by Tom Early
Nick strolled back into sight, appearing as if out of nowhere, and casually extended a finger, and I watched in fascinated silence as his finger twisted and extended, turning sharp and black and glistening strangely at the tip. Nick grinned and poked Percival neatly between the eyes, and a red flare went up immediately, the first and last indication of damage in the entire match. Then Nick made a gesture with his left hand and raised Percival back out of the ground, laughing and clapping him on the back as they hugged.
“That was Percival’s eighth attempt to deal with Nicholas’s flawless invisibility spell,” Aiden said, sighing. “It seemed like he was searching for a trace of a shadow this time. Not a bad plan, but it seems Nicholas knows how to deal with that just as well.”
“Has anyone ever beaten him?” I asked, impressed.
“Some few have the ability,” Aiden replied. “Invisibility does not do much against individuals with complete control over the area itself. Percival’s light is as close as he is able to manage with his Evocation, but not enough. Morgan, Sol’s top duelist, has managed to catch him several times by simply filling the entirety of the Arena with water.” Aiden gave me a sideways look. “If you were at your full capacity, you would be well suited to fighting him as well, come to think of it.”
“Why not you, then?” I asked. “Your wall of shadows thing seems like it would be perfect against Nick.”
“It would be, if he didn’t have tricks designed specifically to deal with them. Unfortunately, the first time I fought him I was not at my best, and he started work on mastering my tricks before I could catch him off guard with any of them.”
“Hence you losing repeatedly,” Sam said with a grin. Aiden ignored her.
Nick bounded back out of the Arena, favoring all of us with a cheesy grin. “How’d I do?”
“Your invisibility is as irritatingly successful as always,” Aiden said dryly. “But go ahead—perhaps the first-years are more easily impressed.”
“I didn’t know you used the Change Form,” Sofia said, a smile on her face. “Would you be willing to help teach me how to create things so swiftly as well? That mirror trick was quite impressive.”
“Well, since you asked so nicely, I can hardly say no.” Nick grinned. He turned to me. “Anything?”
“All right,” I admitted, “I get why you’re in charge now. Sorry for doubting you.”
“Apology accepted,” Nick said, stripping off his tunic. Despite how easy he made the match look, his chest was soaked in sweat. For a moment I was distracted by a bead of it running down his abdomen, and then I shook myself out of it. Wow. I glanced over and grinned when I saw Aiden was having similar difficulties with looking away.
“Yes, you were good,” Sam said impatiently. “Can we get food now?”
“Deal,” Nick said and slipped his other shirt back on. “I can always shower after food.”
“Just so long as you sit away from me,” Aiden said, wrinkling his nose.
“You know you like it,” Nick said with a sly grin, and I could have sworn I saw a blush on Aiden’s dusky cheeks. Wow. Sam made a coughing noise that sounded suspiciously like “sexual tension,” and then everyone scurried into motion.
I glanced over at the other side of the Arena, where Percival was currently looking sheepish while being lectured by Morgan. His posture was definitely deferential, and I wondered for a moment just what kind of mage Morgan was.
THE FIRST avenue Sam and I tried for getting information about her mom was going directly to the one thing we knew was connected to her—the ercinee. The Garden had several summoning circles already made in the practice area that also had the cone of silence active, so we went there, made the necessary adjustments, and went to work.
The ercinee manifested with the same flash of light it always did, but it seemed dimmer, somehow, while the sun was still shining out. That didn’t make it any less beautiful, though—the starry black eyes and the gently curving neck and tails of trailing light still made for a mesmerizing picture. Right up until it decided to speak.
“I take it you’ve finally put the pieces together” came the lilting voice in our minds. “Very well. I find the sunlight distasteful—please make this quick.”
“So, to clarify, you were my mom’s familiar,” Sam said, completely on task. “And so you helped her do all of those terrible things?”
“Terrible is in the eye of the beholder, manling called Sam,” the ercinee chided. “I do not consider how I feed to be terrible, but your kind certainly seems to.”
Sam glared at it. “That doesn’t answer my question. Did you help my mom commit these crimes or not?”
The ercinee’s tails twisted around each other. “Yes, but do not be so quick to judge them as crimes.”
“I’m sorry, how could I think of murder as anything other than a crime?” Sam growled. “My mom killed people, plain and simple.”
“I am aware of where we are, you know,” the ercinee echoed, a note of amusement in its tone. “The headmaster here—I assume you are not so foolish as to think he has not killed people. Does this make him a criminal, then?”
“It should,” Sam said bitterly.
“Motive is important, manling, as is power,” the ercinee lilted. “Leanora tried to teach me this many times. I appreciated the effort, but at the end I found I didn’t much care, so long as I was fed. Didas’s station allowed him to get away with crimes that would have jailed most any other. Have you considered that your mother’s motives might have been good, and her persecution was a result of that more than her actions? Or are you so determined to hate her for leaving?” The last sentence was almost an afterthought, and I watched Sam clench her fists.
“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “How do you know that Sam’s mom is gone? Sam, did you tell it that?”
Sam’s head snapped up. “No,” she breathed. “I didn’t.” She glared at the ercinee. “When did you last see her? Tell me!”
“You still haven’t guessed?” Its voice was a mockery of sadness, glee clearly laced through underneath. “Such a pity what happened to her, to see her spirit slowly sapped away. Why, it was as if her very soul was being torn from her body, the way she diminished so rapidly.” The ercinee paused, and if it could smile, I swore it did. “Hers was the most delicious soul I have had the fortune to taste in centuries. And to have it offered to me freely, at that! Truly, I was honored.”
“Sam, don’t!” I grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the circle as she screamed in rage, warped lines of force appearing around her arm, tinged a sickening red. She yanked her arm away from me, and I threw up a wall of earth almost without thinking between her and the ercinee. “Sam, we need it. You can’t attack it, no matter how much it deserves it,” I added, glaring at the smugly floating bird.
“Fine,” Sam spat out, shaking visibly. It took visible effort for her to force away the bloodred light. “I won’t forget that you did this,” she said to the ercinee.
“Nor do I forget that you are prey, same as all of your kind,” the ercinee replied coldly. “But in the interest of ending this sooner, I will tell you the rest. Your mother asked me to take her soul, yes, but she also forced a geas on me to return it. She did not fake her death—she truly died, for the span of a week. She did this because she was being tracked down by the Families, and she knew that they would find her soon, and that you as family would be easy collateral damage. By ‘dying,’ she kept you alive—the Families hate to waste such potential as Leanora’s daughter, after all, and with Leanora dead you were of no use as leverage.” The ercinee’s light dimmed for a moment. “Returning a soul proved most unpleasant, as did her severing of the familiar bond immediately after. I do not know what she did after that, but I know that she still lives. It would, after all, take the likes of a Family head or Didas to be able to kill her, and news of such a fight would have reached even me, as distant as my home may be.”
The ercinee disappeared, and Sam fell to her knees, head bowed. I knel
t gently next to her, a hand on her shoulders as the tears came. “It’s okay,” I said, not knowing what else I could say. “It’s okay.”
“She’s alive. My mom’s alive, and….” Sam looked up, and while she may have been crying, her smile was beautiful. “She left to protect me. She didn’t leave me of her own choice.”
I grinned down at her. “She did. And it sounds like whatever she’s wanted for, we aren’t hearing the full story.”
Sam got back up, wiping away her tears and turning toward me, her honey-brown eyes sparkling. “I have to find her. I have to. Will you help me?”
“Like you even have to ask.”
Chapter Eighteen
PLANNING TO find Sam’s mom and actually making any progress in it were two different things, however. What the ercinee had said indicated that whatever Leanora had done, she’d made some powerful enemies, and somehow I didn’t think it would be a good idea to let them know their enemy’s daughter was digging into their records of her. That meant we had to be sneaky about it, and, bare minimum, that meant not letting the Librarian know about it. Fortunately, we had a friend who had probably spent more time already in the Library than the rest of our class put together.
“What you’re looking for are public records,” Lailah said as she navigated us through the labyrinth of shelves. “I don’t know what your sudden fascination with the Dawn’s Hand is about, but most of the details on her actions aren’t available publicly. The Families keep their own private records in their homes.”
“I figured public records were as good a place to start as any,” Sam explained. “I’m still trying to get a picture of what this person was like. Specifics come later. Speaking of which, how goes that compendium spell you were telling me about?”
“Slowly,” Lailah said, her brow furrowing. “It’s one thing to maintain Synchrony between two objects, but among many at the same time without drawing the energy from yourself? That’s a different matter entirely.” She took an abrupt left, ducking into a section lit only by the flickering torchlight. “Here you go. I stumbled on this section last week when I was looking for the Alexandria case. Criminal files are placed here, sorted in years and then alphabetically in those brackets.”
“Thanks, Lai,” Sam said with a grin. “Let me know if you ever want help with your project. I owe you one.”
“I might take you up on that,” Lailah said with a nod, her braids swaying with the motion. “Enjoy your research.”
I glanced over at the files’ names, skimming them until I came across a thin folder titled “Gray, Leanora.” I pulled it out and handed it over. “Got it.”
“Excellent,” Sam said, pulling out her phone. “Take all the files out of the folder and spread them out on the floor. The less time we spend here, the less suspicious it’ll be.” I did as she asked, and she carefully bent over and snapped a picture of each one of them. “Mind if I set up a board in your room? I trust Lailah, but I don’t think I want her asking why I’m putting string up between case files.”
“Sure.”
“Great, let’s go now.”
What we discovered back in Sam’s room was that the files weren’t much more complicated than the abbreviated list Sam had initially found. What’s more, a lot of what was on them was also heavily redacted, great blocks of black hiding the details.
“These are next to useless,” Sam said, exasperated. “I mean, look at this one. It doesn’t even tell me where, just when. How am I supposed to figure out what my mom was doing burning a building if I don’t even know which building it was?”
“Look for patterns?” I suggested and shrugged when Sam gave me a look.
“Thank you, Captain Obvious.”
“Hey, you’re the cop’s daughter, not me. My parents just gave me video games and books.”
“Fair enough. Pass me that one over there. I want to see if any of the arson files give locations.”
I sat down, and we got to work. Making any sense of the files was slow going, and both of us also had class to deal with. I had my Arena match coming up too. It was against someone from Verdant, a boy named Emerus.
“He’s an elf,” Septimus explained to me during one of our breakfasts together with Sam and Lailah. The four of us ate together fairly often, when Nick or Aiden didn’t command my attention. “I don’t know much about how he fights, unfortunately. Expect good weapons training and nature magic. Probably an animal familiar.”
“Thanks,” I said. It might not have been much to work on, but it was better than nothing, and Septimus could have just as easily said nothing at all. “Guess I need to practice more with my Wards, then.”
My lessons with Speaker Alferon had been going well, but there was a slight problem in that any time I was caught off guard, I reacted with my ice magic before my actual spells. Alferon’s face the first time that had happened was quite something to witness.
“Well,” Alferon said, raising his eyebrows as he took in the glittering wall of ice that had sprung up between me and the vine he’d directed at me. “Points for timing, Feayr, but given what the headmaster has told me, we’re going to have to train that reaction out of you. It is quite impressive, however,” he added, tapping the ice with a finger.
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s just hard to stop doing that when that’s all I did for so long, you know?”
“You’ve had your powers for so long that using them has become second nature,” Alferon said gently. “I won’t fault you for falling back into that now. We just need to work on teaching your subconscious that worded magic works just as well.”
“Right,” I said. “Okay. Let’s try again.”
Infusion Basics had also helped teach me a little about the other ways to use the Form beyond magic. Enchantment was especially cool, and also something I could immediately put to use. Since I couldn’t make weapons from ice for Tyler like I had during the Trials, I needed to prepare his swords for him ahead of time. Sam had given Tyler a set of exercises to keep up with so he wasn’t completely useless with his swords, but to quote her, “as long as he’s good enough to not hurt himself with them, he’s good enough to act as a meat shield for you.” I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but I knew I’d do better with him there, and any advantage I could get to keep myself from using my ice magic was an advantage I had to take.
Tyler came through the door to my room an hour before the match, and Sam ran him through a quick drill to make sure he was still up to fighting. Then Sam ran me through a test to make sure I was still able to work with Tyler. Once I’d proven that I could still extend spells to affect Tyler as well as me, we were ready to go.
Compared to the crowd that Sam and Gwaine drew, there was almost no one in the Arena for my match. Apparently the lower your rank was, the less of a spectacle the match was. I, for one, was pathetically grateful that I didn’t have to know the whole school was going to watch me fail. And that was an honest statement, it really was. I’d been getting better about making stronger Wards, and I’d learned a few new ways to cause trouble with my Infusion magic, but that still didn’t make me the equal of, well, pretty much anyone.
Tyler held my hand tightly as we entered the Arena. I knew that a human familiar wasn’t something that had happened before, but the stares Tyler got when people figured out what he was were… intense, to say the least. But as long as we were here together, I knew we’d manage. Emerus was waiting at the other side of the Arena, with dusky skin and long black hair, and a face that seemed somehow sharper and more streamlined than any human’s could ever be. There was something about the way he held himself that made me wonder if elven anatomy was fundamentally different from human—his knees were bent ever so slightly at rest, and his arms seemed longer than mine, despite being shorter than me. His entire stance made it seem like he was coiled, waiting to spring, and his green eyes watched my every move. The bow strapped to his back looked lethal.
“Are both sides ready?” Speaker Sekhmene called out. Emerus nodded, and
I did as well. “Then begin!”
Learning how to make a mobile Ward had been the biggest challenge of the past week. I could do it with air easily enough at the cost of real effectiveness, and I could manage it with water as well, but trying to make one out of earth that could move wasn’t a puzzle I had solved quite yet. One thing I had managed, however, was to create a Ward that had a little more motion to it, and less solidity.
Emerus had drawn his bow almost immediately, making a gesture with the hand reaching for his arrow just before he grasped one. Vines lashed out of the ground beneath my feet as he loosed an arrow at my head with unerring accuracy. The vines fought through my Ward with minimal difficulty—I hadn’t designed it to hold back persistent force, but as soon as the arrow came within two feet of me, a gust of wind altered its course to shoot harmlessly wide. At least that much had worked. I made some quick alterations to my Ward and forced back the vines as well.
Tyler was already charging toward the elf, swords drawn. When he got within swinging range, Emerus leaped out of the way, firing two arrows at him as he retreated, both of which my Ward sent wide. The drain wasn’t nearly as bad as it would have been if I’d been hardening the air—asking the air to simply make a little wind was a lot less demanding than asking it to harden. I used my extra energy to call the same creature I’d summoned when I was fighting Sam and the homunculus—a cat sídhe . I said the words and pressed my palm against the ground, and a tiny black cat appeared, licking its paw with lazy swipes as it took in the battlefield. I heard a few snickers from my small audience, but they all cut off as the cat swiftly grew to the size of a horse, letting out a growl that set the hairs on my neck standing on end. Emerus’s eyes widened as he took it in, and he let out a sharp whistle, which was answered by the loud baying of—really? Five dappled brown-and-white hunting dogs had appeared out of nowhere, baring their teeth at the cat sídhe and Tyler. The cat continued without hesitation, but Tyler hesitated to raise swords against them.