“I’m here now, but this is not where I’m from.”
Sam regarded her again and laughed to himself. How could he have ever believed that she was from the Barlands? She was too different in appearance, nothing at all like the people he had seen from the Barlands.
“Where are you from then?” he asked.
“Far from here,” she said.
“How far?”
She smiled again. “There are many places far from your land. Not all of them can be reached without—”
“Without magic.”
“Without a way of transporting,” she said softly.
Transporting. Did she mean the way Havash had used power?
Knowing how to use that would allow Sam to get back to Tavran much faster. He ached to get back to the city, to Tara. He wanted to help protect those he cared about most in the world. The almanac served that purpose, allowed him to offer some protection. The almanac was key to being able to help Tara and Havash, to stop the Nighlan, to defend the Academy. He had to take it back there.
“Can you teach me how to transport?” Sam asked.
“When I do, what do you intend to do with the knowledge?” Despite her question, Lilith studied him with a knowing look in her eyes. She understood exactly what he wanted out of that.
“I need to be able to stop the Nighlan,” he said.
“Is that the only reason you want power like that?”
Sam looked down at the almanac. He could feel the energy around him, and he questioned whether he could use something from the almanac to understand that energy better. The pages didn’t have those answers, at least not that he had seen. They had only arcane magic, not the kind of magic he might be able to access. But he might be able to learn something from Lilith.
She continued to watch him with that knowing look, waiting.
“The Academy is under attack,” Sam replied. “I feel like the almanac—and the vrandal—are key to stopping it.
“Not just for the sake of power?”
Sam shook his head. “I wanted to better understand magic, but I know that even if I do, there isn’t anything I can use that magic for.”
“Find your source, Samran.”
Lilith made a circuit of the room, and her power flowed through the lanterns. Each time it did, he could feel the sizzling energy.
Pausing in front of one of the lanterns, Sam leaned forward and whispered. “Is there anyone in there?”
He felt foolish talking into the lantern—no less foolish than it had felt when he’d done it the first time—but he waited. There was no answer. He guessed that Lilith wouldn’t allow him to connect to the lantern without her permission.
Regardless of what she said to him and how she seemed interested in him better understanding the power he possessed, he still felt like a prisoner here. That made him uncomfortable, and he wanted to get out.
Sam reached up with the vrandal again. The power in it pressed against his palm, causing the device to pulse. Lilith had suggested he find his source, his focus, but the vrandal served that purpose for him. That was how he’d come to know he had magic, and that was what he had to continue to use. In doing so, he could call on the power within the vrandal and keep reaching for something more. There had to be something more.
Sam believed he needed to use the key to translate the almanac, but it might not have been necessary.
Could her vrandal be another key?
He moved to the center of the room, closing his eyes and focusing on what he knew. Lilith had been trying to confound him. With her, it wasn’t about the almanac. She hadn’t seemed at all concerned about letting him have it.
If she wasn’t Nighlan, who was she?
There was no doubt she had power, but what kind of power had he seen from her? Barrier magic. That was about it. He hadn’t seen her do anything else so far. At least, nothing dangerous to him. She could prevent him from getting too close to her. It was a kind of magic that had its uses, but there had to be something else.
Sam continued to turn in place, his mind racing. He needed to reach the others. Daven. Chasten. Havash. Was there a way for him to reach any of them from here?
He had to use the lanterns.
Sam moved toward one of them again. He held his hand closed, squeezing it around the vrandal. He called power through him, summoning as much as he could. The nearest lantern pulsed with light and power, and he stopped in front of it. Lilith glanced in his direction. Would she try to stop him?
He squeezed his hand around the vrandal, waiting. “I’m sorry if this is wrong,” he whispered into the lantern.
Then he held his hand up.
Lilith cried out, but Sam ignored her. He squeezed the vrandal, letting the power he held within him explode outward, and it blasted into the lantern. He didn’t hold anything back.
The lantern flickered. Then it burst into a bright white light.
Sam leaned toward it. “Hello?” He didn’t expect anything from it. The light fluttered for a moment. Then it solidified. “Is anyone there?” Sam asked.
He had a vague sense of movement from behind. Power built, radiating toward him. He tried to ignore it, but the sense of power intensified. Lilith approached, though a green haze that lingered in the air seemed to make it difficult for her to get too close.
Sam held the vrandal out, trying to push more power from it. If nothing else, he could try to use the device to keep her from coming near, though he doubted it would work. He used the same technique he’d seen from Chasten, the way the other man had pushed energy into the cloud.
A storm of power filled her and slammed into him, surrounding his green cloud and whisking it away.
The light from the lantern flickered. Sam glanced toward it.
“Who’s there?” asked a voice. It came from a distance, muted, but Sam definitely heard it.
“Sam—”
He cut off as whatever Lilith did squeezed him.
Another flicker, which held for a moment this time. Was there a voice coming from within it? Sam couldn’t tell.
The lantern surged, and a familiar voice came from a distance. “Samran?”
It was Chasten.
Before Sam had a chance to answer, the pressure overwhelmed him, and he collapsed. Lilith stood over him with only an expression of disappointment on her face.
Chapter Thirteen
Lilith had guided Sam outside again, though he wasn’t sure what she wanted from him this time. They were standing on the ridgeline, the tower behind them, a smattering of trees casting shadows in the growing moonlight. Storms were rippling in the distant Barlands, the steady thunder rumbling, a drumbeat that seemed to drive its way into his being, mixed with the occasional streak of lightning.
“Why did you bring me out here?” He found himself growing increasingly frustrated with her and knew that he needed to be careful with his reaction. She had given him a chance to work with the almanac, the vrandal, and to try to come up with some way to master the two.
“For understanding,” she said.
He laughed softly. “I don’t need to come out into the storm to understand.”
“You grew up in the Barlands, did you not?”
He shrugged. “Near enough.”
“Did you have storms?”
“Often,” he said.
“You didn’t care for them.”
“When you are homeless and living in a shelter with a terrible roof, you find yourself praying for them to end.”
Most of the time, the rain didn’t get into their shelter, though there were times when it did. Times when it managed to slip past them, and times when they were drenched, regardless of the protections above their heads. Mia had never complained, though. She had trusted him. She had always trusted him.
It was during a storm like this when they had lost their parents. He remembered that time all too well, remembering how the clouds had beat with dark streaks of lightning, making them almost seemed purple. The steady drumming building,
and he and Mia waiting for their parents to return.
“When will they get back?” Mia had asked.
Sam had stood at the doorway of their home. It was small, comfortable, but it had been secure against the storms. That had been the last time before he and Mia had gone to the Academy when they had felt that comfort.
“It won’t be long now,” Sam said. “They always come back before the storms.”
“Always before now,” she said.
She had slipped up alongside him. Even then, she had some control over her arcane arts, and he had seen the pale white glowing of her connection to her magic. He had always marveled at it, amazed by the power that she possessed and wishing that he had some connection of his own. His father had always said that a quick mind could counter power any time. Sam had never known whether to believe that, whether it was something he said as a way of placating Sam, or if he truly felt that way. As he looked back upon those days, Sam still didn’t know whether his parents had any access to the arcane arts, though they had not been surprised by Mia’s connection.
“I could go look,” he said.
“I don’t want you going out in the storm by yourself,” she said. “And I don’t want to be left alone.” She looked up at him, her innocent eyes so young, so hopeful. “They are coming back, aren’t they?”
Sam had done his best to smile at her, to offer her a measure of reassurance.
Only they hadn’t.
The night had passed, the steady drumming of thunder rumbling in the distance. The sleeting rain pouring down as if washing away their connection to their past, and in the morning, their parents still hadn’t come. Days passed, and then weeks. When it became clear their parents were not going to return, Sam had made a promise to Mia.
“I will watch over you. Always.”
“What happens if you leave me like they did?”
“I won’t. I will always keep you safe.”
She had squeezed his hand, feeling so small, so helpless, next to him.
And all the time they had spent on the streets, he had made certain that he would come back for her. That he would protect her. All that time, he had honored that promise to her.
When the thunder rumbled again, taking those memories away from him, he looked over to Lilith.
“I thought most people who lived in the Barlands grew to appreciate the storms.”
“I’m not most people,” Sam said.
She regarded him for a long moment, and he couldn’t read the expression in her eyes, only that she looked at him with a curious glint. “You will come with me.”
“Where now?” Sam demanded though it rang hollow in his ears. How could he demand answers to anything when it came to Lilith? He was forced to follow her, whatever she wanted, and forced to do what she wanted. He was her prisoner, even if she was not Nighlan.
“You need to see something.” She turned and started walking west.
Away from the Barlands.
Away from Olway.
He trailed after her. She had a way of moving that seemed graceful but also powerful. He was always aware that she had some power to her, that he couldn’t run or go anywhere, not without her permission. Even if he were to run out into the Barlands, Sam didn’t think that he could survive it. The storms were too powerful, and he would be torn apart by them. He would be ripped apart, unable to survive it, unable to do anything, much like his parents before him.
His time out here did make him think about his sister, though. He had made a promise to her before his abduction that he would help her. That he would see to it that she could pass the Academy. He had made a promise long ago that he would be there for her.
And now he wasn’t going to be?
That ate at him more than it should, he knew. It wasn’t his fault.
Much like it probably was not his parent’s fault that they had left them.
For all he knew, the storms in the Barlands had befallen them. Or maybe something worse. Knowing what he did of the Nighlan now and the true threat they pose, it was entirely possible that they had befallen some danger from the Nighlan themselves.
They walked for what felt like hours. The landscape rose and fell, and after a while, the tower disappeared in the distance behind them. It was like a memory. He wondered if Lilith was taking him someplace else, to some other group of strangers who would hold him captive for longer, but at this point, he knew better than to try to run. It wasn’t like he could do anything or go anywhere. He was her captive, regardless of what she claimed her purpose might be. He was tired but not so tired as to think that he had been up for an impossibly long time. His time in the tower had left him well fed, generally well-rested, and simply isolated, more than anything else.
He missed aspects of the Academy, but surprisingly not nearly as much as he thought he would. He missed Tara. James. Checking in on Mia. The library, at least what it had once been. But other parts of the Academy he could have done without. The personalities. The challenges of trying to fit in. The fear that he would be exposed as a fraud within the Academy. None of that really mattered to him. Were it not for his sister, he wasn’t even sure that he would care if he stayed at the Academy.
That was a lie. He knew it. He did care. Especially now that he had come to gain access to books and think that maybe there was some potential that he had which he could access. If only he could unlock that.
Finally, Lilith stopped when she reached a hillside that looked down, sweeping and sloping far below. They had been walking for hours. Long enough that he was surprised she didn’t use some way of transporting them, traveling with alchemy as he knew possible, but she had not. Instead, she had gone on foot. He found that strange. Could she not use that kind of power, or did she not have the right alchemical device to allow her to travel?
“What you see here?”
Sam stood in place, staring for a long moment. Down below, there were occasional trees, clumps of grass, but the darkness spread, making it difficult for him to make much out. Every so often, a peal of thunder rumbled more loudly than the others, and another burst of bright lightning punctuated it, and he could glimpse more out in the distance.
“If you wanted me to see something, you should have done it during the daytime.”
“Have you looked out your window?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
She glanced over, and then she started to smile. “It has everything to do with it. Have you ever looked out your window?”
“I guess so.”
“You guess. What have you seen?”
“I have seen the storms.”
They had been a constant companion since his captivity. The thunder, the lightning, the darkness.
That was what she was getting. It was the darkness.
“You’re saying it never gets light around here?”
“I’m saying that it is possible that you wouldn’t know the difference between day and night. It is possible there is no difference here.”
Sam found that difficult to believe. Every place had a difference between day and night, but perhaps she wasn’t altogether wrong. It would be difficult for him to know if there was anything other than what he had seen. The darkness had seemed almost eternal. The storms persistent.
“Is there something about the storms out here?”
“There are some who believe this part of the world is at a confluence of energies.” She shrugged, and she stared into the darkness, looking off to the west. “I’m not so sure that I believe that, but there are some who think that. Still, there are reasons for this place.”
“What reasons are those?”
She turned back to him. “Reasons.”
“You wanted me to see something out here. Something that I couldn’t see within the tower. What is it?”
“I’m not holding you here to torment you, Sam. You are here to gain the understanding needed to accomplish your task. You are the only one who can do it. You are the only one who can control that
device,” she said, motioning toward his vrandal. “You have connected to it.”
“I’m sure somebody else could.”
“Somebody else would have to have the necessary potential, and unfortunately, it is incredibly difficult to find that potential. So in this case, you must be the one who does it.”
“Or else this power is released?”
She fell silent. The thunder rumbled. Lightning crackled. Most of it stayed up in the clouds, illuminating the sky more than anything else, but an occasional burst of lightning streaked down, and he could make out the landscape. Sam stared for a long while until he realized just what it was. Buildings. He saw what looked to be buildings, though they were small, smears of darkness, as if there had been a city there, but not any longer. He saw no lanterns lit, no glowing in the windows, and nothing to suggest any life in that city.
“What is that?”
“That is a place long ago destroyed by the Nighlan.”
Sam swallowed. The air crackled with energy, and he could feel his heart thumping, almost as if in time to the thunder. “Why didn’t they stay?”
He tried not to let his mind go toward darker thoughts, tried not to think about what the Nighlan might’ve done to those who were here, people that his parents probably would’ve traded with. It did regardless.
“We don’t know. This is but one such place. There are others. Many others. Many of them are throughout the Barlands, villages that had been safe, protected, but ones whose defenses the Nighlan eventually managed to penetrate.”
“You wanted me to see the danger of the Nighlan?” Sam turned to her. “I’ve seen what they do. Have been attacked by them. I understand what they want.”
“You don’t understand what they want. You think that you do. You think that you have seen the key, that you can understand it, but you cannot. There are places of power the Nighlan have not been able to breach. Your Academy was one of them.”
“Was.”
She nodded. “Was. Unfortunately, the thirst for power is often far stronger than a desire for protection and safety. People get corrupted, even those you would never think capable of corruption.”
“We stopped the attack.”
Alchemist Illusion (The Alchemist Book 3) Page 13