Traitor Savant (Second Seal of the Duelists)

by Giacomo, Jasmine

  “What are the little holes there, along the ceiling beam?”

  Bayan bent closer and stilled Shear’s faint breezes. Faint text was scrawled above the image, with indicator lines drawn between it and the holes. “’Vicinity block spacing minimums must be rigidly adhered to,’” he read.

  “What’s that mean?”

  Bayan shook his head in bafflement. “No idea.” His eyes skimmed across the faded ink, searching for familiar words or sketches. “Is that a potioneer’s mortar and pestle? There in the lower corner. What does that have to do with anything?” A few pages on, next to a drawing of a necklace strung with rounded beads, Bayan struggled with the ancient ink words, mouthing them slowly. “Binding—no, bonding multiple aspects increm—increases mastery.”

  “Any chance you know what that one means?” Tala murmured.

  The necklace’s central bead was black. Bayan squinted at it in recognition. Surely… surely that’s just a coincidence. Right? Bayan’s skin tingled. No. The sints don’t make coincidences. They make connections. The duelist figure that Sint Koos showed me was wearing this necklace. This exact necklace. “I think I actually might.” His voice sounded faint with amazement, even to his own ears.

  Eager for more even though his brain was still digesting the full import of the multi-beaded necklace, Bayan asked Tala to keep turning pages. His eyes saw more, and his mind buzzed with stunning concepts. “Yes! This is amazing. My hexmates aren’t going to believe this—”

  Then, beneath a simple drawing of a small sphere, Bayan found a single word that changed everything.

  Steel.

  Bayan read several paragraphs, but before the implications of the faded text could fully settle into his horrified mind, Tala nudged him. “Did you hear that?” She padded around the table to the doorway and listened again.

  Bayan could hear it too. Someone’s shoes clacked their way along the wooden hallway outside the little protected room.

  Biting her lip, Tala darted back to Bayan, who still stared at the pages of the ancient book. “I need to put the ward back up.”

  With his mind chasing elusive ideas down ancient corridors, he gave her a distracted nod.

  Tala quietly sang the wardsong, but the doorway remained transparent. She tried again, with the same result. “Bayan, it’s not working! Someone’s going to catch us!”

  That got his attention. He looked up at her, then at the doorway, and finally at the air around them. “Maybe we can’t have active magic inside the room while the ward is put in place.”

  “If you let your avatar go, though, I won’t have any air to sing with.”

  Bayan glanced at the doorway. “Can you sing the wardsong and Sint Koos’s melody in one breath of air?”

  Tala flicked a glance out the doorway as well. “I… I think so.”

  “You’ll have to. You can do it.”

  “What if I can’t? Or what if you can’t bring your avatar back once the ward is up?”

  He met her eyes. “Then we run for it and hope the ward doesn’t kill us. You’ll need to portal us out of here right away, or they’ll catch us.”

  Tala’s eyes widened with fear, but she nodded. She took a series of very deep breaths, like a swimmer preparing to dive deep into the ocean. She held the last breath and nodded at Bayan.

  He took a deep breath as well and let his arms fall to his sides, releasing Shear’s presence from the small room. Tala clasped his hand tightly. The space around him warmed and seemed to suck at his skin, even his eyes. He squeezed them shut. Through Tala’s hand, he felt faint vibrations and realized she was singing. How strange to hear nothing at all with his ears.

  Her hand stilled. Bayan risked cracking an eyelid, and saw absolutely nothing. Her spell had worked! The black barrier was in place again, hiding them from view. How long until the person in the Periorion left? Or was it the First Singer, come to enter her secret room?

  His lungs began to ache.

  Not A Murder

  “He’s not back yet. I’m worried.” Kiwani was uncertain whether Tarin would even care about her opinion.

  “Let him be,” Tarin responded. “He’s had a lot to deal with recently.”

  “You think he went to talk to Bayan? Maybe they’re working things out.”

  Tarin snorted. “Unlikely. You sound like Eward. Calder’s only worried that Bayan’s not seeing how dangerous Treinfhir is. We have no proof whatsoever that he’s not behind all these attacks. Why are we protecting him, again?”

  Kiwani’s mouth tightened. “At this point, it’s so we don’t get into even more trouble, and you know it. Bayan has already explained that the basic moves of anima are distinct and noticeable, just like elemental basics, and that Treinfhir wasn’t doing any of them when Cormaac was attacked. He’s not dangerous.”

  “And Calder rightly refuted that by pointing out that Treinfhir wouldn’t teach Bayan the same moves that he used to attack students.”

  Kiwani sighed. “Let’s not go through this again.”

  “But don’t you see? That’s exactly the issue. Either Treinfhir is an innocent victim, or he’s a vicious, lying killer—”

  “He hasn’t killed anyone here.”

  “He killed plenty at the Kheerzaal.”

  “That was different!”

  Tarin tipped her bright head. “Not from our point of view. If he really has been attacking us, then every duelist lost from this campus after Cormaac was attacked is our fault.”

  Kiwani paused before replying. She didn’t for one moment believe Tarin was right about Treinfhir, but all at once, she finally understood how dangerous protecting the Tuathi refugee must look to Tarin. And more importantly, to Calder, who had vanished after talking with Master witten Oost right after they had all passed their Avatar exams. Kiwani’s eyes flew wide, and she bolted from the room.

  Feet made fleet by near-panic brought Kiwani to the edge of the hills outside the campus boundary. She summoned Stratus, then leaped into the air and hurled herself up the path with a blast of targeted air. Her mind was distracted from envisioning gory battle scenes by the frantic state of constantly adjusting the spell effects so she didn’t crash and break half her bones. Kiwani landed with a stumble near the cold houses where Treinfhir lived, then let Stratus go and ran forward, calling the Tuathi’s name.

  She flung open the door and found the small room empty. Silence pervaded the tiny clearing. Kiwani looked around, but saw no severed limbs or mangled anima-creature corpses. The area felt far too quiet for her comfort. She called Treinfhir’s name, but received no response.

  The dead autumn grasses at her feet drew her attention. One area looked more crushed and broken than anywhere else. She crouched down and spotted an exposed rock with a discolored surface. She bent closer. Fresh blood.

  “Calder, no… ” Kiwani slipped forward onto her knees and buried her face in her hands, almost lost in despair, but she knew she had no time to wallow. Treinfhir could still be alive. She’d shed more blood than that while training with Bayan before he mastered his Savantism.

  She stood again, thoughts racing. If she returned to campus to get Eward’s help in searching for Treinfhir, Master witten Oost would probably learn of her discovery in moments. He always seemed to know everything that happened on campus.

  That meant he might have known about Treinfhir’s existence all along, and his talk with Calder just before Calder vanished could very well have incited her hexmate to commit murder on the master’s behalf.

  Kiwani’s mind spun. Why would the master want Treinfhir dead? And why, if he really did mean the man harm, hadn’t he done the deed himself?

  The only thing Kiwani and Treinfhir had in common was their kidnapper. If their kidnapper was a highly respected public figure, there was no way he’d risk soiling his hands with such a crime as murder. No. He’d manipulate someone else into doing it for him. Someone who feared for their hexmates’ safety.

  Someone like Calder Micarron.

  Kiwani dare
d not return to campus for Eward. If Master witten Oost heard of her arrival, and if—if—he had taken her from the road so long ago, then he would have to assume she’d pieced everything together, and he’d try to take her again. A nameless dread rose up despite her amnesia, and she clenched her jaw to stop her teeth from chattering.

  Only one option remained. Kiwani ran to the edge of the cold houses. Once outside their magic-negating influence, she summoned Ghaw, her Earth avatar. The flowerpot-headed dirt man clambered up through a cloud of silver and awaited his next command.

  Kiwani took a deep, steadying breath. If her idea didn’t work, Ghaw would be destroyed, and she would die underground. She had exactly one chance to get things right. She let Ghaw pick her up. Cupped in his hands, she cast her spell, and together they descended into the earth.

  In the pitch blackness surrounding her air pocket in Ghaw’s fingers, Kiwani heard only the grating and rumbling of stone. From experience, she knew that Ghaw’s underground speed was equivalent to a flat sprint. She had to keep tight control on Ghaw’s depth—difficult when the terrain was so rough. Palms slick with sweat, Kiwani couldn’t take the uncertainty any longer. She surfaced Ghaw on the slope of the last hill before the near-campus cold house cluster.

  Ghaw’s hands parted. Between his lumpy fingers, Kiwani saw Bayan’s prison. Abandoning her avatar, she bolted down the hill, leaping over bare rocks and erosion channels.

  Breathless once more, she ran to Bayan’s cold house and pounded on the thick door. “Bayan! Bayan, Calder’s done something terrible! Bayan!”

  When he didn’t answer, she felt the icy tendrils of a new, horrific thought. Throwing herself against the small, round window, Kiwani squinted inside the small cell.

  Her hexmate was gone.

  ~~~

  Air returned, surrounding Tala with its blessed coolness. She gasped repeatedly in the blackness of the warded room, gulping in its sweetness. Bayan crouched beside her, pressing a finger to her lips. He whispered into her ear, “Seems I’m able to cast elemental spells in here once the ward’s active, thank Bhattara. I’m going to listen at the door. Don’t make a sound.”

  Tala expected Bayan to move to the door, but he stayed by her side. She could feel through his hand on her shoulder that he moved a little, waving an arm or something. Suddenly, she could hear faint shuffling just beyond the blackness. She clamped her mouth shut and didn’t even move, eyes wide and staring in the lightlessness.

  The shuffling footsteps moved away, and Tala sagged in relief.

  “Wait a bit,” Bayan whispered. “Then we’ll get out of here. We’ll need to take the book with us.”

  “The book? Why?”

  “It’s evidence.”

  “Of what?”

  “Everything. We’ve lost so much knowledge! And someone’s been using these secrets to fool the world. I have to stop him.”

  “Who? What are you talking about? Does this have something to do with Doc Theo?”

  “Yes, in a way. He learned something he shouldn’t have, and he got silenced and branded insane so no one would believe him.” Quickly, Bayan summed up what he had derived from the book’s ancient pages, and what he thought it meant. Tala felt her mind swim.

  “I need to get back to campus and tell everyone about this. And you need to talk to Doc Theo. You have to, whether you want to or not. Tell him what I’ve told you. Somehow, your First Singer has gotten caught up in this mess. She warded the room that protected the book. And please, hide this book somewhere safe after you send me back to the cold house. I don’t want anyone destroying it before we can prove what’s really happening.”

  “Back to the cold house? I thought you said that was your cell.”

  “I can’t let them know that I’ve been out of it until we learn the whole truth. Master witten Oost will just kill me and blame it on the anima caster.”

  After the pair escaped the warded room, Tala replaced the ward once more. She opened a portal to the mountain overlook above the Temple—covered in several inches of fresh snow— in case anyone lay in wait inside her own room. From the outlook, she made a portal for Bayan back to the cold house. She even managed to open her portal directly inside it this time.

  “You’re getting better,” Bayan said as he stepped through. “Good luck with Doc Theo. There’s a redstone tower in the forest near my house in Pangusay; a seerwine plant named Gamay is growing on the front, but at the top of the back side is a small cave where I used to hide food and—and some special letters. Put the book there.”

  Tala let the portal close. Shivering, she wished she could spend a few days in Pangusay warming up and not thinking at all about the dangerous secrets Bayan had just told her. But she knew he’d be disappointed in her, and her failure to act might even get him killed. Just like Doc Theo, she realized. If she left him down there in that deep, dark oubliette, the First Singer might never let him out. Despite his paranoia, Doc Theo had been a good tutor, and he had been proud of her. She couldn’t abandon him either.

  Tala opened a series of portals around Pangusay, searching for a volcanic tower rock. Finally, she spotted it in the distance as she gazed down in midair across dozens of rice paddies in the frenetic stage of harvest. The reddish monolith thrust up from the forest beyond the furthest paddy.

  Her next portal opened behind the rock, about seven strides up from the ground. The little cave was a deep shadow before her. She sang a protective bubble of cool, dry air around the book and left it in her padded jacket inside the cave.

  “Ay, Bhattara! What are you doing up there?” She heard a young boy’s astonished voice.

  Tala nearly toppled through the portal in surprise. She looked down and saw a slender boy who strongly resembled Bayan. He held a pair of dead rats by the tail and had paused with one resting against the inner edge of a deep red pitcher whose vines clung to the rocky wall next to him.

  “Greetings from Pallithea!” Tala squeezed together a snowball and, with a wicked giggle, tossed it down at the boy. He yelped at the icy splat that landed on his bare shoulder. Before he could respond with more than cute little splutters of surprise, she snapped the portal shut.

  Her moment of fun now past, Tala rubbed her hands together against the cold and sang one more portal song. She stepped through into the darkness on the other side, carrying her crystals with her.

  The room was silent. She swallowed hard, then called softly into the blackness.

  “Father?”

  ~~~

  “Bayan! Where are you?” Kiwani slammed her fist against the cold house wall. She stepped back and looked around. Could someone have taken him back to campus? Maybe Master witten Oost had decided his fate—

  “Kiwani?”

  She pressed herself against the window. “Bayan? Where did you just come from? I know you weren’t in there a moment ago.”

  “I was with Tala at the Temple of Ten Thousand Harmonies.”

  An odd jumble of feelings welled up in Kiwani’s chest, hot and cold and bitter all at the same time.

  He leaned against the window, inches from her face. “I have so much to tell you, Kiwani. Nothing is what we thought it was.”

  “It can wait. I think Calder’s killed Treinfhir!”

  “What?”

  “Master witten Oost put him up to it somehow, I’m sure of it. I saw the two of them talking right after our exams.”

  “It all fits,” Bayan said to himself. “But why? Why Treinfhir?”

  “What are you talking about? Fits with what?”

  “Master witten Oost is planning something. Something very big, and very secret. He has been for a long time. Years. We need to stop him. That’s going to involve rescuing Treinfhir and, hopefully, convincing Calder that he’s been lied to all this time.”

  “All well and good, but they sealed your door. I can’t open it from the outside without a chisel. How are you going to get out of there in time to do anything against him? If he even suspects that you know, you’ll never get
out of there.”

  “Back up.”

  Kiwani frowned. “What?”

  “Back up. Behind that cold house over there.” He pointed.

  Cautious, Kiwani hid behind the cold house. If Bayan was going to get Tala to rescue him— Her cheeks went hot, and a thick green snake coiled within her chest.

  All rivalries were forgotten when Bayan’s cold house exploded. Fragments of stone rained down against the roof of the cold house where Kiwani sheltered, and a cloud of white dust drifted past her. Coughing, she staggered out from behind the small structure and squinted through wafting clouds of powdered stone.

  Bayan stood alone on the bare foundation. The cold house’s walls were completely gone. The floor beneath his feet was spiderwebbed with cracks. The iron stove that had once been embedded in the wall had become part of the hillside a dozen strides away. Bayan met her eyes with an intense gaze she hadn’t seen since the Kheerzaal. He brushed stone chips off one shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  ~~~

  Back at Treinfhir’s abandoned cold house, Bayan studied the disturbed grasses and the bloody rock Kiwani showed him. He shook his head, desperately hoping Calder hadn’t done what it looked like he’d done. There was only one way to be absolutely certain. He turned to Kiwani. “I can find Treinfhir. If he still lives.”

  Kiwani’s eyes were mirrors of concern. “How?”

  “Lifeseeker. Treinfhir taught it to me so I could find nearby animals. It also senses humans. Don’t look at me like that. He was adamant that using a human being as a totem partner is anathema. All I’m going to use it for is finding him.”

  With a reluctant nod, she backed up. Bayan squeezed his hands into fists a few times, momentarily letting go of the urgency of what he’d just learned from Sint Koos’s ancient book. Focusing, he dropped into a crouch and let his arms swing through the simple motions of Lifeseeker.

  Kiwani popped brightly into his mind, glowing like a pale orange flame. Rather than shutting her out, he focused on the feel of her life energy, then used it to seek Treinfhir’s signal. In the distance, the sensation of all the lives on campus pressed against his consciousness, but he turned away from them, reaching out into the wilderness.