by SA Magnusson
It was different than the power that I had connected to before, and I reached for it, no longer feeling as if I couldn’t react. I had moments, probably nothing more than that, before Jen died of her wounds.
“Kate?”
Jen called out my name, her voice weak, and I screamed.
I don’t know what I said, but power flooded out of me and slammed into the woman, crashing into her chest and throwing her back. I ran toward Jen, wrapping her in magic, sealing off the emptiness as I felt it, ignoring the cold in my spine, pushing it away as I closed off the emptiness, healing the wound.
She coughed and looked up at me.
“What did you do?”she asked.
“Saved you,” I said. Turning my attention to the shed, I pointed to the building. “Go in there and hide.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I have to stop this.”
I didn’t know how, and I didn’t know where the woman had gone. Power continued to flow through me, drawn from the circle surrounding Solera’s pool.
That was what I would do first. I turned my attention back to Solera and wrapped a barrier around her. This time, it held. I pulled and, with a crackling of magic, she came free, flying across the pool to lie next to me. She remained rigid, whatever spell bound her holding steady.
“This is a mistake,” Solera said.
“A mistake in saving you?”
“A mistake in you drawing upon this magic.”
“Why?”
“It’s already changing you.”
“How?”
“Feel it. Because I can.”
I couldn’t feel anything other than the power as it coursed within me. Rage boiled within me, too. Rage at what the woman had done, the way that she had intended to sacrifice Jen, and likely Solera, and for what purpose?
“Why did she want to sacrifice both of you?”
“There is power in a sacrifice,” Solera said.
“What kind of power?”
Solera stared at me. “I think you have experience in that, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is that she intended to use a sacrifice that was both magical and non-magical. A blending. The combination of both would be incredibly powerful.”
“But I don’t see how.”
“There is power in dying to those who can use it.”
Everything within me went cold.
I didn’t know if it was magic or death or something else, but I surrounded myself—and Solera—with a barrier.
As I did, I realized that it wasn’t the sense of magic or of death that had given me chills. It was Solera’s comment.
“Who can use the power of death?”
Solera looked up at me. “Who indeed?”
Something struck my barrier and I looked over, realizing the woman hacked at the barrier with her sword. My sword.
She carved through the spell, slitting an opening within it, and she darted forward.
Drawing upon the power coming from the other side of the Veil, I summoned my sword. It was different than it had been before, no longer the purplish glowing blade. Now it was black, the color of night. The color of death.
When she swung the demon sword around, it connected with my summoned blade, and mine sent the other blade flying free from her grip.
Her eyes went wide.
I wrapped her in a barrier and started to constrict. As I did, cold began to surge along my spine. With that cold came the promise of power. Something within me celebrated it, called to it, demanded that I use it.
And why wouldn’t I use it? It was power, and it filled me. I had known that power ever since going to the emergency room, ever since my training days began, and I had known how it had filled me. At first, before I had been willing to use my magic, it had nauseated me, but only because I had been unwilling to accept it. Now I understood.
I continued to constrict the barrier. The woman stared at me, her eyes angry, and power from her death continued to fill me.
I held her gaze.
Something changed. The anger went out of her, and the anger in her eyes disappeared. Emptiness replaced it.
I had seen that emptiness before.
Aron.
“Katie. Please—”
I looked up and saw Gran and Gramps holding hands, approaching carefully. They stared at me with a look of concern wrinkling their brows. I had seen that concern before, and I knew it.
“You might not believe it, but this is your mother. This is our Anna. You can’t kill her.”
The calling of death continued to fill me, almost too much to ignore. All I had to do was squeeze a little bit more, and when I did, this could all be over. I could restore the ley lines and I could free my friend. Solera was rescued, and I wouldn’t need to worry about an attack anymore.
But I would be different.
Was that what Solera had meant? Is that difference what she had known about?
The temptation was there. All I had to do was continue to squeeze, but I relaxed, releasing my hold on magic. The icy grip along my spine faded.
Gran and Gramps raced over to the fallen woman, but I ignored her as I turned back to Solera’s pool and used that energy, focusing on the ley lines.
They were a power deep beneath us. The spell that the dark-haired woman had placed had shifted the direction of the ley lines, concentrating them here but also beyond here. As I held onto this connection to the Veil, as I held onto this magic, I could feel the distinct variations of power deep beneath me. I hung onto that power and pushed.
I could feel the way the ley lines directed now, and connected to the Veil, to as much power as I did, even changed as it was, I could feel the way they were supposed to run. Pushing downward as I did met resistance, and I continued to funnel, forcing energy down and down. And then something exploded.
The power shattered the spells redirecting the ley lines.
Something within me shifted.
I gasped, the power flooding through me, washing over me in a way that left me nauseated. I took a step back, staggering, and felt a firm grip on my shoulder.
As I did, warmth flowed through me.
I looked over to see Solera with her hand on my shoulder. “Release it.”
I let go of my connection to the spell, releasing my hold on the power from the other side of the Veil, and staggered backward, feeling everything fade. Strength faded. Energy faded. And I looked over, staring at Gran and Gramps as they leaned down, tears dripping from their eyes as they watched the woman.
“Is that my mother?”
Solera released my shoulder. “I don’t know. She has power. Knowledge. And it doesn’t come from this side of the Veil.”
“My mother was a mage.”
“If it’s your mother, then she serves someone else.”
“What happens now?”
“Now that she’s been incapacitated?”
I nodded.
“Now the council will need to decide what to do with her. That will be up to them.”
“Can you do anything?”
“I don’t get involved with matters of the council.”
She turned and strode away, and I hesitated before racing after her. “Solera!” She slowed and glanced back at me. “Aron. Can you help him?”
“What about him?”
“He nearly died and I saved him, but he’s different.”
“How is he different?”
I looked over to the fallen woman. The emptiness that I had seen in her eyes was the same as what I’d seen in Aron’s eyes. Could she be my mother? Could she have nearly died and been brought back?
“He doesn’t remember anything.”
“You’re the doctor, I believe.”
“There’s nothing physically wrong with him.”
“Then you have to accept him for what he is.”
“But he’s not what he wants to be.”
“How do you know?”
“He wants to remember.
He wants to be able to be that person.”
“Is that what he wants or what you want?”
Tears streamed down my face and I wiped them away. “Both.”
She closed her eyes and her skin began to glow softly. Power streaked out from her, the ground seeming to sigh as she sent whatever magical power across it.
“I’ve done what I can.”
“That’s it?”
“I’ve offered him an opportunity.”
“What conditions are there on this opportunity?”
Solera smiled at me. “What makes you think there would be conditions?”
She wandered off and quickly disappeared into the trees. I stood in place, tempted to go to the pool, to trace a pattern around it, to capture that power, but there was no purpose in it. We were done. We had succeeded. We had stopped this mage—a follower of Odian and possibly my mother.
And perhaps Aron would come back to me.
I looked for him, wandering across the ground, but didn’t find him until I reached the shore. I approached slowly and carefully.
“Aron?”
I wasn’t sure what he would do, or whether he would even react, and when he turned to me, there was the same emptiness within his eyes that I’d seen before.
“Is it over?” he asked.
“We stopped her.”
“Your grandparents seem to believe that it’s your mother.”
“I don’t know whether it is or not. My memories of her are hazy.” I had never given it much thought before, but now that I did, it was clear that they were not quite what I should have for memories, not having known her for so much of my early childhood. Was that normal? I had other memories from that time, memories that seemed clear, memories that came from my grandparents, but nothing other than my mother’s voice, and the woman we had stopped didn’t have that voice.
But then, Aron didn’t have the same voice that he had before all of this had happened. There wasn’t the warmth, and there wasn’t the connection for the affection. He was cold.
If the same thing had happened to that woman that had happened to Aron, then maybe she could be my mother. If only there was some way of knowing. If only there was some way of doing something that could help me understand, but there didn’t seem to be.
I looked up into his eyes, searching for a spark of recognition, but none came. And maybe none would come. Maybe the opportunity Solera mentioned had to come from within me. I had to be the one to accept.
I sighed. “Thank you for coming. Thank you for helping.”
“I did what was asked of me.”
“You did more than was asked of you. You intervened when you didn’t need to.” Had he not, Darvish might have died. I needed to go and speak with Darvish and Barden and the rest of the dark mages and thank them, but there would be time for that later.
“You seem disappointed.”
“I had hoped that we could restore you.”
“I’m not sure that I want to be restored.”
“Why?”
Aron met my eyes. For a moment, I thought there was a spark of recognition, but it was fleeting and it faded quickly. “I serve the council. I serve with my magic. And I have a purpose. I’m not certain that the person that I was shared that purpose.”
“That person got to choose his own purpose.”
“With what I’ve seen, I think that I need to remain focused on magic. I need to remain focused to protect the council, especially when threats such as this,” he said, sweeping his hand around him to indicate the island, “happen.”
I could only nod. No other answer seemed fitting.
Maybe there was nothing wrong with Aron, and maybe he truly did get to choose, and if he did, who was I to be the one to tell him that he made the wrong choice? In this case, it hurt because his choice wasn’t me, but perhaps that was best for him.
“Thank you again,” I said.
I wandered away from him, making my way back toward the center of the island. I found Barden and Darvish speaking with their dark mages, and nodded to both of them. Barden waved and studied me, worry on his face, too. I flashed a smile, though didn’t feel it work all the way through me. How could I, when I felt empty?
I reached the tree line before the clearing and found Jen. She leaned back against the trunk of the tree, staring inward, watching a cluster of mages surrounding the dark-haired mage.
“I can’t take my eyes off of them,” Jen said.
“Why not?”
“They’re doing something to her. They’re touching her, and it seems almost as if they’re putting something onto her.”
The steady tapping of magic worked its way along my spine, a rhythmic sensation that I didn’t notice until it was pointed out to me. “They’re using spells on her.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure what the nature of the spells are, but I can tell that they are trying to keep her from using her magic again.”
“Why do I get the sense that you aren’t thrilled by this development?”
“I’m not thrilled by any of this. We stopped her, but…”
“But what?”
“But my grandparents seem to think that she is my mother.”
“Your what?”
I nodded. “They seem to believe that she’s my mother.”
“What about you? You should know her.”
“That’s just it, I should know her, but I can’t remember her. Isn’t that strange?”
“When it comes to magic, I would say that everything is strange, Kate. But if she is your mother, you need to do everything you can to help her.”
“She tried to kill us. She tried to kill you.”
“Yeah, about that.” Jen rubbed her stomach and I looked down at her bloodstained jacket. She pulled it up, revealing that the skin was completely healed. “How were you able to do that?”
“I was connected to a significant power.”
“But I don’t have any sign of injury. The only thing I have is a damaged shirt, and it was your shirt.”
I smiled. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“There’s something else, Kate.”
“What is it?”
“I felt your power.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that when you were saving me. I could feel your power. It flowed into me, and now… now I can still feel it.”
“You can what?”
Jen looked over at me. “I wasn’t sure what it was, but now that you’re close to me, I can tell where you are. I feel that connection. Does that make sense with what you can do?”
Sending a trickle of magic, I probed Jen, searching for any sort of unusual findings, but couldn’t come up with anything. It wasn’t as if I had left her incompletely healed, but if she was feeling something, it meant that there had been a change. My experience using magic with healing suggested that there shouldn’t be a change.
And yet, that wasn’t quite right. When I had healed Aron, there had been a change. What about Darvish? Had he changed when I had saved him?
Then I thought of everyone I had touched over the last year in the hospital. People I had saved. Most recently, the mother and the baby. Had they somehow changed?
I felt nauseated.
“Kate?”
“I’m just thinking about what you said.”
“What part?”
“All of it. And I guess what you said is true.”
“What part is that?”
“When it comes to magic, everything is strange.”
Jen squeezed my arm. “I changed my mind, by the way.”
“About what?”
“About not wanting to be around you. Not wanting to be around your magic. I don’t understand it, but if you can do this, I want to be around it. I don’t know that I can’t, now that I’ve seen this part of the world.”
“Well, you have already used a magic wand.”
“Yeah. I’m sort of badass like that.”
“You have to be
to be willing to be around this without any magic.”
I wrapped my arm around Jen, holding her close, and sighed. As we stared at the pool of power, the connection to the other side of the Veil, I realized that there was something that I hadn’t considered. Not only was this woman trying to connect power to the other side of the Veil, but she had to be serving someone. I had thought it Odian, but he was gone.
On the far side of the clearing, Solera remained, watching.
I wonder if she knew what I needed to do next. The more I thought about it, the more I realized what I needed to do. It was time for me to cross over to the other side of the Veil. In order to have the answers I wanted, I would have to do it. I just hoped I’d be strong enough. There would be answers on the other side. There had to be.
And before I went, Solera would tell me what she knew about my magic.
She stared at me a long time before turning away.
“Kate?”
“Hmm?”
“I can feel that you’re worried. Why is that?”
She could feel my emotions? What had I done by saving her? How much had I changed?
“There it is again.”
I turned to Jen, forcing a smile. “It’s nothing. I’m just thinking about what I have to do.”
“Like work?”
“Work. Other things.”
“Well, stop. Just relax. And maybe we can sit back and have a glass of wine. You know, to celebrate.”
Though I didn’t feel like celebrating, I nodded anyway. Jen might feel my concern, but she didn’t need to know about the extent of it.
“There it is again.”
I shook my head, forcing happier thoughts into mind, and turned her away from the clearing, seeing a glint of metal from the demon sword. The blade no longer felt quite like mine, but maybe that was because I had begun to use a different weapon.
“Kate?”
“Hmm?”
“Are you going to be okay?”
I took a deep breath while squeezing the hilt of the sword. “I think so. With enough time.”
The problem was that I didn’t know if I would have that time.
I would take it, though. I needed to get away from the magical side of the world, if only for a little while. Soon enough, it would draw me back in, and I was determined to be ready.
Book 6 of Medicine and Magic: Paralyzed