Where had Tom learned to speak it so fluently?
“It seems you knew my father pretty well,” I said.
Tom motioned to the sofa and went to sit.
I glanced at Devan before following. “You coming?” I asked Jakes.
“I will be here if needed.”
“Your guardian role?”
He gave me a half smile. “There are no gateways here, Morris.”
“Ah. So your sheriff role. I don’t think you have too much to worry about.”
Jakes simply crossed his arms over his chest.
I took a seat on one of the faded wooden chairs opposite the sofa. Devan took the other, but pulled it over close to me. As she did, I made a point of grabbing one of my charms and palming it. I couldn’t explain why I did, and I didn’t really expect anything from Tom, only that with everything that had gone on around us lately, I was trying to be better prepared for the unknown.
When we were settled, Tom leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, looking from Devan to me. “I knew the Elder about as well as anyone could know him. He was a mentor, but more than that, he was my friend.”
I noted that Tom said “was.” Why was it that everyone was suddenly convinced that my father was gone? They hadn’t been nearly as convinced before now, or at least, they hadn’t seemed to be. “Yeah, I wouldn’t know about that.”
“Wouldn’t you, Oliver?” Tom asked. He peered at me through his half-frame glasses. A flop of his gray hair fell down into his eyes, but he didn’t bother to push it back. “I recall your father working with you quite a bit when you still lived here.”
I didn’t remember Tom from that time, but then again, there were quite a few things from my childhood that I’d forgotten. Mostly because I didn’t want to remember them, even though they weren’t necessarily bad memories. Those didn’t start until I got to Arcanus. After Arcanus, I should have had even worse memories, especially given some of the things I was asked to do, but there I had Devan—and, I had to admit, Nik had been a good friend for the first part of my service to the Trelking—who had kept me company.
“What’s your role in all of this?” I asked.
Tom took a deep breath and leaned back, setting his hands on his legs. “My role is to offer a place of safety. That has always been the role of the Waykeeper.”
He said it like a title, only one I had never heard before. “I assume you’re the Waykeeper?”
Tom pushed his hair back then and studied me. “I am.”
“I thought you were the warden.”
His eyes narrowed, and he glanced to Jakes. “They are much the same.”
That wasn’t quite an answer, but I didn’t push. “My father chose you for this role?”
Tom smiled slightly. “Not at first. As you can imagine, it is not without its dangers, but he saw the value in having someone he trusted.”
I glanced at Devan. She wore a troubled look that clouded her face. “I’ve got a pretty good imagination, but I don’t know anything about the Waykeeper. Did you?” I asked Devan.
Devan shook her head.
I turned back to Tom. “What does it mean? What do you do?”
He looked past me to catch Jakes’s eyes. “You haven’t told him?”
“That’s not my place.”
“It is now that your father is gone.” Tom’s voice was normally warm and fatherly. When he spoke to Jakes, it became hard.
“He will not serve. What does it matter?” Jakes said.
Tom shifted in his seat. His eyes darted from Jakes to me. “You have asked him?”
“I have asked.”
“All right,” I said, interrupting them. “You’re going to have to fill me in a little. I might have spent a decade learning from the Trelking, but there seems to be quite a bit that I knew nothing about.”
“Because you were shielded from it,” Tom said. “The Trelking foresaw your role in all of this. Why do you think he summoned you? Why do you think he kept you away for so long?”
“What do you mean? He didn’t summon me, I triggered the crossing myself.”
Tom nodded. “You were to trigger the crossing, but it did not go as planned. Your father needed you on the other side of the Threshold, but he didn’t think you’d be claimed by the Trelking.”
“No?” I couldn’t believe that my father would have any plans for me dealing with the Threshold. It seemed to me that everything he had planned turned out exactly the way he expected, except for maybe his death. Even that I wasn’t certain had really happened the way I was told. For all I knew, my father was still alive somewhere, waiting…for what? For me? To avoid the Trelking? To attack the Druist Mage?
“Do you think the Elder wanted his son committed to serve the Trelking?” Tom asked. “He wanted you to learn, but to do so on your own.” He glanced at Devan. “That you survived at all is a testament to your strength and the friendships you forged.”
I resisted the urge to turn and stare at Jakes. How much of what Tom was telling me did he know? How much of it was even true?
Then again, how much of it really mattered? At this point, nothing really mattered. Had I not crossed the Threshold, had I not been claimed by the Trelking, I would never have met Devan. As much as our friendship and ultimate relationship meant to me, there was another reason that was important. I might not know as much as Tom or Jakes about what had happened on this side of the Threshold, or what happened with my father, but I knew what had been happening on the other side. I knew how the Trelking and the Druist Mage battled. And I knew that Devan could never go to the Druist Mage.
“Tell me how any of this is going to help me stop the Druist Mage when he decides it’s time to claim Devan,” I said. “Tell me how any of this is going to help me keep the Trelking from dragging his daughter back across the Threshold. Can you do that?” I looked from Tom to Jakes. Neither spoke. “No? Then tell me what the Trelking is after on this side of the Threshold. Because you seemed pretty petrified that he was here,” I said to Tom, “and since he held the doorway open, we’ve seen that the compass up on Settler Hill has gone missing and now some storage unit has been broken into. Know anything about that, Tom? Because that’s the kind of information I need to understand now.”
“What do you mean the compass is missing?” Tom asked.
I frowned. That was what he chose to latch onto?
“The compass was taken. Maybe last night, maybe longer ago than that.” We still didn’t know when, or why, and Taylor hadn’t been able to help. “Something with serious power, enough to separate the base from the ground.”
Tom looked over to Jakes. “You knew about this?”
“Morris told me.”
“And you didn’t know what it meant?”
Jakes took a step toward us before settling back on his heels and taking a breath. “There are many things in the city that I don’t fully understand. Without my father’s guidance, I might never fully understand.”
With that statement, I suddenly realized that Jakes was struggling with nearly as much as I was. He missed his father, but it was more than that. With his father’s disappearance, he was asked to provide more protection than he might have been ready to offer. Jakes was a powerful shifter, but it was just as likely that he was a young shifter, still learning what he needed to know to fulfill his role. And here I had been treating him like he had all the answers, when he probably had nearly as many questions as I did.
“Why don’t you tell us, Waykeeper? What does it mean?” I asked Tom.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “The compass is more than a simple monument.”
“Yeah, I sort of figured that. There was too much power used to make it anything less than something with a bit of magical draw, but it didn’t seem like anything of my father’s.”
“That’s because it is not. It predates your father providing protection to the city. The compass is a magical creation, made by ancient painters, back when there were true masters, befor
e the hunters nearly destroyed them all. It provides a sort of diffusion over the city, a way to mask what passes through here. I never would have thought it able to be taken. The city itself provides the protection to the compass.”
I whistled softly. There were plenty of reasons for the Trelking to want to remove something like that. If it worked as Tom described, the compass would possibly restrict the Trelking’s visions of Conlin, remove his prescience. If that were true, I could see why my father had chosen Conlin. The compass would keep him out of sight from other magical beings.
And I wondered if the city changing had weakened the compass. Trees that once formed patterns around the city were gone, no longer providing the same protection. I didn’t know that the pattern Taylor had found was the reason for the protection, but it had to be a part of it. How much else had changed since my father was last here?
“Would it work against the Trelking?” I asked.
“I don’t know. The Elder seemed to think there wasn’t anything that could see through the compass. I disagreed with him and for years thought that I was right.”
“Why?” I twisted in my chair to be able to see both Tom and Devan.
“Well, because of what happened to you. The Trelking knew enough about you to know where you’d appear. He knew enough to place a reason for you to remain on that side of the Threshold.” Tom fixed his gaze on Devan. “Did he not send De’avan for you, Oliver? Did he not foresee your friendship and how that would bind you to him?”
“I’ve lived with and around the Trelking long enough that I don’t think he sees everything. Even he will admit that there are limitations to his sight. Could he have foreseen that I would help steal Devan away to keep her from marrying the Druist? Could he have foreseen that I would return to Conlin?”
Tom cupped his hands together over his lap. “Yes.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but bit it back. Was it possible that the Trelking knew what would happen between Devan and me, that I’d risk myself and my safety to get her free of him, to keep her from the Druist Mage?
As much as I hated it, the answer was yes. If he knew what I would do, the risk to Devan was lessened. The Trelking could commit her to the Druist Mage, could use her as leverage to keep his realm safe, all while knowing—or at least suspecting—that I would do what was needed to protect her.
Would he do that? Would he risk her like that based on his prescience?
If that were the case, then the Trelking would want to have the compass removed. He’d want to be able to see what we might do. If he thought we really planned to attack the Druist Mage at some point, the Trelking would want to know when.
“What was in the box in the storage shed?” I asked Tom. “It’s not the shardstone box.” I watched him as I said that last. If Tom knew about the shardstone box the Trelking sought, I wanted to know. His face didn’t betray anything. Apparently, that didn’t necessarily mean anything, not when it came to Tom. Like my father, there was much more about him than I knew. He was the Waykeeper, and maybe nearly as skilled a painter as I was.
Tom sighed. “It’s… unfortunate that was taken. Unlike the compass, the storage unit was owned by your father. He left certain items there for me to use.”
“For you?”
Tom nodded. “They were intended to help further my training. It’s been a long time since I attempted any additional training.”
“Why the storage unit? Why not leave them here? Or in the house or in…” I glanced back at Jakes. He shook his head slightly, barely more than an imperceptible motion. Tom didn’t know about the space beneath the shed? Why would that be? “Other places I’ve found,” I went on.
“I could not access the house. Your father made certain that I was skilled enough to serve as the Waykeeper, but I have never had your talent with arcane patterns, Oliver. I think you might be surprised to know that what I’ve seen from you rivals what your father could accomplish.”
I’d have to think on that later. If what Tom said was true—and I no longer knew what was true and what was not—then my father might never have wanted me to reach the Trelking, but the Trelking had been the reason that I managed to learn what I did about the arcane patterns.
“My role has only been one of guidance,” Tom went on.
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“I serve those who come through the Rooster, ushering them on to the next destination. Some, I guide toward the Threshold and the guardians help them cross. Others I’ve helped escape places where they were in danger.” He tipped his head to me. “I have placed more than a few in Arcanus.”
“Do the masters know about you?”
Tom smiled. “They know of me. They consider me a skilled tagger, as they should. Your father saw to it that I was something else.”
“What of the box?”
Tom’s face clouded. “That’s what troubles me. There should have been nothing in there of any value. Mostly inks and some paints, but little else. Anything of use I took out of there long ago.” His eyes darted toward the room at the back.
“How long ago?” I asked, following the direction of his gaze.
“Shortly after I last saw your father.” He smiled sheepishly. “He said I should wait, but there has always been a part of me that wanted to be a little bit more. Unfortunately, it was clear I wasn’t ready for what he left me. Maybe in time.”
“Where is it now? What he left you, I mean.”
“The inks were returned to the box. They were the Elder’s paint. There was value in that.”
Maybe more than Tom realized. “And the other items?”
He swept his hand around him. “I’ve kept them here. This place is as good as many others to keep items safe. The Elder saw to that.”
“Where? Can you show me?”
I started to stand. As I did, the hairs on my arms started to stand on end.
I glanced over to Devan. She had already lurched into motion, jumping to her feet and starting toward the door.
“Jakes?” I said. The huge shifter looked over, his expression unreadable. “It’s about to get nasty.”
“We’re safe here,” Tom said. “This is a place of peace. The Elder saw to—”
“He saw to the diner,” I told Tom. That was what I had sensed coming in here. “Not your living quarters. The only protections here are what you placed on it. And while I don’t deny you have skill, what’s coming is a little bit more powerful than that.”
14
The air became charged with a mixture of energy. There was what I readied; the simple act of me preparing to use patterns left a magical sense hanging around me. Then there was what Devan did. She took one of her figurines—only a single one, which I’ll admit surprised me a bit—and set it by the door. She whispered to it and stepped away. Jakes didn’t seem to do anything, but he still seemed ready, if that made any sort of sense. There was a part of me that wanted him to shift, to change into his wolf form to be ready to frighten whatever would come at us, but he didn’t.
“Where did you put them?” I asked Tom.
Tom knelt in front of a small wooden cabinet and paused as he drew the door open to glance back at me. “Put what?”
“You’ve said it yourself. The storage unit held things of my father’s. That’s what they’re after. So where did you put them?” Was it Brand? Or was this another attacker?
He shook his head, his gaze never straying from the door. “This is a place of safety,” he said again.
I turned to Jakes. “Can you tell?”
He tipped his head, and his nose elongated, briefly stretching into something more wolf-like, before snapping back to his human nose. He nodded toward the room behind the closed door. “There is power stored through there, Morris.”
Tom jumped to his feet and darted in front of me, moving more quickly than I would have expected him to manage at his age. He held a small metal tin in each hand. Paint, I suspect. From what he said, it might have been paint that my fathe
r had mixed.
“There’s nothing back there,” Tom said, trying to veer in front of me.
I reached the door at the same time as he did. With a practiced snap of his wrist, he smeared an irregular circle onto the door with a light brown ink.
Before he had the chance to charge it, I pressed my power through the pattern. It was risky doing that, especially without knowing what Tom intended, but I didn’t want to give him the chance to seal the door himself. Besides, before I used the pattern, I’d flicked a pinch of ink toward it, enough to disrupt whatever it was that Tom was attempting.
The door bulged with a soft explosion. Tom shot me an angry look.
“Oliver, you should be more careful.”
I grabbed his arm as he readied to make another mark on the door. “Jakes—”
Tom glanced over his shoulder. “You don’t have to do that with me,” Tom said.
“It’s not you,” I said. “Listen to what’s on the other side.”
Tom closed his eyes. His right foot made a swirling pattern on the ground, a trick that few painters from Arcanus ever learned. They were always so focused on paints and inks that they never paused to think of what else could focus power. Tom had learned from my father some of the same lessons that I had learned, but I’d had to cross the Threshold to learn them.
“What is it?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Don’t know.” Not Te’alan, I didn’t think. The signature was something like a painter, but not any painter I’d ever detected. And I didn’t remember seeing any windows, so whatever got in had come in through walls wrapped in protection. It wasn’t like my father had completely abandoned this side of the Rooster. There were protections in place here, but they were weaker than what was found toward the front side of the diner and along the inner wall.
Stolen Compass (The Painter Mage Book 4) Page 14