Origin of Magic (Dragon's Gift: The Protector Book 3)

by Linsey Hall

  “So? Spill it,” I said, anxious to get going.

  He leaned in, and the overpowering scent of cologne and sweat hit me. I grimaced, held my breath, then leaned forward to hear his whispers.

  ***

  As soon as Clarence walked away, the communications charms around my neck vibrated. I jumped, then groaned. Only one person had access to this charm.

  I shoved the small package Clarence had given me into my short’s pocket and pressed my fingertips to the comms charm, igniting its magic.

  “Hello, Mr. Oribis.” I swallowed my bile at having to be polite.

  “Girls,” he grumbled.

  Nix made a gagging face. We hated when he called us girls.

  “Change of plans. You need to go to the temple tonight.”

  “What? But it’s dark. We’re going tomorrow.” He never changed the plans on us. This was weird.

  “I need the daggers sooner. Go tonight.”

  My mind raced. “The jungle is more dangerous in the dark. We’ll do it if you pay us more.”

  “Twice the usual,” Del said.

  A tinny laugh echoed from the charm. “Pay you more? You’re lucky I pay you at all.”

  I gritted my teeth and said, “But we’ve been working for you for four years without a raise.”

  “And you’ll be working for me for four more years. And four after that. And four after that.” Annoyance lurked in his tone. So did his low opinion of us.

  Del’s and Nix’s brows crinkled in distress. We’d always suspected that OMB wasn’t planning to let us buy our freedom, but he’d dangled that carrot in front of us. What he’d just said made that seem like a big fat lie, though. One we could add to the many others he’d told us.

  An urge to rebel, to stand up to the bully who controlled our lives, seethed in my chest.

  “No,” I said. “You treat us like crap, and I’m sick of it. Pay us fairly.”

  “I treat you like crap, as you so eloquently put it, because that is exactly what you are. FireSouls.” He spit the last word, imbuing it with so much venom I thought it might poison me.

  I flinched, frantically glancing around to see if anyone in the bar had heard what he’d called us. Fortunately, they were all distracted. That didn’t stop my heart from thundering in my ears as rage replaced the fear. I opened my mouth to shout at him, but snapped it shut. I was too afraid of pissing him off.

  “Get it by dawn,” he barked. “Or I’m turning one of you in to the Order of the Magica. Prison will be the least of your worries. They might just execute you.”

  I gasped. “You wouldn’t.” Our government hunted and imprisoned—or destroyed—FireSouls.

  “Oh, I would. And I’d enjoy it. The three of you have been more trouble than you’re worth. You’re getting cocky, thinking you have a say in things like this. Get the daggers by dawn, or one of you ends up in the hands of the Order.”

  My skin chilled, and the floor felt like it had dropped out from under me. He was serious.

  “Fine.” I bit off the end of the word, barely keeping my voice from shaking. “We’ll do it tonight. Del will transport them to you as soon as we have them.”

  “Excellent.” Satisfaction rang in his tone, and my skin crawled. “Don’t disappoint me, or you know what will happen.”

  The magic in the charm died. He’d broken the connection.

  I collapsed back against the chair. In times like these, I wished I had it in me to kill. Sure, I offed demons when they came at me on our jobs, but that was easy because they didn’t actually die. Killing their earthly bodies just sent them back to their hell.

  But I couldn’t kill another supernatural. Not even OMB. It might get us out of this lifetime of servitude, but I didn’t have it in me. And what if I failed? I was too afraid of his rage—and the consequences—if I didn’t succeed.

  “Shit, shit, shit.” Nix’s green eyes were stark in her pale face. “He means it.”

  “Yeah.” Del’s voice shook. “We need to get those daggers.”

  “Now,” I said.

  “I wish I could just conjure a forgery,” Nix said. “I really don’t want to go out into the jungle tonight. Getting past the Dvarapala in the dark will suck.”

  Nix was a conjurer, able to create almost anything using just her magic. Massive or complex things, like airplanes or guns, were outside of her ability, but a couple of daggers wouldn’t be hard.

  Trouble was, they were a magical artifact, enchanted with the ability to return to whoever had thrown them. Like boomerangs. Though Nix could conjure the daggers, we couldn’t enchant them.

  “We need to go. We only have six hours until dawn.” I grabbed my short swords from the table and stood, shoving them into the holsters strapped to my back.

  A hush descended over the crowded bar.

  I stiffened, but the sound of the staticky TV in the corner made me relax. They weren’t interested in me. Just the news, which was probably being routed through a dozen techno-witches to get this far into the jungle.

  The grave voice of the female reporter echoed through the quiet bar. “The FireSoul was apprehended outside of his apartment in Magic’s Bend, Oregon. He is currently in the custody of the Order of the Magica, and his trial is scheduled for tomorrow morning. My sources report that execution is possible.”

  I stifled a crazed laugh. Perfect timing. Just what we needed to hear after OMB’s threat. A reminder of what would happen if he turned us into the Order of the Magica. The hush that had descended over the previously rowdy crowd—the kind of hush you get at the scene of a big accident—indicated what an interesting freaking topic this was. FireSouls were the bogeymen. I was the bogeyman, even though I didn’t use my powers. But as long as no one found out, we were safe.

  My gaze darted to Del and Nix. They nodded toward the door. It was definitely time to go.

  As the newscaster turned her report toward something more boring and the crowd got rowdy again, we threaded our way between the tiny tables and chairs.

  I shoved the heavy wooden door open and sucked in a breath of sticky jungle air, relieved to be out of the bar. Night creatures screeched, and moonlight filtered through the trees above. The jungle would be a nice place if it weren’t full of things that wanted to kill us.

  “We’re never escaping him, are we?” Nix said softly.

  “We will.” Somehow. Someday. “Let’s just deal with this for now.”

  We found our motorcycles, which were parked in the lot with a dozen other identical ones. They were hulking beasts with massive, all-terrain tires meant for the jungle floor. We’d done a lot of work in Southeast Asia this year, and these were our favored forms of transportation in this part of the world.

  Del could transport us, but it was better if she saved her power. It wasn’t infinite, though it did regenerate. But we’d learned a long time ago to save Del’s power for our escape. Nothing worse than being trapped in a temple with pissed off guardians and a few tripped booby traps.

  We’d scouted out the location of the temple earlier that day, so we knew where to go.

  I swung my leg over Secretariat—I liked to name my vehicles—and kicked the clutch. The engine roared to life. Nix and Del followed, and we peeled out of the lot, leaving the dingy yellow light of the bar behind.

  Our headlights illuminated the dirt road as we sped through the night. Huge fig trees dotted the path on either side, their twisted trunks and roots forming an eerie corridor. Elephant-ear sized leaves swayed in the wind, a dark emerald that gleamed in the light.

  Jungle animals howled, and enormous lightning bugs flitted along the path. They were too big to be regular bugs, so they were most likely some kind of fairy, but I wasn’t going to stop to investigate. There were dangerous creatures in the jungle at night—one of the reasons we hadn’t wanted to go now—and in our world, fairies could be considered dangerous.

  Especially if you called them lightning bugs.

  A roar sounded in the distance, echoing through the
jungle and making the leaves rustle on either side as small animals scurried for safety.

  The roar came again, only closer.

  Then another, and another.

  “Oh shit,” I muttered. This was bad.

  ~~~

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  Author’s Note

  Thank you so much for reading Origin of Magic! If you’ve read any of my other books, you won’t be surprised to hear that I included historical elements. If you’re interested in learning more about that, read on. At the end, I’ll talk a bit about why Nix and her deirfiúr are treasure hunters and how I try to make that fit with archaeology’s ethics (which don’t condone treasure hunting, as I’m sure you might have guessed).

  Nix’s village was inspired by Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert in southwestern France, an ancient city that ascends a valley between two mountains, and by the portrayal of Themyscira in 2017’s Wonder Woman movie. To my eye, Themyscira, Wonder Woman’s home, looked like Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert on steroids. Both places are beautiful and trapped away from time, which made them perfect places for Nix to grow up. I did my best to describe the city of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, but one of the most interesting parts that was hard to fit into the book were the fountains that ran all along the street. They are fed constantly by the rivers and are always flowing, draining into a basin and then down onto the slanted cobblestone street. They are an incredibly impressive piece of ancient architecture.

  Death Valley was chosen the perfect place to test Nix’s skills. Where better to put Life than in Death Valley? Though Death Valley was given its name by a group of pioneers in 1949-50, Native Americans from the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe have lived there for over a thousand years. Many of the obstacles in the book were inspired by real places in Death Valley: Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, Ubehebe Crater, and Badwater Basin, a dried-up ancient lake that is the lowest point in America. All sorts of minerals and metals have been mined in Death Valley over the years, including gold. Abandoned mines and towns scatter the landscape there, long since abandoned.

  That’s it for the historical influences in Origin of Magic. However, one of the most important things about this book is how Nix and her deirfiúr treat artifacts and their business, Ancient Magic.

  As I’m sure you know, archaeology isn’t quite like Indiana Jones (for which I’m both grateful and bitterly disappointed). Sure, it’s exciting and full of travel. However, booby-traps are not as common as I expected. Total number of booby-traps I have encountered in my career: zero. Still hoping, though.

  When I chose to write a series about archaeology and treasure hunting, I knew I had a careful line to tread. There is a big difference between these two activities. As much as I value artifacts, they are not treasure. Not even the gold artifacts. They are pieces of our history that contain valuable information, and as such, they belong to all of us. Every artifact that is excavated should be properly conserved and stored in a museum so that everyone can have access to our history. No one single person can own history, and I believe very strongly that individuals should not own artifacts. Treasure hunting is the pursuit of artifacts for personal gain.

  So why did I make Nix and her deirfiúr treasure hunters? I’d have loved to call them archaeologists, but nothing about their work is like archaeology. Archaeology is a very laborious, painstaking process—and it certainly doesn’t involve selling artifacts. That wouldn’t work for the fast-paced, adventurous series that I had planned for Dragon’s Gift. Not to mention the fact that dragons are famous for coveting treasure. Considering where the deirfiúr got their skills from, it just made sense to call them treasure hunters.

  Even though I write urban fantasy, I strive for accuracy. The deirfiúr don’t engage in archaeological practices—therefore, I cannot call them archaeologists. I also have a duty as an archaeologist to properly represent my field and our goals—namely, to protect and share history. Treasure hunting doesn’t do this. One of the biggest battles that archaeology faces today is protecting cultural heritage from thieves.

  I debated long and hard about not only what to call the heroines of this series, but also about how they would do their jobs. I wanted it to involve all the cool things we think about when we think about archaeology—namely, the Indiana Jones stuff, whether it’s real or not. But I didn’t know quite how to do that while still staying within the bounds of my own ethics. I can cut myself and other writers some slack because this is fiction, but I couldn’t go too far into smash and grab treasure hunting.

  I consulted some of my archaeology colleagues to get their take, which was immensely helpful. Wayne Lusardi, the State Maritime Archaeologist for Michigan, and Douglas Inglis and Veronica Morris, both archaeologists for Interactive Heritage, were immensely helpful with ideas. My biggest problem was figuring out how to have the heroines steal artifacts from tombs and then sell them and still sleep at night. Everything I’ve just said is pretty counter to this, right?

  That’s where the magic comes in. The heroines aren’t after the artifacts themselves (they put them back where they found them, if you recall)—they’re after the magic that the artifacts contain. They’re more like magic hunters than treasure hunters. That solved a big part of my problem. At least they were putting the artifacts back. Though that’s not proper archaeology, I could let it pass. At least it’s clear that they believe they shouldn’t keep the artifact or harm the site. But the SuperNerd in me said, “Well, that magic is part of the artifact’s context. It’s important to the artifact and shouldn’t be removed and sold.”

  Now that was a problem. I couldn’t escape my SuperNerd self, so I was in a real conundrum. Fortunately, that’s where the immensely intelligent Wayne Lusardi came in. He suggested that the magic could have an expiration date. If the magic wasn’t used before it decayed, it could cause huge problems. Think explosions and tornado spells run amok. It could ruin the entire site, not to mention possibly cause injury and death. That would be very bad.

  So now you see why Nix and her deirfiúr don’t just steal artifacts to sell them. Not only is selling the magic cooler, it’s also better from an ethical standpoint, especially if the magic was going to cause problems in the long run. These aren’t perfect solutions—the perfect solution would be sending in a team of archaeologists to carefully record the site and remove the dangerous magic—but that wouldn’t be a very fun book.

  Thanks again for reading (especially if you got this far!). I hope you enjoyed the story and will stick with Nix on the rest of her adventure!

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you, Ben, for everything. There would be no books without you.

  Thank you to Jena O’Connor and Adam at Fine Point Publishing for your excellent editing. The book is immensely better because of you both! Thank you to Crystal Jeffs, for your keen eye for continuity. Thank you to Rebecca Frank for the cover art and to Orina Kafe for the cover edits. Thanks to Stanley Morrison for his inspiring artwork—be sure to check out his amazing dragon art.

  The Dragon’s Gift series is a product of my two lives: one as an archaeologist and one as a novelist. Combining these two took a bit of work. I’d like to thank my friends, Wayne Lusardi, the State Maritime Archaeologist for Michigan, and Douglas Inglis and Veronica Morris, both archaeologists for Interactive Heritage, for their ideas about how to have a treasure hunter heroine that doesn’t conflict too much with archaeology’s ethics. The Author’s Note contains a bit more about this if you are interested.

  I’d also like to thank The FireSouls on Facebook for your help with ideas and clever suggestions. While I can’t always use them all, it’s so fun to talk about them with you. A few of those that made it into the book were Jim O’Keefe’s idea for a magical signature being the scent of an ‘old shoe housing a wet ferret’. Kara Perring suggested the Australian underground city of Coober Pedy as a great location for the book. I used it as inspiration for a scene in Death Valley. Charlotte Sanchez and Stacey Miller reminded me that Nix would obv
iously conjure something cheesy for breakfast. Alison Claxton and Jessie L. Collins suggested thermite as a hot-burning substance, and Gena Williams came up with “hairspray” (which gave birth to one of my favorite fight scenes). And Tara Patterson-Syrnyk, Kelly Ard, Guin DeLany Worthington, Tara Christensen, Michelle Gong, Sara Weir, Sally Strugnell, J Michael Gunn, Kara Perring, Kate Fox, Livvi Richardson, An Na, Janice Rosa, and Nje Dalena all suggested Dragonfruit. Please excuse me if I missed any names, and thank you all for being part of the group!

  Glossary

  Alpha Council - There are two governments that enforce law for supernaturals—the Alpha Council and the Order of the Magica. The Alpha Council governs all shifters. They work cooperatively with the Alpha Council when necessary—for example, when capturing FireSouls.

  Blood Sorceress - A type of Magica who can create magic using blood.

  Conjurer - A Magica who uses magic to create something from nothing. They cannot create magic, but if there is magic around them, they can put that magic into their conjuration.

  Dark Magic - The kind that is meant to harm. It’s not necessarily bad, but it often is.

  Deirfiúr - Sisters in Irish.

  Demons - Often employed to do evil. They live in various hells but can be released upon the earth if you know how to get to them and then get them out. If they are killed on Earth, they are sent back to their hell.

  Dragon Sense - A FireSoul’s ability to find treasure. It is an internal sense that pulls them toward what they seek. It is easiest to find gold, but they can find anything or anyone that is valued by someone.

  Elemental Mage – A rare type of mage who can manipulate all of the elements.

  Enchanted Artifacts – Artifacts can be imbued with magic that lasts after the death of the person who put the magic into the artifact (unlike a spell that has not been put into an artifact—these spells disappear after the Magica’s death). But magic is not stable. After a period of time—hundreds or thousands of years depending on the circumstance—the magic will degrade. Eventually, it can go bad and cause many problems.