The Painter Mage: Books 1-3

by D. K. Holmberg

  The statue here was a simple orb set atop a thick stalk. Most called it Globe. I called it blah. But my father had made it, just like the others, so the local townsfolk fawned over it. If there were many more like Jakes, I began to understand why. Maybe my father was higher up in the magical world than I thought. I mean, it’s one thing to be an Arcanus Master and lead the painters, but Arcanus was pretty low in the magical world. Most painters didn’t even realize there was a magical world, and certainly nothing like the one I’d experienced since leaving Arcanus. They all thought the pinnacle of what they could do meant being known as an artist. But artists had limits.

  I glanced over at Taylor. Well, maybe not as many limits as I had always thought, but then again, I’d been duped into thinking the hunters still roamed at night and that I had somehow escaped their attention.

  What did you use?” I asked, nodding to the Globe.

  Taylor leaned toward it and ran her fingers across it. “This was different than the last. With a little,” she paused and pulled a pinch of ink from beneath her coat, “I used blue and swirled it around the base like this.”

  The complex pattern she made was like nothing I’d ever seen. There was something like a pentagram mixed with spirals and possibly an irregular square around it. Parts of it repeated, and like everything with painting, numbers mattered. I might be decent at patterns, but I would never manage something with that level of complexity.

  “Where did you see that?”

  “His book.”

  I pulled the book from my pocket and flipped open the cover. Scrawled across each page were a series of patterns. Most were simple shapes, but they gradually increased in complexity the farther down the page you went. “How did you know which one to use?”

  She grabbed the book from me and flipped through the pages. “The patterns here,” she said, pointing to the first few pages, “they repeat, almost like they’re meant to guide the artist. Once you get past them, there are other pages, each with a single symbol marking the corner.”

  Now that she’d said it, I realized she was right. I hadn’t seen it before. I turned the pages quickly and there it was, a symbol that looked like the Globe: a solid circle atop a thick post. The rest of the page consisted of repeating symbols leading to one at the bottom of the page.

  “Well, shit,” I whispered.

  Devan leaned over my arm. “What is it?”

  “It’s a lesson book.”

  Devan frowned. “A what?”

  I pointed to the first few patterns on the page. They might be complex, but they were easier than the patterns farther down the page. Each one grew increasingly complicated, adding to the previous, until you reached the final pattern. “It’s a way to draw that,” I said, pointing to the symbol Taylor had made on the ground around the base of the Globe.

  Turning the pages, I saw that each page was more of the same. Each one was meant to guide the painter into creating increasingly complicated patterns. With something like this, I might be able to replicate the pattern Taylor had so quickly drawn, though I wouldn’t have any idea what it was meant to do.

  “How did you know what it would do?” I asked Taylor.

  She touched the page, careful not to disturb the marks she’d made on the ground. “These,” she started, touching a series of triangles, “and these,” she pointed to the tight spirals, “work together.”

  I breathed out a laugh. “A summons.”

  Taylor nodded. “Complicated as hell, but what else would you expect from the Elder?”

  What indeed, I wondered. “So you triggered it and then what?”

  Taylor started toward the pattern she’d made but I grabbed her, pulling her back.

  “As soon as you infuse will into that, they will know we’re here. I want to be damn sure I know what our plan is when we do that.”

  Taylor pulled her hand away and breathed out slowly. “The summons called a series of patterns,” she answered.

  “Any I’d know?”

  She looked at me sharply. “You’re the son of the Elder. Why wouldn’t you know?”

  In spite of my nerves, I laughed. “You’ve seen what I can do. I’m not much more than a tagger. My father… well, he was a whole lot more than just a simple tagger.”

  And from what I gathered tonight, he was much more than I had ever known.

  Taylor touched my arm. Her hand felt warm and soft and made me all too aware of how she pressed close to me. “I’ve seen what you can do, Escher. You’re far more than any tagger we have in Arcanus.”

  “Yeah, well I’ve sort of had to be since I left. You don’t survive on the other side too long if you don’t pick up a few tricks.” I elbowed Devan for emphasis and took a twisted satisfaction in her yelp and the glare she gave me.

  “When this is over, I’d like to know more about you,” Taylor said to Devan.

  Devan laughed. “I’m sure you would, painter girl. We’ll see what Ollie has to say about that when we’re all done and after I’ve chatted with him.”

  I focused on the Globe again. “Were the patterns it summoned in his book?”

  “No. They were on the bowl.”

  Of course. Something we didn’t have with us.

  Taylor pulled a scrap of paper from her pocket and unfolded it. There, worked across the page, was an interlocked series of shapes. Beneath that was another series, much like the one in his book.

  “Okay,” I said.

  Taylor frowned.

  “Trigger your pattern.”

  Taylor touched the pattern with the tips of two fingers. Power surged through her, making the skin on my arms tight. The Globe spun. The sculpture actually spun. As it did, new patterns emerged.

  Taylor pointed to one on the page she held. “This one.”

  She started to shift her focus to that pattern when I stopped her. “But that’s for summoning the gate.” There was another pattern on the globe, one that seemed out of place with the others. “See that?” I asked, pointing.

  Taylor’s eyes narrowed as she studied it and then shook her head.

  At least I had something on her. “Maybe because it’s arcane.” Without waiting to explain, I sent a surge of power into that symbol.

  The Globe stopped spinning. Then it reversed directions, spinning the opposite way.

  I laughed. I’d actually figured out something of my father’s. Maybe I wasn’t quite the disappointment to him that I’d always thought.

  “Come on, Ollie,” Devan said.

  She pulled on my arm. As she did, I heard the soft howl coming from the darkness in front of us. It was close. Too close.

  We wouldn’t be able to get away.

  “Go, take her to the next one,” I said to Devan. “I’ll do what I can to slow it down.” Taylor’s eyes widened. “It’ll be fine,” I said to her, trying to sound confident. “Maybe Jakes will get here.”

  But I’d seen how fast the other one had moved. Or, to put it correctly, I hadn’t seen how fast the other hunter had moved. Without another containment charm, I didn’t think there was anything I’d be able to do to stop it.

  “You’re an idiot, Ollie,” Devan said.

  With that, she pulled something out of her pocket—the tiny figurines she carved—and whispered something I couldn’t hear.

  “Go,” she said without turning back to me. “I’ll be there in a second.”

  “Devan?”

  “Don’t be stupid, Ollie. I’m faster than you. And you know I’m not completely helpless.”

  I did know that, but I didn’t like the idea of her staying behind while I went off with Taylor to the relative safety of another sculpture. “You can’t attack,” I reminded her.

  “I don’t have to attack. Go, Ollie.”

  A low rumbling came from behind me, something I’d heard once before, but never here, and I almost turned when Taylor jerked me forward.

  We ran.

  Trees whipped by in the darkness. Without Devan with us, there were only the distant li
ghts near the center of the park and a faint light filtering through the trees from streetlights on the other side of the wall.

  Taylor seemed to know where she was going, so I let her lead. She also seemed better able to see in the darkness and I wondered about that until I realized her hair had a slight shimmering effect to it.

  “They’re going to track us by your hair,” I said.

  Taylor twisted over to look at me. “What do you want me to do, shave it off?”

  “Can’t you, you know, not power it?”

  She shook her head. “Not this one. I twisted it into the fibers so I didn’t have to think about it. It gives me better sight and stamina.”

  Well, at least that explained why she moved so easily. “Then we’d better hurry,” I said.

  The sculpture on this corner of the park was an obelisk that rose up from the ground. Usually, the sculpture rose no higher than my waist. Now it rose nearly to my head. Whatever Taylor had done had changed it.

  Its edges were flattened as it went up, making it look almost eight-sided from a distance. Up close, you could more easily make out how two rectangles sat atop each other, twisted forty-five degrees to make the sculpture work. Like the others, no patterns were etched into the stone.

  “What’s the summons for this?” I asked.

  She pulled a pinch of blue ink from beneath her coat and traced a quick pattern. Like the last, the complexity to it was more than I could make without weeks of practice. With a quick infusion of power, Taylor worked the proper symbols along each of the sides of the obelisk.

  “These were what I used to summon the gate.” She pointed to a series on each of the sides. The patterns were complex, but less so than the one she had used to summon. They were all primary shapes—angles and spirals and circles—but were connected like someone had taken a Spirograph set and created them.

  I made my way around the obelisk. As I did, Devan skidded to a stop just outside the line the shadows made. Her skin had a slight sheen to it. The amulet hadn’t gone cold, so I didn’t think she’d been using her power, but somehow she’d gotten away from the hunters.

  “Did you lose them?”

  “They have their hands full.”

  “You’ll have to tell me what you did later.”

  She tipped her chin forward and shrugged. “We’ll see.”

  Another howl pierced the night. A loud snarl chased it. At least I knew Jakes was still out there. And still alive.

  “Do you see anything?” I asked Taylor.

  “Nothing that wasn’t here before.”

  That wasn’t the answer. Somehow, I knew that. I might not know how to trigger the power stored in the obelisk, use that to bury the gate, but I sensed there was something like what we’d seen on the globe.

  But what?

  I had to think like my father. The trouble was, I was nothing like my father. He was a painter, an artist, whereas I was a tagger.

  But he worked in patterns. I worked in patterns. I could do this.

  As I made another loop around the obelisk, I stumbled and dropped to my knees. Devan caught me, lifting me easily. I offered her a quick smile of thanks before turning to closely study the sculpture.

  Of course.

  Worked along the edge where the ground met the stone was a series of symbols that mirrored those Taylor had triggered. I suspected hers had been at ground level when she triggered them.

  I touched the first and pushed out with a finger of power and intent. If I was wrong, there would be resistance. The symbol surged with power. I touched the next and the same happened. Within moments, I’d triggered them all.

  The obelisk rumbled and began to sink back into the ground.

  Another howl came, close again.

  “Come on,” I urged.

  We had two left. I still didn’t know what to do with the Claw. If we managed to make it to the next—and survive—we could figure it out.

  The last sculpture was near the far back corner of the park. It was different than nearly anything else, shaped something like a child with a blank face looking out and away, and short arms, though it took a twisted imagination to get there. My father had called it the Child, though, so maybe I got my imagination from him.

  Taylor didn’t wait for my urging and quickly placed the summons on the ground. Symbols burst into being, worked onto the Child’s face like grotesque tattoos.

  “Sort of a sick sense of humor, don’t you think?” I asked Devan.

  “Explains where you got yours,” she answered.

  “What did you do here?” I asked Taylor.

  She pointed to the Child’s ears. Two long lines worked along the sides of his cheeks.

  “A bit simpler than the others, don’t you think?”

  “The patterns might be, but the sculpture is not.”

  She was right. Maybe that would help me find the patterns we needed to bury the gate. I looked around the sculpture, but saw nothing else as simple as the lines along the ears. There was nothing.

  A snarl startled me and I jerked around.

  A long, lean shifter jumped from behind one of the trees, leaping over Devan and crashing into something behind Taylor.

  Devan surged power, making my amulet grow cold. Light bloomed from her skin.

  Behind Taylor, darkness folded, twisting around the shifter. They fought, snarls and fangs and howls.

  “Ollie!”

  I shook myself away from the fight and focused on the sculpture. If we couldn’t do this, other hunters would get through.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  Taylor pushed against me, staring at the sculpture. “You went out and fought that?”

  “Not so much me but the big man,” I said. “I only helped a little.”

  “I think I’ve not been giving you enough credit,” she said.

  “Come on. We need to figure this out. What aren’t we seeing?”

  As I said it, I realized my problem. I needed to think like the Elder.

  “The first two marks were over the ears. What about the eyes?” I asked Taylor.

  “There’s nothing there,” she said. “Just eyes.”

  I smiled darkly. The Child had no eyes.

  With a surge of power, I pressed on the sculpture’s eyes, feeling a little creepy as I did. Why would my father make me poke the eyes of a little kid? A sick sense of humor was right.

  The sculpture trembled and then twisted slowly around, pivoting until it faced toward the center of the park. Toward the gate.

  “Well, damn. I hadn’t realized he faced the wrong direction,” I said.

  Devan grabbed my wrist to pull me and Taylor away. “There’s one remaining. You better figure out how to trigger it or we’re going to be overrun here.”

  As we went, I thought about what I had to do. The others all had something about them that we could trigger. They all had symbols, but the Claw was different.

  “You didn’t have to summon anything?” I asked Taylor.

  “Not with that one. There was a page in the book, but it didn’t do anything. Had I not done the others first, I think I would have worried I was wrong. But since it was the last one I came to—”

  “Not Agony?” I asked.

  I’d worried what we would have to do with Agony. Something about the sculpture made me more nervous than anything. More than the others, there was a darkness to it, an energy that scared many away from even trying to draw it.

  “Not that one. It wasn’t needed.”

  I wondered why that would be. If the other sculptures all called the gate, why wasn’t Agony involved in it somehow?

  We reached the Claw. Nothing had changed for me. I still had no answers about how to trigger it.

  “Morris.”

  I turned in time to see Jakes get attacked.

  In one moment, he stood, half naked—at least he gave me that—the next, something wrapped around him, dark and horrifying. He didn’t have the chance to shift.

  I jumped toward Jakes without th
inking.

  When I crashed into him, I felt the hunter. There was a thick, almost oily sense to it. Mixed with it was something like a hunger.

  And then it was gone.

  Jakes shifted, fangs snapping and tearing. A solid kick pushed all the air from my lungs and sent me flying away until I sprawled across the ground. My head struck the Claw. The pain of it drew tears to my eyes, and they watered. I rolled over, and as I did, I knew what had to be done.

  I pushed to my knees. “Invert it,” I croaked.

  Taylor leaned toward me. “Escher?”

  I didn’t have the strength to correct her. “Invert. It.”

  A look of understanding spread across her face.

  I didn’t see what she did next, but I heard it. Stone groaned as she pushed on the Claw’s fingers, tilting them down, flipping the triangle toward the ground. An anchoring symbol.

  Power surged through her as she triggered it.

  I tensed, waiting for something, anything, to tell me that what we’d done made a difference. I don’t know what I expected. Maybe a surge of power or a flash of light, but something.

  Instead, all I heard were repeated low howls of the hunters.

  12

  Taylor and Devan reached under my arms and lifted me. Devan looked at me with a scolding expression on her face. “What did you think you were doing, Ollie? Bull rushing a nightmare Hell creature? Did you want to die?”

  I tried taking a deep breath but I think Jakes’s kick broke a rib or two. A painful cough wracked me instead of letting me breathe. When it eased, I twisted to see Jakes finishing with the hunter, tearing at what seemed like nothingness with sharp claws. “Invisible nightmare Hell creature,” I said. “And I was doing what I could to help your boyfriend.”

  Jakes shifted back into his human form as I said it. Pants covered him below the waist, but his well-muscled upper body glistened with sweat. The long gash he had acquired fighting the hunter near my house now had a matching mark along his shoulder.

  “Is it done?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “We’ve triggered each of the sculptures, but I can’t tell if it did anything.”

  Jakes tipped his head to the side and sniffed the air, looking like the wolf part of him as he did. As he did, howls met with loud snarls somewhere near the center of the park. He paused long enough to meet my eyes.