The Painter Mage: Books 1-3

by D. K. Holmberg

  “Your people can handle him once we make the trade?”

  Jakes nodded. “We’ll be ready.”

  “How many will come?”

  “As many as can be spared.”

  Would that be enough?

  But then, it wasn’t only shifters. Taylor and I would be there. If I had enough time, I could even prepare a trap, but that would require Adazi overlooking the marks or the power I used to fuel it.

  “We will save your friend, Morris.”

  I stopped pacing and looked over to him. “You weren’t willing to help before. We could have taken him when we found him at the barn.”

  “I doubt he would have made it quite so easy.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ll never know, will we?”

  Jakes nodded. “I should have helped. You’re the Elder’s son, but then…” he glanced at Taylor, and then back at me, “you broke into my father’s house. Had I known you possessed the key, it might have been different. I thought you were the one who broke in the first time.”

  “And had I known you knew where to find the orb, it would have been different.”

  Jakes turned toward me and thrust his hand out. “Trust?”

  I shook his hand. “Trust,” I agreed.

  Jakes turned his attention back to where Taylor worked, watching her.

  I did the same, taking a deep breath as I did. Other than Devan, I didn’t have any friends, certainly no one I could trust. Taylor helped, but the gods only knew what agenda she had. She was tied to Arcanus and Hard, but what happened during her year away? What else had she done that she hadn’t shared? Something that gave her the ability to face down a shifter and not blink.

  And really, what did I know about Taylor?

  I watched her as she worked on the orb. Her hand moved with skill as she created the patterns atop the glass. Once they were in place, I would draw the arcane pattern, then all we needed was Jakes to send his shifter magic through it to smooth the surface. Sure, I would have to hold the patterns in place with Taylor’s help. That would be difficult, but not impossible. I think if I’d had to do all of it on my own—not only creating the patterns, but holding them while heating the orb—it would have been too much of a challenge, but I didn’t need to do that.

  Before Taylor had shown up, I’d fumbled around looking for evidence in the house that my father might still be alive, anything that Devan and I could use to learn from, to keep her safe and free from the Druist Mage. Since Taylor’s arrival, I’d discovered the patterns made in his book, the way those patterns could be used to summon and bury the gate hidden in the park, and realized that shifters lived in Conlin, serving as its guardians. More than that, I’d learned that there were other magical creatures in Conlin, granted some sort of peace, protected by whatever treaty my father had enacted. And I’d learned there was a power even the shifters feared, one that my father had a hand in protecting them from.

  None of this would have happened without Taylor showing up in Conlin. Was that coincidence or providence?

  She looked over her shoulder, her hand hesitating in place as she made the patterns atop the orb replica. There weren’t too many painters with the level of skill needed to halt in mid-pattern like that. I wouldn’t be able to do it, not without distorting what I intended to make. Taylor turned back to the orb and continued working.

  I didn’t think she was a part of this, but what if I was wrong? If my time spent with the Trelking had taught me anything, it was to question everyone’s motives. And I’d never fully questioned Taylor’s.

  She wanted to find Hard, but once Devan went missing, she hadn’t pressed me at all. Either she was incredibly understanding, or there was something else she hoped to gain. Maybe it really was all about learning from the Elder.

  Or maybe none of that was true. Maybe Taylor was exactly who she said she was. An artist from Arcanus with incredible skill.

  I needed to be careful. For Devan’s sake, I needed to know more about Taylor.

  “I’m ready for you,” Taylor said.

  I made my way over to the bench. Her work was exquisite, perfectly recreating the patterns on the orb. All that remained was for me to add the arcane pattern. Once I did, there became some risk. If I made the arcane pattern too loosely, the orb may not look quite as it should. If I created the pattern too much like the actual one on the orb, then we ran the risk that it would work as the original orb worked.

  I glanced at Taylor, and she held the marker out to me. With as steady a hand as I could manage, I added the arcane pattern to the orb.

  Arcane patterns were difficult and took a painter with knowledge of the patterns and the right temperament to place them. Most arcane patterns shared similarities. I’d been making them since I arrived in Arcanus, though without any guidance at first. Ironic that the place is called Arcanus and they won’t teach the arcane patterns. It wasn’t until I left that I began to gain real skill.

  The shapes in the pattern on the orb weren’t terribly difficult for me. And I had some sense of what they would do, though I’d never actually made this particular pattern before. It should push power out from the orb, though in a specific way.

  I made certain not to include the entire pattern, but did add an extra flourish. It was subtle enough that, unless you looked for it specifically, you would never see it. My nod to Adazi.

  “I’m ready,” I said to Jakes.

  He took the orb, holding it carefully, almost as if it were the real thing.

  “Taylor, you’ll need to hold these patterns in place,” I told her, pointing to the series of basic patterns she had made worked around the orb. “I’ll be responsible for holding the rest. Then Jakes can do his shifter thing and…” I waived my hand over the orb.

  She nodded. “I’m ready.”

  “Remember, you’re only holding them in place while Jakes seals it. Nothing more.”

  “That’s not exactly true,” she said. “You said the patterns were clear on the orb?”

  She was right. “Fine, then give it enough extra juice to burn off the ink as you hold them.”

  That meant I’d have to do the same. I could split my focus and hold several of the patterns at once, but it would drain me. I’d need time to recuperate. Time Devan didn’t have.

  “Let’s do this,” I said.

  I started with the patterns ringing the top of the orb. These were complex patterns and wouldn’t take much energy. If Taylor made them right, and I had no reason to think she didn’t, then I should be able to hold them easily.

  Energy flowed into the orb, held there by the pattern.

  I split my focus, working with the pattern along the bottom of the orb. This was as complex as the other one, and when I funneled power into it, I felt it take hold.

  Taylor added hers while I worked. The simple pattern, that of triangle and squares and circles that made their way up and over the orb, began to glow softly. “Hurry, Oliver,” she said.

  I suspected that even holding that series would be difficult. It was why she’d needed to do it. If my father had done this alone on the original, it would have taken more strength than I could fathom.

  I split my focus again and funneled energy into the arcane pattern.

  This was the trickiest part. If I’d done it right, it should hold, but I’d intentionally left part of the pattern off and changed one of the series. I didn’t know what effect that would have. Maybe nothing, but maybe enough to rebound back at me. With all the power now in the orb, that could be disastrous.

  Maybe I should have done the arcane pattern first.

  Too late to change, not without having wasted energy. I pressed into the arcane pattern. Like the others, it began to glow softly, taking on its shape. I held the patterns, pushing and storing power in the orb.

  As the last of the arcane marks engaged, fire burned through me.

  I had expected it, but the suddenness took my breath away. “Now, Jakes!”

  I felt nothing as he worked, but the orb starte
d glowing. It became increasingly difficult to hold my focus, diverted as it was. The fire burning through me left my insides raw, as if my brain—my entire being—was being seared from me. I tried not to scream by grunting loudly instead.

  Then the glowing eased.

  Jakes held the orb carefully. “It is done.”

  I released the energy I’d pushed into the orb. As I did, I felt a strange fluttering in the pocket of my duster that faded as I let go of the power. I patted the pocket, but found nothing more than the sculpture I’d taken from the shed.

  Taylor stepped away. Sweat left a sheen on her brow, and she wiped it away.

  “That was…difficult,” she said.

  I could only nod.

  “Did it work?”

  I took the orb from Jakes. It felt the same as the one in the shed. The dark ink we’d used to make the patterns had disappeared, but left behind the patterns, just as we’d planned. In the light of the garage, the patterns caught the light and distorted it somewhat, leaving the entire orb looking hazy. Had I not ever seen the other orb, I would have believed this to be what Adazi sought.

  “Yeah. I think it worked.”

  I handed the orb back to Jakes. He took it carefully, practically palming it like a basketball in his massive hands, and watched me.

  “Now for the base,” I said.

  “I’m not sure I have the strength to hold another pattern like that,” Taylor said.

  “We won’t need to for this.” I pointed to the wooden base on the page. I could find an old oak log to craft it from, but what if it didn’t look the same as the silvery wood that held the orb? “Nothing quite as difficult. All I need is a log from your father’s house,” I told Jakes. “And I think I might even have enough skill to carve it.”

  13

  We rested most of the day after forming the orb and the base. They were safely stored in the basement of my house. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving the orb in the garage, not if what Jakes said about its potential was true. The patterns around the house would protect it as well as possible. I barely dared touching it for fear of dropping it before we got it to Adazi. From the way Taylor looked, I doubted either of us would have the energy needed to forge a new one.

  “Maybe we should just have let Jakes make the whole thing,” I said as I stared at the orb.

  Taylor looked up at me from where she sat on the floor. One of the journals lay open on her lap, and she had a pad next to it that she took notes on. “Could he do that? I know you thought there was something strange about Adazi, but can shifters use our magic?”

  Taylor had proven it didn’t take a super-powered painter to jump like Adazi had managed, only someone with skill. “I asked the same question.”

  “And what answer did you get?”

  “That there wouldn’t be any reason. Shifters control enough power on their own. They wouldn’t have any reason to attempt painter magic.”

  “Jakes told you that?” Taylor shifted and lowered the journal so it rested next to her.

  “Not Jakes. Kacey. I ran into her in the park the other night. She was studying Agony when I found her. Kind of like you,” I said.

  “You’re wondering why I was there that night.”

  I took a deep breath. Might as well have at it. “Yeah. I guess I am.”

  “I told you how I left Arcanus?”

  “You told me you left after Hard disappeared. That you’d been gone a year.”

  “More or less.”

  “But you were also terrified that hunters followed you. Which tells me you hadn’t been out in the open very long. Either that, or you were playing it up to get me to help.”

  Taylor smiled sheepishly. “Maybe a bit of both? When I left Arcanus, I knew I needed to learn a different type of patterns if I was to help him, the kind I couldn’t learn in Arcanus. I started by going to a monastery in China. The monks there are renowned for their artistry.”

  “Another place like Arcanus?”

  “Sort of. You weren’t there long enough to understand how unique Arcanus is. The way it’s protected and the knowledge stored in the library…well, there’s nothing else like that.”

  Not in this world, but I still didn’t know if I trusted Taylor’s motivations to share that with her. “Why the monastery then?”

  She flipped a few pages in her notebook, turning to one she’d shown me before. It was the hall of doors. “This. Hard knew something about this place when he reached it. That’s how he managed to open one of the doors. If I could just figure out what he learned, I could at least know what happened to him.”

  I suspected I knew what happened. He’d crossed the Threshold, but to a place outside of the Trelking’s realm. Had he ended up there, I would likely have heard of it. “And you thought the monastery was the place to do that?”

  “The monks know more about certain patterns than anyone in Arcanus.”

  I stared at her and finally smiled. “Not often an Arcanus painter is willing to admit that Arcanus doesn’t have all the answers.”

  Taylor closed her notebook with a quick snap. “Not all the answers. Only more questions. From the monks, I learned celestial patterns.” Her eyes drifted closed, and she tipped her head back as she remembered. “The nights were clear and bright and full of stars. We’d sit atop the mountain, staring at the sky, using the stars for our patterns. Mine were basic, never as complex as the monks’, but I saw the potential. They tolerated me, I think. I got so that I no longer jumped when I heard a howl in the night, thinking that hunters were after me.”

  “How long were you with them?”

  She stretched and sat up. “Six months? Seven at most. I think I could study a lifetime and never really understand the celestial patterns. Even the senior monks claim they learn something every night, though I’ve seen their mastery, so I’m not sure that’s quite true.”

  “What are celestial patterns?”

  Taylor pushed up to her knees and made her way over to me, holding her notebook open to the back. A few pages held nothing but scattered dots. She flipped the pages slowly. As she did, I realized that the pages depicted stars in the sky. Not just stars, but patterns within the stars. “Constellations?” I asked.

  She pulled the notebook away and closed it again. “Not just constellations. And nothing like the Big Dipper or anything. There are other patterns there. Power that a painter can access with the right pattern.”

  I wondered how much of that power my father understood. The stars on the key seemed significant, especially how they tied to the pyramid and the orb. Or was it nothing more than another simple pattern?

  “Where did you go after the monastery?”

  Taylor looked down. Dark hair hung over her face, covering it. “To hell,” she whispered. “I came down from the monastery looking for a different type of pattern, something darker and more complex. I didn’t really know where I was going until I ended up there. What I saw turned my stomach, but I forced myself to learn. Patterns placed on skin, inside mouths and on tongues. Piercings that changed the painter. And worse things, too.”

  I’d seen painters like that, usually on the other side of the Threshold. They’d changed their bodies, using them as a canvas. Most were taggers who would never amount to much power, but when they started changing themselves, they managed to tap into something more. And they became dangerous creatures of power. It was dark magic, an ominous kind that I hadn’t ever dared to attempt. I could do more with arcane patterns and painting, anyway. I didn’t need to risk myself.

  “Modders,” I said.

  She nodded. “I thought about leaving, but how could I leave when he was still lost? Wouldn’t he have searched for me? So for him, I did what I could, forced myself to learn what I could.”

  I looked at her hair in a different light. That was what she’d modded. “What else did you do to yourself?” I asked. I knew the ink in the hair gave her some strength, but not what price she paid adding it. With modding, there was always a price.
r />   “Nothing.”

  I could tell that wasn’t entirely true but chose not to push her. “Where did you go from there?”

  “I hadn’t found anything that resembled any of the patterns we found in that room, nothing that will help me open one of the doors and find where he went,” she said. “It had been eleven months. He’d been gone long enough that I knew he might not ever return. Not alive.” She shivered. “I spent nights hiding in basements, too frozen to move, reaching for the scraps of heat the furnace would offer. Then I heard about this master of arcane patterns. He was said to be able to recreate any arcane pattern, but the way most people spoke of him, I thought him mythical. The person who told me about him hadn’t seen him in nearly five years. He made crazy claims about his ability, including that he was descended from a powerful artist.”

  She fixed me with her eyes, and I knew she meant me. I was not a master of patterns, but who else could she be referring to?

  And five years. The timing was right. My heart hammered. “Nik? He’s alive?”

  An anguished look passed over Taylor’s face as she nodded. “He’s alive.”

  I let out an unsteady breath. I’d met Nik while serving the Trelking. Nik was me, except for having started a few years earlier and with less skill. When the Trelking learned how I could help him, Nik was pushed to the side, eventually jailed for failing to recognize some pattern. We were friends, painters in a land where our powers weren’t the most impressive, just another magical aspect. I’d never had a friend like him before. When I found out what the Trelking had done to Nik, I became disillusioned with the Trelking.

  “He said he had you to thank for it.”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t know what happened to him. When I helped him escape from prison, all I could do was sneak him out of the city. From there, he was on his own. I heard nothing more from him. As far as I knew, he was dead.”

  “He wouldn’t speak of it much,” Taylor said. “I think it still pained him. But he said this arcane master might help me find the patterns I needed. When I learned it was you, I knew he was right.”