The Scofflaw Magician (The Artifactor Book 3) (4 page)

In all
actuality, the crystal was not her first choice in trying to locate something
or someone. It was very precise—too precise. It would show you the literal
location, but if that something was in a dark crevice, or behind a piece of
furniture, all you would see was darkness. Or a part of the furniture. Unless
you recognized the specific area the piece was in, then the image was of no
help to you whatsoever.

The reason why
Sevana used it first was simple—she wanted to see if the princess was still
alive. Searching for a living being was different from searching from a corpse
after all. It would also give the girl’s family time to either accept her death
or hope that they would be able to get her back alive. The location itself was
important, but not as much as finding out the girl’s status.

Sevana waited
for the image to appear in the facet of the crystal, then waited some more, but
nothing appeared. It remained glowing in a smoky white color, flickering,
searching, but not finding anything.

She stared at
it for several long moments, unbelieving what she was seeing. Never, in the
entire time that Sevana had been using magic—not even in her student days—had
this happened. In fact, before this moment, she’d have sworn this was
impossible!

Firuz hovered
at her elbow, eyes flickering back and forth between her and the crystal.
“What’s happening? What does that mean?”

“I now
understand why your magicians are maintaining that she must have been spirited
away,” Sevana said slowly, shutting off the spell. “That has to be the strangest
result that I have ever seen.”

“What does it
mean?!” he demanded in growing agitation.

“I don’t know,”
she admitted, making a sour face as the words left her mouth. She
hated
saying that, it was the one phrase she hated most in the world.

Firuz gulped,
expression going ashen. “Is she dead?”

“No,” Sevana
corrected immediately, putting the crystal back on the table. Bracing her back
against the table’s edge, she tilted her head back towards the ceiling, trying
to think and explain at the same time. “The crystal doesn’t differentiate
between ‘alive’ and ‘dead,’ it simply searches for the object that I name.
People or things don’t make any difference to it. I used it first because I
wanted to see if she was still alive, maybe give me a hint of her location. But
it didn’t find anything to report to me. It literally could not find her,
living or dead.”

The king’s brow
furrowed as he puzzled his way through that. “But she must be one or the
other.”

“Until a minute
ago, I’d have thought the same thing. But that isn’t what the crystal is
telling me.” Sevana could think of two possibilities off the top of her head to
explain why, but she wasn’t about to say either one of them in front of a
doting father. Not until she had some hard evidence to back it up with. “Firuz,
I’m going to have to do some pretty elaborate spells to try to figure out this
result. Grydon’s nose just became a really good option to use as well. I need
full reign of your country.”

“You have it,”
he promised her instantly. “I’ll assign someone to aid you in whatever way you
need. But…you’re sure she’s not dead?”

“Not dead,” she
responded, shaking her head. “I can’t give you a quick solution or promise
immediate results either. This might take a few weeks to unravel. Whoever got
past your daughter’s magical protections is very crafty and did a very good
job. I won’t be able to solve this overnight.”

He looked
disheartened, but as a king, he was used to things not always going as planned.
“Please…find her quickly. Whatever help you need, you have.”

“I’ll use all
of it.” Sevana might put in a call to Master later if she couldn’t get to the
bottom of this on her own.

Farah burst
back inside the room, a cloth lion in her hands that had seen better days. “Her
favorite toy.”

“Perfect.”
Sevana took it and held it out to Grydon, letting him get a good sniff. “Go
hunt. I have to get back to the workshop. The tools I brought will not be
enough for the job.”

Grydon, happy
to have something to do, bounced out the door.

Sevana, envious
of his energy, paused before heading for the clock. “When I get back, I’ll need
to see the area where she last was.”

“I’ll guide you
there myself,” Firuz promised.

“Good. I’ll be
back shortly.” Sevana opened the glass door and stepped through. She wouldn’t
be getting much sleep in the coming days. This situation had changed from
interesting to very, very dangerous. It behooved her to solve the riddle before
something else disastrous happened.

It took her
very little time to get everything she needed together, shove it all into a bag,
and then come back through the clock and into the palace. When she arrived,
Firuz was pacing back and forth in front of the clock, hands clasped behind his
back, obviously trying not to fidget and failing miserably at it. Sevana had a
twinge of sympathy for what the man was going through and didn’t call him on
it. Really, all things considered, he was holding up remarkably well.

Most of what
was in the bag she wouldn’t need for the search of the area. It would be for
later, for the variety of tests that inevitably would need to be done. For now,
she grabbed her box lens and threw the bag into the room before gesturing for
Firuz to lead the way.

He did so with
an audible sigh of relief.

Sevana got
quite a few looks from the staff as they walked briskly through the hallways.
In this country of black hair and dark olive skin, she stood out like a sore
thumb. It was obvious at even a glance who she must be. The people they passed
gave a brief, startled blink at finding her right there in front of them, then
a flash of relief went across their faces before they gave an appropriate bow
to their king. After they passed, there was always a flurry of low voices
whispering to each other. Gossip certainly flew here.

Firuz opened a
door that let out into a large square courtyard. There was very little in the
way of grass or plants of any sort, just a lot of flagstone and one fountain
that dominated the center of the area. The heat was intense enough to make the
air go wavy. Of all the places she had seen in the palace, this seemed the
least welcoming for a child.

“People come
through here?”

“It’s the
passage way for the Small Court. Anyone that has business to discuss, such as
paying taxes or settling a grievance, comes here.”

Sevana gave the
area another sweep, becoming more baffled. “She liked to play here?”

“The water
fountain was like a pool to her,” Firuz explained sadly. “She would play in it
with her friends.”

Alright, it now
made more sense. The fountain really was large, very wide at the base and
filled with water. It would be the perfect thing for a child to play in without
risk of drowning. “Since this was a regular routine for her, that’s why you had
so many protective wards set about the place?”

Firuz didn’t
seem surprised by her question. Some of them would be visible even to a
nonmagical person, so of course she saw it. “Yes, that’s why. Wards against
kidnapping or assassination. Weapons can’t be brought into the court anyway but
I didn’t want people thinking they could just cart her off either.”

Wise of the
man. To the naked eye, these wards were intimidating. Not even a half-witted
fool would dare to try anything here. With all of these protections in place,
it made sense that her parents weren’t worried about her playing here. Sevana
would have done the same without thinking twice about it. Even if the wards
mysteriously failed, there were at least twenty guards all about that were sure
to take notice of something happening and act immediately.

Knowing that
she wouldn’t be able to see what she needed to with just her naked eye, Sevana
lifted the box lens to her eye and started really looking in detail at the
place. She walked up and down the area, around the fountain several times,
sometimes crouching to peer at the water or flagstones, sometimes going up on
tiptoe and craning her neck to look at the top of the walls. But the effort was
in vain. Growling out a sigh, she let the lens drop to her side.

“Firuz, this is
hopeless.”

“You can’t pick
up any hints?” The king had his fists balled into his robes. “Was the magic not
strong enough? It didn’t linger?”

“I give it even
odds that it did.” Turning about, she looked for her wolf and wasn’t surprised
he had already moved on. His nose had likely led him to other places. “The
problem is there’s
too
much magic here. It all overlaps with each other,
mingles, and it’s impossible to completely separate one thread of magic from
the other.” Seeing that he was following, but not, she couched it in different
terms. “It’s akin to looking for a needle in a stack of needles. I can’t see
the one I’m looking for.”

“Because you
don’t know what it looks like to begin with,” Firuz finished with resigned
understanding. “I think I see. Then this place is useless to you. It holds no
answers.”

Or hints. Yes,
he was right in that regard. “There are other methods I can use to find her.
I’ll start with those.”

Lacing her
fingers together, she stretched her arms out in front of her, rolling her head
around and cracking her neck, getting as much tension out of her shoulders as
possible. Feeling more limber, she started laying out her tools on the table. After
yesterday, she’d ducked back to Big to gather more of them, as this wasn’t
going to be a quick job. This would take more specialized tools.

Wands were
first, lined up in a precise row, then crystals below that, and then potions
and journals along the far right side. She always set up her table in the same
way so that she knew where everything was and could reach for it without
looking.

To Sevana’s
knowledge, there were fourteen varieties of locating spells. Two of them she
had invented herself. She did not for one second believe that they would
actually work, or that the court magicians here hadn’t already tried most of
them, but she didn’t trust people to do their jobs correctly. Especially with a
king breathing down their necks, they would likely have made a hash of even
mundane spells. Besides, sometimes she was pleasantly surprised and those
mundane spells worked. It only took a whole five minutes to try the lot of them,
so she had little to lose.

Picking up her
favorite wand, she flicked through all of the locating spells, one after the
other in quick succession. Nothing. Color her surprised.

Alright, next.
Sevana had learned in the first year of her training that when locating spells
didn’t work, sometimes summoning spells did. Of course, you had to be rather
vague on what you were summoning, to broaden the search area. And sometimes
that meant you summoned very interesting things indeed, things you didn’t want,
and there was no such thing as an
un
summoning spell. Unfortunately. This
time she wouldn’t run into that sort of hazard. Hopefully. There were only so
many princesses in the world, and as long as she excluded them in the spell, it
should turn out alright.

These took a
little longer as she had to add in the exceptions, but Sevana still ran through
all of them within an hour and didn’t have any results to show for it. Well,
again, she wasn’t too surprised.

Now that they
were out of the way, the work really began.

Firuz had
commanded his court magicians to give her a precise outline of what magical
protections Princess Amas had on her. They were charted out in minute detail,
left on her table, waiting for her attention. Sevana picked it up and settled
into a window seat, studying it for chinks in the armor. After what had
happened with Bel and Aren, using either a de-aging spell or a magnifying spell
of any sort was blocked. She was gratified that everyone had taken her warnings
seriously and the spells were being actively counteracted. But that didn’t mean
there weren’t any other weaknesses.

Sometimes the
wards would prevent other things from happening, things that were convenient.
Like transportation spells. And healing spells. Those of course were added in
as exceptions, magic that was allowed. Sevana looked for an exception for the
locating spells and found it. She frowned thoughtfully. If the wards allowed
locating magic to work, then it must be something of the curse that blocked it.
Or it was a side effect of the curse. One of the two.

Making a mental
note, she went through the rest of the chart. Transforming spells were allowed,
potions were allowed as long as they weren’t poisonous or harmful in dosage,
and things that were of an ‘entertainment’ class were allowed. Anything that
dealt with fireworks, music, art, or something of that ilk wouldn’t set off her
wards. Sevana had expected that. If that weren’t the case, no royal family
member would be able to stand the magic that their entertainers did in court
without their wards reacting, which was hardly a fun way to spend the evening.

There wasn’t
one part of this ward design that was outside of her expectations except the
locating spells. And that was probably because she was so young—if ever she was
somehow kidnapped or lost, they had to have a way of easily finding her. So
what spell or curse could get through these layers of protections?

Sevana tried to
think like an evil magician. Nothing brilliant came to mind. Alright, work with
the spells that she knew were allowed and try to find a way to spirit away a
girl through them. It was the dogged approach, but she didn’t want to sit
around waiting for a flash of genius.

Getting up, she
started on the transportation spells, and worked her way from there.

Two days she
spent going through each category of spells, looking for ways to duplicate the
results of what happened, without gaining anything. Sevana actually started
keeping a log of things she tried—it became that insane—as she found herself
repeating things for lack of a new idea. It strangely reminded her of the time
she’d been put in charge of breaking the Sleeping Princess curse on Morgan. The
situations were totally different from each other, but her level of frustration
in trying to crack the puzzle was the same. It didn’t help that she had to
report daily to the royal parents. Saying
I don’t know
on repeat was wearing
her last nerve dangerously thin.

Day three
dawned and she sat on her worktable, staring at the diagram of the magical
wards pinned to the opposite wall. Any spell, used the way it was intended to,
didn’t get past the wards. She made a mockup of them, surrounding a chair, and
it hadn’t done what she wanted to. Perhaps it wasn’t one spell, but a
combination of two? Turning sideways, with only one leg dangling, she bent
forward and reached for a blank page to sketch out the idea. It wasn’t exactly
stable, but the numbers looked alright. Evil magicians wouldn’t care about
stability anyway, just results.

Well, if she
was wrong, it would be a chair that died. No real loss there. Focusing, she
combined a locating spell with a transportation spell. For a split second, it
looked like it would work. Then the chair started rattling.

Sevana swore
and dove to the floor, arms over her head, an anticipatory wince on her face as
she just knew what was going to happen next.

“Sevana, how
are things—” Firuz had the door half open, head coming into the room.

“DOWN!” she
screamed at him.

The king had
better reflexes than most men. He dropped to all fours instantly, and just in
time, as the chair ripped itself apart at that moment, legs and wood splinters
flying all directions. All that was left was kindling and wisps of smoke where
the spell had failed.

Sevana peeked
out from behind her arms, found it safe, and rolled up to her knees. “Firuz.
Get up, it’s safe enough now.”

The king did
not look sold on this idea and was slow to get to his feet. “I do not think I
should enter this room, where gods would fear to tread.”

Snorting in
amusement, she encouraged him inside. “I was experimenting with spells. I’ve
discovered that a single spell cannot spirit anything away, so the only answer
is that it’s a combination of spells that managed it. I’ve narrowed it down to
what categories of spells are possible to get through the protections, it’s
just finding which spells and how they’re combined. Once I know that, I can
unravel what happened and track her down.” Hopefully.

“Then…that…” he
had a disturbed, pinched look to his face as he stared at the remains of the
chair.

“That
combination is not what was used,” she said firmly, before he got a gruesome
picture stuck in his head. “Whatever was used got your daughter out of this
palace quickly and cleanly, without a trace. So this obviously isn’t it.”

“Oh.” His
shoulders slumped in relief. “I wanted to see where you stood on things.”

“I’ve narrowed
the list of possibilities. That’s all I can report at the moment.”

Firuz, being a
good king, knew that hovering around the room as she tried to work would be
counterproductive. So he took himself off again, closing the door behind him.
Sevana cleaned up the remains of the chair with a swish and flick of the wand,
summoning another one from the far wall and resetting the wards.

Hmm, alright,
that hadn’t worked. What combination would? And wouldn’t be volatile in the
process?

~ ~ ~

After nearly
having his head taken off, Firuz had learned not to bother her but instead
hover outside the door and wait for her to come out before pestering her with
questions. Sevana said far too many “I don’t knows” in those days and it turned
her already bad mood into a bitterly sour one.
I don’t know
was for incompetent
morons or hacks at the magical trade. They were not for her.

Finally, she
had exhausted the usual, the unusual, and the probable. It came down to the
improbable and theoretically impossible, and while that was fun to figure out,
it was also highly dangerous. Sevana’s hopes of getting a missing princess back
dwindled quickly.

Unhappy with
her own failures and lack of results, she nevertheless resigned herself to
imparting the bad news. She’d have to, in order to prepare for the next step.
Leaving her wands and tools behind, she went looking for the king. Instead of
just him, she found both queen and king, along with Farah and her quiet
bodyguard. They were ensconced in the room at the other end of the hallway,
which Sevana was given to understand was a study of sorts for the royal family.
It didn’t resemble any study she’d ever seen—more like a morning room. It only
had tables and pillows inside, the tall windows on either side fully open to
let a breeze in. Guards were stationed on either side of the windows, another
just inside the door, but they were still enough to be mistaken for statuary at
first glance.  

Queen Malia
looked up as she strode through, then scrambled to her feet. Her white robes
were immaculate, dark hair braided in an elaborate style around her head, so
that she had the outward appearance of being in control. But her dark eyes were
filled with worry and she didn’t look like she’d been getting any sleep at all,
like her husband.

“Artifactor.”

“There’s three
possibilities,” Sevana started without even trying to ease them into it. She
pulled up an oversized cushion and plopped onto it, beyond tired of being on
her feet. “And you’re not going to like any of them.”

The family
leaned in, over the table, eyes glued to her. Heaving a weary sigh, she started
ticking options off on her fingers. “First, she’s been transformed into
something that is so different from her normal form the spells don’t recognize
it as being her still.”

“Like what?”
Farah objected.

“Anything. At
this point, anything is possible. It can range from an animal to an object,
like a figurine statue or something. When we search for the princess, we have
an image in our heads of a human girl, but that’s exactly what the spell’s not
finding. We can’t search for her in any of the normal ways because she’s been
changed into something so different the spell can’t recognize it as her.”

Malia raised
both hands to her mouth, eyes wide and bright with unshed tears. “Is she
still…alive like that?”

“The one sliver
of hope I have is that the magical protections she was under prevented any
spell that would have harmed her. Transformed her, yes, but not killed her. So
whatever she’s turned into, my educated guess is she’s still alive.”

The parents
looked disturbed by this, but relieved.

Sevana lifted a
second finger. “Option two is, she hasn’t been transformed, but is instead
between. She’s trapped in a magical dimension separate from this one, in an
entirely different plane. If that’s the case, she’s perfectly fine for a long
while, but our searching spells won’t be able to detect her. Our spells work on
this
plane, and this plane only, it can’t search beyond that. This, I
think, is the more likely option. It would neatly navigate past all of her
protections without any trouble.”

“It can?” Farah
objected. “But how...?”

“You yourself
did that when you stepped through my clock portal,” Sevana explained, straining
to keep hold of her patience. After five days of racking her brains, she didn’t
have much of it left. “That was passing through another dimension as well.”

Farah’s mouth
formed a silent ah of understanding and thankfully didn’t ask any other
questions.

“The third
option,” Sevana continued while lifting another finger, “is that it’s both.
They’ve somehow transformed her into an object that taps into another plane. If
they’ve done this, I have no idea how we’ll find her. Nothing magical will be
able to detect her unless we just luckily stumble across her.”

Firuz dared to
ask the question everyone was thinking. “What do we do now?”

“I’m fresh out
of ideas,” Sevana admitted sourly. She braced her forearms against the table’s
surface and let her head hang in between her shoulders. If she could have about
twenty hours of sleep, she’d probably be able to think of something brilliant,
but at the moment she had nothing to offer.