Will of Shadows: Inkwell Trilogy 2 (The Inkwell Trilogy)

by Aaron Buchanan

  “Yeah. If I have to. But I will tell you this,” I sat up from the bed, putting the phone down to stretch. “I’ve been in that area before. Not too close to Howenwald, but once, when I was 12 or 13, my dad took me with him to a town outside Chattanooga. He was looking up this sighting of a ‘Tennessee Wild Man,’ but I think he wasn’t being up front with me about that part.”

  “Bigfoot. Yeah. Heard of that.” Joy’s voice sounded muffled, like she was holding her phone between shoulder and chin.

  “Yeah. Another variation on Bigfoot.” I was not aware Joy was versed in the legends of Bigfoot. “Most of the time, these things are manifestations of The SUB that get labelled Bigfoot. Dad usually ignored this stuff, but not this time.”

  “So, what was it?” Joy asked.

  “Shh. I’m getting there. So, I was 12 and the mountains just outside of Chattanooga have an almost mystical quality. Well, they did back then. Anyway, they’re not like the Green Mountains we’re used to in Vermont. Pretty. But pretty weird, too.” I remembered first getting there and thinking it was all painted by a landscape artist.

  “Everything was fine. Until my dad checked me into a bed & breakfast and he went out at night, but told me not to go outside. So, the first few nights I had no problem staying inside…” I recalled how the proprietors thought me peculiar because I was left alone and not only did I make no trouble for them in the least, I never made one complaint about television or video games or any other trappings of early adolescents. I even remember what books I read those nights: Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Hemingway’s Farwell to Arms, and a tattered copy of Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End. When I finished those in the first three days, I had nothing left to read. The owners gladly offered me their King James Version of the Bible. It was not my first time through it, but I was knowledgeable enough to skip over the superfluous sections of genealogies and other extraneous information.

  “But by that fourth night, my dad left again and I was starting to go stir-crazy...” Back home in Springfield, I felt perfectly comfortable walking around after dark. It was never ideal, but there were times, especially in the summers, I would be out past dark and could safely see my way back home. “So I went out and it wasn’t until then that I noticed just how far from civilization I was. There was a small town a few miles away, but it didn’t really matter. I felt fear the moment I stepped out. Still, I remember thinking if there were any cars, I’d just duck down into a ditch or hop into the woods behind a tree.

  “Okay, Grey, but what’s this have to do with—”

  “Shhh!”

  “Ugh. Fine. I’ll be patient.” Joy feigned offense, but seemed to be in a genuinely good mood. Maybe she could point me in the direction to that java she was drinking.

  “So, because it’s the mountains, the driveway was long with a decent slope downward. I finally stepped foot on the road…” I actually remember losing any sense of admiring the natural beauty of the area. The tapestry of land that looked painted by an adept artist’s hand in the daylight, looked twisted in the dark. The moonlight was minimal, and the trees and the mountains looked wicked and fearsome.

  “Grey?” Joy knocked me from my momentary reverie. “What happened next, Grey?”

  “It was everywhere.” I finished.

  “Uhm…what? What was everywhere?” she asked.

  “The blackness.” And my dad was out in it. “Anyway,” I wasn’t really sure why I was telling her the story or even why I was remembering those moments with such clarity, but I did not want to delve into any of the details. Honestly, it was difficult to even quantify what I meant. “Anyway, next thing I remember I was under my covers, re-reading Childhood’s End for the umpteenth time.”

  Joy remained quiet on the line for just a moment. “So, the moral of the story is this Hohenwald place is some kind of creepy. But it has to be where this other trivium is, right?”

  “Well, no…” I wondered if that was an underlying motivator? “Maybe.”

  “Then?” Joy prompted me to finish my story. Or highlight the point. I wasn’t quite sure what it was.

  “It’s not the same area. It’s far enough away. Just saying it wouldn’t be much to think there’s some weirdness going on there.” I looked at the map on my tablet, calculating the distance between where I was and where I was about to go. “Probably nothing, though. Really.”

  “Ha,” Joy faked a laugh. “You’re so convincing. Okay. Touch base with me later. Let me know what you find. And that you’re safe.”

  Once past Chattooga, I diverted from Interstate 24 onto US 64. The scenery brought forth the memories of that trip in cascades. Wherever we were back then, it was to the east of Chattanooga, and I felt I may have purposely forgotten the name of the town where we were. These days, I had no problem taking care of myself in the dark. This girl had tools of the trade, though I knew better than to be overconfident. I had taken too much care recently to put myself into harm’s way—even if that was what I had done with Triolo. That was a necessary risk. Even now, this was necessary, even if I had no idea where I was going or what I would do once I got there.

  Maybe, just maybe, Triolo would be there waiting for me like he said he would be.

  I turned onto the Natchez Trace Parkway a little after noon, still some 20 miles away from my destination. Cell phone reception was already horribly sketchy, so I opted to pull over and buy a real map before I came to Natchez Trace. I didn’t really need it, as the trivium was close enough to the Meriwether Lewis National Monument, I could navigate from there, but felt it more prudent.

  Just off the Natchez Trace, I found the monument in the back end of a picnic area. There was an anachronistic version of the Grinder House and 200 yards away, the monument itself. I was also pleased that the landscape did not seem quite as severe here, compared to what I experienced those years ago outside of Chattanooga. I parked my rental in the roundabout that circled the monument to Meriwether Lewis. I would have to go the rest of the way on foot. The Natchez Trace made up one side of this trivium. On the other side of the park that held the monument was a footpath set apart by a split-wood fence, dubbed Old Trace. I followed it until I reached another path that led down the ridge, finishing the triangle of the trivium. There was nothing there. There was the fence, last fall’s dense blanket of leaves on the ground, and a few markers that indicated the path.

  Lewis’ monument was several hundred feet back. Unlike the trivium in Athens, this spot did not declare itself as separate. It was about four or five times smaller than that of the New York-one, but that trivium had a funny way of declaring itself. Here, there was nothing that gave any sign that it was a location of magical significance. The location was altogether underwhelming. The ridges and hollows that made up the road and paths did not match what I envisioned in my mind. Furthermore, it did not seem connected to magic in the least.

  Something was not adding up.

  I trekked back to my car to examine the map, decided to walk back to the location, then back to my car once more. I still had no signal on my cell phone, or I would have called Joy to…well, I wasn’t quite sure how Joy was going to make this location suddenly meaningful. I was so very positive this was where I would need to be.

  I was about to return to my rental once more, but saw something in my peripheral vision. I knew that down the ravine to my left, there would be a creek. At first I thought what I saw was some sort of animal life—a dog or maybe a deer, as I had seen many deer already on the Natchez Trace. There was more movement once I decided to get my map out of my Smythson’s satchel and pore over it like a confused tourist while trying to catch a glimpse of what I had seen. I felt horribly exposed so decided to write the incantation to conjure my mirror-self. The incantation itself was complex, requiring multiple layers, patterns, and my most ancient languages. Enochian, I loathe to admit, was one of them, giving it a historical provenance that I would have scoffed at months before. Once fashioned, I slipped the full-sheet of paper into the scuba jacke
t of my duplicate. Maneuvering her is best compared to a puppeteer tugging the strings of a marionette. Though, done with one’s mind and while grasping the duplicate master sheet in the palm of my hand.

  I was somewhere between the paranoia of being shot at by some rEvolve groupie like I had been in New York and hoping that it was Triolo was crouched in the bushes, sizing me up for whatever reason. I had my mirror-self start to walk back to the monument and the car once more. Once out of sight, I used spit to erase the spell from my skin and, hidden behind a large oak, I wrote another pattern to cloak myself.

  As hair-brained as it was, it seemed to work. The figure lying in wait on the slope to the creek rose up and began to follow a version of me that wasn’t actually there. The spy was about six-feet tall, bald, with dark skin. I wondered if he followed me back to my car the first time, or if he was only just now curious or worried enough to tail me.

  Whoever he was, it was obvious this was not something he was used to doing. What’s more, it was astoundingly easy for me to follow him. Was this some guy Triolo tipped off to meet me here? Why did he simply not introduce himself?

  He hurried his pace, fearing he had lost me, or rather, my doppelganger. I reached in my bag to remove a Post-It. Walking while writing, even a simple triangular incantation was never ideal, but he stopped once he got to the clearing with the Meriwether Lewis monument and looked around. He stared at my now obviously empty car and turned around to walk back. Instead, he found himself staring cross-eyed at a sticky-note as I placed it right on his forehead to put him to sleep.

  The mystery man did not fall asleep. In fact, his eyes, were white and glassy, lacking both pupils and irises. Whatever his eyesight, he was within my field of magic and saw me perfectly. He swung wildly. I blocked, but fell over and rolled a few feet away from him so he could, hopefully, no longer see me. He was already running back to the clearing. I picked myself up along with the Post-It note lying on the ground, thinking in my haste, I must have screwed up the spellwork. It was messy, but quite legible. And correct.

  Whoever he was, the sleeping spell did not work on him. And now I had to chase him.

  Like a sword, a word can wound or kill, but as long as one does not touch the blade, the sword is no more than a smooth piece of metal. Someone who knows the qualities of a sword does not play with it, and someone who knows the nature of words does not play with them.”

  —Musashi Miyamoto, The Book of Five Rings

  “Lately, I’ve come to believe that when facing down the past, it is much like having to face Medusa. Stare at it too intently, you’ll turn to stone. Face it with a mirror, it’s going to stay frozen in the past.”

  —Joy Hansen

  Bar Sinister 1600

  It had been a longer night than he had yet experienced. He was spent, body-and-soul.

  The cries of terror from the populace were enough to addle his brain, leaving him bone-weary and with a blistering ache in the back of his skull.

  Francis was befuddled.

  There were no creatures to track—just trails of blood and sometimes limbs. There were no matters of evidence, no modus operandi, no logic. Even the cycles of the moon offered no explanation.

  There was only a body count.

  The queen had promised a knighthood upon solving the crisis, but he did not trust her to fulfill the terms. Besides, knighthoods did little to put food in his belly or a roof over his head, but he wasn’t entirely reliant upen his wits for subsistence these days. He had his brother for both wit and income.

  Francis Bacon found himself standing, staring into the dark of night with only a small nub-of-a-candle. The morning sun would ascend within the hour, but he heard something that worried him. Instead of rushing to the door of the cottage to investigate, he went to his laboratory. There, he kept his vials.

  He had burned through four that evening alone. Two for brigands of the human variety. Two for something even now he could not explain. Still, he was entirely certain his alchemy had saved his life and the lives of those around him. Instead of blood and limbs, the abbey could have been turned into a charnel of bones and the dismembered citizenry of Westminster.

  He put the candle nub down and reached for the glowing green-yellow vial and dashed to the door.

  He did not wait to even see if his suspicion was unfounded—he threw the vial on to the cobblestone walkway. The entire area around the cottage illuminated with the green-yellow light magnified a thousand times over.

  At first, Francis thought the sun had come up, but after batting his eyes several times to adjust to the light exposure, he knew it was the alchemic phosphorus providing the light. The sun was yet to crest the horizon.

  He did, however, smell something.

  It was not altogether an unpleasant odor, but the more he breathed it in—through the alchemic phosphorus, of course—his lungs filled with dread. It was something he smelled the previous night in the abbey. There were pools of blood around only a hand that, Francis surmised, belonged to the missing vicar. He had not realized what he was smelling: it was a musty, dank smell, much like an old cellar filled with books. Francis had seldom visited Westminster Abbey, so had no reason to question it.

  But outside his cottage, he knew the smell to be something else entirely. It did smell of must and even a little bit of rot. But there was more. In fact, it was his skills in perfumery that first led Queen Elizabeth to call upon him.

  Jasmine. There was a perfume-like quality to the scent. Or there was perfume masking a scent.

  Francis Bacon walked back into the college and shut the door. Outside his window, he could see the spell wearing off, and in its place the bright glow of the sun peaked over the eastern roofs.

  He would inform William about this. He had already spoken with Master Dee who was, as they both were, perplexed.

  Something was coming to head and all the alchemy he could conjure did not seem to be able to conjure enough illumination to find the murderers or, indeed, just how much peril they all stood to face.

  I can’t stand this indecision

  Married with this lack of vision

  Everybody wants to rule the world

  Say that you’ll never, never, never need it

  One headline, why believe it?

  Everybody wants to rule the world

  All for freedom and for pleasure

  Nothing ever lasts for ever

  Everybody wants to rule the world.

  —Tears for Fears, Everybody Wants to Rule the World

  Chapter 4

  I took off at full speed toward the seemingly false trivium. Though I was trying to sprint, my satchel was flapping against my body so hard that it not only made it too difficult to get up to speed, but also made too much noise as it slapped at my hip and arm.

  I came to the convergence of trails and looked around. Wherever he was, he was nowhere I could see. I performed a foot-trace spell and again it revealed nothing, though I knew he had come down this path. My magic was not working like it should with him. Short on time to catch any glimpse of his retreat, I decided to head toward the hill that led down to the creek where I had originally seen him.

  The slope down was sharp since I avoided the trail. I tumbled down, catching and scratching myself against sticks, leaves, then small stump. By the time I stopped sliding, I was landing in a patch of mud next to the creek. Even from some distance, my mystery man had to have heard my fall. Thankfully, it was just my face and hands now covered in mud. The rest of me was relatively dry, though my hands were covered in scrapes and blood from the careless way I descended into the ravine. I knew from the dull throb on my tailbone, there was a good chance I had broken that, too.

  I wiped my face on my shirt and looked at the ground. My Smythson satchel was, miraculously, only a few feet away from me, caught up on a sapling that now had no hope of surviving, thanks to me. Its craftsmanship proved extraordinary, in that there wasn’t even a scuff on the leather. I slung it back over my shoulder as I scanned the
area for a trace of the spy. It was just muddy enough to see real tracks just off to my left. I followed the creek, silently cursing the fact I had only packed one pair of shoes as these would already be unsalvageable. As the creek bed widened and a few hundred feet in, I lost track of the stranger’s footprints. I looked to my immediate left to see if this was where the stranger climbed up, but there was nothing to indicate he had. To my right, I looked frantically at the opposite side of the creek. It took me a few moments, but I saw sloppy prints from where he had obviously slogged across and up the hillside.

  I took a step backward, wondering if there could be any traps, but realized that even though he had a head start on me, there was no time to have set any booby traps. I hoped there were no traps pre-set and crossed the creek. At its deepest, it was only calf-high and came out the other side thinking about the trip back to the car with these spongy, water-logged boots. The slog up the other side of the mountain—and the exertion I was putting myself refused to acknowledge what was technically a hill as anything less than a full-fledged mountain.

  My chest heaving from the steep run, I suddenly thought better than to merely pop my head above the crest of the hill, so army-crawled up to peer over.

  I reached in my bag and fetch out a pair of sunglasses I had etched with logomancy—a trick I had picked up from Gavin—so that I could see further distances like a magical pair of binoculars. I looked around and saw nothing. Whatever my mysterious stranger was, he seemed immune to my magic. Or mostly immune.

  I had the idea to scrape my etchings off this pair of sunglasses and write something in that would help me to see in the magical spectrum. I felt around for something that would enable to make form the words and patterns small enough since I had made the other etchings so large over the lenses. I settled on breaking the zipper off my jeans and using its edge.