“That’s not how it works.”
Sam looked over to her. “How long have you known about your magic?”
Tara shrugged. “I guess I’ve always known. My father and mother can both use the arcane arts, and they looked for the signs. Not everyone knows how to do that, though.”
“And if neither of my parents had the arcane arts…”
“That doesn’t mean they can’t have a child with magic. There are plenty of powerful magic users who come from those without any power of their own. It just makes it rarer. And those who are born to parents without any magic often don’t know what to look for.”
“Mia had plenty of magic early on. I think they always knew she was going to have potential. It was more about getting the attention of the Academy.”
“The Academy wants anyone who has the necessary skills.”
“They do, but we’re out in Erstan. We’re far enough from the rest of Olway that it’s difficult to get the attention of anyone who might be able to identify what talents you have. And someone like Mia, with her natural gifts, would be rare.”
Sam thought again about the conversation he’d had with the Grandam and how she described the use of magic. Mia would be a river. There would’ve been no way to stop her from developing her connection to magic. Had she shut it off, he suspected it would’ve come out regardless. He actually smiled at the thought.
“I didn’t have anything quite like that, but the magic I did have seemed to come out of me regardless. When I saw my father doing something, I was able to recreate it quickly.”
“Were you using complicated angulation early on?”
“Not quite like that. My father was the one who tried to work with me.” She started to smile. “He was always the one to try to work with me. I suppose I miss him the most here. But it’s my mother who has driven me. She has shown me how powerful somebody with the arcane arts can be.”
“I doubt you need somebody to prove that to you.”
“Maybe not, but it isn’t always easy, and Tavran to be a woman with potential, especially one who intimidates those who don’t think that woman should have such potential.”
“I don’t think you have to worry about Gresham.”
“Oh, but I do. He is far too well-connected for me to ignore him.” She took a deep breath. “I think that’s why it’s hard for him to acknowledge that you might be smarter than him. Being from the Barlands and all.”
She stared at the bed for a while. “There was a time when I would have said that those from the Barlands are backward. Too much of trying to stay connected to the earth and less about understanding the magic.”
“What changed?”
“I met you.” She got to her feet and extended her hand. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?” Sam asked, taking her hand.
“If you really want that thing back on your hand, we’re going to see if we can find you some help. You do want this to work again, don’t you?”
They headed through the halls, not bothering with the Study Hall, and made their way to Havash’s room.
“What is it, Samran?” Havash asked.
“I…” He hesitated. There remained the concern that if he shared with Havash what had happened, the professor would want to take the vrandal from him. Even if he did, it was possible Havash wouldn’t be able to use it any more than Sam could.
“Samran?”
Sam shook his head. Chasten was looking at him with his pale blue eyes. A hint of a smile worked across his face as if he knew a secret.
“Something happened,” Sam said, glancing over at the door where Tara stood. She nodded at him encouragingly, but he didn’t necessarily feel encouraged. He held his hand out, exposing his now bare palm.
Havash frowned, studying him, then his eyes widened. “How did you remove it? Did you learn the necessary control?”
Sam shook his head, though he was reassured that Havash was familiar enough with the vrandals to know that having control was required to remove them. He hadn’t known whether that was the case. Havash might have thought Sam would need to keep the vrandal on forever. For that matter, Sam had started to feel that way. Now, without it, he felt somewhat empty.
“I was in the Alchemy section when my hand started to tingle. Then the device loosened.”
Havash held his hand out. “I would like to see it.”
There wasn’t anything for Sam to do but to show him. He reached into his pocket and pulled it out. Chasten stepped forward, grabbing it from Sam before handing it to Havash. The suddenness of the movement caught Sam off guard. Havash looked over at Chasten while twisting it in his hands. There was a soft glow from it, though it was faint. “What do you think?”
“It would be unusual,” replied Chasten.
“It would, but there could be no other explanation.”
“Do you know what happened?” Sam asked.
Havash ignored the question. A brief white light surged from him, and then he pressed it into the vrandal. The light flowed through it.
“It refuses to make a connection to me,” Havash said as he held it up to the light, twisting it.
Chasten nodded. “You are not alchemists. And I am not powerful enough.”
They locked eyes for a moment. Finally, Chasten looked over to Sam.
“Which begs a different question.”
“Which was?” Sam asked.
“It bonded to him immediately,” Chasten said, ignoring his question.
“I’m aware.” Havash started to glow. There was a different sort of power that swept out from him as he did, swirling around him. It circled him and stretched outward before flowing into the vrandal. The lines of power radiating out from Havash were incredible.
Tara moved toward Sam and took his hand, squeezing tightly. “I haven’t seen anything like that control before,” she whispered.
“What’s he doing?”
She shook her head. “I don’t really know.”
“I’m trying to determine whether this has been altered in any way,” Havash answered. “The vrandal is a work of alchemy, and within some alchemy there is a level of the arcane. There should be no magic in the vrandal, though, which is what I’m trying to determine. If there is… ah. There.” He frowned, and the white light spilling out from him continued to twist, turning into a point of light that worked over the vrandal. “This is most unusual.” Havash flicked his gaze toward Chasten before turning back to Sam. “Tell me exactly what it was that you experienced when this occurred.”
“There isn’t much to say. I was coming out of the room when my hand started to tingle. It came slowly, then started to hurt more. As it did, I found that the vrandal began to shift on my hand, then it moved. Finally, it fell off.” He took a deep breath. “Now, I can’t even keep it on for more than a few moments before it starts to hurt.”
Havash looked over at him. “You can’t?”
Sam shook his head. “Tara doesn’t detect it the way I do.”
“She should not. The vrandal either will or will not bond. I have never heard of one separating like this before.”
“It separated when Luthian attacked me,” Sam replied.
Chasten leaned forward. “About that.”
“What?”
“Not now,” Havash said sharply.
Chasten pressed his lips together as he frowned but said nothing.
Lines of angulation poured out of Havash, turning, probing, and twisting. He could see it and understood the angulation he was using, even if he could not use it himself.
“What else happened?” Havash asked without looking up. His jaw clenched in concentration, and a droplet of sweat formed on his brow.
How much was this taking out of him?
Sam glanced over at Tara and found her watching Havash intently.
“Nothing else happened,” replied Sam.
“What were you doing before it?” Chasten asked.
Sam thought about what he’d been doing. He’d made c
opies of the pages from the book, but he’d done that enough not to think it’d be the reason for the sudden change. If not that, then what was it?
“I was trying to focus and learn to use it.” He left out that he’d attempted Daven’s technique and failed.
Havash lowered the vrandal and turned his attention to Sam, watching him for a moment. The white strands of power began to stream away from Havash and swirl around Sam. Tara gasped and held tightly to his hand as she started to glow.
“Do not intervene, Ms. Stone,” Havash spoke harshly, and Tara released Sam’s hand.
The lines of angulation probed from Havash, a faint tracing of patterns that began to work around him. When it struck him, it was like a wave of cold, like plunging into an ice bath.
Sam sucked in a breath.
The cold stayed with him, sweeping up from his feet, through his chest, and into his head. Pain surged. It was the pain he’d felt when trying to peel the vrandal free from his hand. He’d experienced it enough times that he could recognize it even without the vrandal. Only this time, the nature of the pain was different. There was an additional element of what he’d felt when the tingling started, the sense of needles plunging into his palm. This time, it seemed to be throughout his entire body.
Sam let out a cry. Tara tried to reach him, but whatever Havash was doing made it so that she couldn’t get to him. He yelled out again.
“You’re killing him!” Tara shouted.
It was a faint, distant sound that reminded him of how he’d felt when Havash had tested Mia. What a strange irony. Now he was the one suffering, the one nearly dying, and Tara was trying to save him. Would she be punished the same way he’d been? He didn’t want her to suffer because of him. He wanted to protect her.
“I’m not killing him.” This came from Havash and sounded closer to Sam, though it might’ve been the power swirling through him that made it seem that way.
“I can feel what you’re doing.” Tara’s voice was more distant. Sam looked over at her. She glowed with bright white light and was trying to reach for him. Whatever it was that Havash was doing kept her away, separating the two of them. The look of horror on her face pained him more than anything that Havash was doing.
“If you can feel what I’m doing, then follow it. Understand it.”
With that, Havash turned toward him, and the power that flowed from him intensified. Sam cried out again. All he felt was pain. All he knew was the burning sensation of needles jabbing through his skin, through his entire being.
He didn’t remember Mia suffering in this way. When she’d been tested, she’d appeared to have stopped breathing, but nothing suggested that she hurt. Not like this.
His vision became a blinding white nothing. He tried to clear it but found he couldn’t move. Everything started to fade. As it did, he thought that this was too much like when Ferand had held him.
Another thought drifted in. It was the same worry that he had went Havash had wanted Sam to try to interpret the symbols within the almanac.
What if Havash did really want to have access to the alchemy found within?
Chapter Twenty
The darkness parted slowly, and Sam started to come around. It was difficult, and his mind didn’t seem to work the way it should, and it almost seemed as if he could still feel the burning through him. Everything throbbed, which couldn’t be a good sign.
He tried to think about what he’d felt and what had happened before he’d blacked out, but the only thing he could remember was the pain. It had been overwhelming, more than what he could tolerate. Tara had been there, trying to get to him and help, but Havash had held her back. The sense of power from the Alchemist had been immense and more than what Sam had seen before.
He rolled over, trying to get a sense of where he was, but the room was dark.
Pain flowed through him, and he groaned. When he sat up, he felt something strange. The vrandal was back on his hand.
With the pain he’d experienced, he hadn’t paid any attention to the sensation of his hand. Could the burning he felt be related to that? He reached for it, and a voice called out of the darkness.
“Don’t disrupt it just yet.”
“Chasten?” Sam asked.
“The connection is still forming, but it will take some time for it to set firmly. It would be best for you to leave the vrandal where it is.”
“What happened?” He tried to shift where he was sitting, but it was difficult for him to do with the darkness.
“Havash found the source of the influence.”
“In the vrandal?”
“Within you.” Chasten’s voice was closer, and Sam could almost feel him as he neared but still couldn’t see anything.
“What was within me?”
“When you were out in the city, they must have placed something on you that allowed them to twist your connection. Havash has never seen anything quite like it before. The touch was really quite subtle.”
Sam took a deep breath. “Ferand wasn’t able to take the vrandal off of me before, but this time he managed to move it.” He had to resist the urge to touch the vrandal. He didn’t want to disrupt the connection. “He’s learned something in the time he was imprisoned.”
“That is Havash’s concern as well.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Sam tried to look around him but couldn’t see anything. He could only detect the sound of Chasten breathing. He took a deep breath. Something smelled strange, though he wasn’t quite sure what it was.
“Where am I?”
“You are in the infirmary, Sam,” Chasten said softly.
“Why is it so dark?”
Chasten pressed closer. Sam was aware of his sense, the physical pressure of the man as he neared. Sam wanted to move away, but without seeing anything, there wasn’t any place he could go.
“It’s not dark, Samran.”
Sam frowned. “It’s dark. I can hear you, but I can’t see you.”
The pressure coming from Chasten faded. “I thought you might be able to see something as I moved closer, but it seems as if not.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s a lantern by your feet. The room is perfectly bright.”
“Why can’t I see then?”
“I suspect it has something to do with what Havash had to do to separate the influence from you. Hopefully, it will be fleeting.”
There was something in the way he said it that left Sam wondering if Chasten believed it. “What did he have to do?”
“It was powerful arcane arts, far more complicated than what I am capable of doing.” Sam could almost imagine Chasten smiling. “I am a simple alchemist.”
“Not simple,” Sam said.
“Perhaps not simple, but I do not have the complicated arcane arts that Havash is capable of forming. And as far as we can tell, what he did for you was effective. Whatever influence was there is now gone. Now we must wait and see if the vrandal sets again. As it chose you, bonding to you, we both agreed that it needed to be sent to you.”
The pressure on the bed shifted as Chasten stood.
“Why would he want it to connect with me again?”
“The vrandal is alchemy, Samran.”
“I understand that.”
“When it comes to alchemy, the nature of the way items function is different. There is power in some and not in others. It’s the same with people. There is power in some and not in others.”
“Do you think I have arcane arts?”
At this point, there was no point in hiding his weakness from Chasten. He doubted Havash had hidden anything from him.
“You have a connection to the vrandal. That is what matters.”
“What does that mean?”
There was no answer. He waited until he realized that Chasten had left.
Sam was alone in the dark. Would his eyesight return? If it didn’t, he wouldn’t be of much use to Tara as he tried to read the book. Without that connection, would she even
want to continue working with him? Would Havash be willing to keep him around?
It was more than that, though. Without his sight, how was he going to help keep Ferand and the Nighlan from attacking? He had a role to play in it—Havash had said as much. Sam couldn’t imagine living without his eyesight. He would adjust, like the injured people he encountered while working with Arne. He knew that everyone adapted, but this wasn’t something he wanted to have to adapt to. Why couldn’t they just heal him with arcane magic?
Sam tried to move into a more comfortable position on the bed, which he found more challenging now. He closed his eyes for a moment, but there was still nothing but darkness around him when he opened them again. He wouldn’t be able to stay in the Academy like this. Without his vision, he could offer Havash nothing as an apprentice or even as a servant.
Sam touched the vrandal, despite the warning. Chasten claimed he’d bonded to it again, though Sam didn’t know if that was true or not. He didn’t feel the same as he had about the vrandal when it’d been on his hand before. The memory of how his hand had tingled remained within him, the sense of the damaged vrandal sliding off.
He wanted to keep the connection between him and the vrandal, a thought that had intruded when Daven had talked about emotion and how he’d felt about the vrandal. The power of the vrandal—the Alchemy, as Chasten and Havash called it—was something a person like him would never expect to be able to use, let alone control.
Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes, resting his hand on the vrandal. He didn’t try to move it but instead simply held his hand above it and felt its warmth. Some of that came from Sam, but some seemed to come up through the vrandal itself and press outward. The device had always had a strange sense to it, but had it been warm? He couldn’t remember. He thought of the smoothness of the surface. The pressure on his palm. The occasional constriction around his fingers as the device took hold of him. All were sensations he’d detected with it before, but nothing more than that.
Now there was the warmth. That likely had to do with what had happened to him—and possibly to the vrandal. Perhaps Havash had done something, triggering it in a way that allowed him to be able to bond once again to the device. This warmth was new to him, though.
Alchemist Assault (The Alchemist Book 2) Page 19