She leaned forward as if she wanted to put her elbows on the table but was too well-bred. “Some fifty years ago there was fighting in the Middle East. Not of the mundane type. Magical war. And not between factions, but Nicollien fighting Nicollien, family against family. One family decided to prevent the other from use of the Wishing Well. They killed the custodian and dumped his body into the Well.”
I covered my mouth to hold back a gasp. “That’s horrible!”
“They were not good people. The Nicollien Archmagus finally sent in others who destroyed both families utterly. They tried to retrieve the custodian’s body, but it had vanished.”
“I heard the water in the Well turned bloody after that day,” Judy said.
“I do not know that,” Madeleine said. “What is certain is that from that day forward, anyone daring to wish on the Well is cursed. Some die immediately, others suffer terrible misfortunes, but there are no exceptions. The Well is poisoned.”
“So it might as well be destroyed,” I mused. Two gone, four remain. But why had the oracle referred to the named Neutralities as guardians? I’d had one question answered, but that left a slew of them I didn’t understand.
“Yes,” Madeleine said. “I think the Arabian nodes have not given up trying to reclaim the Well, but they keep to themselves these days. Few foreign magi are allowed in the Middle East.”
“I’d heard that. It’s weird to think the whole area was shut down for reasons not relating to the Long War.”
“Ours are not the only problems in the world, just the most serious.” Madeleine stood and straightened her pantsuit. “You will call me if you see any problems with the wards, yes?”
“I…sure, I guess so.” She’d sounded perfectly professional, and I’d responded without thinking. Well, if Madeleine could change even a little bit, I could be big enough to accept it.
We walked with her to the front door, where she nodded farewell and walked to Abernathy’s magically reserved parking space and the sporty red coupe parked in it. I watched her drive away and said, “Was that surreal, or was it just me?”
“I didn’t think she was capable of ordinary conversation,” Judy replied.
“Maybe she’s changing. She can’t be happy, holding in all that anger and bitterness all the time.”
“You’re too optimistic to be real,” Judy said.
“I’m not that optimistic. You didn’t hear me invite her to dinner, did you?” I ran my fingers through my hair and yawned. “I wish I could go home and end this day already. I don’t know if I can bear any more shocks.”
My phone rang.
“You need to not hand the universe such amazing straight lines,” Judy said.
I checked the display. Ariadne Duwelt, my liaison with the Board of Neutralities. “Hello?” I said.
“Helena. How are you?”
“Fine, just a bit rattled. Is everything all right?”
“We’re concerned, naturally.”
I almost laughed. Ariadne was as laid back as they came, and “concerned” was, for her, the equivalent of “freaking out.” “The wards on Abernathy’s were checked and they’re as strong as they can be without preventing people from entering.”
“It’s possible it will come to that. We’re still not sure how the invaders managed to destroy the Fountain, but we know they exploited a weakness in its wards.”
The back of my neck tingled. That had come too glibly to be real. “I…think you’re not telling me the whole truth.”
Ariadne sighed. “We are trying to keep quiet the fact that it was a large number of intelligent invaders who were responsible for the destruction, all right? No sense stirring up fears.”
“Sorry to contradict, but don’t you think people have a right to know what danger they’re facing? I don’t know much about fighting invaders, but I do know it’s important to base a fighting technique on the type of invader a Warden faces.”
“We won’t be able to conceal it for long, and you’re right, people need to know. But we want to be able to give more concrete information. I’ll call you when we know more. It’s essential that we protect the rest of the named Neutralities.”
Another warning tingle. “You make it sound like there’s more to it than wanting to avoid more destruction.”
“The named Neutralities are the biggest nodes in the world. Never mind losing their special advantages—we can’t afford for the invaders to get their tentacles on that much raw power.”
I glanced at Judy, listening to this call without disguising her interest. “The oracle said…it referred to the named Neutralities as ‘guardians,’” I said. “Does that make sense to you?”
“It’s not anything I’ve heard before, but I suppose you could call them that. Guardians of magery, certainly.” She sighed again. “Keep doing your job, and prepare for word that Abernathy’s will have to temporarily shut down. I’m not saying it will definitely come to that, but it might.” She hung up.
“Guardians? Were you going to tell me this?” Judy demanded.
“Madeleine drove it out of my head,” I lied. “Besides, it wasn’t more than that. It just said two were gone, four were left, and it called the ones that remained guardians.”
“That’s weird. Guardians of what, I wonder?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I hope the invaders don’t know more than we do.”
3
I propped my chin on my hand and stifled a yawn. With the rest of the named Neutralities on the other side of the world, it made sense for us to schedule this call for midnight my time, but it didn’t make me any less tired. I’d set up my laptop on the kitchen table, had a big mug of herbal tea at my elbow, and was just waiting for the call to come in.
The rest of the day had been uneventful, but I hadn’t relaxed. I wasn’t so much afraid for Abernathy’s as I was for whoever the invaders might strike next. Granted, that could be Abernathy’s, but deep down I felt the invaders, the intelligent ones, wouldn’t be so obvious. I wished I knew their plan. No, I wished Lucia knew their plan, because I had faith in her ability to counter it, backed by the other Neutralities and the magi.
“Helena?”
I half-turned to look at Malcolm standing in the kitchen doorway. “I’m going to bed,” he said, “unless you want me to wait up?”
I smiled. “No, but it’s sweet of you to offer. I don’t know how long this will take. Probably not long, unless one of the others knows something I don’t.”
He came forward and kissed me. “Good night.”
“Good night. I love you.”
I watched him disappear through the doorway and sighed. That one little interaction left me feeling more relaxed than I had all day.
The laptop began chiming. I hit the button to connect to the video call. The camera light blinked on, and four smaller screens appeared. One of them showed me—did I really look that disheveled? I resisted the urge to comb through my hair with my fingers and sat up straighter.
Three men looked back at me from the other tiny rectangles. They all looked far fresher than I did—well, for them it was morning or midday. Though Claude Gauthier, custodian of the Athenaeum, always looked alert no matter what time of day or night I spoke to him. He claimed he hadn’t slept in twenty-five years, which struck me as implausible, but who knew what weird effects a named Neutrality might have on its custodian? I, for example, hadn’t had so much as a sniffle in the nearly three years I’d been Abernathy’s’ custodian.
Amarion Katsaros of the Labyrinth, on the other hand, had natural dark rings under his eyes that made him look older than his thirty years. I felt a pang, in looking at him, that he wasn’t my friend Iakkhos, who’d passed away just ten months ago, but Iakkhos had been well over a hundred years old and had gone peacefully. I didn’t know Amarion well yet, but he was as friendly and outgoing as Iakkhos had been, and it was easy to see why Iakkhos had chosen him as his successor.
And then there was Samudra Magar, his smooth dark skin a
nd graying black hair giving him a distinguished elder statesman look. The custodian of the Sanctuary was always polite, but I had a feeling that he disapproved of me for being so young. From comments he’d made, I’d gathered I was the youngest custodian Abernathy’s had ever had, and I’d come to realize Samudra didn’t trust anyone younger than forty. Diane and Amarion came in for the same polite but chilly treatment, or I’d have felt more insulted. As it was, I returned him politeness for politeness and hoped his attitude might change over time.
Samudra spoke first. “Is everyone connected?” His English was heavily accented, but English was the only language we all had in common.
We all replied in the affirmative. “Thank you, Helena, for being willing to take this call at such a late hour,” he continued.
“It’s no problem, Samudra, thanks.” I always had the impulse to call him “sir” that I’d so far successfully controlled.
“Well. It has been a terrible day for magery,” Samudra said, “and a great personal loss for each of us.”
“Mourning will have to wait,” Amarion said. “Right now we should discuss the fates of our own Neutralities. The invaders will certainly come after us next.” His English was perfect and unaccented despite Greek being his first language.
“The wards on the store are as strong as they can be and still allow us to use the oracle,” I said.
“But is that enough?” Claude said. “I think, me, that Diane did not disregard her charge’s safety. Granted that the Fountain’s wards might not have been as strong as possible, but they would have been powerful regardless. We should be asking what the invaders have learned that allowed them to overpower wards of any strength.”
Everyone was silent. “I was wondering,” I finally said, tentatively, “whether what happened to the Well might be important.”
“What do you mean?” Samudra said.
“Well, I’ve only just learned the Well exists, so I don’t know much about it. But it was corrupted by human action, right? What if the invaders did something like that to the Fountain, and it warped the wards, or something?”
Amarion’s eyes narrowed like he was thinking hard. “I don’t know,” he said.
“It seems unlikely,” Samudra said. “The Well is still there, and to my knowledge is still warded—powerfully so, to prevent any more tragedies.”
“Perhaps not,” Claude said. “It was not possible to ward it completely against physical intrusion, as that would draw mundane attention to it. But it is true those wards have a very strange shape, to my knowledge.”
“Does the shape of a ward make a difference?” I asked.
“It can,” Samudra admitted. “I have made it a point to stay informed about how the wards on the Sanctuary work, and the stone magi tell me the Sanctuary’s node distorts its wards in peculiar ways. The example they gave was of a stone disc broken in half, not smoothly, but with jagged edges. Both must be aligned perfectly to make a whole. The wards are made jagged by the node, and the stone magi build matching wards that mesh into a single magical structure.”
“I get it,” I said. “So if the node behaved differently—warped the wards in a different way—would that weaken the wards? Because they no longer, um, mesh?”
Samudra’s face had grown thoughtful as I spoke. “I cannot answer that, as I am not a stone magus,” he said, “but it is a theory worth pursuing. I shall contact the Devarakonda Node when we are finished here and ask Mr. Chowdhury to send a stone magus. However, I cannot imagine a condition that would alter a node enough to change the way it affects the world.”
“Nor can I,” Claude said, “but nodes grow and shrink over time, so there is nothing inherently impossible about them changing in other ways.”
“I agree that it is worth considering,” Samudra said.
His approval warmed my heart, and I had to remind myself that I wasn’t a lap dog, eager for praise from my master. Especially since Samudra wasn’t my master. “Can I ask something about the Well?” I said. “You said it was still there, and I was told it could still grant wishes, but that they were cursed wishes. Why would anyone even make a wish, if they knew it was cursed?”
Amarion grimaced. “Some people are hard of learning,” he said. “They believe their request is so pure it won’t be tainted. Others think they’ve learned the secret way of asking that will grant them success. And some simply do not know the danger. Those are outsiders, usually, ordinary non-Wardens who toss a penny into the Well and make an idle wish. Because they pay little, the Well gives them little, and that’s true for its curse as well.”
“The Well has been corrupt for over fifty years,” Claude said, “but the Wardens have not given up on reclaiming it. It would be a great boon to magery were they to succeed.”
“I heard only the Middle Eastern magi are allowed to go there,” I said.
Samudra nodded. “This is mostly true. The conflict in the Middle East makes it hazardous in places for foreign magi, particularly those of American and European descent. But there are those who go anyway, without official sanction, naturally.” His pinched, disapproving expression told me those were likely hot-blooded young men with no common sense. I wondered if Malcolm had ever gone to the Middle East, either as a Navy SEAL or as a magus. He had plenty of common sense.
“So the invaders couldn’t attack it without being noticed,” I said.
Samudra began to speak, then subsided, his pinched expression becoming thoughtful.
“It would do them no good,” Claude said, then fell silent as well. Amarion had an inward-turned expression, like he was thinking hard.
“What is it?” I said finally, feeling impatient.
Claude shrugged. “Possibly nothing. It is just…we assume the invaders have not attacked it because it is poison to them as well as to us, but that is a guess only. Perhaps we should not depend on guesses.”
“I’ll tell Khalil al-Hussein at the Najmeh Node of this possibility,” Amarion said. “The Well is heavily warded, but I don’t know how often they check the wards.”
“But this leaves us with the other possibility,” Claude said, “that the invaders struck at the Fountain in a non-magical way. I did not ask how Diane died, obviously, but if it was other than simply being drained of her magic…”
Silence fell over the four of us. I didn’t want to think about Diane’s death at all. Invaders usually killed by draining someone’s magic, and it was an agonizing death, but there were a lot of ways to die that were equally awful, and if Diane… I shuddered and said, “I suppose we ought to tell someone about this possibility. I doubt anyone would think of telling us if Diane died a different way. Just…just killing her wouldn’t do it, because Mr. Briggs was murdered and it didn’t hurt the oracle—oh, I can’t believe I just said that.”
“Michelle Suzuhara at the Hampton Node spearheads this investigation,” Samudra said. “I do not know her.”
“Lucia does,” I said. “And she should probably be told, too. I know the Board of Neutralities goes to her first when they need someone to, um, put pressure on the magi.”
“Very well. Then you will discuss this with Ms. Pontarelli,” Samudra said. “And each of us will discuss with our stone magi the possibility of the wards being distorted and therefore weakened.”
“I—oh, Xerxes!” I exclaimed as a furry body leaped onto the table in front of the laptop. “Sorry, everyone.” I grabbed my Persian cat around his fluffy midsection and unceremoniously dropped him on the floor. “He knows he’s not allowed on the table, but he thinks if there’s no dishes…anyway.”
“Of course,” Samudra said, and to my surprise he was smiling the smile of a fellow cat guardian. “He is large.”
“Eighteen pounds of bird-chasing fur.” Xerxes rubbed against my leg as if he knew I was talking about him. My pajama legs were always covered with white hairs.
“As I said, I’ll warn Khalil,” Amarion said as if Xerxes hadn’t interrupted us. “And suggest he speak to Lucia as well. Her info
rmation may help them.”
“Then I believe that is all,” Samudra said. “I will text the rest of you if I learn anything.” It always surprised me to get texts from Samudra, because I never thought of Nepal as particularly rich in technology—but that was probably my ignorance showing. All I knew about Nepal was high mountains and Sherpas.
We all added our agreement, and I reached to disconnect from the call when Claude said, “Helena. A moment.”
I lowered my hand. “Yes?”
“What does the oracle say on this matter? Has it spoken to you?”
I felt like an idiot. I should have led with this. “I’m sorry, I should have said. It told me, before we learned of the destruction at Berryton, that two Neutralities were gone and only four remained. I didn’t understand that, because at the time I didn’t know about the Well. Then it called the four remaining ones ‘guardians.’ I asked Lucia, and she said that was an appropriate description of the named Neutralities, but she didn’t say why.”
The three men regarded me with a scrutiny that made me uncomfortable. If they’d been in the same room together, I was sure they’d have been exchanging sideways glances. “I have not heard of the named Neutralities being called guardians of anything, except, perhaps, their own secrets,” Claude finally said. “But in a metaphorical sense…”
“The Wardens look to the named Neutralities as…mascots, maybe? Or totems?” Amarion said. “You must have seen that, Helena. We—the custodians—we’re respected for our connection to our Neutralities, because the named Neutralities are special. Unique.”
“Is that why, at the Conference of Neutralities, we were high in the unofficial ranking everyone assured me didn’t exist?” I asked.
The Book of Destiny Page 3