The Flaw in All Magic (Magebreakers Book 1)

by Ben S. Dobson

  Kadka stared wide-eyed at the right-hand enclosure, a large desert-like environment with sandstone caves all along one side. Inside, a massive lion-headed manticore with bat-like wings and a scorpion tail padded back and forth over arid ground, watching them pass. The enclosure was fully caged, with iron bars overhead. “All these animals live in wild? How do I not hear more of them?”

  “There aren’t many left.” There was just a hint of anger in Selene’s voice. “Hunted down for one magical property or another, or just out of fear. Driven from their natural habitats as cities expand here and on the Continent. No one wants a chimera for a neighbor, even if the chimera was there first. Most of the animals we keep here are nearly extinct. The Conservatory’s primary purpose is to protect the ones that are left.”

  They’d moved past the manticore, but Kadka was still looking back, craning her head over her shoulder. “Why do they stay? That one could break bars, if he tried.”

  “I’ve trained them too well for that,” Selene said with a smile, and Tane believed her. Sprites had a natural affinity for animals. They couldn’t actually control beasts, like some people believed, but they could commune with them. “But you aren’t wrong. A full-grown manticore could break out of just about any housing we could make. The fences and cages are for show, more than anything. They make people feel safer. It’s the wards that really keep them from escaping.”

  “You have dragons?” Kadka peered around with interest.

  Selene shook her head. “Just a wyvern, but he’s a bit of a runt. Not much larger than a big dog. True dragons… if they ever existed at all, no one has seen one for centuries.”

  Tane laughed at Kadka’s disappointed pout. “What, unicorns and manticores aren’t good enough?”

  She grinned. “They are good. Dragon would be better.”

  “Here we are,” said Selene, pointing ahead to an enclosure on the left side of the path. “Olka, our Svernan ice wolf. We’ve only had her two weeks or so. She’s still learning not to keep people up at all hours, but her training is coming along.”

  “Can’t use spell to keep her quiet?” Kadka asked.

  “The people who live nearby suggest it every time we get a new addition, but we need to be able to hear when the animals are in distress,” said Selene. “For the most part, our residents are trained well enough that it isn’t a problem. It just takes time.” She landed on an eye-level perch designed for people of her size along the side of the fence, and waved them closer.

  The huge enclosure had been made to mimic the Svernan climate, all icy tundra and snowy crust. The ice wolf—or tunvok, according to Kadka—padded to the fence as they drew near, her paws crunching against the frozen ground. She looked much as Kadka had described: a massive wolf the size of a horse, with a strange undercoat of pale blue beneath white fur. Her hackles were raised, and her grey-blue eyes traced every movement. Where she breathed, a coat of frost formed on the iron fence.

  She growled, and Tane retreated a step, keeping his distance.

  “Don’t take it personally,” Selene said. “She’s not very friendly to anyone just yet.”

  “Maybe never,” said Kadka. “Is not easy, taming tunvok.” She leaned close. The wolf snapped her teeth between the bars, then danced back, confused, when the wards repelled her muzzle. Kadka frowned, but didn’t flinch. “Has spirit. She will never be happy here. Is big enough, and looks like home, but still cage.”

  “It isn’t ideal,” admitted Selene. “We usually only take animals in when they can’t survive safely in their natural habitat, but Olka’s situation was… complicated. She’d crossed into northern Rhien from the Svernan border, and she was causing problems for some of the smaller villages there. Killing livestock, freezing crops with her howl. They were scared to get close, so the Rhienni ambassador asked the Conservatory for help. We’re still trying to make contact with someone in Sverna about sending her home, and the Rhienni would have killed her if she stayed near the border, so here she is. Where she ends up depends on the diplomats now, but I don’t think she’s a very high priority.”

  “Well, she might be the solution to a problem that the Lady Protector wants solved very badly,” said Tane. “That could help. Now, I hate to annoy your neighbors, but can we hear her?”

  “Of course,” said Selene. “Assuming she’s in the mood to cooperate.” She locked eyes with Olka, and the wolf tilted her head as if listening.

  And then Olka raised her muzzle to the sky and let out a long howl.

  The sound of it sent a circle of frost racing across the enclosure, expanding rapidly until it reached the fence, coating black iron bars in white rime. The air crackled loudly with the sound of sudden, intense cold; the already frozen ground groaned and split open in places. Even outside the wards, protected from the immediate effect, Tane felt a chill raise gooseflesh across his body.

  “That’s it,” he said. “That’s the sound.” It was the same as what he’d heard in the workshop, there was no doubting that. “You said you’ve had complaints. That must give you a sense of how far people can hear her from.”

  “Just the upper streets of Greenstone, south of here. It’s all Rosepetal Park for a ways in the other directions. If anyone hears her from that far, they haven’t complained.”

  “Good. That gives us a place to start looking. I just have one more favor to ask: can you have her howl one more time in about fifteen minutes?”

  Selene raised an eyebrow. “I suppose, but why?”

  “I want to get an idea of how it sounds from where we’re looking,” said Tane. “That should give us enough time to get there.”

  “It shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Thank you, Selene. You’ve been a great help.”

  Selene waved a dismissive hand. “If it’s for Lady Abena, I’m glad to do it. Whatever you’re looking for, I hope you find it.”

  Not quite fifteen minutes later, Tane and Kadka arrived at Dedric Cranst’s house in northern Greenstone. The squat brick building was divided into four separate homes, and there were more just like it on both sides and on down the street. Each home had its own cramped yard at the back, fenced off from the others and accessible through narrow side alleys. This was the better end of Greenstone, though it was still a far sight from more affluent districts like the Gryphon’s Roost. Further south, under the green-grey haze rising from quarries and ancryst processing facilities, the homes shrank and the buildings stretched into rows of unbroken brick with no yards or open space to speak of. Very much like Tane’s neighborhood by the docks.

  “This is the place,” said Tane. He remembered the address from the records: 8 Thiel Street. The number was painted beside the door.

  “You think Cranst hid portal here?” Kadka looked suspiciously at the brick building.

  “No, but I think he might have chosen a place reasonably near. If he stole the badge, he would have wanted to be able to get to his hiding spot and back before Dedric noticed.”

  “So how do we find?”

  “First, we wait for—”

  Perfectly timed, a distant howling rose from the north, toward the Conservatory. The groan and crackle of ice was faint from this distance, but still noticeable—perhaps a little bit louder than what he’d heard through the portal, but he couldn’t be certain.

  “For that,” Tane said. “What do you think? You have good ears. Was that closer or farther than what we heard in the workshop?”

  “Closer, I think,” said Kadka.

  “Then we search southward, away from the park.”

  “What do we look for? Sound is not enough. Ears are not that good.”

  Tane pulled the watch case from his pocket and snapped it open to reveal the cloudy green ancryst held inside. “We use this. Ancryst makes a good magic detector, and the place should be warded against intrusion. The badge we found on Cranst was probably what he used to get in. So we circle these buildings front and back until the ancryst tells me there’s a ward nearby, and then we look clo
ser.”

  “Other magic won’t move it? Magelights?”

  “We’d have to be very close. It’s going to react to a decent ward spell from much further away, and in a neighborhood like this, we’re not likely to run into many of those. Too expensive to keep them up. Same reason I don’t activate the ones on my office unless I know I’ll need them. If the ancryst moves from the street or outside the yard, it’s worth a closer look. There are going to be misleads, but I don’t have a better way.”

  “Maybe Cranst is stupid, uses next house down.”

  “I don’t think we’re that lucky.” Tane sighed. “This is probably going to take a while. Let’s get started.”

  It was even slower work than Tane had expected. They moved down one street and up the next, checking each building as thoroughly as possible, but more than once they were driven off by residents who valued their privacy, or occasionally ones who just didn’t like the look of Kadka’s orcish features. Even when they weren’t being chased, it was difficult to avoid attention from people sitting on stoops or going for an afternoon stroll. Kadka was usually able to sneak around the back fences to check the yards without being seen, but there was nowhere to hide in the street.

  A few times the ancryst moved enough to be worth checking, but each time it was a false alarm: usually someone using some minor charm to banish a smell from their yard or clean their windows or the like, but once a gnomish child setting off colorful flash charms, all bright lights and loud popping sounds. That caught Tane by surprise, leaving him blinking away spots for several minutes.

  Late afternoon was quickly becoming evening when Kadka called Tane around to the back of a seemingly empty home on Bolane Street, in a low brick building just like all the rest.

  “Here, Carver. Stone is moving.”

  Tane ducked into the alley and found Kadka standing outside the fence of the second yard down. She handed him his watch case; he could feel it pushing against his palm.

  “Boost me over,” he said.

  Kadka ducked down; Tane stepped into her cupped hands and vaulted the fence, landing roughly on his hands and knees. He lost his grip on his watch case, and an invisible force pushed the ancryst a foot or more toward the fence as it fell. Definitely magic nearby.

  Kadka pulled herself over and landed easily on her feet as he retrieved the watch case. She pointed across the yard. “There, you think?”

  Tane followed her finger to a pair of cellar doors set against the base of the building. He moved the ancryst from side to side, testing the direction of the force. “It’s strongest in that direction.” He stepped closer, and the force increased, until it threatened to push the case from his hand. When he snapped it closed, the pressure abated immediately, blocked by brass.

  A chain held the doors shut, with a heavy iron lock at the center. Tane drew the key they’d found on Cranst from his pocket. Black iron, like the lock. He tried it—the key turned, and the lock opened.

  “This is place, then,” said Kadka.

  Tane only nodded, his heart beating fast against his chest.

  Kadka quickly pulled the chain free, and together they threw open the doors. A stone stair descended into the earth, with brick walls on either side. At the bottom, a hint of silver-blue magelight glimmered around the corner.

  “Time to see what Cranst was hiding.” Tane started forward.

  “Wait,” Kadka said, and caught him by the wrist. “Should be me. Might be other spell to see you, and then someone knows you are here. Won’t see me.”

  Part of him wanted to argue—it felt like he’d come a very long way to get to this place, and he wanted to see it for himself. But Kadka was right. If there were any detection spells, she could walk through them freely. “Here,” he said, and reluctantly handed her Cranst’s crowned staff badge. “This should get you past any wards.”

  Kadka took the badge, and grinned. “Is good that I come now, yes?”

  “Don’t rub it in,” Tane said, smiling slightly. “Just be careful, and tell me what you see as you see it.”

  Her grin widened. “If nothing kills me first.”

  With that, she started down the stairs.

  _____

  At the bottom of the stairs, Kadka turned the corner into a room that made no sense to her at all.

  The cellar was awash in silver-blue magelight cast by a glass globe hanging from the ceiling. Most of the floor was taken up by a strip of copper inlaid in the stone in a large circle. Glyphs she couldn’t understand were scribed in gold across the copper band. On the far side stood a stone pedestal, about waist height, and from the top of the pedestal a bird-like copper claw jutted upward, holding a fist-sized gemstone of an opaque milky white. The gem was riddled with tiny cracks and chipped where pieces had fallen away. Lines of inlaid copper radiated from the base of the claw, one striking straight down to meet the copper circle and two more running to the other side of the pedestal, out of sight. Against the wall near the entryway where Kadka was standing, a little desk held a few books and a half-rolled paper.

  “Don’t know what this is, Carver, but looks like magic.”

  Carver’s voice came from the top of the stairs. “Describe it to me.”

  “Is… big circle. Copper. Gold glyphs.”

  “Gold? They were trying to stabilize an unreliable spell. What else?”

  “Pedestal at one side with white gem. Gem has little cracks, all over.”

  “The white is a sort of milky color?”

  “Yes.”

  “How big?”

  “Like fist.”

  “Spellfire.” Carver sounded surprised. “A gem that size, and they used up all its power. How did Cranst pay for that?”

  “Is desk here, with books. Let me check.” The books had long titles that were nonsense to her, mostly Audish words she didn’t know. She took one and opened it, looking for anything of interest.

  “I took a peek through the window up here,” Carver said from above as she flipped through pages. “There’s nothing inside. Cranst must have rented this place just to use the cellar. Did you find anything else?”

  The books meant very little to Kadka, and she didn’t understand much of what she saw inside, but one word stood out. “Magic books, about portals.”

  “That makes sense, under the circumstances. Anything else?”

  “Paper here too.”

  “What kind of paper?”

  At one side of the desk was a large rectangular sheet, held in place in one corner with a brass paperweight. The other corners were free, and the sheet had been rolled closed to make room for the books. Kadka cleared the desk and flattened out the paper. It was covered in glyphs and complex instructions, but she recognized the diagram at the center easily enough. She’d seen it before, from across the Porthaven harbor.

  “Plans for airship,” she called to Carver.

  “Really? I need to see that.”

  “Let me finish first. Might be more.” She crossed the copper circle to the pedestal, tracing the copper lines inlaid in the marble. A glass-fronted cabinet was set into the far side. Inside was a scroll held between a pair of copper claws very much like the one holding the milky gem. The lines of copper from above each met a claw at its base.

  Kadka knelt and opened the little glass door. “Is scroll in pedestal.”

  “Kadka, don’t—”

  She grabbed the scroll and lifted it from its housing. “Already took. Nothing happened.”

  “It might have been trapped!”

  “Why trap when they think no one can get in?”

  “I don’t know, paranoia?” She heard him sigh, even from down the stairs and around the corner. “It doesn’t matter now. I need a look at that scroll.”

  There didn’t seem to be much else, which was disappointing. She’d been hoping for some magic she hadn’t seen before. “Coming now.”

  Carver snatched the airship plans from her the moment she stepped out of the cellar.

  “Now you say ‘Thank y
ou, Kadka,’ yes?” she said, grinning.

  “Thank you, Kadka,” he repeated absently, without looking up. “These are for the envelope. The heating glyphs. That’s what Thrung said Allaea was working on. This has to mean Cranst was planning to sabotage the launch.” He beckoned for the other scroll. “Let me see that one.”

  Kadka handed it over. “Was in little copper hands. All joined up to circle.”

  He nodded. “That’s not uncommon for a pre-cast spell. Engraving the glyphs is more permanent, but overly complex spells can be too long for that.” He unrolled the scroll and started reading.

  All the color left his face at once.

  “Carver?”

  “This is the flaw, Kadka. This is how they did it. Spellfire, I’m an idiot. What did I get us in to?”

  As usual, she wasn’t going to get any useful answers if she didn’t ask. Carver was smart enough—when he wasn’t being stupid, at least—but he took for granted a great deal of knowledge that she didn’t have. Making him talk it through aloud seemed to help him find his way to the important parts. “Explain to me.”

  “This is a portal spell. It was all prepared in advance. The spell, the circle, that huge gem. Diamond, it says here, to provide the kind of power this would have taken. What we saw in the workshop wasn’t a spell being cast in the moment. It was more like an artifact being activated.” Carver touched the watch case in his pocket, the way she’d seen him do when he was agitated. “I should have seen it! I just never thought… portals are unstable, always shifting and changing. I’ve never heard of one being cast without direct oversight. I didn’t know it could be done.”

  Kadka furrowed her brow. “So portal was made like artifact. This means something?”