The Painter Mage: Books 1-3

by D. K. Holmberg

  I took a breath. That talent had been cultivated working with Devan and her father, working with her father’s men, and I’d paid dearly for the knowledge. But I still wasn’t an artist. I’ve seen work artists can make. There is a skill level there I can’t replicate.

  “Will you try?” I asked again.

  Taylor shrugged.

  She stepped into the middle of the summoning pattern. Energy surged from her—great amounts of it that left the skin on my arms dry and tight—and then my ears popped as she released it. “Nothing.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  “No,” she said, looking around the house. “It’s not that there’s nothing here. It’s that I can’t sense anything. You said the Elder placed protections around the house?” I nodded. “That might be what’s keeping me from sensing anything.”

  “Are you sure? You should be able to sense something.”

  “Well, I can’t. And didn’t you say the protections around the fence would seal our power to us?”

  I sighed. It worked like that, but it didn’t. I wasn’t sure quite how to explain what the patterns carved into the fence did, only that I could feel the way they diverted power, twisting it away from me.

  I frowned. Why would they be necessary?

  With a quick wipe of my sleeve, I removed the evidence of the pattern from the floor. To remove the ink entirely I’d need alcohol and water, but my sleeve would keep the casual person from knowing what we’d done here. Then I started out the back of the house, heading off the deck and toward the center of the back yard.

  Taylor followed close behind. “What did you find?”

  “Why would my father have placed such protections around the yard?” I asked.

  “For the sheriff, I thought you said.”

  I glanced at the house. “Yeah, but there was nothing there that made any sense. The house was simple, nothing magical about it. Not like my house, where the walls were infused with his patterns. This was only the fence, and a pattern like one I’ve felt before.” I motioned toward the edge of the yard. “The fence. It’s designed to draw away a painter’s power. Not remove it or mask it, but simply divert it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Yeah. Me, neither,” I said. “That’s the problem. Why divert the power?”

  I made a tight circle in the yard and then began working out in spokes from the center, making a trail of ink as I went. Much more like this, and I would run out of ink. That would leave me defenseless, but I had my charms. And Taylor. We’d be fine.

  The pattern I made was an arcane pattern. It was one of the first I’d learned past the Threshold, one that wouldn’t be limited by the protections placed in that world by the Trelking. Magic there had different limitations than it had here. There, I had to work around what the Trelking allowed. And, when I was not near him, I had to fear what the Druist Mage would notice. Some patterns bypassed their power, letting me use my full potential. I don’t think the Trelking realized that I’d learned until it was too late. By then, I had very few limitations to my magic, only limited by my ability to craft arcane patterns.

  Taylor watched me, brow furrowed in curiosity. She followed behind me, repeating my steps, but not adding additional ink to the work. Almost as if she was feeling out what I did to determine whether she could recreate it. I had no doubt she could.

  After taking a deep breath, I infused the arcane power with a surge of energy.

  It glowed softly in the night. I wouldn’t have much time before someone noticed something, but that wasn’t the intent. The intent was to determine flows of magical energy. Flows my father sought to control.

  I closed my eyes and listened.

  Magic has a distinct pull to a painter. When you learn to listen to it, the humming of power creates something like a song. Given enough practice and time and skill, painters can learn to follow the song and tease it apart. I’d gotten plenty of practice since working with the Trelking.

  The pattern the Elder placed on the fence around the yard buzzed off my pattern, leaving me with a discordant sense, but there was movement to it, a flow. I could follow it.

  My father’s work tried drawing away my pattern, but this was a powerful arcane pattern, one that resisted such things. I pressed more energy through it, determined to hold the connection. Another moment, and I’d know where it led.

  I stumbled and opened my eyes. My connection to the pattern faded.

  Taylor grabbed me by the elbow and kept me upright. “Careful,” she whispered.

  We stood next to the shed. I frowned. This couldn’t be where my father’s magic led us, could it?

  It was made of simple construction. Framed in what looked like plywood, it had an angled roof. There weren’t any windows, and the single door had a padlock hanging from it.

  “This can’t be it,” I said.

  I made a circle around the shed. Logs were stacked along the front of the shed, most split. There was nothing else that would make me think my father’s pattern would draw us here.

  “This is what you think your father protected?” Taylor asked.

  “This is where the power leads,” I said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “You can track the flow of patterns. This is where it went.”

  “You can’t do that, Oliver. Tracking another pattern doesn’t work.”

  I shrugged. Living with the Trelking, I had to learn the trick. When he wanted to know where to find certain painters, it was my job to take him there. This tracking pattern had allowed me to do that more than once.

  “With practice you can,” I said. “And it led here. Only, I’m not exactly sure why.”

  I ran my fingers along the shed, looking for something that might signal to me that there was something—anything—worth protecting in the shed. This was probably where old Jakes kept his lawn mower and gardening tools, not some sort of magical shed where my father stored items of power.

  By the time I made my way back to the padlock, I was feeling more and more frustrated. Jakes’s father wasn’t the answer as I had hoped. And now, we were back to where we’d been before, which was exactly nowhere. I had no idea how to find what Adazi wanted, and if I couldn’t, I’d lose Devan.

  I smacked the padlock in frustration.

  My hand bounced off from the force of it. Something protected the lock. I frowned and leaned toward it. “Bring me that ring,” I said to Taylor.

  She stretched her arm forward, the ring on her finger glowing with a soft yellow light. The padlock wasn’t one of those combination-style locks. This required an actual key, one that would have to fit in the lock.

  As I twisted it, wondering whether we’d need to go back into the house, I saw a symbol on the back. I’d seen it before.

  The pattern was of a pyramid surrounded by circles and stars. It matched the key my father had left for me, only there was no way the key would ever fit this lock.

  I started away from the shed and Taylor ran after me.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “To get the key.”

  10

  By the time I returned with the oversized gold key, something had changed.

  There weren’t lights on in the house or anything that made me think something was different, or anything in particular in the yard, it was just a general sense I had. I’d learned to trust those senses in the past.

  I held out my hand to Taylor as we approached the fence. “Careful,” I warned.

  “Do you see anything?”

  “No.” And I couldn’t sense anything, either, but that didn’t mean there was nothing to worry about. We were breaking into the yard of one of the shifters. We needed to be watchful.

  Before grabbing the fence, I reached out for the sense of the pattern I’d made in the back yard. It was vague and faded, as if the energy I’d infused it with had burned out the pattern, but that wasn’t how arcane patterns like that worked. Normal patterns could burn out. If I pressed too
much energy into a pattern, I could burn out myself or the pattern, sometimes both. That was sort of the intent with the Death Pattern I’d used on myself before Devan had stopped me. But arcane patterns were different. By their very nature, they held energy differently, more efficiently.

  For me to lose track of the power in that pattern meant something had happened to it. It could have been as benign as a deer running across it, distorting it, but I didn’t think that was quite likely. More than likely, it meant we had been discovered.

  Rather than making my way through the sheriff’s yard, I followed the fence around the outside, trailing along the outer edge of his yard. When I reached the back, I paused and stared into darkness. Nothing moved.

  I crept forward, moving as silently as possibly. As before, Taylor followed me, though this time, she wasn’t quite as quiet as she had been before. We stopped every so often to listen, but I found no sign of anyone else.

  When we reached the back corner of the lawn, I hesitated again. Shadows spilled through the yard. The main part of the lawn was nearly black. By now, my eyes had adjusted. Not to the extent of how a shifter would be able to see, but well enough to pick out differences in shadows. Still I saw nothing.

  I raised a finger to my lips, and Taylor shot me a look like I was being stupid. I was, but that didn’t mean I shouldn’t warn her. We moved a step at a time, practically crawling toward the far corner.

  Then the shed came into view.

  “Wait here,” I whispered.

  She shook her head. “What if you need my help?”

  “I think you can help more from this side of the fence than the other. If something happens, I need you to make sure I get back out. Don’t let the shifters keep me here.” I hated talking like that. I had no sense of Jakes harboring ill will toward me, but neither had he been that helpful when it came to finding Devan. I wasn’t about to be detained by Sheriff Shifter and lose the opportunity to find Devan.

  With a quick jump, I cleared the fence and sprinted toward the shed.

  As soon as I did, I felt movement around me.

  Shadows drifted away from trees. Shifters prowled around the back yard, but they seemed to be looking toward the front of the house. It gave me a moment to reach the shed.

  I pulled the gold key out of my pocket and grabbed the padlock. There was no way the key would fit. It was nearly three times the size of a normal key, the kind of thing you’d give to a kid to play with if you were afraid he’d swallow it. And if you weren’t worried he’d lose a gold key. As I tried to figure out how to make it fit, a shifter sprinted toward me.

  It shifted in a heartbeat.

  Kacey stood behind me. I was aware of her by her scent.

  “Let me just look inside,” I said.

  “I’m not supposed to do that,” she said.

  “Why? Because Jakes doesn’t want you to?”

  “Because your father didn’t want you to.”

  I tensed. I hadn’t expected that answer. “How do you know? He’s the one who gave me the key. He wanted me to open this.”

  “Not like this, Oliver. Not for this purpose.”

  It was Jakes. He stood next to Kacey.

  I turned and faced them. A third shifter, nearly as massive as Jakes, prowled in wolf form toward the front of the house. How much longer until they detected Taylor? If she could buy me a moment, that might be all I needed to figure out what to do with the key. Then I could see whatever my father had stored in this shed.

  “I’m sorry about what happened to your father, Jakes. I really am. But I won’t lose Devan because you’re so committed to some memory of my father that you can’t help me in the present.”

  “You don’t even understand what it is that Adazi wants.”

  “You’re right. And it’s probably something only I can use, but something that’s too powerful for me. Is that about it?”

  Jakes just tilted his head toward me in assent.

  “Why can’t you trust that I’ll do what’s needed?”

  “Because you brought her here.”

  “Taylor?”

  Jakes took a step toward me, moving faster than I could react. “The Te’alan. The Trelking’s heir. Having her here is dangerous. I know you don’t see that, but she needs to return to the other side. If she doesn’t, more can be lost than you’ll know.”

  I shook my head. “The balance?” When he didn’t answer, I knew that I was right. “You talk like you know what you’re talking about, Jakes. I’ve lived on the other side. I know what she’s running from. I know what’s at stake if the Trelking gets her back. There’s darkness through the Threshold, and it’s because of the Druist Mage. That’s who the Trelking wants to give her to. There is no ‘balance’ with what he intends.”

  Jakes’s face tightened, as if he puzzled through something. “That is not for me to decide. The Elder left instructions—”

  “Then show me!”

  “They were destroyed when the gate was summoned.”

  I sagged, leaning back against the door. Could Taylor be the reason I wouldn’t know what I needed? Could her trying to summon the gate have led to all the trouble I’ve had since then?

  But I didn’t think that likely. Devan had been on this side since I first returned. Had there been a concern, why wouldn’t Jakes or his father have told me then?

  Because they didn’t know.

  There was something else he wasn’t sharing.

  “Taylor?” I yelled.

  All I needed was a moment, a distraction to draw Jakes away long enough for me to open the shed. The secret had to be the matching pattern, but I had to figure it out. Maybe the key didn’t actually fit into the lock. Maybe with the patterns, they simply had to make contact.

  It was worth a try.

  A bloom of power and light exploded from the opposite end of the back yard. It was more power than I could have made with twice the time to prepare, but Taylor had managed it in moments. She thought I underestimated my abilities, but clearly she underestimated hers.

  Kacey and Jakes started toward the explosion.

  Jakes howled something, and Kacey stopped and spun toward me.

  She was too late. I’d already taken the key and pressed it against the lock. As I did, the key shrunk to a size that I could jam into the lock and twist. The lock snapped open, and I pulled out the key, barely able to hide my surprise as the key returned to its original size.

  I yanked the door to the shed open as Kacey grabbed my arm.

  She was shifter strong, but I had placed my feet into a particular pattern learned from the best of the Trelking’s archers, a pattern that infused my body with power, holding me in place.

  With a shake of my wrist, I freed myself from her grasp and jumped into the shed, pulling the door closed behind me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  I traced a quick pattern along the door, locking it with an infusion of will. The shifters would probably be able to break it down eventually…or maybe not. There was a series of tight patterns worked on this side of the door and all along the walls. Protections meant to strengthen the walls. It would take a magical battering ram to break into the shed. I still didn’t put that past the shifters, but it would buy me a little more time.

  Hopefully, Taylor didn’t need my help. She was skilled and had avoided the shifters in the past, but now there were three. Could she keep herself safe long enough for me to figure out if there was anything to this shed?

  There had to be, especially with the way Jakes worked to protect it.

  The inside was bigger than I expected. I flicked a pinch of powdered ink into the air and infused it with power. A soft glow came from the red ink. I wished I had Devan’s ring; with that, I wouldn’t have had to use power quite so wastefully. Already, I felt the drain from everything I’d done today, especially tonight.

  Inside the main part of the shed was a row of gardening equipment, everything to make a useful shed. Even an old push mower covered with dust tucked i
nto the back corner. There were a few shovels leaning near the door. Nothing but what I would expect in a shed.

  Then, to my left, the ground sloped down, disappearing into darkness. I followed. Beneath the ground, walls stretched back impossibly far, as if I stood in some massive hall rather than in a tiny shed. What had my father done here?

  There was no lawn equipment here. No mower or rakes or shovels.

  Rows of benches lined the walls. It looked something like Devan’s space, but these were covered with sculptures in various stages of completion. One looked something like Agony, but only about four inches high and for all intents complete. I tried lifting it, but it was too heavy. Another sculpture was made of what appeared to be smooth stone and shaped like an inverted version of the obelisk found in the park. All along the bench were other items like this.

  What was this?

  There were no tools, nothing that would explain how my father had made everything here. For all I knew, he’d done these by hand, slowly crafting them with his fingers. If so, that was even more impressive.

  I wondered what would happen if I had the book of patterns. Or if Taylor had been here with me, since she already seemed to have mastered all the patterns. Would I be able to unlock some secret of his or had these not quite been marked with his patterns yet? Maybe that was why they were still here, in this shop.

  But why here? Why would my father keep these items in this shed rather than at the house? The garage seemed as good a place as any to store them. If he feared for safety, he could as easily have locked them in the basement. I don’t think anyone else knew how to reach what he kept stored there, and the journals and books had not seemed any worse for the fact that they’d been there for the last ten years.

  There had to be another reason.

  Maybe this wasn’t my father’s work. What if Jakes’s father had done this, creating these sculptures. If that were the case, then why let my father take the credit? He might be the Elder, but that didn’t mean others didn’t have skills.