I looked around and took one more nervous check outside in the direction of the field through the slats. Satisfied, I climbed into the Corolla.
In front of the wall and facing the wall at the back of the barn, he inserted the brush and began painting a rectangle on the wall. He went behind me for something else in the trunk. He returned to the hood of the car and blew some kind of powder from his hand onto the wall. The rectangle he painted on the wall began to peel away, like thinner thrown on paint. He shut the trunk and climbed inside the car. “Please, swallow this,” Cool Luke handed me a piece of wax paper with something wrapped inside. “Please, Grey. You gotta trust me now.”
I unwrapped the paper, finding what resembled a throat lozenge inside. Warning bells sounded from within, but Cool Luke was the guy who didn’t have a collection of letters from the families of people he killed. So far, he was already a much trust worthier individual. I suspended my doubt and swallowed the lozenge.
Almost immediately I began heaving. Cool Luke had not started the car yet, so could not put the window down. I opened the door and retched violently. What I believed to be bits of my morning bagel spewed onto the barn floor. I kept heaving uncontrollably, cursing Triolo, cursing San Francisco, and Atlanta, and Hohenwaled, and Meriwether Lewis. Hoping there would be nothing more left to emit, praying to the written word itself that it would stop, I choked out a black stone onto the ground between the door and the door jamb. I shut the door, and leaned back, tears streaming down my face, wiping mucous onto my soiled shirt.
“Now you’re no longer on his errand, my friend.” Cool Luke started the car and drove forward.
I was not expecting Cool Luke to floor the gas pedal. I jerked back, frantically reaching for my seatbelt, questioning my recent choices yet again.
“Hold on!” he exhorted. Cool Luke sped down the driveway and turned right onto a road going north. He made another right turn onto a dirt road that looked like the only traffic it got was agriculture-related.
Triolo had drugged me the night before last. I wondered how much of what I had done in the time since was actually motivated by my own volition and how much was Triolo pulling my strings. Nevertheless, I was relieved to be out of the reach of the alchemist, and once more in control of my will. I finally felt I was recovering enough to ask some questions. “Where are we…”
“The trivium. The real one,” he cut me off. “The one you went to was a decoy. Made by Meriwether Lewis some 200 years ago.”
“Meriwether Lewis made a decoy trivium? That doesn’t even begin to make sense.” I knew I sounded a little drunk, but I was enervated. I reached in my bag to jot a quick healing spell on my mutinous tummy.
History was a subject I have long enjoyed. As the story goes, Lewis was making his way from St. Louis to Washington, D.C. to meet with Thomas Jefferson. Nothing is known about what that meeting was meant to be about, but it seems there was some tension between Lewis and Jefferson before he made the trip. Also, for whatever reason, Lewis chose to take the Natchez Trace. It was here that according to an innkeeper’s wife, Lewis committed suicide—hence the memorial. There was some research done later to verify if that was, in fact, the case. They even exhumed his body about 50 years later and confirmed it as a suicide.
History, too, was something I always read with a grain of salt, but for some reason never questioned this. I should have—how could a physician rule it a suicide from an autopsy performed when the cadaver was nothing more than a skeleton wearing a wool suit?
“Does that mean he didn’t kill himself?” I wasn’t even sure if Cool Luke knew the answer. But something had led him here to Tennessee. There was a story here. “I’m not going to say you owe me any answers—you don’t. But I’ve come along ways to find them.”
“Even if you came here on someone else’s order?” Cool Luke was slowing down, letting bumps in the road gently rock the vehicle.
“I would have come here no matter what. Now, please…” Though healing, I still felt very weak. Though I was meaning to ask him politely, I knew it came off more as pleading.
“I came to the U.S. with my family eight years ago. I was much older than my brothers, so I did not assimilate, exactly,” he emphasized the last word before continuing, “like they did. My mother was given a job. I tried to go to high school, but found myself not going more days than I did. Minneapolis isn’t just a foreign city to a Somali boy, it is a different planet. I was lost. I started stealing. One day, I stole something from Triolo. He said he would kill me if I did not learn what he had to teach me. Who was I to disagree?” Even though there were not as many potholes, Cool Luke did not accelerate the car.
“He told me how he was exiled beyond the Mississippi, that he chose to live there so he could still see over to the eastern side of it when he wished. In my culture, we do not disbelieve things like Americans do,” he laughed, though it sounded as if it were with a heavy heart. “Sure, Americans believe everyone in the world wants what they have. They believe in Bigfoot; they believe God loves them more than everyone else, but they don’t believe in magic outside of playing the lotto or watching Wheel of Fortune. In Somalia, most do believe. Those who don’t move to America!” This time he was laughing.
“Your mom?” I wondered.
“Yes. The United Nations resettled us. She jumped at the opportunity to leave our home behind. I was old enough to stay, but feared for what this world would do to my brothers.” He shifted the car into park. There was a dirt road to our left, and another about 40 feet away that sealed the triangle of the trivium. In the middle, there was a mossy, stone obelisk about three feet high. He did not get out of the car, so I remained with him, listening. “Triolo was teaching me alchemy, but I began to suspect a darker purpose. He became suspicious of my intentions to leave. I knew his next step was to kill me, rather than free me. I learned how to make homunculi from one of his books. My first one didn’t have to be a good one, because I only meant it to sleep as me. I’ve pretty much already told you the rest.”
I was glad that he told me. In fact, it made me trust him beyond the necessities of the moment. “No, you still haven’t told me why we’re here.”
Cool Luke smiled. It was warm and true. “Because I come here to talk to Hecate.”
This was quite unexpected. I even found myself thinking Cool Luke might be crazy, and that he only imagined himself having conversations with the Greek goddess of sorcery. But I knew it was the truth as soon as he said it. It seemed unlikely that Hecate would be calling Hohenwald, Tennessee her home, but I’m sure it was just as likely that no one would expect Windsor, Connecticut as the home of Athena and several other deities.
“We must show her the box. I have told her about it. She will help.” He turned off the car, opened his door and got out.
“Will we have to wait until nightfall?” I asked, stepping uneasily out of the Toyota.
“A few more hours. You need to rest,” he pointed at me and went to the trunk. He handed me a nutrition bar and a bottle of water. He, himself, had a bar and a bottle of water and drank his bottle completely on his first try.
The flavors of the nutrition bar were accented by my recent upheaval. And they were not very delectable flavors. I drank my water and was handed another one by Cool Luke. He was on his third bottle.
A few hours later, Cool Luke had told me about his childhood in Somalia; some stories about his brothers, and how he hoped they were all safe somewhere, though he would never allow himself to know. He told me about how Triolo trained him in alchemy and how Triolo took a Spartan approach. That is, physical chastisement was frequent, but only for getting caught doing something incorrectly, never for what he studied. It was this approach that allowed Cool Luke to study certain spells like the homunculus without Triolo ever knowing.
I felt some trepidation telling him some things, but confided in him about my own potential apprentice, Joy. I even told him about our recent battle with rEvolve, though I left out such details as the location of
the Well of Gods, and other choice details that would elicit more questions than they were worth. I also told him how important it was to find Gavin. Though I told him this not to impress him, I think he was taken with my dedication to a friend I only barely knew.
The sun was about an hour from setting when I felt I could grill him for anything he might now about the magoi and the box.
“Mostly, that’s why we are here. We’ll ask the goddess. She will tell us what we need to do with it,” Cool Luke leaned onto the hood of his Corolla, picking at his fingernails.
I was sitting on the passenger side seat, door open. “I need to ask you what you know about the magoi,” I stood up and poured some water over a patch on the door I thought my vomit had hit. I faced him, even though his back was to me. “The box has inscriptions from six different disciplines of magic. I know of only four: logomancy, arithmancy, musimancy, and alchemy. I think two of the sides represent more schools of magic. Do you know anything about that, by chance?”
He said that sound like an uhm before turning to look at me over his shoulder without actually turning his body, almost as if sizing me up. He thought for a few moments before he swiveled around to face me. “What I say now I only put together from puzzle pieces he would say from time to time. Triolo was a hitman for the Vitelli Family. But he had grown up in New York City foster homes. When he turned 40, he sought out his birth mother out. He found her. She is the one that taught him the magic of alchemy, that even his name, Triolo, was itself tied to his ancestry in magic, for it means the number three.”
I shut the door and went to sit near him on the hood of the car. “Let me guess—his mother had no idea what kind of person her son had grown up to be?”
“No,” he started to pick at his fingernails again; a seeming nervous tick. “She knew. She was like him. That was why she put him into foster care—so he would actually survive into adulthood, I think.”
This explained some of what made Triolo tick: nature and nurture for sure. “Is she still alive?” I asked.
“He killed her. I think for some kind of bloodspell, but don’t ask me what that is. Only ever mentioned it once. Explained nothing. He may have wanted to use me for the same thing. Maybe. Anyway, after six years, stories do come up.” The sun was now sliding beneath the trees. Cool Luke got off the hood, walked a few paces, and turned to look me in the eyes. “I also know that another mage exiled him beyond the Mississippi.”
I had hoped it was my father, but even as I thought it, I knew the timing and geography was not correct. “Someone from New York? Who or what kind of mage?”
“He was from somewhere in the Adirondack Mountains. I heard his name but once. When I left Minneapolis, I went searching for him, but the Adirondacks is a very large area and a very easy place to hide.” Cool Luke waved me toward the obelisk and started to walk with me at his side. “He found me. Eventually. Left me a note telling me to come here to Tennessee to consult the goddess of the three-way crossroads—the goddess of sorcery herself—and he told me to wait, because help would soon arrive. I also heard his whispers from the earth itself when Triolo crossed over the Mississippi. Some kind of terrestrial alarm was tripped.”
“Oh.” I was left to conclude that I was meant to be that source of help.
Chapter 6
The sun was now completely out of sight, but the moon was fully shining, making me think that time had a strange way of elapsing at this trivium. Maybe all of them were like that, however many that may be.
Out of nowhere, a woman came into view. That is, a woman with three faces arranged to face each direction. Historically speaking, what little art remained of her in the world seemed reasonably accurate as to how she portrayed herself.
“Hurry, now.” The goddess’ voice also seemed to meld three voices into one strange ethereal echo.
Cool Luke, apparently was on good terms with her and handed her a pack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups from his back pocket. “I hope they are not too melted. They have been in my trunk.”
The face of the goddess that looked at us smiled amiably. “Grey Theroux. First, I must thank you Well-Keeper. I am only able to speak with other goddess in my network of trivia, but I have heard your story and what you have done for my kind.”
I smiled and nodded, as you’re welcome wasn’t exactly something I was inclined to say at that moment.
“You should know, every time a magos uses magic, I know it. I feel it.” The last sentence seemed to come from another mouth and put me ill-at-ease. “For instance, I know that the alchemist has concocted a substance to enhance his sense of smell. He is trying to smell where you went.”
This prompted me to speak: “How soon do we have before he catches our scent?”
Again she smiled, unworried. “The winds are blowing in the opposite direction. He will not find you until the winds shift—and then some time after.” Her playful attitude seemed to suggest it was her doing that kept the winds blowing to the west.
“Goddess, Cool Luke has told you about this box,” I gathered it out of my bag and handed it over to her. “Can you tell us it what it is?”
The goddess turned it over in her hands, though she did not appear to look at any of the inscriptions. “The magos who brought me here and closed off this trivium possessed this box, so I have seen it, though never held it. It was forged in iron a half a millennium ago by six magoi.”
“Meriwether Lewis was the one who brought you here, who possessed the box?” I asked, eager to solve this centuries-old mystery.
“Yes. Lewis was the geomancer. The box was forged by The Triginta to protect its wielder and to make any spell sealed within ultimately potent.” She turned the box over again, tracing some of the etchings with her finger.
“The Triginta?” I hoped Hecate would finally have an answer about the supposed thirty.
She passed her index finger over one of the sides, still not looking at the chest. “Yes, these pictograms were made by various practitioners from the 30 mages who made up the Triginta at that time.”
“So even then, this cabal or secret wizard counsel was exerting its will?” I pleaded, desperate for any clues about who these people were. “Who are these 30?”
“The only 30, Grey Theroux,” this voice came from one of Hecate’s other faces. It almost had the effect of living in an old Kung-Fu-movie with comically-timed dubbed audio. “This is the law of the magoi. There must never be more than 30 mages between the disciplines at a time. This was why Meriwether Lewis was murdered here. His apprentice completed the cycle and was to take his place.” Hecate turned the box over to its bottom side, did not examine, and declared, “these symbols relate to your discipline.” She went through each side, labeling each magic. “These,” she pointed, “are from the arithmancer. “These markings here,” she held up the side opposite to the arithmancy side, “represent musimancy.” She turned it over and spoke directly to Cool Luke, “these markings here, Kuluc, you should recognize as being alchemic, though this script is not often used. And these,” she lifted a bony finger to one of the sides I did not recognize, “are geomancy.”
She had one side left, and I found myself giddy with anticipation. “The last one? The last side, Goddess?”
“These were etched,” she held the last side up for me to analyze, “and were made by an extinct discipline.”
Her explanation of the box was exactly what we sought, though I still was not anywhere near satisfied with the brief explanation of The Triginta. Was this a cabal? Should I have a membership card? If I were to complete Joy’s training cycle, as she put it, would I be murdered? If I did not already know that my dad was murdered by the sycophant, Dr. Linden, from rEvolve, would he have been murdered by The Triginta? Those questions would wait...
“Goddess, I need this box to find the arithmancer, Gavin Moniz. How will I be able to open it?” This was the question I had been dying for months to ask…whomever: how can I find Gavin?
“You should know that there are parts o
f the world that delve into the shadow utterly and completely,” she started.
“Like the Shadow Mill in San Francisco,” I was taken aback that she did not realize I was there and that I had drawn upon my magic there.
“I do not see or feel that shadow plane. I do know, however, that its very nature serves to enhance magic.” Hecate summoned shapes from the air, like wisps of smoke and formed a globe, with the continents of the earth perfectly represented. It was not static, either, and rotated on its airy axis. A few moments went by and Hecate pointed at the globe as if to stop its imaginary spin, and let her finger turn it around to show us where she was pointing. “Many centuries ago, when this world was not at all hospitable to practitioners of magic, many retreated to the shadows and built a village there.”
Hecate’s finger was on Great Britain. I leaned in closer for another look and saw her nail was on what looked to be its western side. “Isle of Man?”
She shook her head. “Yes. The village’s name is Bereft. If you have been to the Shadow Mill, you will know how to enter. Its entrance is near Cashtal yn Ard.”
I still had one last question to ask of her. “Goddess, the language representing logomancy. I recognize it, though I know of no way to interpret it. Do you know how?”
This time the goddess did not smile. “He is trying to change the winds, this alchemist. Grey, you know whom you must ask. It is one of the Greek tongues. You know the mother of the Greek tongues, do you not?”
Will of Shadows: Inkwell Trilogy 2 (The Inkwell Trilogy) Page 6