The Painter Mage: Books 1-3

by D. K. Holmberg

  I came upon a cabinet with locked doors. I studied the locks, considering simply trying to pry them open, when I saw the pyramid surrounded by circles and stars. I touched the key to the top door, and it sprang open.

  A two-inch figuring rested inside. It was the only thing there.

  I grabbed it and looked at it. The figurine looked much like what Devan would make and with nearly the same level of skill. This one looked somewhat like Jakes, with a thick, muscular body but long hair. Lines of red streaked across the face. I decided to keep it, slipping it into my pocket.

  The next door revealed another figurine. This one looked less like a man than some sort of troll from bedtime stories. A long club hung in its hand. A single spike jutted from its nose. The metal had a greenish tint, as if baked in.

  The third door down held three figurines. One was a large creature, like some hairy beast, and stood nearly five inches tall. I wondered if there was any purpose to the scale used in forming the figurines. The other two were distorted, as if bent and twisted. Spindly arms and legs worked at odd angles. They seemed to be made of a dark stone and tinted slightly blue.

  The last door was empty.

  I closed them all, keeping the one figurine to study later. The others would stay.

  There still was no sign of the orb Adazi wanted. Or why he wanted it.

  I continued around the lower level of the shed, working along the benches. A small ring, much like the one Taylor had taken from Devan’s workshop, rested atop one of the benches. I picked it up and turned it in my hands. An arcane pattern curled around it, forming a sweeping line around the side that my eyes found difficult to follow. I pocketed this, as well.

  Some benches were completely empty. Had my father—or Jakes’s father—not had time to work on these benches, or were they already used? Had these once held the statues that now rested in the park?

  That seemed unlikely, but so did the idea of finding essentially a warehouse running beneath a shed.

  I reached the back wall and stopped. There were no benches here, nothing but open space. Curious, I made a quick pattern on the ground, a replica of what I’d used outside earlier, and pressed through it. Power flowed through the entire room, working along the walls and overhead in enormous bursts. From the skill involved, there was no question that my father had placed the patterns here.

  I still didn’t know why. Other than protecting his sculptures as he made them, what about this shed was so valuable?

  The power faded slightly along the back wall.

  I stopped in front of it, running my hand along the dark stone. Without the pattern, I wouldn’t feel the change, but it was there, a subtle shift in the energy running through here.

  And there was a pattern to it.

  I tried to trace where the energies shifted, feeling for the pattern my eyes couldn’t see. Then I had it.

  With a pinch of red ink—I didn’t dare switch colors now, or I might contaminate any pattern I could make—I made the pattern along the wall. A massive equilateral triangle with stars on each corner. It nearly matched the pattern on the key.

  I had no idea what it would do, but there was only one way to find out. It was why I had come here. Drawing upon my power, I pressed through the pattern.

  It glowed, taking on the energy and shimmering, shifting, and sliding across the wall.

  The outline of a door formed. In the center, was the shape of a keyhole. Taking out the gold key, I reached for it.

  “Don’t.”

  I hadn’t heard Jakes coming up behind me. I didn’t take my eyes off the door. “What is this place, Jakes? Was it your father’s or mine?”

  Jakes sighed, and I glanced over my shoulder at him. He stood near the cabinet that held the figurines. “Both.”

  “What is it?”

  “A storeroom.”

  I frowned. “What kind of storeroom? It looks more like some sort of workshop.”

  “No work was done here.” He touched the front of the cabinet, his eyes lingering on the shelf from which I’d taken the figurine, and the bottom, where there had been none. “Can you not feel the power through this place, Morris? Your father taught you that much, at least.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was taunting me or simply stating a fact. “Yes, I can,” I said. “I just don’t know why it needed to be here. Why not at my father’s house? Since you know so much about him, I presume you know about the basement. That’s equally difficult to enter.”

  Jakes nodded slowly. “Your house is well protected, but it’s not the same as having my father keep watch. The Alpha’s power is intermingled with the Elder’s. It makes this place powerful.”

  The comment left me with more questions than answers. “It’s behind this door, isn’t it?”

  Jakes glanced to the wall and the key in my hand. “I did not realize he’d gifted you the key.”

  “I wouldn’t have been able to get in here otherwise, would I?”

  When he didn’t answer, I pressed.

  “Would I?”

  “You are the second person, other than my father and yours, to enter this place.”

  “Someone else came through here?”

  Jakes nodded. “Shortly before Devan disappeared. There are protections around the shed that told me that someone entered. I thought it might have been Adazi, but he would not have known of this place.”

  “How can you be sure it wasn’t my father?” I asked, knowing it wouldn’t be true.

  “Your father wouldn’t have come through that door. He had some other access. And now that I see you have the key, he could not have come through that door.”

  “Then how did someone break in?”

  Jakes shook his head. “We don’t know.”

  “Was anything missing?” I thought of the empty bottom shelf and wondered.

  He looked around and shrugged his massive shoulders. “My father might have known, but I don’t.”

  I looked at the empty benches. Maybe there had been other items here, but who would have wanted them? This was where Adazi had wanted me to come. He’d said he wouldn’t be allowed entrance, so it couldn’t have been he, unless he’d lied about being unable to access this storeroom.

  “I’m going to open the door,” I told Jakes.

  I thought he might say something or reach to stop me, but he didn’t. Instead, he fixed me with that hard stare of his. He didn’t shift or race toward me.

  “Maybe the key is the key,” I said to myself. Had it not felt so damned serious, I might have laughed.

  Jakes only frowned.

  “Whatever,” I mumbled, and turned back to the door. I pushed the key into the slot, not surprised that the oversized key fit perfectly. When I turned it, I expected something more than the soft click that came. I pulled on the key, bringing the door open with it.

  Beyond the door was a small space. It was dark, and the dim light that shimmered from the ink suspended in the air didn’t really reach very far into the opening. The light that did make its way into the opening revealed the orb, reflecting softly off its surface. I stared at it a moment and debated whether or not I dared lift it and take it out.

  “Morris—”

  I glanced back. Jakes wore a serious expression, his eyes drawn, and he shook his head slightly. “You don’t understand what that is.”

  “And you do?”

  His eyes drifted toward the cabinet. “More than you.”

  I reached into the opening and grabbed the orb. The drawing depicted it as having both the orb and a base, but they were separate, the base more for holding it than anything else. I grabbed them both and carried them out to set on the bench.

  “Is there any light?” I asked Jakes.

  I thought he might simply refuse, but a lantern I hadn’t seen suddenly flared with pale yellow light and glowed. I hadn’t even felt any power drawn through it. Again, I marveled at the power of the shifter. What else could Jakes do that I only imagined? How much energy could he move? If he had really wa
nted to stop me, I had no doubt that he would have been able to simply overpower me.

  That left me wondering why he didn’t. The respect he clearly felt for my father couldn’t extend to me, could it?

  No—I’d done nothing to earn that level of respect. Or maybe I had. Nearly dying to help the shifters might have given me a little sway with them.

  The orb was smooth and seemed to be made of some sort of glass. The symbols that I’d seen drawn on the page were pressed into the glass, though when I ran my hand over the top, I couldn’t feel them. The base was a heavy wood and stained nearly gray. A series of alternating shapes worked around the base as if burned there, reminding me of the way Adazi had burned his pattern into the wood of the floor in the barn.

  “What does it do?” I asked Jakes.

  “If you need to ask, then you shouldn’t hold it.”

  I looked over at him. “You don’t know, do you?”

  Jakes breathed out in irritation. “No.”

  “Then why not simply take it from me.”

  “You have the key.”

  “That’s been the problem all along? You didn’t think I had the key? Hell, we could’ve been a whole day closer to getting Devan back if I knew that was your whole reason for not helping me find this.”

  Jakes stepped up to the bench and eyed the orb warily. “That’s not the entire reason. Adazi cannot acquire this orb.”

  “I don’t think he could even use it. Painter magic is different from yours,” I explained to Jakes. “The patterns aren’t attuned to him. But you know that. You already told me that he couldn’t use it.”

  “Because he can’t. But he can convince you to power it.”

  “What would happen?”

  Jakes took a deep breath and glanced around the storeroom again. “You saw the power released when the gateway opened.”

  “Yeah. I know my father did what he could to protect it, to keep the hunters from coming through and feeding on painter magic.”

  “Yes. The Elder protected this world from many things.”

  The way he said it gave me pause. “Wait. There are other creatures he prevented from coming here?”

  “There is other power in this world, Morris. Power you don’t fully understand. Your time on the other side may have given you a different perspective, but it doesn’t make you an expert. The Elder understood what he was doing. Through his power, we are kept safe.”

  “You said ‘we,’ but you don’t mean me, do you? Something my father did protects the shifters here, as well, doesn’t it?”

  Jakes nodded. “The Elder is respected for what he did. Without him, many of our people would have been lost.” He looked at me with a darkened expression. “Yours are not the only people who are hunted.”

  The idea of something capable of hunting the shifters sent chills down my spine. How much power would there need to be in a creature to be able to manage shifter power? Not only manage it, but overwhelm it?

  And how powerful had my father been if he’d managed to stop something like that?

  Here I thought I was beginning to know my father. There was much more to the Elder than I could ever have known.

  “You think this orb will release creatures who hunt your people?” I asked.

  Jakes fixed me with his hard eyes again. “I don’t know, but if the Druist Mage seeks it, then I fear that it does. That it has the power to release great danger upon this world and others.”

  Well, damn.

  I had thought it straightforward. Find the orb and take it to Adazi, consequences be damned. But if it had the ability to release something more powerful than the hunters, something that even the shifters feared, then I’d be a fool not to at least pause before doing something really stupid.

  But if I didn’t get this orb to Adazi, then I’d lose Devan.

  I looked at Jakes, and he stared back at me. I had the sense that if I tried to take it past him, we’d come to blows of a sort. I had no doubt which of us would win that fight.

  “Help me,” I asked. “I know you’re not convinced it’s the right thing to do, or you think she deserves the fate her father set for her, but know that I don’t. She’s my friend, Jakes. I can’t… I can’t lose her.” Just thinking of it nearly drove me insane. “Help me save her.”

  He hesitated a moment and then nodded once in answer.

  11

  I stood in the living room of Jakes’s father’s house, too close to the sliding door. It felt different standing in the house with the bright lights on than when Taylor and I been sneaking around. Taylor sat next to me on the old leather sofa, glancing over at me occasionally, the expression on her face warning me to silence. A bruise had formed on her cheek, and she’d shot me a look telling me to back off when I asked her about it.

  “You can’t trust him, Sam,” I heard through the glass.

  My ears perked up. The other shifter I’d seen seemed agitated, though I didn’t know why.

  “Chase,” he started, “this isn’t for you to decide.”

  “You’re not the Alpha, Sam.”

  I heard a low snarl. “And neither are you. The pack will decide, and until they do, this is my house, so my rules.”

  “He’s not the Elder—” Chase started.

  “He also didn’t break into the shed. You were on watch that day, and you let someone through?”

  There was another snarl that cut off quickly. “How do you know it wasn’t him? He came back here didn’t he?”

  “It wasn’t him,” Jakes said.

  His boots thumped across the deck, and he yanked the door open with a little more force than needed, slamming it closed. He took a deep breath and crossed to the wall of pictures, blocking them with his massive body as he leaned against the wall. He wore a tight black T-shirt and jeans.

  “So,” I said. “Chase seems fun.”

  Jakes’s eyes narrowed. “Careful, Morris. He’s lost more than I have, so cut him a little slack.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Jakes didn’t answer, only turned and stared at the pictures on the wall. Now that I’d seen him here, I realized that the shifter I’d seen in the Rooster and in most of the pictures on the wall had been Chase.

  Kacey perched atop the counter in the kitchen, looking from me to Taylor with a concerned expression. She wore a thin white shirt and clearly no bra. She noticed me looking and gave me a wolfish grin. “Back when your father was still here, Chase lost his father and older brother. There was an assignment and neither returned. Bill basically raised Chase.”

  I began to understand. Jakes and Chase were clearly close, practically brothers. “What was the assignment? What happened to his brother and father?” Hell, what happened to Jakes’s mother?

  Kacey opened her mouth to answer, but Jakes turned then and cut her off with a low growl. “Tell me what you know of this Adazi,” he said. His tone took on a hard edge, something that reminded me of a cop interrogating a witness. All he needed was a notepad, and he’d complete the image.

  I glanced from Taylor to Kacey, wishing she’d had the time to explain more, but Jakes clearly wasn’t interested. Taylor only stared at her hands.

  What had happened to her while I was in the shed with Jakes? After sealing the orb back behind the wall, I’d come out to find her sitting on the lawn staring blankly toward the shed, her blue-tinted hair disheveled and a small tear in her jacket. Kacey had been next to her holding her arm awkwardly, but smiling as she did.

  Later, I decided. There had to be a story worth hearing.

  Finally, I turned and studied Jakes, but I couldn’t read him. He stood stiffly, seemingly shaken by the argument with Chase. Now wasn’t the time to fuck around with him. “He’s a painter,” I answered. “Probably an artist, though I can’t say with certainty. You understand what I mean when I call someone an artist?”

  Jakes gave me that same “What are you, stupid?” look that I’d gotten from Taylor before.

  “Anyway, I’ve come across him befo
re. When working with Devan’s father—”

  “The Trelking,” Jakes said, interrupting.

  “Yeah, the Trelking. When working with the Trelking, we’d find traces of his work. At first, it was simple things. Marks meant to disrupt scouts. Later, they became more significant. He began to use patterns to disrupt troop movement.”

  “The Trelking is at war?” Taylor asked.

  I wondered how much of this she really followed. She was bright, I’d give her that, but I hadn’t really explained everything about the Trelking. I mean, what can you say about a being so powerful that he could will me to work for him if he chose? That was the power of the Trelking. That I’d escaped had been luck and planning…and Devan.

  “The Trelking is always sort of at war. His realm always faces incursions, but he’s always pushed them back.”

  “You helped with this?” Jakes asked.

  “I helped him keep peace,” I answered. “My power is nothing compared to what the Trelking operates with, but I could offer him something his men couldn’t. I could recognize another painter. Painter magic is different from the Te’alan. It made painters useful.” I shrugged. “Most are taggers, like me, but there are a few who can draw a little more power, painters like Adazi. That was part of the reason why the Trelking found me useful, for when another painter came for the Trelking. Over time, I got good at deflecting them.”

  “How many painters were there?” Taylor asked.

  “Our power isn’t confined to this side,” I told her. “There are some painters who’ve lived their entire lives on the other side.” They had a different type of painting ability, and I’d never met anyone with the same skill with traditional patterns as existed in Arcanus. “The world is bigger than Arcanus.”

  Taylor stiffened and rubbed the bruise on her face. Her eyes darkened. “I know,” she said.

  There was conviction in her voice. What had she seen in the year since she’d left Arcanus? What had she learned? Where had she gone? Most of the masters feared leaving, feared the hunters, and for good reason, though the hunters hadn’t really been in our world for many years. Not until Taylor had almost unleashed them again.