The Gray Tower Trilogy: Books 1-3

by Alesha Escobar

  “Hello, Gregory. Thank you for helping Cliff and Sadik.”

  Gregory gave a nervous nod. “You’re welcome.”

  I turned and approached Izsak before Gregory could suspect I was trying to read him.

  With a deep sigh, I bent my knees until they touched the floor. I felt small kneeling in front of Izsak, who still towered over me while sitting, but then, now wasn’t the time for pride or theatrics. Izsak slumped his wide shoulders and clasped his hands, which emphasized his long arms even more. He looked afraid, though he no longer had any reason to be. Or did he? With a heavy heart, I spoke to him. “Hello, Izsak.”

  He watched me with anxious eyes. “Hello.”

  “If I retrieve that Mehmed VI text from Bela Jakab, will you help me understand it? Will you tell me everything you know?”

  He bit his lower lip. “I never meant to get involved in all this. There are powerful people willing to kill for that page.” He eyed the men in the room, as if accusing them of being one and the same. He turned his gaze back toward me, a woman kneeling in supplication, with purple bruises from battle and probably wearing ruined makeup. “Why do you need the page? Who are you?”

  I breathed a low sigh and said, “My name is Isabella George, an Apprentice Alchemist of the Order of Wizards...and I am the Drifter.”

  49

  I stood in a large empty warehouse. Beams of sunlight streamed through the high windows and I heard pigeons fluttering their wings in the rafters above. A high-pitched electronic noise startled me, a mix of a kettle’s whistle with a radio frequency. I looked to my right and saw the alchemist, Veit Heilwig, sitting on the floor with his legs crossed and turning knobs on an odd machine with an antenna. It glowed a shimmery color, which meant that some part of it had been touched with an enchantment. Veit glanced up to smile at me, and he adjusted his glasses. He lowered his head to examine the machine once more.

  But...you’re dead, I thought to myself. I raised my hands and peered at them. They were softer, smaller. How old was I here? Eight? Ten?

  “Isabella.” My father’s voice flowed like a spider’s web through the air. He seemed to appear out of nowhere and stood to my left.

  “Daddy?” I gasped, startled at the little girl’s voice that came from my throat. I gulped. “Where am I?”

  I looked up into his face. His hair was cut short, and a few speckles of gray dotted his dark hair. The feature that I, and most other people, seemed to linger on when looking at him, was his thick expressive brows which made him and my brother look so much alike. Although the tangy, rusty metals in the warehouse competed for my attention, I could still distinguish the scent of my dad’s cologne, and even the fresh crispness of his uniform--Major Carson George, U.S. Army.

  “Isabella, I need you to concentrate.”

  I felt a vibration throughout the warehouse, and a bright light appeared in the middle area. It hovered just above the floor. The light molded into a rectangular shape and turned into a faded blue door with peeling paint and a gold handle. A tap, tap, tap and scraping noise from behind me pulled my gaze from the door, and I looked over my shoulder. The Master Philosopher, Ekwueme, jotted down a complex mathematical formula on a chalkboard. The tall Master Wizard stuck out a dark brown hand in a gesture for me to listen to my father.

  “I turned back toward the blue door which hovered above the floor. “Daddy, I see something."

  My father glanced in Ekwueme’s direction and looked sad. “What do you see?”

  I furrowed my brow and wondered why he didn’t just take a look for himself. Suddenly, I realized that maybe this was something meant for me. “I see a blue door.”

  The color in my father’s face drained. “Yes...that’s right. There is a door in front of you, and only you can see it. Only you can touch it, and open it.”

  I slowly approached the door, and my breath caught in my throat. “Where does it go?”

  I heard him swallow. “Remember, only you will know.”

  I reached the door and felt a tremor of raw power at the surface. I walked around to the other side of it and saw only the backside of the door. However, I knew that if I opened it, I could go through to somewhere different. I circled the door again and gathered enough courage to grab the handle and turn it. I pulled the door open, and I nearly collapsed. My knees weakened at the darkness that greeted me. A howling wind came flying through, and a shriek escaped my throat as I rushed to close the door. It made a loud thud as I shut it.

  “You’ll have to go through that door, child,” Ekwueme said in his Nigerian accent. He had stopped writing his mathematical equation and turned to stare at me.

  “I can’t.” They said they were testing and preparing me. Was this part of the test? I had stepped through another door before, but not like this blue one.

  My father placed his firm hand on my shoulder. “Isabella--”

  A loud groan wandered past the door and echoed throughout the warehouse. The blue door shuddered, and an invisible force caused a dent, nearly forcing the door to fold in upon itself. I wrapped my arms around my father’s right leg.

  “It’s too dark! I can’t go there.” I trembled.

  My father watched Veit and Ekwueme rush toward the door and recite an incantation. They may not have been able to see it, but they could sense the raw power emanating from the center of the marked off area. The door lit up momentarily in response to the wizards’ incantation, but faded just as quickly. A loud crash from the other side sent the two wizards flying backward.

  My father knelt and turned me toward him, our noses almost touching. “Listen to me carefully: he will come, and when he does, you have to go through that door, or else all will be lost. Do you understand?”

  “No!” I cried.

  The faded blue door collapsed, and a dark rectangle stood in its place. The wind blew and drew us toward the door like a vacuum. My father shouted some more instructions to me, but I couldn’t hear his voice over the whipping winds. He pulled me into his arms and squeezed me in a tight hug.

  And then I awoke.

  My heart raced faster than I ever thought it could, and my palms were slick with sweat. I sat up and looked around just to make sure I was still in our tiny apartment in Budapest. Through the faint glisten of moonlight from our window, I saw Mehara lying near me, on a pile of cushions, fast asleep, and Master Skye still in the bed in the corner. To my surprise, he was awake; he sat in bed, taking swigs from a bottle of wine. That was my wine.

  “You couldn’t sleep either?” He swished the bottle in an invitation.

  I stood with a groan, forcing my weak and shaky knees not to fail me. I went over and sat on the bed next to him. He grinned and handed me the bottle, and I took a gulp.

  “My...memories have been tampered with since I was a child, but my father did it to protect me. Ever since I fled the Tower, one of those memories has been coming back and keeps invading my dreams. I’m supposed to step through a blue door--it seems powerful and dangerous, but I have to do it, or else everything goes to hell.”

  He stared straight ahead. When he didn’t immediately answer, I clasped my hands together, thinking perhaps I had shared too much. He finally spoke. “You’ve got things you want to remember, and I’ve got things I want to forget. In all my years of training and fighting, I don’t think I’ve ever seen what I did at the Gray Tower that day. I can’t lay my head down and sleep. All I see are those poor kids on the ground, all torn up...” His jaw tightened.

  I handed him the bottle. “I saw them too. Do you think...we can beat Octavian?”

  He drank and returned the bottle to me. “Well, we have one thing he doesn’t have.”

  I snorted. “Please don’t say it’s me, and if you’re going to say I’m your only hope, I’ll punch you square in the face. I’m screwed up as it is.”

  “Aw...don’t worry about that. Everyone’s screwed up.”

  “That sounds so much better when you say it with a Cajun accent.”

  He chuckled
. “Now you’re going to make fun of the way I talk?”

  I smiled and changed the subject. “I want to know what happened to your leg.”

  “My leg?”

  “You said that it was a lesson learned from your younger days. What happened?”

  “You don’t want to hear about that,” he said, stealing the bottle and finishing it off.

  “Hey, you drank my wine, you owe me a story.” I crossed my arms.

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and set the bottle aside. “Okay, fine. To make a long story short, I was egged on by a few of my companions, including the high and mighty Jian Lan--who thinks he’s Saint Lan--to appear as the Black Dragon and see if I could frighten Master Ovidio. I jumped out at him one day breathing smoke, snapping at him, and flexing those talons...this was when we were Apprentices, by the way.”

  I suppressed a fit of laughter. “That was stupid.”

  “That’s exactly why I didn’t want to tell you this story. Well, let’s just say Master Ovidio really is the best elemental wizard around. I thought I’d be able to take anything the old man could dish out, but he clipped my leg with his fire and it was never right since then.”

  “I’m surprised you weren’t expelled from the Order.” I shuddered, trying to suppress another laugh.

  “Almost...almost, but then Ekwueme said something about the mathematical possibility of another wizard with the skill to transform the way I did being astronomical, and so, Ovidio let me stay at the Tower. We gave each other hell each time we crossed paths. The day I became a Master, he gave me a letter and said, ‘Congratulations, Allan. The U.S. Navy has asked me to send you to them, and I’ve agreed to it. So, piss off.’”

  I gave him a sympathetic gaze and sighed. “Well, right before the attack on the Tower, Master Ovidio grounded me there and threatened to throw me into the dungeon because he knew I was helping my father.”

  His eyelids closed. “And now look at us--we’re on our way to rescue the bastard. I told you we were screwed up.”

  I shrugged. “Do you think Master Ovidio and the other prisoners are still alive?”

  He kept his eyes closed. “They’re bait. But if we’re too late, they’ll be on the menu. The Cruenti warlocks will devour them.”

  I frowned at the thought. One of my friends, a young woman named Bianca, was among those who had been taken captive when the Tower fell. I felt horrible every time I thought of her, because the man who kidnapped her was a traitor who wanted to be initiated as a Cruenti--and he chose her to be his sacrificial victim. Capturing Master Ovidio and a few other powerful wizards seemed to be Octavian’s way of saying he had finally beaten the Gray Tower into submission. And, if he wanted to, he could drain them and steal their powers.

  “Master Skye, do you think--” I stopped mid-sentence. He was snoring.

  My eyelids grew heavy, and images of the friends and people I knew at the Tower swirled in my mind. My final thought before falling back asleep was that I was going to save them if I could, and as many as possible.

  I awoke to the smell of breakfast. Mehara and Master Skye sat at the table, pouring themselves coffee and chatting over bread, fried meat, and eggs. I joined them for a bite before heading down to see Brande. Cliff and Sadik were already out and about, doing maintenance around the building, which allowed them to see and hear useful things, and Brande was already speaking with Izsak. The librarian appeared to be drawing him a map.

  “Good morning,” I said, closing the door behind me and plopping down on the small couch.

  Brande acknowledged me with a nod and then turned his attention back to Izsak, who gave him instructions. Apparently, the librarian needed a few items from his home, but he was afraid to go, for fear of running into Jakab’s men--or worse, warlocks. Brande had volunteered to retrieve the items, and, with a cup of coffee in hand, he intently listened to Izsak and began forming a plan as to how he’d get in and out of there.

  “And...and once you leave my study,” Izsak emphasized, “it’s important that you close the door and then open and close it three more times.”

  “Why?” Brande asked.

  Izsak waved his hand. “That’s just how I do it each time I leave. You should do it too.”

  “I see...” Brande shot me a glance as if telling me, thanks for bringing the wacko obsessive-compulsive guy along.

  Once Izsak was done with his instructions, I encouraged him to go upstairs and join Mehara and Master Skye for breakfast. When Brande and I were finally alone, he set down his cup of coffee and crossed his arms.

  “Did you rest well?” he asked in a flat tone that took me by surprise. Yesterday he was holding my hand and jumping in front of guns pointed at me. Today he acted like I drowned his cat and was denying it.

  “I rested well enough. How about you?”

  He walked over to the table where Izsak had been sitting and casually perused the map and written instructions. “I slept well. In fact, I woke up early and went upstairs to see you.”

  I cringed. Now I saw where this was going. “Brande, I sat up last night with Master Skye, talking, and we both fell asleep...talking.”

  “I understand,” he said in that false tone that people used when they actually meant the opposite of what they said.

  I rolled my eyes. “Well, I’m going after the final page of the Mehmed VI text. I just thought I’d let you know.”

  “Of course,” he said, placing the sheet of paper back onto the table. “We have a mission to accomplish. I promise I’ll be professional about everything.”

  “Oh come on, don’t act that way.”

  “Let me ask you a question.”

  I inclined my head toward him. “Fine. What is it?”

  “What would be your reaction if you found a woman, who was clearly attracted to me, asleep in my bed, with me in it?”

  I’d beat the crap out of her and blast her into next week. “I would talk to you about it. I’m a mature adult, and I’d like to have all the information first before jumping to conclusions.”

  “For such a seasoned spy, sometimes you’re a horrible liar.”

  “Okay, I see your point.”

  I got up and went over to him, wrapping my arms around his neck and brushing my lips against his. He slipped his arms around my waist and pressed me against him, returning the kiss with a soft, slow fervor.

  He reluctantly pulled away. “I’m going to the librarian’s house to grab his things. I promised him we’d protect him as long as he stayed with us. Do you need me to come with you?”

  “No, I’m going down to the opera house. That’s where Dani said I could find Jakab.”

  “The opera house?”

  “Yeah, who knew a guy like Jakab enjoyed operas? Well, I’m going to get him to take me to his home--don’t look at me like that--and I’m going to drug him and look for the text.”

  “Why don’t you just break into his house while he’s gone?”

  “Have you seen his guards? And besides, rumor has it that he’s into the occult, so he might have magical traps lying around for intruders. It’s better if I’m an invited guest. Don’t worry, I’ve done this plenty of times when I was on assignment for SOE.”

  “But this isn’t an assignment for SOE.”

  Though he didn’t say it, I knew that he was trying to tell me my spying days were over, and not just because I was a thousand miles away from headquarters. My boss, Ian, had gotten entangled in a blackmail scheme, and I ended up getting implicated as a traitor. I never got to resolve the matter or prove my innocence. Ian had poisoned himself, and I was stuck with all the blame. I pushed aside the pang of bitterness that hit me and assured myself that, while this wasn’t an assignment, I could still use the skills I had acquired.

  “Brande, I can do this. I’ll be in and out, so don’t worry.”

  He frowned. “Mehara told me how his henchmen pulled a gun out on you yesterday because of what happened to his ship.”

  “And did she tell you Jakab a
nd his men still sat down for another tarot reading? That man is superstitious, and I can use it to my advantage.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “No kissing.”

  “That won’t be a problem. And besides, you are the only man I want to kiss.”

  He pulled me back into an embrace. “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  Mehara and I hailed a cab, bringing along Master Skye. We drove across town to Dani’s place so Master Lan could take a look at Skye, and so Dani could escort me to the opera house. The cab driver dropped us off at Dani’s beautiful two-story home in the Forest Hill area. I paid the driver, while Mehara helped Master Skye out of the car. I got out, beat them to the front door and rang the bell.

  “I’m not a cripple, you know.” Skye’s expression stiffened as Mehara held onto his arm. He tried to hide his limp. As they approached, he readjusted his grasp so that it looked like he was escorting her, instead of the other way around.

  “You’re a stubborn man.” Mehara shook her head.

  My lips curved into a smile when I saw Dani answer the door. He welcomed me in with a warm half-hug. I could tell he still struggled with pain from the iron-tipped bullet that had pierced him. He led us into his living room, and we all took a seat.

  “Dani, how are you feeling?” I eyed him with a twinge of guilt. I was glad that at least the bullet hadn’t gone through his heart.

  “I’m well.” He self-consciously ran his hand through his dark, wavy hair. I could see his bandage, a square patch beneath his white shirt. “Can I get drinks for any of you?”

  We all declined, and I stood and gestured toward the staircase. “I should get ready for the opera.”

  Dani nodded. “I have everything ready for you upstairs. Third door on the left.”

  “Thanks.”

  Master Lan came in carrying two black cases, one large and one small. He locked gazes with Mehara for a moment before nodding. I wondered if she had used mental communication to tell him something.

  “Allan, I’ve got something for you.” Lan approached his friend and opened the large case. Some type of bandaging kit was inside. All of the contents shimmered with an enchantment.