The Gray Tower Trilogy: Books 1-3

by Alesha Escobar

  Dr. Heilwig finally managed to capture our attention and, acting as if nothing were amiss, he instructed us to open our notebooks. We pretended to listen to Heilwig’s lecture on Dmitri Mendeleev’s development of the Periodic Table. Everyone else was probably wondering if the Gestapo agents would return.

  Every few minutes I caught Heilwig staring at me like I was an oddity. It made me a little self-conscious, and I questioned if my blonde wig was slipping off. I sat there and considered how I was going to subdue him and take him with me. When class ended, I made sure to be the last student to leave. I tried to stay and speak with Heilwig, but he eschewed me and shut the door as soon as I stepped outside.

  The thought of Isidore returning within minutes, in a murderous rage, nearly made me sick with dread, so I picked the lock on the door and let myself back into the classroom. I spied Heilwig sitting at a table toward the back of the room. For a few moments, he stared at his talisman ring, which I could taste was made of gold. I could also sense an enchantment that protected against another wizard’s body magic. He had what looked like a diary sitting on the table in front of him, and he held a thin iron rod that he performed a Sublimation spell on.

  Instead of using a ritual knife to create his symbol, he moved his fingers through the air. I saw luminous traces of the symbol in mid-air and it both awed and frightened me. I sometimes wondered what it would’ve been like to become an Elite Wizard like my father, or Brande. Obviously Heilwig’s skills were greater than mine, and it would be nearly impossible to overwhelm him with magic as I had originally planned. So, I did the next best thing—I pulled out my two pistols and pointed them at him.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Sorry, Dr. Heilwig, but I need to take you with me.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m not a damned Nazi, but I will shoot you if you try to run.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I need you to come with me, before he gets back.”

  “Do I know you?” He began staring at me the way he did earlier.

  “My name is not important.” I eyed the iron rod he dropped. It disintegrated into powder and turned into a dark gas that rose into the air. Alchemists cast this spell to ward off evil and restore their minds.

  He saw that I wasn’t frightened by the spell. “You’re an alchemist too...trained by the Gray Tower...like me?”

  “Yes.” I gripped my weapons even tighter. So, the Tower supposedly trained him; I hated those types of rogue wizards, because almost all of them ended up becoming warlocks.

  It seemed like something connected in his mind, and he looked at me as if he knew me. “But...do you know why you’re an alchemist?”

  “I was born this way?” Sometimes people said crazy things when they had guns pointed at them.

  “I’ll go with you freely then, if you answer one last question I have.”

  This was getting interesting. “What is it?”

  “Are you Carson’s daughter?”

  I almost dropped my guns. “How do you know who I am? Is this some kind of trap?”

  My arms went limp, but my legs still worked. I turned and fled the room, sprinting down the hallway and suppressing the urge to scream when I saw him right behind me. I kept running, and nearly knocked over a few students who gave me frightened looks. I made a right turn at the corner and pressed on, seeing that my path was clear. I skidded and came to a halt when I saw none other than Nikon Praskovya coming toward us from the opposite direction. I glanced in Heilwig’s direction, paralyzed with fear, but to my astonishment he stepped in front of me protectively, and kept his gaze on Praskovya as she strode toward us with a grin.

  “I knew sooner or later the Ally dogs would come sniffing at the bait,” she said. “All the better that it was you.”

  Since Praskovya’s words were directed at me, I gestured for Heilwig to step down, and I stood firm.

  “Still upset about Belgium, I see.” My fingers gripped my pistols.

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “Shouldn’t you be on the Soviet border? Why are you still working with the Nazis when they’ve betrayed your country?”

  She laughed. “Isn’t yours still neutral? Why are you here? Besides, you should know that at the end of the day, all that matters is survival...and money. I chose the winning side, and you could’ve done the same, but you were weak. And to think, all that talent had been wasted as a slave of the Gray Tower.”

  She drew her revolver and I charged her, striking her hand and making her drop her weapon. I would’ve gladly used my pistols, but I didn’t want Heilwig caught in the crossfire of our gunfight. I blocked a few of her incoming strikes, slipping to the floor when she finally landed a blow. As my guns went flying out of my grasp, I swung my leg and tripped her, and then I was on her in a straddling position, hands gripping her head. All I needed was physical contact to enact a mind control spell, much like the one I performed on Karl Manfried the night I landed in Paris. Even if it sapped me of most of my energy, I was willing to do it if it meant subduing her.

  She screwed up her face in concentration as she fought back against my spell. She clutched my wrists and tried to pry my hands loose, but I held on even tighter. She suddenly dropped her arms—and, out of nowhere, pointed her revolver at me. I made a sweeping movement with my hand to deflect her shot, and the bullet missed my head by a centimeter. I hated when she used telekinesis.

  She made a quick jab and hit me square in the face. It threw me off balance, and she followed up with a left hook. I rolled with the punch and quickly got back onto my feet. She also stood, but didn’t make another move. And she didn’t need to—Heilwig struggled in vain against Isidore, who held the professor in a headlock.

  “Let’s end this!” Praskovya signaled to Isidore, but he did nothing.

  “I need to take her to Marcellus...alive.” He effortlessly held on to Heilwig.

  “If she can’t fight her way out of this, then she doesn’t deserve to make it to Marcellus.”

  Of course, she would say something like that. We had been fighting and thwarting each other ever since she turned on SOE and joined the Russian Liberation Group. I actually admired her when I first started, but one evening, while on assignment together in Belgium, she confessed her treachery and asked me to follow along with her. When I refused, she tried to throw me out of a window.

  As Isidore gazed at me. I could tell he was concentrating on a spell. A ring of fire suddenly surrounded me in mid-air and came crashing down, but with a flick of my wrist I drew a Circle of Healing on the floor in front of me with my knife. Since Circles of Healing were activated by fire, the flames fell and rejuvenated me instead of destroying me. I felt stronger, faster, and even my vision was clearer. When Isidore saw what I did, he quenched the flames and inhaled a long breath that made the entire corridor grow ice cold. I almost slipped on the floor as I backed away, and the temperature dropped so low that I could see my breath in short puffs, I could barely move.

  Isidore pushed Heilwig toward Praskovya, leaving them both shivering, and slowly approached me. My arms and legs froze in place and my throat constricted as I tried to speak. As I felt my heartbeat decelerate to a dangerous pace, my eyelids grew heavy, and I struggled to breathe. I forced myself to stay focused. I used all my might to regain even a little movement. I still gripped my knife in my hand, and stood ready to use it as soon as I could.

  “Do you surrender now?” He reached for my knife.

  With a low grunt, I flexed my fingers, and even though my arm hurt with icy numbness, I slashed at his hand, quickly carving a reversed Fixation symbol, an upside down five-pointed star, on his palm. He threw me back with a roar. I skidded across the floor and my golden knife clattered against the ground.

  “I told you to kill her.” Praskovya pointed her revolver at me.

  Isidore raised his wounded hand to his lips and blocked her shot. “No, Nikon.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and she stood her ground. “Then
you’re dead.”

  Isidore’s gaze went between Praskovya and me, and he doubled over in pain. His skin rippled like waves of water. I still lay on the floor, freezing and struggling to breathe normally. I couldn’t turn my face away and had to watch my reverse Fixation spell at work. Fixation spells turned volatile substances into solids, so it wasn’t difficult to imagine what a reverse Fixation would do. Praskovya immediately sent Isidore flying down the hallway, screeching and protesting the entire way, until he exploded. I felt a splatter of blood and bone fragments hit me from behind, and I groaned in disgust.

  Heilwig must’ve used the commotion to lay his own spells, because the next thing I knew, he sent a gust of wind against an adjacent wall. The wind ricocheted off the wall and nearly spun out of control. It caught Praskovya and pinned her against the ceiling. The blast was so strong, that she struggled to breathe.

  I didn’t understand why Heilwig couldn’t just directly force her down the hall with Air, but when I saw a gold band around his neck peeking from beneath his shirt, it all became clear. If Praskovya had placed that imperium collar around his neck, then he could never directly cast a spell against her.

  Heilwig rushed toward me and knelt, drawing a luminous triangle, and then a second one with a horizontal line toward the top: the alchemical symbols for Fire and Air. A warm breeze filled the corridor and the cold began to subside. I finally felt the warmth return to my body, and I was glad to be free of the freezing spell that would’ve killed me. My limbs ached as I coughed and tried to draw in breaths. He laid a second Air symbol, but held off its effect.

  Praskovya rose from her knees, wiped the vomit from her chin, and cocked her revolver—she aimed straight for my head. “You will not cast any more spells, Veit.”

  Heilwig held his hands up in the air to show his compliance. “Don’t shoot, Praskovya. You heard him; Marcellus wants her alive. I’ll go with you to the laboratory.”

  “Then get away from her.”

  He took small, slow steps toward her, hands still in the air. With each step he took, the final Air symbol he had created in front of me grew stronger. Suddenly Heilwig reached into his pocket and withdrew a dark blue stone. Before anyone could react, he tossed it onto the Air symbol and activated a Transfer spell, and then collapsed to the floor.

  I shouted his name as I got caught up in a whirlwind; I tried to reach him, but a blinding light surrounded me and took me away.

  The next thing I knew, I was face-down in a field next to a road. As I stood and glanced around, I realized it was the same field I had first landed in France. I dusted myself off and winced at the aching throes my body went through in response to Isidore’s ice spell. My mind was in no better shape, still being a little hazy, and then there was the confusion that now plagued me.

  Heilwig seemed to know my father and was probably telling the truth about being trained at the Gray Tower. But why had I never heard of this until today? The Nazis forced him to make those chemical weapons and to teach those classes as a way to play as their bait. This had begun to look more like a rescue mission than an enemy extraction.

  I never would’ve thought to see this day: Ken lied to me, and a disgraced wizard saved my life, probably at the cost of his own. The moment he activated my teleportation with the blue Transfer stone, I saw Veit suffer a stroke and permanently lose half his magical strength. This could never be remedied or reversed, and he’d never be the same again. I only heard of alchemists using Transfer stones in the direst circumstances. For whatever reason, he must’ve felt it was of the utmost importance to protect me and get me out of there.

  I walked toward the road and shielded my eyes from the sun, scouting for any trekkers. I heard the rumble of a motorbike in the distance and growing louder. My thoughts went back to Heilwig, and how he tried to protect me, which meant that perhaps he wasn’t all what the dossier said he was. Either way, I’d have to find him. I needed to reach him before they considered him useless because of the physical and magical harm he did himself in casting that Transfer spell. I needed to reach him so I could find out about my father...what if he knew where he was?

  Since I had burned that letter my dad left me, Heilwig was now the only tangible link I had. He left a clue and said that he would go to a laboratory, but which laboratory? Was it even in France? A bit of despair took hold of me, but I disliked quitting at anything, and I absolutely hated to lose—especially to Praskovya.

  “Do you need a ride?” the motorbike rider looked no older than twenty. He pulled off his helmet and ran his hand through his dark hair.

  “Thank you, but I think I’ll walk.”

  He eyed me for a few seconds before saying goodbye and slipping his helmet back on. He started his bike and drove down the road, making a sharp left turn at the crossroad. As I began walking back toward the city, I tried coming up with a plan. I had no idea where this laboratory was, so I would have to follow the trail of the chemical weapons which would surely lead me there. I’d made up my mind; I needed to speak with a Maquisard, a member of the Resistance, who regularly received an influx of intelligence. I halted my steps and turned in the opposite direction, away from Paris.

  Mathieu Perrine stayed in the town of Mantes, I needed to find him and enlist his aid.

  9

  I made it past the city gate just before curfew began. The bells of Notre Dame clanged in a crescendo that reverberated throughout the town, and the smell of the murky Seine filled my nostrils. William the Conqueror had burned much of the town to the ground a few hundred years ago. Yet, that didn’t stop it from being rebuilt. I supposed that spirit of tenacity inspired people like Mathieu to join the Resistance and keep fighting. Though I knew I could find him in this town, I didn’t know which house or building he broadcasted his nightly shows from. I had no friends or contacts in this city, and worst of all I just realized that I had lost my knife back at the university.

  I could still do magic without it, but my knife was a ritual tool, a conduit of energy and concentration. I had specifically requested that it be made of gold because the types of alchemical spells I liked to cast flowed with more power and harmony when I used the precious metal. The Gray Tower gave it to me as a parting gift when I left.

  “Excuse me.” I slipped past a woman and her child and snaked my way through the small crowd. I arranged my clothes and smoothed my blonde wig, all the while thinking of where I would hide if I were Mathieu.

  Some people headed toward the church, while others approached the shops begging for scraps. A few of the town dwellers ushered some of the refugees toward their homes. Some rushed inside their buildings, locking their doors behind them. A tall woman stood outside the local inn, handing out cups of water to those who needed it. I approached and accepted a drink.

  “I’m sorry this is all I could offer.” She took the cup when I finished, and gestured toward the partly open doorway. “The inn is full.”

  “Thank you.” I turned and headed in the direction of the church, ignoring the hunger gnawing at my stomach. The drawn faces passing me, looking like those of ghosts, and the energy of this town, writhing with tension, made me feel like I wasn’t in the Mantes I had known. It all certainly changed from when I had first arrived, fresh out of college, and met the wizards who invited me to join the Order.

  Brande would annoy me whenever he tried to turn a conversation into how I should return to the Gray Tower. Sometimes I suspected that he only visited me because they sent him directly. Now, having seen what alchemists like Heilwig could do, perhaps it wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

  I had joined the Order partly out of curiosity, but mostly because I wanted to explore these abilities I had been born with and to participate in my father’s legacy. Within my first month of testing, they had placed me as an alchemist, and I learned body magic along the way.

  “Inside, everyone!” An older man stood at the foot of the crowd, waving his arms, while a boy pointed toward the trekker approaching town.

  E
veryone rushed to wherever they could, so they’d be out of the way. I wasn’t too keen on breaking curfew either, so I continued making my way toward the church. I paused when I spotted the woman and child I had seen earlier. Some creep walked a little too closely behind them and grabbed the woman’s bag, nearly ripping her arm out as he wrested it from her. The woman protested and he knocked the little girl to the ground as he darted in my direction.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I growled through clenched teeth as I caught his arm and tripped him with my right foot. He stumbled to the ground and I grabbed the bag. He looked ready for round two, but the look in my eye told him that he’d better not try.

  “Thank you...thank you.” The woman cradled her daughter in her arms and accepted the bag from me.

  “Let’s get into the church.” I ushered her along when I saw the familiar glare of the trekker’s headlights. Two SS officers jumped out.

  We rushed up the church steps, and as I entered through the west doorway, I could smell the sweet scent of incense burning and see the flicker of candles in one of the apses. The stained glass windows grew dimmer with the progressive sunset, and as I made it further into the church, I noticed that the altar lay bare. A long white banner that hung across the sanctuary quoted 1 Corinthians 2:16: For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that we may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

  The Order of Wizards promised to protect the Mind of God, or the Akashic Record... whatever one wanted to call it. We believed this was the Knowledge of the Universe, and only the most powerful wizards had limited access to it. The coven of Black Wolves lusted for it, but the Order stood in its way because we knew that full access to the Akashic Record would bring disaster on both the wizard and humanity as a whole.

  This was why Drifters, wizards who could drift in and out of time and access the entire Akashic Record, were considered illicit by the Order. Personal virtue didn’t matter—if you were a Drifter, you were anathematized and as good as dead. Not even being a member of the Order protected you. The Gray Tower executed the three last known Drifters a long time ago.