“I thought we needed the rejuvenation burst that takes place when a phoenix dies, but I had that wrong,” the Immortal-Shelly-being was saying as he unrolled a carpet with symbols painted on it. “It was a reasonable assumption, after all, you'd have thought the same if you had only seen the mess I had to work with. However, it was my conversation with Julius which made me realize—the phoenixes don't really die. There's just an energy transference from one body to the next. Phoenixes have never died, but they also will never create new phoenixes. It's just the same old ones who get new bodies every other century or so. That made me wonder, if phoenixes never die, has Death never lived?”
“Is this what you were doing in the Wildwoods?” I asked, drawn in despite myself.
The Immortal smiled at me. “Does this spell here on the carpet resemble the one I made in the Wildwoods?”
No, no it did not. The frightening thing was, every one of these spells I saw kept on getting smaller and smaller.
“What's to keep me from tossing this carpet over the edge and ruining your plans?” I asked. It seemed too easy.
“It's a mock-up. Cole has the real spell, but I thought I'd show you my work. Beautiful, isn't it?”
I'd suspected that the third Unwritten was involved in these shenanigans, but I didn't know what it did. Cole knew, otherwise he wouldn't be so set on doing it. Whatever the end result was, I had to stop it—before Julius was forced into rebirth and the spell thereby completed. I doubted that he would rise again in a way we would be able to recognize. The Unwrittens seemed themed on life and death, and if this wasn't to bring back a dead person the way the second one had, nor was it to generate a new life form the way the first one did, then was this a transference of life? But how? From once body to another? One entity to another? Or worse, was it a study in making others rebirth upon their death?
Then I realized what Josephina had said to me earlier, and put things together. I said, “When we last talked, you said the first Unwritten brought you to life. The second one did something different. It brought Gregor Cole back from the dead.”
The Immortal grinned up at me. “It did.”
“I thought I interrupted it.”
“You made it not go according to plan. It nearly failed, but I am as stubborn as you are, even though it cost me greatly.”
“But why? Why go through all of that for him?”
The Immortal let out a long breath. “You are tied to Meadows. So long as you are near him, you have access to all of his resources, resources which his family has been accumulating for a great many generations. The two of you share a goal and have an adequate understanding of one another's nature. However. However, consider this. Without him, you are in a greatly reduced position.”
“The same is true of you and Cole.”
“Yes.”
The image of an undefeatable army rose in my mind. I had to stop it. But I couldn't let go of the illusion, I couldn't keep it maintained and stop Cole at the same time. Shelly wouldn't accept the honor of upholding the illusion for herself, not when it was in her best interest to let it drop. She couldn't see what was inside the illusion at all. It relieved me that she was as blind to the inner workings as everyone outside. If the Immortal-Shelly thought that she was saving Cole's reputation, then maybe I could get my way.
“My word,” I said, gasping a little too audibly, staring straight through the illusion where Cole and Julius were fighting, seeing what Shelly couldn't see.
“What?”
“No.” I bounded to my feet and strode for the edge of the illusion, reaching out a hand. I sensed rather than saw the struggle between the Immortal and Shelly. One would know I had a trick planned, the other could be made too frightened to risk that I spoke the truth.
Rapid click-clacks of heels followed me at a trotting jog. “What is it?”
Barely loud enough for her to hear, I said, “He's surrendering, you idiot. Don't kill him.”
“Who?”
I had reached the illusion. My finger brushed it, skimming over the surface and causing ripples. Shelly yanked my arm down, throwing me off-balance.
“What's happening in there?” she demanded.
I ripped my hand out of her grasp and glared at her. “I'm going to show the world what a monster he is. And you, too. Killing a surrender, no honor.”
Her eyes widened. “You can't!”
We struggled.
It was a good tiff, complete with nail scratching, hair pulling, and fists. I even got a heel scraped down my shin before I broke away and pushed into the illusion, threatening to bring the whole thing crashing down until Shelly took over maintenance of the spell.
I surged into the fray. She whimpered in pain with my every movement; I didn't want her to lose control over the illusion, yet wading through the spell was hard, unrelenting work.
Every step was like pushing through hip-deep snow. Vague shapes fogged my vision, distorted fractals mirroring what was within and without the spell, obscuring any hint of direction. All I could think was forward, forward, as the pressure sank into my ears with piercing pain growing bright and brighter—I fell to my knees, out of the illusion like that.
A streak of blue crackling sparks seared my elbow, snapping out its existence against the ward behind me, welcoming me into the battlefield.
Mordon would not be happy. He'd be not-happy about the next thing I had in mind, too.
There wasn't time to waste waiting for a clear opening to reach Cole and Julius. Who knew how long Shelly would or could keep the illusion going? I bolted through the spells which had missed their targets and through buffeting winds and biting shadows.
The trek across the walkways seemed to take forever though I scrambled across the wooden decks and slick blood splatters at nothing less than a full-on sprint. My back was wet with sweat, my hands cold. Others fought near and far, usually dodging the spells aimed for them, leaving me to duck the errant ones which came my way. Twice more I felt a spell zing across my body, leaving in their wake a tingling aftermath and numbed limbs.
The Unwrittens took time. But would it be time enough for me to talk fast? The image of a perpetually-resurrecting Gregor Cole haunted me. At a bend in the walkway, I slipped, my jaw cracked against the deck.
On my feet before I even finished crashing. Vision darkened from the slip or from the itchy sensation of a spell against my scalp, making it impossible to see what happened when a male voice raised higher than the others and a boom echoed through the market. Was it Julius or Cole who had delivered that spell? I flung myself into the center of the Unwritten where a five pointed star was glowing in the wood.
The air within Cole's confines clogged with power; the thick, fetid stink of a mouldering marsh on a hot day. Mordon stood too far away to help, in a tangle with a shadow serpent coiled about his dragon form's neck. Barnes, Leif, Lilly, Valerin, and all the rest battled their own opponents. Julius himself was flat on his back, unmoving, Gregor Cole standing ten feet away with smoke unfurling from the dark tip of his wand.
Our eyes met.
To try to solidify that instant with permanent words, black ink on white paper, would be too clumsy of a thing to do in order to capture what passed between us. It was ethereal. It was more than an expression, it was a meeting of the minds at the briefest exchange of a glance.
When his eyes locked on mine, a memory flashed before my eyes, fleeting and fuzzy with the passage of time: a boy with his dark hair and pale skin laying prone on cold granite floor, a grief-stricken man kneeling over him, the brilliant lines of a pentangle dimming as the specter of Death walked away, carrying with him the weightless burden of the boy's soul. As soon as the image faded and was replaced with the yells of a fight, I felt a chill in my heart.
Cole blinked, and for a few seconds, we did not speak. Then I licked my lips and said, “Julius won't reanimate, but I know what will.”
Cole lowered his wand a fraction. “What is your offer?”
Putting aside the i
mage of Cole the grieving father, I focused on the matter at hand. “Julius won't work for your Unwritten. The phoenixes use a soul gem to rejuvenate. You've fought him too long, his is exhausted. Your spell will fail unless you use this.” I displayed the amber in the palm of my hand. The stone I'd hidden in my navel, escaping the Immortal's notice. “I'll drain it dry unless you remove Septimus.”
Cole stared at me, his thoughts hidden behind his aloof, cool expression. Weighing what I said, deciding if it was possible that the phoenixes had told me one of their most treasured secrets.
If only he didn't get dumb ideas into his head.
Cole's brow narrowed; he knew full well not to trust me.
Yet he'd also know the extent that I'd go to save someone.
Come on, come on. Say yes! Let me take Septimus home. I bit the tip of my tongue—to say another word would ruin the lie.
Outside the Unwritten, Mordon had noticed our stand-off. A roar trembled through the wood under my feet, but I didn't flinch.
Take the soul gem!
And at last, Cole's brow smoothed out once again, he nodded and stretched out his hand. As he did so, he flicked his wand, sending Julius flying through the air.
My eyes widened as I felt my body drawn across the floor. Cole twitched his wand again, forcing me into a kneel. Then he spoke a word and brought his arms upward in a finalizing movement, triggering the Unwritten.
Power ripped down through me, penetrating bone and tissue, striking heart and beyond, tearing atom from atom. Light went black, then I trembled through all-encompassing vast emptiness. Once I'd been a passenger on snowy roads and the vehicle had spun out of all control, twirling and sliding, yanking yet smooth in every action as it plummeted off the shoulder of the road and I hadn't known if we'd rolled or stayed on the wheels until the truck jammed to an ear-ringing halt. That was how it felt as the honeysuckle pin I'd borrowed from Anna kicked me clear out of the Unwritten.
That was when things started to go wrong. A full-sized dragon and troll hit my ward together, with enough momentum to cleanly snap the ward and sever the illusion and buffer in one blow. Pain tore through my body. I contorted in agony, unable to so much as gasp. I didn't realize how far I'd been tossed by the protective charm until I saw the ledge of the walkway pass by my eyes and then I was staring at the underside of the deck as I plummeted through thin air.
Frantically, I bunched up magic beneath me. It was enough, just enough, to soften the blow so I didn't hear a snap when I slammed back-first onto the deck below. I tried to gasp but the wind was knocked clean out of my lungs and I couldn't draw a breath yet, nor move. The Immortal's round face peer over the ledge, stared down at me, wide-eyed.
Normally the sudden cacophony of noise would have been disorienting, as it must have been to all those people finishing up a quiet lunch hour. But my ears were ringing and heat was coursing through my body and my one thought was wondering if I'd broken my neck and if I could move. Time seemed to still for an instant, brought down to the Immortal staring at me and the troll suspended midway to a fall to the next deck below mine.
Then I was moving, the decks were snapping and cracking, and my feet were clumsy but working. When I stood and could make and unmake a fist, I stared up at where there had been a face before and now there was none. Numb and dizzy, I staggered to the rolled-up carpet at the edge of the walkway. It extended upwards, forming stairs, which I climbed as Mordon finished his battle with the troll.
I saw the Immortal as it and Shelly Johnson began a slow retreat. I squared my shoulders and drew on my final reserves to say, “Sisto cor!”
I felt the magic tingle in every nerve but even as it left me, I realized that something was wrong. Not too far away there was a witness. They couldn't have possibly heard what I said or known what it did, but Death had warned me not to do the spell in sight of others. I'd assumed the rules were to prevent questions. That was faulty thinking. It was one of the requirements in order to make the spell work at all.
As my vision tunneled down to a narrow pinpoint, I dove for the amber gem. It couldn't have been more than a matter of seconds before I had recovered the amber in my hand. The Immortal, Shelly Jonson, and the carpet they'd hired were gone, and the fight was now over even as the Market started its lockdown.
The deck rattled under the weight of a dragon, then Mordon was soon kneeling beside me. A big part of his cheek gaped open. He held the cuff of his sleeve against it to absorb the blood and make speaking easier. I deliberately did not look too closely.
“The others?” I asked.
“Leif and Barnes stayed here to calm things down. Lilly and the rest are safe,” Mordon said and stroked the hair off my brow. “I wish I could say the same for you. You need to stop doing this to yourself.”
“Says the man with teeth showing through his cheek,” I said and looked away from the injury. It made me sick just to see.
“Troll club.”
“What now?”
“Selestiani.” Mordon wadded up his shirt and pressed it against his freely bleeding cheek. “I don't want to answer questions at Kragdomen.”
I turned the amber over in my palm. “There's another Unwritten. And I think this one is active.”
“Why?”
“Because now the soul gem is cold to the touch.”
Mordon folded my hand around it. “Just hold on. The rest doesn't matter.”
But it did, because it meant I'd failed. There was another Unwritten unleashed into the world, and I would have to wait to understand what effect it had.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
And that was that. It had started and stopped so fast that I was still reeling from it while I endured a round of healing spells. My own bout of spells was nothing as prolonged nor sophisticated as what they did for Julius, Mordon, and Valerin. Barnes had escaped without noticeable injury, which he later said was because he knew where everything was in the market, lights on or off. Later he developed massive bruises around his face, and he admitted that he'd gotten into a fight with someone from his past but I wasn't able to get the full story on that by the slightest means.
After this, the visitors stopped coming to my room, so I went out in search of Valerin.
I found the room he was in by checking the chart at the nurse's watering hole. Room 23. The first room 23 not the second, which meant it should have been Room 22 except it seemed that even Selestiani had paranoia about certain double-numbers. Tacitus and the nurses would have a fit if they knew I wasn't resting, but so what? Similar to Kragdomen, the doors here didn't have a latch for safety reasons, in case a child was stuck in a non-human form. The man inside slept on a mattress missing its blankets, the covers themselves crumpled up at the foot of the bed where he'd kicked them off.
Instinctively, I stripped the blankets, shook them out, and folded them. When they were at last settled in a square on the visitor's chair, I noticed the sleeper was rolling to face me. He squeezed his eyes and fell back to sleep. I let out a shaking breath.
What was I going to tell him?
“Feraline, I want you to know how much we enjoy having your here,” Julius had said yesterday as soon as we'd all returned and I was reunited with Anna.
“It sounds like you're telling me farewell,” I said, a little injured at the thought of being taken away from the baby who wasn't smiling, but wasn't scowling either.
Julius pressed his fingers into Anna's palm so her fingers tightened about his, staring down at her in admiration. He said, “I know what it is to be in love with two people and be torn between them. I would understand your reason for staying or going. But if you stay, this is my charge to care for and you will always be her guardian. No matter what.”
“I know,” I said, meeting his gaze. “I've always known. Should we find you.”
“Feraline, there is one last thing.” Julius exposed the honeysuckle pin and showed it to me. “Who did you buy this from?”
“It was a gift from Lyall Limber of the Verdant Wild
woods. He didn't say what it would do, and I'm not sure myself.”
“A simple yet powerful protection charm. Old magic, called Roman Lullaby. It pushes danger off to the side, instead of meeting it square on force for force. My question is, why did she receive this as a gift?”
“Lyall said if Mordon were to not be adequate as a secondary carer, the Wildwoods would step in through Lyall.”
Julius turned the pin over in his hand. “Interesting times we live in, for the Wildwoods to extend her sanctuary to one of our own.”
“You think Lyall knew she was phoenix? Then why didn't he tell me?”
Lost Magic (The Swift Codex Book 3) Page 30