The Painter Mage: Books 1-3

by D. K. Holmberg

  I stood and extended a hand. My legs wobbled. Jakes took my hand in one that felt twice as large. “Thanks for, you know, not destroying the house,” I said. “For not killing me. And for stopping the hunters.”

  Jakes nodded as he shook my hand and then made his way toward the front door. The limp in his step was new, as was the slight arch to his back. I hoped he hadn’t been permanently injured, but seeing what he’d lost tonight, maybe he had been.

  After he left, I turned to Devan. “So she’s downstairs?”

  “I figured it couldn’t hurt anything now.”

  I snorted. “I’ll go talk to her. Why don’t you go see if Officer Jakes needs any help.”

  She glared at me.

  “I’m fine. Really. Go.”

  Devan shook her head and left me alone in the kitchen. I turned to the hall with the symbols and paused long enough to trigger the hidden and inverted symbol. The door opened with a slight puff of air.

  I started down, clinging tightly to the rail as I did. Symbols like those on the wall outside were etched along the rail. At the bottom of the stairs, I found Taylor sitting at my father’s desk, blue-tinted hair hanging in front of her eyes as she pored over one of his books. She looked up when I entered. Damn, but she was beautiful. I shouldn’t let her draw me back like this, but I couldn’t help myself.

  Maybe Devan was right. I was an idiot.

  Relief filled her eyes. “Escher—”

  I didn’t bother to correct her this time.

  “I’m sorry. About all of this.”

  I swallowed. I was sorry, too. Jakes had lost his father. I’d nearly died. I didn’t know what it had cost Devan to save me. For all those reasons, I would see Taylor returned to Arcanus.

  Still, I’d learned a few things. I could think like my father. All these years I’d spent thinking I could never live up to him, and I had managed to trigger the symbols needed to bury the gate. And I’d learned that even in Conlin, there was more to the world than it appeared. Maybe I could actually learn enough to keep Devan alive.

  I didn’t say anything to Taylor. There really wasn’t much for me to say. I slumped into the chair on the other side of the desk and went back to sleep.

  Arcane Mark

  1

  The usually musty air of the basement now held a decidedly bitter stink from pages curling and smoking where my pencil made repeated patterns. Pencil lead held little permanence, preventing my patterns from doing too much damage. My hand cramped from the repetition, and my mind hummed with symbols I’d never imagined attempting, let alone managed to create. It had been years since I’d worked this hard.

  Taylor leaned over the long desk, black hair tinted with streaks of blue ink hanging in front of her eyes. She had shown up in Conlin a while back, seemingly out of nowhere, asking for help finding her father. Using enormous painter magic, she had nearly released a nightmare into the city when she tried to open a gate to cross the Threshold. I still wondered if she felt remorse. Maybe working with me was her way of paying me back for saving her ass.

  The desk she leaned on had patches of brighter wood where books had once been stacked, but had since been placed back on the shelves lining the rest of the unfinished basement. A pile of notebooks was now stacked neatly on the edge of the desk, and a bundle of freshly sharpened pencils rested atop them.

  “You’re getting closer,” she said.

  Her breath smelled of spearmint gum and black tea, an unusual combination. I mean, how could she stomach combining the two?

  I rubbed my temples and shook my head. “Not close enough. I can’t get this angle to look quite right.” I pointed to a page in the notebook spread out in front of me, my attempts next to a series of shapes my father had drawn down the page—a lesson on how to create the complicated pattern I attempted. With each step, I got closer, but still had barely progressed beyond the middle of the page.

  “Look, Oliver, you’re still almost a dozen pages in. Consider that a success,” Taylor said.

  I glanced up at her. Those deep brown eyes looking at me, seemingly questing for forgiveness. After nearly releasing hunters on my city, creatures who fed on magical ability, it was hard to move past it. Her taking the time to work with me on the patterns was a start.

  “How long did it take you to complete?”

  She dropped her eyes back to the notebook. “It’s not a competition.”

  I snorted. “Not a close one.”

  I’m what’s known as a tagger, someone with magical ability but no real artistic sense. I can work with patterns—and some, like the arcane patterns I’d learned on the other side of the Threshold, I had mastered—but don’t have the same ability that Taylor has achieved. Still skilled and better than having no talent, but I’d seen how easily Taylor mastered patterns like these.

  And what I had was nothing like the true magic of those on the other side of the Threshold. The Threshold separated our world from another where those with true magic lived, essentially a filter that required specific locations and enormous power to cross, holding magic where it belonged. My best friend Devan was one of the Te’alan, basically elves or fairies or whatever you’d want to call them, and possessed more magic than anything I could accomplish, but there were limits to what she could do, especially when it came to using magic to attack. For some reason, my magic didn’t share those limitations.

  There were other dangerous and deadly creatures on the other side of the Threshold. Serving under the Trelking—Devan’s father and ruler of the Te’alan—I had fought them for nearly a decade before finally managing to escape with Devan. Now I wanted peace, a chance to learn enough to keep us safe, and maybe to find out what had really happened to my father the night he’d disappeared.

  Taylor picked up one of the pencils and pulled a pad toward her. As she worked, making pattern after pattern, I felt the power she fused to the page. She was an artist—a painter of exquisite skill who could use her paintings to augment and infuse magical power into what she created. Were she still in Arcanus, the place where painters went to discover their abilities, she would have been considered practically master level.

  It had been a week since we’d survived the hunter attack. During that time, I’d mostly slept, trying to recover from nearly dying, but when awake, I practiced the patterns in this notebook, working through them with a fervor that bordered on obsession. The notebook had been my father’s, a man they called the Elder. If I didn’t begin to understand some of his work, I’d never survive the powers chasing my best friend Devan and me.

  I made another attempt at the pattern, working down the page and following the instructions. The pattern was for summoning. I knew because we’d used it in the park to summon the other patterns on the sculptures. Patterns like this had other uses, as well. Mastering it could lead me to better understanding what my father was studying before he disappeared.

  This time, I nearly made it all the way down the page before I felt the pattern begin to fizzle, sending curls of smoke up from the page. I slapped at it absently.

  I set the pencil down and rested my hands on the table, shifting slightly in the chair. It was hard and uncomfortable, but it had been my father’s. Maybe I’d learn something sitting where he had once sat, enough to understand the purpose of this book, understand why he’d left it for me before disappearing, if not how to make each pattern. There had to be another reason for it, more than simply the statues in the park.

  I studied the page, wishing I could get through this more easily. I was better with arcane patterns—hell, I was better than most with arcane patterns, but these weren’t arcane. Working in pencil had advantages, especially with paper. For one, it wasn’t permanent. The pattern could be erased before it did any real damage. And pencil didn’t have the same focus as ink. Ink gave more energy to each pattern, augmented the intent even more.

  “When do you want to return to Arcanus?” I asked Taylor. Best to confront the elephant rather than leave it lie. Or maybe that wa
s dogs. Whatever it was, I needed to figure out the plan, and that plan didn’t include Taylor staying in Conlin. It could include me staying here and studying—learning patterns from the Elder could only help me keep Devan alive—but Taylor still searched for her father, Hard. He was a master in Arcanus, and had disappeared a year ago behind a door covered with arcane patterns. The problem was, I wasn’t convinced he still lived. If he crossed the Threshold, he was probably dead. Or worse: he might have ended up like me, captured and forced to serve someone like Devan’s father. At least serving the Trelking had brought Devan and me together, and had increased my skills. I didn’t know what would happen to an Arcanus master on the other side of the Threshold.

  Taylor paused her pattern, her pencil held precisely so she could pick up where she left off, and met my eyes. “I’m not going to return. I told you—”

  “Yeah. You want to find your father. Or bring the hunters into Conlin.” I waved my hand at her as she opened her mouth to object. “But I’ve been on the other side of the Threshold,” I said, watching her to see if she understood. I still didn’t know how much she’d learned since leaving Arcanus in search of her father. A year spent trying to find a way through the door Hard had disappeared behind. I figured he’d crossed the Threshold, and if I hadn’t heard of it when I was still there, that meant he’d ended up somewhere outside the Trelking’s realm. And out there, he wouldn’t have found many places safe for a painter. “If Hard had been there, I would have known.”

  She swallowed and crossed her arms over her chest. “I refuse to believe that he’s dead.”

  I felt the same way about my father. That was part of the reason Devan and I had returned to Conlin. Not all of it, and not most of it, if I was being completely honest. Now after ten years without him, I wasn’t sure what I’d do if I actually found him. But I could learn from him, and anything that I could learn had the potential to help keep Devan safe.

  “So you won’t help?”

  “I’ll make sure you get to Arcanus,” I started, knowing that I wasn’t really ready for that. At least, not to go to Arcanus myself. When Devan and I had returned from the other side of the Threshold, I suspected I’d need to go at some point. I just hadn’t expected it would be so soon. But I wanted to get Taylor away from Conlin and keep her from trying to find the other ways around the city to cross the Threshold.

  Taylor watched me. “You could return, too. The hall of doors—”

  I shook my head. Taylor knew how to appeal to me. I couldn’t deny my interest in what was in that hall of doors she’d shown me, but that meant spending real time in Arcanus. There was no staying safe if I did that. “I don’t want anything to do with Arcanus. And it doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

  “But you’re the son of the Elder—”

  “You think that matters, considering what I am?”

  She frowned. “And what is that?”

  I laughed and stretched my back, running my hands along my sides. “A tagger.”

  “You keep calling yourself that, but you’re nothing like any tagger I’ve ever seen.”

  I glanced toward the stairs, where I heard Devan coming down from above. “Only because of what I learned on the other side of the Threshold, what I was forced to learn from her father.” I hesitated saying more. After what had happened, I wasn’t sure how much I could trust Taylor just yet. Letting her learn of the power from the other side of the Threshold, the power Devan’s father possessed, had the potential to be dangerous. “Let’s just say there’s a reason neither of us wants to return.”

  “What happened?”

  “Ollie being an idiot.”

  I looked over. Devan stood at the bottom of the stairs, watching me with an amused expression. She wore a lime green T-shirt with a faded lightning bolt across the chest. I still hadn’t figured out where she got her clothes. With Devan, it was possible she made them herself.

  “You’re still free,” I said. “And not—”

  I cut off as Devan came around the table and jabbed me in the side while glancing at my work. She tipped her head to the side as if a different angle would make the patterns look better. Then she shrugged.

  “There is that,” Devan agreed. “Why else do you think I’m with you?”

  “Who’s her father?” Taylor asked.

  I watched Devan for a moment, wondering if she’d explain so that I didn’t have to. “You don’t want to know.”

  Devan smiled widely. “That’s the Ollie I know. It’s taken you a week to get back your usually pissy attitude. And here I thought dying had changed you.”

  “I didn’t die.” Not because I hadn’t been willing. The gods know, to stop the hunters and save Devan, I had been willing to do anything, including using the Death Pattern.

  Devan raised her brow briefly. “Nope. And a good thing, too.”

  “Why?” I asked carefully. When Devan got excited, things became complicated for me.

  “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  We followed Devan up the wooden stairs and out of the basement. My hand trailed along the symbols carved into the rail as I did, wondering, as I did each time I touched it, how long it had taken my father to make. The entire rail was designed to hold the door closed, merging with the patterns on the wall at the top of the stairs to hide and secure the basement. I couldn’t see them, but I suspected similar patterns were worked into the stone around the basement, as well. The entire house was like a magical fortress.

  At the top of the stairs, she led us through the kitchen and out through the living room. At some point over the last week, someone had found an old sofa that folded out to a bed. Taylor had been sleeping on it, but kept it neatly folded up during the day. The sofa covered part of the circle carved into the living room’s hardwood floor, a place where I had taken to practicing, but I hadn’t really been in the mood to do much work.

  Outside, the sun was high in the sky, giving needed warmth to the cool day. A steady breeze gusted in from the west, rustling leaves on the trees in the nearby park. Another couple of weeks, and the leaves would begin changing colors. I hadn’t been in Conlin for fall in well over ten years. Part of me actually looked forward to something as mundane as the changing of the seasons.

  Devan moved with a quick step, her feet, as usual, leaving no mark on the dry lawn. She threw open the garage door and led us inside, where propane burned with a deep blue flame, heating the garage to an almost uncomfortable level. Big Red, the old, faded red Ford F150 was parked to the side with the hood up, making me wonder what else Devan might have done to it. The series of patterns and shapes she’d worked into it before Taylor ever appeared made it far more capable than the run-of-the-mill farm truck it resembled.

  “Damn, Devan, not worried about burning down the garage?” I asked, turning down the flow of gas to her burner.

  She placed her hands on her hips and glared at me. Though half my size, Devan was stronger than I was, both physically and magically, and someone like me wasn’t about to intimidate her. “If you blasting a two-hundred-foot pattern couldn’t destroy your house and garage, a little flame isn’t going to do anything.”

  I laughed and then grabbed my side. Ribs were still cracked. At least one on the left, though I wondered if it might be more, injured when Jakes thought he’d needed to kick me away from the hunter. A gentle nudge would have sufficed, but I suspected Jakes didn’t do anything gently, not with the power he possessed as a shifter.

  “I started repainting it,” I objected.

  Devan leaned past me to peer out of the garage, her eyes sweeping over the siding on the house. “You’re just making it worse.”

  I glanced over. She was right. “Well, I’m not my father.”

  She punched me gently on the shoulder. “No. You’re Ollie the idiot.”

  I rolled my eyes. “What did you want to show me?”

  Devan nudged past me, more carefully than usual. For that, I was thankful. Most of the time, I ended up with her elbow poking i
nto my ribs. She turned to the long bench lining the far left wall of the garage and lifted a large item. She carried it toward me and nodded for me to follow her out of the garage.

  “Devan?”

  “Just be patient, Ollie,” she said as she walked passed me.

  Outside, she moved to the middle of the yard and set down what she’d been working on. It was a replica of the obelisk from the park, done in a miniature scale and standing only three inches tall. Like the one in the park, it seemed to have eight sides, from two rectangles placed atop each other and shifted forty-five degrees. Unlike the one in the park, tiny patterns were carved into the sides. I understood why Devan had carried it carefully.

  “That’s amazing,” I whispered.

  “What’s it do?” Taylor asked.

  Devan turned on her. “What’s it do? You’re the painter. Aren’t you supposed to know?”

  “I know what the statue in the park did, but this is different. These symbols”—she pointed to a pair of irregular ovals on one side—“they’re dangerous. And this?” She motioned toward an odd-looking spiral that seemed to spin as you turned your head. “This will likely create an explosion if not done correctly.”

  I touched the sides of the obelisk. “I think the explosion is the point,” I told Taylor. “And it’s probably best that you not question Devan’s ability to make patterns correctly.”

  I looked back down at the obelisk as Taylor studied Devan. I turned it slowly, revealing other patterns on each side. “You intend this to be multi-use.”

  “Well, of course I do,” Devan said, crouching down next to me.

  “What if this—” I said, pointing to the spiral, but then cut myself off. “You’ve placed protections within it, too, haven’t you?”

  Devan smiled proudly. “After seeing the effect your other trinket had, I thought I’d best be safe this time.”

  “Why this shape?” Taylor asked.