me think they could be the same thing. Even down to the victims it leaves behind.”

  I waited for a reaction, but didn’t get one. “Anyway,” I went on, “Alhazred apparently didn’t make any diagrams that survived regarding how he ultimately got rid of it, but Freud believes that he did, and that the means of doing it was by applying abyssal elements to a terrestrial summoning ritual. And it makes sense. Listen.”

  I opened up the page and read the passage in Bertram Freud’s native German. “The Eichen Manuscript number seventy-five supports the possibility that rather than utilizing abyssal elements alone, Alhazred was able to blend both abyssal and terrestrial magics, in order to isolate the entity from himself. While his method is not known, there are further writings by the Mad Arab, and so it can be inferred that he was indeed successful. Examples in the Eichen Manuscript, number seventy-five, are potentially early attempts at this, and indeed, although they do not appear functional, there is a clear progression which I believe proves that the pages are cataloged in the incorrect order. As we know, Alhazred was a mathematician first, and would have solved for individual variables.”

  I switched back to English, “The rest just goes on about the manuscript being out of order, but it’s pretty clear that he had strong reasons to believe that terrestrial magic alone couldn’t permanently get rid of the entity.”

  “Is that all?” Nathan asked.

  I bit my tongue for a second to keep from saying anything that would embarrass me more in front of the headmistress. When the urge passed, I nodded. “That’s the gist of it.”

  He looked to Hayes. “May I?”

  She closed her eyes, rubbed the back of her neck and nodded slowly as she gestured for Nathan to say his peace.

  “I can think of six reasons why that theory is entirely senseless and will only derail our efforts,” he said, and held up his thumb. “One: abyssal and terrestrial magics are mutually exclusive, there is no available interface between them.”

  “That’s not necessarily—”

  He cut me off as he put his forefinger up. “Two: Freud’s whole assumption is that Alhazred was attempting an exorcism, which means that he was inhabited by a being at the time, which we have no proof of at all—Alhazred was called the Mad Arab for a very good reason.”

  It always came back to this. I gave a disgusted groan. “I’m telling you, the word used for ‘possession’ is an archaic form and… Nathan?”

  He put his hand to his forehead, but not to feign one of the headaches that he swore I gave him.

  “Mister Crowley?” Hayes muttered as she approached him.

  Nathan swayed. “I almost… Mara, I had nothing to do with… no, that’s not right…”

  “It’s happening again,” I said, and rushed to Nathan’s side as he sagged. His eyes were wild, rolling as if he couldn’t make sense of where he was.

  “Miss Athenbow,” Hayes said, her fingers locked into the last gesture of a Whisper spell, “Mister Crowley has lapsed again. We can assume there is some manifestation currently. I’m administering the sedative right away.”

  I looked up, surprised. “What? No—you can’t sedate him. And it won’t matter, anyway. I think this only happens when it comes through. In the ballroom he was lucid as soon as it attacked.”

  Hayes reached into the pocket of her jacket and produced a syringe, her lips hard as he pulled the cap free and flicked it to loosen any air bubbles trapped in the needle. “I’m afraid we can’t gamble on that hypothesis.”

  Even as she knelt though, Nathan began to come back around. His eyes focused on me first, then the needle in Hayes’ hand before he swatted it away. “What on Earth are you thinking? I can’t afford to—ah…”

  He pressed a hand to the side of his head, and his knees buckled. I grabbed him under the arm and managed to at least lower him to the ground as he pressed his eyes closed. “Pressure…”

  “What do I do?” I hissed at him. “Nathan, tell me what to do.”

  In another moment, it passed. Nathan’s jaw was clenched, and he breathed hard as he took his hand from his head and looked blearily around Hayes’ office. “Hunter… I think I…”

  Or not. I took Nathan’s chin and turned his face toward me.

  He pulled his head away. “What are you doing? Give me space.”

  With a sigh, I stood and backed away. “My mistake. I thought you were still delirious. What about Hunter?”

  “I saw him,” Nathan said as he rose unsteadily to his feet and took a moment to straight his uniform. “Tha
t time was different, somehow. Headmistress… the attack was, I believe, in the library. Ask Miss Athenbow—”

  “She’s already intercepted the three of them,” Hayes said, her head cocked to one side. “Apparently they’re headed here. Mara seems to be having a fit over the state of the library.”

  “Good,” Nathan muttered, and began to pace. “This shouldn’t happen… though it seems like a natural progression, but how? Not a standard possession, the entity doesn’t appear concerned with the use of my physical body as a vessel—ah, but—”

  The door to Hayes’ office opened. Hunter, Lucas and Isaac hurried in. “The shadow—” Lucas started.

  “—It’s Nathan,” Hunter announced for him as the three of them stared at Nathan like he might be a ghost. “Or… it’s taken on some of his appearance. I’m not sure.”

  “Not my appearance,” Nathan muttered. “No… it must be a psychic impression of some kind.”

  Isaac frowned. “Sorry… no one seems profoundly shocked or disturbed by this?”

  I met Nathan’s eyes before he turned to Headmistress Hayes. “I don’t believe that sedating me would have made a difference,” he said. “I believe the entity is capable of acting independently of whatever connection we share. That said… I do believe it may be necessary to contain me. We need more observation, and I’d like to work with Master Larson more consistently.”

  Hayes gave a slow nod. “Can anyone attempt to give a clear explanation of what just happened, and what it means?”

  The boys were silent. Nathan seemed uncomfortable without an answer, his head bowed.

  The Headmistress looked them over and then turned to me, one eyebrow raised. “Miss Cresswin?”

  I spread my hands. “I’m sorry, Headmistress, I don’t…”

  Except… maybe I did. I held a finger up, as she began to press for an explanation, and considered this piece. The shadow was taking on Nathan’s appearance. It had harassed me relentlessly for days—until Nathan and I began our lessons. I had even said it to him; we’d seemed to make strides in his attitudes. And the next time it attacked, we were arguing at the ball.