The Painter Mage: Books 1-3

by D. K. Holmberg

  Taylor touched the obelisk. It tottered slightly. She jerked her hand back.

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Nothing. He left these patterns like a guide. Each of them means something, even if we don’t yet know what it is. It’s like the ones we used for summoning the gate.”

  “You used,” I corrected.

  “Fine. The patterns I used to summon the gate. They were paired to the statue. Once you identified what he intended, it was easy to see how the pattern matched.”

  “Maybe easy for you,” I muttered.

  Even with him gone, someone else seemed to understand him better than I could. After all these years, it shouldn’t bother me as much as it did, but there was that part of me—that young kid who wanted nothing more than to be like his father—who wanted to understand what drove him. Now that I’d begun to see some of the details of his work, I thought I was beginning to get it. Who else had discovered the hidden area beneath Jakes’s shed? Without the key he’d left me, we would never have discovered it; but even then, Adazi had seemed to know what was there before I did.

  “What did this pattern do?” Devan asked.

  She stood near the obelisk, arms held away from her sides as if readying to catch it in case it fell. Devan might be strong, but no one had ever managed to move these sculptures before. It was something about how my father had anchored them to the park. Until now.

  “I don’t know,” Taylor admitted.

  “Wait. You didn’t know? Why use it if you don’t know what the pattern will do?” Devan asked. “Isn’t that like the first rule you painters have? Don’t make a pattern until you know what it does?”

  Taylor looked at me, and I shrugged. “I’m probably the wrong example. Devan knows I’ve made plenty of patterns without any real idea of what I was doing. I’m good like that.”

  “Yeah, and you nearly died a few times, I seem to remember,” Devan said.

  Taylor laughed nervously. “Like when he was trying to get into the garage when Adazi had locked it? I thought he would blow himself up.”

  Devan only shook her head, annoyed, and changed the topic. “Fix this,” she said.

  I think she didn’t like it that someone else had helped me, particularly that it had been Taylor.

  Taylor took a pinch of blue ink and made another pattern on the obelisk, wiping it with a careful precision. As she infused it with power, the obelisk swiveled again, twisting on some invisible platform, before settling. Devan touched it carefully, but it didn’t move. She gave it a more solid push, and the statue stayed in place.

  Taylor made her way around the base of the obelisk and made a few notes on her pad, quickly sketching the symbol. She looked up at me, over the top of the paper. “There are probably other effects these patterns have on the statues. If I only had the time…”

  “We don’t,” I told her. “Come on. I need you.”

  Devan stifled a laugh. Thankfully, Taylor missed it.

  “Where are we going?”

  “The Rooster,” Devan said. She started away from the corner of the park, moving toward Agony and the central plaza.

  Taylor looked over at me, confusion wrinkling her brow. “The Rooster? We’re going to eat?”

  I shook my head and started to follow Devan. “Not exactly,” I said.

  * * *

  I told her about the murder on the drive over. We sat scrunched together on the bench seat of the truck, making Devan practically hug the door and the window. Had Devan not placed her charms on the truck, I would have worried about the door popping open and her falling out. With what she had done to the truck, I didn’t have to worry about that so much, though I did wonder why she made a point of giving Taylor so much space.

  Taylor sat with her arms tucked between her legs. Her knees were draw up and to the side, making it so I could reach the gear shifter without bumping into her legs. She had stuffed her notebook under her arm, and she stared straight ahead.

  A cool autumn wind whistled through the window I had cracked open, dissipating some of the oily stink that always seemed to linger inside Big Red. Pretty soon, the leaves would be falling. I wondered if I’d still be in Conlin to see the fall.

  “Who do you think was killed?” Taylor asked. She finally tore her eyes off the road and turned in her seat to face me.

  “I’m not sure that’s the question we should be asking,” I said.

  She pulled her head back in puzzlement. “You don’t care who it was who died?”

  “Oh, I care. But I’m more concerned with why. And who did the killing.”

  “Aren’t they all part of the same question?” Taylor asked.

  “Not really. Look, how many painters do you think are in Conlin?”

  “Probably only you and I.”

  And Tom Brindle, but I didn’t let Taylor know that he was a tagger and a friend of my father’s. There was no telling what she would do if she discovered that he learned from the Elder. I imagined her trying to force him to show her what he’d learned from him, studying him like she studied the journals in the basement of my home.

  “Yeah. Two of us. And now, some guy shows up at the Rooster of all places, burned to death by a painter with enough power to still hold me back even after he’s gone. What does that tell you?”

  Taylor turned her eyes back to the road and bit her lip while she considered. “That it was an artist. That’s what you’re implying.”

  “I’m not implying anything. I’m saying it.”

  “And you think I could have—”

  “You? Gods, I hope not,” I answered, swinging the truck back into the Rooster’s lot, but the thought had occurred to me.

  There were a few more cars here than before. Jakes’s squad car sat in the same place. A black Tahoe now parked next to it. A newer Camry angled toward the front of the Rooster. And then there was my old truck. It sort of felt out of place in the lot. Kinda like me, most times.

  I jumped out and made my way around the side of the Rooster, not bothering to go through the diner this time. There might be a reason to stop in later—I mean, it was meatloaf night—but I wanted to see what Taylor might be able to tell us about the murder. Jakes stood talking quietly with Tom. He was an older man, closer to my father’s age, with streaks of silver in his hair and a long, hawkish nose. Both looked up as we approached.

  “Jesus, Oliver, I’m sorry to drag you into this, too,” Tom said. His eyes were drawn and tight. Normally, an easy smile crossed his face, but that was gone, replaced by a weary expression. Every so often, he glanced down at the body lying near the dumpster, and his fingers twitched.

  The body hadn’t been moved. The charred stink coming from it had faded somewhat, but not enough to take the bitterness out of the air. The patterns burned into its chest pressed against me. I knew that I should recognize them, but couldn’t.

  “This is supposed to be a place of sanctuary,” Tom went on. “That was how your father envisioned it. Most of the protections running through the building are his.”

  I hadn’t known my father had placed protections around the Rooster. Made sense, considering he and Tom were old buddies. Now that he mentioned it, I shifted my focus and made a quick tracing in the dust around my feet, listening for the draw of the patterns against me. They hummed softly, so faint that I could almost believe they weren’t there.

  Damn, my father could be subtle. That explained why I struggled to use my magic before.

  “This happened outside, Tom,” Jakes said.

  “It had to have,” I said. Jakes looked over at me, and I waved my hand toward the Rooster as I released the power I pulled through my quick pattern on the ground. “No painter would be a able to draw much power in the Rooster. Not enough to do this.”

  Tom tipped his head and nodded. “That was always the Elder’s intent. Neutralize power. Create a place where everyone could meet peacefully.”

  “Looks real peaceful like,” Devan muttered.

 
Power worked through the concrete of the parking lot, radiating away like spokes on a wheel, practically tearing power away from the Rooster. How had it not drawn my power away when I used it when trying to understand what happened to the body? Unless it had, and I simply wasn’t aware. Maybe that had been the reason I had to use as much power as I had in order to sense anything.

  Things like this were why the Elder was feared and respected. Things like this were why he drove me crazy.

  “What is it?” Devan asked me softly.

  I shook my head. “Later.”

  Tom frowned at me, and then his eyes shifted to Taylor, almost as if seeing her for the first time. He nodded respectfully, tipping his head forward.

  I looked from Tom to Taylor. Did he know she was from Arcanus?

  “I want you to take a look at the body,” I said to Taylor. “See what you can determine from the pattern used. Maybe there’ll be nothing, but maybe you’ll pick up on something I couldn’t.”

  “I…” She hesitated, looking at the faces around her. “I’ll try, Oliver. This isn’t my area of expertise, you know. You’re probably better suited to it than I am.”

  I didn’t argue with her. Mostly because she was right. This was an area where I had particular skill—at least I thought I had—but even I couldn’t make out what had happened here. That made Taylor, an Arcanus artist, invaluable.

  Jakes stepped to the side. Taylor glanced at me again before moving to crouch next to the body. She held her vial of blue ink in her hand and pulled a long brush out from a hidden pocket of her coat. She dipped the tip of the brush into the ink and began making a dusting around the outside of the body, quickly swirling in tight spirals and circles. They were focusing patterns. She added elements around the circles, some triangles and some flourishes that I couldn’t comprehend.

  “Do you mind?” she asked without looking up at me. Her hand hesitated in place, pausing perfectly so that the tip of the brush would be able to resume the pattern she worked on. Her eyes locked onto my much cruder patterns.

  “Not at all,” I told her.

  Taylor dropped the brush back to the ground and continued to work. I half expected her to simply destroy the patterns I’d used, but she didn’t. Instead, she added to them, working them into whatever it was that she created. When she finished, she had made a triangle around the body, but the border was comprised of dozens of other patterns, each adding to the other. Like I said, she’s an artist.

  Power built as she infused her will into the pattern.

  My skin tingled and the hairs on the back of my neck stood taut. I don’t know how much energy she drew from herself, but the pattern augmented it. As complicated as the pattern was, she should be able to draw significant power. Taylor’s jaw clenched as she worked, and she pushed hair behind her ears, her hand lingering as she did to twirl the loose strands, pulling the blue-tinted hair between her fingers.

  Then the power faded, disappearing with a soft pop. She looked over at me and shook her head. “I can’t. I don’t understand it, but I can’t do much with the power here.”

  I looked at Tom and then at the building behind him, the one my father had apparently made certain no painter could work with much power. “Yeah, I should have expected that. Let me try something.”

  I took a pinch of black ink from my pouch and added an inverse spiral to each arm of the triangle Taylor had made. Black would be destructive. Not enough to counter what my father had done—not for long, anyway—but maybe enough for me to use Taylor’s pattern.

  With a surge of power, I pressed through the pattern, infusing my will into it. As I did, I split my focus, activating each of the arcane patterns I’d added before and then moving onto Taylor’s pattern. My pattern was simple. I’d used it enough times over the years that there was a familiarity to the way it felt when I drew power through it. Taylor’s was completely foreign to me.

  Usually, it could be dangerous to use another painter’s pattern, especially if you didn’t know the intent, but with Taylor’s pattern, I did know what she intended. I would never have thought to draw power the way she did. There was an elegance to her pattern where mine were more utilitarian. Brutish. But she had used the triangle as a way to simply focus power inward, to draw from it what had happened to the body. I could use her pattern.

  It took more power than I expected. A complex pattern such as she’d created should require much less power, but then again, it had to work against whatever my father had working through the lot around the Rooster.

  I had to draw deeply. Keeping the balance of the three arcane marks around the triangle was tricky, but I had practice splitting my focus like this. I pulled the power coming from the arcane marks toward the pattern Taylor had made, uniting them as I did.

  I had the briefest second where it held, and then everything snapped away from me, tearing control from me. I fought it long enough to let it ease out. There was a risk to losing control like that. Others could be hurt. Hell, I could be hurt. Had I not tried to fight the energy release, the arcane patterns could’ve torn everything apart around them. Or not, considering what my father had put in place here.

  I slumped to the ground, drained.

  “What is it?” Devan asked. She dropped to the ground next to me, unmindful of the dirt.

  I turned to face her. Jakes stared down at me, a deep frown furrowing his face. Taylor remained silent. Probably the effort of trying to pull power through her pattern had drained her almost as much as it had drained me.

  “Did you learn anything, Morris?” Jakes asked.

  I took slow, steady breaths, as I tried to regain my focus. “Not really.”

  Taylor’s face had gone white, and she remained silent.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “You sensed something.” Since the patterns had been combined, she could have detected more than I did. “What did you learn?”

  “This was done by a painter,” Taylor started.

  “We knew that,” Jakes said.

  “There was skill and power,” she went on. “But I’ve seen the pattern used here before, just not quite in this form. And it’s been a while. Maybe a few months since I’ve seen it.”

  I turned to Taylor. “Months? As in during the time you were with—”

  She nodded slowly. “It’s not his, but yeah. It was during the time I was with Nik.”

  3

  The lights of the Rooster felt bright and artificial and welcoming. Now that I knew how my father had turned the diner into a magical sanctuary, I appreciated the fact that there couldn’t be any magical throw downs that might surprise me. A couple of months ago, back when Devan and I had first returned to Conlin thinking that we would find safety and time for me to keep her safe, I didn’t worry about things like that. Now I wasn’t sure of anything.

  I sat in one of the booths along the front windows. The cool of the plastic seat pressed through my pants. A plate of Tom’s meatloaf sat in front of me, mostly untouched. It wasn’t that it didn’t taste good, only that my appetite wasn’t what it should be. That, and the fact that the smell reminded me too much of the dead guy lying next to the diner.

  “Tell me about Nik,” Jakes said.

  He sat on a chair he’d pulled up to the booth, arms crossed over his chest and his face wearing a flat expression, looking for all the world like a cop interrogating a witness. And maybe that’s what he was. Still, I wished he’d change out of his sheriff’s uniform. Talking about painting and patterns and shifting felt strange with him wearing that.

  Devan sat against the wall in the booth. She had one of her figurines in her hand and flipped it around, almost as if playing with it nervously. Maybe she was nervous. She knew Nik, too. He’d been the Trelking’s private painter before I showed up. He might not have the same skill with arcane patterns as I did, but he had once been a hell of a lot better painter. Not quite an artist, but a step above a tagger, for sure.

  Taylor studied
me a moment, then turned to Jakes. “Nik is a painter, as Oliver said. I would disagree when he calls him a tagger, though I disagree with that title in general. He has talent, but it’s in different areas than traditional training in Arcanus would allow.”

  “Arcane patterns?” I asked. Had Nik learned something since I’d last seen him? Nik’s inability to learn arcane patterns had been the reason that I’d become something of the Trelking’s pet. It was the reason Nik had ended up jailed, needing Devan and me to rescue him.

  “Not like what you can do,” she said. “He has some talent there, but where his talent really shines is in reaching through the physical form to reach a deeper power.” She touched her hair, twirling it between her fingers.

  “So was it Nik?” Jakes asked.

  Taylor shook her head. “Not him. I can’t believe Nik would ever do something like that.”

  “I can,” I said softly.

  She looked at me with an accusation in her eyes. “You said you were friends.”

  “We are. We were,” I corrected. “But Nik served the Trelking much like I did. There are things you do in his service that change you.” Devan touched my leg beneath the table, squeezing it comfortingly. She knew the things I’d done, and for some reason, she was still my friend. Of course, she was the Trelking’s daughter. There were things she had done because she had to, things I doubted she wanted anyone to know about.

  “But Nik is in Russia,” Taylor said.

  “When did you see him last?” Jakes asked.

  I half expected him to take out a pad and begin taking notes, but then again, Jakes was a smart guy, and probably had a great memory.

  Taylor looked across the table at me. She had a plate in front of her, too, equally untouched, though she had chosen the fish and chips. That was her first mistake. Tom might be a pretty good cook, but there was just something about ordering fish in a place like the Rooster that made you wonder if you were getting anything all that fresh. At least with all the farmers around us, I had the impression the beef was locally sourced.