Ermolt tapped his chin with one finger. “That’s a good sign, but there hasn’t been a revolt here. If there’s enough people against him they would throw him out of town. But he’s still in control.”
“The people are afraid,” Elise said thoughtfully, spearing another bit of egg. “They might not realize it directly, but they know that if they step out of line, they will be crushed back in. Especially under the guise of ‘the things Numara used to keep at bay.’ They don’t know or care about what he’s doing with the power they’ve given him. All they know is that if they don’t give it, they’re in danger. His game is money and power, and giving it out in exchange for loyalty. But he’s using that loyalty to spread more fear. Which he then uses to grab more money and power.” She paused, staring at her fork. “It’s all the more reason to stop him, at least.”
“Alright. So how do we use this knowledge? We can probably move more freely than we thought through parts of town without a heavy Guard presence, but after last night he likely knows we’re here. We should expect more Guards in more places.”
“Do you think we’d have any chance just rushing the Temple? If we could convince Athala to come with us, that is,” she added glumly. “A few well-placed swings of your hammer and we could be done with this before nightfall.”
“Not entirely,” Ermolt said as he pulled Athala’s abandoned plate over in front of himself. There was only a handful of eggs and some fried vegetables left, but he dug into them anyway. “From what Conscript Tilke told us, it’s poorly guarded, but we can’t trust him or anything he said that we didn’t hear from a more trustworthy source. And beyond that, Temple rushing isn’t a good idea.”
“Why not? It worked in Jalova.”
“It only worked in Jalova because we had the Overseers watching our back. All it takes is one Conscript to get away from us, and Ibeyar’s Guards and mercenaries will burst in on us while we’re fighting the dragon.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Fighting on two fronts is a fast way to lose, especially if one of those fronts is a mountain-sized apex predator.”
The mention of the Overseers stabbed at Elise. She shoved a forkful of eggs in her mouth to distract the pinpricks of tears that threatened her eyes. After she was sure she was under control, she grunted. “Hrm. A good point.” She tapped the tines of her fork against the edge of her plate. “So then we need to deal with Ibeyar instead—either take him out or just make sure he doesn’t have the time or resources to stop us.” Elise paused. “If we can get close to him and figure out his plans, we can do something to complicate them. Or take advantage of them to get the better of him. And if we can keep his plans for the dragon complicated, it’ll wear on his resources. Maybe even undermine his control. He’ll either have to leave town, or deal with a revolution like what he caused in Gloder.”
Ermolt smiled wide at Elise. She looked at him, confused, tilting her head to one side. “What did I say,” she finally asked, not getting his ever-widening grin.
“Lucky for us, Athala already did the research we need to get us close to him.
“She did?”
Ermolt didn’t speak, but instead pointed with his fork to the wall behind Elise. She turned slowly to find another poster, like the one Athala had found the other day.
Ibeyar’s smug smile and exaggerated features brought her anger up like bile. This parchment was slightly different from the last one. Not only did it have detailed information about the Prophet’s next “sermon,” but someone had drawn a comically evil mustache over his face. At the bottom of the page was the date and time of the rally, in large bold letters.
Tomorrow night.
“Well,” Elise said as she turned back to her plate, “I guess we have a day to get some actual disguises together.”
“Good,” Ermolt said as he resumed digging into Athala’s remaining breakfast. “Perhaps by then Athala will be able to join us as well.”
“I doubt it,” Elise said sullenly. “Any knowledge worth learning will take days to acquire... and even then she’d still need time to practice with it.” She stabbed at the last of her eggs and moved them around her plate, not actually having the fortitude to eat them. Eventually she sighed and looked to Ermolt. “Face it: we’re on our own for now. May the Gods take pity on us.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Athala was no longer sure what day it was.
She slept little, ate less, and studied constantly.
If pressed, she would have said that it had been less than two days since she left the Lucky Turnip in a huff, but she couldn’t be sure.
And she really didn’t care.
The mid-day sun was trying its hardest to pierce the closed curtains that turned Sieghard’s library into a gloomy, cool refuge of studying. Athala was sitting at one of the larger tables, a spread of books covering most of the horizontal surfaces around her, including the floors and low shelves. A pile of half-eaten dishes was shoved off to one corner of the table. In front of Athala was a cup of water that seemed to mysteriously refill itself whenever Sieghard hovered to check up on her work.
Her back hurt, her eyes were strained, and a voice in the back of her mind cried for sleep, food, sunlight, or all three.
But, at the same time, Athala felt invigorated.
Sieghard’s assistance with her research on the dragon spells was invaluable and very eye-opening, but she was growing just as invested in his own research.
The day she had arrived after her regrettable tantrum, Sieghard and Athala had worked together, making leaps and bounds on investigating the creation myth. Sieghard had produced dozens of books of myths and fables, and once they realized that history, as presented by the Temples, couldn’t be trusted, inconsistencies leapt out of the tales left and right. It called into question not just the events of the past, but the very underpinnings of magic itself, once they realized how much of what they knew was told to their predecessors by the Gods themselves. While the discoveries were not explicit progress towards information on the origins of the Gods, they both raised and answered questions that Sieghard admitted he couldn’t ignore.
Their work on the dragon spells was slower, and slightly more frustrating. Athala knew, from Meodryt’s warning, that the spells were dangerous. But just from Athala’s notes and transcriptions, they couldn’t determine how. And with no adequate way to test the nature of the danger, it was like examining a trapped corridor with no knowledge of where or how the trap would be sprung. They couldn’t enter safely to examine it as a whole, so they had to pick it apart, proverbial brick by proverbial brick.
Time was spent examining the notes she had already taken on her own—transcripts of the draconian runes, mostly—and they broke the spells down into their component parts. However, they had not made any real progress until Sieghard pointed out that they were examining the spells like they were made by mortal casters, and dragons were anything but.
After that realization, they had approached the spells from a different angle, looking to break them into groupings of runes that made up the various aspects of the spell. But being divine magic, fabricated by deific beings with an intimate understanding of the forces of magic that they themselves created, it was just impossible. The spells were not just bits and pieces of other spells mashed together in a way that worked. They were carefully created and curated to build something wholly unique, and the construction and outcome confused and infuriated both wizards well into the late evening.
Eventually Athala had spent some time sleeping. When she woke in the morning, Sieghard led her to the second floor of his library and introduced her to the false back on one of the shelves. Behind it was a number of mundane-looking books that the older wizard handled as if they were made of glass.
Athala could physically understand why, as they looked old and poorly bound. One of them was just a collection of papers clumsily held together with a knotted string.
But their titles proclaimed they were cookbooks.
Athala wasn’t interested in
cooking.
Sieghard smiled when she proclaimed that and shook his head. “These books are an inheritance from one of my dearest friends,” he explained as he carefully cradled one from its hiding spot. The book was bound in crumbling leather. “He had explained to me that he acquired them from his grandfather, and he from his mother, and she from her cousin, and so on and so forth, since before the Age of Dragons.”
“I don’t doubt that, from the age and quality.” She looked at the title of the one he held, which proclaimed it was a guide to preparing and roasting fowl. “But they do very clearly look like cookbooks.”
“That they do.” Sieghard returned to the pile and extracted a very thin volume that was unlabeled. “They are written in a cipher. This book is the key to the rest.”
Athala blinked. “A cipher? What kind of recipes would need to be hidden in a cipher?”
“What indeed.” Sieghard grinned. “I’m afraid I haven’t been clear. These are not cookbooks. No recipe created from these books would be edible, cipher or no.” He patted the top of the pile, almost lovingly. “No, these are texts banned by the Temples since time immemorial. They have been transcribed and transcribed again, translated into ciphers, and transcribed between them, passed on and hidden for generations.”
“I wasn’t aware the Temples banned books,” Athala said with a frown. She looked at the innocuous pile.
“Ah, but I did say it was since time immemorial.” Sieghard lowered himself into a chair and began to sort through the stack of books, separating them into smaller piles. “The original manuscripts were burned at the dawn of the Age of Dragons. I would be surprised if any member of the Temple still knew to look for these, much less knew to destroy them on sight.” He pushed the smallest pile, and the thin tome explaining the cipher, over to Athala. “Though if any of the Gods knew what each of these were, this place would be surrounded by a host of Conscripts from every Temple within a day.”
“So what are they?” Athala asked, pulling over the offered pile of books and opening the cipher key.
“Personal records,” he said with a grin. “From a time before the Gods.”
After the older wizard had explained that he had originally kept the books out of a desire to preserve them for posterity, rather than out of any direct interest in their contents, the pair of them had dived into translating the books. Athala compared the translations to the discrepancies in the myths, and she found the corroboration between the two piles of notes vindicating.
Sieghard was most interested in the tales of Bylin, a monastery tucked into the mountains outside of Feldhok, but Athala wasn’t quite sure why. The monastery was for retired Priests and Clerics, usually of higher positions in the Temples. It was vaguely interesting to Athala that the monastery didn’t divide up the Priests and Clerics by God, but otherwise it seemed like a fairly harmless place.
The book he studied the most was the journal of a Priest-turned-Monk who served in Bylin, and she had detailed the daily goings-on around the monastery. Her writings revealed their duties to include the protection of magical artifacts that were ancient even in those times, and prayers that were not directed at any one God, but to the monolith of Grunith itself.
Athala, however, was entranced by a journal that was one of the earliest accounts in Sieghard’s collection. It was written by an accomplished wizard in a time when people believed all of the influences of the Gods originated from a single deity, and his understanding of magic was as alien to her as was the idea that there was only one God. It was as if he didn’t know that his magic depended on the ambient energy of the world that was the chaff of the God’s divine magic. He and his contemporaries believed that magic came from within themselves, rather than from the Gods.
It was an interesting idea and a great indicator of how far magical studies had come.
She put the book aside with the intent to study it later, perhaps as a side project. It didn’t really lend much to her current studies, as the aspects that talked about the one God were vague and inconsequential.
Another book in her pile that caught her eye dealt with the city of Marska, and a God who was rumored to rule it. The stories and traditions explained in the pages were something wholly unlike anything Athala had heard before. The God—Isadon, God of Death—was a benevolent ruler of the realm of death, and his followers lived at a Temple that spiraled into the sky. The book claimed a powerful relic lay hidden within its spire, the Favor of Isadon.
Athala took copious notes, as no other volume spoke of the God of Death, nor of the state of Marska. She had heard the stories of Marska previously, and of the plague that destroyed it. But no story had included such detailed information about the religion built around death, or the joy that the religion brought to people.
At the stroke of the next bell, Sieghard appeared at Athala’s elbow. His presence was sobering, shaking Athala from her concentration. He led her away from the forbidden tomes and instead to a table dressed with plates of cheeses and fruits, as well as a dish that looked like scrambled eggs and vegetables over a savory flat bread.
She protested at first—there was so much still to do—but he silenced her by pointing out the foolishness of working with unknown magic while putting her mind and body through the stress of starvation.
Athala begrudgingly ate.
But only at first.
The second the food was past her lips a force overtook her and she became a voracious void, devouring every scrap of food she possibly could.
“So,” Sieghard started, his tone full of amusement and a bit of what could be considered disgust, “where did we leave off yesterday?”
“We were disassembling the spell,” Athala said after swallowing a mouthful of eggs. “But the results were more confusing than enlightening. The components it breaks down into don’t correspond to usable pieces.”
“Yes, of course.” The older wizard nodded. He picked at his own food, mostly moving it around his plate. “But we decided we need to let go of our preconceptions, right? These spells weren’t made by mortals who went to the same schools and took the same classes as we did.”
“It makes sense, but spells still need to follow the most basic principles.” Athala gestured with a slice of hard cheese, a bite taken out of one end. “It still has to shape the ambient energy to power the spell, form the energies to a purpose, and cast it into the world. It’s like... like these spells skip the first part. There’s no beginning that calls up energy for it.”
Sieghard sat back in his chair, his eggs still untouched. “Yes. It’s as if the parts of the spells we have form... for the lack of a better term, they form the mold of the spell. The container in which the spell sits. But if we peel the rest of it out, what remains should be the parts that fill that mold with the energy required. I think that once this arduous task is done, we should have a relatively enlightening view of the drawing of energies that I might need to write a new book about.” He inclined his head with a chuckle. “With an appropriate research credit to you, of course.”
Athala ignored the comment. “But what if there’s nothing there? The spells were originally cast by dragons. What use do they have for calling up energy? They’re—”
Sieghard held up a hand to stop her. He blinked a few times. “They’re... they’re made out of magical energy.” He sounded shocked. “They don’t need to call it up.”
“That’s what I mean.” She popped a raspberry in her mouth and chewed at it thoughtfully. “I was just reading about an early approach to magic where ancient wizards believed that magic came from within themselves, and not from ambient energy in the air.”
“Impossible. What would it do to a person to cast spells directly from their own being?”
“Exactly,” Athala said, slumping in her chair. “That’s exactly what I thought.”
“But imagine if you could? It would hurt you, sure, but for weaker magic, there’s no reason you couldn’t.” Sieghard tapped a finger to his chin. “Perhaps that is th
e way the dragon spell would harm you.” He stood and moved to the table designated for their dragon spell notes. “Perhaps it isn’t the Gods or the dragons that would harm you—although they still might if they were paying attention and had a stake in stopping you—but the casting itself. As mortals, we’re not made of magic, but there's still energy to be had. Our body heat, the chemical reactions in our guts and brains, our blood—all of that business.” He waved a hand dismissively. “But if we were dragons, it would draw from the font of magic from within ourselves.”
“So you’re saying that the spell would burn me out from the inside?” Athala stood and followed him to the table, abandoning her meal half-finished. “Yes,” she said, staring at the notes from yesterday’s study session. “That could make sense, and could explain what Meodryt was talking about. They said that the God that trapped it would destroy me in retribution, but that could be a lie. A ploy. Instead, the act of casting the spell as it is in my mind would drain me and kill me on the spot.”
“Then that’s it, isn’t it?” Sieghard grimaced. “The spells are designed to draw on the caster’s ambient magic, and not from the source of the world. It doesn’t matter if you are human or God.” He shook his head. “Even if you had enough energy in your body to fuel the spell, it would be the last thing you ever did.”
Athala was quiet, staring at the spell components they had torn apart. The words sat sullen on the page, as if sad they would never be used. But they were only draconian runes, only bits of something left incomplete.
Incomplete.
“We change the spell,” Athala said in a breathless voice.
“Hm?”
“We change the spell! We add a man-made component to it! We’re scholars of magic, perhaps even masters. We know the runes needed to call up magic—we just add a man-made component to it that would call up the magic required.”
Destiny (Heroes by Necessity Book 3) Page 16