Stone Dragon (The Painter Mage Book 5)

by D. K. Holmberg

  I studied the door. The patterns on the other side were different than they were on this side, but I suspected I could open it just as easily. Now that I had determined the way to open the door, the need to follow the sigil and trip the arcane patterns, I suspected that was the key on this side too.

  Mac stepped aside to let me reach the door. Shiza stayed close enough I could smell her. She had a musky odor she attempted to cover with a floral perfume. Her breath was hot as she leaned too close to me. I was used to Devan being so much shorter than me. Shiza stood nearly at eye level.

  “Can you give me a little room here?” I asked.

  Shiza flashed a smile. “You will activate the patterns slowly, Escher Morris. I would like to see this.”

  “I’m not your student,” I said. “And I doubt you have anything I want to learn anyway.”

  I ignored the way she looked at me, a mixture of curiosity and irritation, and studied the patterns on the door. These were easier than the other side. There was no sigil, not like the others, but it didn’t take long to pick out the arcane patterns placed on the door. The only problem was that there were nearly a half dozen. That would take some serious work to split my focus that many times. I don’t know how Hard managed. Hell, how even Taylor managed. The Masters didn’t learn to divide their attention like this. It was something I’d picked up working with the Trelking.

  Unless there was another pattern to the door. I couldn’t be certain. The arcane pattern was easy enough to pick out, but maybe that was the point.

  “Ollie?” Devan said.

  “Yeah, give me a minute.”

  “You do not know how to open this door, Escher Morris?”

  “It’s Oliver,” I snapped.

  What if the arcane patterns opened the door to another location? I didn’t know anything about these doors. They were different than the crossings I’d used to reach the other side of the Threshold. The series of doors on the other side of this one certainly were different than anything that I’d seen. Other than the one doorway my father had buried in Conlin.

  And I couldn’t trigger the doorway any other way. So I used the arcane patterns.

  As I started to focus on the patterns, I recognized there was a pattern to the patterns. And smiled. It was one I’d seen before.

  I pressed my will into the first, activating it with a surge of light. Then the second. And so on.

  The door started to glow, the shimmery outline forming into place.

  “What did you do?” Mac said.

  He reached for me, but Devan got there first and pushed him back. I glanced over in time to see the ‘don’t fuck with me’ expression in her eyes as she looked at Mac.

  I pulled on the door, and it opened easily.

  “Ready?” I asked Devan.

  She nodded, and we stepped through.

  There was a part of me that wasn’t sure if the door would open to someplace other than the hall of doors. The way Mac had reacted told me I had triggered the patterns differently than Hard or the others, but as my eyes adjusted, I saw that we were, in fact, back in the hall.

  Devan followed closely behind me, the trunk pushing up against me as I stopped in the middle of the hall. Shiza and then Mac followed through after me. Shiza looked at me with particular interest.

  “How did you do so many?” she asked.

  “What, no ‘Escher Morris’ this time?”

  Her expression didn’t change.

  “That’s just something us taggers can do,” I said and then turned away, making my way down the hall. I didn’t care if they followed and I knew Devan would follow me. If they tried to come with me back into the Rooster, I might have to do something, but otherwise, it didn’t matter.

  The door leading to the Rooster was near the end of the hall. Unlike some of the others, it was plain and made of the same steel found on the other side. “What do you think would happen if the Rooster were to be torn down? Would the door still stand or would it disappear?” I asked Devan as we stopped in front of the door.

  “You’re an idiot, Ollie.”

  “Probably.”

  “This is the one you will open, Escher Morris?” Shiza asked.

  “Would you stop with that?” I said, without turning to face her. “It’s Oliver. And yes. This is the one. It will take me back to Conlin. I’m sure Hard can’t wait for me to be back on the other side.”

  “What of the rest of these?” Mac asked.

  “Don’t know. And I don’t have the time to go searching.”

  Shiza laughed. “You would not be able to open them so easily.”

  “Right. Because it took all the Masters of Arcanus to open one before.” I turned to her and held her eyes. I was beginning to think I didn’t like her, though I wasn’t sure why. “None of these doors would be terribly difficult to open if you know the right patterns,” I said. “And lucky for me, you haven’t studied any of the right patterns here.”

  “You think you have, Oliver Morris?”

  “I’ve spent ten years mastering them, so yeah.”

  Devan pushed on me with the trunk. “Come on, Ollie,” she whispered.

  I shot Shiza another glare, waiting for her to turn away from me, but she never did. She stared at me, holding my gaze as if determined to get me to blink. Which I totally did.

  I turned away, back toward the door. I knew better than to mess around with this and with her. The door had a simple appearance to it and only a pattern in each corner, nothing like the other doors. The patterns on this side weren’t intended to be complex. They had some hint of power, some hint of what they could do, but nothing like the complexity found on the other doors.

  “It’s different,” I said to Devan.

  “How?”

  “These aren’t meant to open the door. They’re a signal.” The more I studied the symbols on this side of the door, the more certain I was of that fact. They were a signal and one that would do little more than send a summons. I imagined on the other side, it would tell the Elder, or maybe even Tom, that the door would be opening. But unlike with the other doors, they didn’t actually open the door.

  “You need Tom to open it from the other side?”

  “Shit, I don’t know he’s able to,” I said. Tom hadn’t known how to open the door, only that the door was there. He might be a painter, but he didn’t have anything like my father’s ability.

  Shiza pushed up near me. I felt her as an unpleasant warmth and could smell her, the unmistakable mixture of her perfume and natural odor. “You cannot open it, Oliver Morris?”

  “This door is different than the others,” I said.

  By this time, Mac had moved up behind me as well, standing on Devan’s left. He leaned over her, careful not to lean on the trunk, his eyes narrowed as he studied the door. “I never noticed this before. There are none of the arcane patterns as there are on the other doors.”

  “Yeah, and it’s more than that. The patterns that are here don’t have any intent. They serve to summons the Elder.”

  “But your father used this door to return,” Devan said.

  That’s what I had thought too, but what if he had a different way through? Maybe he used one of the other doors. For all that I knew, he would bounce back and forth across the Threshold to reach Conlin… only I didn’t think that was likely. Crossing the Threshold was risky, even to the Elder. It put him in the Trelking’s realm. No matter how powerful my father might have been, I doubted he ever went to the Trelking’s realm unless he absolutely had to.

  There must be some way of triggering the door I didn’t see.

  “Maybe it’s not the visible patterns,” I said to myself.

  I touched the surface of the door. The metal was cold but also hummed with a surge of energy flowing through it, a steady thing that left my hand tingling. Sweeping my hand over the surface didn’t reveal any change to the energy of the door, leaving it one consistent sheet of humming metal. I glanced to the corner, at the series of triangles bound tog
ether, all pointing outward. With a surged of power, I pressed through the pattern. Nothing changed. I tried the next pattern, the one with the spiraling series of lines, and again nothing happened.

  “Ollie?” Devan said. “Your father wouldn’t have made it quite so easy for others to reach the Rooster. Not if these are meant to summon.”

  I understood what she was telling me. I needed to look for a different way of reaching through the door. There was energy in the door, but the pattern was on the other side. Could I trigger it from this side?

  Not with a simple pattern. Not even with an arcane pattern. I couldn’t draw enough power that way. But I’d learned a way to do it differently. Nik had taught me another way to draw power. Could I combine the magi magic and somehow reach through the door with it to activate the pattern?

  It would explain why my father would have been able to open this door no others could. He wouldn’t want just anyone coming through to the Rooster, not into the kitchen where Tom might be surprised.

  “Might want to back up,” I suggested to Devan.

  “Oh shit, Ollie,” she breathed.

  I started moving my hands in the pattern Nik had taught me, but this time, I twisted it, augmenting the pattern of the movements with a bit of my own flare. As I did, I felt the increased draw of the pattern and the way it built with the magi magic.

  “Oliver, what are you—” Mac started.

  The pattern completed with a surge of energy. This one was a sort of twisting motion, a way of swirling my hands that started close to my body and then twisted away, as if building away from me, like the pattern steadily drew energy away from. Which, I suspected, is what the pattern was intended to do.

  I released it. Not at the door, but instead, I targeted through the door.

  The energy was enormous, much more than anything I’d ever drawn before. When it slammed into the door, I expected a violent explosion or nothing. What happened was different. The door sizzled, crackling with blue light, before fading. Then a faint line appeared around the edge of the door. Nothing more than that.

  “Nice work, Ollie,” Devan said. She pushed past me and pushed the door open and stepped through.

  I started forward when Mac grabbed my wrist. “What… what did you do?”

  Glancing back, I caught Mac’s eye. “I’ve been away from Arcanus for a while now, Mac. You learn a few things in that time away.”

  “That reminded me of you father.”

  “Yeah, well my father was something more than just a painter.”

  “Oliver Morris,” Shiza said, drawing my attention back around to her. “I thought perhaps the Protariat made a mistake, but it seems I was the one mistaken. You will return to teach like the Elder, yes?”

  I glanced from Mac to Shiza. “I’m not sure there’s much I know you want to learn.”

  “Not all of us want to stay in Arcanus, Oliver. It’s just that we know what waits for us outside if we risk ourselves.”

  “But it doesn’t wait for you. Whatever you think might be out there isn’t—”

  “I was there when Ash was claimed,” Mac said. “I saw what pulled him through. I know I’m not ready to face whatever that was. I’m skilled with patterns, and I’m considered an artist and a Master, but I see there are things I just don’t know.” He released my wrist and glanced at Shiza. “You’ve been saying we need to learn, that we can learn, but none of us were willing to hear it. Well, I’m ready to listen now. When you return, Oliver, I’d like to see what you might be able to show me.”

  That was a bit unexpected. Even Shiza’s sudden thawing was unexpected. I wasn’t used to being asked to teach anyone. Hell, I wasn’t used to being in the position to teach before. “Work on the arcane patterns. That’s going to help more than anything else,” I said.

  “You will return, Oliver Morris?” Shiza asked.

  “I’ll have to think about it,” I admitted. After the way I’d been treated in Arcanus in the past, I didn’t have the same warm and fuzzy feeling about it I could have had, but I also recognized the need to have painters able to use more than just the conventional patterns. And if I could learn how to use the magi magic, there was no reason the Masters couldn’t learn.

  Mac clapped me on the shoulder, and Shiza nodded. I turned away from them and stepped through the door. The energy around the door sizzled over me as I did, but quickly disappeared.

  Devan stood on the other side waiting for me. The trunk was set next to the actual freezer door. The kitchen was darkened, nothing more than a low-level lighting that came from outside the kitchen itself. The smells of the kitchen were muted, but a burnt stink hung over everything.

  “Do you feel it, Ollie?” Devan asked.

  “Feel what?”

  As I asked, I realized I did. It was there, pushing on my senses, steady and rhythmic, like a tapping on the ground. I could almost imagine the tapping of the staff on the ground, regularly.

  “We have another day,” I told Devan.

  “Do we?”

  “We weren’t gone that long.”

  “Not that long here, but what if the crossing takes longer than we realize? The passing of time when going across the Threshold is different too, why should this be any different?”

  The pulsing rhythm of energy suddenly stopped.

  “Well, whatever happened, the Wasdig seems to know that we’ve returned,” I said.

  12

  We made our way through the kitchen. I noticed the bin holding Nik and decided to leave him, preferring to come back for him later. I had to deal with the magic monster first.

  Devan carried the trunk with her before stopping and flipping it open and reaching in to grab the dryad out. The dryad held onto Devan’s arm, his gray woody arms twisting up and around her arm. He stood only a little higher than her waist. His dark eyes seemed to pull the light coming from outside the diner and reminded me of the table in the crystal room. She reached in and grabbed the blanket and tossed it to me.

  “You think we’ll need the blanket?” I asked.

  “It was your father’s. Who knows what we’ll need. You’ve got the other things?”

  “Doesn’t seem like it matters. We don’t have time to go through the pages. And I don’t know what the bowl is for. We’re basically in no better place than we were when left for Arcanus. Worse, since it seems we’ve lost a day or two.”

  Power built with a quick surge and then faded.

  “I think we’re going to need to hurry,” I said to Devan. “I don’t think the Wasdig is much of a patient monster.”

  Devan nodded tersely. We left the trunk in the kitchen of the Rooster and then stepped into the main part of the diner. It was empty. The lights were dimmed.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  Devan shook her head. We stopped at the door and had to twist the lock to get out. Outside, the air was cool. A steady misting rain came down. Big Red was parked where we left it, and there were no other cars in the lot.

  “Think it will start?” I asked.

  “You’re an idiot, Ollie.”

  “Not an idiot. Just nervous.”

  She glanced over at me. The dryad had stayed with her and crawled into the truck after her. Had I not felt the growing fear of what would happen when we reached the Wasdig, I might have chuckled. As it was, I didn’t feel anything but a gnawing sense I still didn’t know what I was doing.

  I climbed behind the wheel and gripped it tightly. The Wasdig’s power began to build again, the steady tapping sense. I could almost visualize it slamming its staff into the ground as it generated its energy. Big Red started with a rumble, and I took a deep breath. I knew exactly what I needed to do, I just wasn’t thrilled with the fact I needed to do it. But who else was going to go against the Wasdig? The idea of that creature roaming free through Conlin worried me.

  As we pulled out of the lot of the Rooster, I glanced over at Devan. The dryad remained on the ground as if hiding from me. “Why the old plant?” I asked aloud. />
  Devan looked up. “What are you talking about?”

  Now that I put words to it, I recognized what had bothered me since we first came across the Wasdig. “Anything magical that comes through Conlin seems to come via the Rooster, right?” Devan shrugged. “And the protections my father placed around the town should serve to at least keep anything that’s not supposed to come through out of the city.”

  “It didn’t stop the Nizashi. Or my father.”

  “Yeah, but I think that was because they made a point of destroying those signs first. That was the only way they would have been able to do it.”

  We made a turn onto Thistle Street. The night was dark and full of shadows, and an angry wind gusted along the street, carrying with it the scent of a recent rain. The truck’s headlights struggled to pierce the darkness, but I’d driven these streets enough times since returning that I didn’t need much light, at least not like I had when we first returned to Conlin. The sense of the Wasdig and the magic he pulled drew us onward.

  “What are you doing, Ollie?” Devan asked.

  I had the window down and trailed a thin stream of ink out the window as we drove. I wasn’t sure what I was doing would even work, but if the Wasdig had already returned, I had to do something. After all, wasn’t I now the protector of Conlin? That was sort of the role I’d given myself.

  “Just trying to do my part,” I said.

  Devan leaned across me. I couldn’t help but notice her thin shirt falling open as she did. She glanced out the window and then saw me leering at her. “Really? After ten years and now you can’t keep your eyes off me?”

  I shrugged. “You know it’s different.”

  “Only for you. I’m not the one who’s been an idiot the last decade.”

  She stayed pressed against me, and I enjoyed the soft way her body felt. There was a familiarity to her, but also an electric sense as we touched. I’d always felt that sensation around her, but I’d never attributed it to any sort of feelings. It had taken nearly losing her for me to realize what I should have known all along.