Magic Wept

by Andi Van

  “Why isn’t there more dust?” Jorget asked. “It’s too clean.”

  “Tas said the same thing about the library when the guild was still in ruins,” Kelwin noted as he turned around to take a look at the rest of the expanse. “That’s when Rin started explaining about magic preserving things. I imagine preservation includes preventing a foot of dust from collecting.” He squinted and stared across the room. “Are the walls starting to glow, or is that wishful thinking?”

  “They’re starting to glow,” Emlynn agreed. “Just slowly.”

  And much as the walls at home did, Kelwin could see they were indeed lighting up. It was a slow, painful process that seemed to stop only halfway, and he frowned. “I wonder why they aren’t lighting all the way.”

  It’s been abandoned for longer than any of us know, Bahz pointed out. Magic collected here, and is still here, but it’s become thinly spread.

  “It will do well enough,” Emlynn replied as she kicked the glowing orb at her feet farther into the room. Kelwin supposed kicking it was easier than trying to pick it up with a bird the size of a large human toddler sitting on your shoulder. When the bright sphere stopped rolling, the giantess let out a gasp. “Look at that.”

  “That” was a mural painted in vivid colors, depicting a white, gray, and blue dragon in flight, wings spread wide as it faced off against another dragon, this one black with red eyes. Behind the pale dragon was what looked like an army of gryphons. And below that crowd was a depiction of the sea and four water dragons. And one of those dragons was—

  “Vashk,” Kelwin breathed aloud, raising a hand to point at the likeness. “That’s Vashk. But how?”

  Falcon and I both wondered the same thing, Bahz admitted as he launched off Emlynn’s shoulder to circle the room. We lost the chance to find an answer when Falcon was… changed.

  “Something to ask later, then,” Jorget said. “But I’m starting to get the impression he knows far more about what’s going on than he says.”

  Kelwin chuckled a little at the truth in Jorget’s words, but he didn’t get a chance to answer as another scream rent the air. It was still some distance away, but it chilled him to his bones. “We should keep moving,” he said instead, staring at the mural as he tried to commit it to memory so he could describe it to Tasis. Someday, when the danger was past, he’d bring his beloved here to see it for himself. Until then, a description would have to do.

  “Well, where to now?” Reikos asked, looking around the room with one hand on his sword hilt as if he expected to be attacked at any moment. And Kelwin supposed that was certainly a possibility. For all they knew, Falcon could be heading right for them.

  Forward, then an immediate left, Bahz said as he circled back in their direction. It’s clear for now, but I have no idea how long that will last.

  “Understood,” Reikos answered, giving the bird a nod of thanks. “We’ll move as fast as we can.”

  The descent to the bottom will begin after your left turn. The path will begin to wind. Be cautious of blind turns.

  “Great, so she could be hiding anywhere,” Jorget sighed.

  “That’s part of what makes it fun,” Shan said as he threw a grin over his shoulder, earning himself a frown from Emlynn.

  “Shut it, all of you,” Reikos hissed. “Let’s get this over with. I don’t know about you, but having some crazed beast randomly screaming from an unknown location isn’t my preferred way to spend the day.”

  Kelwin let out a snort, but he followed behind as they began to move again. Reikos had the right idea. Sooner in, sooner out. And sooner he’d be back with Tasis.

  Chapter 14

  “IT’S CREEPY,” Jorget said softly so only Kelwin would hear him.

  “What is?” the elf asked, his gaze roaming the corridor they were currently heading down. Jorget wasn’t sure if he was memorizing it or expecting to get attacked at any second. Maybe a little bit of both.

  That was kind of where Jorget stood, at any rate. He fully expected to see some woman-bird thing come soaring down the hallway only to tear his head from the rest of his body as she flew by. He screwed up his face in disgust. That visual was a bit much, even for him. “The whole thing,” he finally admitted, forcing himself back to the conversation he’d started. “It’s like time stopped here. And this happened long before Triv’s time, which makes it even creepier. Something should have changed.”

  “I agree time seems to have stopped here,” Kelwin said with a sigh. “Actually, there are things that would make a lot of sense if that were the case. Like the plants outside. I was able to recognize them as being similar to other things I’ve known, but… not. The plants at the base of the mountain are familiar, but the higher we climbed the more they changed. And the gryphons….”

  “Wait,” Jorget said, coming to a stop. This brought the guards behind them to a stop as well, and they frowned at the duo. “What about the gryphons?”

  “I started to get the feeling the plants on the mountain are from the time of the guild’s origins. What if the gryphons are the same? It would make a weird kind of sense if it wasn’t that they were myth, but extinct everywhere else. Kind of like the dragons. Clearly they existed, but they’ve all but disappeared into a thing of legend.”

  “Keep moving,” Reikos called from some distance ahead. “We don’t have time to dally.”

  Jorget and Kelwin gave each other guilty looks before rushing to catch up, the small group behind them grumbling as they did. “So… what, then?” Jorget asked as they rejoined the others. “Time has no meaning here?”

  “Or it’s paused, somehow,” Kelwin theorized with a shrug. “I don’t know. But I have to wonder if it’s linked to the box Falcon found.”

  “You think the thing in the box stops time?”

  Kelwin let out a snort and aimed a grin at Jorget, shaking his head. “It’s not that simple. I mean, the thing changed Falcon completely, and I seriously doubt that had anything to do with time manipulation. No, I’m thinking….” He paused, then let out a sigh and shook his head again.

  “Go on,” Jorget urged. He had a gut feeling that whatever was working its way through Kelwin’s head would make sense. And if they could figure out what was going on, they might be able to use it to help Falcon. Or if not help her, then at least keep her from killing them until they could figure out if she could be helped.

  They cautiously turned another corner in the barely lit hallway, Emlynn’s brightly glowing orb lighting the way ahead of them enough to see they were still safe. The way was clear. Again, too clear, to Jorget’s mind, though Kelwin had mentioned the self-lighting walls were even less effective here. Shouldn’t there at least be a couple cobwebs somewhere? Surely there were at least some spiders living in the stone corridors. But no, the floors were so clean they might as well have been freshly scrubbed that morning. And even if the spell in the walls wasn’t working properly, they still held no grime.

  “Vashk is a sea-dwelling dragon,” Kelwin finally said after a long stretch of silence.

  “Right,” Jorget agreed, though he wondered how that tied in to what they’d been discussing.

  “All of the souls he brought back are merfolk. Humanlike creatures who can’t live outside of the ocean. In a way, they look kind of like him. Falcon was turned into a humanlike creature with feathers and wings.” Kelwin paused and looked at Jorget then, his eyes dark in the half-light. “The dragon on the mural? The blue one? It was feathered.”

  A shiver ran down Jorget’s spine as he searched his memory. The pale blue dragon, dotted with white and looking like a piece of the sky, its wings spread as it battled.

  Its wings, which were feathered and looked as if they belonged to a massive bird.

  “Oh Maker,” Jorget breathed as the implication hit him. “You think the dragon turned her into that? But how?”

  Kelwin swallowed hard. “What if it lost the fight that was depicted? What if, to hide the dragon away from the world, it was locked in a box and s
tored deep within an empty guild?” His face twisted with a myriad of emotions, none of them staying for more than a flash of time. “What if the dragon is the weapon?”

  Jorget felt his insides lurch, and he took a deep breath to settle them. “We need to contact Vashk. We can’t do anything until we find out who the real enemy in that mural was.”

  Another scream echoed around them, and this time the rage in it was so palpable there was no mistaking it. They’d been discovered.

  She’s aware of us, Bahz told them, confirming Jorget’s thoughts. We need to hurry.

  “No time to contact Vashk,” Kelwin said as the pace was sped to a near-run. “Is there any chance you can take hold of that box without being turned into something else?”

  “A chance, sure, but only because we’re not sure why Falcon ended up as she is.” As they jogged around another turn, Jorget mulled over their options and found them woefully lacking in number. “If I was better at levitation, I could levitate the thing and not actually touch it. As it is, I’m likely to send it soaring up to the ceiling only to break it open. If we knew how heavy it was and if it were bound with rope instead of chain, I’d suggest seeing if Daro could carry it.”

  The wolf, who was still striding next to them, looked up at his name. Jorget was positive the canine frowned at him, but given the situation, he was probably imagining it. Or not, considering he’d had cats and falcons in his head. But Daro wasn’t a familiar, and while he was intelligent, he was still a wild animal. Wasn’t he?

  “I’m not chancing him,” Kelwin answered firmly, if a little breathlessly. “I didn’t save him only to have him turned into some twisted version of himself.” He went silent again, but when Jorget glanced at him he had that look on his face that said he was mulling over an idea. “Can levitation only be done upward?”

  That almost made Jorget pause, but he managed to remember the guards directly behind them would likely knock him down if he did. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Why?”

  “Well, if the box could be shoved to the side…. But it would still hit a wall and likely break the wood if it worked, so maybe not. I was trying to figure out a way we could move it without touching it and still be able to reach it.”

  “I don’t think we have a choice,” Jorget said, feeling the truth of the statement weigh him down. “I’ll do it.”

  “Jorget….”

  Jorget shook his head. “No, right now I’m expendable. Rin may think I have some special skill, but he’s also told me it’ll take time for it to actually be of any use. If something happens to you, Tasis will break down. It makes sense.”

  “But—”

  “Just promise me,” Jorget said, glaring at Kelwin for a fraction of a second before focusing his attention back to the hallway they were rushing down. “If I turn into a harpy, you have Tasis come back and try to fix it once the king’s taken care of.”

  Next to them, Daro whined, but Kelwin nodded. “Deal.”

  “Good.” Jorget swallowed hard, trying to keep the panic down, but it was the only answer that made sense. If something happened to one of the guards, it could make things with the king even more problematic. They couldn’t afford to have anything else work against them. Emlynn had more practical skill with magic than he did, which meant she was useful to have around. Jorget only accidentally set things on fire and messed up levitation spells. It was a painful truth, but it was also something he could be useful for. Besides, it could be that nothing happened, and they’d go on their merry way after successfully dodging an angry harpy.

  And that, of course, was when they heard the scream directly behind them.

  “Run,” Jorget yelled, not bothering to take the time to look behind him. If he did, he had a feeling fear would lock him in place.

  A white blur soared over them and toward the direction of the scream as the group’s jog turned into a mad dash. Hurry, Bahz commanded. I’ll try to stop her. If nothing else, I can delay her. Get the box and get out.

  Emlynn peeled back from the group, heading in the same direction as the massive bird. “Em, what in the Maker’s name are you doing?” Kelwin called to her.

  “He will not fight alone,” the giantess growled as she lobbed something in the elf’s direction. “I’ll be fine. Go. Block the entrance and blast through the ceiling to get to the floor above to escape if you have to. That will detain her further.”

  Kelwin caught the object, which turned out to be the light she had cast. “Tas is going to kill me,” he sighed. “Jo, can you cause a cave-in?”

  On one hand, Jorget was kind of pleased to have earned a nickname. On the other hand, it would have been nice if they hadn’t been running for their lives when it happened. “Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve destroyed something,” he acknowledged. “Knowing me, I’ll actually try to cave in the entrance and restore the room instead. Are we seriously leaving Em behind?”

  “No,” Shan said, coming to a stop so quickly he nearly got run over. “I’m staying.”

  “Take the others with you,” Reikos ordered as he screeched to a halt next to his friend. “I’m going with Kelwin and Jorget.”

  “Just the three of you? That’s not smart. You should take some of the others.”

  “We don’t have time for this,” Jorget barked, looking back at the sounds of fighting from the way they’d come. He wished he hadn’t. The creature that had once been Falcon was terrifying. Despite the cleanliness of the guild, her wings looked filthy and tattered. Her face was contorted with fury, and her hair was a matted clump atop her head. Her arms and hands were human enough, but her legs were distinctly birdlike, ending with wicked talons guaranteed to rip apart anyone who got within range. Her back was covered in the dingy feathers that made up her wings, and the feathers completely covered her from the waist down. “Bahz,” he yelled once he’d managed to shake off enough of the fear that coursed through him to allow him to move again. “Get out of the way.”

  The familiar obliged, diving toward the ground as Jorget screamed the words to the levitation spell. With a slight change, he could aim it at someone other than himself. Probably. Hopefully it would work.

  The harpy met the ceiling with a crunch and a scream. For a blip of a second, Jorget was afraid he’d killed the creature, but she began to struggle, screaming in that bone-chilling way of hers. “I did it,” Jorget said, in complete shock that he’d managed to get something right for once. Sort of. He hadn’t meant to throw the harpy against the ceiling, but he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  Let’s go, Bahz yelled. It’ll hold her until we can block the entrance, but I don’t know if it’ll hold her for much longer than that. She’s no longer human.

  “That’s putting it mildly,” Kelwin muttered as Bahz left his former mistress’s flailing form and soared in the direction of the next room.

  “Less chatter, more running,” Jorget told him before sprinting in the direction Bahz had gone.

  The room they found themselves in was, oddly enough, in more disarray than the rest of what they’d seen. It was still cleaner than it should have been, but things had been knocked down, and there was an odd circle made of stone blocks in the middle of the room. It almost looked like someone had started to build a fountain there and then gave up. Perhaps it had been used as a fire pit of some sort, because the ground within the circle was black with ash.

  Next to the circle, on the ground, sat a small wooden box, reinforced with steel and bound with chains.

  “Work on getting this place secured,” Kelwin told Jorget. “We can worry about the rest once we’re sure we’re safe. Or safer than we are now, at any rate.”

  Jorget nodded and began chanting the first spell that came to mind under his breath. When he finished, a small flame flicked from his fingertips, but that was all. “Right, maybe the next one.”

  “I’ll try,” Emlynn told him. “I think you might need a break after that last spell.” She smiled at him then, a broad smile that was complete
ly different from the usual small smiles she gave out sparingly. “That was brilliant, by the way. You may have saved us all.”

  Jorget could feel his face flame at the praise, and he looked at the floor, embarrassed. “I couldn’t let everyone get hurt,” he mumbled.

  “You succeeded,” Kelwin said as he examined the box. He stretched out a hand as if wanting to touch it, only to stop when Daro whimpered at him.

  “Don’t touch it,” Jorget reminded him.

  “I know, I know,” Kelwin sighed. “There’s something about it. I don’t think whatever’s in it means harm.”

  “That’s the kind of assumption that will get you killed,” Reikos said, scowling at the still-open entryway. They could hear shrieks of frustration ringing from outside, so it was a safe bet Falcon was still trapped for the moment.

  “I’m aware,” Kelwin said sharply, one hand going to Tasis’s pendant.

  “Can we not bite at each other?” Jorget asked, glaring at Reikos as he made his way to Kelwin’s side. He looked into the stone circle, furrowing his brow when he found a peculiar smudge inside. “Bahz, is this where Falcon found the box?”

  No. It was originally within the circle. It was when she removed it that things took a turn for the worse.

  “That’s one way to put it,” Kelwin said. His frown deepened, and he lifted the pendant to look at it.

  Jorget didn’t like that expression. “What’s wrong?”

  “The pendant is getting warm,” Kelwin said. “Warmer than mere body heat, and it’s not stopping. I’m not sure why.” He looked at the box, then looked at the pendant again. “I’m going to put it back in the circle.”

  “Kel, no.”

  The elf sighed and held up the stone for Jorget to see. Jorget thought it was a trick of the half-light at first, but the pendant was definitely glowing. “The magic was gone. Or so we thought. But it’s definitely reacting to the box, and this was a talisman of protection.” He handed Jorget the glowing sphere he was still holding, and looked over at Emlynn, who was still chanting different invocations to no avail. “Em, I’m about to do something stupid.”