by SA Magnusson
It had to be the rune.
At least now I knew what it did, but not why.
And I could use it, especially if the knight intended to act.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked. I didn’t dare move. Staying inside the circle allowed me to connect to this power, which was what I needed until I dealt with this mage—and the other. “Where is your friend?”
“What friend?” The mage held another spell ready—I could feel it—and had his sword gripped as if he intended to attack. I could hold my barrier in place to stop him, but it might come down to stopping him. That meant the kind of attack I didn’t really want to use on someone who actually served the council.
“You’re not alone, so he or she might as well reveal themselves.”
“What makes you think I’m not alone?”
I shot him an annoyed look, though I didn’t know if he could see it in the darkness. “Look at this situation. You sent a reasonably powerful spell in my direction that did nothing. I don’t know what you thought you were doing, but clearly it wasn’t effective. And I’m holding you back with a simple barrier.”
“Which will fail in time.”
“Will it? I don’t know what kind of knight you think you are, but I doubt you have much experience. If you did, you would have let me finish telling you who I was.”
Magic surged again, though it was different.
What the hell was going on?
“Now who’s out there?”
“Dr. Michaels?”
I turned slowly toward the sound of Darvish’s voice. “What are you doing here?”
“I would ask you the same, but seeing as how you’re facing two knights of the council, I think the better question is whether you are safe.”
“Do I look like I’m not safe?”
Darvish strode forward, the sense of magic swirling around him. It was powerful and I didn’t have to know how to use his kind of magic to know that he probably held a barrier spell of some kind. “And now you have Macon Frond facing you.”
“Macon is almost as bad as Darvish,” I said.
“Darvish is an excellent name.” He stalked around the circle, glancing briefly at the rune, before facing Macon. “What are you doing here?”
“Are you protecting her?” Macon asked.
Darvish laughed darkly. “If you knew anything about her, you would know that she doesn’t need any help.” He twisted suddenly, raising his hand, and a lance of bluish light streaked away. “Tell Jamison he needs to come out or I’ll send another, and the next won’t be quite as friendly.”
“You think you can walk around all cocky now that the council deemed your kind safe?”
Darvish leaned toward him. A spell crackled off him. “That’s exactly what I think. If you want to return the councils to war, be my guest, but there’s a reason you never got close to me.”
Damn, but this was about to get explosive and I wasn’t going to stand by while Darvish—someone I would actually feel bad seeing hurt—started fighting with Macon. I didn’t know either of the knights, but given Macon’s quick spell release, I suspected I knew what kind of person he was: fight first and ask questions later.
I wrapped Macon in a barrier, silencing his yelp. When Jamison sent a surge of magic out, I used that to locate him and did the same with him.
“Alright. That’s enough out of both of you.” I dragged Jamison forward so that I could see him. He was fat and balding, and sort of reminded me of the machinist from the hospital. Deeply sunken eyes glared at me. Unlike Macon, he didn’t seem to be carrying a sword. “I will hold you both like this if you’re going to act like children. And as I was starting to say,” I said, shooting Macon a hard glare, “I’m Cyn Michaels’s granddaughter, so if you want to attack me, make certain you can handle whatever she might throw at you.”
Jamison paled and it was to Macon’s credit that he said nothing, showing no sign of discomfort at the fact that I held him the way that I did—or that he’d attacked a family member of the council.
“Now, will anyone tell me what’s going on?”
Darvish chuckled. “I’d say you’re what’s going on.”
“I’m what?”
“You’re drawing from the other side of the Veil. That attracts attention. It’s the reason I’m here, and I suspect it’s the reason they are here as well.”
“I didn’t place this rune, if that’s what you’re trying to get at. It was already here and I only placed a circle around it to try and contain whatever was happening here.” I still wanted to know what was happening. If someone was strong enough to place a rune like this, they were the kind of person who could be dangerous. And maybe it was one of Odian’s followers.
“I doubt you did, but it is an impressive spell.”
“I don’t do spells,” I said.
“You do something, and that’s what we’re picking up on.” Darvish leaned over Macon, a wide sneer on his face. “Imagine what I could do with you like this?”
“Darvish—”
He straightened, wiping his hands on his jacket, and shrugged. “I didn’t say that I would do anything, only what I could.”
“That’s not any better.”
“It feels better to me.”
I imagined that it did, especially considering everything Darvish had been through over the years. Much of his magical life had been lived running, hiding the dark magic he practiced, trying to ensure the council didn’t find him and burn it out of him. In that way, I understood what he had gone through all too well. There had been years where I had feared the same, to the point where I had avoided my magic at all, not wanting to risk using it and attracting the attention of the council. Didn’t I feel better knowing that I was no longer hiding that part of myself? It had to be even more significant for Darvish and others like him.
It was a wonder that there wasn’t more fighting amongst the various magical factions. And a measure of the control Barden had over them.
“Do you recognize this rune?” I asked, forcing his attention back onto me.
“No, other than what it does.”
“And it connects to the other side of the Veil?”
He nodded. “The requirements for placing this are complex.”
There was a measure of respect in his voice. “You can’t do it?”
“Not something like that.”
It was even more evidence that this might be the work of Odian’s followers, but why? And for what purpose? There had to be some reason for it, though without having Aron around, it was possible that I wouldn’t be able to figure it out. These knights were likely to report to the council, but that didn’t mean that I would be privy to the details of the conversation. Even Gran and Gramps weren’t likely to share all that much with me.
“Have you seen anything like it before?” I asked.
Darvish looked up at me, frowning deeply. “You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“I thought that with you here, you must have been following these, but perhaps you don’t really know.”
“Darvish—”
“This isn’t the first time this spell has appeared, Dr. Michaels. There have been others—quite a few others—and they’ve been popping up all over the city.”
5
The small shack set in the middle of the field would have been out of place anywhere else, but out here, in the middle of nowhere, with nothing other than fields of long-ago harvested corn, it simply was strange. I glanced over at Darvish, looking to see what he might say, but he remained silent.
A cold wind gusted, whipping around my hair, and I wrapped my coat more tightly against me. I wasn’t dressed for the weather and wished that I would have taken time to go back home and change, perhaps pulling on long underwear or some sort of additional base layer that might better protect me.
“Why out here?”
“Because the rest of the council won’t come out here.”
“I didn’t think you w
orried about the rest of the council.”
“We don’t, other than the fact that they haven’t been the most forthcoming with us.”
“The council was supposed to involve you.”
“Just because you required that as a price doesn’t mean that they willingly have decided to work with us,” Darvish said, glancing over at me.
It was something I would need to talk with Sharon about. I had hoped that the two councils would find a way to work together, but doing so was anathema to how they had operated for centuries. It was a marvel that they had managed to stay functional as long as they had. And it was a testament to just how determined the mages of the Dark Council had been. They had managed to survive despite everything that the mage council had intended to do to them.
“What did you uncover out here?” I asked, deciding that it might be better just to change the topic. When it came to the mage council, members of the Dark Council felt much the same way as those on the mage council felt about them. Maybe I was naïve to think that we could somehow figure out a way for them to work together. I didn’t want to think like that, but they had proven unwilling to do anything other than continue to argue.
“You’ll see.”
We reached the small shack. The path leading up to it was well worn, with the dirt hard packed beneath my boots. Darvish gripped the door and the spell built from him, washing through the door to unlock it. How many protections would they have placed on it?
I smiled to myself. Probably enough that it would deter the mage council from venturing out here. If I knew anything about the Dark Council, it would be that they had some way of convincing the mage council to avoid looking in this direction. And if the council didn’t come this way, then the dark mages would be relatively safe.
He pushed the door open. Two others were inside, and they both glanced up when we entered.
A dark-skinned woman with short black hair sat behind a narrow table. A stack of books on top of the table were pushed off to one side, and she had a sheet of paper in front of her that she took notes on. The computer angled off to the side cast a soft glow. The other person was an older man with close-cropped hair and a sharp nose. His cheeks were ruddy despite the warmth within the shack. He crouched over the center of the ground, looking down at it.
“What are you doing here, Darvish?” the woman asked.
“I’m allowed to be here, Florence.”
“Does Barden know that you’re here?”
Darvish straightened and clasped his hands behind his back, squeezing them. What sort of irritation was there between this woman and Darvish? I’d never seen him not getting along with members of the Dark Council, so this hint of antagonism surprised me.
“If you would question anything, feel free. Make sure you tell Barden that I’m here with Dr. Kate Michaels.”
For a moment, I thought that would be the end of it, but the woman picked up the phone and punched in a message. I couldn’t see exactly what was she typed, but the response came quickly, and she frowned as she stared at it before setting her phone down.
“My apologies.”
Darvish relaxed. “This is similar to the marking we just found,” Darvish said, turning to me.
“You found another?” the man asked.
Darvish joined him, staring at the ground. It was only then that I realized that a similar spell had been formed on the ground much like we had just encountered. There were some features that were different, though not many. For the most part, it was a circular pattern, with other shapes bound within it. Power radiated from it, and now that I was aware of it, I realized that power came from the containment spell around it.
The Dark Council was holding the spell in place.
“There was another outside of downtown,” Darvish said.
“That’s a bit of an understatement,” I said. “We were practically to Blaine.”
The man frowned, standing up and scratching at his jawline. “There aren’t that many in the northern suburbs. We’ve found them in many of the southern suburbs.”
“How many have you found?” I asked.
“So far, there have been seven,” Darvish said. “And that includes the one we found tonight.”
“You mean the one I found tonight.”
“I think we can both agree that I would have come across it either way.”
“But the knights were there first.”
“Knights?” Florence asked.
“There were knights, but Dr. Michaels kindly ensured that they were no longer a threat.”
“You attacked knights?” The question was directed more toward Darvish than to me.
“I did nothing,” Darvish said. “And they attacked her first. Considering who she is, they will have much more to answer for than I.”
“And who is she?”
“I’ve already told you who she is,” Darvish said.
“You told me her name, but that does nothing to tell me who she is.”
“She is—”
“What are you doing?” Florence snapped.
I looked up. I had stepped across the spell and now stood in the center of the pattern placed on the ground. Now that I was here, I could feel the contours of it. It was strange, and I wasn’t entirely certain how it was that I was able to determine that connection, but I was aware of it, almost intricately so, enough that I thought I could re-create it if I had to. I doubted I would have the necessary strength to add power to it, not the way that this spell obviously had been, but I did have an idea of what the pattern did.
“I was just trying to see what this might do,” I said.
Florence glared at Darvish before standing and coming around the back of her desk. “If you disrupt it…”
“I don’t have any intention of disrupting it,” I said. “Does it connect to the other side of the Veil?” I asked Darvish.
“We think so, but the pattern is a little different than the last. And to be honest, I didn’t know that it connected to the other side of the Veil until you found the last one.”
“Wait. This connects to the other side of the Veil?” the man asked.
“Easy, Bernard. It’s not as if you were forming this spell yourself.” Florence pushed him up to the side and he just stared at me.
“Dr. Michaels uncovered the nature of the spell when we found the last one,” Darvish said.
“And how did she manage to uncover that?”
“Because she is a powerful mage,” Darvish said.
The fact that he didn’t share more about me told me something about this woman, though maybe it was a matter of competition more than anything else. Could it be that Darvish felt threatened by her?
“It feels similar, though it’s different,” I said.
“How different?” Florence asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
“I don’t know how to describe it. The power within the spell is subtle, and I can feel it rolling across my senses.” Could I use that power the same way I had used the power coming from the other spell? Would I be able to add to it, confine it and draw from it?
When I had done that with the last one, I had done so without knowing exactly what I was doing, but I worried that attempting to do so again would be dangerous. Especially if I didn’t know what the intent of the spell might be. If nothing else, working around magic should have taught me caution. There were enough strange and dangerous spells that I had learned to be careful with my use of magic around them. If I didn’t, it was entirely possible that I might end up damaged by them, the same way the gorgon had damaged Darvish.
I stepped to the edge of the pattern and began to make a circle around it.
“What are you doing?” Florence asked, reaching for me.
I ignored her, continuing my circle. It didn’t have to be a significant circle. All it had to be was enough to add a connection to my magic, and once I did, I could see exactly what this spell might do. With a growing surge of energy, I could feel the power flowing through the spell and out
through me.
I held on to it, trying not to use too much of the power at one time, still uncertain about exactly what this spell might do. I doubted it was nearly as benign as what Barden had done when he had used a connection to the other side of the Veil.
“What can you tell?” Darvish asked.
“There’s power, but…” As I continued to hold it, drawing it through me, it seemed as if there was something different about it. I couldn’t tell exactly what it was, only that the type of power coming from it was different.
“Dr. Michaels?” Darvish asked.
“What?”
“You are starting to swell,” he said.
I looked down, and he was right. There was a strange bloat to my arms. I ran my fingers along my arms, feeling tingling along my skin. Cold began to creep up my back.
It wasn’t just from magic. The cold creeping on my back came from the sense of death, and it was strong enough that it was near.
Me.
Shit. I released the connection to the spell, but it didn’t separate from me. Power continued to draw out of the circle, flowing into me, and as it did, cold raced along my spine.
“Darvish, I need you to separate me from this power.”
“Dr. Michaels?”
“Whatever it’s doing is killing me. I need you to separate me from it before it finishes the job.” My throat had begun to swell. If this weren’t a magical attack, I would suspect an allergic reaction, possibly anaphylaxis. If I were in the ER, epinephrine and antihistamines would be needed.
Attempting to separate from the magic failed. Could I cut it off from myself? I could use the draw of the magic from death, but it was my death, and I didn’t think that would work to save me. Even if it did, what would become of me?
“I’m not sure I can do that,” Darvish said.
“You have to try. I can’t…”
I couldn’t talk. As much as I might want to try, no words came out. My mouth was swollen. My body ached. The spell was reacting negatively with me.
What had I done?
It was stupid trying to use a spell without knowing what it might do. I knew better than that, and I shouldn’t have even attempted this, but I had made the mistake of thinking I would reach for power on the other side of the Veil.