I feel nothing. No magic, no power, no warmth, nothing. Even the feathery-light touch of his cool lips against the back of my hand is nothing more than an illusion.
One cannot kiss a hand through a thick stone wall.
The Red Lord gives me a sharp, surprised look. Then he lets go of my hand, reluctantly, almost as if he’s disappointed.
As soon as he releases my hand, there is a subtle shift, a shimmer in the fabric of reality.
I find myself blinking as I look at the wall between us.
How the hell did I do that?
And why does this wall feel so familiar, so known? Not to mention those strange thoughts I had about stone masons and centuries of protection…
Damn.
Maybe I really did steal Daniel’s mother’s magic.
“… some of us still believe that your mother became a bloodmaster before the end …” As the wall begins to fade, I realize that the Red Lord is talking. “…there were even some—my own sister included—who believed she would turn out to be the Worldmaker foretold by all the prophesies.” He taps his fingers against the armrest of his chair, impatient now, almost bored. “But she is dead, and you are here. The last of your kind.” He gives a malicious little smile. “Such a very ordinary girl.”
I take a few steps back.
The wall between us—if there ever was a wall—has now disappeared completely, and I need some distance.
“You knew my mother?” I ask.
“Hmm. Now there’s an interesting question,” he sneers. “But we’re not here to talk about your mother, and if you’re about to enter a plea on the charges brought against you, it’s high time you met the members of this court.” He sighs, as if he finds the proceedings tedious now that I’ve failed to live up to his expectations. Then he points to the chair next to him.
“On the blue throne,” he cries, so dramatically as to sound deliberately mocking, “Deron Deleon: Lord of all the Seakeepers!”
I give a little jump when the Blue Lord appears out of thin air. He is leaning back in the blue chair as if he’s been there for a while, unnoticed. Like the last time I saw him, he’s dressed all in white, his dreadlocks hanging loose on his shoulders. He gives a restrained nod, his body-language tense, his eyes worried.
“On the red throne,” the Red Lord cries again, snapping his fingers and pointing to the right, “my sister, Ananya Dara: Lady of all the Bloodkeepers!”
A woman appears on the red chair. Like her brother she has strong, attractive features—an olive skin, glossy-brown hair and dark eyes—but unlike him she has a friendly smile on her face. She nods at my obvious confusion, as if trying to reassure me.
“On the green throne, Lord Phillip Shawcross, Lord of all the Earthkeepers!”
A man appears on the green chair. He looks about Gunn’s age and he’s handsome in a square-jawed, fresh-faced, Clark Kent-type of way. In spite of his youth, he has an aura of authority about him, but he looks unhappy, as if he disapproves of this bizarre introduction.
“On the white throne, Sonya Orlov, Lady of all the Skykeepers.”
The woman who appears on the white chair is a cool, Asian-looking beauty whose pearly skin seems to radiate its own glow in the soft light of the candles. Her hair is a pale, ashy blond, her features are perfectly regular, and her dark eyes are heavily made-up.
“Oh, come on, Amit,” she says, her voice raspy and deep, “enough with the cheap theatrics. I’m sure the poor girl is suitably impressed by now. Let’s just get on with the proceedings.” She turns to me. “What do you plead, girl? Guilty or not guilty?”
“I’m not saying anything until I speak to a lawyer.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake.” The Red Lord makes an impatient sound. “This is what happens when Black keepers forget their duties. Phillip, explain to the girl the predicament she finds herself in, will you?”
The Green Lord clears his throat. “You seem to misunderstand the very nature of this court, young lady,” he says, sounding exactly like a pompous English gentleman from a Jane Austen movie. “You have been brought before a special body today, an Extraordinary Court comprised of five of the most trusted leaders of the Order of Keepers.” He gives me a condescending little smile. “By custom and right, we follow an inquisitorial rather than an adversarial procedure, which means that an accused before this court should not need, nor indeed want, any form of representation, as it is the duty of the court to actively investigate all the relevant facts of the case.”
I do not like the sound of this at all.
“Inquisitorial … You mean like the Spanish Inquisition?
“Our methods aren’t quite that medieval,” he says, subtly emphasizing the word “quite”. “But make no mistake: we will do whatever is necessary to get to the truth.”
“There is no need to look so frightened, child,” the Red Lady says soothingly. “It is true that some of our procedures may seem a bit extreme to the modern mind, but they are also necessary.” Unlike her brother, the Red Lady speaks with a strong foreign accent (Indian would be my guess). “The people who appear before this court are usually quite extraordinary, and because of this we, too, must take extraordinary measures to get to the truth.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, my voice shakier than I would have liked. “Are you going to beat me? Pull out my toenails? Make me rot in a cell?”
“We do not habitually pull out people’s toenails,” the White Lady says calmly. “And lashings are usually a last resort. But yes, you will definitely be spending some time in solitary confinement without any food or water.”
I nearly pass out on the spot.
“For the record, and speaking on behalf of all the Seakeepers, I want to make it clear that I object very strongly to these proceedings.” The Blue Lord speaks up for the first time, his voice stern. “Magic calls to magic, and Amit has already touched the juvenile skin to skin. If she had any power inside her, stolen or otherwise, we would have known by now.”
The White Lady gives a deep, throaty laugh. “Oh, Deron. You must think us fools. If she has truly stripped a keeper as powerful as Sofia Rodriguez of all her magic, there’s a good chance that she would be able to hide her true self, even while touching skin to skin.” Her laugh stops abruptly. “But stolen magic is quickly spent. After a night in the cells, any stolen magic will have trickled away, and by tomorrow we will know exactly who we are dealing with.”
When the White Lady turns her gaze from the Blue Lord to me, I imagine something moving behind her eyes: a cold, detached, snake-like intelligence. “I suspect that by the time the trial starts tomorrow, we’ll see someone very different from this terribly frightened, terribly ordinary little. Won’t we, young Jess?”
I look down at the floor to avoid her knowing gaze.
“How do you plead, child?” the Red Lady asks in the silence that follows.
I hesitate only for a moment. I don’t really see that I have any choice here.
“Not guilty.”
Chapter 22
Wherefore the semblance of Truth is oftimes interwoven with that of the Lie, it might require great labour to cull out and sort asunder one instance from the other. Moreover, inasmuch as many of those brought before the Court doth indulge in falsification, prevarication, subterfuge and deception, the Court may relie on the Skykeeper powers of Truth and Clear Sighte at any time of its choosing.
Assuredly there might be those rare Keepers with magick so powerful as to withstande these deepe Skills, wherefore each accused shall first be broken in their magick by the withholding of food and victuals and the manufacturing of such agitations, trepidations and consternations as shall render them most receptive to the powers of the Court.
Extract from Third Part of the Institutes of the Laws of the Order of Keepers by Lord Henry Shawcross (1716)
Hours later.
I’m sitting in a tiny cell.
There’s no window, no mattress, no chair, nothing. Just a rough cement floor, a bare lightbu
lb hanging from the ceiling, a toilet without a seat, and a small bulbous black object in one corner, which I presume must be a camera. The ceiling is so low that I can’t stand upright; the floorspace so limited that I can’t lie down without bending my legs.
I am doing my best not to lose my mind, but my entire body is drenched in sweat. I’m shivering with sickness and I’m making soft little moaning sounds.
Someone, please help me.
In the endless hours since they locked me in here, I’ve used every trick Gunn has ever taught me. I’ve tried to center myself. I’ve tried to control my breathing and lower my heart rate. To focus on my own power; on what I can control. To stay positive, no matter what.
But with every passing minute, I’m more and more tempted to throw myself against the door, scream like a madwoman, hammer my fists, and beg whoever is listening to let me out!
I cannot stand to be confined like this. I am genuinely afraid I might go crazy.
I cannot stand it.
I sit on the toilet for a while. Then I sit on the floor. Then I lie down.
I can do that, I remind myself: I have enough space to lie down, even if I can’t stretch out completely.
I take a shuddering breath: I have enough air to breathe. There’s no need to panic.
I have enough air to breathe.
I close my eyes against the advancing walls, the pressing ceiling.
I concentrate on my breathing.
Time passes.
I do not throw myself against the door. I do not scream like a madwoman, begging to be let out. I clench my hands into fists, keep breathing through my nose.
This isn’t the end of the world. It’s just claustrophobia. The mind’s irrational reaction to a situation that is not truly life-threatening. I cannot control my circumstances, but I can control my own reaction to those circumstances. I can deal with it.
I’m dealing with it.
I curl myself into a little ball and work on a simple mantra to keep the animal of my panic caged up inside.
I have enough air to breathe. I have enough space to rest. There’s nothing to fear except fear itself.
I mumble this over and over and over, trying to think myself out of my suffocating panic. But although my mind is trying its best, my body doesn’t appear to be listening: I’m shivering and there’s a painful tightness in my chest that’s starting to make it difficult to breathe.
I cannot stand this.
I sit up. I lie down.
I stand up, hunched over. I sit down again.
I squirm around on the floor, trembling, curling up.
I become aware of a sound, a low whine, like a lawnmower in the distance.
I’m the one making that sound.
The walls keep coming closer, the ceiling lower.
I cannot breathe.
*
It’s only when I know for sure that my mind is about to break that I draw on my magic. Gunn warned me not to use it for any purpose except to protect myself from the judges’ probing. I know he said that. I remember it well.
But his warnings are meaningless now.
What do I care about judges, or courts, or secret societies, or my future or my freedom? All I want is for this agony to stop.
I have to make it stop.
And so I reach inside for my magic. I do this deliberately, even though I know this is exactly what they want me to do.
But I don’t care anymore.
They’ve won. I don’t fucking care.
I close my eyes, this time not to block out the sense of being helplessly trapped, but to sink deeper into myself. I use what strength I still have to search for that well of power hidden—
There’s no need to search. It’s there immediately: a fizzing, electrifying fountain of energy bubbling just beneath the surface of my consciousness. It takes no strength, no effort, no concentration. There’s no need for a deep dive into myself, no need for any focusing techniques.
One moment I’m shivering and shaking and helpless in my cell, the next I’m light and effervescent, floating high on my own power as the magic flows from me, billowing outward like a thick, protective cloak.
Nothing about this is difficult. It’s the most natural thing I’ve ever done, as easy as breathing. I let the magic stream out, surrounding me till I’m drowning in it, wallowing and savoring and delighting in its thick, rich, gorgeously protective strength.
The relief of it!
I am safe now. The fear is gone.
I am safe and happy and unafraid inside my wonderful bubble of magic.
It’s a really good feeling.
*
The moment I relax, the White Lady’s power hits me like a sledgehammer.
I immediately know it’s her; I recognize the clarity and purity and harshness of her magic. I’ve tasted just enough skymagic to recognize its fresh, faintly bitter smell, to identify the astringent burn at the back of my tongue. Daniel’s mother’s power was damaged, but the White Lady’s is whole and untainted: a crisp, sharp, delightfully airy rush of sheer skymagic that calls to every fiber in my being.
Magic calls to magic, the Blue Lord said, and right now I can feel that truth vibrating through my body as my entire being begins to yearn for that power. To burn for it.
I want to open myself up to her magic. I want to become part of that razor-sharp bliss, to lose myself in all that clever, bitter, fabulously airy skymagic.
Skymagic is the intensity of flight, the euphoria of freedom. It is the zest of truth and the terror of insight, a harsh, dry, clear power, stimulating and exciting and deeply dangerous, and I want it so badly that I relax my body and my mind, opening myself up to—
WALL!
This time it slams into my conscious mind: a wall made of solid ice, not built by human hands. An enormous glacier formed over centuries, impenetrable and deadly.
I have no idea where the image comes from, but I do know that I’ve seen it before. Somehow I know this place; it has been home for me, a place of solitude and safety…
Ah, yes. Of course.
Well have I known the icy wastelands of this world! It is one of the few places where I have known happiness, or at least contentment. A place where I could be free and magnificent and splendid in my isolation.
How I long for those times! How I long for the exquisite lifeless wastes of endless ice and snow, where none but my own kind could survive. Could thrive.
How good it was to live free from the greed of those too weak to transform! How wonderful to spread my great…
A shiver runs through me and everything shifts.
What the actual…?
I rake both hands through my hair, take three deep, measured breaths.
It’s okay.
I’m just thinking crazy things, that’s all.
I shake my head to clear it. Take another three slow breaths.
I’m not insane. Of course not. I’m practicing magic—stolen magic—and I’m way out of my depth.
No wonder I’m thinking such creepy things. It’s completely understandable.
Everything’s going to be okay.
I sit back, a little surprised to feel a sturdy wall behind me, and gawp at the enormous sheet of ice my imagination has conjured up out of nowhere. How on earth did I come up with such a specific image in the first place?
How did I know what to do?
I stare at the glacier, trying to figure out how the illusion works, but my rational mind just cannot make any sense of it. For one, the scale of it is all wrong: how can something so endlessly huge fit into a cell that, moments ago, was too small to stand up in? It’s as if the laws of time and space have stopped existing, as if I’ve stumbled into a place beyond the reach of physics.
After a while I stop trying to understand. I sit and I wait, numbly staring at the wall of ice stretching endlessly into the distance.
*
Time passes. Not unpleasantly.
I sit and wait, and I do not think.
But eventually, as the minutes start to melt into each other before stretching out and morphing into hours, I begin to relax into a wonderful sense of safety and accomplishment.
Look, I get that things aren’t exactly perfect. I’m well aware that although it feels as if I’m lost and alone in the furthest frozen reaches of the Arctic, I’m really sitting on a bare cement floor, caught up in a weird illusion while imprisoned by a bunch of creepy and dangerous people.
But does it really matter?
Hmm. At this point, I’ll have to say: not really.
Not when I can still feel my magic buzzing in my veins, a constant fizz of power as delicious and intoxicating as champagne.
I raise my hands to my face, realize that I’m smiling.
This isn’t so bad, actually. To be honest, I could probably sit here forever, feeling like this. Why should I mind being locked up anyway? I can wait them out, and it won’t cost me a thing.
I really don’t know what I was so afraid of before. I have all this power inside of me, more power than I could burn through in days. Weeks, even. Months.
Dear God, I can sit here for years.
But I don’t have to.
Deep inside me, something stirs.
Something that feels no need to block out temptation with the help of a silly imaginary wall. Something that knows I’m strong enough to take the magic the white woman is dangling in front of me so recklessly, and to do it easily.
Something that knows it all belongs to me anyway.
My body relaxes as the thought crystalizes.
There is no need for these ridiculous games.
Why hide my true self?
I am better than this.
I smile, sensing the rightness of what I’m about to do.
Yes. Yes.
I will strip the white woman’s power from her. And then I will take the others’ power too.
Every last drop.
It is my right, being who I am.
It was all mine in the first place.
All mine!
The truth of this simple insight is suddenly so obvious that I feel something tightly coiled-up within me loosen. It will be so easy to take their power from them! I will take what I want without scruple or fear of consequence, reveling in the joyful, delicious violence that is my birthright.
Ordinary Girl (The Dark Dragon Chronicles Book 1) Page 23