The Alchemist's Touch (15 page)

“Do not speak of her,” snapped Ebon.
 

At Lilith’s side, Oren and Nella tensed. But Lilith only smiled. “I shall speak of what I wish. After all, we are all friends here, are we not? Or at least, we are young people joined in mutual endeavor. To learn our magic. How fare your studies, by the by?”

Ebon’s hands balled to fists. Were it not for Theren’s command, he would have walked away on the spot, for he feared he might strike Lilith if she did not stop badgering him. Though she sat and he stood, the scorn on her face made him feel as though she were looking down on him.

And then suddenly, she was. Without warning, Lilith’s chair rose into the air. At first Ebon thought it was her doing, some trick of fire magic he had never heard of before. But the look of shock on her face soon told him it was otherwise. With a glance over his shoulder, he noticed Theren lurking in a corner, half-hidden behind a couch. Her eyes were glowing.

“What are you doing?” said Lilith. “Put me down at once!”

Ebon spread his hands, stifling a smile. “What do you mean? I know no magic. And I am a transmuter besides. Is this transmutation? If so, I have never seen its like before. Perhaps I have turned you into a bird.”

The ceiling in the room was quite high, and now Lilith was very close to it. Then, the chair began to tip. Very, very slowly, it tilted forwards. Now every head in the room was turned towards her, watching as she scrambled to keep her seat. For a moment, Ebon was afraid she would fall to the stone floor. It would not be fatal, but surely it would injure her. But he reassured himself; Theren must know what she was doing.

“It is mind magic!” cried Lilith. “I can feel it! Oren, stop them!”

“I can’t!” said Oren, whose eyes were glowing now. He ground his teeth in frustration.

“Which one of you is it?” said Nella. She went from chair to chair, seizing students by the front of their robes and looking into their eyes, searching for a glow. “When I find you, I will melt the skin from you!”

Then the chair flipped all the way over. Lilith barely held on to one of the legs, dangling there in midair. But then her legs lifted up, and suddenly she hung upside down in midair, still clinging to the chair leg as though the world had turned upside down. Gravity did its work, and dragged her robe down around her shoulders, exposing her underclothes and a great deal of skin. Kalem yelped and averted his eyes. Throughout the room, reluctantly, students began to giggle. The laughter swelled, and soon was reverberating throughout the room and off the walls.

“What an audience I have tonight,” said Ebon, turning to them all with a smile. “It pleases your jester very much to have brought you such mirth.” He placed a hand to his waist and bowed, as fine as any courtier. The students only laughed harder.

“Put me down this instant!”
cried Lilith. “Theren! Theren, I know it is you!”

She stopped moving through the air at once. Then, swiftly, she came back down. The chair turned over in its descent to land right side up. Lilith was not so lucky, landing hard—but not too hard—on her head. She shot to her feet and replaced her robes, her face a mask of fury. Quickly she made for Ebon.

Theren appeared as if from nowhere, standing beside Ebon with hands balled into fists. Kalem stood to his other side, though Ebon saw the boy gulp in fear. But fright, it seemed, was baseless; Lilith stopped a pace away, staring at Theren with…not hatred, nor even anger. Ebon could not place it. It was sadness.

“You have a forked tongue, Lilith,” said Theren softly. “And I care not what you do with it. But you will not use your magic against my friends again.”

Oren and Nella made to move past Lilith towards Theren, but she stopped them with outstretched arms. Her jaw spasmed again and again, but she spoke no word to Theren. Instead she turned hate-filled eyes on Ebon again.

“Until the morrow,
jester,”
she hissed. “You find yourself in fortunate company.”

She spun on her heel and swept from the room. Oren and Nella followed after only a moment’s hesitation.

The other students in the room turned quickly away. If Ebon had thought to earn more friends, those hopes seemed dashed. But Theren was smiling, and even Kalem wore a nervous little grin. That seemed enough, at least for now.

“I have not had such fun in months,” said Theren, grinning. “Come, goldbags. Let us see if we cannot get ourselves a drink before nightfall.”

fifteen

THE NEXT DAY, EBON SPENT his time in the library reading Kalem’s hidden tome on the Wizard Kings, while Kalem sat by and worked on his own lessons. Often Ebon would have some question about the text, and would ask Kalem. The boy’s knowledge was incredible, and he would always answer Ebon with some tale from another of the library’s volumes. Ebon would record the names of other books that Kalem thought he should read, and soon his parchment was full. He looked upon the list with some dismay; it seemed to be half a lifetime’s worth of reading.

When he tired of the book, he would take out his stick, and Kalem would try teaching him to turn it into stone. But try as he might, Ebon could not summon the magic to do it.

“Take your time,” Kalem told him. “It is only your third day.”

“You do not understand. As long as I am in Credell’s class, my time here is wasted.”

“I passed his class early, and yet still it took me half a year. You cannot expect to do it in a week, especially when you have never been allowed to practice.”

That day passed, and the next, and the next. Soon Ebon found himself settling into a comfortable routine, at least outside of Credell’s class. Although soon even that became more tolerable. The instructor still looked at Ebon with wide-eyed terror whenever he spoke or moved, but soon the other children forgot their fear of him, and soon he learned their names. The wild-haired girl he had seen on his first day was named Astrea, and she seemed to take a particular liking to Ebon, though she appeared afraid to speak with him. Sometimes he would catch her staring from across the room, but she turned and blushed whenever he looked. Though Astrea did not resemble Albi, still something in her manner reminded Ebon of home. He would catch her gaze and stick his tongue whenever he could manage. She would giggle behind her hand and quickly return to her lessons.

Then each day he would huddle in the library with Kalem. Ebon finished the history of the Wizard Kings in his first week, and began on his catalog of other tomes. But commonly he would come upon something that gave him some question, and he would refer back to the great blue book. He and Kalem spent as much time trying to learn spells as they did reading, though Kalem often warned him that they were supposed to use the time for studying, and Jia would be most cross if she found out.

After three weeks, Ebon began to feel comfortable. Already, when he thought back to his first two days, they seemed to have happened to someone else. Even Lilith’s torments had lessened, though she still gave him an evil look whenever they passed in the hallways, and sometimes she jostled him in the dining hall. But Lilith gave him a wide berth whenever he was with Theren, which was often, and if Theren ever caught her nearby, she stared until Lilith scuttled away. Ebon suspected there was some history between them, but when he asked Theren, she merely shrugged and said, “Some, yes. Now she knows better than to make any more.”

On occasion Ebon would sneak out of Credell’s class and onto the training grounds. The instructor could not possibly have failed to notice his absence, but perhaps he was relieved not to have the young Drayden in his classroom. Ebon knew he would get in trouble if he were ever discovered, but many hedges ran along the Academy’s wall, and he could go there to hide himself and watch the other students practice their spells.
 

Sometimes he watched classes from the other three instructors: mindmages, firemages, and weremages. But most often he went to the smaller grounds to see the alchemists practice. Their spells were less spectacular, not the sort of magic he often heard in tales and the like. Yet Ebon knew, or hoped, that this magic lay in his future, and so it kept his interest better than any of the others. He did not see the student who had turned her instructor’s arrow to dust, but saw the others performing similar spells with the cloth balls thrown amongst each other.

When he saw the weremages, there was an instructor he watched often—an older man, black hair dusted with grey, wearing his thick beard trimmed close to his face. Ebon thought he had the look of a Selvan man. There was something familiar about him, mayhap because the man looked so kindly. Always he spoke to his students in a calm and measured tone, and Ebon noted how he would show them a spell over and over until they had learned it. Then he would leave, while keeping careful watch from the corner of his eyes. Ebon often thought wistfully how he wished Credell were such an instructor—but this man was a weremage, and could not have taught Ebon even if he wanted to.

One day, nearly a month after his first day, Ebon was in the library with Kalem, rod in hand, trying to change it, yet unable to manage.
 

“Try to
feel
it, instead of just seeing it,” Kalem suggested. “Sometimes that works better.”

“Of course I feel it,” said Ebon. “I am holding it in my hands, am I not?”

“I do not mean feel it, I mean…
Feel
it,” he finished lamely.

“That makes it all much clearer. Quick, run to fetch Credell! I am ready for my test.” Ebon shoved the rod back into his robes. “Enough of this. I have found a book written by a member of my own family, many hundreds of years ago, and today I meant to start it. I shall return in a moment.”

He stood and strode away from their table, in and among the shelves all about him. Ebon found the section he was looking for easily enough, for he was now well practiced in seeking the library’s many works. He scanned the spines on shelf after shelf, searching for his book.

“Well, little goldbag, how go your studies?”

Ebon nearly jumped out of his skin, and gripped the bookshelf to steady himself. He turned, and for a moment could not believe his eyes. Mako leaned casually against the shelf behind Ebon, the wicked knife at his hip shining as bright as his sparkling eyes. He had folded his thick, tattooed arms over each other, but in one hand he held a book, which he had opened to the middle and appeared to be reading. With a start, Ebon realized that it was the very book he had come here to find.

“Mako? What are you doing here?” Something made Ebon’s skin crawl, more than his normal reaction to the man. How did Mako get here, to the library’s third floor, without causing some sort of commotion in the Academy? Guests were not allowed to roam these halls unescorted. Yet no one else was in sight.

“Your lack of hospitality wounds me,” said Mako, frowning. “It seems an eternity since last I was privileged to lay eyes upon you.”

“It has only been a month.”

“The days turn to years, and all that drivel.” Mako slapped the book shut and made to return it. But then he caught Ebon’s eye upon the volume, and he held it up in mock surprise. “Oh, were you looking for this one? Here it is, young lord. Take it with my compliments.”

“How did you know?”

Mako’s too-friendly grin widened. “How did I know what, Ebon? There are far too many answers for me to deliver them all here and now.”

“Never mind. What do you want?”

“That question, too, comes with a host of replies. And why should I answer your question, when you have failed to answer mine?”

“Yours?” said Ebon, blinking.

“The first thing I asked you: how go your studies?”

Ebon looked about, unsure. “They go well enough, I suppose. Though I find it—”

Mako clapped his hands sharply, and Ebon’s words died in his mouth. “Quite enough of that. I have come for another purpose. The family requires something of you.”

The library was utterly silent, except for the thunder of Ebon’s heart. “The family. By which, I would guess, you mean my father. What does he need?”

Mako looked down at the fingers of his right hand. His left drifted to his knife, and Ebon’s hands tightened on the spine of his book. But when Mako drew the knife, it was only to pick under his fingernails with the tip, which glistened in the dim orange glow of the library’s lamps.

“What sort of question is that?” said Mako lightly. “He is your father, and the reason you attend the Academy. Are you not happy to fulfill his heart’s desire, whatever that may be?”

“Of course,” Ebon said quickly. The last thing he wanted was for Mako to run back to his father with tales of ingratitude. “I only meant to ask, how may I be of service to him?”

“There will be a package left for you. Tonight, after the Academy’s lanterns have been dimmed and that white-haired old bat has left the front door. You will receive a special permission slip from the Dean, your loving cousin Cyrus, allowing you to leave the Academy after nightfall.”

Ebon’s heart caught in his throat. “Leave the Academy?”

Mako took his meaning and grinned. “Not forever, boy—only for tonight. You must bring the package to the west end of the Seat. Near the western wall, you will find an inn called the Shining Door. A man there will recognize you, and you must deliver the package to him.”

“What is in the package?”
 

“You need not trouble yourself over that.”

“Could you not bring it yourself? This seems an awful amount of trouble.” Mako’s eyes grew cold, and Ebon shivered. “I mean only that, certainly my father would like it done fast, and it will be many hours until I can leave.”

Still the bodyguard stared with his icy eyes, his grin unwavering. “He has patience enough for this. And besides, I am somewhat well known in that part of the Seat, and not in any way you would consider complimentary. But no one there will think that
you
are up to anything nefarious.”

“And will I be?”

Mako winked. “Why should you be? You are only delivering a parcel. Any mischief shall be on your own account.”

Ebon felt the jaws of some unseen trap slowly closing about him. “But students are not supposed to leave the Academy so late.”