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

by Aaron Buchanan

  Gavin’s lips pursed. He did not expect to get both of us. What Spahr said was true. They didn’t care about Cool Luke or Shred. Shred’s hair was long, and in the rain they might have thought he was me. His hair may have saved his life. He still wore the shirt I warded, but had it been a headshot…

  I was trembling.

  But that was part of my current ruse. I thought about sobbing, but thought Gavin might look at me too closely. As it was, I could use shudders and shivers to cover the movements my pen knife was making on the ropes.

  Spahr came into the tent. “We have it. It’s there, just as they said it would be.”

  “Of course it is. I haven’t known Selene long, but she is trustworthy. She knows her mage lore, that’s for certain.” Gavin was fully engaged in talking with Spahr.

  I heaved back and forth to loosen the ropes enough I might be able stretch out of them. I was almost there, but hesitated, eager to hear what Spahr had to say.

  Gavin looked back at me and then to Spahr and then sidled up to where I was laying. “You see, there’s this box. Whatever gets dropped inside goes to the other world. And unless one knows an exit, the word is—that person, or being—” he emphasized, “stays there.”

  He stared at me with eager enthusiasm. He was desperate for me to join. “Grey, I know you looked for me. I know that your loyalty is what brought you here. It’s time to come in out of the cold. Learn everything your father denied you.”

  It was an odd moment, because it was just the kind of temptation he knew would pique my curiosity: information about my family and even about logomancy itself.

  “You should know—it was Shakespeare himself who culled the magoi down to the thirty who make up The Triginta. It was done because magic was tearing new holes between this world and that shadow world. They wrote about it back then, Grey. Letters to him, from him. They sacrificed their own number to save their world.” He stood up, not breaking eye-contact. “We have to do the same to save our species.”

  Gavin grabbed Shred by his hair and dragged him out of the tent. Given that his legs were tied together at the ankles, he had no recourse but to hop until he fell over, ripping out a patch of hair. It wasn’t Gavin who dragged him along the ground next, but rather the guard who initially brought him to the tent.

  Their attention was focused on what was occurring and I, too, was allowed to hop out of the tent to witness what they intended, but only after I reached into my bag for a Sharpie.

  The guard picked Shred up by his waistline and threw him into the hole and near the object found when I first arrived.

  “Put him in the sarcophagus,” Spahr ordered and the both the armed guard and the one dragging Shred climbed down the ladder.

  I had no idea what the plan was, but this clearly was not something Shred intended to happen. I broke free of the loosened ropes hiding me and immediately wrote the cloaking incantation on my palm.

  Just then, someone shot at me.

  I rolled to the side and out from under the canopy, hoping to work spellcraft in the mud that surrounded the site.

  Korez saw me and heaved his bloody axe down at my feet with such savagery, I thought for certain he was going to amputate—or at least split my lower legs down the middle.

  “BACK UP! NOW!” he said, even as he pulled me further from the canopy and into the torrents of rain coming from the sky. He jumped over me to protect me from what happened next.

  There was a concussive blast that would have knocked me down to ground had I not already been there. Had Korez not been covering me, I also likely would have been knocked unconscious. It was not the sound of a bomb or an improvised device, but something both sonic and magical.

  Cool Luke was using his alchemy.

  Korez let me up. Though he was covering me when the spell occurred, I still felt woozy.

  I saw Korezeloth’s grotesque jawline moving up and down indicating he was speaking, but the ringing in my ears muffled what he was saying. And reading lips was just not an option. I stuck my little fingers in both ears and waited several seconds before removing them. Korez looked at me patiently, slung his axe over his shoulder, and decided it wasn’t worth waiting for.

  I followed him as he bent down and used one hand to snap the neck of the nearest individual. I was weirdly grateful I could not make out the sound he made as he did it to each unconscious body around the central pit.

  “Not leaving a trail. Unfortunately, I had to leave a trail outside of here,” I finally heard Korez say. He was already on his sixth or seventh human. I assuredly was not about to lecture or attempt to hinder a millennia-old demon on the morality of his actions. These people had every intention of killing Cool Luke and Shred—and likely me once I refused to fall in line with The Cor. I might feel badly about it later, but not then. He was methodical.

  Finally, Cool Luke shimmered into view and I realized my cloaking spell was still applied. I used spit to clear it, but the Sharpie was still present. I used my pen-knife to cut across one of the Greek words and broke the spell.

  “Grey,” Cool Luke looked forlorn. “I can’t find Shred.”

  I looked back at Korezeloth. “Korez—the one to your left in the white is Gavin. Please don’t kill him. Yet.” I turned back to Cool Luke, “Right—they threw him into the pit.”

  “I just looked down there. There are two men. One sarcophagus. The sarcophagus is empty.” Cool Luke went to the ladder and climbed down for, apparently, the second time.

  As I descended, I finally heard the rain let up. I would not have noticed, except I heard the distinct crack of another neck from above us. Judging by where Korezeloth was standing, it had to have been Spahr’s.

  I saw the bodies of the two men who went into the hole with Shred.

  “The sarcophagus. I left it open?” Cool Luke stepped up to its edge and began pushing one of its corners.

  He didn’t know. He hadn’t heard.

  Anything that gets put inside goes to the shadows of the other world. The sarcophagus itself was covered in yet another alphabet which I did not recognize. It was more ornate than the lines and slashes of cuneiform and contained no pictograms like in hieroglyphics or the glyphs on the Phaistos Disc. There were definitive pictograms on the lid of the sarcophagus that gave no indications what they might have meant. No suns. No rivers. No soldiers. No nobles. Nothing else to help decrypt the symbols around the sarcophagus.

  I stood at the other corners and put my weight against the slab that went over the top to push it off. It did not need to be opened very far to see that it was empty.

  Tears were coming down involuntarily before I even had the chance to realize what was happening.

  My throat tightened and I felt the muscles in my neck constrict. There was a lump there that I just couldn’t manage to swallow past.

  Shred was gone.

  Korezeloth looked down at us from the ladder. “Where’d he go? Are you even sure he’s down there?” Gavin hung over his shoulder like a sheep-skin over a caveman.

  “He’s gone. He,” I pointed to the lump hanging on Korez, “said that whatever goes into the box never comes out again.” I climbed up the ladder, feeling Cool Luke holding the base as I ascended. “He’s in the darkness of the shadow world.” I was struck by not only the sadness, but the palpable fear I felt recollecting my experience in Bereft.

  Still, I had my wits about, like Korez told me to before. “Cool Luke—use your phone to take as many photos of the sarcophagus as you can.”

  “What shall I do with this sack of shit?” Korez inquired, pointing to Gavin.

  I shrugged. He had information, but he was blinded now. And he was dangerous.

  I shrugged again, turning the decision over in my mind. I spent much of the past several months looking for him. Thinking I was rescuing him. Maybe I did need to rescue him; from himself. Or maybe…

  “Can you lower him into the pit?”

  I found Cool Luke’s eyes resting upon mine. Was he pleading? Or was this what he was
thinking too?

  “Shred is…” I refused to say gone. “Shred is elsewhere because of him. Help me put him in the sarcophagus. Wherever Shred may be, he’s going to have Gavin to help him get out.”

  Gavin said the parent group of rEvolve was something called The Entelechy. Gavin would no longer be trying to reach his, or what he thought was his potential. I could very well be condemning Gavin to death. While I did feel remorse, it was unlike that which I read about in my books. I knew that killing an enemy was often the choice the hero rarely made because there was some kind of taint to such actions; it demeaned the hero. Surely this was different and I wasn’t demeaning myself? Gavin, hopefully, would assist Shred on the other side while I would help from this world.

  “Quickly, now. I see headlights in the distance,” Korez warned.

  The moral complexities of the moment, I would have to stave off. I needed to bury doubts and remorse just as I needed to bury Gavin. “Help me shut the lid.” Cool Luke did as ordered. I rested my forehead on its edges, arms stretched out along its length; pleading with the universe that this plan would work. “Okay. Nudge it open with me.”

  We both used our palms to push, sliding it forward enough that I could see inside. Gavin was gone as hoped. As I feared.

  We slid the top back on, taking care to make it flush and climbed out of the pit. I could see, further from the center, there were pieces of people lying in the mud, making the blood almost indistinguishable—like in an old black-and-white movie. I made spells around entire areas of body parts and let the mud gulp it down like some starved, man-eating creature.

  I turned to see Cool Luke joining us in time to see two pinpricks of light coming over the horizon toward us.

  Cool Luke and both followed Korezeloth back to his SUV.

  It only just occurred to me to question Gavin about what he meant by saying Shakespeare was the one who culled the magoi and began The Triginta.

  Maybe he’d even have known how my family was involved?

  Chapter 21

  Korezeloth parted ways with us in Ankara. We exchanged telephone numbers, but he gave me no guarantees when he would be back in Springfield, but promised to be on standby in case we needed him.

  For that matter, I didn’t even know when I would be back in Springfield. Going home was something to be dreaded. At least going back to the cabin-turned-villa on Island Lake staved off the dread in the short-term. Still, I texted Athena, Victoria, and Joy each what had happened at Gobekli Tepe, including some cursory information about what Gavin had said regarding Saul, The Cor, and The Entelechy. Joy was the only one to respond with an “Ok. We’ll talk later, right?”

  Cool Luke and I each got rooms. Once in my room, I contemplated turning on the television to see if Cheers was also syndicate in Turkish, but thought better of it. Instead, I decided to sulk outside of the hotel. It wasn’t that I was looking for the company of people, but being around people seemed like the only thing that might assuage the grief and guilt with which I currently wrestled.

  Before I realized it, I was knocking on Cool Luke’s door. I heard him from beyond the door before he finally opened it wide enough to let me come inside.

  “Come. Step over the powder on the floor, though, please. It’s the same stuff I used back…” Cool Luke didn’t finish the statement. We would need more time and more distance put between us and what happened at Gobekli Tepe.

  On the drive back, I had used the scrying chest to divine Shred’s whereabouts. It gave no reply, no matter how much blood I fed it.

  “Good thinking. I should probably do the same.” Not only had we covered our tracks fairly well, there was a good chance we had taken out all—or nearly all—members of The Entelechy currently in Turkey. They might not have the resources to track us any further. Still, it was the smart move.

  “Come with me. I don’t want to stay in the hotel.” My plea was flat and without affect, therefore hardly making it a plea at all.

  “Of course, Grey—I am a friend. A real one, I promise you.” Cool Luke put the tray of vials he held down on the bed and came to me and hugged me.

  It was the kind of move I would have expected from Joy, but not from him. I hitched a few times, but steeled myself and walked out the door. Doorway open, back to Cool Luke, I asked, “Please?”

  The one word was more earnest than anything I had yet said to him. He followed me into the hall and shut his door.

  We decided to eat. Cool Luke suggested a traditional Turkish meal, but it wasn’t anything I could get excited about. Still, I was hungry. In fact, I didn’t even remember the last time I had eaten before that. It may have been the airline food on the way over. That, and the lack of sleep, may well have been contributing to my dour outlook.

  Near the capital, we actually found a restaurant with traditional British cuisine—fish and chips seemed perfectly okay with me—and who even had a few large flat screened televisions showing various soccer matches and a BBC news channel.

  As we waited for our meal, Cool Luke broke the silence. “We have more answers than when we got here. And you found out about your friend’s fate. That has to help a little, yes?”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. There was no taking the sting out of it. “Right. But…”

  I told Cool Luke what Gavin had said about The Entelechy.

  “I know. I heard this. How he claimed to have seen documents that indicate...” Cool Luke must have been hiding nearby when Gavin explained and tried to recruit me. “…up the creek shit. You think what he said is true?”

  “I have no doubts that it is true. Even if he was purposely misinforming us, it’s entirely too plausible. And, if The Entelechy have access to those kind of documents, then they are more far-flung, and have a longer reach than we could have imagined.” Meanwhile, our food arrived: I ordered a curry with chicken. Now, though, all I could managed to do was move it around my plate, even if I was famished.

  Cool Luke gulped down some of his—he ordered the same—but stopped when he noticed me staring at my dish. “You feel guilty, of course. And you fear he’s right. Any action is better than not doing anything?”

  On the television screen behind Cool Luke, someone from the team wearing a red jersey with baby blue stripes just scored a goal those wearing white with a blue strip across the breast. I took in the revelry, hoping to one day feel such mindless adulation.

  “Yes,” I finally replied. “I am only compelled to help protect the gods because so many of them cannot protect themselves. And, for all that I have experienced, they have only shown me kindness and friendship.” The action on the screen behind Cool Luke started once more, my eyes following the ball, but not really what was happening.

  “Then how can you possibly be in the wrong for helping to protect your friends? How could you do otherwise and not be a monster?” he asked.

  “Gavin was my friend. I should have protected him, too. But that’s not it, really. The way he acted. The way he spoke. He was hiding something. Trying not to divulge too much.” Though I couldn’t muster the will to eat, I took a long drink of the bottled water in front of me. “It’s like what happened at Cevennes—with the Well—that was something secondary. Tertiary. Whatever is going on with this larger collective, I think they have something bigger planned. More intricate. Just more.”

  “Ah.” Cool Luke took one last bite of his dinner and pushed the plate away as if he, too, lost his appetite. “But we have no idea what. And if what you are saying is true, it is not just any one thing they could be trying to do.”

  “Plus, we know that Sol Invictus is helping them. We knew a god had betrayed the others. But I don’t think he’s nearly well connected enough to be the betrayer.” Saying it out loud allowed me to take the idea further. “He’s just one god helping The Entelechy. I have to think there are others.”

  “Very grim times, Grey.” He wiped his mouth with the table napkin and drank his own water. “Still, we are the ones who must obstruct them. We must be the X-Men
to their Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.”

  About to ask what he meant, I instead noticed over Cool Luke’s shoulder that the broadcast had changed from the soccer match to live coverage from BBC News.

  I couldn’t make out what the anchor was saying, but the ticker on the bottom read “TERRORISTS STRIKE AMERICA: Terror in Connecticut.”

  I stood up quickly, knocking my chair back onto the floor. Before I realized it, I was reaching up to the television to increase the volume. No one stopped me. In fact, other patrons stopped eating and drinking, from what I could tell—though my back was turned.

  “This is still very early. Very early in these stages,” a disembodied voice was talking on a telephone while pictures of a smoldering ruin played out on the screen before me. “ISIS operatives are being blamed, though they have yet to take responsibility for the carnage here in Windsor.”

  Another voice, the feminine voice of the newscaster came over the air: “What can you tell us, Jane, about the facility that was attacked? Are there survivors?”

  “There is an overwhelming smell of petroleum. One of the buildings, as you should see, is engulfed in flame. The facility is fairly isolated, but the word from authorities confirms that there were multiple buildings, and only the main one is intact. There is currently no word of survivors. But I can see there are a good many of the deceased being carried out of the building.”

  A second newscaster, this one male, interrupted with his own recapping of what had transpired. “A nursing facility in Windsor, Connecticut, the United States was come under attack. BBC News confirms hundreds are dead in what can only be described as a massacre.”

  I turned around to face Cool Luke. He had never been to Solemn Ages, but he knew precisely what unfolded on the television screen. This was not an attack by Islamic fundamentalists. This was… This was…

  I clutched at my phone in the inner pocket of my jacket. I had three missed calls from Joy.

  Neither Athena, nor Victoria had returned my earlier message.

  “Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit.” I dialed Athena first. There was no answer. I dialed Victoria immediately after. Still no answer.